Month: October 2013
Untying the Turkish knot
Mort Abramowitz and Eric Edelman published this week a super Bipartisan Policy Center report “From Rhetoric to Reality: Reframing US Turkey Policy.” Mort was US ambassador in Ankara 1989-91 and Eric 2003-5. It doesn’t get much more knowledgeable when it comes to US policy on Turkey than these two. Caveat emptor: Eric is a valued colleague at SAIS (his office is next door to mine) and Mort is a treasured regular lunch partner and occasional co-author.
They argue for something few sitting ambassadors would be keen on, though it seems likely that the current ambassador was at least forewarned if not approving. They want to shift from rhetoric about shared objectives in the Middle East to frank talk (with an Ankara already resenting US policy on Syria, Iran, Egypt, Israel, Palestine and other issues) about Turkey’s domestic situation.
The aim is to keep Turkey moving in a democratic direction, restore its economic vitality, and encourage it to play a leadership role in the region consistent with US policy. As diplomatic propositions go, this is pretty daring:
Practically, this means that Washington should be more open with Ankara about its concerns about issues like press freedom, freedom of assembly, rule of law, and the Turkish government’s increasing sectarianism.
Edelman and Abramowitz view such frank assessments as likely to produce good results and cite chapter and verse of Israel-related occasions on which American bluntness was productive.
The agenda they propose for Washington is an ample one: Read more
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You are cordially invited
I am expecting Righting the Balance: How You Can Help Protect America to be out November 1 from Potomac Books. As luck would have it, the book is appearing almost three years (minus one day) after I started working on it. It is written for lay people, not experts, and includes a good deal of my personal experience trying to protect America, as well as that of innumerable colleagues.
I’m doing a few book events that friends, colleagues, critics and all others are welcome to attend, depending of course on the hosts’ policies and procedures:
November 4: DACOR Bacon House, noon-2 pm
November 7: Foreign Policy Institute at Johns Hopkins/SAIS (Kenney auditorium), 5-7 pm, with Tom Pickering and Kristin Lord commenting
November 12: Montgomery County Libraries, at 10101 Glenholden Drive in Potomac, 7-8 pm
December 12: Middle East Institute, noon-1 pm
February 20: OASIS at Montgomery Mall, 10:30-noon
I am prepared to do more of these, as the opportunity arises and schedule permits. I always hesitate to publish my email address, but many of you have it and it is not hard to find. Just let me know if there is an opportunity I should take advantage of.
I’ll be doing a couple of op/eds and other short pieces on themes from the book, starting to appear the first week of November I hope. Opportunities for those will also be welcomed.
I’ll be particularly pleased if peacefare.net readers see fit to order a copy. The ad on the right will take you to what NPR this morning called the world’s biggest non-profit to pre-order your very own.
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Twisting arms won’t work
My friends at Etilaf, the National Coalition of Syrian Revolutionary and Opposition Forces, have specified their conditions for going to Geneva 2, the UN/Arab League-sponsored followup of a June 2012 US/Russian agreement on the future course in Syria. Here is the 11-point bill of particulars:
- Releasing prisoners.
- Lifting the siege from besieged areas and allowing the entry of relief items.
- Halting all use of ballistic missiles, cluster bombs, and fighter jets on civilian areas.
- The exit of Hezbollah’s forces and Iranian Revolutionary Guard troops from Syria.
- Renewing Syrian passports outside Syria without conditions.
- A public announcement from Assad about his commitment to the implementation of the Geneva 1 provisions.
- A declaration by the regime to accept a transition of power to an interim government body with executive powers, including presidential powers, written in the constitution including the legislative and executive branches.
- All sides agree that the transitional government body is the only source of legitimate laws in Syria and any future elections should be organized by the transitional government body.
- Any agreement must be enforceable with a guarantee from the Security Council and with a decision facilitated under Chapter VII.
- There must be a specific time frame for the political transition process.
- Officials and those responsible for war crimes against humanity should be removed from power and held accountable.
Note they are not asking for a ceasefire, which would have to be mutual. That is still a formidable shopping list, but my guess is it should be understood mainly as a list of negotiating objectives rather than preconditions. Read more
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When nothing fails so much as success
The New York Times front page yesterday featured reports by Amnesty International and Human Rights Watch criticizing US drone attacks in Pakistan (in particular North Waziristan) and Yemen, respectively. At the same time, the Washington Post published Linda Robinson’s op/ed claiming that they will be used relatively less in the future. It seems we have come to prefer on-the-ground special forces raids, whether we conduct them or our partners do.
It is nice to know that after hundreds of drone strikes abroad we’ve come to realize that there is nothing antiseptic about them. No matter how precise, they cannot be 100% accurate. They kill people we don’t intend to kill. That is what the Amnesty and HRW reports are focused on: the immediate threat to civilian non-combatants. The two reports document meticulously that we are not only hitting our intended terrorist targets. We are hitting other people too, sometimes in ways that breach the laws of war and declared US policy. Those are major concerns for Amnesty and HRW, which argue their case–as one would expect–mainly on legal and human rights grounds.
Those are not my major concerns, much as I deplore the loss of innocent lives. Conventional military means would also kill people other than those targeted, likely many more than drones do. Nor can I regret that drones save American servicepeople from harm. That’s what most advances in military technology do–enable us to kill more of the enemy while preventing them from killing more of us. War is not a pretty, or a glorious, business. Read more
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Counting counts
Valerie Perry, chief of party of the Public International Law and Policy Group, writes from Sarajevo:
Following a delay of several years and much heated debate, Bosnia and Herzegovina (BiH) conducted a long overdue census 1 – 15 October 2013, the first in 22 years. This census is of crucial to both BiH and the international community, as many of the Dayton-era power-sharing arrangements between the three constituent peoples (Bosniaks, Croats, and Serbs) are based on the 1991 census. The new census results will reflect the significant demographic changes caused by wartime ethnic cleansing and displacement. Given the continuing downward spiral of BiH’s current political dynamic, there should be little doubt that census results will be extremely controversial.
On 3 February 2012, Bosnia and Herzegovina’s (BiH) Parliamentary Assembly adopted a law for a census to be conducted in April 2013. The delay in adopting the law meant that BiH did not hold a census in 2011, the year that all European Union (EU) member states (as well as other former Yugoslav countries) held theirs. Additional political haggling delayed the census from April to October 2013.
Even though the process of knocking on doors has finished and many are already exhausted from the politicization of the process, the census is far from over. The aggregation, analysis, and most importantly, the use of the data will remain open questions during 2014 – a general election year. This brief, published by the Democratization Policy Council, provides an overview of the key issues surrounding the census in BiH and identifies a number of potential policy and political implications that will continue to both shape and reflect the politics of numbers.
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The gulf with the Gulf
Yesterday was Gulf day. I spent part of the morning reading Christopher Davidson, who thinks the Gulf monarchies are headed for collapse due to internal challenges, their need for Western support, Iran’s growing power and their own disunity. Then I turned to Greg Gause, who attributes their resilience to the oil-greased coalitions and external networks they have created to support their rule. He predicts their survival.
At lunch I ambled across the way to CSIS’s new mansion to hear Abdullah al Shayji, chair of political science at Kuwait University and unofficial Gulf spokeperson, who was much exorcised over America’s response to Iran’s “charm offensive,” which he said could not have come at a worse time. The Gulf Cooperation Council (GCC) was already at odds with the US. The Gulf was not warned or consulted about the phone call between Iranian President Rouhani and President Obama. Saudi Arabia’s refusal to occupy the UN Security Council seat it fought hard to get was a signal of displeasure. The divergences between the GCC and the US range across the Middle East: Syria, Egypt, Bahrain, Yemen, Iraq and Palestine, in addition to Iran.
On top of this, US oil and gas production is increasing. China is now a bigger oil importer than the US and gets a lot more of its supplies from the Gulf. Washington is increasingly seen as dysfunctional because of its partisan bickering. Its budget problems seem insoluble. American credibility is declining. The Gulf views the US as unreliable. Read more
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