Month: July 2013
China should concern us
With current events keeping the 24-hour news cycle focused elsewhere, one issue that doesn’t get enough attention these days is growing tension between the US and China. With an ongoing cyber-war , hostile actions in outer space , and increasingly confrontational military buildups and posturing, the military rivalry between the world’s two largest economies is worrisome.
Larry Wortzel, a respected China expert and retired US army colonel, spoke yesterday at the Heritage Foundation about his recently published The Dragon Extends its Reach: Chinese Military Power Goes Global. Describing China’s People’s Liberation Army (PLA), Wortzel is skeptical about the future of US – Chinese relations. He dismisses those who view China’s economic and military growth as benign and believes that both the near and long-term future will be characterized by friction, competition, and potential for conflict. Read more
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US law on aid to Egypt
Delta Royalty Consulting President Jim Roy,* who left an informative comment on www.peacefare.net correcting some of my errors and omissions last week, offers:
Since the code of Hammurabi was carved in stone three thousand eight hundred and eight years ago, the presence of written law has distinguished civilized societies from barbarians. The tradition in the United States is that the Congress writes the law and the Administration implements the law. Separation of powers has protected Americans from the evils of dictatorships and police states.
Under US law, the coup d’etat in Egypt requires that US financial aid for military purposes be suspended, as well as financial aid for training of military and police. The coup does not require suspension of financial aid for economic assistance, but limits how such aid may be used. In particular, economic assistance may not be used to support police or security measures. The coup does not affect programs delivered directly by USAID. It also does not affect shipments of US-manufactured weapons that Egypt may acquire as a major non-NATO ally. Read more
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Amnesty for what?
Rilind Latifi, a Kosovar graduate of the Johns Hopkins School of Advanced International Studies, explains:
The Kosovo parliament last week rejected a draft law on amnesty required as a result of the agreement reached on April 19 between the prime-ministers Hashim Thaçi and Ivica Dačić. The law is intended to facilitate integration of the Serbs in the north. It offers them protection from legal action due to their resistance to Kosovo’s constitutional order since the 2008 declaration of independence, after which they burned customs points and erected multiple barricades blocking free movement (including for the EU rule of law mission, NATO’s KFOR, and the Kosovo police). Serbia views the amnesty law as a tradeoff and precondition dismantling Belgrade’s governing structures in the north. Read more
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Syria: bad to worse
What do you do about the killers when the war is over?
It’s not easy to summarize the discussions I was privileged to participate in the week before last with Syrian opposition folks assembled in Istanbul by the Syria Justice and Accountability Centre (with support from the Public International Law and Policy Group) to discuss institutional reform aspects of transitional justice after the fall of Bashar al Asad. The group, which included activists as well as a few fighters and several minorities but no vigorous Islamists, viewed transitional justice as a kind of compromise, second-best justice, adequate and even necessary for straitened post-war circumstances should the opposition win and intended to promote security and reconciliation, but far from ideal. Read more
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Process matters
Egypt’s latest constitutional declaration, which is intended to lay out a roadmap for elections within six months, is a mistake. Admittedly it is just the most recent in a long series, but that doesn’t make it any less serious.
First the bare facts: just before midnight Monday, the interim president, Adly Mansour, issed a constitutional declaration Read more
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Afghanistan: why negotiate?
As global attention focuses on the uncertainty in Egypt, the seemingly-ceaseless conflict in Syria, and Edward Snowden’s world tour to seek asylum, another development has gone largely unnoticed – US efforts to negotiate with the Taliban. As predicted, it appears that these talks will proceed, despite the recent attempts by the Karzai government to derail them over a dispute about a Taliban office and flag in Qatar.
US and allied forces are set to withdraw from Afghanistan sometime in 2014. As relations with the Afghan government deteriorate, the withdrawal may come sooner than many expected. As a result, US policy makers have deemed it imperative for there to be some sort of a political process that will ensure the security and stability of both Afghanistan and the broader region. They have increasingly made overtures to Taliban leaders. On Monday, the New America Foundation hosted a panel on what can be expected from these developments and examined the broader context of trying to negotiate with the Afghan Taliban in a study titled, “Talking to the Taliban: Hope over History?” (the complete text of their study can be found here). Read more
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