Category: US foreign policy

State Dept spin on Annapolis: Other possible scenarios?

The very well-informed Boston University expert on Lebanon and the Middle East, Dick Norton, had a great catch on his “Speaking Truth to Power” blog yesterday: the text of the internal “Talking Points” (= spin) that the US State Dept HQ has been sending out to diplomats and consular officials around the world, regarding the imminent Annapolis meeting.
This spin-sheet is fascinating inasmuch as it can be understood as expressing a great deal of Condi Rice’s current actual hopes and planning for the Annapolis and post-Annapolis “process”.
However, though Condi and her boss might think they can control the whole of this process, I judge that it may well get beyond their control.
Back at the time of the last launch of a serious Israeli-Arab peacemaking process, in Madrid in 1991, the US stood at the height of its global power. The USSR was in the midst of long, four-year collapse into its constituent parts. The US was the Uberpower that had “won” the Cold war– and throughout the rest of the 1990s, it was able to control every aspect of the Israeli-Arab peacemaking diplomacy. (Which, guess what, got nowhere, while Israel continued implanting hundreds of thousands of additional settlers into the West Bank.)
But 2007 ain’t 1991. The US’s power position in the world has eroded considerably since then. As has– especially after summer 2006– the strategic utility of the military dominance that Israel continues to exercise over the whole of the Mashreq (Near East.)
In 1991, the Bush-Baker team at Madrid had the USSR sitting there as some kind of co-hosts. But really, that was a nearly wholly symbolic gesture. Two years later the USSR collapsed completely.
This year, the US has the other three members of the “Quartet” along in some kind of possibly co-hosting capacity. That’s Russia, the EU, and the UN. (The UN’s stance as “junior partner” to Washington in this peacemaking is highly anomalous and, I would say, not sustainable for very much longer.) We should not imagine that these three “partners” will all continue to be happy just to be Condi’s arm candy for very much longer. Matters for all parties, throughout the Middle East are far too serious for that; and the need to proactively pursue this chance for speedy final resolution of all the remaining strands of the Israeli-Arab conflict is correspondingly pressing.
I shall write more on this broader aspect of Annapolis in the days ahead. But for now, let’s look at the main dimensions of the spin that Dick Norton has caught for our edification:
Immediate comments on this:

    1. No mention at all of the Syrian track. The whole of this spin-sheet is about the Israeli-Palestinian track. Note this weaselly clause, in partcular:

      Regional support is key to success and essential for a comprehensive Middle East peace. The international meeting in Annapolis is aimed to support an ongoing process and rally international support for the efforts of the Palestinians and the Israelis.

    This is bad news for the Syrians, of course, who have for a long time been eager to resume and complete their long-stalled negotiations with Israel. But it is also bad news for everyone else. A US/Israeli peace effort that seeks mainly to split the Palestinians off from the Syrians and play one against the other is a recipe for failure on all tracks. A successful Israeli-Syrian agreement, reached in parallel with a successful Palestinian-Israeli agreement, would also bring in its train a rapid Israeli-Lebanese peace– and Israel would then be at peace with all its neighbors!
    Imagine that! That was the vision held up at Madrid, and it is still the most compelling, and most viable, vision that we can hold up today.
    2. No mention by name of the President. In the section on “U.S. commitment,” the spin-sheet refers only to actions undertaken by Rice. The US stance would be a lot more convincing if the Pres had committed his full power to this process. How can we be assured that that Dick Cheney is not still busy machinating hard against it behind the scenes?
    3. Ignorance and boilerplate vagueness. Okay, I know it was the Thanksgiving Day weekend and probably lots of people in Condi’s spin-shop were not in the office… But look at this little sub-clause: “the stablishment [sic] of a Palestinian state for the first time in many years.” How sloppy! Folks: There has never been a Palestinian state yet!
    Also, look at this, for vagueness: “Much has been said over a long period of time about critical issues like border, refugees and Jerusalem.” Yes? And what kind of conclusion does the US think these discussions ought to come to? How about some recognition that a lot of fine preliminary work has been done on all these issues in the years since 1991, so with good will and determination they should not be too hard to resolve?
    I should note, though, that both the global and regional balances have undergone significant, though still limited, shifts since the time the Geneva and Nusseibeh-Ayalon formulas emerged back in 2003, so the US and Israel will no longer be so able to defend the interests of the Israeli settlers as they were back then. That is, a politically sustainable outcome reached in 2007-2008 would probably be closer to the “international law” position and the Green Line than Geneva or Nusseibeh-Ayalon were…

Anyway, my bottom line on “Annapolis” today: Let’s wait and see whether it really develops into a worldwide effort to get the whole of the Israeli-Arab conflict resolved.
If it does, that’s good for everybody. Everybody. If it doesn’t, it will be certainly be bad for everyone concerned.

Annapolis guessing game, prospects

The current guessing game in the US and Israel is over “which of the Arab states will participate, and at which level.”
Actually, for many ardent pro-Israelis inside and outside the two governments, those questions about Arab representation are the sole focus of their concern about Annapolis, rather than, as good sense would dictate: “What is the best way to ensure that this gathering contributes to the speedy conclusion of sustainable final-status peace agreements between Israel and all their neighbors?”
There is very frequently a sort of “scalp-collecting” aspect to the way many Israelis, inside and outside of government, think about the possibility of encounters with Arab state nationals.
But anyway, the biggest questions right now about attendance at Annapolis are those over the responses of Syria and Saudi Arabia These two will be among the Arab states that are sending their foreign ministers to Cairo for an all-Arab confab tomorrow, at which many Arabs hope they will be able to find that long-sought Holy Grail, a “unified Arab position.”
AP’s Zeina Karam has a good report from Damascus today, in which she presents the evidence backing up her lead, which is “Syria is softening its refusal to attend the Annapolis peace conference and already has won dividends.”
And Al-Hayat’s Ibrahim Hamidi has an interesting report (in Arabic) in today’s paper, explaining the various strands of analysis that have been pursued by government insiders in Damascus.
People seeking a rendering of Hamidi’s article in English are strongly advised not to rely on the version presented by the usually sound young US professor Joshua Landis, who for some reason seems to have pasted in a commentary on the Hamidi report from elsewhere– most likely, the Israeli press– instead of presenting his English-language readers with the promised direct translation of it.
It is Thanksgiving here in the US, so I can only imagine that Landis just quickly used that commentary instead of working on his own translation of the piece. But the result is very inaccurate and misleading.
There is so much finegrained diplomacy going on around the question of the prospects for Annapolis that I don’t have time to assess it all here. I will just quickly note the following:

    (1) This is in many ways reminiscent of the lead-up to the Madrid Peace conference of October 31, 1991, but with some very important differences. These are that: a) Madrid was an extremely serious peace conference whose main participants were the direct parties to the Arab-Israeli conflict, not a hodge-podge of rapidly enlisted states and governments from all around the known world. b) Madrid was extremely well-prepared, through a diplomatic process that lasted seven months and included winning the prior agreement of all parties on the language of the invitation letters, etc. Annapolis is a hastily-cobbled-together Amateur Hour, by comparison. c) The Bush I administration administration showed at and after Madrid that it was prepared to explicitly link the levels of US financial and political support to Israel to Israel’s continuation of its settlement-building program in the occupied territories. No-one in Bush II has dared breathe a word of any such linkage!
    (2) As always, the Israelis seem to be primed once again to try to “play off” the Syrians against the Palestinians. During the whole of the post-Madrid diplomacy, their use of that tactic was evident. (As noted in my 2000 book on the Syrian-Israeli negotiations of those years.) The result of the Israeli tacticians being “too clever by half” in that regard was that they ended up with neither a peace agreement with Syria nor a peace agreement with Palestine in hand… Unless that was what they had aimed for all along? Well, for some of the Israeli decisionmakers in those years, it is almost indisputable that that was their aim. For others, probably not. But the settlers in East Jerusalem, the rest of the Wset Bank, and Golan all got to continue their lovely lifestyles– and expand!
    (3) It is of course extremely relevant that poor old Lebanon is currently poised on the brink of constitutional disaster. In my work on my 2000 book, I examined the question as to whether, for this Baath Party regime in Syria, their interests in Lebanon or in Golan were weightier. And I concluded that at that time, it was their Lebanon interests. This time, of course, Syria’s situation in Lebanon is very different. But as a general rule, we can say that periods of intense Israeli-Arab peace diplomacy are often accompanied by an intensification of fighting (often, foreign-power-backed fighting) inside Lebanon. Why so many Lebanese people are so happy to allow foreign powers to jerk them around in this way is a subject for more consideration, another time. It would be wonderful if this time around, all parties, both Lebanese and non-Lebanese, could at least agree that the intervention of all outsiders in Lebanon’s internal politics is a no-no, and should be ended… And yes, that should most certainly include interventions from the US, Syria, Israel, and Iran.

And now, back to revising Chapter 4 of my current book project…
(Neither Bill nor I have time to cook a turkey today. We’re having our Thanksgiving meal at restaurant. Personally, I feel I have a lot to give thanks for this year. But the performance of the US Congress leaders we all helped elect a year ago is sadly nowhere near the top of that list.)

Washington’s continued coup preparations for Pakistan

So here’s the deal: The Bush administration, which until recently has been pushing Pakistan’s Prez Musharraf very hard to “take off his uniform” and rule as a civilian, has become frustrated with his unwillingness to do that to order. So now they are moving a lot closer to trying to topple him– with a military coup.
Go figure.
A gang of three NYT reporters are currently the administration’s leakees of choice in this campaign. Is the goal to use these always-anonymous leaks to put additional pressure on Musharraf– or, to encourage their chosen successor-general to him, Gen. Ashfaq Parvez Kayani, to finally launch this posited coup against him? Hard to tell.
But not hard to tell that there is a concerted campaign of leaks on this subject to these NYT reporters, who use a three-headed byline on today’s story– “This article is by Helene Cooper, Mark Mazzetti and David Rohde.” How’s that for diluting the responsibility of the individual reporter? Just like the sleaziest practices of Time magazine, etc..
This reporting, I should note, looks a near-total reprise of some of Judith Miller’s wildest days of anonymous Cheney-channeling over there at the NYT.
The story leads thus:

    Almost two weeks into Pakistan’s political crisis, Bush administration officials are losing faith that the Pakistani president, Gen. Pervez Musharraf, can survive in office and have begun discussing what might come next, according to senior administration officials…

A few grafs down, we are told that:

    More than a dozen officials in Washington and Islamabad from a number of countries spoke on condition of anonymity because of the fragility of Pakistan’s current political situation.

Not a single administration source is named in the whole piece. Do I need to repeat that?
Then, there is the question of whether this tricephalous reportorial unit has its own “point of view” regarding the complex political judgments that their piece purports to “report”. The NYT has a separate category of articles that, though they appear on the “news” pages also contain the authors’ analytical judgments. Those pieces are clearly titled “News Analysis.” This piece is not titled thus. Therefore, it is supposed to contain only reporting. (And good, thorough, reporting, too; which this piece notably does not.)
Buried one-third way down in the piece we have this:

    the State Department and the Pentagon now say they recognize that the Pakistani Army remains a powerful force for stability in Pakistan, and that there is little prospect of an Islamic takeover if General Musharraf should fall.

Note that verb “recognize”. It is one of those supposedly “reportorial” verbs that also carries the author’s own judgment about the truth-value of the judgment being reported: namely, that it is a correct judgment. Good neutral ways to convey the same bit of reporting would be to say that these official bodies “judge”, “say”, or “claim” that the Pakistani Army remains a powerful force, etc etc. Not that they “recognize” that this is the case.
Well, the unintentionally revelatory writing style of these three reporters is only a secondary aspect of this story, with its main aspect being that there evidently does seem to be an increasingly strong tendency in the Bush administration that’s urging a military coup in Pakistan.
Here is the scenario laid out by the Gang of Three, citing, presumably, some or all of their “dozen” anonymous administration sources:

    If General Musharraf is forced from power, they say, it would most likely be in a gentle push by fellow officers, who would try to install a civilian president and push for parliamentary elections to produce the next prime minister, perhaps even Ms. Bhutto, despite past strains between her and the military.
    Many Western diplomats in Islamabad said they believed that even a flawed arrangement like that one was ultimately better than an oppressive and unpopular military dictatorship under General Musharraf.
    Such a scenario would be a return to the diffuse and sometimes unwieldy democracy that Pakistan had in the 1990s before General Musharraf seized power in a bloodless coup.

So now, the game plan seems to be that, instead of pushing for a Musharraf-Bhutto two-handed power-play, they are switching to an Army-Bhutto two-handed power play, with hopes for the coup pinned, for now, on Kayani, whom they describe thus:

    General Kayani is a moderate, pro-American infantry commander who is widely seen as commanding respect within the army and, within Western circles, as a potential alternative to General Musharraf.

They do note, however, that Kayani has already been designated by Musharraf as his the man who will head the army after, as Musharraf still promises, he steps down as Chief of Staff within the coming weeks… No surprise, then, that the NYT Three describe him as a bit reluctant to move against Musharraf at this time.
What effect might the publication of this “news” report be expected to have on Kayani? H’mm. Maybe increase his reluctance?
Meanwhile, I’d like to also note that nearly all the US MSM is continuing to report the Pakistan crisis as one that, among non-Pakistani powers, involves only the US. Given Pakistan’s lengthy history of close relations with China, and it position in Southwest Asia between Afghanistan and India, this is a very myopic view of the matter, indeed.
China Hand has had another couple of good posts on her/his blog, about Pakistan. Here and here.
 Definitely always worth reading CH’s non-US-centric commentary.

UN expert on prospects for “Annapolis”

(Note: On 11/21/07 I revised the text of this post just a little, to increase the accuracy of my portrayal of the USIP event. ~HC )
Because of my continuing interest in the politics of peacemaking and conflict transformation (as I recently explored the topic a little, here), I went to a panel discussion at the US Institute of Peace yesterday on the topic of “Constructing an Effective Ceasefire.”
Now, I know that what the Palestinians and the Bushites are hoping for from the upcoming “Annapolis” meeting is something of considerably greater impact than merely a ceasefire. Indeed, the PA still avers it is insistent on tangible and monitorable progress towards the final peace agreement with Israel that is, surely, the desire of the vast majority of the people in the world. The government of Israel– consistent with many years of foot-dragging now– wants to move much slower than that.
(That foot-dragging has allowed government-subsidized Israeli colonial corporations to implant large numbers of illegal colonies inside the occupied Palestinian territories. Coincidence, or what?)
But still, even though I recognize there are differences between a ceasefire and a final peace agreement, I thought it would be good to trek along to USIP and catch up with some state of the art in negotiations theory. The theorists on hand were:

    Dr. Ranabir Samaddar, head of the Calcutta Research Group, who has completed research on three ceasefire-negotiating experiences he was earlier actively engaged in, in Sri Lanka, Nagaland, and Nepal; and
    Nita Yawanarajah, a staff member of the Policy Planning and Mediation Support Unit, at the UN’s Department of Political Affairs, described as “involved in UN negotiations and assessments of ceasefires in the Balkans and Sudan and …developing guidelines for ceasefire negotiations.”

It was a good refresher course. Particularly refreshing and illuminative for me because they focused mainly on situations well outside the Middle East and sub-Saharan Africa, the two regions I’m most familiar with.
Both took a cool, analytical look at what makes peace negotiations (in general, and not just those aiming at temporary ceasefires) effective.
Both looked dispassionately at the political components of successful peace negotiations. Samaddar noted, for example, that in government-insurgent conflicts, the governments have a strong interest in using the ceasefire to bring about the complete demilitarization of the insurgent side without opening up any of the insurgents’ grievances, while the insurgents seek strongly to use the ceasefire to get their political issues onto the table without, if possible, disarming.
Nothing new there. (Except perhaps to the people across in the US State Department who continue to parrot the Israeli line that all of Israel’s opponents need to disarm completely– at both the military and the ideological levels– before they can even be admitted to any negotiation.)
A successful negotiation would, the two panelists said, be one that laid out and won agreement to measurable, monitored steps being taken in parallel by each of the parties, so that neither would end up feeling taken advantage of by the negotiating process itself.
“But the prospects for peace are harmed if the government side insists too hard on the rebels’ demilitarization at the very beginning,” Dr. Samaddar underlined at one point. He also judged that governments frequently seem to have a self-serving and unhelpful understanding of why the rebels in any situation have accepted a ceasefire. “It is a queer understanding,” he said. “They frequently think that the rebels have agreed only because they are weak… And so instead of listening to the rebels’ grievances, the governments use the ceasefire to try to drive home a military advantage over the rebels. But that doesn’t build peace.”
But the most telling moments came when both he and Yawanarajah laid stress on the fact that, to be successful, a peace negotiation requires that both sides are experiencing a “mutually hurting stalemate.”
In question time, I asked Yawanarajah whether, in view of her analysis– which was considerably longer and more sophisticated than I’ve had time to describe here– she thought that the negotiators in “Annapolis” had “any hope in hell of success.” I mentioned, in particular, the fact that there very evidently is not a situation of a mutually hurting stalemate there. (This is a feature of the Palestine-Israel conflict that I have noted several times in recent years, including in my comments last year about Israelis sipping lattes in elegant malls in North Tel Aviv.)
Yawanarajah’s response– which she stressed she was giving in her personal capacity as an analyst and not as a UN official– was to concur with the judgment I’d expressed that they “didn’t seem to have a hope in hell” of succeeding.
H’mmm.
In her earlier presentation, she had noted that this whole question of “needing” a mutually hurting stalemate” raises thorny ethical questions. Should we, indeed, seek to impose hurt on the Israelis so that they would be hurting as much as the Palestinians? Probably not.
However, I would also note the following:

    1. To equalize the amount of “hurt” each side is suffering, we could also seek to decrease the amount of hurt being intentionally inflicted by the Israelis and the US on the Palestinians– in both Gaza and the West Bank. This route should certainly be followed. The total economic lockdown imposed on the Palestinians is anti-humanitarian and quite possibly illegal under international law; and it should be ended.
    2. The US, and much of the rest of what some people claim is an “international community”, is meanwhile actively involved in both maintaining the level of harm being inflicted on Palestinians and in providing continuing lovely benefits to Israel, through generous aid packages, trade preferences, etc etc.
    3. To cut back on those generous benefits would not involve the imposition of any real harm on the Israelis. They could still have a fairly nice lifestyle. (But oh, could the government still pay for overseas travel for Israeli seniors, and for in-home indentured labor from Third World countries for infirm Israelis? Could it continue, in sum, to give benefits to older and infirm Israelis that are far, far in excess of what the US government for its own citizens? Perhaps not…) But cutting back on the benefits that the US and other outsiders currently heap onto Israelis would perhaps signal to them that they cannot simply continue with their land-grabbing project in the occupied areas, with its concomitant harsh repression of Palestinian rights, and continue to drag their feet in peacemaking, and still be treated with generosity by the outside world.

Just a couple of suggestions there. But I do think that at the moral level, there is a significant difference between “withholding benefits” and “inflicting harm”, especially if the withholding of benefits does not result in any real harm… And meantime, the continued and intentional inflicting of harm on the Palestinians should be ended.
Finally, if anyone thinks that a party that has been actively colluding with Israel’s anti-Palestinian project for many years now could realistically be considered to have the moral authority and the neutrality required to act as lead negotiator on this issue, I would love to hear their arguments.
Go on, Condi: Persuade me!
Until now, though, I see neither morality nor realism in the “Annapolis” set-up.

Bushites and Pakistan: Strategic erosion, diplomatic own-goals

The first thing to note is that the (linked) security situations in Pakistan and Afghanistan have been getting significantly worse over the past 18 months. That is bad news– because civil strife is always bad news– first and foremost for the people of the two countries. See, for example, this report of mass arrests in Islamabad.
These situations are also a symptom of the reckless disregard with which the Bushites have viewed every single development in the world since their attention became obsessively focused on Iraq, in 2005-2006.
They are also, like the ongoing deterioration in Palestine, a symptom of the fact that the other big and emerging powers in the world either do not want to step in and stop the US from playing the blocking/disruptive role it has been playing, or they are unable to.
US strategic power everywhere in the world is eroding rapidly. The causes of this erosion are real and deepseated enough. But it is certainly only being accelerated by the Keystone Cops-ish ineptitude of the way US “diplomacy” is being handled.
Friday night, Condi Rice called Pakistani Pres. Musharraf and “warned” him against declaring martial law. The people in the State Dept. also apparently told the press Rice had done so. Musharraf , who has received more than $10 billion in US aid since 2001, swept the warning away like a minor irritant.
So who’s giving Condi and Bush advice on how to handle Washington’s diplomacy? It looks amateurish and desperate.
However, I don’t want to mock the Bushites too much. I’m a bit afraid that if they feel themselves to be in too much of a corner internationally they might take some rash and drastic action…
Meanwhile, Manan Ahmed over at Informed Comment Global Affairs gives an English-language rendering of the entire transcript of Musharraf’s epoch-making t.v. announcement– both the Urdu and the English portions of it.

1956 and all that

Last night, Bill and I hosted a fun little dinner party with some old friends (and one new one) in Washington DC. The conversation turned to 1956. Firstly, in the context of how, during the Suez crisis of that year, Pres. Eisenhower had “persuaded” Anthony Eden to back off from continuing his imperialistic aggression against Egypt by pulling the plug on Washington’s support for the pound sterling.
That, in the earlier context of our having discussed the fact that the amount of US federal debt that the People’s Bank of China now holds is almost exactly the same dollar total that the US war in Iraq has cost until now…
I interjected that I had actual memories of the British war effort. “You were only four at the time!” Bill said. But I do. We lived very near RAF Abingdon, the main base for the British paratroopers as they flew out to invade Egypt; and for nights on end I heard the very scary drone-drone-drone of aircraft taking off. Actually, I was a few weeks shy of four.
Then a little later, we were talking about the ongoing prosecutions against former AIPAC officials Steve Rosen and Keith Weissman– in which, as you can see here, the lawyers for the accused are now playing some politically intriguing hardball against current and former Bush administration officials, including Rice, Hadley, Douglas Feith, etc etc.
So that reminded me that the whole idea of AIPAC itself really dated back to 1956… To Morris Amitai deciding then, with his friends, that he wanted to build a political machine in this country that would ensure that never again would a US president be able to “dictate” the terms of a peace settlement to Israel.
I wrote a whole chapter on the US-Israeli relationship in my 1991 book The Superpowers and the Syrian-Israeli Conflict, tracking many of the themes that Walt and Mearsheimer would later expand upon including the shifting balance between the “shared values” rationale for tyhe relationship and the “strategic asset” rationale…
Anyway, 1956: an intriguing year, in many respects. And yes, I realize the US-Chinese relationship is a lot more complex, and probably at this stage symbiotic, than the US-UK relationship was in 1956.

Brzezinski on the power to control vs. power to destroy

I was (re-)reading Zbigniew Brzezinski’s recent, shortish book Second Chance: Three Presidents and the Crisis of American Superpower, actually looking for a short couple of sentences that might work as an epigraph in the new book. Brzezinski is a consummate “Realist” in terms of his view of the world. Of proudly Polish heritage, he was a strong Cold Warrior back in the day… (Including, the day when he was Pres. Jimmy Carter’s National Security Advisor.)
Well, I haven’t found the perfect epigraph-quote yet. May still happen. But I did come across one absolutely riveting quote on the utility (or otherwise) of raw military power in the present era that I want to explore more a bit later in this post. First, though, for anyone who wants to see Zbig talking about the book on the Lehrer News Hour, you can see a Youtube clip of that here.
Okay, so the quote in question is on p.215. It runs thus:

    In the past, power to control exceeded power to destroy. It took less effort and cost to govern a million people than to kill a million people.
    Today the opposite is true: power to destroy exceeds the power to control. And the means of destruction are becoming more accessible to more actors, both states and political movement. Consequently, with absolute security for a few (notably America itself) becoming only relatoive security for all, collective vulnerability puts a premium on intelligent, cooperative governance, reinforced by power that is viewed as legitimate. Global leadership must now be accompanied by a social consciousness, a readiness to compromise regarding aspects of one’s own soveriegnty, a cultural appeal with more than just hedonistic content, and a genuine respect for the diversity of human traditions and values.

Okay, well maybe the epigraph-quality quote is in there somewhere, now that I think of it. But really, it is the whole thought/argument there that I am most intrigued by– starting with his opening observation.
“In the past… [i]t took less effort and cost to govern a million people than to kill a million people. Today the opposite is true: power to destroy exceeds the power to control.” That is a very important– and, I believe, true– observation. But then, there are two directions you can take an argument based on it. He takes the argument primarily in the direction of noting how easy it has become for groups/organizations– non-state actors as well as states– to acquire and deploy mega-lethal devices; and from that to the question of the “new” vulnerability of Americans. (Americans were, of course, vulnerable to far more lethal, rapid, and loomingly “imminent” destructive power during the Cold War; and then we had, I guess, a brief decade, 1991-2001, when most US citizens felt largely “invulnerable”.)
But you could take an argument based on his initial observation there in the other direction, too: to note that controlling other people in the days of broadband international connectivity is much, much harder nowadays than it was in the old days of European (or Japanese) colonialism. Indeed, if you go to the Youtube clip, he doesn’t make exactly that point; but he does say that Bush’s foreign policy has been one of trying to enact colonial policies “in the post-colonial era”, etc.
The difference between today and the classic colonial era is, it seems to me, twofold. First, nowadays we have the fairly well-established “global norms” of human rights, human dignity, the right to self-governance, etc… and most people around the world really do value and uphold those norms even if large numbers of US citizens really do not seem to. And secondly– possibly even more importantly– we have the new capabilities of international communications… so that even if the Bushist spinmeisters are assuring us that everything is going just peachily in Iraq, we can still find out from numerous sources that that is not at all the case.
Indeed, it is that new connectivity between the different parts of the world that makes the “control” paradigm Zbig wrote about so hard to maintain, and that has so radically changed the balance between the “ability to control (or govern)” and the “ability to destroy.”
In my view, it is the ability to control that has been eroding in recent decades– due to the two factors I identified above– much faster and more significantly than the ability to destroy has been increasing.
After all, fuel-filled airliners are not “new”, and nor even was the possibility they might be used as “weapons” new. And roadside bombs and suicide belts are not new, either. What is “new” is the fear– luckily unsubstantiated as of now– that rogue elements might get hold of nuclear weapons. But even that fear is not particularly new. (And hey, if we didn’t have any nuclear weapons in the world, we wouldn’t need to be nearly so fearful about them getting into the wrong hands, would we? Also, are anybody’s hands in the world the “right” hands to have nuclear weapons, if nobody else has them? I believe Brzezinski was one of those “wise men” who a few years ago wrote an article saying that the only possibly valid use for nuclear weapons is to deter the use by other people of their nuclear weapons– in which case, why on earth not go along with the idea of verifiably dismantling everyone’s nuclear arsenals all together??)
My bottom line here: I do not in any way disagree with what Zbig wrote after he had made that initial astute observation. But I think his argument could have been a lot richer there. Also, the general point he makes can be seen as strong collateral evidence for what I have started to think and write about the radically decreasing utility of raw military power in the present era.
Regarding the bottom line of his argument in the book, it is that in 1991, the US had a first great chance to build a peaceful, stable, US-led world order, and basically the three Presidents who came along all in one way or another blew it. On p.185 he has a slightly overly cute “Report Card” in which he gives Bush I an overall B for handling of the eight listed items on the global agenda; he gives Clinton a C; and Bush II he gives a clear F.
So that was “the first chance” Washington had to– in his view– get it right. And after 2008 Washington will, in his view, have a second chance– and he warns that it had better get it right “for there will no third chance.”
As for me, I’m not sure that he (or Mike and the Mechanics, come to that) has it right. I’m not sure there is a second chance for the US, or perhaps any other power, to play a classic “superpower” role in the world in the present era. Because power has become so widely distributed. Because it is now so hard to “control” even a million people– let alone 26 million people; let alone 6.4 billion people.
Look, the US is not going to become nothing. It is not about to be invaded by anyone, or pulled apart by outsiders (as Iraq has largely been, by the Bushites), or to slip down into the ranks of being a fourth- or fifth-rank power. Life will still be very good in this country. But in the future we just might– shock! horror!– have to figure out how to be and act a little more equal to the other peoples of the world.
Actually, I think we would all become a lot more secure, and our lives a lot richer and better, if we rejoined the rest of the human race as equals.

Ramazani: “Bridging the Divides”

** Updates posted below **
As regular justworldnews readers will recognize, Helena and I have presented and commented on numerous essays here by R.K. – “Ruhi” – Ramazani. Here’s one on Jefferson & Iraq, another on “Making Gulf Security Durable,” and this one on why massive arms sales are not the answer. Tomorrow, he faces a complex heart surgery.
On the eve of this potential life crossroad, the University of Virginia, via UVA Today on-line, published a multimedia tribute to Professor Ramazani’s generous service to students, the University, and to the cause of “understanding” between Americans and peoples of the Middle East.
I especially like Professor William Quandt’s comment at the essay end:

“One of Ruhi’s great hopes has been that he could personally help bridge the divide between the country of his birth, Iran, and the country where has lived for most of his adult life, the United States,” said William B. Quandt, the Edward R. Stettinius, Jr., Professor of Government and Foreign Affairs and an expert on the Middle East. “It remains to be seen whether Ruhi’s hope for reconciliation between the two countries he knows best will take place, but if and when it does, he will have played an important role behind the scenes.”

Several years ago, I published a biographical sketch of how Ramazani’s scholarship has compelling echoes in his own life journey. I hope to have it available on line shortly. I’m also in the early stages of a project to “digitize” the best of his half century of writings for ready access to all via the web.
The UVA Today item includes marvelous clips from a recent interview with “the” Professor himself. (look for the link near the top right) In addition to the quotes on what the University has meant to him, about America’s fixation with “fixing” things, and his ending optimism about the “oneness of humankind,” do enjoy the breathtaking scenery behind him. Warms the heart.
Let’s send our good thoughts, wishes, and prayers for his surgery and speedy recovery. We can endeavor to emulate the bridgebuilder; but not replace him.
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Update as of Sept. 26h, 5:00 p.m. est: Via Ruhi’s family, we are greatly encouragedby the good reports from the outstanding University of Virginia heart surgeons. Ruhi has pulled through the surgery, with even a few positive surprises. Thank you Dr. Kron!
Ruhi, enjoy your “vacation….” :-} We – and the world – still need you.

Senator Chuck Hagel to “retire”

The New York Times web site is reporting that Senator Chuck Hagel, R-Nebraska, will not run for re-election to the Senate, nor for the White House.
We’ve written about Senator Hagel here before, in general admiring his status as a rare Republican foreign policy maverick, a clear-thinker with the credentials, the experience, and most importantly, the nerve to stand up to the neconservative infiltration and takeover of the Republican Party.
Hagel was anti-war on Iraq, when being anti-Iraq war wasn’t cool…. in either party. As a decorated Vietnam veteran, Hagel early on warned of Vietnam ghosts in Iraq.
Yet Hagel has been a creature of the US Senate, and in that political role, he’s often bent with the wind, (such as on the habeas corpus for detainees issue) perhaps in hopes of living to fry bigger political fish. That earned him the back-handed compliment from one Nebraska blogger:

“He’s Chuck Hagel, folks – the thinking man’s unthinking Republican. And, you almost have to like him; you just can’t count on him.”

I think that’s too harsh, but I find myself disappointed that he apparently hasn’t found a viable way to run for national office next year.
So what’s behind Hagel’s decision not to run for anything next year – at least not at this time?

1. Was it his disgust with his own Republican Party? I’ve seen reports that neoconservatives were raising mountains of out-of-state cash for a nasty challenge to Hagel in the upcoming Republican primary.
2. Was it a sense that the Republican Party stands on the threshold of being crushed next year in the US Senate? That prospect, perhaps ironically, increases with Hagel withdrawing. If fellow veteran Bob Kerry indeed returns to Nebraska, the Democrats might well add Hagel’s seat to their Senate winnings next year. (They could also take John Warner’s seat here in Virginia, provided they can find another “maverick” like Jim Webb.)
3. If that indeed is his assessment, might Hagel be calculating that it’s more prudent for him to sit this slaughter out, and be available as the elder “realist” statesman to help with a Republican reconstruction by 2012?
4. Or is Hagel “thinking” yet again — that there might still be a chance for re-surfacing on a serious third party ticket for the White House next year? Perhaps Sam Waterston’s “Unity08” might yet persuade him. Or maybe New York’s Mayor Bloomberg might draft him — as David Broder recently suggested.

In my opinion, the Republican Party is in crisis mode, even as it refuses to admit it. It has strayed dangerously far from its own grand heritage as the Party of Lincoln, “TR,” “IKE,” and even “the Gipper.” Worse, it has abandoned all too many fundamental American values.
With most of the Republican Presidential candidates, including Fred Thompson, now running hawkishly to the right of Dick Cheney, Chuck Hagel could take a huge chunk of disaffected “Eisenhower Republicans” with him, wherever and whenever he goes. I sense many anti-war-party Democrats also admire and might support Hagel, should the Democratic candidates self-destruct in kow-towing to the neocon returnees into their ranks. Ah, wishful thinking?
Hagel’s formal announcement on Monday should be interesting. I’m counting on him not to go quietly.

Cartoon: Iranians as Cockroaches!?

I learned today of a particularly disturbing political cartoon published on September 4th in the Columbus (Ohio) Post-Dispatch. Drawn by Michael Ramirez, the cartoon very much illustrates themes I’ve written about here several times before — that when all else in the Middle East fails, the change-the-subject Bush/Cheney Administration and friends can resort to the fail-safe “blame Iran game” as the root of all such troubles.
The cartoon in question displays a regional map with Iran and a sewer pipe at its center, the source of hordes of cockroaches infesting the region. You can see the Dispatch version here. I have since discovered that the cartoon was first published on June 25th, in full color, in the internationally circulated Investors’ Business Daily. (click here or here)
Before presenting additional details about the artist and the controversy, I am pleased to publish here an eloquent and courageous open letter to the Columbus Post-Dispatch, from Marsha B. Cohen, a scholarly colleague at Florida International University in Miami. (with my emphasis added)
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From: Marsha Cohen
To the Editor: Columbus Post Dispatch

For over four decades, Fidel Castro has been considered one of the most odious leaders in the Western hemisphere. After he took power, hundreds of thousands of Cubans fled their island home for Miami (where I live and work), and where they have prospered. Many of them have been among the most vocal opponents of any moves by the US government to normalize relations with Cuba. Even now that Castro is old and sick, and at death’s door, he remains a hated symbol of a revolution gone wrong, that rapidly morphed into a detested enemy of the interests and values of the US.
Nevertheless, no Florida newspaper would ever dare to depict Cuba as a sewer, with cockroaches from it spreading out across North and South America. The outrage expressed, even by the regime’s most vociferous opponents, to the insult to their Cuban identity and beloved homeland, would put the police on crisis alert, and make headlines throughout the entire country.
Yet in an editorial cartoon, published on Sept 4. the Columbus Dispatch had no compunctions about portraying Iran as a sewer, and Iranians as cockroaches. Its decision to do so–regardless of the political motives of the editorial board, of the artist, or the message they were trying to convey–is unfortunate, and reflects more shamefully on the values and integrity of your newspaper than on the Iranian people, both in Iran and and those who have made their home in this country and other parts of the world, that this cartoon (whether intentionally or unintentionally) maligned and demeaned.
I hope that every organization that considers itself a champion of civil and human rights will express its outrage at the publication of this cartoon. Had the “cockroaches” been designated Jews, Blacks or Hispanics, the cartoon never would have made it into print in a respectable newspaper. And if it did, the objections and the fury generated throughout the community would have been loud, swift and resonant.
Anyone who would not want to see themselves and their ethnic group depicted in this way by a cartoonist is morally obligated to vociferously object to its publication. While the rights of a free press may extend to the promotion of racism, hatred and dehumanization, this does not mean you, as a newspaper, are obligated to exercise that right, or that decent people everywhere should not denounce your decision to do so when you do. Your disgusting representation of Iranians–irrespective of their regime–deserves nothing less than nationwide condemnation.
Sincerely,
Marsha B. Cohen
Miami, Florida

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Well said and thanks Marsha Cohen.
A few additional tidbits on the cartoonist and the controversy:

Continue reading “Cartoon: Iranians as Cockroaches!?”