Tag: Lebanon
No end in sight
Syria is the most rapid and widespread displacement of people since the Rwandan civil war of the 1990s, according to State Department Deputy Assistant Secretary Kelley Clements of the Bureau of Population, Refugees, and Migration. Last Friday’s Brookings Institution/Mercy Corps panel focused on “No End in Sight: Syria’s Refugees and Regional Repercussions,” drawing on humanitarian and diplomatic expertise from Iraq, Jordan, Lebanon, Turkey, and the United States.
Ambassador Antoine Chedid said Lebanon honors its international commitments to meeting the needs of Syrian refugees and asylum seekers, who are straining the country’s public services and the economy. Lebanon’s population has increase by about one-third. This population bulge has distorted the economy, increasing the unemployment rate and driving the cost of rent upward. Conditions in the refugee camps are exacerbating poor health and insecurity as well as breeding terrorism and radicalization. The Lebanese government favors creation of safe zones within Syria, but these are controversial, because their civilian population can become a target of the warring parties. Read more
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Rethinking Islamist Politics
Why and how have Islamist politics thrived? Thursday afternoon the Project on Middle East Political Science hosted a panel discussion analyzing Islamist politics in the Middle East. Featured speakers were François Burgat (Institut de Recherches et d’Études sur le Monde Arabe et Musulman), Thomas Hegghammer (Norwegian Defense Research Establishment), Bruce Lawrence (Duke University), and Tarek Masoud (Harvard University). Marc Lynch (George Washington University) moderated.
François Burgat: The problems that societies are facing in the Arab world today cannot be related to the fact that Islamists are or have been in power. They are linked to circumstances at the end of an authoritarian period in which societies were de-institutionalized. Islamists were not visible in the first stages of the protests. They seemed to have disappeared. Some scholars claimed “No one in the Arab world will vote for Islamists!” Three weeks later, 66% of the voters in Egypt voted for Islamists.
We are in the wrong time frame. If an Islamist government faces difficulties, that is not the end of Islamism. It is not the end of the capacity for mobilization that is specific to the Islamic reference. The fact that people are comfortable identifying as Muslims is written in a time frame that is much longer than the failure of one government in Tunisia or Egypt. The strength of the Islamic reference does not come from its being sacred, it comes from the fact that it is indigenous. Read more
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How to stay out of trouble
It would be easy to be pessimistic about 2014. But as Adam Gopnik cleverly illustrates it is really impossible to know whether we are on the Titanic, destined for disaster, or its twin the Olympic, which plied the seas for two more decades without faltering.
The question is what will keep America out of trouble? How do we avoid the icebergs of contemporary international relations? Gopnik suggests avoiding challenges to honor and face and worrying little about credibility or position. This seems to me wise. The question of reputation in international affairs is fraught, but anyone of the Vietnam generation will want to be skeptical about claims the United States needs to intervene in the world to prevent its reputation from being sullied or to prove its primacy.
Hubris is the bigger danger. I, along with many others, don’t like the Obama Administration’s aloof stance towards Syria. But the least good reason for intervention there is to meet the Russian challenge, reassert primacy in the Arab world or prevent others from thinking America weak. We are not weak. We are strong, arguably far stronger than we would have been had we intervened in Syria a year ago and gotten stuck with enhanced responsibilities there. The reasons for intervention in Syria are more substantial: the threat of a terror-exporting Sunni extremist regime either in Damascus or in some portion of a partitioned Syria as well as the risk to neighboring states (Iraq, Lebanon, Jordan, Turkey and Israel) from Syrian collapse. 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, November 11-15
The Federal government is closed Monday for Veterans Day but the rest of the week has lots of peace and war events. The Middle East Institute Conference (last item) is not to be missed:
1. How to Turn Russia Against Assad
Tuesday, November 12th, 2013
6:00pm
Rome Building, Room 806
1619 Massachusetts Ave, NW
Washington, DC 20037
Samuel Charap
Senior Fellow for Russia and Eurasia, IISS
Jeremy Shapiro
Visiting Fellow in the Foreign Policy Program, Brookings Institution
Chair: Dana Allin
Editor of Survival and Senior Fellow for US Foreign Policy and Transatlantic Affairs, IISS
A light reception will follow
No RSVP Required
For More Information, Contact SAISEES@jhu.edu or events-washington@iiss.org
Samuel Charap is the Senior Fellow for Russia and Eurasia at the International Institute for Strategic Studies based in the IISS–US in Washington, DC. Prior to joining the Institute, Samuel was a Council on Foreign Relations International Affairs Fellow at the US Department of State, serving as Senior Advisor to the Acting Undersecretary for Arms Control and International Security and on the Secretary’s Policy Planning Staff.
Jeremy Shapiro is a visiting fellow in the Foreign Policy program at the Brookings Institution. Prior to re-joining Brookings, he was a member of the U.S. State Department’s policy planning staff, where he advised the secretary of state on U.S. policy in North Africa and the Levant. He was also the senior advisor to Assistant Secretary of State for European and Eurasian Affairs Philip Gordon, providing strategic guidance on a wide variety of U.S.-European foreign policy issues. Read more
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Breaking up is hard to do
The Carnegie Endowment for International Peace yesterday afternoon focused on the changing regional and international atmosphere for the members of the Gulf Cooperation Council (GCC) states.* Frederic Wehrey, Senior Associate at the Carnegie Endowment and moderator of the event, opened the discussion asking what the current disagreements with the GCC, particularly Saudi Arabia, mean for the future of US-Gulf relationships?
Abdullah al-Shayji, Professor at Kuwait University, sees the widening trust deficit between the US and the GCC as alarming. This is not the first time that the GCC and US have had disagreements, but Shayji sees something amiss in the relationship. The US hesitation about involvement in Syria, and its overture with Iran, make the GCC question whether it can rely on the US.
The GCC also sees Washington as dysfunctional and fatigued based on sequestration and the government shutdown. The relationship is at a tipping point but not at a critical state yet. The GCC sees itself as shut out from US foreign policy regarding the region and wants a more nuanced and holistic approach. Diverging trust can ultimately be detrimental to the US-GCC relationship. The US should be more receptive and open-minded toward its junior GCC partner.
Professor at the Georgetown University School of Foreign Service in Qatar Mehran Kamrava focused his comments on Qatar and its changing foreign policy. Before 2010, Qatar wanted to come out of the Saudi shadow. This was mainly a policy of survival, but Doha also made attempts to project power and influence in the region. Qatar had four “ingredients” for its pre-2010 foreign policy: Read more
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