Tag: United States
You make peace with your enemies
News of Hamas/Fatah rapproachement–that’s diplomatese for kissing and making up–has agitated Israel and the United States, which found it more convenient to deal with divided Palestinians and pursue peace only with the Palestinian Authority, which controls the West Bank. Washington and Tel Aviv say Hamas, which controls Gaza, is a terrorist organization that targets Israeli civilians and is therefore not a legitimate negotiating partner.
This is odd. You make peace with your enemies. Israel is well within its rights to defend against Hamas and otherr attacks, including by attacking Gaza (as it has repeatedly). But to refuse to negotiate with the people doing the most harm condemns Israel to perpetual war. And to expect the Palestinians to remain divided so that Israel can deal with the ones it likes and not with the ones it doesn’t like is unrealistic.
The vital question is whether there is any hope for peace with Hamas. Opinions differ on this important issue. A former head of the Mossad and national security advisor to Ariel Sharon suggests it is worth a try. Three years ago most Israelis agreed. Many others say no. Hamas says peace talks with Israel are not on the agenda of the interim government it is to form with Fatah in preparation for Palestinian elections.
So Israel and the United States have something like eight months to think about this issue. Unfortunately, Israel will do so with a government that seems not to want peace on terms that are even remotely acceptable to the Palestinians. We’ll hear more about this side of things directly from Prime Minister Netanyahu when he addresses the U.S. Congress next month. The Americans have had little luck with the so-called Middle East peace process so far. Will they, and the Israelis, be prepared to talk with a new, post-election Palestinian Authority that will likely include Hamas participation in some form? And will Hamas be prepared to talk with Israel and the United States?
The flux in the Arab world makes it really very difficult to imagine the conditions under which such decisions will be made eight months hence. Let’s hope they improve the likelihood of a serious peace process.
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Preventing political violence
My problem with the second of my lunch time events yesterday at Brookings, “Defusing the Bomb: Reversing the Process of Radicalization and Preventing Political Violence,” was not so much what was said but the need to continue saying it. The study, undertaken for the Qatar International Academy for Security Studies by the Soufan Group (as in Ali Soufan, formerly of the FBI), looked at strategic counter-terrorism approaches in France, Indonesia, Northern Ireland, Singapore and Great Britain.
While none of the programs “had systematic ‘outcome’ data that could be used to evaluate them,” the takeaway was clear enough: comprehensive (psychological, social, religious) community-based approaches that rely on former militants work better than law enforcement alone, especially if the law enforcement is not of the community policing variety. The French approach was the exemplar in this study.
Why? Because it is not really about theology or ideology. Recruitment is about identity and relies for its effectiveness on finding (mostly) young people who feel stereotyped, marginalized, misunderstood and unfairly stigmatized. Countering this requires offering a new narrative that enables people to re-engage their critical thinking skills and disengage from a narrative that they have found highly compelling in the past.
The process of recruitment is similar to recruitment into gangs in the U.S.–no one yesterday was parepared to say exactly how it differs. Of course we have largely failed to prevent gang recruitment, and the prospects for preventing radicalization don’t seem much better, at least in the U.S. Singapore has powers to detain and treat that don’t exist here, and it is difficult, especially at the local level, for the U.S. to mobilize the kind of comprehensive approach that even the UK and Indonesia are able to mount. Particularly notable in Indonesia is the individual and respectful treatment of detainees, which the Indonesians believe elicits more and more reliable intelligence information.
That said, it seems to me more than time that we start to do what Soufan Group, Quilliam Foundation and others suggest: engage in a comprehensive way, preferably using at least in part former radicals, with people and communities for whom political violence is a way of asserting identity with a bang. This will not be easy either at home or abroad, but it is what is needed to reduce a threat against which military force has proven ineffective and law enforcement is essential but not sufficient.
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America the exceptional
Lunch today was another double header, but a somewhat disappointing one. The Center for American Progress event on American exceptionalism and the Brookings event on preventing political violence were solid reminders that American analysts do not always get it right.
At CAP, the issue was not so much whether America is exceptional–Bruce Jentleson, Robert Kagan and Nina Hachigian agreed it is–but what that should mean in today’s world. Jentleson was at pains to emphasize that American exceptionalism should not be an anesthetic, as he implied the Republicans use it, but a stimulant. We need less boasting (an “end to arrogance”) and more “besting,” that is less glorification of the past and more effort to compete in a more multipolar context.
Kagan, in the strangest statement of the event, said America is the only country whose nationalism is based only on ideology–in particular the ideology of the Declaration of Independence. That may be true in the Foreign Service I served in, but not in a country where birthers question where the president was born and patriots fly the Confederate flag. The question, he suggested, was not so much whether America is exceptional but whether it wants to continue to play the central role in the world order that we took on after World War II.
Hachigian, whose unflagging optimism is on good display in the book she wrote with Mona Sutphen, also asserted that America is exceptional geographically, economically and in the realm of ideas, but it is not infallible. It has to find new ways to lead, getting others to take on more responsibility and divising ways in which rivalry can lead to positive sum outcomes.
The panel gave the Obama administration a B in its efforts to find a new form of American exceptionalism, under the slogan “winning the future.” Jentleson thought the aspirations to get cooperation from others have been often disappointed, and that Washington is still not listening to others enough. Kagan thought it a big challenge to get cooperation in a period in which we are returning to greater nationalism and interstate conflict. Hachigian gave the Adminiistration credit for learning as they go.
Why was I disappointed in all this? I confess I left early and maybe it got better. I personally am strongly attached to the ideals of the Declaration of Independence, but I don’t really think America is in any absolute sense exceptional. We need to remember that the document was written by a slave owner who didn’t even free his mistress on his death. We are imperfect practitioners of our fabulous ideals.
And sometimes other people are practitioners of them. Kagan was comfortable asserting that nothing in the world really happens without us. I think he must be living in a universe different from mine. The only Arab rebellion going really badly at the moment is the one we are engaged in.
The fact is that much of the world is adopting our ideals and even practicing them. And other parts of the world are doing well without adopting American ideals. We are in relative economic, political and likely military decline. Our geographic advantages mean less than they did 200 years ago, and our cultural and educational supremacy is long gone, if it ever existed. No presidential candidate can talk that way, but any president will have to deal with the consequences, which have broad policy and budgetary implications. More on that when I get to the Defense Department budget, hopefully tomorrow.
Read the next piece up for my second lunchtime event on preventing political violence.
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Embracing Solomon’s baby
As the Americans prepare to leave Iraq, most of the journalistic focus–insofar as it exists at all–is on the security situation there, which is far from completely calm. But that is not what most people who know Iraq well are most concerned about. They worry mainly about Kurdish-Arab disputes, which take many forms: quarrels about distribution of oil revenue, the authority of Baghdad’s government and courts, the degree of Kurdish control over oil development and the extent of the territory under the control of the Kurdistan Regional Government, a sub-national entity with a wide degree of autonomy. It is all inter-connected. Whichever one you start with, you’ll end up discussing the others in due course.
Sean Kane at the United States Institute of Peace has chosen to take up Iraq’s “disputed territories,” arguably the toughest of the Arab-Kurdish issues, first. In a long and detailed disquisition, he demonstrates assiduously that quite a few of the territorial disputes are resolvable on the basis of voting patterns since 2005 as well as historical/cultural antecedents. The report will be presented and discussed at a webcast event this morning featuring also Emma Sky and Joost Hiltermann. One unusual feature of the report is the posting online of several Iraqi reactions to it. They make interesting reading.
Having disposed of some of the “easier” problems, Sean comes to the difficult core issue: Solomon’s baby in this context is Kirkuk, which is the object of Arab, Kurdish and Turkomen ambitions that appear irreconcilable. Here he proposes that either the entire province be given a “special” status (allowed under the Iraqi constitution) and shared between Erbil and Baghdad, or that much of the province be divided between the two and only Kirkuk City become a “common” city. These solutions bear a distinct resemblance to the so far successful effort to share the town and county (opstina) of Brcko in Bosnia between the two constituent entities of the Bosnian state. In practice, this has meant a special status now recognized in the Bosnian constitution. Something like this for either all of Kirkuk province or the town of Kirkuk would allow both sides to claim victory and neither to enjoy all of the spoils. In due course, the solution might be ratified, along with mutually agreed divisions of territory, in a referendum provided for in the Iraqi constitution.
All of this is eminently reasonable and notably helpful. Where things get more problematic is in drawing conclusions for American policy. There is the great temptation to condition American security assistance to the Kurds and Arabs on their respective good behavior with regard to their dispute. On some level, this will surely be the case: the United States will not want its materiel deployed in an intra-Iraqi dispute and will likely tie some strings to the relevant agreements to try to prevent that from happening. But it would be hard for the U.S. to yank its training of the Iraqi army, navy or air force in response to developments between Erbil and Baghdad. Washington sees that training–and the ample armament that goes with it–as vital to Iraq’s regional role, especially vis-a-vis Tehran. Washington is not going to cut off its nose to spite its face, or throw Baghdad into Tehran’s arms.
More promising is the positive incentive approach Emma Sky says has been used in the past to encourage peshmerga integration. She has proposed in the same paper (also published by USIP) conflict resolution, management and prevention mechanisms that merit more attention than they have so far gotten. As Emma knows better than most civilians, wishful thinking is not a plan.
But that does not mean the internationals necessarily need to keep their hands on this problem either–it could be that leaving the Kurds and Arabs to manage it themselves is not only feasible but preferable. What I haven’t seen is a careful, independent assessment of the different options. The U.S., UN and Iraqis need to get their heads together sooner rather than later on how to handle Arab-Kurdish disputes, especially as resistance to a continuing U.S. troop presence after the end of this year seems to be strengthening.
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Syrians need even more courage
AJ English is doing what it can to cover events in Syria from nonprofessional footage, as journalists have been kept out:
Brian Whitaker, whose al-bab.com is one of the best blogs covering the Arab world, is being widely cited today for saying about Syria:
For the regime, the only tool left now is repression, and in the long run that will seal its fate. The question is how long.
Of course in the long run we are all dead, but I wish I shared his confidence that repression will not succeed. One need only recall popular rebellions that did not succeed in Burma, Thailand, Belarus, Venezuela and elsewhere to be reminded that autocratic regimes sometimes do manage to repress their opponents. The outcome in Syria is not yet obvious to me, much as I might wish Whitaker correct.
As President Obama has suggested, Bashar al Assad is being egged on and assisted by Tehran, which will regard the Syrian repression as a quid pro quo for Saudi intervention in Bahrain. This is cynical and ugly, but sometimes cynical and ugly succeeds. As Babak Rahimi says in a piece for the Jamestown Foundation yesterday:
If successful in its reaction to the events in Syria, Tehran will be able to reinforce its national interests and expand its reach in the region. If Syria is unsuccessful in subduing its revolt and goes the route of Egypt, then Iran will lose a major strategic ally and access to Hezbollah in Lebanon, which could have a major impact on Iran’s position in the Middle East.
If Babak is correct, and I think he is, it is puzzling that the Americans have waited so long to express their displeasure with the repression in Syria.
Of course it may well be that the demonstrators are better off without overt American assistance, which the regime would no doubt use to tar them as foreign stooges. But that label for the moment seems more appropriate for Bashar al Assad, who is clearly getting Iranian encouragement and support.
The Syrian demonstrations yesterday were widespread, but not overwhelming in numbers, and the regime showed little hesitation in mowing down its opponents, killing upwards of 75. That however is a smallish number in the history of repression in Syria. Bashar is trying desperately to prevent Damascus from erupting. It is not pre-ordained that he will fail–a lot of people in Damascus owe their jobs to the regime, which has husbanded the spoils less greedily than Gaddafi in Libya.
Syrians still need to decide how much they want change, and how much change they want. No one should presume to tell its citizens that they have to risk their lives. That is for them to decide, I hope in numbers so large that the outcome Whitaker predicts will come sooner rather than later.
PS: Courage does not appear to be lacking. This crowd chanting “the people want to topple the regime” is in Zabadani, near the Lebanese border, tonight:
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Not so Good Friday
I had originally said it was best in Syria, but as the news of dozens of deaths at the hands of security forces comes out that would be wrong. The demonstrations were not massive (thousands rather than hundreds of thousands) but widespread. Wissam Tarif circulated this from Zabadani, a Damascus Suburb, with demonstrators chanting “people want to topple the regime”:
President Bashar al Assad seems unlikely to fall right away, but the protests have already gone farther in Syria than many people anticipated. As I noted originally, what they lack still is mass–they are too small for safety, which of course discourages more people from joining them. The security forces have already killed a dozen or more today. PS (note added at noon): it looks like at least two dozen now. PPS (note added at 3:30 pm): it looks like more.
In Yemen, President Saleh is still playing rope-a-dope, seeming to accept proposals for transition while imposing conditions he knows the opposition won’t accept. The GCC is proving ineffective in mediating, but there is no surprise in that. But the demonstrations today are big in both Sanaa and Taiz.
Today’s big news in Libya is the American introduction of Predator drones into the fight, a unique capability some believe will make a difference by enabling more precise targeting in built-up areas. I do hope it will work, but Admiral Mullen is talking stalemate. Jeffrey White at the Washington Institute argues well that stalemate favors Gaddafi. NATO needs to end this war successfully, and soon.
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