The end is nigh, once again

Two years ago I published a post with this title. Remarkably little has changed since then in many conflicts:

• South Sudan is suffering even more bloodletting.
• The Central African Republic is still imploding.
• North Korea is no longer risking internal strife but continues its belligerence on the international stage.
• China is still challenging its neighbors in the East and South China Seas.
• Syria is even more chaotic, with catastrophic consequences for its population and strains for its neighbors.
• Egypt continues its repression of the Muslim Brotherhood and secular human rights advocates.
• Israel and Palestine are no closer to agreement on a two-state solution.
• Afghanistan has a new president but the Taliban are stronger in the countryside and the Islamic State is gaining adherents; money and people are still expatriating.
• Al Qaeda is less potent in many places, but that is little comfort since the Islamic State has risen to take the leading role in Salafist jihadism.
• Ukraine has lost control of Crimea, which has been annexed by Russia, and risks losing control of much of the southeastern Donbas region.

The only issue I listed then that is palpably improved is the Iranian nuclear question, which is now the subject of a deal that should postpone Tehran’s access to the nuclear materials required to build a bomb for 10 to 15 years.

Danielle Pletka of AEI topped off the gloom this year with a piece suggesting there are reasons to fear Putin’s recklessness could trigger World War III.

Without going that far, it is easy to add to the doom and gloom list:

• Europe is suffering a bout of right-wing xenophobia (the US has a milder case), triggered by migrants from the Middle East and North Africa.
• Mali and Nigeria are suffering serious extremist challenges.
• The Houthi takeover in Yemen, and intervention there by a Saudi-led coalition, is causing vast suffering in one of the world’s poorest countries and allowing Al Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula to expand its operations.
• Civil war in Libya is far from resolution, despite some signatures on a UN-sponsored agreement to end it.
• Turkey has re-initiated a war against Kurdish forces that had been in abeyance.
• Even Brazil, once a rising power, is suffering scandals that may bring down its president, even as its economy tanks.

I’m still not ready to throw in the towel. Some successes of two years ago continue and others have begun: Colombia‘s civil war is nearing its end, Burma/Myanmar continues its transition in a more open direction (even though it has failed to settle conflicts with several important minorities), Kenya is still improving, ditto Liberia, which along with Sierra Leone and maybe Guinea seems to have beaten the Ebola epidemic, and much of the Balkans, even if Kosovo and Bosnia are going through rough patches.

I still think, as I said two years ago:

If there is a continuous thread running through the challenges we face it is this:  getting other people to govern themselves in ways that meet the needs of their own populations (including minorities) and don’t threaten others.  That was what we did in Europe with the Marshall Plan.  It is also what we contributed to in East Asia, as democracy established itself in Japan, South Korea, Taiwan, Indonesia and elsewhere.  We have also had considerable success in recent decades in Latin America and Africa, where democracy and economic development have grown roots in Brazil, Argentina, Ghana, South Africa, and other important countries.  I may not like the people South Africans have elected, but I find it hard to complain about the way they have organized themselves to do it.

This is what we have failed to do in the Middle East:  American military support for autocracies there has stunted democratic evolution, even as our emphasis on economic reform has encouraged crony capitalism that generates resentment and support for Islamist alternatives.  Mubarak, Asad, Saleh, Qaddafi, and Ben Ali were not the most oppressive dictators the world has ever known, even though they murdered and imprisoned thousands, then raised those numbers by an order of magnitude as they tried to meet the challenge of revolution with brute force.  But their departures have left the countries they led with little means of governing themselves.  The states they claim to have built have proven a mirage in the desert.

If there is reason for doom and gloom, it is our failure to meet this governance challenge cleverly and effectively.  We continue to favor our military instruments, even though they are inappropriate to dealing with most of the problems we face (the important exceptions being Iran and China).  We have allowed our civilian instruments of foreign policy to atrophy, even as we ask them to meet enormous challenges.  What I wish for the new year is recognition–in the Congress, in the Administration and in the country–that we need still to help enable others to govern themselves.  Investment in the capacity to do it will return dividends for many decades into the future.