Tag: United States
MEK, yech
This morning’s report that the State Department is close to a decision expected to de-list the Mujahedin-e Khalq (MEK) as a terrorist group quickly aroused the cry of “shameful” in the blogosphere.
Hillary Clinton is unquestionably in a difficult spot: a U.S. court has ordered a re-examination of the designation, which was certainly justified at the time it was made. Presumably the issue is whether the MEK, which has managed to hire a lot of high-priced American talent to speak on its behalf, still merits the “terrorist” designation, as it claims to have renounced violence, which it used against not only Iran but also the United States in the past.
Next week’s nuclear talks with Iran complicate the issue. De-listing the MEK just before the talks could derail them. De-listing the MEK after the talks, if they go well, could provoke an unfortunate reaction in Tehran.
Keeping the MEK on the terrorist list is of course an option. Some people think the MEK has been responsible for killing Iranian nuclear scientists. That would certainly rate a terrorist designation, even if no one in America is mourning their loss. If they are not actively involved today in terrorist acts, the MEK would likely not be unique on the list–there are other organizations listed who seem past their terrorist prime. But they may lack the resources to get a court to order a review.
There is one complicating factor: the bulk of MEK’s cadres are being moved from one place in Iraq, where they took refuge under Saddam Hussein, to another. The Secretary of State has said she would decide the de-listing issue once that has been accomplished. This implied approval of de-listing, even if it has nothing to do with the merits of the case.
So it is a difficult choice for the Secretary of State. If she de-lists, she runs the risk of upsetting nuclear talks that are far more important than the MEK. If she doesn’t, she runs the risk of provoking the MEK’s many backers, including in Congress, and losing one day in court. I’d opt to keep them on the list, at least until I was certain they were not responsible for the murder of Iranian nuclear scientists. But there is ample reason to find the issue distasteful.
MEK, yech.
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Time for Athens to export stability
I spent a good part of yesterday on one of my least favorite topics: the name of the country whose capital is Skopje.
I started it with yesterday’s post. The NATOniks on Twitter then told me how out of it I was to think that the Alliance could spare the seconds needed to admit Skopje as a member. After all, it has a hefty agenda: Afghanistan, where it will decide what has already been decided, and smart defense, where it will decide something that will not be implemented. Enlargement, they said, is just not part of the narrative. They also suggested nothing, absolutely nothing, would change Greece’s veto of Macedonian membership.
What about a phone call from the President of the United States asking Athens to stand down in his hometown of Chicago at the NATO Summit there this weekend? It would be The FYROM* entering NATO, not “Macedonia,” in accordance with a 1995 agreement the parties to this “name” dispute signed (and Greece violated, according to the International Court of Justice, when it blocked The FYROM’s entry to NATO at the last summit in Bucharest). Athens, after all, might find it useful to build up some credits in Washington.
One of my Twitter friends suggested yesterday that Greece had won the ICJ case because the court declined to order Greece not to repeat what it had done in Bucharest. Here I need only cite what the Court said, citing a previous decision:
“[a]s a general rule, there is no reason to suppose that a State whose act or conduct has been declared wrongful by the Court will repeat that act or conduct in the future, since its good faith must be presumed”
Misreading this as suggesting the ICJ did not find Greece in the wrong is beyond my ability.
By the end of the day, I was having a perfectly reasonable conversation with Greeks interested in resolving the issue, and seemingly willing to think about The FYROM membership in NATO, if only that does not entail postponing a solution to the name issue forever. That is a reasonable concern, one that could be met by taking the issue to arbitration if it is not solved within a specified time frame. I imagine there are half dozen other solutions that people brainier than I am will think up. It is important also to note that Greece can block Macedonia’s process of gaining membership in the EU at any stage, so it will not have given up all its leverage if it allows The FYROM into NATO.
Greece today is in an uncomfortable position. It is in clear violation of an ICJ decision and is exporting instability to its neighbors and friends. It is going to be really hard to prevent the export of economic instability, since the electorate is rejecting austerity and causing real problems for the Euro and the European Union that will ripple far and wide. Check out your 401k today to see what I mean.
But the export of political instability is avoidable. Ethnic tension in Macedonia is on the increase, in part due to failure to get into NATO. This is a treasured goal of its Albanian population, one of whose political leaders told me last summer that it was vital to his ability to contain and counter growing pan-Albanian sentiment. Pan-Albanianism is also growing in Kosovo, where Belgrade makes no secret of its desire to partition the North, so that it can hold on to the largest single concentration of Serbs in Kosovo (even if most of them live farther south).
Partition in Macedonia and Kosovo would lead quickly and irrevocably to partition in Bosnia, and guess where else? Cyprus. Thus, Greece’s resistance to Macedonian membership in NATO and refusal to recognize Kosovo are politicies that risk undermining one of Athens’ most cherished goals: reunification of Cyprus.
The first law of holes is to stop digging. Athens has a real stake in the unity and territorial integrity of The FYROM, Kosovo, Bosnia and Cyprus. Greece should quietly reverse its position and allow The FYROM into NATO at Chicago, provided it gets a firm commitment to resolve the name issue within a defined time frame. That would clear one problem and gain Athens a good deal of credit. Then I’ll want to talk with Greek friends about recognizing Kosovo, which would remove still another issue that risks precipitating partition in Cyprus.
It is time for Athens to export stability.
*The FYROM, for the uninitiated, is “The Former Yugoslav Republic of Macedonia,” the name by which the country entered the United Nations and many other organizations soon after independence.
PS: I thought you all would enjoy this reaction from one of my Twitter followers: “Greece is and always was a lighthouse of stability in the region. NATO member, EC member, EU zone member and u claim instability?”
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This week’s peace picks
Are things slowing down, or is it just me? Still some excellent events:
1. Is the Arab Awakening Marginalizing Women? WWC, 9 am-12:45 pm May 14
The Middle East Program and the Council of Women World Leaders
of the Woodrow Wilson Center
present
Is the Arab Awakening Marginalizing Women?
Monday, May 14, 2012
6th Floor Flom Auditorium
8:30 – 9:00am Coffee
9:00 – 9:20am Welcoming Remarks: Haleh Esfandiari, Director, Middle East Program, Woodrow Wilson Center
Opening Remarks: Jane Harman, President, Director and CEO, Woodrow Wilson Center
9:20 – 11:00am PANEL 1
Fatima Sbaity-Kassem, Former Director, UN-ESCWA Centre for Women
“A Cup Half Full or Half Empty: Is a ‘Women’s Spring’ Inevitable in Transitions to Democracy?”
Lilia Labidi, Visiting Research Professor, Middle East Institute, National University of Singapore; Former Minister of Women’s Affairs, Tunisia; and Former Fellow, Woodrow Wilson Center
“Tunisia: Policies and Programs for Women during a Democratic Transition”
Moushira Khattab, Public Policy Scholar, Woodrow Wilson Center; Former Egyptian Ambassador to South Africa and to the Czech and Slovak Republics; and Former Minister of Family and Population, Egypt
“Lost in Translation: The Case of Egyptian Women”
Moderator: Haleh Esfandiari, Director, Middle East Program, Woodrow Wilson Center
11:00 – 11:15am Coffee Break
11:15 – 12:45pm PANEL 2
Rend Al-Rahim, Executive Director, Iraq Foundation; and Former Iraqi Ambassador to the United States
“Iraq: Frustrated Expectations”
Rola Dashti, Former member of Kuwaiti Parliament and Chairman, Kuwait Economic Society
“Arab Springs without Flowers”
Caryle Murphy, Public Policy Scholar, Woodrow Wilson Center
“Awakening Rains on Saudi Desert, Brings Green Shoots of Hope, Change”
Rangita de Silva de Alwis, Director, Women in Public Service Project Institute 2012, Wellesley College; and Director of International Human Rights Policy, Wellesley Centers for Women
“The Way Ahead: Some Lessons from Other Post-Conflict Communities”
Moderator: Robin Wright, USIP-Wilson Center Distinguished Scholar
Read MEP’s latest publication on women in the Arab Spring: Reflections on Women in the Arab Spring
2. Solution or Stall? The Next Round of Talks with Iran, Bipartisan Policy Center, 10-11:30 May 14
Address:
1225 Eye St. NW, Suite 1000, Washington, DC, 20005
On May 23, the United States and its international partners will sit down in Baghdad for another round of talks with Iran. While a diplomatic deal remains the best hope for a peaceful resolution to the international standoff over Iran’s nuclear program, experts disagree over what terms the United States should accept and what can be expected from Iran. Join BPC and a distinguished panel for a discussion of what to expect from, and what is at stake in, the upcoming negotiations.
Featuring
Ambassador Dennis Ross
Counselor, The Washington Institute
Elliott Abrams
Senior Fellow for Middle Eastern Studies, Council on Foreign Relations
Undersecretary Nick Burns
Professor, Harvard’s John F. Kennedy School of of Government
Steve Rademaker
Principal, Podesta Group
Member, BPC Iran Task Force
Moderated by
Mortimer Zuckerman
CEO and Chairman, Boston Properties
Member, BPC Iran Task Force
Introduction by
Michael Makovsky
Director, BPC Foreign Policy Project
REGISTER
3. Delivering Dignity in the Arab World through Political and Economic Reform, CIPE, noon-2 pm May 15
CIPE, 1155 15th Street, NW, 7th Floor
May 15, 2012
12:00 pm – 2:00 pm
|
Speakers: Larry Diamond, Director, Stanford University’s Center on Michele Dunne, Director, Atlantic Council’s John D. Sullivan, Executive Director, Moderated by Steve Clemons, Editor at Large, The Atlantic, Last year’s uprisings made clear that people were willing to make great sacrifices to build states and societies capable of delivering dignity to their citizens. This luncheon will offer an opportunity to explore the key linkages between political and economic reform in the Arab world and identify the opportunities and challenges to institutionalizing democratic values in economies throughout the region. |
Lunch will be provided.
RSVP by Friday, May 11, 2012
4. The U.S. National Security Budget, AEI, 1-2:30 May 15
On Tuesday, May 15, join the American Enterprise Institute, the Center for a New American Security and the New America Foundation to discuss an issue sure to face the next administration: U.S. defense spending in light of American grand strategy. With the “sequestration” mechanism set to cut at least $500 billion from the Department of Defense, on top of budget reductions in recent years, discussants will consider how these cuts could affect defense policy. Former Under Secretary of Defense for Policy Michèle Flournoy will provide introductory remarks.
This event continues a unique collaboration among these institutions in the presidential campaign season, “Election 2012: The National Security Budget.” Past conversations covered the U.S. role in the world and policy in East Asia, and a later event will consider U.S. relations with the greater Middle East.
Schedule:
12:45 p.m. – Registration
1:00 p.m. – Remarks
Featured Speaker
Michèle Flournoy
Former Under Secretary of Defense for Policy
Panelists
David Barno
Senior Advisor and Senior Fellow, Center for a New American Security
Thomas Donnelly
Resident Fellow and Co-Director of the Marilyn Ware Center for Security Studies, American Enterprise Institute
Michael Waltz
Senior National Security Fellow, New America Foundation
Former Advisor on South Asia to Vice President Cheney
Moderator
Peter David
Washington Bureau Chief, The Economist
2:30 p.m. – Adjournment
Election 2012: Informing the National Security Agenda was launched on March 15 with a kickoff discussion on America’s role in the world and the strategies this might suggest for the elected commander-in-chief.
Future Events Include:
The U.S. and the Greater Middle East, keynote to be announced
July 17, 2012
New America Foundation, 1899 L St. NW #400 Washington, DC
This fall’s presidential election comes at a critical moment for the United States and the world. The demands for U.S. leadership are substantial–particularly in the dynamic Middle East and Asia-Pacific–yet fiscal challenges are forcing reductions in American military power and defense spending, sparking new thinking about American engagement with the world. In this important election season, many Americans will look to the next U.S. president to repair the economy, but he will nonetheless inherit complicated military and diplomatic engagements and govern as commander-in-chief of the globe’s most powerful nation. As a result, the discussion of national security issues must take a central role in the 2012 presidential election.
This event is the third in a series of four campaign-season seminars on the critical issues of U.S. foreign and defense policy, sponsored by AEI, the Center for a New American Security and the New America Foundation.
5. A Blueprint for Engagement Amid Austerity: A Bipartisan Approach to Reorienting the International Affairs Budget, 10:30-noon, May 16
Featuring report co-authors:
John Norris, Executive Director of the Sustainable Security and Peacebuilding Initiative, Center for American Progress
Connie Veillette, Director of the Rethinking U.S. Foreign Assistance Program, Center for Global Development
And distinguished panelists:
Gordon Adams, Professor, School of International Service, American University, and Distinguished Fellow, the Stimson Center
Andrew Preston, Counsellor for Development, Foreign and Security Policy Group, British Embassy
Moderated by:
George Ingram, MFAN Co-Chair
Wednesday, May 16, 2012
10:30am–12:00pm
The Glover Park Group
1025 F St NW, 9th Floor
Washington, DC
Please RSVP by Monday, May 14th to event@modernizeaid.net. Space is limited.
Please join MFAN for a discussion on a new report from the Center for American Progress and the Center for Global Development. The report, A Blueprint for Better Engagement Amid Austerity: A Bipartisan Approach to Reorienting the International Affairs Budget, calls for a more focused approach to how the U.S. delivers economic and security assistance.
We will be joined by the report’s authors to share their findings and recommendations followed by a reactions from a distinguished panel and Q and A.
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Colbert fetes Simonyi
I found this gem on the Johns Hopkins/SAIS website. Former Hungarian Ambassador to the United States András Simonyi has become the managing director of the Center for Transatlantic Relations, with which I am proud to be associated as a senior fellow. Or at least I used to be proud. Now I’m prouder. A Jon Stewart upload will make be proudest:
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Talking Turkey
There were Turks in town this week. Well-informed ones who spoke off the record at a meeting that included other luminaries. Here are some of the conclusions from the discussion.
Zero problems with neighbors, Turkey’s avowed foreign policy based on realpolitik, blew away in the gusts of idealism associated with the Arab spring. Turkey now has growing problems with neighbors, especially Syria and Iran but also Iraq.
Syria. Turkey misread Bashar al Assad. Ankara thought he would step aside, but that reflected a misunderstanding of the nature of the Ba’ath regime and an underestimation of the difficulty of getting Bashar out. In fact, Turkey generally lacks people who understand the Middle East well, and even experts who speak Arabic.
With the U.S. reluctant to intervene, Turkey is paralyzed, fearing that anything it does will worsen its own problems with the Kurds and increase refugee flows. Prime Minister Erdogan’s voice is much stronger than his policies. He lacks domestic political support for any further move against Bashar al Assad. There is little popular sympathy for the Syrian revolution in Turkey. Ankara says it supports an inclusive Syrian National Council (SNC), but in practice Turkish support goes mainly to the Syrian Muslim Brotherhood, the dominant influence within the Syrian National Council, not to secularists.
Turkey wants the Syrian Kurds to support the revolution, but it isn’t willing to support their desire for decentralization. Ankara pressured the SNC to deny the Kurds what they want, causing them to withdraw from the SNC entirely.
Iran. Turkish relations with Iran have deteriorated sharply. The traditional highly competitive but non-hostile relationship is turning ugly, despite rapidly growing bilateral trade. The balance is sharply in Iran’s favor. Iran will not back down on Syria. Nor will Turkey. Tensions are bound to escalate. It is not clear where the breaking point lies, but there is no sign that it can be avoided.
Iraq. Turkey has improved its relations with the Iraqi Kurds (particularly Kurdistan Regional Government President Barzani) in an effort to influence the Syrian Kurds. But Ankara’s relationship with Baghdad has taken a turn for the worse. Turkey is competing for influence in Iraq with Iran.
Bottom lines: A few years ago, Ankara had hopes for zero problems with neighbors and was knocking on the door to the Europe. If Assad survives, Turkey will now face increasing Middle East turmoil that it has little capacity to manage and no European prospect. Ankara has bitten off more than it can chew in Syria and has little idea what to do about it.
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Rebalancing should be the order of the day
Having spent some time earlier this week listening to people who think war is becoming obsolete, it is hard not to write about today’s publication of a survey suggesting Americans want substantial cuts in the defense budget. This is true across the board: Republicans as well as Democrats, with the average cut desired far larger than anything Congress is contemplating.
The war in Afghanistan is one target of the cutting, but the sentiment extends also to nuclear weapons, ground forces, air power and missile defense. As the authors put it
By far the most durable finding — even after hearing strong arguments to the contrary — was that existing spending levels are simply too high. Respondents were asked twice, in highly different ways, to say what they thought the budget should be, and a majority supported roughly the same answer each time: a cut of at least 11 to 13 percent (they cut on average 18 to 22 percent).
Far be it from me to suggest that public opinion should determine the defense budget. But combined with previous survey data showing that Americans think we spend far more on foreign aid than is in fact the case (and would support spending far more than we do), this new poll suggests that rebalancing is not only in order but politically viable. It would take only a small slice of a defense cut of $100 billion or more, which is what this survey suggests the American people on average would support, to significantly increase civilian capabilities and thereby compensate for at least in part for any loss of overall capability to protect the national security.
Rebalancing should be the order of the day.
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