Tag: Israel/Palestine
Game changer
Politics and Policy in the New Middle East: that’s what they are calling the Middle East Institute 2011 Annual Conference at the Grand Hyatt, 1000 H Street:
Wednesday, Nov. 16th
6:00pm: Kickoff Banquet: Keynote by Bill Burns, DepSecState; awardees Lakhdar Brahimi and Esraa Abdel Fattah
Thursday, Nov. 17th
Conference
8:45 – 9:00am: Opening Remarks: Ambassador Wendy Chamberlin, President MEI
9:00-10:30am: After the Arab Spring: Assessing US Policy In the Middle East
10:45am-12:15pm: The Road Ahead for Emerging Arab Democracies
12:30-2:10pm: Keynote Luncheon: Samih al-Abed and Yossi Beilin
2:15-3:45pm: Shifting Regional Power Dynamics in an Era of Change
4:00-5:30pm: Economic and Development Strategies for a Middle East in Transition
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They’ll miss it once it’s gone
Tim Wirth argues that UNESCO admission of Palestine as a member will initiate a cascade of U.S. withdrawals from UN specialized agencies, damaging important American interests. This is because current law prohibits the U.S. from providing financial contributions to any UN entity that admits Palestine as a member.
John Bolton says
UNESCO has made its decision: It prefers Palestinian membership to American participation. Now let the rest of the U.N. specialized agencies make their choice.
This is game of chicken, played between the U.S. Congress, which is not interested in changing the law, and foreign governments, most of which have so far seen support for Palestine’s membership in international organizations as a cheap way of supporting the Palestinians and expressing dissatisfaction with the Israeli government’s negotiating stance.
Despite its good works, few care much about UNESCO, which the U.S. stayed out of for years without much harm done. As Wirth notes, the more important UN agencies for American interests are the World Intellectual Property Organization, the World Health Organization, the International Telecommunications Union and the International Atomic Energy Agency. Each will make its own decision based on the procedures outlined in its charter.
Some argue that failure to pay dues does not automatically lead to withdrawal from membership, and the U.S. could continue in arrears for at least several years, and possibly more, without legal consequences. That may be so, but American influence would certainly decline, as would the capabilities of organizations that really do perform functions–like inspection of nuclear programs–that serve U.S. interests.
We are watching a diplomatic game of chicken, which like most diplomatic games occurs in slow motion. If Palestine’s supporters blink first, their cause suffers a setback, but not really a very serious one. More than 100 countries have already recognized Palestine. Membership in international organizations won’t add much. The international system would then remain what it is: an imperfect but useful multilateral instrument through which Washington has often been successful in pursuing its interests.
But if they don’t and the U.S. cuts off funding, we could be witnessing the end of the post-World War II international system, one that depends on the United Nations and its specialized agencies to carry a lot of water for Washington. Bolton and company don’t see it that way–they see it as a hindrance to American power and would rather get rid of it altogether. But they’ll miss it once it’s gone.
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There are worse fates
The annual EU Forum, a confab sponsored by the Paris-based European Union Institute for Strategic Studies and SAIS’s Center for Transatlantic Relations, convened Thursday and Friday in Washington to focus American and European luminaries on the thing we all call the Arab Spring, even though we know it started last winter, varies from country to country and may not have results as upbeat as the appellation implies. Almost entirely missing from the day and a half conference were Arab voices. This was an opportunity for the “the West” to put its heads together, not for the revolutionaries or the oppressive regimes to offer their narrative.
They were nevertheless much present in the minds of the participants, who leaned towards enthusiasm for the values of the protesters, as well as their energy and determination, while worrying about the impact on Western interests. The three big areas of worry arise from
- the Islamists: what do they really mean by sharia law? will they really play fair in democracy?
- increased Arab support for the Palestinians: will it make the Israel/Palestine equation even more difficult to solve?
- sectarianism (will it lead to civil wars and possible spillover to other countries, especially in Syria, Lebanon and Yemen?
Underlying all was a sense that the West has precious few resources with which to respond effectively to the revolutions in Egypt, Tunisia and Libya, to the continuing repression in Syria and Yemen, or to the reforms in Jordan and Morocco, never mind the still solid autocratic regimes in the Gulf or the fragmented polity in Palestine. No one seemed to feel Western credibility or influence was strong, especially in light of the long-standing support (and arms) both Europe and the U.S. had given to Arab autocracies in the past (and continue to provide to Saudi Arabia, Bahrain and others even now). And everyone was aware that the Chinese, Turks, Brazilians, Indians and other emerging powers will play increasing roles in the Middle East, offering contracts and aid on terms far less complex and burdensome than those of the West.
The Europeans nevertheless came with a strong sense that the Middle East is their “southern neighborhood” and they need to up their game in response to changes that will affect their interests directly, whether through immigration, economic interdependence, oil and gas supplies, contracts, investment and myriad other ties. Precisely what they are going to do about it was not clear, and there was a strong sense that European policy on the Arab Spring has been re-nationalized. The British and French in particular are carving out their own distinct approaches, taking advantage of their forward role in the NATO military action against Qaddafi, while other countries are lagging and the EU itself is still contemplating the interior walls of the Berlaymont.
The Americans would like to focus more on Asia, not only Afghanistan/Pakistan but also China and North Korea as threats to national security. It was clear to all that Europe would not share this Asian interest to the same degree, but yesterday’s talk of Chinese financing to back the euro might change a few minds on that score. The problem for the Americans is that the Asian challenge requires a very different set of policy instruments from the Arab Spring, which apart from Egypt and Yemen Washington might rather leave primarily to the Europeans (no one of course says this quite so bluntly, but if you follow the money that is what they mean). Everyone expects, though, that NATO will remain somehow important and in the end the only real military instrument capable of effective power projection available to the Europeans.
There were lots of other points made. Trade and investment are far more important than aid. We need to be talking not only with secular women but also with Islamist women. Liberal economic reform, associated in Egypt and other countries with the old regimes, is in trouble, at least for the moment. Civil society in the Arab Spring countries needs Western support, but it should not be done through governmental channels but rather by nongovernmental organizations like the American National Endowment for Democracy (and the talked about European Endowment for Democracy). Western conditionality should focus on transparency and accountability rather than specific policy prescriptions.
I could go on, but I trust the sponsors will be doing a far better job of writing up in due course, and tweets are available from EUISS for those really interested. Bottom line: the West is fading even as its values spread. There are worse fates.
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Tehran’s options
While the world debates the significance of the Hamas/Israel prisoner exchange, let me turn back to something that really counts for the United States: Iran’s nuclear program. In the aftermath of the Iran(Car)Tel plot, friend Rashad Mahmood, formerly of Cairo, asks “What would be reasonable Iranian policy to having their nuclear scientists killed (by admittedly much finer spycraft since they haven’t aired any proof of who has done it)?”
This is a reasonable question with some scary answers. Let’s look at some of the (not mutually exclusive) options:
1. They can respond by killing the nuclear scientists of those countries they think responsible for the attacks on their own (presumably Israel, but as Rashad says there is no proof in the public domain). I assume they’ve tried this and haven’t succeeded, or at least we haven’t heard about it.
2. They can accelerate their nuclear program, hide it better, protect the people who work in it and try to get nuclear weapons as soon as possible. They may be trying, but they appear to be failing.
3. They can begin to wonder whether the nuclear program is worth the trouble it is causing and reach an arrangement that reassures friends and foe alike that Iran will not develop nuclear weapons even if it acquires the “fuel cycle” technology required to do so. President Ahmedinejad has proposed something along these lines, but no one is taking him seriously yet, so far as I can tell.
4. They can kill diplomats or citizens of third countries, say Saudi Arabia, that may have little to do with the killing of the Iranians but are hated enemies anyway.
My impression is that they’ve tried at one time or another Nos. 1-3, so far without success. No. 4 doesn’t make any sense to me, but maybe it does to someone in Tehran (and certainly it does to some in DC). The jury is still out on the extent of official Iranian involvement in the IranTel plot.
Meanwhile, the Obama Administration seems to me to be doing the right thing: keeping the focus on the nuclear program and ratcheting up sanctions implementation. This may not bring immediate results, but at least it provides some incentive for no. 3. The trick is knowing when to take Ahmedinejad’s proposition seriously. It is really difficult for outsiders to judge when the right moment comes–we are going to have to trust the White House to call that shot.
Here is the version of what Ahmedinejad has said about limiting uranium enrichment published by the Washington Post:
Q: I understand that you were in favor of the deal you had reached with the United States in 2009, according to which the U.S. would sell you 20-percent-enriched uranium in exchange for Iran exporting low-enriched uranium. But you were attacked by your critics and came under assault and people here could not reach a consensus and the deal fell apart.
Ahmedinejad: In Iran, people are free to express their views. Every day some people criticize the policies of the government. This doesn’t mean that the government is going to abandon their policies. We felt that they wouldn’t give us the fuel required here for our reactor. There were some political leaders who gave interviews in the United States and Europe and they said they want to keep Iran from having access to such fuel. So we realized that they wouldn’t give us that fuel so we had to do it ourselves. Even if they gave us now uranium grade 20 percent, we would not continue with the production of this fuel.
Q: So if the United States sold you the enriched uranium, would you stop enriching yourselves?
Ahmedinejad: Yes. We don’t want to produce uranium of 20 percent. Because they did not give us that uranium, we had to make our own investments. If they start to give us that uranium today, we will stop production.
Q: You reached a deal in Geneva in 2009, and you came back here and the deal fell apart here, and now people in Washington don’t believe a deal is possible.
Ahmedinejad: If they give us uranium grade 20 percent, we would stop production. Those negotiations took place in Vienna. Apparently they know everything. I repeat: If you give us uranium grade 20 percent now, we will stop production. Because uranium grade 20 percent can only be used for such reactors, nothing else.
This is the proposition some commentators think worth considering. Many think it a mirage, but time is on Tehran’s side: even if their nuclear program has slowed, they will eventually get there if there is no verifiable agreement for them to stop.
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The limits of military power
Maybe it’s because I’ve been reading Joe Nye’s The Future of Power, but every event I’ve been to lately around DC has reminded me of the limits of military power in achieving U.S. national security objectives. It is certainly not lack of admiration for the prowess of the American military–they are fantastically good at not only the military tasks that are their bread and butter, but also at the many other tasks presidents toss their way. And if you haven’t had the privilege of hearing David Petraeus or James Stavridis talk, you’ve missed some first class intellectual heft.
But consider today’s problems: Iran, Syria, Afghanistan.
If Iran did in fact plot with a Mexican cartel to murder the Saudi ambassador to the U.S., what are we going to do about it? Sure there are military options, and
people who advocate them. If the plot had succeeded we would probably have used one or two like leveling Quds force headquarters with cruise missiles or capturing a few Iranian miscreants in Iraq or Afghanistan. But it is all too obvious that the Iranians would respond, blowing up some favorites of ours or grabbing a few more Americans taking walks in Kurdistan. The more realistic options in response to a plot that did not succeed are the nonmilitary ones I pointed to yesterday.
Syria is a case where military intervention like that undertaken in Libya might make a big difference, and some of the protesters against President Assad’s regime would like to see it happen. But it won’t: the Russians haven’t even allowed a denunciation of the regime’s violence against the demonstrators to pass, and the Arab League is sitting on its duffs. I know there are some who still hope NATO will undertaken the kind of unauthorized campaign it unleashed from the air against the Serbs in 1999, but it isn’t going to happen so long as Bashar keeps the level of atrocities in the daily dozens. The protesters are in for a long struggle without foreign force on their side.
In Afghanistan, the Americans have really brought to bear most of their military capability, without a clear result. No one serious believes any longer that there is a military solution there. We’ll have to settle for a political arrangement that gives the Taliban (hopefully not Al Qaeda) some significant measure of what it wants. Afghanistan is looking more and more like Vietnam, less and less like even Iraq. We aren’t likely to come out in 2014, when withdrawal is to be completed, with much.
Let’s not even discuss Israel/Palestine and North Korea, where American interests are certainly at stake. American military capabilities are vital to shaping the environment in both places, but the opportunities to use it are very limited. It is more an insurance policy against gross misbehavior by one of the protagonists than a tool that we can use on a daily basis. In Joe Nye’s terms, military power in these environments can be converted into influence, persuasion and agenda-setting (i.e. soft power) even if use of American force is not likely.
Of course our flag officers know they need stronger civilian counterparts in defending national security. They have repeatedly called for beefing up civilian capabilities. But it isn’t happening. Congress is tearing the budget of the civilian side of foreign policy to shreds, even as the game of chicken between Republicans and Democrats on the budget approaches the moment of truth. I think we know what will happen if it comes down to cutting the national security budget, which includes both military and civilian expenditure. The military may not like what it ends up with, but it will be a feast relative to what the State Department and the Agency for International Development have on their plates.
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This week’s peace picks
With thanks to former student Jeff Jorve (who suggested it), I’ve decided to try to highlight a few Washington, DC events each week as interesting to those who follow peace and war issues. I’ll welcome volunteers to write any of these up for peacefare.net Just let me know (daniel@serwer.org) if you are intending to do a writeup, so that I can avoid duplicates.
Warning: some of these events require invitations, membership and/or RSVPs. I don’t arrange those. I advise checking with the host organization before going. I’ve included links to their web sites when I could figure out how to do it.
Here are this week’s peace picks:
1. The Georgian-South Ossetian Conflict: Perspectives from the Ground, Carnegie Endowment, October 3, 9:15-10:45
Carnegie Endowment’s Russia and Eurasia Program event with Archil Gegeshidze, senior fellow at the Georgian Foundation for Strategic and International Studies (GFSIS), and Lira Kozaeva, director of the Association of South Ossetian Women for Democracy and Human Rights, South Ossetia. Susan Allen Nan, assistant professor at the Institute for Conflict Alalysis and Resolution (ICAR), George Mason University, serves as discussant. Carnegie senior associate Thomas de Waal moderates.
2. Egypt After Mubarak, Washington Institute for Near East Policy, October 3, 12-2
Of all the momentous developments in the Middle East this year, none was more riveting than the sight of Egyptian “people power” forcing Hosni Mubarak from the presidential palace. But since those heady days, Egypt has entered a period of uncertainty as military leaders and newly unchained civilian parties alike wrestle with the responsibilities of democratic rule and the enormous problems facing the country.
Abdel Monem Said Aly is president of the al-Ahram Center for Political and Strategic Studies in Cairo and a senior fellow at Brandeis University’s Crown Center for Middle East Studies. His most recent publications include The Paradox of the Egyptian Revolution (PDF).
David Schenker, the Aufzien fellow and director of the Program on Arab Politics at The Washington Institute, is author of Egypt’s Enduring Challenges: Shaping the Post-Mubarak Environment.
3. Share the Water, Build the Peace, World Affairs Council at Lindner Commons, GWU, October 3, 6:30-8:30 pm
The extraordinary Gidon Bromberg of Friends of the Earth Middle East followed by a panel.
4. The Impact of Sanctions on Iran, the U.S., and the Global Economy, Rayburn HOB, October 4, 9-10:30 a.m. 2237
Speakers: Robert Pape – Professor of Political Science at the University of Chicago Lucian (Lou) Pugliaresi – President of the Energy Policy Research Foundation Bijan Khajehpour – Iranian Political and Economic Analyst and Chairman of Atieh Group Moderator: Barbara Slavin – Nonresident Senior Fellow at the Atlantic Council and author of Bitter Friends, Bosom Enemies: Iran, the U.S. and the Twisted Path to Confrontation
5. Why Al Qaeda Is Winning: The War We’re Fighting, and The War We Think We’re Fighting, Barnes and Noble, 555 12th St NW, October 4, 6:30 pm
Carnegie’s Nathan J. Brown will present his new paper on al-Azhar, Egypt’s leading religious institution, and analyze Egypt’s Muslim Brotherhood. Georgetown University’s Jonathan AC Brown will discuss his recent research conducted in Egypt on debates over Islam’s role in society, with a focus on Sufi and Salafi groups. The Brookings Institution’s Khaled Elgindy will discuss politics and Islam. Carnegie’s Marina Ottaway will moderate.
8. What Next?: the Palestinian U.N. Bid, Israel and Options for the U.S., U.S. Institute of Peace (also webcast), October 7, 9:30 am
On September 23, President Mahmoud Abbas submitted an application to the U.N. Secretary-General for Palestine’s admission as a full state member of the United Nations. The United States, which sought to prevent this step, has threatened a veto in the Security Council, and there have been calls for a suspension of U.S. aid to the Palestinian Authority over the matter, currently worth more than $500 million per year.
The Middle East Quartet has proposed a re-launch of Palestinian-Israeli negotiations with the goal of achieving a final agreement by the end of 2012.
However, the two sides continue to adhere to opposing views on even the conditions for returning to the table. What is needed to move the peace process forward? Is the diplomatic track in sync with the Palestinian state-building effort? What are the options for U.S. policy?
The United States Institute of Peace is pleased to host the below panel of discussants to explore these questions.
- Elliott Abrams, Discussant
Senior Fellow, Council on Foreign Relations - Dr. Ziad Asali, Discussant
President, American Task Force on Palestine - Neil Kritz, Discussant
Senior Scholar in Residence, U.S. Institute of Peace - Congressman Robert Wexler, Discussant
President, S. Daniel Abraham Center for Middle East Peace - David Sanger, Moderator
Writer-in-Residence, U.S. Institute of Peace
9. Taking Stock of Iran’s Nuclear Program: What Does it Mean, and What are the Implications? Linder Family Commons, rm 602, Elliott School (1957 E Street NW), October 7, 9:30-11 am.
David Albright, Founder and President, Institute for Science and International Security
David Albright, a physicist, is founder and president of the non-profit, Institute for Science and International Security (ISIS) in Washington, D.C. He directs the project work of ISIS, heads its fundraising efforts, and chairs its board of directors. In addition, he regularly publishes and conducts scientific research. He has written numerous assessments on secret nuclear weapons programs throughout the world. Albright has published assessments in numerous technical and policy journals, including the Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists, Science, Scientific American, Science and Global Security, Washington Quarterly, and Arms Control Today. Research reports by Albright have been published by the Environmental Policy Institute in Washington, D.C. and Princeton University’s Center for Energy and Environmental Studies.
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Sponsored by the Institute for Security and Conflict Studies and the Nuclear Policy Talks
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