Tag: United States
A charm of powerful trouble
That’s Shakespeare’s description of the witches’ brew in Macbeth, but it seems apt for what may be brewing in parts of the Arab world these days. Today’s big demonstrations in Egypt aiming to spook President Mubarak and derail his effort to give the presidency to his son follow closely on yesterday’s naming of a Lebanese prime minister (albeit a wealthy, Sunni one) by Hizbollah. We need hardly mention the uprising in Tunisia, whose outcome is still in doubt despite (or maybe because of) the vows of the army chief to defend the popular will. And the pot may still boil over in Algeria or Libya.
To me, there is nothing surprising about people discovering the will to rebel and overthrow oppressive or unrepresentative political systems, however difficult to predict it may be.
What is interesting to watch is the differentiated reaction to events in the West. How is what’s happening in Lebanon less democratic than what’s happening in Tunisia? You’d think from Washington’s reaction that the devil himself had ceased power in Beirut, when all that has happened is naming of a government that can gain a majority in parliament. Hizbollah is not a legitimate democratic political party, since it runs its own army and terrorist cells as well as social services. But does anyone doubt it would be successful politically in Lebanon even without its military dimension?
Washington’s enthusiasm for popular revolt in Tunisia, which otherwise doesn’t count for much in the West, is palpable. We rarely send an Assistant Secretary of State off to ensure free and fair elections in the aftermath of a popular revolt. You’d think we hadn’t spent several decades helping former President Ben Ali avoid the popular will. But I guess there is little else you can do when your man has fled the country. I do hope however that we are keeping an eye on the army chief and trying to ensure that he protects, rather than expropriates, the popular will.
Egypt is a different case altogether. You can watch one tidbit that demonstrates considerable police discipline, and somewhat less than complete determination on the demonstrator side, here:
The blogotwittersphere may be enthusiastic, and critical of Al Jazeera for downplaying today’s events. But official Washington is not going to welcome in Egypt anything like what happened in Tunisia. I do hope however that President Obama will find the gumption to tell President Mubarak that the legitimacy of the succession depends in large part on how open and fair the process is. How it is handled will determine more than anything else whether the result is “Like a hell-broth boil and bubble,” or something more like a democratic opening in the Arab world.
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Adult supervision needed
The New York Times reports that President Karzai has agreed to convene Parliament Wednesday, after making a genuine mess of things by trying to get changes made in the results of last September’s elections. Somehow I have a feeling we have not heard the last of this story, but even thus far it tells us something about Afghanistan.
The President had good reason to be unhappy with the outcome of the September parliamentary elections: due to insecurity in the parts of the country where they live, Pashtuns are underrepresented, especially in Ghazni province, and some of his favorites did not get in. The last parliament had become increasingly aggressive in questioning ministers, claiming it had ultimate responsibility for constitutional interpretation, and in general exercising some oversight of the executive branch. This is not fun for any president, especially one who lacks a strong power base of his own and is fighting a counter-insurgency war with allies he regards as fickle while he tries to negotiate a political settlement with the enemy. A little support in parliament would be nice.
What Karzai tried to do was use a panel of judges he appointed expressly for the purpose to outflank the internationally supported electoral commissions that were supposed to have final say on the election results. Normally I might cheer a president who is feisty enough to tell the internationals where to go, but that would not have been the appropriate reaction in this instance. It is hard always to credit the rule of law arguments (“integrity of the electoral process” and all that) my colleagues make, but every once in a while something is so blatantly abusive that we should, if only because the Afghans who did vote are entitled to the parliament they voted for.
So what does this story tell us about Afghanistan? It tells us that the international intervention there needs to maintain its vigilance and act when necessary to counterbalance abuses.
But it also tells us that the Afghans have their own balancing mechanisms–President Karzai apparently backed down after a very long lunch with the people elected to the new parliament, who had been threatening to open their session without him. Maybe, just maybe, the adult supervision that is needed can come in the future a bit more from Afghans than from the foreigners.
We’ve got our own politicians to keep on the straight and narrow. As well as an ex-spy and his friends to rein in.
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Darkest hour before dawn, or just a flop?
Laura Rozen reports in detail on the failure to make progress on nuclear issues in the P5+1 talks with Iran in Istanbul. The press will no doubt say this is a flop.
I certainly wouldn’t argue it is success, but note the absence of more threatened sanctions, the “open door” to further, unscheduled discussions, and the updated fuel swap proposal left on the table for the Iranians to take back to Tehran. This smells to me like the beginning of a negotiation, not the end of one, at least on the P5 end.
The sticking point seems to be recognition of Iran’s “right” to enrich uranium. This is a complicated legal issue that I won’t pretend to elucidate. Suffice it to say that I don’t know of any country that has given up enrichment technology once it has acquired it, even if it may have stopped enrichment or limited its extent. We may not worry anymore about Brazil or Japan acquiring nuclear weapons, but it is not because they have given up their enrichment technology.
Iran won’t either–that is quite clear. The P5+1 are trying to finesse this issue with the avowedly pragmatic swap agreement, which would remove stocks of enriched uranium from Iran and limit the extent of enrichment. But the Iranians are wanting an acknowledgment of their “right” to enrich even as they give up the enriched material. This doesn’t strike me as an insoluble problem–and it has appeared in the recent past that Hillary Clinton was flexible on the issue.
That said, the P5+1 will want to be certain that Iran has seriously abandoned its nuclear weapons program before agreeing, either explicitly or implicitly, to Iran’s continuing to enrich. That would require more intrusive inspections and a more serious statement by Tehran of its commitment. Other countries have moved in this direction–Argentina, Brazil, Libya and South Africa are not such bad analogues.
It is impossible to be hopeful that Tehran will go in their direction. Two factors weigh heavily in the direction of keeping the Iranian nuclear weapons option open: a fragmented but nationalist political leadership that makes it difficult for any one component to compromise without being sharply criticized by others; real regional incentives to gain the power and prestige that some think would accrue to Iran as a nuclear weapons state, or even as a potential nuclear weapon state.
Tehran also had reason to be belligerent and recalcitrant during this particular meeting. The murders of its nuclear scientists, the apparently successful Stuxnet attack on its centrifuges, and Israel’s apparent assessment that Iran would not be able to get nuclear weapons until 2015 have combined to lessen the likelihood of a military attack.
That said I doubt this is the end of the negotiations. Too much is at stake for Iran, Israel and the P5. Before reaching any solid conclusion, let’s wait for Acting Foreign Minister Salehi’s reaction to what the Iranian delegation brings back from Istanbul.
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Hu is the better alternative
Michael J. Green in the National Interest has an excellent piece on communique diplomacy with China, but it leaves open the difficult question of the longer-term relationship between Washington and Beijing. While this question is being asked at Brookings and elsewhere, answers seem to be lacking. Clean energy technologies are far too weak a reed to support a long-term U.S./China relationship. While some argue that what is needed is to implement what has already been agreed, that too seems a formula less robust than what is needed.
The basic problem lies in diverging values. This is not just a matter of human rights, but it is also a matter of human rights. First ducking the question and then sounding forthcoming yesterday, President Hu Jintao said China “recognizes and also respects the universality of human rights” and acknowledged that “a lot still needs to be done in China in terms of human rights.” This answer that will cause Hu more trouble in Beijing than in Washington. But expert analysts are having a hard time interpreting what it means, and even whether it is boiler plate or something new. And for the Chinese, human rights include economic and social rights, not just political ones. Where we hear “freedom of expression” they may mean “right to health.”
My own inclination, but I admit it is not a particularly well-informed one, is to think that yesterday’s visit did open some possibilities for improved longer-term relations with China, if only because the two leaders seemed on the same wavelength and free to express their agreements and disagreements clearly and comfortably. Above all, they seemed to agree that the kinds of misunderstandings that plagued the bilateral relationship in 2010 should not be repeated in 2011 and beyond. Tone matters in diplomacy, especially with the Chinese, and yesterday’s tones were harmonious (an important value in Beijing).
The tone of mutual respect hides however a fundamental asymetry. Hu Jintao is the leader of a one-party system. President Obama is not everyone’s favorite in the U.S.–I am getting a lot of Tea Party tweets these days about defeating him at the next elections–but precisely because he won office in a tough political competition he has a kind of democratic legitimacy that Hu Jintao lacks. In fact, democracy of the sort we would recognize as such is still a great threat in China, because it calls into question the Communist Party’s monopoly on political power.
What difference does this make? A great deal, it seems to me. The Chinese are feeling their cheerios: the past decade of rapid economic growth, financial success and infrastructure modernization has given even the man in the Shanghai street the sense that nothing can stop an inevitable rise, one in which competition and potentially conflict with the U.S. is regarded as likely. Chinese nationalism is a serious and rising threat to good relations with the U.S., since it sees the U.S. as hegemonic, or at least as trying to hem in China’s growing power.
There is the irony: Hu Jintao, weak though he is in the panoply of Chinese leaders and lacking though he may be in real democratic legitimacy, is a bulwark (or at least a facade) of sorts against vigorous expressions of Chinese nationalism, which seem to be all the rage these days, especially in the military. So the Americans are once again caught in a situation where the democratic alternative, more nationalistic than the Hu Jintao we witnessed yesterday, would be a lot more difficult to deal with than the less democratic reality.
But China’s one-party system will not persist forever. There will be enormous risk to U.S. interests once that system starts to transition to something more obliged to reflect Chinese nationalism. The kind of cautious, low-key and mutually sensitive approach on display between the two presidents yesterday will not satisfy human rights hawks in the U.S. or Chinese nationalists, but it certainly sets a reasonable tone for the difficult challenges ahead.
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What would MLK say?
The rash of suicides and attempted suicides associated with popular rebellions in Tunisia, Algeria and now Egypt naturally raises the question, on Martin Luther King Day: is suicide a useful, effective or legitimate tactic against autocratic regimes?
Let’s admit right off that in one sense it is useful: self immolation attracts a lot of attention today, as it did decades ago during the Vietnam war. The press seems barely able to get its fill of such stories, and if there are photographs in addition you can be sure they will run on the front page in the West. Self immolation is treated as the ultimate testimonial to how desperate people are. I suppose that makes it effective as well. These protests are largely indigenous, but you can be sure that Western attention to them will still be an important factor in how the Arab regimes react. And what are you going to do to someone who has already doused himself in gasoline and tried to light it afire?
I am not a King scholar, and the day is not long enough yet for me to have checked out his writings carefully on this subject. But I grew up with MLK’s words ringing in my ears from well before attending the March on Washington in 1963. This was a man whose opposition to violence and respect for human life would not permit him to support suicide of any type to prove a point. Yes, he expected himself and his supporters to run gigantic risks and to suffer brutality at the hands of police and thugs. But this was to bear witness, to confront oppression with human dignity, not to get killed.
This is an important message just now, as the demonstrations in several countries seem to be deteriorating into street brawls and looting. If something good is to come of the sacrifices people are making, nonviolence and dignity–including respect for property–are vital. If the regimes can credibly call the demonstrators criminals, decent people will hesitate to join them and the security forces will feel free to crack down.
Nonviolence for Martin Luther King was a moral as well as a practical imperative. It was a high calling, one that really did appear to give his movement divine blessings, as it did Gandhi’s. But not everyone can adhere to that calling. I admit to having seen things in this world that merit a violent response. The trouble is that violence, even violence against oneself, begets more violence. What the demonstrations need now is MLK’s recipe of nonviolence and respect for human dignity. The demonstrators should not be attacking the security forces but inviting the security forces to their side, as they did in the days leading up to President Ben Ali’s flight. Self immolation will not be effective in that sense.
I have just returned this morning from Baghdad. I can only wonder what might have happened there had demonstrations of the sort now seen in North Africa broken out against Saddam Hussein. It would have been bloody and nasty, but could it have been as bloody and nasty as these last eight years? I played a role in advocating the support for the Serbian opposition that brought down Slobodan Milosevic just a few years before the American invasion of Iraq. There is no question but that Serbia is better off for having dealt with its own autocracy by largely nonviolent means.
That is what I might wish for our North African friends on Martin Luther King day: disciplined nonviolence and respect for human dignity have the best chance of winning the day and bringing about regimes that in turn will respect human dignity and not use violence against their own people.
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Bosnia still needs the U.S. as well as Europe
International Crisis Group, in a piece published today, urges a kind of unilateral coup by the EU to take over the lead international role in Bosnia:
European Union (EU) member states should make 2011 the year when the lead international role in Bosnia and Herzegovina shifts from the Office of the High Representative (OHR) to a reinforced EU delegation.
With scarce reference to coordinating with the United States or its future role, ICG claims Bosnia and Herzegovina has outgrown the OHR, the arbiter of Dayton agreement implementation, and will do just fine if current conditions for its abolition are dropped or finessed and the weight of the international community’s intervention is shifted to the question of EU membership, with no executive authority for the EU representative. Somehow conditions for EU membership will be much more effective, international community credibility in imposing conditions will not be reduced just because the last set is being ignored, and OHR can be left to tidy up its unfinished business and wither away.
I confess a serious temptation to support wholeheartedly ICG’s bold proposition. The Washington has too many issues on its shrinking plate today–getting rid of a few leftovers from the 1990s would be most welcome. Bosnia was never a vital U.S. interest. President Clinton’s intervention there in the 1995 was precipitated by an accumulation of secondary interests, combined with Senator Dole’s sharp criticism of the Administration for not intervening as it promised it would during the previous electoral campaign. Today, Bosnia lies way down the list of priorities. As a taxpayer, I would count Europe taking over as a big plus.
The trouble is that I doubt Europe can do it with anything like the forcefulness and clarity required, and nothing in the ICG report convinces me otherwise. The ICG report simply ignores Milorad Dodik’s many threats to take Republika Srpska (RS) in the direction of independence, as if they are not to be taken seriously (unless they present themselves in military guise, at which point the report seems confident the U.S. will join Turkey and the EU in preventing it from happening). The report treats the RS’s many acts of defiance as rightful and all attempts by the international community to block or blunt them, except the most discreet, as arbitrary, mistaken or unjustified. It is hard to imagine how the report would be much different if it had been written in Banja Luka, where RS’s masters call the tune.
The sad fact is that Europe and the U.S. need to act in close concert in Bosnia, where Europe’s voice is still weak and divided and the American voice is heard more loudly and clearly. A quick visit to Mostar, where the EU has achieved little since 1993, and to Brcko, where the U.S. has led a real effort at reintegration, would show what difference it makes.
My own worst fear is that Europe, left to its own confused devices, will begin to de facto negotiate EU membership separately with the RS, which will happily volunteer to implement the acquis communitaire without any help from Sarajevo. Already European ministers regularly call on Milorad Dodik in Banja Luka as if he is leading an independent state, something the Americans have generally tried to avoid. If Dodik can prevent formation of a government in Sarajevo for a few more months, as he likely can given his showing in the last election, he’ll be in a position to leave Sarajevo in the figurative dust when it comes to implementing European requirements.
I would not protest a well-coordinated move to shift more weight to a truly amped up EU Delegation, but that should include a plan for meeting the conditions for closure of the OHR (the ICG description of the current state of play on these makes interesting reading) as well as for strong American participation in the European effort. There is nothing unusual about this. The head of the International Civilian Office, who is also the EU representative in Kosovo, has a strong American deputy, and Americans have participated in many EU missions, starting to my knowledge with the European customs mission in Bosnia right after the war.
No effort that simply drops the Americans from the picture, or ignores the local political context as much as ICG’s does, will succeed. Bosnia still needs the U.S. as well as Europe.
NOTE TO THE PRESS: please cite www.peacefare.net when quoting or reproducing this piece in any language.
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