Month: August 2013
Yes, I was there and then is now
This piece was republished today, the 50th anniversary of the March on Washington, by Buzzfeed under the heading “I Was At The March On Washington 50 Years Ago,” with my enthusiastic concurrence:
Eighteen years old in August 1963, I had spent the summer after high school graduation working in a factory, commuting by bike the five miles or so from where I was staying with a friend. I don’t remember my decision to go to the March, but I do remember my racist aunt calling my mother the night before and trying to get her to stop me. There would be violence, Aunt Betty was sure, and who knows what kind of trouble.
That appeal fell on deaf ears. My mother was a committed advocate of integration, which had been an issue for years in my hometown of New Rochelle, New York. My father, until he died in 1961, was an activist and successful opponent of “blockbusting”: the real estate agents’ practice of scaring whites to move by implying that the neighborhood was “turning,” thus fulfilling their own prophecy and collecting lots of commissions. A Federal court had found two years earlier that the Lincoln School half a mile from our house had been intentionally segregated and eventually ordered remedies. This, people, was hundreds of miles north of the Mason-Dixon line.
I was already dating a “Negro” girl, in the terminology of the time. That wasn’t common (nor was it common when we married five years later and remained married until today). I confess it had taken me years to work up the courage to ask her out. She was away that summer and did not go on the March. But surely the sense I had that the March was the right place to be was connected to my romantic interests, if only by worldview.
To get to Washington around 8 am in those days meant a 2 am rising in New Rochelle, no breakfast and a quick dash out of the house grabbing the brown paper lunch bag from the fridge. As the bus arrived in DC, I awakened to a strong fish smell. It was that brown paper bag. It wasn’t the one with my lunch. I don’t know what my family had for dinner, but I had little money in my pocket (no ATMs then) and was hungry much of the day.
We staged at Thomas Circle and marched from there singing and chanting to the Lincoln Memorial, where I found a good spot on the left of the reflecting pool under the trees. It was a happy but determined crowd. We knew the country was watching. We all dressed reasonably well, the “Negroes” better than the “whites” to look as respectable as possible. We knew there was an absolute need to avoid violence, but the issue never arose in my part of the march. There were just too many of us for anyone to tangle with. The racists, who were many in that day in Washington, stayed home.
Solidarity was the overwhelming feeling. The weather was beautiful and the mood was good, but this was no picnic. It was a determined and disciplined protest. “We Shall Overcome” was the anthem. The New York Times reporter who quoted me in Saturday’s paper asked whether I was surprised that celebrities like Peter, Paul and Mary and Bob Dylan sang. No, that was no surprise: they had been part of “the movement.” The answer, my friend, was blowing in the wind.
A word about the concept of race at the time of the March, which was clearly organized and led by Bayard Rustin and A. Philip Randolph. In the terminology of the time, they were “Negroes,” not yet blacks or African Americans. The concept of “whites” is likewise an anachronism. I didn’t regard myself as part of a white majority then (nor do I really now). The majority then was WASP: white Anglo-Saxon Protestants. As a Jew whose grandparents immigrated from Russia and Russian-occupied Poland, I was in none of those three categories. I was a minority. The barriers to Jews (quotas in universities, prohibitions in clubs and limitations in employment) had only recently come down. The affinity of Jews for the civil rights movement was strong.
The March on Washington was important to us because it was a massive show of support to those who wanted to end segregation, which was more the rule than the exception. It was inconsistent with what the marchers understood as the founding creed: all men are created equal (the question of women was posed later). “Jobs and freedom” meant an end to discrimination on the basis of skin color in a society still based on racial separation. It was a radical proposition. I learned only this week that the even the police force in DC was still segregated, with no mixed patrols.
Segregation did not end during the March on Washington, as some would like to imagine. The struggle continued even more intensely after August 1963. The bombing of the 16th Street Batist Church in Birmingham came just two weeks or so later. James Chaney, Andrew Goodman, and Mickey Schwerner, who was the son of my high school biology teacher, were murdered in Philadelphia, Mississippi the next June. I had wanted to spend the summer there but yielded to my mother’s entreaties and instead earned some much-needed cash doing research at Yale. New Haven was still mostly segregated, especially schools and housing. I imagine it still is to some extent.
I was sitting down in the street in Cambridge, Maryland in 1964 in support of people trying to end school and housing segregation in what was known then as the Delmarva peninsula (not the Eastern Shore). Delmarva was more akin to the deep South than the northeast when it came to segregation. The state-mobilized National Guard blocked our march there with fixed bayonets, wearing gas masks. The protest leadership decided not to test their will to use them. I’ve never regretted that.
Once MLK and RFK were murdered in 1968, the civil rights movement lost steam to the anti-Vietnam War movement. I got my first whiff of tear gas protesting at Fort Dix in 1969 and tested the patience of army officers at my physical in 1970. The civil rights movement ended prematurely, befuddled by weakened leadership and dissension within the black community (as it came to be called), some of which toyed with violence while others tried to move further in the direction of economic justice.
Another ten years of MLK leading the challenge to the American reality would have done a lot more good than the lionizing of him now. In housing, schooling and the economy the sharp divides between blacks and whites have not disappeared. Some have even widened. The mechanisms of segregation are no longer overt and direct, but they are effective and persistent. No one can hope to do what Bull Connor and George Wallace did once upon a time, but voter ID laws are just a more sophisticated version of a particular group’s desire to keep America in the hands of people who look, behave and vote like them.
Still, things have changed for the better. I can hope that the voter ID laws will mobilize massive minority participation in the states that pass them. I am pleased my children have had opportunities that would have been denied a generation earlier. My wife and I married in the year after the Supreme Court struck down Virginia’s prohibition on interracial marriage, though we were unaware of the decision at the time. Today we travel the length and breadth of America without worrying about being lynched. And yes, President Obama embodies the ideals of August 28, 1963.
But we still need to make sure we treat all people as the equals they are. Then is now.
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Serious is as serious does
John Kerry can be downright eloquent when he wants:
…our understanding of what has already happened in Syria is grounded in facts, informed by conscience and guided by common sense….
President Obama believes there must be accountability for those who would use the world’s most heinous weapons against the world’s most vulnerable people. Nothing today is more serious, and nothing is receiving more serious scrutiny.
His statement today is more than a red line that can be blurred depending on future circumstances. It is a clear pledge to do something serious about a red line already crossed.
The diplomatic fur is flying fast and furious, according to the Secretary’s account. That’s as it should be. The Administration needs to construct as wide an international and domestic consensus for what it wants to do as possible, including Congressional backing and a UN Security Council resolution if possible. Speed is not as important as developing momentum. If President Obama wants to be taken seriously, whatever befalls Bashar al Asad and his regime now must be sufficient to prevent him from ever again even contemplating use of chemical weapons.
That should not however be the only goal. Bashar’s depredations against civilians are occurring every day, even when chemical weapons are not used. Syrian artillery and aircraft are attacking population centers, hospitals, schools and other civilian facilities. Each and every one of these attacks is a war crime. Very few of the 100,000 Syrians killed in the last 2.5 years have been victims of chemical attacks. Are the lives of those maimed and killed in bombings and shelling less valuable than those who suffered so horrendously from nerve agent? Is the international prohibition of attacks on civilians not as important as the prohibition on use of CW?
I don’t imagine that Bashar al Asad can necessarily be gotten rid of with American air attacks, which are as far as the Administration is prepared to go. But I do think the goal of whatever we do should be broader than accountability for gassing civilians. The playing field has tilted in recent months in favor of the regime, due mainly to Iranian, Hizbollah and Russian support for the Syrian security forces. It needs to be tilted back in the other direction if there is to be any hope of the negotiated outcome to which John Kerry is committed. Whether that is done with air attacks or with weapons and intelligence supplied to the opposition, it needs to be done.
We’ve seen this scenario before: air attacks in Bosnia, Kosovo and Afghanistan helped indigenous forces on the ground to at least begin to win the day, resulting in negotiated outcomes in Bosnia and Kosovo and regime change in Afghanistan. None of these outcomes would, however, have been sustainable without boots on the ground, including substantial numbers of Americans. That is almost unthinkable in Syria and certainly not what Americans or their President want, though some Americans to guard and dismantle the chemical weapons stocks may be necessary. So the Administration would do well to consider what is to be done if intervention succeeds in bringing about a political solution. What then? Who will stabilize Syria and ensure that the post-Asad period is not even more violent than the current civil war?
The UN has some pledges of troops if there is a peace to keep. But they are far short of the numbers needed for a country of 21 million people (before more than a million of them became refugees) suffering severe ethnic and sectarian cleavages after a more than 40-year autocracy. Rallying troop-contributing countries is going to be the Secretary of State’s next Sisyphean task.
Serious is as serious does, not only in warfare but also in peacefare.
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Square one
Having written about nothing but Syria for the better part of a week, it is time to take a glance back at Egypt, where the wise-beyond-his-years Ahmed Maher is telling it like it is:
We view ourselves back at square one, because what is happening now could be more dangerous, more complicated than what was there before January 25, 2011
I fear he is right. The Egyptian army has taken back power and appears determined to repress the Muslim Brotherhood, whose leadership is to be prosecuted and whose membership is to be harassed to an even greater degree than under Hosni Mubarak. Guys like Ahmed, a leader of the April 6 movement that helped precipitate the revolution, aren’t safe either, because they speak up for the rights of Islamists and others.
Disappointed as I am by this turn of events, things are never quite the same as the first time around, as Ahmed implies. It’s a bit like turning up at “Go” in Monopoly. The board has changed a bit since last time you were there. It may be more dangerous and complicated, but there are also more people who have tasted something like basic freedoms and will be unwilling to let the savories disappear. I wish Ahmed well in forming a coalition that will harness that sentiment and push for a return to a democratic path.
That will take time and effort. One of the many shortcomings of the Egyptian revolution was that it failed to mobilize grass roots support for a clear roadmap to a democratic outcome. Instead it entrusted the country’s future first to the military, which failed to deliver, then to President Morsi, who failed to deliver, and now again to the military, which is likely to fail to deliver again.
With each failure, the Islamist/secularist divide in Egypt has widened, making it difficult at this point to imagine that the Muslim Brotherhood will participate in the referendum to approve a revised constitution and elections promised for early next year. Though they supported the July 3 coup, even Salafist participation is in doubt.
Breadth of participation matters, but apparently not to the Egyptian army, which is forging ahead with the expectation that its diktat will rule Egypt for the foreseeable future. General Sissi is definitely not the self-restrained George Washington of Egypt. It looks very much as if he is preparing for a long period in power.
What should the United States do in this situation? I really don’t see much point in cutting off military assistance, as the Saudis have vowed to replace whatever the Americans cut. We can of course still do it as a symbolic act, and there are many in Washington arguing that we have to in order not to be seen as complicit in restoring the Egyptian army to power. But the aid is tied to the peace treaty with Israel, at least in the minds of the Egyptians, which means the Israelis will be pressing us hard to maintain it.
If we do decide to cut off military aid, I hope we can do it in a way that sends a clear message in favor of a serious democratic outcome. I’d wait for some egregious act to which we could respond. More than likely, the Egyptian army will give us cause by committing another mass atrocity, conducting show trials, departing dramatically from the schedule for a new constitution and elections, or some other outrageous move.
In the meanwhile, we need to do what we can to protect people like Ahmed who are daring to speak out even under newly repressive conditions. We can’t want democracy for Egyptians more than they want it for themselves, but we can support those who are taking serious risks even as the country returns to square one.
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Bombing expectations
With the United States getting ready to bomb Syria in response to its government’s use of chemical weapons against its population, it is important to keep expectations in check. Bombing, especially if well-targeted and short duration, does not cause autocrats to give up power. Apart from a lucky shot that hits Bashar al Asad, the best that can be hoped for in Syria is that bombing may tilt the playing field back in the opposition direction, enabling the rebel forces to regain some lost ground or establish firmer control in areas where the regime has been using aircraft, missiles and artillery to disrupt opposition efforts to establish governing structures and begin to deliver services. In the best of all possible worlds, which of course is not the likeliest, this could create the kind of “mutually hurting stalemate” that would favor a negotiated outcome.
More likely a short and well-targeted bombing campaign will send no more than the message that future use of chemical weapons will not be tolerated. But Bashar al Asad wouldn’t be the first autocrat to respond to a well-calibrated message by upping the ante. That’s what Milosevic did in response to NATO’s bombing: he intensified the ethnic cleansing of Albanians from Kosovo. The Obama administration needs to be ready to extend and expand its bombing if Bashar chooses to use even more chemical weapons with greater abandon. Otherwise the red line won’t hold.
The big question mark is whether a bombing campaign, even of only a few days, will loosen Russian attachment to Bashar, or cause Moscow to hug him even tighter. Certainly it would be prudent to expect Putin to use the occasion to defy the Americans and continue his effort to reassert Russian great power status. But if in fact the Russians are convinced that Bashar used chemical weapons, that may put some daylight between them and their protégé. The Americans would be wise to use all the diplomatic means at their disposal to this end, as Russian withdrawal of support for Bashar could well be decisive in the Syrian civil war.
Another important question is whether bombing will give the Syrian opposition forces more reason to unify, better to win the day, or create incentives for even more violent clashes among revolutionary brigades, which are already too common. I can’t pretend to know which course they will take, but judging from their behavior thus far it would be reasonable to expect clashes as they compete to establish themselves and expand their territorial control.
Edward Luttwak, in a typically ill-considered piece, suggests in reference to the impending bombing:
At this point, a prolonged stalemate is the only outcome that would not be damaging to American interests.
That is just dead wrong. None of America’s interests in Syria’s territorial integrity, regional stability, preventing Syria’s use for terrorism or enforcing the prohibition on the use of chemical weapons is served by a prolonged stalemate. America’s best interest will be served by a stalemate that leads quickly to a negotiated solution, allowing the international community a modicum of say-so in who inherits Syria from the Asad regime.
Can bombing lead in that direction? Yes, it can, but a great deal depends on whether the opposition can get its act together and find a unified voice to speak for it at the negotiating table. Bombing brought about negotiated solutions in Bosnia and Kosovo, with semi-satisfactory outcomes many years later. Bombing in Iraq and Afghanistan led to collapsed regimes and long American military deployments, with far less satisfactory outcomes. I’ll take the semi-satisfactory outcome any day, though it may well require some sort of international force to stabilize Syria once Bashar is gone.
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Peace picks, August 26-30
Still quiet in DC, but not for long:
1. Exploring Opposing Perspectives in Egypt
Wednesday, August 28 at 2:00 – 5:00pm
Johns Hopkins SAIS
1717 Massachusetts Avenue, NW ∙ Room 500
Salon 101: The antidote to the typical DC panel discussion.
With the Salon 101 series, IPSI and SAIS continue our thought leadership collaboration by providing dynamic and experiential events, bridging the gap between theory and practice. Participants at Salon 101 directly engage experts, ideas, and each other to explore diverse perspectives and pragmatic solutions to complex global events.
Exploring Opposing Perspectives in Egypt: Since the deposition of President Morsi, unrest in Egypt has dominated international news. The outpouring of public sentiment, mass rallies and protests, and conflicting ideologies have left observers scrambling for answers. In a situation characterized by extreme tension, charged opinions, and a lack of clear-cut responses, this Salon 101 event will bring together topic experts to grapple with participants for a way forward in Egypt’s current political crisis.
The featured panel of expert facilitators includes:
- Mohamed Elmenshawy Director of the Languages and Regional Studies Program, Middle East Institute
- Dr. Nancy Okail Director of Egypt Programs, Freedom House
- Dr. William Zartman Co-Founder & Chairman of the Board, IPSI; Professor Emeritus, Johns Hopkins SAIS
With special photo exhibit from 18 months in Egypt by Keith Lane.
Spots are limited and will fill up fast, so please RSVP with your name, affiliation, and one sentence on why you would like to attend.
2. The U.S.-Russia Relationship: What’s Next?
Summary
On August 7, the White House announced cancellation of the planned Moscow summit in early September between Presidents Obama and Putin, saying there were no prospects for significant progress on key issues at the meeting. The White House also said cooperation with Russia remains a priority, and on August 9 Secretaries Kerry and Hagel met with their Russian counterparts, Ministers Lavrov and Shoigu. While President Obama intends to travel to St Petersburg for the G20 summit on September 6 and 7, there has been no word on whether there will be a bilateral meeting with President Putin on the margins of the summit. Clearly, U.S.-Russian relations have entered troubled times.
On August 28, the Center on the United States and Europe will host a panel discussion to address these developments and future prospects for the bilateral relationship between Washington and Moscow. Brookings Senior Fellows Clifford Gaddy, Steven Pifer and Angela Stent will take part. Brookings Visiting Fellow Jeremy Shapiro will moderate. Following opening comments, the panelists will take questions from the audience.
Event Agenda
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Moderator
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Visiting Fellow, Foreign Policy
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Panelists
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Nonresident Senior Fellow, Foreign Policy, Center on the United States and Europe
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Protecting long-term US interests in Syria
Whatever you think of President Obama and his decisions, he knows what his job is:
We have to think through strategically what’s going to be in our long-term national interests, even as we work cooperatively internationally to do everything we can to put pressure on those who would kill innocent civilians.
So what are America’s long-term interests in Syria, where innocent civilians are being killed in increasing numbers every day?
Three things:
- Preserving the unity and territorial integrity of the Syrian state, as well as its neighbors;
- Preventing either Sunni extremists or Iranian allies from using Syria as a platform for international terrorism.
- Maintaining an effective prohibition on the use of chemical weapons.
It is all too apparent that continuation of the civil war will do damage to all three:
Sectarian divisions and the risk they pose to territorial integrity become more dramatic with every passing day. Many Alawites, convinced that the fall of Bashar al Asad will lead to mass slaughter comparable if not worse than what the regime is already doing to Sunnis, are concentrating themselves in the west and in certain neighborhood in Damascus. Christians and Druze are trying to duck and avoid direct engagement, but both groups have good reason to fear either regime survival or an opposition win. Kurds are looking for an opportunity to create their own federal unit, if not an independent state. Ethnic and sectarian cleansing and self-cleansing are separating Syria’s once mixed population in ways that will be difficult if not impossible to reverse, leading to a real risk of state collapse. Refugees threaten to destabilize Syria’s neighbors. Al Qaeda in Iraq and Syria is aiming explicitly at destroying the state structure in the Levant.
Sunni extremists are increasingly present among the stronger fighting forces of the Syrian opposition. They are more experienced and better equipped and financed than the relative moderates of the Free Syrian Army (FSA). They are facing off against regime forces backed by Iran and Hizbollah that for the moment seem to have the upper hand around Homs and are fighting to loosen the opposition ring around Damascus. The longer this goes on, the less room there will be for the FSA, which depends on unreliable financing and supplies, mainly from Saudi Arabia but presumably by now also from the US. Continued fighting will strengthen Tehran’s hold on Damascus. A win by either Sunni extremists or the regime with support from Iran and Hizbollah will make Syria terrorism central.
If President Obama allows the red line he drew on use of chemical weapons to be crossed without consequences, the international prohibition may come to be seen as toothless. Bashar al Asad won’t be the only one to draw the conclusion that they may be used with impunity.
So ending the fighting quickly should be on the President’s mind, as continuation will be inimical to long-term American interests. How can the fighting be brought to a quicker end?
The short answer is anything that will end Asad regime advances and create a “mutually hurting stalemate” favorable to a negotiated solution, when both regime and opposition conclude they will be better off with a negotiated outcome than continuing the fighting. There is no guarantee that any particular intervention will create a mutually hurting stalemate, but it is clear enough that allowing the fighting to continue without intervention will be irreversibly inimical to long-term US interests.
What is needed is an intervention that changes Bashar al Asad’s calculation that he can stay in power because no one is going to do anything substantial to prevent it. There are two ways of achieving this: convince the Russians to end their military and financial support for him, or intervene militarily in favor of the opposition. The two options are linked: threat of the latter might well increase the probability of the Russians abandoning Bashar. And it is difficult to imagine they will stick with him if there is a successful American military intervention.
What kind of military intervention? Here the art of the possible enters into the calculation. America clearly has no stomach for another ground war in the Middle East, or even a weeks-long intervention like the NATO attack on Muammar Qaddafi’s forces in Libya. This rules out a no-fly zone as well as humanitarian corridors and safe areas, which would have to be enforced. The NFZ over northern Iraq cost many millions over more 11 years of implementation. Even vigorous intervention advocates agree there should be no American boots on the ground.
So the preferable military option, in addition to continued diplomatic effort with the Russians, is a stand-off attack with cruise missiles and smart bombs focused on Syrian missiles, artillery and air force as well as their command and control. I don’t really know how you measure proportionality to the apparent chemical attack that killed over one thousand people, many of them women and children, but a few days of well-targeted destruction would send a strong message.
The big question is whether to do something like this without UN Security Council authorization. President Obama is hesitant but does not rule it out:
…if the U.S. goes in and attacks another country without a U.N. mandate and without clear evidence that can be presented, then there are questions in terms of whether international law supports it, do we have the coalition to make it work, and, you know, those are considerations that we have to take into account.
Even the threat of intervention without UNSC authorization might bring the Russians around to restraint in their support for Asad, but he would be likely to stay in place and continue the fight for some time. An early end to this may depend on military intervention without UNSC authorization. I hope the lawyers are working on their briefs and the diplomats on the coalition needed “to make it work.”
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