Tag: United States
Maliki isn’t likely to take much advice
Iraq’s Prime Minister Maliki completed his visit to Washington yesterday. He got a lot of free advice. He should govern more inclusively, he should be less sectarian, he should at last reach agreement on an oil revenue law, he should not use the election law to exclude electoral competition, he should address Sunni protest demands…. There was rare unanimity in Washington on what President Obama should say. I agree with a lot of these suggestions.
But I don’t really think Maliki will take much of the advice. After his last visit to Washington in 2011, he brought murder charges against (Sunni) Vice President Hashemi and chased him from the country. His visit before that sealed the deal for American withdrawal. And the one before that he signed on to the American military surge against Sunni insurgents.
Maliki is not about governing. He is about power. That means he worries about three things: garnering votes, political maneuvering and security. His now more than seven years as prime minister have seen a major increase in oil production and revenue, which are essential to everything else in Iraq. The government makes more than $100 billion in oil revenue per year. But other than that, there has been little progress on Iraq’s many social and economic challenges: education, healthcare, transportation, social welfare. Much increased electricity production still doesn’t keep up with subsidized demand. Read more
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The quickest way out of the Balkans
It doesn’t rank high in the annals of Balkan history, but the apparent Greek suggestion that Macedonia be renamed “Slavo-Albanian Macedonia” is certainly one of the more offensive and revealing maneuvers of recent times. Greeks know that Macedonians don’t like to be characterized as Slavs, even though their language is a Slavic one. It’s a bit like the term “redskins”: offensive despite the veneer of descriptiveness.
The proposal is also calculated to cause trouble between Macedonians and Albanians, the two most populous ethnic groups in the country. Never mind the other minorities the country counts among its citizens, including Turks, Roma, Serbs and Vlachs. They won’t be pleased either. There is a reason the French call a fruit salad une macédoine.
The Greek suggestion is calculated to irritate Skopje, but it ought also to annoy the international community, which has been hoping for two decades that Macedonia and Greece would come to a compromise solution on the “name” issue. Greece has simply confirmed what should have been obvious: there will be no solution based on the free will of Athens and Skopje. Greek Prime Minister Samaras has wanted the collapse of his northern neighbor. Better to increase the chances of that than solve the problem. Conversely, Macedonian Prime Minister Gruevski sees no possibility of a negotiated solution better than the one he already has: the entire world calls Macedonia Macedonia, except for Greece. He is not blameless in the failure to reach a negotiated solution. Read more
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The other North Korean challenge
I don’t write much about North Korea, because I don’t know a lot about it. But I’m convinced it poses a potentially enormous challenge on two fronts:
- as a nuclear power
- as a collapsed state
Bruce Bennett’s presentation on the second challenge at Heritage Foundation October 17 strikes me as generally well-informed, even if might quarrel on details (I don’t much like the idea of airdropping humanitarian assistance, for example). So I’m posting it here, along with a link to his RAND study on Preparing for the Possibility of a North Korean Collapse. Those who think the United States doesn’t need a capacity to plan for and deal with weak, fragile or collapsed states–in this case in cooperation with South Korea–should take note:
As Bennett points out, the issue is not whether we would want to intervene, but whether we would have to in order to avoid serious risks to our own national security as a result of North Korean collapse. It is clear that any intervention would have to be a combined military/civilian operation.
I am hoping to have a post up soon on the UN-mandated Commission of Inquiry on Human Rights in the Democratic People’s Republic of Korea Public Hearing, held here at SAIS this week. Human rights violations are a clear warning sign of state collapse.
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Writing Righting the Balance
I’ve never been number 744,961 in anything before, that I knew of. But that was my book’s rank on Amazon yesterday. Today it’s number 51, 547. That’s up from 2.5 million or so a few weeks ago. In other words, bouncing around, but generally in the right direction. This morning it was number 11 in the “war and peace” category, which gave some satisfaction.
I have to admit to a significant feeling of relief that it is anywhere. I lived with this book–in my head, on my computer, on the desk in the office at SAIS, at home–for three years. That’s a long gestation period. You start to dream about it. Sometimes nightmares. Of course there are people who take much longer to produce even a thin volume like mine. But I’d been used to mostly quick turnaround times. Writing reports and op/eds produces smaller but still precious offspring in a matter of weeks, not years.
What I found really tough in writing a book is maintaining the arc of the narrative. Each chapter has to tell a story. Then somehow the chapters together have to tell a consistent, but not identical, story, one with a broader and deeper message. My doctoral thesis on the history of radiation protection before World War II was easier from the narrative perspective. Those chronological building blocks provide a natural order, even if there was still the problem of making them add up to something larger than the sum of the parts. Read more
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When will Macedonia enter the EU?
I of course have no idea, but I did this interview for the Macedonian daily Vecer, which published it yesterday. Maybe it sheds some light on the question, if not the answer:
Q. After the European Council did not adopt the Commission’s recommendation to begin negotiations with Macedonia last year, you recommended that “the bicycle must move, so as not to fall,” warning that the enlargement process may be terminated if it is slow. Again, Macedonia, for the fifth time had a recommendation for starting accession negotiations with the EU. Do you expect that the Council in December will finally accept it and will grant Macedonia a date?
A. No, not unless there is a solution of the “name” problem. Greece seems determined to continue to block a date without that. But the High Level Accession Dialogue (HLAD) seems to be providing an alternate route that can take Macedonia a long way forward in the process. That’s a good thing.
Q. Your position that Macedonia should begin negotiations under the interim reference from 1995 is well known, a solution that is acceptable for Macedonia, inoffensive for Greece and Bulgaria and supported by the Hague verdict, but Athens does not comply. Is it possible that Athens and Sofia change something in their perceptions before December and accept this solution as a compromise? Read more
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Unhappy allies need to carry more burdens
Everyone’s favorite subject this weekend is America’s allies, who are unhappy for many reasons:
- France and Germany don’t like their phones bugged, and Brazil is also in a lather;
- Saudi Arabia wants the Americans to push harder against Syria’s Bashar al Asad and Iran’s nuclear program;
- Israel concurs on Iran and would rather President Obama didn’t insist it talk to the Palestinians;
- the Egyptian military didn’t like the cutoff of some major military equipment;
- President Karzai has not yet agreed to U.S. jurisdiction for troops who commit criminal acts in Afghanistan post-2014.
Everyone found the US government shutdown disconcerting. No one is looking forward to the January budgetary showdown, except maybe Russian President Putin. He likes anything that brings America down a peg.
There are solutions for each of these issues. We’ll no doubt reach some sort of modus vivendi with the Europeans, who won’t want to shut down either their own eavesdropping or America’s. More likely they’ll want us to share, while swearing off Chancellor Merkel and President Hollande’s cell phones. The Brazilians will be harder to satisfy, but they aren’t exactly what I would call an ally either. The Saudis may go off on their own to arm whomever they like in Syria, thus deepening the sectarian conflict there. That could, ironically, increase the prospects for some sort of political settlement at the much discussed but never convened Geneva 2 conference. It is hard to find anyone at this point who seriously opposes the effort to negotiate a settlement of the Iranian nuclear issue. The alternatives (war or containment) are worse. Even Netanyahu has toned down his objections, while unleashing Sheldon Adelson to advocate nuclear war. The Egyptian military doesn’t actually need more Abrams tanks; it has lots in storage. Karzai has convened a loya jirga to approve the continuing American presence in Afghanistan and to share the rap for agreeing to American jurisdiction. Read more
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