Tag: Israel/Palestine
The end is nigh…
Not really, but 2010 is coming to a close. Never easy to look ahead a year, but let me give it a try. It’ll make for a nice mea culpa post a year from now. And if I cherry pick a bit maybe I’ll be able to claim clairvoyance!
- Iran: the biggest headache of the year to come. If its nuclear program is not slowed or stopped, things are going to get tense. Both Israel and the U.S. have preferred sanctions, covert action and diplomatic pressure to military action. If no agreement is reached on enrichment, that might change by the end of 2011. No Green Revolution, the clerics hang on, using the Revolutionary Guards to defend the revolution (duh).
- Pakistan: it isn’t getting better and it could well get worse. The security forces don’t like the way the civilians aren’t handling things, and the civilians are in perpetual crisis. Look for increased internal tension, but no Army takeover, and some success in American efforts to get more action against AQ and the Taliban inside Pakistan. Judging from a report in the New York Times, we may not always be pleased with the methods the Pakistanis use.
- North Korea: no migraine, but pesky nonetheless, and South Korea is a lot less quiescent than it used to be. Pretty good odds on some sort of military action during the year, but the South and the Americans will try to avoid the nightmare of a devastating artillery barrage against Seoul.
- Afghanistan: sure there will be military progress, enough to allow at least a minimal withdrawal from a handful of provinces by July. But it is hard to see how Karzai becomes much more legitimate or effective. There is a lot of heavy lifting to do before provincial government is improved, but by the end of the year we might see some serious progress in that direction, again in a handful of provinces.
- Iraq: no one expects much good of this government, which is large, unwieldy and fragmented. But just for this reason, I expect Maliki to get away with continuing to govern more or less on his own, relying on different parts of his awkward coalition on different issues. The big unknown: can Baghdad settle, or finesse, the disputes over territory with Erbil (Kurdistan)?
- Palestine/Israel (no meaning in the order–I try to alternate): Palestine gets more recognitions, Israel builds more settlements, the Americans offer a detailed settlement, both sides resist but agree to go to high level talks where the Americans try to impose. That fails and Israel continues in the direction of establishing a one-state solution with Arabs as second class citizens. My secular Zionist ancestors turn in their graves.
- Egypt: trouble. Succession plans founder as the legitimacy of the parliament is challenged in the streets and courts. Mubarak hangs on, but the uncertainties grow.
- Haiti: Not clear whether the presidential runoff will be held January 16, but things are going to improve, at least until next summer’s hurricanes. Just for that reason there will be more instability as Haitians begin to tussle over the improvements.
- Al Qaeda: the franchise model is working well, so no need to recentralize. They will keep on trying for a score in the U.S. and will likely succeed at some, I hope non-spectacular, level.
- Yemen/Somalia: Yemen is on the brink and will likely go over it, if not in 2011 soon thereafter. Somalia will start back from hell, with increasing stability in some regions and continuing conflict in others.
- Sudan: the independence referendum passes. Khartoum and Juba reach enough of an agreement on outstanding issues to allow implementation in July, but border problems (including Abyei) and South/South violence grow into a real threat. Darfur deteriorates as the rebels emulate the South and Khartoum takes its frustrations out on the poor souls.
- Lebanon: the Special Tribunal finally delivers its indictments. Everyone yawns and stretches, having agreed to ignore them.
- Syria: Damascus finally realizes that it is time to reach an agreement with Israel. The Israelis decide to go ahead with it, thus relieving pressure to stop settlements and deal seriously with the Palestinians.
- Ivory Coast: the French finally find the first class tickets for Gbagbo and his entourage, who go to some place that does not recognize the jurisdiction of the International Criminal Court (no, not the U.S.!).
- Zimbabwe: Mugabe is pressing for quick adoption of his new constitution and elections in 2011, catching the opposition off balance. If he succeeds, the place continues to go to hell in a handbasket. If he fails, it will still be some time before it heads in the other direction.
- Balkans: Bosnians still stuck on constitutional reform, but Kosovo gets a visa waiver from the EU despite ongoing investigations of organ trafficking.
If the year turns out this way, it won’t be disastrous, just a bumpy downhill slide. Hard to see it getting much better than that, but I could have made it much worse:
- Iran: weaponizes and deploys nukes.
- Pakistan: finally admits it can’t find two of its weapons, which have likely fallen into AQ hands.
- North Korea: goes bananas in response to some provocation, launches artillery barrage on Seoul.
- Afghanistan: spring Taliban offensive sweeps away Coalition-installed local institutions; Kandahar falls.
- Iraq: Kurds and Arabs fight, without a clear outcome.
- Israel/Palestine: Israel attacks Hizbollah in Lebanon, third intifada begins with Hamas suicide bombings inside Israel.
- Egypt: Muslim Brotherhood challenges Mubarak in the streets, prevents orderly succession process.
- Haiti: hurricanes, food riots, political strife, reconstruction blocked.
- Al Qaeda: big hit inside the U.S., thousands die.
- Yemen/Somalia: both go south, with AQ establishing itself firmly on both sides of the Bab al Mandab.
- Sudan: post-referendum negotiations fail, fighting on North/South border, chaos in Southern Sudan.
- Lebanon: Hizbollah reacts with violence to the Special Tribunal indictments, taking over large parts of Lebanon. Hizbollah/Israel war wrecks havoc.
- Syria: succeeds in surreptitiously building nuclear facilities on commission from Iran, Israeli effort to destroy them fails.
- Ivory Coast: Gbagbo tries to hold on to office, imitating Mugabe’s successful effort. Ouattara plays ball and accepts the prime ministry, pressured by internationals who don’t want to do what is necessary to airlift Gbagbo out of there. A real opportunity to demonstrate the effectiveness of international solidarity is squandered.
- Zimbabwe: Mugabe succeeds, Tsvangirai is out, state in virtual collapse.
- Balkans: the EU unwisely begins implementing the acquis communitaire in Republika Srpska due to delays in formation of a national Bosnian government, investigations in Kosovo drag on and make progress towards the visa waiver and other EU goodies impossible.
There are of course other places where we might see bad things happen: Venezuela, Burma, Nigeria, Kyrgyzstan, Saudi Arabia, Russia–but I’ll leave the imagining to you.
Happy New Year!
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The world is slowing down again
The world is slowing down again, after the sprint from Thanksgiving. This time I’m sure it’s not just me: no cars on the way downtown today, even though there were traffic jams on the Beltway. I hope it helps the economy.
Here is my quick assessment of where things stand as we head into Christmas/New Year:
- Sudan: independence referendum is on track for January 9-15. People (read “people in the know, more or less, whom I’ve talked to”) seem confident the North will accept the results. Still no agreement on Abyei, which could be lost to the South, or on the many post-referendum issues (oil, citizenship, debt, border demarcation, etc.), which will be negotiated in the six-month transition period.
- Iraq: Maliki met the 30-day deadline by presenting his ministers to parliament Tuesday, with some temporary placeholders in important national security slots. No one but me seems happy with the motley crew, but now let’s see if they can govern effectively.
- Afghanistan: President Karzai objects to the September parliamentary election results, which returned fewer of his favorites than he would like, but has agreed that parliament will meet January 20. We’ll see. The Obama Administration strategy review was little more than a sham–we’re in this war until 2014, when VP Biden says we’re out come hell or high water.
- Palestine/Israel: no more hang up on the settlement freeze, which Washington abandoned. Both parties are pursuing their “Best Alternative To a Negotiated Agreement”: Israel is building, Palestine has received a spate of recognitions.
- Koreas: After indulging in an artillery barrage against a South Korean island, North Korea has turned down the volume, but there is no real progress on the issues.
- Iran: Ahmedinejad fired his foreign minister and brought in the MIT-educated atomic energy chief, who knows his stuff. Sanctions are biting and the regime is abolishing subsidies to cope. Americans and Europeans hope rising gasoline prices will generate popular pressure on the regime. Little sign of that so far. Next P5+1 meeting in late January.
- Lebanon: bracing for the Special Tribunal verdict (still!), with Tehran backing Hizbollah in denouncing the whole process.
- Egypt: voted in unfree and unfair elections that won’t even do much good for President Mubarak.
- Balkans: Kosovo elections marred by ballot stuffing, causing reruns in some municipalities January 9. A Swiss opponent of Kosovo independence accused Prime Minister Thaci of heinous crimes. Montenegrin PM Djukanovic resigned, Croatia arrested its own former PM, Bosnia is having trouble forming a government. Mladic of course still at large.
- Burma: Aung San Suu Kyi still moving cautiously. I guess when you’ve been under house arrest that long a bit of caution is in order.
The earth was spinning pretty fast for President Obama until today. He got a big new stimulus package (in the guise of tax cuts), repeal of Don’t Ask Don’t Tell (if you don’t know what that is, don’t ask and I won’t tell), ratification of New START (that’s when you have too many nuclear weapons and need an agreement with Russia to allow you to get rid of some while giving in to upgrading others), food safety regulation, and health benefits as well as compensation for the 9/11 rescue and cleanup crews. Former New York City Mayor Giuliani, probably frightened they would hand the $4.2 billion bill to him, was notably off in Paris promoting an Iranian group that has made its way onto the U.S. government list of terrorist organizations.
The president lost two battles: a few of the rich get to keep a lot of money even though the government needs it more than they do, and kids brought illegally to the U.S. through no fault of their own don’t get to stay just because they want to go to college or serve in the armed forces. I guess you can tell whose side I’m on.
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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.
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The week the world slowed down
Or was it just me? After a week of over-indulging, and 10 hours of driving yesterday, I needed an update. So here is the exercise, intended to get us back into form for the race to December 25:
- Sudan: registration for the January 9 referendum on South Sudan independence extended to December 8; still no agreement(s) on Abyei.
- Iraq: on November 25 (while we were stuffing down turkey) President Talabani formally asked Nouri al Maliki to form a government–he’s got 30 days.
- Afghanistan: warrants issued to arrest election officials who disqualified candidates President Karzai wanted to see elected in the September 18 poll.
- Palestine/Israel: still hung up on the settlement freeze, so far as I can tell. Someone correct me if I am wrong!
- Koreas: the U.S. and South Korea went ahead with naval exercises, China is calling for six-party talks and North Korea continues to sound belligerent.
- Iran: sounding more defensive than belligerent, but offering the Lebanese Army (and Hizbollah) assistance and still thinking about executing a woman for adultery.
- Lebanon: bracing for the Special Tribunal verdict (still), with PM Hariri reaching out to Tehran to cushion the impact.
- Egypt: voting today, after crackdowns and a severe tilt of the playing field towards President Mubarak’s National Democratic Party.
- Balkans: Kosovo getting ready to vote for parliament December 12.
I won’t say it was the week the earth stood still, but I don’t feel I missed a whole lot. One more thing to be thankful for. Enlighten me if you disagree!
P.S. In case you were wondering about Burma: Aung San Suu Kyi is still moving cautiously.
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Slo-mo train wreck
I’ve been hesitating to comment on the “Middle East peace process,” but I guess there comes a point at which you can’t ignore it any longer. When even President Obama has turned gloomy, you’ve got to wonder whether the time has come. So here goes:
Leverage in negotiations comes from having “BATNA”: a best alternative to a negotiated solution. The Israelis have one: they just keep on building settlements in the West Bank. The Ramallah Palestinians don’t really have one: Mahmoud Abbas doesn’t want to go back to the Intifada, and there is really nothing he can do to block the settlements. Hamas is trying out a new BATNA, as its last one (rockets into Israeli population centers) did not work so well. It is lying (relatively) low, figuring time is on its side.
The Israelis have got a BATNA, but what Netanyahu lacks is the ability to deliver Israel to a negotiated solution. His government is fractious, and he sees no need to take the political risks a negotiated solution would necessarily entail. Of course Mahmoud Abbas has a similar problem, only his government is just plain broken, since he doesn’t control what Hamas does or does not do. So neither side can deliver its own people to a negotiated peace.
Continuing to build Jewish settlements in the West Bank is making it hard to picture a viable two-state solution. Netanyahu says he wants the Arabs to accept Israel as a Jewish state, but his pursuit of his BATNA is putting the country into a demographic trap: the more settlements he builds, the harder it gets to picture a viable Palestinian state, which is an indispensable component of a two-state solution, and the more likely it gets that Israel/Palestine will end up as a single state, which eventually won’t have a Jewish majority.
So Israel and Palestine are careening towards an outcome neither wants, with leadership on the Israeli side that doesn’t want to take the risks required to prevent it and leadership on the Palestinian side that lacks any means to prevent it. Slo-mo train wreck.
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Kerry still running
Even for the chair of Senate Foreign Relations, this is an unusually frenetic trip to important places.
The envoy: Kerry in Turkey, Israel, West Bank – Laura Rozen – POLITICO.com.
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