Tag: Democracy and Rule of Law
The end is nigh, once again
2013 is ending with a lot of doom and gloom:
- South Sudan, the world’s newest state, is suffering bloodletting between political rivals, who coincide with its two largest tribes (Dinka and Nuer).
- The Central African Republic is imploding in an orgy of Christian/Muslim violence.
- North Korea is risking internal strife as its latest Kim exerts his authority by purging and executing his formally powerful uncle.
- China is challenging Japan and South Korea in the the East China Sea.
- Syria is in chaos, spelling catastrophe for most of its population and serious strains for all its neighbors.
- Nuclear negotiations with Iran seem slow, if not stalled.
- Egypt‘s military is repressing not only the Muslim Brotherhood but also secular human rights advocates.
- Israel and Palestine still seem far from agreement on the two-state solution most agree is their best bet.
- Afghanistan‘s President Karzai is refusing to sign the long-sought security agreement with the United States, putting at risk continued presence of US troops even as the Taliban seem to be strengthening in the countryside, and capital and people are fleeing Kabul.
- Al Qaeda is recovering as a franchised operation (especially in Iraq, Syria, Yemen and North Africa), even as its headquarters in Pakistan has been devastated.
- Ukraine is turning eastward, despite the thousands of brave protesters in Kiev’s streets.
The Economist topped off the gloom this week by suggesting that the current international situation resembles the one that preceded World War I: a declining world power (then Great Britain, now the US) unable to ensure global security and a rising challenger (then Germany now China). Read more
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The world according to CFR
The Council on Foreign Relations (CFR) survey of prevention priorities for 2014 is out today. Crowdsourced, it is pretty much the definition of elite conventional wisdom. Pundits of all stripes contribute.
The top tier includes contingencies with high impact and moderate likelihood (intensification of the Syrian civil war, a cyberattack on critical US infrastructure, attacks on the Iranian nuclear program or evidence of nuclear weapons intent, a mass casualty terrorist attack on the US or an ally, or a severe North Korean crisis) as well as those with moderate impact and high likelihood (in a word “instability” in Afghanistan, Pakistan, Yemen, Iraq or Jordan). None merited the designation high impact and high likelihood, though many of us might have suggested Syria, Iraq and Pakistan for that category. Read more
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Peace picks, December 16-20
DC is beginning to slow down as the holiday season is fast approaching, but there are still some great events this week. We won’t likely publish another edition until January 5, as the year-end doldrums will likely last until then:
1. The Middle Kingdom Looks East, West, North, and South: China’s Strategies on its Periphery
Monday, December 16 | 9:00am – 10:30am
Woodrow Wilson Center, 1300 Pennsylvania Avenue NW, Fifth Floor
China’s recent declaration of an air defense identification zone in the East China Sea and its territorial claims over 80% of the South China Sea are focusing renewed American attention on Chinese strategy. To understand China’s policies, deployments, and ambitions in the Western Pacific, we must analyze China’s attitudes toward all of its 14 border States and Pacific neighbors, and toward its near and more distant seas.
The Kissinger Institute’s 2013 series of public programs will conclude with a talk by renowned author Edward Luttwak, who will lead a discussion of China’s strategy throughout its periphery, with an emphasis on the Diaoyu/Senkakus and other regional disputes.
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For those who couldn’t make it
I gave the last of my pre-holiday talks on Righting the Balance yesterday at the Middle East Institute. Here is the latest iteration of the talking points I’ve been using, admittedly with occasional departures to tell a story or respond to a skeptical look.
1. Thank you for that kind introduction. It is truly an honor to present at MEI, which welcomed me as a scholar after I moved to SAIS from USIP three years ago and provided a steady flow of interns who did essential fact-checking, footnoting and commenting on the manuscript.
2. As I am going to say some harsh things about the State Department and USAID, and even suggest they be abolished in favor of a single Foreign Office, I would like to emphasize from the first that I have enormous respect for the Foreign Service and the devotion of its officers to pursuing America’s interests abroad. I feel the same way about the US military.
3. But I don’t think the Foreign Service is well served by the institutions that hire, pay and deploy our diplomats and aid workers. And I don’t think our military should be called upon to make up for civilian deficiencies.
4. My book, Righting the Balance, is aimed at correcting those imbalances. But it does not start there. Read more
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Mandela, and de Klerk
It would be hard to say anything new about Nelson Mandela after the last day of praise and remembrance. I met him–very briefly–at a UN cocktail party in 1994. All I really remember is his assiduous effort to introduce himself to each of the wait staff. They were thrilled. So was I.
But there are a few things that might bear repetition, if only for emphasis. As correct as it is to celebrate Mandela for his pursuit of justice, it was really his pursuit of peace that made him so unusual. I wouldn’t want to minimize the courage required to stand up against racism in apartheid South Africa, but it took at least as much to stand up to those who thought violence was the only way to bring the system down and then to seek reconciliation with white South Africans in the aftermath.
That would not have been possible but for Mandela’s negotiating partner, F.W. de Klerk. As the last president of apartheid South Africa, he not only released Mandela from jail but cooperated in converting his country to a one-person, one-vote electoral system that necessarily meant the end of white domination, at least at the ballot box. He also ended South Africa’s nuclear weapons program, which was meant to help sustain apartheid.
South Africa managed its transition quickly and well, even if I find it hard to admire its post-apartheid politics (and politicians). The countries I mostly follow in the Balkans and the Middle East are not so much managing their transitions as experiencing them, and things are going slowly by comparison. It seems to me there are at least four reasons: Read more
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People to be thankful for
My friends get in trouble a lot. At the moment, I’m concerned in particular about Ahmed Maher, an Egyptian activist in the April 6 Movement for whom an arrest warrant has been issued because he defied the government’s latest law on demonstrations, which went into effect this week. He already faces other charges related to previous demonstrations. And I’m concerned about Sonja Biserko, who is being criticized for agreeing to testify on behalf of Croatia to support its charge of genocide against Serbia at the International Court of Justice. In Belgrade, where Sonja has lived most of her life, she is accused of being a traitor.
Ahmed was in DC just two weeks ago, when he spoke at the Middle East Institute conference and chatted with some of us privately. He is determined to create space in Egypt for a “third force,” which would occupy the political space between the current military-backed government and the Muslim Brotherhood, now the object of repression but itself intolerant and anti-democratic when it held power for a year, ending last summer. Ahmed’s third force would be committed to human rights, a civil state based on citizenship, and democratic ideals. It has been precisely the lack of support for these ideals that has made the Egyptian revolution such a roller coaster ride.
Ahmed doesn’t expect real success for another ten years or so, which makes his willingness to keep democratic hopes alive now particularly striking. He is trying to maintain a space for political dissent in Egypt, despite the restoration of military authority. This will not be easy. Egypt’s army quickly accuses dissenters of being terrorists, or supporters of the Muslim Brotherhood, against which Ahmed also took to the streets. Now he defends their political rights. Egypt’s restored military regime does not take that kindly.
Sonja is in a different, but no less problematic, situation. Serbia today is a democracy, more or less. So far as I can tell, its government is refusing to comment on her willingness to testify against it at The Hague, but Serbia’s press is condemning her (this is from Novosti last Saturday):
This is one of rare, if not the unique, examples in modern history of a person taking the stand against his or her own state by proclaiming it genocidal. Should the trial take place – meaning should the two sides refuse to withdraw charges – Sonja Biserko would be responsible for war damages citizens of Serbia would have to compensate Croatia that had expelled and plundered 450,000 Serbs in 1990s. What’s even worse, the title of the genocidal state would be forced on Serbs who had sided with the Allies in WWI and WWII. And all that in favor of the country that allied itself with fascists and left a legacy of Jasenovac and other concentration camps in which Serbs in the first place have been systematically eradicated; Serbs against whom a proved genocide was committed, the genocide that for the sake of brotherhood, unity and peace has always been swept under the carpet in SFR of Yugoslavia.
Serbia’s own homicidal record in Croatia, Bosnia and Kosovo in the 1990s of course goes unmentioned. That too is one of Sonja’s sins: she mentions it all the time.
Sonja too was in Washington recently, as a member of a UN-commissioned group looking into human rights violations in North Korea. The long-time chair of the Helsinki Committee for Human Rights in Serbia, like Ahmed she is a well-known figure abroad. Both of them will enjoy some measure of international attention, as well as whatever limited protection that may bring. And if they decide to flee, even temporarily, they will find haven in any number of Western countries where they are known.
People committed to nonviolence like Ahmed and Sonja are trying to assert their rights, not incite violence. Many can’t flee, and most don’t want to. What they want is to be able to speak their minds freely, no matter how unpopular–or distasteful to those in power–their views may be. I am grateful for all of them this Thanksgiving, including those with whom I don’t agree. May you be safe, and may those of us who enjoy freedom be prepared to protect your rights as best we can!
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