Tag: United States
This week’s peace picks
I’m out of town next week, but here are the events that I would consider attending if I were there:
1. Iran Nuclear Negotiations: What’s Next?, Atlantic Council, 9:30-11 am May 29
May 29, 2012
Please join the Atlantic Council’s Iran Task Force on Tuesday, May 29, for an in-depth review of the Iran nuclear talks that took place in Baghdad on May 23. These talks follow on discussions in Istanbul April 13-14, between Iran and the five permanent members of the United Nations Security Council plus Germany (P5+1) that were relatively positive. Nevertheless, there are concerns whether a “step-by-step approach” to de-escalating the nuclear crisis with Iran can be achieved. Iran is looking to the international community to ease draconian sanctions, but US flexibility is limited, especially in a presidential election year. Additionally, Israel has a more restrictive view of the Iranian nuclear program than some in the United States and Europe. Panelists will analyze the converging and conflicting interest of the P5+1, Iran, Israel, as well as explore repercussions should negotiations fail.
A discussion with
David Albright
Founder and President
Institute for Science and International Security
Barbara Slavin
Senior Fellow, South Asia Center
Atlantic Council
Moderated by
Shuja Nawaz
Director, South Asia Center
Atlantic Council
| DATE: | Tuesday, May 29, 2012 |
| TIME: | 9:30 a.m. to 11:00 a.m. |
| LOCATION: | Atlantic Council 1101 15th Street, NW, 11th Floor Washington, DC 20005 |
To attend, RSVP with your name and affiliation (acceptances only), to southasia@acus.org. Photo credit: Getty Images.
David Albright is founder and president of the Institute for Science and International Security (ISSI) in Washington, DC. A physicist and former UN arms inspector, Albright has written numerous assessments of nuclear weapons programs throughout the world. He has co authored five books, including the 1992 and 1996 versions of World Inventory of Plutonium and Highly Enriched Uranium, (SIPRI and Oxford University Press); Challenges of Fissile Material Control (ISSI Press, 1999); Solving the North Korean Nuclear Puzzle (ISIS Press, 2000); and Peddling Peril: How the Secret Nuclear Trade Arms America’s Enemies (Free Press, 2010).
Barbara Slavin is a senior fellow at the Atlantic Council’s South Asia Center and Washington correspondent for Al-Monitor.com, a new website devoted to news from and about the Middle East. The author of a 2007 book, Bitter Friends, Bosom Enemies: Iran, the US and the Twisted Path to Confrontation, she is a regular commentator on US foreign policy and Iran on NPR, PBS, and C-SPAN. A career journalist, Slavin previously served as assistant managing editor for world and national security of The Washington Times, senior diplomatic reporter for USA Today, Cairo correspondent for The Economist, and as an editor at The New York Times Week in Review.
The Iran Task Force, co-chaired by Atlantic Council Chairman Senator Chuck Hagel and Ambassador Stuart E. Eizenstat, seeks to perform a comprehensive analysis of Iran’s internal political landscape, its role in the region and globally, and any basis for an improved relationship with the West. Please click here for more information about the Iran Task Force.
2. Assessing the Impact of Egypt’s Presidential Elections, Center for National Policy, noon-1:15 pm May 29
Although there are now competing sectors of power in Egypt, the outcome of its presidential elections will likely have a major impact on that country’s domestic and foreign policies. The Center for National Policy will be hosting a panel of experts, moderated by CNP Senior Fellow for the Middle East, Gregory Aftandilian, to discuss how these elections will affect Egypt and the future of U.S.-Egyptian relations.
Where
Center for National Policy
One Massachusetts Avenue, NW
Suite 333
Washington, DC 20001
202-682-1800
When
May 29 12:00 pm – 1:15 pm
3. Is America’s Age of Descent Ushering in a G-Zero World? Carnegie Endowment, 6-8 pm May 2
Register to attend
Edward Luce and Ian Bremmer will debate America’s changing role in the world given profound social, economic, and political challenges, as well as the geopolitical consequences. Luce’s new book, Time to Start Thinking: America in the Age of Descent, outlines the nation’s decline and the loss of its pragmatism; Bremmer’s book, Every Nation for Itself: Winners and Losers in a G-Zero World, details the risks and opportunities in a world without global leadership. Carnegie’s David Rothkopf will moderate.
4. Women’s Leadership in Post-Conflict Liberia: My Journey, WWC 10-noon May 30
Women’s Leadership in Post-Conflict Liberia:
My Journey
with Author Olubanke King-Akerele and
Special Keynote Address from
Liberian President Ellen Johnson-Sirleaf
(via video-conference)Wednesday, May 30, 2012
from 10:00am-12:00pm
6th Floor Flom Auditorium
Woodrow Wilson International Center for Scholars
5. The Crisis in Northern Mali, Carnegie Endowment, 12:15-1:45 pm May 31
Anouar Boukhars, Rudolph Atallah, J. Peter Pham
Register to attend
While much attention has been focused on Mali’s capital Bamako following the March 22 coup overthrowing Mali’s elected government, developments in the northern part of the country may have greater regional implications. Bolstered by fighters and weapons flowing from Libya, separatist Tuareg rebels have succeeded in driving out government forces and allowed a number of Islamist groups to expand their presence.
A panel of experts will provide an update on the situation and discuss the broader regional implications for the Sahel, North Africa, and West Africa.
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Revolution, conspiracy or civil war? Yes
After a spectacular clear morning walking in the older parts of Istanbul and a visit to the Grand Bazaar, I took in a discussion of Syria this afternoon at Bahçeşehir University moderated with distinction by Samir Aita of le Monde Diplomatique, who noted the key role of the youth movement in Syria, whose cohort faces a disastrous job market with no more than one in five finding even inadequate employment. Control of the Syria by a small, rich rent-seeking elite is no longer acceptable to the younger generation.
He wanted to know whether Syria is experiencing a revolution, a conspiracy or a civil war? Will there be a military or a negotiated solution? If the latter, who should negotiate, how will they attain a modicum of unity and what roles should international powers play, in particular Qatar, Russia and Turkey?
I am not going to identify the respondents by name, even though this was a more or less public event. I don’t want my reports in someone’s file.
A young Syrian activist confirmed it was a revolution but suggested that the civil (nonviolent) revolt needs to split from the military (violent) rebellion, because a democratic outcome requires the former and not the latter (which will lead to civil war). Military intervention will not bring what the Syrian opposition wants. Success in Syria means a democracy established without international intervention.
Confusion reigns in Syria. The Syrian National Council (SNC) has been fragmented among ethnic/sectarian communities in a way that does not reflect Syrian reality. The regime has built a strategy quickly that divides the opposition and drives it in a violent direction. The opposition will be willing to negotiate with secondary members of the regime as well as with Russia and Iran, who are mainstays of the regime, but not with Bashar al Assad.
A Lebanese political scientist living in Paris suggested the Syrian revolution is undergoing three simultaneous processes: militarization of the rebellion because of regime violence (which will create big demobilization challenges in the post-Assad period), territorialization (which will create big governance issues after Assad) and regionalization, with spillover and external interference that makes the conflict increasingly a proxy war among foreign powers (which may ignite a regional conflagration). For the Iranians, the conflict in Syria is now an existential one and they will continue to support Bashar al Assad, but only up to a point, when they feel they have to abandon him to limit their losses. Israel would have preferred that Bashar stay in power, but they have now concluded that the best solution is to replace him with a strong military regime, to block jihadists from taking over.
Negotiation will eventually be necessary, but only on the conditions of the regime’s surrender, in particular amnesty, and an exit for Iran and Russia from their support to Bashar al Assad. There is also a need for negotiation within the revolution on a minimal united front: the role of Islam in the future of Syria, the position of minorities, and international guarantees and assistance.
For the moment, the Annan plan is the only political game in town. To succeed it needs some sticks for use against the regime and as many as 3000 monitors (there are currently fewer than 300) as well as a clear commitment to transition away from Bashar al Assad. If the Annan plan fails, there will be civil war.
A Syrian Kurd underlined that the Kurds have suffered 60 years of oppression in Syria and want to see a real revolution. But the regime is trying to make the rebellion into a sectarian and ethnic conflict. The Kurds fear their efforts will be viewed as separatism. There really is a conspiracy, by the regime, to make the revolution into a civil war. That is increasingly successful, with the conflict framed as Islamists against the Alawites. There will be no military solution without a political one. The Kurds are willing to participate in a unified opposition, but they want to hear an answer to the plan that they have already put forward. They want to see a tolerant society emerge from this revolution.
Another young Syrian activist underlined that the student movement has been in existence since 2001, when Bashar al Assad came to power. The goals have always been freedom, dignity and citizenship. The demonstrators often chant “We are all Kurds, we are all Arabs, we are all Syrians.” The Free Syria Army cannot win a war with the regime. The international powers all have their own agendas, the U.S. with Russia and China and Qatar wanting to export gas to Europe via Syria.
Little did I expect at the end of the presentations to find the session hijacked by hostile remarks from Turks in the audience on the Kurdish question. I should have known. The questioners had heard little about Syria, only about how the Kurds would get what they wanted from the Syrian revolution. The news was not welcome. One of the Syrian Arabs was unequivocal in reply: the Kurds will decide their own destiny.
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Nikolić gets his break
This is a somewhat more detailed and updated version of a piece The National Interest published this morning as “Serbian Transition Worries West”:
On his fourth try, Tomislav Nikolić won Serbia’s presidential election Sunday, defeating incumbent Boris Tadić by a narrow margin. Turnout was low. The number of ruined ballots was high. The electoral mechanism appears to have worked smoothly, freely and fairly.
Nikolić’s victory in this second round of the presidential election comes on the heels of his party’s victory in the parliamentary polls, which gave it the largest number of seats. A majority of Serbs was fed up with a leadership that had failed to deliver jobs, economic vitality, sufficient progress in Serbia’s efforts to gain membership in the European Union, or Serbian sovereignty over Kosovo.
An ethnic nationalist with a history of support to Slobodan Milošević and of close ties to radical nationalist and war crimes indictee Vojislav Šešelj, Nikolić broke from Šešelj in 2008. Allegations that Nikolić committed war crimes in Croatia in the early 1990s have not been proven in court, and he won a related defamation suit in 2009.
Since breaking with Šešelj, Nikolić has taken a more pro-Europe line, while maintaining promises of never recognizing the independence of Kosovo. In this, he is no different from Tadić, who however had convinced Brussels and Washington of his bona fides. American and European officials will be nervous about Nikolić, whose recent moderation they worry could be tactical.
How should Europe and the United States react to Nikolić’s election? Calmly and purposefully. The purpose should be to bring about genuine and deep reform in Serbia, which has failed in the more than 10 years since Milošević’s fall to purge fully its security services, investigate high-level involvement in war crimes and hiding of war criminals, give up its control of northern Kosovo or support the establishment of a viable Bosnian central government. Washington and Brussels have put up with this, fearing that a tough line would undermine Tadić at the polls and strengthen nationalists like Nikolić.
The coddling of Tadić has not worked. Tadić sought credit with nationalist voters by promising never to recognize Kosovo’s independence and supporting the Serb entity in Bosnia to the hilt. Its increasingly nationalist president campaigned openly for Tadić, who failed for years to provide the support to expensive international efforts in Kosovo and Bosnia that would make them successful.
Some in Brussels and Washington will still want to play their hand in formation of the new government by pushing for Tadić’s Democratic Party to lead the majority in parliament and “cohabit” with President Nikolić. That may be the way things will turn out, even though Nikolić’s party won more seats, if the Democratic Party alliance with Ivica Dačić holds. Some think such an arrangement would enable Serbia to make policy adjustments that Tadić was unwilling to make on his own, for fear Nikolić and others would benefit.
But there is no reason to believe that a Democratic Party-led government coalition under a Nikolić presidency will necessarily prove better from an American or European perspective than the outgoing Democratic Party-led government under Tadić. Cohabitation could allow Tadić to continue promising without delivering, with the blame cast on Nikolić. Washington and Brussels should look this gift horse in the mouth, trying to ensure that it is truly committed to a course they can support before encouraging or rewarding it.
If Nikolić forms a government without the Democratic Party, prying Dačić away from his alliance with the Democrats and relying on other more conservative nationalists like former prime minister Vojislav Koštunica, the result would be far more coherent. Washington and Brussels would then be free to push hard for real policy changes.
But it is unclear whether Nikolić would in fact choose the EU path over closer ties with Russia, where he is planning to make his first foreign visit since the election. If Nikolić chooses to align Serbia more closely with Moscow, that won’t make anyone in Washington or Brussels happy, but it will relieve them of the burden of worrying about Serbia’s “Atlantic” orientation.
Alternation in power is an essential feature of truly democratic systems. It has now happened in Serbia for the first time since the fall of Milošević. Europe and the United States should recognize in these elections a clear expression of the will of Serbia’s people: like others in Europe, they wanted change. In Serbia the only viable alternative was the more nationalist, less pro-European variety.
What Brussels and Washington need to do now is draw clear red lines that both can support wholeheartedly, no matter who gains power in Belgrade. Once the new parliamentary majority is formed and the government appointed, they should ask Serbia, which will seek a date to begin negotiations for European Union membership, to end its resistance to Kosovo’s independence, to push the Bosnian Serbs towards full acceptance of the Sarajevo government and to begin deep reform of the security services. There is no reason to coddle Nikolić, who in the past has proven himself pragmatic when faced with clear and forceful requirements.
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Ramifications of an Iran nuclear deal
Optimism is breaking out in some circles for tomorrow’s nuclear talks in Baghdad with Iran. Tehran Bureau hopes for a win/win. Stimson projects possible success.
This hopefulness is based on the emerging sense that a quid pro quo is feasible. While the details people imagine vary, in general terms the deal would involve Iran revealing the full extent of its nuclear efforts and limiting enrichment to what the amount and extent it really needs under tight international supervision. The international community would ease off on sanctions.
What is far less clear than the shape of a deal is whether politics in either Tehran or Washington will allow it to happen, as Zack Beauchamp speculated on Twitter last week. Europe, which leads the p5+1 (US, UK, France, China, Russia and Germany) talks with Tehran is useful to the process but will go along with whatever the Americans and Iranians decide.
Iran’s Supreme Leader, Ayatollah Khamenei, has been a major stumbling block in the past. He scuppered a deal a few years ago that would have supplied Iran with the enriched uranium it needs for a research reactor in exchange for shipping its own stockpile of 20% enriched uranium out of the country. Unquestionably more in charge than in the past, Khamenei and the Revolutionary Guards who support him need hostility with the West to maintain their increasingly militarized regime. A resolution–even a partial one–of the nuclear standoff may not be in their interest.
It might not please hawks in the U.S. Congress either. They want a complete halt to enrichment in Iran and don’t want to rely on international inspections that might be suspended or otherwise blocked. Improvement in relations with Iran would hinder their hopes for regime change there. It would also make it difficult to criticize Barack Obama in the runup to the election for his diplomatic outreach to Iran, which failed initially but with the backing of draconian international sanctions seems now to be succeeding.
The smart money is betting that both Tehran and Washington will want to string out the negotiating process past the U.S. election in November. This would be a shame if a deal really is possible before then. The world economy would look a lot brighter if oil prices, pumped up since winter by Iranian threats to close the strait of Hormuz, sank well below $100 per barrel. Improved relations with Iran could also have positive knock-on effects in Iraq and Afghanistan, where Iran (which neighbors both countries) has sought to make things hard for the Americans.
A nuclear deal could also free the American hand a bit in Syria, where Washington has been reluctant to act decisively because it needs Russia and China on board for the P5+1 effort. Of course it might also work in the other direction: Washington could decide to give a bit in Syria in order to get a nuclear deal with Iran. That would not be our finest moment.
PS: Julian Borger is, as usual, worth reading, in particular on how low the bar has been set for the Baghdad talks.
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Algeria: is stability stable?
Thursday’s discussion at SAIS’s Center for Transatlantic Relations of Algeria After the Elections: Now What? left the audience wondering whether the country’s apparent stability really is stable, in particular as the 2014 presidential elections draw closer.
Algeria pulled off an election no one will say was free or fair for a parliament that controls nothing, as SAIS professor Bill Zartman put it. The junta remains firmly in power. The election results reflect the voting population’s reluctance to rock the boat or entrust its future to Islamists, who did poorly. Algeria had its intifada in the 1990s. Having suffered a civil war as a result, with horrific violence both by the Islamists and the security forces, there are good reasons for those Algerians who remember it not to want a repeat performance. It also had mini-intifadat every month or so in the 2000s and a larger one in January 2010; labor and other protests are common in Algeria, but they have little political impact. It wouldn’t matter if President Bouteflika were removed; the junta remains. However, the time of the presidential elections in 2014 may bring a moment when, whoever runs, the people will have had enough.
Even without revolutionary fervor, Algeria faces big problems. Barrie Freeman of NDI noted that its youth bulge is finding little employment (youth unemployment stands at 40%). Few young people voted. While the government is claiming over 40% of the electorate went to the polls, the real number may be significantly lower. Civic participation is generally low, in part due to a restrictive law on associations. The junta has promised constitutional reform, but it is unclear what that means. There is no reason to expect any serious moves to democratize.
Carnegie Endowment’s Marina Ottaway noted that a remarkably high 18% of voters spoiled their ballots, which likely reflects widespread dissatisfaction. It is harder to interpret the low turnout, which might just reflect indifference. While the Islamist parties did not see the surge evident in Tunisia and Egypt, Algeria suffers as they do from lack of secular opposition parties offering a serious alternative. President Bouteflika represents the last of his generation. Once he and his cohort are gone, within the next few years, the dissatisfaction many feel may emerge in political form, but there is little sign of it yet. The ruling parties have so far hung together fairly well, fearing that otherwise they will hang separately.
Pointing to southern Algeria and northern Mali, Daniele Moro of the Center for Transatlantic Relations raised the specter of terrorism, equipped in part by arms from Libya. We need to keep our eye on this obscure part of the Sahel, which could become a free for all region where Nigerian, Somali and Algerian (Al Qaeda in the Maghreb) terrorists may create a “mini-Afghanistan.” Algeria and Morocco, whose border is closed due to differences over Algerian support to the Western Sahara, are joining with NATO soon in a naval exercise. This is a positive development of a sort Europe and the U.S. should continue to encourage.
No one should be under any illusions. Reform in Algeria has not yet begun in earnest. But the apparent stability of an aging regime may not last.
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Iraq watchers, watch this
The National Democratic Institute (NDI) April 2012 Iraq polling sheds expected but clear light on the political situation there: especially among Shia Iraqis and in Baghdad, Prime Minister Maliki is a hit. Among Kurds in the North and Sunnis in the West, that is far less the case. While commentary in Washington has been mostly negative since completion of the U.S. withdrawal at the end of 2011, an increasing percentage of Iraqis appreciate Maliki and think the country is heading in the right direction.
There are of course things that could upset the trends, and NDI explicates those:
- Failure to address jobs and basic services concerns
- Sunni insecurities intensify
- Disaffected Shias shifting support
- Ability for opposition groups to emerge and build a strategic campaign
- North’s divisions with Baghdad intensify
But so far, Maliki has a lot to stack up to his credit. Chosen prime minister because he looked weaker than the alternatives, he is proving that he has the vital requirement of a democratic politician: approval (and presumably votes at the next election). The big question is whether he will use his improved position to consolidate democracy in Iraq or undermine it.
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