Tag: United States
Can citizens bridge the divide?
Pew yesterday published the results of its survey of Western and Muslim attitudes towards each other, updating a 2006 survey. Andy Kohut presented the results at a Carnegie Endowment event yesterday, “A Great Divide? How Westerns and Muslims See Each Other.” I won’t try to summarize: best that you read it in Pew’s own words.
There were some striking findings. The percentages of Muslims believing that Arabs carried out the 9/11 attacks has gone down since 2006. Pew deadpans:
There is no Muslim public in which even 30% accept that Arabs conducted the attacks. Indeed, Muslims in Jordan, Egypt, and Turkey are less likely to accept this today than in 2006.
Another stunner:
Muslim publics have an aggrieved view of the West — they blame Western policies for their own lack of prosperity. Across the Muslim publics surveyed, a median of 53% say U.S. and Western policies are one of the top two reasons why Muslim nations are not wealthier.
This despite very large quantities of aid given to some Muslim countries by the West, and an astounding amount of money sent to other Muslim countries in payment for oil.
On a more hopeful note:
…both Muslims and Westerners are concerned about Islamic extremism. More than two-thirds in Russia, Germany, Britain, the U.S. and France are worried about Islamic extremists in their country. Fully 77% of Israelis also hold this view.
But extremism is considered a threat in predominantly Muslim nations as well. More than seven-in-ten Palestinian and Lebanese Muslims are worried about Islamic extremists in their countries, as are most Muslims in Egypt, Pakistan and Turkey.
The Carnegie Endowment discussion yesterday had some high points too. Shuja Nawaz of the Atlantic Council noted the similarity of what people want in Muslim countries and in the West (freedom and democracy, no violence) but underlined the U.S. neglect of education about the world beyond its borders, noting that less than half of 8th graders know that Islam originated in Saudi Arabia.
Shuja thought Muslims react more to U.S. policy than to Americans as a people (or the U.S. as a political system); they see the U.S. as backing autocratic rulers, fighting in Islamic countries and wanting to sustain its hegemony. Six out of ten Pakistanis want improved relations with the U.S., but few have any direct contact with Americans. What we should be trying to do is establishing more society-to-society, people-to-people relations, in particular with the middle class, but American visa policy does the opposite (and is opaque and demeaning to boot).
Samer Shehata of Georgetown University agreed, suggesting that U.S. policy has given Muslims little reason to change their views of the West in a positive direction since 2006, apart from the still incomplete withdrawal from Iraq. He also noted that there have been no serious protests against the NATO action in Libya, which is broadly supported in Muslim countries. Still, Muslim attitudes are heavily conditioned by the Palestine/Israel conflict, the presence of U.S. troops in Muslim countries, and U.S. support for Arab and other autocrats. Shehata also asked a lot of good questions about the assumptions and framing of the Pew survey.
Kohut agreed that personal exposure makes a difference to attitudes, whereas there appears to be little correlation with age and education. American assistance after the 2004 Indian Ocean tsunami and the 2005 Kashmir earthquake was positively received, but the effect was not dramatic. President Obama has disappointed Muslim expectations.
On 9/11, Shuja Nawaz said that in Pakistan most of the conspiracy theories originate on the crackpot fringe in the U.S., but no one counters them once they reach Pakistan, where they consequently gain greater currency.
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The rich get richer
Yesterday’s conference on investment prospects in the wake of the Arab Spring over at the World Bank’s Multilateral Investment Guarantee Agency (MIGA) was a lively couple of hours–these economic types are briefer and more to the point than their political counterparts–but the bottom line was gloomy: the GCC states and Iraq are likely to attract the lion’s share of investment while Egypt and Tunisia (Syria, Yemen and Libya weren’t even mentioned) go begging in the short term. There was disagreement on longer-term prospects, with Ian Bremmer registering a strong minority view that the geopolitics are unfavorable, both because of Iran and the Israel/Palestine conflict.
An upbeat and indefatigible Afshin Molavi started off underlining that we live in a world of surprisingly interconnected risk, that there is a lot of diversity in what we should not really label “Arab Spring,” and that the Middle East and North Africa region (MENA) has a young population, many unable to get married because of the lack of jobs and looking for “dignity.” Growth has now slowed, hurting their prospects.
Citibank’s Hamid Biglari said investors have adopted a wait and see attitude toward the more revolutionary part of the region and are shifting their attention towards the GCC and Iraq, whose prospects are good if Baghdad can get security under control. Multinationals are not pulling out. Egypt is a larger and better known market than Tunisia, which however is more homogeneous, more secular, more middle class and better educated. Tunisia is more likely to succeed economically, but Egypt is the bigger prize. The immediate concerns of investors are about legitimacy and whether the new governments will treat the old elite decently, but it will be a decade before “equilibrium” returns.
Ian Bremmer of Eurasia Group admitted enthusiasm for the Arab Spring (“it feels good”) but noted that Ukraine and Georgia felt good at first too. Tunisia seems to be moving in the right direction, Egypt less so but will likely muddle through. Iraq is the most exciting investment opportunity in the region. U.S. influence is declining, and Saudi influence is increasing. Saudi policy objectives and conditionality will differ from those of the U.S. Overall though the immediate political risks have been overvalued. The problem is in the longer term, both because of Iran and the Israel/Palestine conflict. Europe and the U.S. will increasingly be occupied with other problems.
Cairo-based Walid Bakr of Riyada Enterprise Development, Abraaj Capital, was more optimistic in the medium and long term. Egypt’s big market and tourist attractions are not going away. Half the population is under 24, well educated and internet savvy, with lots of entrepreneurial spirit. The revolution has unleashed strong feelings of national pride and dignity. Youth is the engine of growth and can contribute to the all-important creation of small and medium enterprises so vital to job creation and wealth distribution.
Dubai-based Yasar Jarrar of PwC Middle East underlined that we are still at the beginning of the changes in the Middle East, which suffered a long period of stagnation (not real stability). The GCC countries are moving well to kickstart job creation for youth, major infrastructure investments and dialogue between their governments and the citizens. But it is going to be a long spring in a region that really does matter. Philip Haddad of Mubadala Infrastructure Partners agreed that we need to take the long view, but in the meanwhile as much as $38 billion is being invested in infrastructure, which is not bad.
The Omani ambassador, Hunaina Sultan Ahmed al-Mughairy, led off with a very upbeat assessment of the Sultanate’s prospects. The message was “yes, we can” reform ourselves, if we put our minds to it. Jean Francois Seznec of Georgetown said he was very pessimistic about Bahrain, where the basic issue is governance. In recent weeks, only 5% of the hotel rooms in Bahrain have been occupied.
There was a good deal of agreement that the issue everywhere is at least in part governance. Citizens did not feel they were benefiting under the old regimes, because of a lack of accountability. Political and economic reform need to go together, but it is not clear that new parliamentary democracies will credit competence and choose economic reform, which is discredited because it is associated with the old regimes.
Wrapping up, Ravi Vish of MIGA confirmed the importance of governance, addressing social inequality and the income gap, and job creation, mainly through a stronger and more entrepreneurial private sector. He also reviewed MIGA’s portfolio of political insurance products, for which demand is naturally rising in the region.
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Beyond Rupert Murdoch
The Murdoch scandal may look like a domestic UK affair, with repercussions for the media also domestically in Australia and the U.S., where his News Corp is a big player. But it is really an international affair about electronic information technology, one that continues a prior pattern: the National Security Agency’s warrantless wiretapping and Wikileaks come to mind.
The sad fact is that no electronic communications are genuinely secure. That’s why the Pentagon has all but declared war in cyberspace. Individuals are vulnerable, but the government is also vulnerable, as are companies and all the institutions of a modern open society. Closed systems don’t do much better. I can’t wait until the day some Chinese hacker turns his skills on the Communist Party. Even Osama bin Laden’s extensive efforts at infosec proved vulnerable partly because his couriers used the internet.
The only reasonable way to respond to this vulnerability is to limit the extent of what we try to keep secret, and intensify the efforts to build a wall around that truly high value turf. Ninety-eight per cent of what most of us say and write should be said and written with the understanding that it might be heard or conveyed to the public. Not that hacking into cell phones is justified. Just difficult to prevent.
That has not however been the general impulse. Institutions everywhere are trying to cast a broader net to protect a wide swathe of information. Security officers are requiring that more and more computers and offices be swept for bugs, passwords changed, visitors screened and documents shredded. I am not talking here about classified government information, but unclassified, publicly available data that I might post on www.peacefare.net.
When I was science counselor in the U.S. embassy in Brasilia, an American intelligence product published as secret photographs of a rocket launch facility that I had visited several times. It was used every two years to launch U.S. Air Force sounding rockets but someone at the Pentagon imagined it so sensitive that they needed to take overhead photographs of it from outer space. They were not amused when I offered to smile for the cameras next time I stood on the launch pad.
Don’t get me wrong: there are some real secrets out there, including secrets about what is secret, since sources and methods are often as valuable as specific data. I wouldn’t want our enemies knowing everything about us. Loose lips used to sink ships. Now even tight lips may do it, if they are attached to someone who uses email.
Murdoch and his sidekick Rebekah Brooks denied yesterday to a parliamentary committee that they had authorized or knew about hacking by News Corp. It’s possible they did not know. No great resources are needed to do the dirty deed, and any employee with sense would not tell the boss, to provide plausible deniability. That doesn’t jibe of course with Murdoch’s infamous attention to detail in his operations, but the one employee so far willing to speak up on this subject has expired of unknown causes.
Somehow it is fitting that Murdoch, who stands to lose billions as a result of the scandal, elicited the first whiff of sympathy when some low life in a plaid shirt (who wears a plaid shirt in London?) doused him with shaving foam (or was it really whipped cream?), and got clocked by Murdoch’s wife in turn. Taste and behavior worse than Murdoch’s is hard to come by. But there is always someone prepared to push the envelope:
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The real budget losers won’t be military
After several days of Casey Anthony, Carmeggedon, and Rebekah Brooks, my TV finally produced something worth watching: the U.S./Japan women’s World Cup match. The two fading powers of the late 20th century produced a super ball game, which should remind us that even in decline great powers have a lot of clout left.
This is the trick the Americans need to learn in foreign policy. Britain lost its empire more than 30 years ago but still punches above its weight. Its military prowess is not the only reason. The Foreign Office and the Department for International Development are serious operations. I am not a great admirer of the Quai d’Orsay. If you want to see a Foreign Ministry other than the British one that makes a difference, visit The Hague, capital of another lost empire.
Jim Lindsay in yesterday’s Washington Post was in full angst over the impact of how the debt issues are handled and the impact on the U.S. military. That is not what worries me. I’ll bet the Defense Department gets a relatively small cut, after a decade of having its budget doubled, without counting war expenditures. The Obama Administration and House Republicans have both proposed -3.5%, but the Senate is likely to insist on a smaller number.
It is the State Department and USAID that are likely to get whacked. They have finally produced a blueprint for dealing with current national security challenges that begins to make sense: the Quadrennial Diplomacy and Development Review. What are the odds of much of it being implemented in the current budget environment? Sure, they can move a few people around, but there is no hope for Foggy Bottom without a top to bottom reform that would require a good deal of money. House Republicans proposed a 43% cut in the 150 account (“international affairs”) relative to the Administration’s dead-on-arrival 2012 proposal. That’s likely worse than what will actually happen, but the State Department and AID are in for a shock.
One reason is that half the country thinks they already have a lot of money–25% of the Federal budget, and wants that reduced to 10% (see http://www.worldpublicopinion.org/pipa/pdf/nov10/ForeignAid_Nov10_quaire.pdf). The real number is well under 1.5%, and declining for several decades. Could it be that State and AID have not handled their relationship with the American people as well as the Pentagon has?
A friend commented after the soccer game, “the Japanese have had an even worse year than we’ve had. It’s good they won.” I did not agree–I wanted the Americans to win. But like my friend I’ll be cheering for the civilian underdogs in the budget battles. They’ve had a bad couple of decades. It is time to correct the absurd imbalance between the military arm of our government, which is healthy and well-exercised, and the civilian arm, which is weak and getting weaker.
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The damndest problem
Somehow this invitation to a discussion of India/Pakistan relations prompts me to ask a different but related question: how should the United States deal with Pakistan?
I confess to colossal ignorance when it comes to anything east and south of the Durand line. All I really know is that Pakistan is populous (170 million), ethnically complex (Punjabis, Pashtuns, Sindhis and many others) and mostly poor (about $1000 per capita GNP). It has nuclear weapons and an enduring existential fear of India. The army plays an often outsized role, but civilian politics can be dauntingly agitated as well.
So why should this matter? It is the nuclear weapons that really count to the United States–they are approaching 100 warheads. Their main purpose seems to be to prevent an Indian attack, or to respond to one. American concern is not only that Pakistan might use them, triggering an unpredictable but likely devastating series of events, but that they might fall into the hands of terrorists. Pakistan has a record of having exported nuclear technology to North Korea and elsewhere.
For at least as long as U.S. troops are in Afghanistan, there will be another concern: terrorists harbored in the Pakistan’s border areas. We can quarrel about whether the Pakistani government knew Osama Bin Laden was holed up in Abbottabad, but it is clear that at least some religious extremists have de facto permission from the Pakistani government to destabilize the southern and eastern provinces of Afghanistan, in order to gain “strategic depth” for Islamabad (that is, deny India a foothold in a stable Afghanistan). Our many drone strikes inside Pakistan, with something like tacit permission from Islamabad, are the current stopgap in deal with this problem.
What are our options in dealing with Pakistan?
1. Walk away. Too complicated, too difficult, too far away. We’ve tried this several times over the last few decades. We always end up regretting it and going back, whether because of the nukes or the border with Afghanistan.
2. Get engaged. Pakistan has lots of problems: political, economic, security. We could try to engage more actively in resolving some of these. Dick Holbrooke is said to have thought we needed to help resolve the India/Pakistan conflict, especially over Kashmir, if we wanted Pakistan to help us out more against the Taliban and Al Qaeda. But what makes us think we can have much impact on Pakistan’s internal political and economic problems, never mind its more than 60-year conflict with India?
3. Get selectively engaged. So some things are too hard. That doesn’t mean we shouldn’t ante up to get Pakistan to do the things we need done, like police its border with Afghanistan more effectively and guard its nuclear weapons more carefully. This is pretty much current policy, plus the drone strikes. We don’t know if the American assistance on guarding the nuclear weapons is effective, but we do know that the Pakistani military has been pocketing a lot of our assistance and doing very little in return. So we’ve cut off some of that assistance and they are cozying up to the Chinese.
4. Go with India and contain Pakistan. India is Pakistan’s natural regional rival. We could just throw in our lot with the Indians and use them as a counterbalance to Pakistan, which in turn would become a Chinese surrogate. This kind of “offshore” balancing is much the rage these days among those who resist American intervention abroad but recognize the national security problems that motivate it. But offshore balancing in this case amounts to putting our interests in the hands of New Delhi–does that sound wise? And it might do nothing to prevent nuclear war or nuclear terrorism, and certainly nothing to prevent Pakistan from destabilizing Afghanistan, which are our main concerns.
5. Go regional. Rather than splitting Asia between American and Chinese spheres of influence, we could try to promote the kind of regional cooperation that has proved so effective in Europe and Latin America. Freer trade and investment would eventually lead India and Pakistan to have a bigger stake in peace and stability that they would maintain themselves. But at best this is a long-term bet, not one that produces results in the next year or two, or even five or ten.
Having trouble choosing your preferred option? That’s what I said: the damndest problem.
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Does recognition make a difference?
The United States today joined 32 other countries at what is being called a “contact group” meeting in Istanbul in recognizing the National Transitional Council (NTC) as the “legitimate governing authority” in Libya. What difference will that make?
Obviously it is a big psychological boost to the NTC, but the real difference is money. If the UN and U.S. lawyers can figure out how to unfreeze Libyan assets (more than $30 billion in the U.S. alone) and move even a fraction of them to Benghazi, the NTC would have all the financial resources required not only to defeat Gaddafi but also to govern the country far more effectively than he ever did. Of course what they actually do with the money is another question, but they aren’t going to be able to do a whole lot without some of it.
The devil, as always, is in the details, not only the lawyerly ones. Secretary of State Clinton’s statement was importantly nuanced:
…I am announcing today that, until an interim authority is in place, the United States will recognize the NTC as the legitimate governing authority for Libya, and we will deal with it on that basis.
Behind the quiet reference to an interim authority lies concern that the NTC is not fully representative. How could it be? Tripoli is still under Gaddafi’s control, so the Tripoli representatives on the current NTC are people who have left the capital with their families and gone to Benghazi. As the rebels succeed in “liberating” territory, Washington expects them to expand the NTC and eventually to reformulate it entirely as an “interim authority,” including representatives from throughout Libya. This is consistent with the NTC’s own declared intention not to become the government of Libya (and with its reported pledge that its members will not seek future offices, but no one seems to take that entirely seriously).
Precisely how this and other important steps–like writing a constitution–will be done, is unclear, even if two well-informed Libyan Americans tried to explicate it yesterday. What is clear to me is that Libyans are not going to accept a hastily drafted constitution prepared by 15 experts behind closed doors without extensive public discussion and debate. Have a look at this NDI report from early May: the people who have agitated and organized themselves so quickly and well are unlikely to swallow someone else’s handiwork without getting their fingerprints on it.
Yes, recognition as a legitimate governing authority by the people who are sitting on a lot of your money makes a difference. But Libya still has a long way to go before it has a government whose legitimacy is not based on the use of force, but rather one whose use of force is legitimate. It is the Libyan people’s recognition that will make the really big difference, when the time comes.
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