Category: Daniel Serwer
Martin Luther the King
That’s what my nephew answered when I asked the name of his grade school: Martin Luther the King. It strikes me as consistent with the hagiography of our time. MLK is treated in much of today’s America, especially on today’s holiday, like a latter day Moses: he led us out of the oppression of segregation to a promised land of equal opportunity that he was not allowed to enter.
This narrative distorts two realities. We are still far from the promised land of his dreams. And MLK was no saint. Come to think of it: neither was Moses, who killed an Egyptian to stop him from whipping a Jew and broke the original tablets containing the Ten Commandments in anger.
Our record on equality is far from perfect. The statistical evidence for inequality in outcomes (assets, income, health, jobs, education) is dramatic. So too is the psychological evidence of input bias. We are not talking ancient history here. We are talking today, in post-segregation America, where our housing, schools and churches remain more segregated than most of us like to admit. I’d be the last to deny that lots of things have changed since the 1964 Civil Rights Act made discrimination based on race, color, religion, sex, or national origin illegal and the 1965 Voting Rights Act sought to end voting discrimination. But we are still a society in which police kill too many black men with impunity and blacks fail to show up in force at the polls.
Nor was MLK perfect. That is one of the messages of Selma, a film noted in recent weeks more for its lack of Academy Award nomination than for those it received. The film conforms to the classic American narrative: good triumphs over evil, but it still offers a nuanced and equivocal portrait of MLK. Hesitant and uncertain in private with his wife, his colleagues in the Southern Christian Leadership Conference (SCLC) and John Lewis of the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee (SNCC), he is forceful in public and in defying President Johnson. This is no absolute monarch but rather a man who tries to stay in touch with his supporters, listens to his advisers (even if he also overrules them) and suffers from guilt about his sexual exploits as well as the deaths of his supporters.
Today, all American politicians present themselves as supporters of Martin Luther the King. Selma illustrates how that is a snare and a delusion. The real MLK was interested not only in equal rights and opportunity, but also in empowering black people politically and economically. He would be dissatisfied today not only with the bias that affects blacks but also with the skewed economic and social outcomes that tarnish the American dream. MLK’s assassination stopped the movement he led in its tracks. Ralph Abernathy tried to continue the struggle for economic betterment through the Poor People’s Campaign, but he was no MLK and failed to arouse the passion required. Bottom line: we are stuck halfway with supposedly equal opportunity but continuing bias in behavior and sharply contrasting outcomes.
We can and should do better. I suppose beatifying Martin Luther the King may help us, because it makes us seek a more just and equal society. But we need to be clear: the movement he led was rooted in American ideals, but it sought to change American reality. That is happening too slowly for my taste. MLK wouldn’t be pleased either.
So here, via @adamserwer and @jonquilynhill:
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Europe takes a turn
Sead Numanovic of the Bosnian daily Avaz yesterday asked some questions about the visit of Foreign Ministers Hammond (UK) and Steinmeier (Germany) to Sarajevo to press implementation of their initiative to hasten reform in Bosnia and Herzegovina. I replied:
1. What do you think on Hammond-Steinmeier initiative on Bosnia? What is good, what is bad in it?
A: I think it is good the Europeans are showing interest. But I have doubts an initiative that ignores the defects of the Bosnian constitution will succeed in generating serious reforms. I’ll be happy to be proved wrong though.
2. Is there a willingness among Bosnia’s politicians for reforms?
A: In theory yes. In practice, it depends on which ones. They dislike proposals that weaken their own hold on power and patronage. But only by doing that, in particular with respect to state-controlled companies, can Bosnia begin to function more effectively.
3. Is the request from EU for reform through this initiative modest or far reaching one?
It seems to me modest in conception. Brussels is trying to make these initial steps easy, in order to get Bosnia into the EU accession process faster. It did something similar for Serbia. I wish it would do it for Macedonia, which truly deserves it.
4. What does the US think about the initiative (I was told US are not so happy about it)?
A: I think well-informed Americans would have preferred something more far-reaching, including amendment of the constitution to reduce ethnic vetoes and clarify the central government’s authority to negotiate and implement the acquis communitaire. The Americans are more pro-European than the Europeans, at least right now.
5. Is an idea to reform economy and social sector, without at this stage touching constitutional issues, a wise one?
A: Let’s wait and see. Those of us who have wanted constitutional changes haven’t produced brilliant results. Let someone else try a new trick.
6. What if this initiative fails?
A: I suppose someone will propose something else. Meanwhile, Bosnia and Herzegovina is falling well behind in the regatta to join the EU. That is unfortunate, but its citizens need to find a way to take the helm and get the politicians to row harder.
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Not in the cards
Yesterday I published a piece by Matthew Parrish suggesting that Iraqi Kurdistan (plus some of Syrian Kurdish territory) is headed towards independence. He imagines the path may be a relatively easy one, compared to the painful history Kurdistan has already endured.
I don’t agree.
My objections have nothing to do with the Kurdish case for independence. That is pretty good: they were promised it at the end of World War I, they have been mistreated both within Iraq and Syria for long periods, they were chased from their homes and out of Iraq, and they were gassed by the Baghdad government. This is a history comparable to Kosovo’s (though the Albanians were never gassed).
Unlike that former Serbian province, the Kurds do not have a UN Security Council resolution that promises them an eventual decision on their political status and the UN did not administer their territory for the better part of a decade. But they were protected by a UN-authorized no-fly zone that allowed them to develop substantial and relatively democratic governance. The distinction amounts to little net difference.
The case against Kurdistan’s independence is not based on Kurdistan’s merits but on geopolitical factors. Turkey, as Matthew suggests, has already accepted Iraqi Kurdistan’s de facto independence and deals with it pretty much as an independent state. It remains unclear what its reaction to de jure independence would be, but let’s assume it would accept (though recognition would only come if independent Kurdistan forswore any pretensions whatsoever to Turkish territory, as Matthew suggests).
That is the only good news. Matthew’s presumption that Iran would somehow come around is dubious. Tehran has made it absolutely clear that it fears the irredentist sentiment Kurdistan’s independence would unleash, endangering the peace and stability that has generally reigned in the Iranian province of eastern Kurdistan and uncorking other ethnic resentments throughout a country whose Persian population is likely no more than 60% of the total. Iran is not going to welcome an independent Kurdistan.
Just as important: Arab Iraqis would not accept an independent Kurdistan either. The presence of large oil reserves in territory that the Kurds now control, which Matthew cites as a plus for independence, is one reason. Another is Sunni fear of what would be a large Shia majority in an Iraq without Kurdistan. The Sunnis would be unlikely to secede from Iraq without Kirkuk and Baghdad, which they would fight for. Peaceful separation, like that of the Czech Republic and Slovakia, requires prior agreement on the lines of separation, which doesn’t exist today in Iraq and isn’t likely to exist in the future.
Nor would the international community welcome an independent Kurdistan. The Americans will oppose it because of the precedent it would set for the Donbas region of eastern Ukraine. The Russians will oppose it because of the implications for its ethnically non-Russian republics. The Europeans will be worried about Catalonia. The Chinese about Tibet. Kosovo, which still is not a UN member, was an exception that proves the rule, not a new rule.
In any event, the Kurds aren’t likely to go for independence anytime soon. At current oil prices and production levels, Kurdistan is not financially viable. While Matthew may imagine peaceful coexistence with the Islamic State (yes, he does), few in Turkey or Kurdistan can. Ankara and Erbil as well as Baghdad all know that they need American, European and Gulf help to defeat the self-declared caliphate. Complicating matters by declaring independence will not improve the Kurds’ prospects for needed assistance.
Could things change? Of course. Certainly oil prices can go up, though likely not as high as they were, because anything above $80 per barrel will open the “tight” oil and gas spigot. Kurdistan will need something like that price (and 10 years or so of drilling) to be better off with 100% of their own oil revenue than 17% of Iraq’s. Kurdistan could come to terms with Baghdad on where to draw its border, which would remove one important casus belli. Turkey could settle its problems with its own Kurds and Syria could throw out the Islamic State. Iran could turn into a cream puff. But little of that is likely to happen in the foreseeable future.
Bottom line: Kurdistan is not headed towards independence anytime soon, despite the merits of its case.
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Towards Kurdistan independence
This piece comes to peacefare.net from Matthew Parish, identified in full at the end.
The Kurds are an atypical people. The geographical area they populate is essentially contiguous, but they have not enjoyed their own state in modern times. Since the early sixteenth century their territory and population has been divided between the Safavid (Persian) and Ottoman Empires. They stayed much that way until the Treaty of Sèvres, a European plan for dismemberment of the Ottoman Empire that anticipated a Kurdish nation amongst several new emergent states at the end of World War I. The existence of such a state was a corollary of Woodrow Wilson’s theme of self-determination for previously colonized peoples. Sèvres anticipated that a Kurdish state would emerge under joint Anglo-French suzerainty, but Ataturk buried the abortive treaty through success in the Turkish War of Independence.
The Kurds remained without autonomy, divided between Turkey, Syria, Iraq and Iran, for some decades afterwards. In the 1950s and 1960, the Kurds took advantage of the chaos surrounding Sunni minority rule in Iraq, and in particular the military coup of And al-Karim Qasim against the Iraqi monarchy in 1958 and his subsequent execution in a Ba’ath party coup in 1963. The First Iraqi-Kurdish war reached a conclusion after nine years in 1970, with establishment of a federal Kurdish entity within Iraqi borders.
The Kurds’ luck ran out with the seizure of absolute power in Iraq by Saddam Hussein in 1979.The humiliation of the Iraqi central authorities by the Kurds would not be forgotten during his totalitarian reign. De jure Kurdish autonomy would be progressively eroded until Iraqi Kurdistan fell entirely under the writ of Baghdad. This course culminated in the 1988-89 Al-Anfal military campaign to defeat the Kurdish Peshmerga (the region’s autonomous military), which involved the widespread massacre of civilians including use of poisonous gas attacks.
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No loophole
Seyed Hossein Mousavian, who has worked at Princeton since 2009, is the moderate voice of the Iranian regime, which lacks an ambassador (other than at the UN), in the United States. He said yesterday, in an interview with Die Welt (Moussavian provided the English translation):
R&D on nuclear weapons is not prohibited by NPT. NPT prohibits building, storage and the use of nuclear weapons. For many years Germany is doing R&D on nuclear weapons under IAEA’s supervision. Because Berlin wants to know the consequences of possible use of nuclear bomb against Germany by other nuclear powers. It is legitimate as long as the nuclear powers maintain thousands of nuclear weapon.
To me, this is one of the most interesting remarks in a lengthy presentation that helpfully and clearly outlines main parameters of a possible nuclear agreement with Iran: limiting Iran’s enrichment and reprocessing capabilities to meeting its practical requirements (and thereby making the time it would take to achieve a nuclear weapons capability at least a year) in exchange for lifting of sanctions, starting with European oil and financial sanctions.
Whereas those parameters may be mostly agreed, as Moussavian suggests, the parties seem far apart on the question of nuclear weapons research and development, if Moussavian’s remarks represent accurately what people in Tehran are thinking.* Germany certainly does conduct research on the impact of ionizing radiation, a subject on which its scholars have been leaders since the discovery of X-rays in 1896 (I should know: I wrote my doctoral thesis at Princeton on the early history of protection against ionizing radiation). That is quite different from conducting research on how to initiate a nuclear detonation, which is what the Americans think Iran was up to at Parchin before 2003.
While a great deal more attention has been paid to the number of centrifuges and the quantity of enriched uranium Iran will retain under a possible nuclear agreement, the issue of clandestine nuclear weapons research is really far more important. I don’t know of a single case of nuclear proliferation due to materials and facilities monitored by the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA). Moussavian is correct in believing that an agreement that limits enrichment and reprocessing and enables the agency to keep tabs on all of Iran’s declared facilities should be adequate to provide at least a year of warning if there is any attempt at diverting material to a nuclear weapons program.
But that is not sufficient, especially if Iran is now claiming a right to conduct nuclear weapons research. I know of no such right in the Non-Proliferation Treaty (NPT). Nor to my knowledge has the IAEA ever agreed to monitor the nuclear (e.g. initiators) or non-nuclear (e.g. high explosive) research needed to develop nuclear weapons. Such research would be inconsistent with the purposes of the treaty. The IAEA’s interest in Parchin is not in order to monitor the activity but to understand Iran’s intentions. I won’t claim non-nuclear states have never done experiments of the sort Iran is accused of conducting at Parchin, but Iran is not just any non-nuclear state. It can expect no US relief from sanctions if it insists that conducting nuclear weapons research is legitimate. I doubt even the Europeans will fall for that one.
That comes from someone who would very much like to see an agreement within the parameters Moussavian suggests reached by the June deadline. But ending nuclear weapons research in Iran permanently and verifiably has to be part of the deal. Anything less leaves a giant loophole.
*PS: on this point, Moussavian writes: “Iran neither had research on nuclear weapons nor has such agenda. As a scholar, I stated my personal interpretation from NPT which I believe it is correct. It has nothing to do with Iran’s position.”
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Je ne suis pas Charlie
This is what the remaining staff of Charlie Hebdo had to say this morning on the first cover published since the murder of most of its editorial staff:
It’s a mixed message: defiant in asserting Mohammed would identify with the terrorists’ victims and shed a tear for them, but also forgiving in pardoning the assailants.
That second Catholic message, which looks to me like an afterthought, is the more difficult one for me to swallow. Reconciliation needs to be based on mutual acknowledgement of harm. Neither Charlie Hebdo nor its assailants have yet acknowledged any harm they may have done to each other. It is difficult to picture how that can happen, since the harm is so wildly disproportional.
Before evaluating that judgment, it would be wise to read and view this Mohammed Image Archive. The much-vaunted prohibition on depictions of Mohammed is, as demonstrated there, a relatively recent phenomenon. It dates from the 16th and 17th centuries, not earlier, and is not necessarily observed even today, especially among Shia. Of course that does not mean Charlie Hebdo‘s irreverent depictions are not offensive. They certainly were, and were intended to be. But the mere fact of depicting Mohammed is not so unusual as many in the Muslim community today claim.
Charlie Hebdo‘s sense of humor is not mine. Satire is difficult, as it requires exaggeration of some traits over others. It is also risky, because it easily laps over into exceedingly poor taste. A single Saturday Night Live episode is enough to convince most people of that. I prefer sardonic, even snarkey. But can there be any question about the right of others to say and draw whatever they like?
The answer is “yes.” Certainly I object to the use of the pejorative label “Redskins” as the name of the Washington area football team. So do many others. But none of us have seen fit to murder the team owner or staff. We haven’t even tried. We expect lawsuits, demonstrations and popular sentiment to convince the owner to change the name. He has deep pockets, but eventually the costs will exceed whatever benefits he imagines the name brings.
That is the point. Muslims have every right to object to Charlie Hebdo, which would not be doing its self-created job if they did not. Certainly Jews and Christians had their own bones to pick with the magazine. But where did the Kouachi brothers get the notion they could kill the messengers? What leads anyone to murder random people doing their grocery shopping in a Kosher deli?
The terrorists themselves are claiming inspiration by the Islamic State and Al Qaeda (sometimes one, sometimes the other). We should take them at their word. The sad fact is that violent extremism is proving its appeal to some young Muslims, even those who live in democratic societies. Their communities need to find ways of inspiring them in other directions.
And non-Muslims need to help. We won’t be able to catch or kill all those who might find violence an attractive outlet for their feelings of alienation and hostility. Nor should we want to. We should hope that Muslim citizens in the West find dignity and well-being without resorting to murder and suicide. Inclusion, not exclusion, is the right direction.
Je ne suis pas Charlie. Nor am I Muslim. But I want to live in a society in which both Charlie and Muslims can coexist.
PS: more on depictions of Mohammed here and here.
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