Tag: Tunisia
Peace picks, October 7-11
A wide array of interesting events this week (be aware of possible event cancellations due to the government shutdown):
1. A New Look at American Foreign Policy: The Third in a Series of Discussions
Monday October 7 | 12:00pm – 1:00pm
The Heritage Foundation, Lehrman Auditorium, 214 Massachusetts Avenue NW
For decades, libertarians and conservatives have been at odds over American foreign policy. But perhaps a conversation is possible today between classical liberals and conservatives on the nature of American foreign policy. Some are trying to find a “middle way” that is less doctrinaire. At the same time the “neo” conservative phase of hyper military interventionism is a spent force in conservative circles. Therefore, the time may be ripe for an open and honest conversation among some libertarians and conservatives about the future of American foreign policy. It may be possible a new consensus could be found between Americans who consider themselves classical liberals and traditional conservatives on the purposes of American foreign policy.
Join us as Heritage continues the discussion regarding this question, what the dangers and opportunities are and whether they afford an opportunity to take a “new look” at American foreign policy.
For decades, libertarians and conservatives have been at odds over American foreign policy. But perhaps a conversation is possible today between classical liberals and conservatives on the nature of American foreign policy. Some are trying to find a “middle way” that is less doctrinaire. At the same time the “neo” conservative phase of hyper military interventionism is a spent force in conservative circles. Therefore, the time may be ripe for an open and honest conversation among some libertarians and conservatives about the future of American foreign policy. It may be possible a new consensus could be found between Americans who consider themselves classical liberals and traditional conservatives on the purposes of American foreign policy.
Join us as Heritage continues the discussion regarding this question, what the dangers and opportunities are and whether they afford an opportunity to take a “new look” at American foreign policy.
More About the Speakers
Kim R. Holmes, Ph.D.
Distinguished Fellow, The Heritage Foundation
Randy E. Barnett
Carmack Waterhouse Professor of Legal Theory, Georgetown University Law Center
Marion Smith
Visiting Fellow, B. Kenneth Simon Center for Principles and Politics, The Heritage Foundation
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Solid kernels in a not so good idea
My SAIS colleague Ed Joseph and Aaron David Miller earlier this week put forward a proposal for a Union of Arab Democracies that merits examination despite its deep and fatal flaws. There are nuggets therein worth preserving.
The idea in their words is this:
Egypt and its fractious neighbors desperately need a unifying vision that can inculcate respect for democratic norms across glaring differences. Although Arab nations have no interest in joining the European Union or NATO, the Arab world can draw on the model of Eastern European transition, with fledgling Arab democracies devising their own supra-national organization dedicated to advancing democracy. Like the E.U. in its infancy, this Union of Arab Democracies (UAD) could start with limited objectives and evolve toward ambitious goals, including, ultimately, pan-Arab political union.
Waving their magic wand, Ed and Aaron then tell us all the good things that would happen if such an organization were to come into existence, despite the shambolic history of pan-Arab political union proposals.
If Egypt and the other Arab uprising countries were capable of creating such an organization, they wouldn’t need it. The weakness of the proposal is all too apparent when Ed and Aaron get to proposing that Iraq, Lebanon and the Palestinian Authority (known to me as Palestine) would be the leading democracies, with transitioning countries (Libya, Tunisia, Egypt, Yemen) and supposedly “liberalizing” countries (Morocco, Jordan and possibly Oman) tagging along. What a democratic club! Several are more likely to find themselves joining an Islamic union than a democratic one.
Nevertheless, there is a core idea here that is important: transitions need a destination. When the Berlin wall fell, the former Soviet satellites of eastern Europe and the Baltic “captive nations” quickly set their aim on meeting European Union and NATO standards. This gave direction and impetus to countries that would otherwise have wandered as aimlessly as the North African revolutions are doing today.
The way to answer the question “transition to what?” is not to have nascent Arab democracies try to figure it out for themselves. They cannot reasonably aim for membership in NATO or the EU, but they should be able to aim at two easier targets: the Organization for Cooperation and Security in Europe or, as my Turkish colleague Aylin Unver Noi suggests, the Council of Europe.
OSCE comprises 57 states and plays an important role in the Balkans and the more Asian parts of Eurasia. Algeria, Egypt, Jordan, Morocco and Tunisia are already among its “cooperating partners.” Several OSCE members are no farther along in democratizing than their Middle Eastern partners. With 47 member states, the Council of Europe regards itself as the continent’s leading human rights organization. It has a human rights court with some real enforcement capacity that could provide minorities in the Middle East with real recourse if their mother countries were to join.
The idea of extending OSCE and the Council of Europe to the southern littoral of the Mediterranean may seem far fetched, but efforts to construct more ad hoc arrangements have not worked well. Neither the Euro-Mediterranean Partnership nor the Broader Middle East and North Africa Initiative gained much traction before 2011, Aylin says, and their relevance will be further reduced by the Arab uprisings.
Another of the world’s more restrictive clubs, the rich people’s Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD) , has opened its doors to newly developed states like Korea and Mexico, much to their benefit and the benefit of the organization. Opening the OSCE and Council of Europe to new Middle Eastern members, who would need to meet clearly defined criteria in order to get in, would be a worthwhile experiment. It would give the Arab uprisings, if they want it, a destination as well as a tough-minded qualification process, which is really what Ed and Aaron were calling for.
So “no” to the Arab Democratic Union. “Yes” to Arab democracy that aims to meet the not too exacting standards of the OSCE and respects human rights as defined by the Council of Europe.
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Bad but not hopeless
News from the Arab uprisings this morning is particularly grim:
- In Egypt, the police and army are attacking pro-Morsi demonstrators, causing what appear to be well over 100 deaths;
- In an unconfirmed report, Italian Catholic priest and opposition enthusiast Paolo Dall’Oglio is said to have been killed by opposition Islamists in Syria;
- The American mission in Yemen remains closed as the US continues its heightened drone war against militants.
Add to these items the Islamist government in Tunisia finding itself unable to protect non-Islamist politicians from assassination and Libya’s continuing difficulty in gaining control over revolutionary militias and you’ve got a pretty ugly picture.
I don’t want to minimize any of this. It is all real and problematic. But it is not catastrophic. Revolutions have their bad moments (and days, months and years). Some of them end badly. There is no guarantee that won’t be the case in the Middle East, with some or all of the uprisings.
Egypt is in the most peril. It has not found a steady course but lurches between extremes: either military-backed secularists or Muslim Brotherhood/Salafist dominance. Co-habitation of the two has proven unworkable. It is hard to picture how today’s crackdown can put things right. The Islamists will find it harder to compromise. Secularists and minorities will fear even more a return of the Brotherhood to power. Read more
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Washington’s fault
Even for someone who served abroad as an American diplomat, the Egyptian penchant for conspiracy theories about Washington’s supposed role is astonishing. So too is the crudeness of Egyptian anti-Americanism. While I was treated to a good deal of poor taste and baseless speculation about American machinations while serving as an American diplomat in Italy and Brazil, the admixture of hope for good relations with the United States was significantly greater there. Egyptians seem genuinely to dislike the US and attribute many of their ills to it.
It is difficult to understand how people as clever as the Egyptians have failed to break the code of American behavior: Washington understands that it has relatively little influence over what happens in Egypt and is prepared to accept whoever comes to power with a modicum of legitimacy and promises to steer the country towards something like a democratic outcome with as little violence as possible. That’s what happened when Mubarak fell, it is what happened when Morsi took over, and it is what happened when the demonstrations and General Sissi pushed him out.
Washington is following the Egyptian lead. If American behavior seems erratic and incomprehensible to Egyptians, that is largely because the revolutionary course the Egyptians have chosen is so unpredictable. The result is that all sides in Egypt are convinced the Americans are arrayed against them. Neither secularists nor Islamists in Egypt seem inclined to look in the mirror to see the origins of what ails their country. Both prefer to blame it all on Washington, which has been less than adroit in countering the vituperation.
This is not to say there is no basis whatsoever in the conspiracy theories. Ambassador Patterson likely did try to get General Sissi to negotiate some sort of deal with the Muslim Brotherhood. Deputy Secretary of State Burns did not spend several days in Cairo recently lounging around the embassy–he surely pushed for Sissi to clarify the future roadmap for preparing a constitution and holding new elections. The Americans will be concerned to see things in Egypt move towards relatively democratic stability, with the state’s monopoly on the legitimate means of violence restored (especially in Sinai). They may make mistakes of judgment about how that would best be accomplished, but to imagine that they want Morsi back in power, or Sissi to continue in power without elections, is just plain wrong.
I don’t begrudge Egypt its enthusiasm for its latest military rock star. General Sissi has clearly tapped some deep vein of political gold in the Egyptian body politic. But we should all recognize this cult of personality for what it is: a budding autocrat whose similarity to Gamal Abdel Nasser should raise eyebrows not only in Washington. My dean Vali Nasr predicts that the Americans will soon be back to a policy of supporting Middle Eastern autocrats against more and less radical Islamists.
I hope not. The Arab uprisings are a tremendous opportunity to encourage greater freedom in a part of the world that has seen little of it. Things are now going sour in Tunisia, Libya, Yemen, and Egypt, not to mention poor Syria. Each circumstance is distinct, but in all of them the genie will be difficult to put back in the bottle. What is needed from the United States is consistent backing for democratic processes, which require relatively stable and orderly environments. The only thing we should want to be blamed for is support to those who seek human dignity and open societies.
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Peace picks June 24-28
Summer doldrums have not yet arrived:
1. The Chinese Cyber Challenge: How to Address the Growing Threat, Atlantic Council, Monday, June 24 / 2:00pm – 3:30pm
Venue: Army & Navy Club
901 17th St, NW, Washington, DC 20006
Speakers: Dmitri Alperovitch, James Mulvenon, Gregory J. Rattray, Jason Healey
In recent months, the United States has gone public in a series of speeches by senior officials about Chinese cyber espionage. In an address in March to the Asia Society, outgoing national security adviser Thomas E. Donilon said “sophisticated, targeted” thefts of confidential information and technology were coming from China “on an unprecedented scale.” US Defense Secretary Chuck Hagel also accused Beijing of involvement in cyber espionage in a speech at the Shangri-La Dialogue, openly blaming the Chinese government and military for “cyber intrusions” into sensitive US information systems. A summit meeting between Chinese President Xi Jinping and US President Barack Obama last week brought cybersecurity to the center of US-China relations, but failed to result in any agreement. Cyber espionage destabilizes every facet of the US-China relationship, and how the United States addresses these problems will be a harbinger of its overall approach to the challenge China poses to the global commons.
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Tunisia: its problems have solutions
The focus on political processes during democratization often leads to marginalizing the role of economics. The National Endowment for Democracy, the Legatum Institute, Foreign Policy, and World Affairs have tried to explore the link between economic and political reform through their Transitions Lecture Series: The Role of Economics in Democratic Transitions. This week, the series presented the case of Tunisia. The discussion featured
- Mondher Ben Ayed, the President and CEO of TMI, a leading information technology firm in Tunisia and advisor to the Tunisian Prime Minister in 2011 and 2012, presented.
- Larry Diamond, co-founder and co-editor of the Journal of Democracy and director of the Center on Democracy, Development, and the Rule of Law at Stanford University, moderated the discussion.
- Jeffrey Gedmin, President and CEO of Legatum Institute, introduced the speakers.
Ben Ayed argued that the economic fundamentals before the Tunisian revolution were not discouraging. For the five years before the revolution, Tunisia’s economy grew at 5 percent a year. The budget deficit reached 3 percent, and inflation was below 3 per cent. The literacy rate among Tunisians reached about 80 percent of the population, and the status of women was one of the highest in the region. Read more
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