A helpful reminder of the Ottoman Empire
Why is this helpful? Because it illustrates how many of today’s enduring conflicts–not only those termed “Middle Eastern”–are rooted in the Ottoman Empire and its immediate neighborhood: Bosnia, Kosovo, Greece/Turkey, Armenia/Azerbaijan, Israel/Arabs (Palestine, Syria, Lebanon), Iraq, Iraq/Iran, Shia (Iran)/Sunni (Saudi Arabia, Egypt), North/South Sudan, Yemen.
Ottoman success in managing the many ethnic and sectarian groups inhabiting the Empire, without imposing conformity to a single identity (and without providing equal rights) has left the 21st century with problems it finds hard to understand, never mind resolve.
In much of the former Ottoman Empire, many people refuse to be labeled a “minority” just because their numbers are fewer than other groups, states are regarded as formed by ethnic groups rather than by individuals, individual rights are often less important than group rights and being “outvoted” is undemocratic.
A Croat leader in Bosnia told me 15 years ago that one thing that would never work there was “one man, one vote.” It just wasn’t their way of doing things. For a decision to be valid, a majority of each ethnic group was needed , not a majority of the population as a whole.
In a society of this sort, a boycott by one ethnic group is regarded as invalidating a decision made by the majority: the Serbs thought their boycott of the Bosnia independence referendum should have invalidated it, but the European Union had imposed a 50 per cent plus one standard. There lie the origins of war.
The question of whether Israel is a Jewish state is rooted in the same thinking that defined Yugoslavia as the kingdom of the Slovenes, Croats and Serbs, and it bears a family resemblance to the thinking behind “Greater Serbia” and “Greater Albania.” If it is the ethnic group that forms the state, why should there be more than one state in which that ethnic group lives?
Ours is a state (yes, that is the proper term for what we insist on calling the Federal Government) built on a concept of individual rights, equal for all. The concept challenges American imaginations from time to time: certainly it did when Truman overcame strong resistance to integrate the US Army, and it is reaching the limits of John McCain’s imagination in the debate over “don’t ask, don’t tell.” But the march of American history is clearly in the direction of equal individual rights.
That is a direction many former Ottoman territories find it difficult to take, because some groups have more substantial rights than others; even when the groups’ rights are equal, they can veto each other. A lot of the state-building challenge in those areas arises from this fundamental difference.
Share this, I'll really appreciate it:
The Iranian enrichment gambit gets more explicit
This is from a BBC interview, as reported by Foreign Policy: Hillary Clinton says
We’ve told them that they are entitled to the peaceful use of civil nuclear energy, but they haven’t yet restored the confidence of the international community to the extent where the international community would feel comfortable allowing them to enrich. They can enrich uranium at some future date once they have demonstrated that they can do so in a responsible manner in accordance with international obligations.
In diplospeak, she is clearly floating the idea that there might be a deal if Iran will agree not to enrich too much. This is published under a headline that reads Clinton on Iran: The regime is on the ropes. Nice cover for a soft message to Tehran.
Share this, I'll really appreciate it:
Conditionality is easier said than done
The big idea behind the Brookings Unfinished Business: An American Strategy for
Iraq Moving Forward report published yesterday is conditionality:
As long as Iraq’s leaders are moving their country in the direction that serves American interests, the United States can and should remain willing to help the Iraqis generously.
Otherwise, we should take our assistance elsewhere:
If Iraq’s leaders are not willing or able to act in a manner consistent with good governance, the rule of law, and the need for national reconciliation, then the risks to Iraq’s future stability are so grave that they should cause the U.S. government to reevaluate its level of commitment to the U.S.-Iraqi partnership and the resources it is willing to invest in it.
Let us consider what this might mean. Take for example the last nine months of negotiations to form a new government: was Allawi correct in concluding that the election results legally dictated that he be asked to form a government because he won a larger number of seats in parliament? Or was Maliki constitutionally correct in claiming that his larger post-election coalition should be asked first? Conditionality could have required that the Americans make a judgment on this issue and behave accordingly. Wisely, the Americans largely stayed out of it. Had they been required to decide who was acting in accordance with the rule of law and who not, they’d have put themselves in the middle of the then most sensitive issues in Iraqi politics, to no serious purpose.
Likewise with de-Ba’athification: the Americans argued vigorously in private against the decision to exclude candidates in the March elections because of their alleged affiliations with the Ba’ath party, but ultimately they failed. What if that failure had required a cut-off of assistance? How would that have improved the situation? Would it have served our purposes to make the transfer of military equipment to Iraq contingent on former Ba’athists being allowed to run in the elections?
Unfinished Business argues that “virtually all” American assistance should be subject to strict conditionality based on U.S. objectives. Really? Whether we bring Iraqis to the U.S. for university education should depend on what? On whether the Iraqi police are conforming to international human rights standards? On whether Iraqi schools are teaching tolerance? On whether Christians are being mistreated in Baghdad? Has the history of Congressionally imposed conditionality not taught us something about how complex, illogical and even bizarre the procedure can be?
Or consider the “benchmarks” the Bush Administration negotiated with (or imposed on) Iraq in late 2006/early 2007. They were thought to be vital to ending sectarian strife in Iraq. Many have still not been met. But sectarian strife has declined dramatically. Would we have been wise to reduce military assistance because the benchmarks were not met?
In Baghdad in 2008, I asked a major Sunni politician whether he was concerned about one of the benchmarks, the oil law, which in Washington was thought to be vital to the Sunnis in order to ensure their fair share of oil revenue. Fresh from a meeting in which the American Ambassador had berated him on the need to pass it, he replied, “no,” that was an American issue rather than an Iraqi one. He wasn’t at all concerned with guaranteeing the Sunni share of oil revenue, which was already reliably flowing to the provinces according to population, but he was concerned that an oil law passed too early would give little money to the central government and too much to the provinces. The benchmark was thoroughly misconceived.
I am 100 per cent with the authors of Unfinished Business when they argue that U.S. commitments to Iraq, in particular the military ones, should serve U.S. interests. But if that is the case, there won’t be much we can use as leverage without scoring an own-goal. Conditionality is easier said than done. It is not good strategy when your own vital interests are at stake, and it would be better to use it sparingly and tactically.
Share this, I'll really appreciate it:
Can the Lady deliver?
Simon Henderson at the Washington Institute has a sharper eye than I do, as he detected this from SecState Clinton this week: “Iran is entitled to the use of civil nuclear power for peaceful purposes.” In his well-crafted scenesetter, Simon bemoans that “this formulation could allow Iran to continue enriching uranium.”
I doubt we are going to be able to stop that. The best we can hope for is to limit the degree of enrichment and amount of material.
Monday’s P5+1 meeting in Geneva is a big test for the EU. If Lady Ashton can deliver, Brussels will gain serious credibility.
Share this, I'll really appreciate it:
One more for withdrawal from Afghanistan
Another Afghanistan report for that shelf you cleared: Gilles Dorronsoro says we can’t win and argues for ceasefire, negotiate, withdraw.
Share this, I'll really appreciate it:
Another moment of truth
International Crisis Group has put out its latest on Afghanistan, offering a definitive answer to the question of whether Karzai is worth it:
Any plan that fails to deal with the decay in Kabul will not succeed. President Hamid Karzai no longer enjoys the legitimacy and popularity
he once had and he has subsequently lost his ability to stitch together lasting political deals.
This is followed by a well-documented litany of failures in areas directly relevant to whether the mission as a whole can succeed.
But ICG then somehow manages to turn 180 degrees and recommend, in a backhanded sort of way, engagement rather than exit:
Overcoming the trust deficit between the Afghan government, the Afghan people and the international community will rely on more concerted efforts to increase political representation, to expand access to justice and to confront corruption.
This amounts to no more than wishing it weren’t so–if it wanted to be listened to, ICG would have done better to go where its analysis points: drawdown, presumably on the currently agreed NATO schedule.
RSS - Posts
