Month: February 2014
Citizens are the place to start
My friends are in a tizzy about Bosnia. Ed Joseph wants urgent international action. So do Bodo Weber and Kurt Bassuener. All fear that Bosnia’s social unrest in recent days may degenerate into ethnic conflict. They want the United States and the European Union to step in with clear ideas for reform and strict conditionality to force their adoption.
I am a bit more cautious. I agree entirely with Bodo and Kurt that the current situation is in part the result of bankrupt and ineffective EU policies. I agree with them and Ed that a different approach is required, including stronger American diplomatic engagement and strengthening of Europe’s military presence. But I am suspicious of the notion that the right formula to untie the Bosnian knot can be devised in Washington and Brussels. We tried that at Dayton. It worked to end the war, but not to make Bosnia a functional state.
We need to hear more from the Bosnians, who are busily organizing themselves into plenums that will formulate grassroots demands for reform. Tim Judah describes what is going on: Read more
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Bahrain 3 years on
With the third anniversary of the Bahraini uprising today, Americans for Democracy and Human Rights in Bahrain (ADHRB) and Creative Peace Initiatives hosted a panel on human rights in Bahrain featuring Joshua Colangelo-Bryan (Senior Attorney, Dorsey & Whitney), Brian Dooley (Director, Human Defenders Program at Human Rights First), and Shadi Mokhtari (Professor, American University). Jeff Bachman (professorial lecturer, American University) moderated. The Bahraini government was not represented.
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Semper fi
Antoine Huss, a master’s student at SAIS, offers this account of Marine Commandant General James F. Amos on “Military Positioning in a Time of Transition,” an event at Carnegie yesterday (video above): Read more
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Conflict matters
I did something yesterday morning I don’t usually do: I went to a discussion of the Millenium Development Goals (MDGs to the initiated). The goals fixed in 2000 were supposed to be achieved by 2015. So that UN is working on a new set for then.
The existing goals focus on canonical development issues: eradicating poverty, universal primary education, improving maternal health, reducing child mortality, and combating disease, with a dollop of gender equality and women’s empowerment as well as environmental sustainability. Then a cherry of global partnership to top it off. The exercise has been a useful one, with some real progress made.
But the conflict, peacebuilding and statebuilding communities were left out last time around. So the Alliance for Peacebuilding, John Filson moderating, convened the meeting yesterday to discuss the obstacles to including conflict issues and how they might be overcome. Speakers included Molly Elgin-Cossart of the Center for American Progress, UN Millennium Campaign adviser Ravi Karkara, women’s empowerment advocate Karen Mulhauser, and the State Department’s Charles Call. Read more
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Barack Obama needs to recalibrate
The Syrian opposition delegation at the UN-hosted Geneva 2 talks today tabled its Statement of Principles (for those who read Arabic, and now also in English).
The Coalition (Etilaf) office in Washington writes that this lays out
…its vision for the political solution in Syria. It emphasizes the priorities of peace, democratization, reconciliation, inclusivity, and reconstruction, among other important guiding principles of the transition and post-transition period. The government delegation did not demonstrate either the will or the mandate to discuss these principles.
Our delegation’s position is to pursue the negotiating process to implement in full the Geneva Communique, including the important principles of ending violence and combating terror, but in order to do so both legally and practically, the establishment of the transitional governing body, by mutual consent of both sides, is necessary and required. We believe the attached document serves not only the parties to these negotiations, but also the full interests and aspirations of all Syrians. The government must be prepared to implement in full the Geneva Communique, UN Security Council Resolution 2118, and this statement of principles, beginning with the establishment of the transitional governing body, in order to participate meaningfully in this process to begin to set the stage for a political solution in Syria. Read more
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The art and not the article
Nuclear talks with Iran start again February 18 in Vienna. This time the objective is a comprehensive agreement to replace the Joint Plan of Action initiated in January for six months and possibly to be renewed for another six months.
There are two routes to the fissile material needed to make nuclear weapons: enrichment of uranium (in Iran’s case using centrifuges) to above 90% U238 (in nature it occurs mainly as the isotope U235, containing three fewer neutrons); or production of plutonium 239, which is generated by irradiating U235 in a reactor and then “reprocessing” the spent fuel to separate plutonium. Ideally, if you don’t want someone to have nuclear weapons you would block both these routes: no enrichment and no plutonium production.
That is what my friends at the Jewish Institute for National Security Affairs (JINSA), led by Eric Edelman and Dennis Ross, prefer in their Assessment of the Interim Deal with Iran. They don’t like the Joint Plan of Action because it exchanges a limited freeze and small rollback on nuclear facilities for a limited freeze and small rollback of sanctions. Their detailed critique is well worth reading. They fear, echoing the Israelis, that there will be no comprehensive agreement and that the Obama administration will settle for extending the interim deal indefinitely, leaving Iran with a substantial nuclear capability even if no nuclear weapons. They want a big rollback of enrichment and reprocessing capabilities in Iran, with stringent limits imposed ad infinitum. Read more
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