Day: June 16, 2021
Russians love their tsars, until they don’t
Russian President Putin is all about power: getting it, exercising it, holding on to it. He also knows when he meets it.
That is what happened with President Biden in Geneva today. Unlike his predecessor, Biden was clear and forceful about Russia’s malfeasance, both internationally (especially the invasion of Ukraine) and internally (especially the jailing of Alexei Navalny and restrictions on the press). The result was a relatively productive confrontation leading to future meetings on strategic weapons, cybersecurity, and prisoner exchanges. Putin did his usual “what about malfeasance in the US” for the TV cameras to broadcast back home, and he got the formal respect he always seeks and responded in kind. But this meeting was a win for Biden: the contrast with President Trump’s embarrassing performance in Helsinki is striking. Trump got nothing. Biden got Russia into conversations the US favors.
Biden claims persistently that personally knowing other world leaders is vital to foreign policy. But his description of his own side of conversations often contrast dramatically with this notion. He is all about convincing other leaders to think about their own country’s interests, not about their personal relations with him. He denies being “friendly” with Xi Jinping, only claiming to know him well. He has consistently downplayed his own remark about Putin being a killer and ignores Putin’s support for Trump. Biden wants the relationship to be about the interests of the two states, not the two leaders. Instead of flattery, he warns that Russian malfeasance could end hopes for foreign investment, in particular if Navalny were to die in prison. He tries, not always successfully, to cast what he wants in terms his adversary might be able to accept. Putin couldn’t care less that blocking cross-border humanitarian aid to rebel-held territory in Syria will cause humanitarian problems.
But Putin did not come to this meeting his usual braggart self. Russia’s economy is in bad shape, he is unpopular after so many years in power, and China is rapidly becoming the superpower he would like Russia to be. Moscow is bogged down in Syria and losing in Libya. Putin needs a better relationship with the US at least as much as Biden needs what he terms a more “stable and predictable” relationship with Russia. Putin also needs the US not to reciprocate interference in the 2016 and 2020 American elections with Washington interference in his re-election effort in 2024. Closing down a few cyberhackers and allowing some independent media might be a reasonable way to try to prevent that. Nor is Putin any more anxious than Biden to spend billions more on strategic nuclear weapons. If they can agree to stand down and focus on getting China to do likewise, Putin won’t be unhappy.
No one should expect a sea change in Putin’s behavior. He is a murderer, as Biden once said, and won’t hesitate to do it again if he thinks it will serve his interests and he can get away with it. Putin is Putin, not Yeltsin. The US should think less about Putin and more about what comes next. As one Muscovite put it to me, Russians love their Czars, until they don’t.
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Stevenson’s army, June 16
I’ll let the dust settle and the anonymous briefers dish before circulating comments on the Biden-Putin summit. But WaPo has an excellent story on the internal divisions in USG over Russia policy.
Defense One says NSC process has returned to “regular order.” [I hope so.]
NATO did call out China. And China returned the compliment.
Politico says DOD is considering permanent naval task force in Pacific.
Dan Drezner doubts US can implement a good industrial policy.
WOTR writers call for IC to give more attention to open sources.
My SAIS colleague Charlie Stevenson distributes this almost daily news digest of foreign/defense/national security policy to “Stevenson’s army” via Googlegroups. I plan to republish here. To get Stevenson’s army by email, send a blank email (no subject or text in the body) to stevensons-army+subscribe@googlegroups.com. You’ll get an email confirming your join request. Click “Join This Group” and follow the instructions to join. Once you have joined, you can adjust your email delivery preferences (if you want every email or a digest of the emails).
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Progress for some, but institutional challenges for all
Despite recent gains, Egyptian women are seeing challenges to their rights and duties as citizens. Women are struggling to have their own development keep up with the shifting landscape in both personal and professional life. Furthermore, despite official attempts to promote gender equality, with more women in cabinet and on boards than ever before, long-held patriarchal attitudes continue to restrict the roles of women in the public and private spheres. On June 1, 2021, the Middle East Institute hosted Equality for Some: Changes to Women’s Rights in Egypt to discuss and better understand the socioeconomic consequences of these restrictions and the social movements taking place to forward the feminist movement. The speakers were:
Hoda El-Sadda
Professor of English and Comparative Literature, Cairo University
Mozn Hassan
Founder and executive director, Nazra for Feminist Studies
Mirette F. Mabrouk (moderator)
Senior fellow and director, Egypt program, MEI
The movement in context:
El-Sadda explained the context of the current feminist movement in her discussion about the current status of personal status laws in Egypt. In February 2021, the Egyptian cabinet approved a draft proposal of the new personal status laws that consolidated gendered inequalities and added new restrictions on women’s legal capacity. Currently, women have the legal status equivalent to minors, under tutelage of a male family member to make decisions on the behalf of women in the family. Meanwhile, the legal system can continue to create regulatory and bureaucratic obstacles that impede women’s mobility and guardianship of their children.
The legal subordination of women, according to El-Sadda, has been translated into decisions and regulations implemented by state institutions. When laws were changed in 1956 that granted women universal suffrage and equal rights in the public sphere, these practices were not paralleled in the private sector. While amendments have been added in order to address specific, minor, aspects of these laws, they fail to address the philosophy behind the law and governing logic while cementing religious practices.
The feminist movement and the state
Hassan argued that since the Arab Spring in 2011, there has been change that caused new actors to surface and mobilize – propelling the feminist movement into its current place. While violence is not the primary issue for educated women, Hassan emphasized the importance of the past ten years as demonstrating a dynamic movement that has shown the importance of independence and strength in community.
El-Sadda clarified the role played by the Egyptian government. Rather than acting as a proactive source of equality and protection, the Egyptian government’s amendments on personal status law have been attempts to extinguish social fires at a retroactive pace. While there is a general increase in female representation in government and education, the relationship between the state and social movements like the current feminist campaign is difficult. The state aims to dominate or destroy independent movements, so many of the challenges facing Egyptian women today remain the same since the 1950s. There is little hope for the future of the Egyptian state to act as a proactive and engaged member of the equality dialogue.
The future of the movement
According to Hassan, the feminist movement has created allows for the development and promotion of individual campaigns throughout the public. It is evolving alongside technologies and social media, while drawing on the context of government and civil society structure created by past generations.
El-Sadda concluded the panel with hope for the future. She believes that the women’s movement in Egypt has become the most successful social movement of the 20th century, despite obstacles along the way. There exists a transformative nature within this feminist movement that has the innate ability to pass through generations. El-Sadda claims that due to more courage, increased social media presence and relevance, and the new generation of politically engaged feminists, the movement gives hope for all Egyptian women.
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Nationalism is rising, but sectarianism won’t fade quickly
The Arab Gulf States Institute in Washington (AGSIW) June 9 organized a discussion on issues of nationalism and sectarianism in the Middle East. The Sectarianism, Proxies & De-sectarianization project (SEPAD) co-organized; its director Simon Mabon joined the panel as an expert on Saudi Arabia. Together with two experts on Lebanon and Iraq, respectively, he assessed the state of sectarianism and nationalist projects in these three countries. Iraq and Lebanon are experiencing grassroots protest movements to overcome sectarianism while Saudi Arabia is seeing a major top-down drive through the Vision 2030 project spearheaded by Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman (MBS). Should these be understood as attempts to let national identity overcome sectarianism in politics? If so, can we expect them to be successful? The panel agreed that these issues are unlikely to be solved quickly or by MbS’s preferred economic means, but a clear shift in political thinking is occurring in the younger generations.
The speakers were:
Geneive Abdo
Visiting Fellow
AGSIW
Simon Mabon
Chair in International Politics
Lancaster University
Director
Richardson Institute
Director
SEPAD
Maha Yahya
Director
Malcolm H. Kerr Carnegie Middle East Center
Kristin Smith Diwan (moderator)
Senior Resident Scholar
AGSIW
Two protest movements and one grand vision
As Simon Mabon explained, SEPAD analyzes the events in the modern Middle East and tests the theory that secularist national identities are replacing sectarian political identities. The focus for his talk lay on the three countries Lebanon, Iraq, and Saudi Arabia. As Abdo and Yahya indicated, Lebanon and Iraq are experiencing major protest movements that attack the corruption, lack of accountability, and cronyism in their countries. Both have democratic systems that reserve political positions and parliamentary representation to specific sectarian groups. In practice, as Yahya said, this “turned the relationship between individuals and their state into one that is mediated by sectarian community.” The political system has become a way to divide the cake among power brokers, who in Lebanon are referred to as ‘mafia’.
The protest movements in both of these countries self-identify as secular. As Abdo underlined, Iraqi protesters are overwhelmingly Shia and use Shia religious symbolism (such as references to the martyrdom of Shia Imam Hussein) in their demonstrations. Moreover, the Shia clergy in Iraq openly supports and collaborates with the protest movement. In this younger generation there is a clear division between personal religious identity and political identity. It is in the latter that desectarianization has occurred. Furthermore, the protesters emphasize that their agenda is issue-based.
Maha Yahya noted that Lebanon differs. The current protests go beyond clear-cut issues (such as the Whatsapp-tax that triggered the current protest movement) and aim at a complete overhaul of the sectarian political system. The individual controversies and issues that abound in Lebanese politics are seen as symptoms of a broken regime.
The situation in Saudi Arabia might appear unrelated. The Arab Spring saw some demonstrations in the Shia East of the country, but nothing on the scale of the other two countries discussed here. MBS is seeking to transform and modernize his country under his ambitious ‘Vision 2030’ project. Funded by billions of petrodollars, MBS wants to wean Saudi Arabia off its reliance on oil and modernize its economy. His vision includes relaxation of the strict religious laws for economic and political purposes. MBS hopes to transform Saudi citizenship to a secularist, civic nationalism in which both Sunni Wahhabi and Shia groups participate. According to Mabon, the ambitious pace and huge investments that go along with this show that MBS believes he has a ‘magic switch’ that can achieve this transformation of identities.
Sectarianism won’t go away easily
The panel agreed it would be naïve to think that deep-seated sectarian social and political systems will go away quickly. Vision 2030 aims to remove sectarian divisions by offering everyone a seat at the economic table, and therefore a stake in the state. The systems of marginalization and othering cannot be undone with a ‘magic switch’ and some ‘bread and games’, and centuries of repression cannot so easily be erased. Investing hundreds of millions into shopping malls in Shia areas could be seen as tokenism and introduces new issues of gentrification and marginalization along class lines. Nonetheless, a less cynical view could see these as the first steps towards change according to Mabon.
In Lebanon and Iraq, a major obstacle is the lack of unity within the protest movements. Groups and proto-parties are forming, aiming for Iraqi elections planned for October and Lebanese parliamentary elections to come in 2022. However, the grassroots movements have not yet coalesced into clear protest parties. Yahya and Abdo agreed that in both Lebanon and Iraq the political system discourages new parties, and the existing political establishment is unlikely to disappear in one electoral cycle. Yahya is cautiously optimistic in the medium term about the grassroots developments in Lebanon. Abdo indicated that Iraqi proto-parties are also emerging and receiving donations. However, there is a serious debate on whether the protesters should boycott the elections or try to get as many seats as possible. Iraq’s 2018 elections had an official turnout of 44%, although the real number is estimated to have been as low as 20%, meaning that turnout is already a critical issue for the established elite’s legitimacy. Moderator Diwan pointed out that boycotts in the region (such as in Bahrain or Kuwait) haven’t generally been a successful way to challenge entrenched elites.
Watch the recording of the event here:
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