Tag: Syria
Arab world: positive balance, still teetering
I need a scorecard to keep track of political change in the Arab world, so here it is:
- Egypt: New Egyptian parliament led by Muslim Brotherhood met for the first time yesterday. It needs to choose a commission to write the new constitution and call elections for president in June. Other powers are uncertain. Supreme Council of the Armed Forces still running things and holding on to perks and power.
- Yemen: President Saleh has left for the U.S. for medical treatment. I still find it incredible he would come here given the risks of a court deciding to hold him accountable for crimes for which he has immunity in Yemen. A single-candidate “election” February 22 is scheduled to elevate his vice president to the presidency. It is unclear to me what good this will do. Protests continue, his relatives cling to power and dissident parts of the armed forces control parts of the capital.
- Libya: Demonstrators in Benghazi Sunday attacked National Transitional Council offices in a protest over lack of transparency in deciding the electoral law to be used in May elections and in disbursing money. That’s the good news. Occasional strife among the armed militias is the bad news.
- Syria: The Arab League, much criticized because its human rights observers have failed to stop the violence, proposed a serious transition plan, which the Syrian National Council accepted and the Assad regime rejected. The Russians are saying that their patience has run out. A strong UN Security Council resolution would be a fine way to show that they mean what they say.
- Saudi Arabia: The Kingdom is cracking down hard on demonstrations in the majority Shia, oil-producing east.
- Bahrain: Despite the Bassiouni report‘s frankness about human rights abuses during last year’s repression of protests, the monarchy shows no sign of letting up and the Americans, anxious to keep the Fifth Fleet there, aren’t complaining too loudly.
- Morocco, Algeria, Jordan: All attempting various degrees of reform to forestall revolution. Largely succeeding so far. In forestalling that is. Reforms are modest.
So what once looked like a wave of Arab spring protest has now broken into rivulets moving in many different directions as they hit harder and softer obstacles. A few regimes are gone, but most are still holding on, in some cases just barely. Tunisia is the great success story, so far.
There are quite a few shoes that haven’t dropped yet, but likely will: Egypt’s economy is devastated, shoulder launched antiaircraft missiles are circulating in and beyond Libya, Al Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula may well expand further in Yemen, sectarian war threatens in Syria. The new regimes, especially in Egypt, look likely to be tougher-minded towards Israel, even if domestic issues predominate in the short term. 2012 is likely to be even more challenging than 2011.
Still: the overall direction is clear enough. There will likely be more freedom of speech and expression in much of the Arab world once this tide goes out. There will also be more Islamists in power and fewer supposedly secular and pro-Western autocrats. There will likely be more political competition, though how long it will be permitted to last is uncertain. It is also unclear how much governance will improve, in particular whether accountability and transparency will triumph over cronyism and corruption, and whether human rights–especially minority rights–will be respected. The balance for the year is positive, but there are still a lot of things to sort out.
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The diplomatic screw turns
While Americans are distracted today by Newt Gingrich’s South Carolina primary victory over Mitt Romney and the entry of the New York Giants and New England Patriots into football’s “Superbowl,” the big international news is the European Union agreement to halt imports of Iranian oil within six months. Yawn. No wonder it hardly gets a headline.
This may not be the final turn of the diplomatic screw, but it is an important one. Iran’s economy and currency are in a tailspin. The stage is now set for P5 (that’s U.S., UK, France, Russia and China) + 1 (Germany) talks with Iran on its nuclear program. Turkey wants to host, but a date has not been announced.
If this next stage of the diplomatic efforts fails, as the effort a year ago did, the slide towards war will accelerate. Iran is rattling its saber, which is long enough to try to close the strait of Hormuz to outward-flowing traffic, thus denying the world oil market about 20% of its supplies and causing a sharp price spike. They will also make trouble for Americans in Iraq and possibly elsewhere. The Americans and Europeans, whose warships traversed the strait today in a show of force, will then draw their oil stocks to dampen the price and use military force to keep the strait open, and possibly to deny its use to the Iranians (who need it to import oil products).
While talking about military action less than at times in the past, the Americans and Israelis are conducting a “stealth” war against the Iranian nuclear program, blocking supplies of vital materiel, infecting software with at least one computer worm and assassinating Iranian nuclear scientists. None of this effort can stop the Iranians in their tracks if they are committed to nuclear weapons. Even bombing of their nuclear facilities won’t do that–they will almost surely react by redoubling their efforts. In the absence of an agreement, the best we can hope for is to slow Iran down.
Today’s turning of the diplomatic screw is intended promote a negotiated solution. It is unrealistic to imagine that Iran will cease and desist from trying to obtain all the technology it needs to build nuclear weapons. But it is still possible they will agree to abide by the terms of the Non-proliferation Treaty (NPT) they have signed and ratified. Many other countries have stopped on the threshold of nuclear weapons–the ones I know best are Brazil, which acquired the necessary technology but reached an agreement with Argentina for a mutual standdown, and Italy, which opted for a dual key arrangement for control of American weapons deployed on Italian territory.
Arrangements of these sorts are not possible with Iran. No matter how much my idealist friends press the idea of a Middle East nuclear free zone, it is impossible to imagine the Israelis going for it, especially under the current Netanyahu government. And if the Americans, who asked Israel decades ago not to build nuclear weapons in the first place, can’t even get the Israelis to stop building settlements, what are the odds of success in getting Israel to give up nuclear weapons? “Never again” is not only a slogan–it is an objective that all Israeli governments will adhere to. Nuclear weapons are an important means to that end.
So is there no hope? On the contrary, I think there is. Iran gains little and losses a lot if it actually deploys nuclear weapons: it gets targeted by both Israel and the United States, with the former likely to launch on warning. The United States is committed not to use nuclear weapons against non-nuclear weapons states. Against nuclear weapons states, first use is not prohibited in American doctrine.
What does Iran hope to gain by developing nuclear weapons? Prestige, to be sure, and a more secure and powerful role in the Middle East. But most important is that the Iranians believe that nuclear weapons will guarantee no American invasion and thus survival of the theocratic regime. This is a perception problem: even if we resort to bombing, there isn’t going to be an American invasion of Iran, which is far too large and populous a country for the Americans to imagine that things would come out better than in Iraq and Afghanistan. If the price of blocking Iran from developing nuclear weapons is a pledge that the United States will not invade, it is not too much to pay.
We need however to be cautious. We should not sell out Iran’s Green Movement, or the rebellion against Bashar al Assad in Syria. Nor should we do anything that will help Hamas and Hizbollah to continue their trouble-making. We should not be guaranteeing regime survival in Tehran, only saying what we all know to be true: America hasn’t got the resources or the desire to take on another major ground war in the Middle East.
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This week’s “peace picks”
Still a bit slow on international affairs this week in DC. Maybe it’s domestic politics and the State of the Union? But still some good picks, unfortunately some clustered on the same day:
1. Is Foreign Aid Worth the Cost? Woodrow Wilson Center, 5th floor, January 23, 2012, 4-6 pm
There will be a live cast of this event.
Many Americans think foreign aid consumes 25 % or more of the federal budget when in fact it costs less than 1%. Some presidential candidates are calling for the elimination of all foreign aid. Yet as the U.S. moves into the global economy that depends increasingly on the economic development and growth of all countries, American aid, trade and investment all play vital parts in the well-being of the U.S. economy. What is the outlook for foreign assistance funding in the current Congress and how are Members’ attitudes shaped by new budgetary constraints being forced by the growing national debt? This panel of experts will explore the value of foreign aid, its successes and failures and how it might be better targeted for maximum effectiveness in the future.
The Panel
Charles O. Flickner, Jr. is former staff director of the House Appropriations Committee’s Subcommittee on Foreign Operations, a position he held from 1995 to 2003. Prior to coming to the House, he served as a staff member on the Senate Budget Committee from 1974 to 1994. From 1969 to 1970, he served in a mechanized infantry unit of the U.S. Army in Vietnam. He is author of the chapter, “Removing Impediments to an Effective Partnership with Congress,” in Security by Other Means: Foreign Assistance, Global Poverty, and American Leadership (CSIS, Brookings, 2007). He earned a B.S. degree from Loyola University in 1969, and pursued graduate studies at the University of Virginia from 1970 to 1974.
Donald M. Payne is a Democratic Representative of the 10th Congressional District of New Jersey in the U.S. House of Representatives where he has served since 1989. He is the ranking minority member of the Subcommittee on Africa, Global Health and Human Rights of the House Foreign Affairs Committee, and as a member of the Subcommittee on Western Hemisphere. He is also a senior member of the House Education and Labor Committee where he serves on the Subcommittee on Early childhood, Elementary and Secondary Education, and the Subcommittee on Workforce Protections. He also serves as the chairman of the Congressional Black Caucus Foundation whose mission is to advance the global black community by developing leaders through internships and fellowship programs, and to inform policy and educate the public. He previously served as the chairman of the Congressional Black Caucus. Prior to his election to Congress as the first elected African American from New Jersey, he served on various municipal and county offices in and around Newark, as an executive of the Prudential Insurance Company, Vice-President of Urban Data Systems, Inc., and as an educator in the Newark and Passaic Public School Districts. He is a graduate of Seton Hall University, and pursued graduate studies at Springfield College in Massachusetts.
Carol J. Lancaster is Dean of the School of Foreign Service and a Professor of Politics at Georgetown University. She previously directed Mortara Center for International Studies at Georgetown from 2005 to 2009 and before that GU’s African Studies Program from 2004 to 2005. During the Clinton administration she served as the Deputy Administration of the U.S. Agency for International Development from 1993 to 1996, and during the Carter administration as a member of the policy planning staff at the Department of State from 1977 to 1980, and then as Deputy Assistant Secretary of State at the Bureau of African Affairs. She has published numerous books and articles on the politics of foreign aid and development including, Foreign Aid: Diplomacy, Development and Domestic Politics (2007), and, George Bush’s Foreign Aid: Transformation or Chaos? (2008). She earned a BSc degree from the School of Foreign Service at Georgetown, and MSc and Ph.D. degrees in international relations from the London School of Economics.
Rajiv Chandrasekaran is senior correspondent and associate editor at The Washington Post where he has worked in various capacities since joining the paper in 1994 as a reporter on the metropolitan staff. His positions included being been a correspondent in Cairo and Southeast Asia, assistant managing editor, and bureau chief in Baghdad for the first two years of the Iraq war. He is the author of Imperial Life in the Emerald City, a best-selling account of the troubled American effort to reconstruct Iraq. He recently completed his second stint as a Public Policy Scholar at the Woodrow Wilson Center, this time working on a book that focuses on counterterrorism in Afghanistan. He is a graduate of Stanford University.
2. Regional Implications of the Conflict in Somalia, CSIS, January 24, 10-11:30 am
Freelance Policy Analyst, Horn and East Africa
David W. Throup
Senior Associate, CSIS Africa Program
Moderated by
Richard Downie
Fellow and Deputy Director, CSIS Africa Program
B1 Conference Center, CSIS
1800 K St. NW, Washington, DC 20006
Regional involvement in Somalia’s conflicts has reached a new level, with all of its neighbors directly engaged in combat operations. Please join the CSIS Africa Program for a discussion of how the conflict is reshaping political and security dynamics in the Horn and East Africa region.
Please RSVP to Katie Havranek at africa@csis.org
Former Assistant Secretary of Defense and Member of Congress
Michael O’Hanlon
Director of Research and Senior Fellow, Brookings Institution
Joshua Foust
Fellow, American Security Project and Correspondent, The AtlanticWith US troop withdrawals moving forward, is an end in sight for the decade long war in Afghanistan? Will peace talks with the Taliban yield results? Join CNP President Scott Bates and an expert panel to discuss what the end of the Afghan War might mean for American interests and the people of the region.*A light lunch will be served*
Where
Center for National Policy
One Massachusetts Avenue, NW
Suite 333
Washington, DC 20001
202-682-1800
Map
Click here
4. The Syrian Uprising Seen From The Arab World, IISS, January 24, 2-3:30 pm
Emile Hokayem
Senior Fellow for Regional Security
IISS-Middle East
Tuesday, January 24, 2012
Coffee 1:45 pm – 2:00 pm
Discussion 2:00 – 3:30 pm
IISS-US
2121 K Street NW
Suite 801
Washington, DC 20037
Emile Hokayem will discuss developments in the Levant region, specifically Syria’s descent into civil war.
Mr Hokayem is the Senior Fellow for Regional Security at the IISS-Middle East in Manama, Bahrain. Previously, he was the Political Editor and international affairs columnist of The National and a resident fellow at the Henry L Stimson Center. He holds a Master of Science in Foreign Service from Georgetown University. He recently returned from Tunisia, Egypt, Turkey and Lebanon, where he met with members of the Syrian opposition and the Free Syrian Army.
This meeting will be moderated by Andrew Parasiliti, Executive Director, IISS-US and Corresponding Director, IISS-Middle East.
IISS-US events are for IISS members and direct invitees only. For more information, please contact events-washington@iiss.org or (202) 659-1490.
5. Yemen’s Stalemate, January 25, GWU, 12:30-2 pm
Lindner Family Commons, Room 602
1957 E Street NW
Stacey Philbrick Yadav, Assistant Professor of Political Science, Hobart and William Smith Colleges
Sheila Carapico, Professor of Political Science and International Affairs, University of Richmond
Laurent Bonnefy, Institut de Recherches et d’Etudes sur le Monde Arabe et Musulman, France; Centre français d’archéologie et de sciences sociales de Sanaa, Yemen
Moderated by:
Marc Lynch, Associate Professor of Political Science and International Affairs; Director, Institute for Middle East Studies; Director, Middle East Studies Program, GW
Three leading political scientists discuss political dynamics and prospects for Yemen.
A light lunch will be served.
RSVP at: http://go.gwu.edu/yemenstalemate
Sponsored by the Project on Middle East Political Science (POMEPS) and the Institute for Middle East Studies
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Beware the tradeoffs
Important decisions are pending the next few days on Syria. The two key immediate questions are these: will the Arab League extend its human rights monitoring mission? Will the UN Security Council finally condemn the crackdown?
The Arab League mission has not been able to protect civilians or notably reduce the intensity of the crackdown. But the observers are bringing out large crowds of peaceful demonstrators and documenting abuses, which are two good results. The Arab League should decide the issue of whether their mission should be extended not on the basis of whether they have “succeeded,” but rather on the basis of what will be most helpful to peaceful protests and civilian protection. Syria needs more observers for these purposes, not fewer. UN training for them is just beginning. At least another month is required before the Arab League gives serious consideration to abandoning the mission, and even then it will be important to consider the consequences for peaceful protest and civilian protection. No one should be fooled by the Qatari advocacy of armed Arab League intervention: it isn’t going to happen.
A UN Security Council resolution on Syria would vastly improve the odds for real success of the Arab League mission. The day Bashar al Assad feels the cold hand of Prime Minister Putin pushing him aside is the day the game changes fundamentally in Syria. But Russia has little interest in handing the West a victory in Syria, especially if it would mean losing an important naval base on the Mediterranean. Putin will move against Bashar only if doing so will help to save this asset, not lose it. That is a high price for the Syrians to pay, but it may not be avoidable. That’s one tradeoff.
Then Bashar would have only Iran as a key pillar of international support. Americans think of Syria and Iran as two separate issues, but to Tehran they are just related theaters of struggle with the U.S. Loss of Syria as an ally and link to Hizbollah in Lebanon would be a serious blow to Iran, which is in a spiral of heightening tensions with the U.S. over the strait of Hormuz, planned sanctions that will reduce Iranian oil exports and most fundamentally the Iranian nuclear program. July 1 is emerging as the consensus date for Europe and the U.S. to implement new sanctions. That will be in the midst of a U.S. electoral campaign in which the Republican candidate–most likely Mitt Romney, but it really doesn’t matter who it is–will be pushing for military action.
Iran is supposed to meet with the Americans and Europeans in Turkey still this month to discuss the nuclear impasse. Even the Israelis seem to think the Iranians have not yet decided to build nuclear weapons. Syrians should want to watch that closely: it is not impossible that they will be sold out in exchange for a nuclear deal. It is hard to picture the U.S. winning on both the Syrian and nuclear fronts, but if the Administration succeeds at that I’ll be the first to offer heartiest congratulations!
Let there be no doubt: if Washington has to choose between stopping Iran short of a nuclear weapon and toppling Bashar al Assad, it will choose the former, not the latter. That’s a second possible tradeoff.
Beware the tradeoffs. They are a lot of what diplomacy is about.
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Burma gets real, but how real?
There can be no doubting the significance of Burma’s moves in the past day or two: a massive release of amnestied political prisoners and a ceasefire with Karen ethnic insurgents. There have already been some smaller prisoner releases and cancellation of a Chinese-built dam, which was the subject of local protests. Elections for a limited number of parliamentary seats are scheduled for April 1. Aung San Suu Kyi, a political prisoner for decades, has agreed that her political party will participate.
A military junta has run Burma for almost 50 years. It was only in March that the junta turned over some authority to a “civilian” government. The current president, Thein Sein, spent his entire career embedded in the autocratic regime, mainly as a military officer. Among other distinctions, he ran the much criticized relief effort after Cyclone Nargis in 2008.
Thein Sein seems to have the backing of the generals for a dramatic shift in Burma’s course, one that has already elicited from the United States a Secretary of State visit and an intention to name an ambassador. There has been none in Burma since 1990, in protest of military regime policies, but the embassy remains open under a Chargé d’Affaires.
I am not a great believer in brilliant diplomatic strokes. Most seem that way only in retrospect. Diplomacy is usually a long, hard slog. When the full story is told, this one too may turn out to be more Sisyphean than Herculean.
But I still can’t help but note the incredible difference with what is going on today in Syria or Yemen (and what went on previously in Libya). The Burmese autocratic leadership, after many years of using brutal repression, has decided to go in a different direction. The Middle East would look very different today if Bashar al Assad and Ali Abdullah Saleh had decided likewise before it was too late. Burma has at least an opportunity now to go down the well-trodden Asian road to a more open political system. South Korea, Taiwan, Malaysia, Indonesia and others have achieved democratic reform and improved economic prosperity without violent revolution.
Still, it is not clear how far the Burmese generals intend things to go. Are they opening up the system in a way that will lead to their own loss of power? Or is this an effort to open a restricted space for civilian political competition and governance, with the generals keeping at least control of security and foreign policy? How will they react to efforts to establish accountability for past abuses of human rights? What if it proves difficult to extend the ceasefire with the Karen and other ethnic groups into political settlements? Some of the political prisoners released yesterday had been released years ago, only to be re-arrested. Could it happen again?
What is happening in Burma is real, but just how real is not yet clear.
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Bashar is right, there is a conspiracy
Bashar al Assad is right. There is an international conspiracy to bring him down. The United States, Turkey, much of the Arab League and many European countries want him out. They are providing aid and comfort to the protesters, though so far as I can tell no arms and little encouragement to violence.
The President’s response in his first public statement in more than six months is to double down, attributing the rebellion to the international conspiracy rather than to an international effort to force him out due to his method of dealing with what originated as a nonviolent rebellion. He is not being obtuse. He knows perfectly well what is going on in the streets. He is trying to survive by rallying nationalist Syrians, especially minorities that fear a Sunni Islamist takeover, against the internationals.
The big question is whether the protesters should remain nonviolent in the face of a brutal doubling down. My answer is unequivocal: yes. Self-defense would of course be more than justified at this point. But the use of arms by the protesters will enable the regime to convince its shaky security forces to use more violence, reducing the numbers of people in the street. This is precisely what Bashar al Assad is counting on.
Nonviolence, however, should not mean passive. The protesters need to increase their numbers. The Arab League human rights observers have played a useful role in reducing the potential for overt regime violence and thereby encouraging people to go to the streets. The protesters should be courting them and asking for more, not calling for their withdrawal. The protesters should also be courting the security forces, which can only be done if the protests remain nonviolent.
The Arab League on Sunday called for UN training for its observers but failed to call on the UN Security Council to denounce the violence and send UN observers. It is important that the January 19 Arab League meeting overcome the obstacles to calling for UNSC action. The Syrian National Council should focus on ensuring that it happens.
The continuing splits in the Syrian opposition are mainly these: secularist/Islamist, violence/nonviolence, international military intervention/no international military intervention. My own preferences are clear: I’d choose secularist, nonviolence, no international military intervention, the last because I just do not think it is going to happen. But in the end, what counts is not what I would choose. What counts is that the Syrians somehow transcend these differences. Benjamin Franklin’s advice is apropos:
We must all hang together, or assuredly we shall all hang separately
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