Political Fictions

Dealing with Karimov

2005-05-20T10:10:00.000-04:00

Several analysts of the US reaction to the Andijan massacres in Uzbekistan have written that this is an instance where the interests of the GWOT run up against democratization and human rights. Karimov does indeed face real Islamist opposition - some of it even linked to Al Qaeda. Moving past the US Air Force base in Uzbekistan, there's also the intelligence the US no doubt receives from Karimov's infamous secret police (and from the terror suspects rendered to them). Is it really worth it, therefore, to jeopardize this relationship because of one protest in eastern Uzbekistan that may have been instigated by militant Islamists?

Yes. Yes. Yes. As the Financial Times notes today, the hundreds slaughtered by Karimov's forces are comparable to Tienanmen Square - and there's no way the slaughter can be justified, even if it turns out the IMU had something to do with it.

The fundamental logic behind Bush's Wilsonian strategy of regional democratization in the Middle East is that while it might increase antipathy towards the US in the short term, it would eventually let Middle Eastern peoples vent their political anger in a more productive way in the domestic sphere. The strategy isn't just a moral one, therefore, but contends that democratization will diminish terrorism in the long run.

Reprimanding Karimov is hardly full democratization, but it's certainly a step. If we follow the logic of Bush's Middle Eastern strategy, as the Financial Times does, we must recognize that "the Uzbek leader could easily become a liability not an asset in the anti-terrorism war. Far from suppressing militant Islamism he will be fomenting it."

This isn't a call for disengagement, but rather for aggressive and public engagement. The US should pull out the big guns - Rice or Bush himself - and follow the EU's lead in reprimanding Karimov. Islam Karimov is a far greater tyrant than Shevarnadze or Kuchma ever were, and the longer the US coddles his tyranny, the more it will eventually feel the repercussions.

The Bush/Nazif Meeting

2005-05-19T07:33:00.000-04:00

Egyptian PM Ahmed Nazif met with Bush at the White House yesterday - a meeting most striking for the fact that a certain Mr. Mubarak wasn't there, as he usually is every spring. Mubarak didn't want to be reprimanded by Bush for the slow pace of reform in Egypt. But, as far as I can tell, Nazif wasn't particularly reprimanded. Rather, Bush merely dangled some carrots in front of him - a free trade agreement between the two countries if Egypt speeds up its reform. The devil, of course, is in the details - and the White House looks like it's backing down. The Guardian's story leads with Nazif's interpretation of the meeting:

President Bush has given unqualified support for Egypt's plans to change the rules of its presidential elections, the prime minister, Ahmed Nazif, said yesterday after talks at the White House.

Bush and Nazif didn't address the press together (Nazif, after all, isn't Mubarak), but here was McClellan about their meeting:

Q The free trade agreement you're talking about with Egypt, would it be conditional on Egypt taking election reforms that you would like to see?

MR. McCLELLAN: Well, it's important that they move forward on the political reform, and they had a very good -- the President and the Prime Minister had a very good discussion about that. And the President emphasized the importance of free elections where you're going to have multiple parties and you can have full campaigning. The President talked about the importance of that. And President Mubarak has taken an important step by saying, we're going to have competitive presidential elections this fall. And the President also emphasized the importance of international observers for that process, as well, to show the world that it is free --

Q So there's no --

MR. McCLELLAN: -- that it is free elections. Again, we are -- in terms of any free trade agreement, I would describe it the way I did at the beginning, just having some discussions about that, about how to proceed forward.

So maybe it's not completely unqualified support. Gamal Mubarak stated last Thursday that Egypt will reject any international observers of the election, and Bush looks like he won't give way on that point. And perhaps he even is insisting on an end to the Ayman Nour show trial, and the campaigns of intimidation against all the presidential candidates. But even if Bush refuses to back down on all of these issues - even if he links the FTA with them - it won't make a bit of difference in terms of democracy on the ground. What would make a difference if for Bush to support the Brotherhood, or at least to object to the basically insurmountable conditions that must be met for an independent presidential candidate to run. Without this, the fall elections will be competitive only in the sense that they will nominally be more than a yes/no referendum. But in reality, they won't have changed. This will not be democracy.

A Better Analysis

2005-05-18T11:17:00.000-04:00

Ahmed Rashid, who knows more about the political situation in Central Asia than just about anybody, had an article over at Eurasia Insight yesterday. His key points are that the Andijan uprising wasn't instigated by Islamists, the Karimov repression is only helping the Islamist cause, and the US strategic interests in Uzbekistan - particularly the Khanabad airforce base - are diminishing in importance. Not that this has stopped the US from backing Karimov. I have one small note to make, which is that Rashid points out that State decertified Uzbekistan in July over its human rights record - costing the country some $18 million in loans (security and economic assistance), but DoD then stepped in with some $21 million in military assistance. This couldn't be clearer. To Karimov it says "carry on". To Americans it says that DoD is now running Uzbekistan policy; this is what explains the discrepancy Greg Djerejian noticed between State's attention to the country, and the administration's refusal to adequately condemn the current massacres.
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Note: One final thing that Rashid notes that I haven't seen anywhere else is that Karimov is reportedly extremely ill, and his three likely successors are all more ruthless than he is. Will there be a vacuum when he dies? Will China, Russia, and the US all be trying to get their own guys in power? This is a country to watch.

America's Uzbekistan Policy

2005-05-18T09:13:00.000-04:00

Greg Djerejian has an interesting post today about the situation in Uzbekistan. The situation has grown ever more nauseating, as all parties agree that the casualties are now in the hundreds - with one claim of 745 dead. Sergei Lavrov in Russia is not-surprisingly continuing his campaign of equating the Uzbeki resistance with terrorists, and justifying the Karimov massacres. And, to my eyes at least, it looks like the US is continuing to ignore the issue in the form of minor warnings about human rights. Djerejian has an interesting defense of the Uzbekistan policy. He notes that the Tashkent embassy, as well as the acting Assistant Secretary for Human Rights, have both targeted the human rights situation in Uzbekistan. In Fiscal Year 2003, for instance, State spent some $14.7 million on "Democracy Programs". I believe Djerejian's evidence, but I don't think it speaks at all to the point that higher up in the administration, Uzbekistani democracy doesn't really register. In the two years prior to Ukraine's Orange Revolution, State spent some $65 million, and when Ukrainians took to the street administration support was forceful and constant at the highest levels. Uzbekistan is quite different. It looks like the Khanabad airforce base and oil and gas interests are carrying the day.

Torture, Qur'an, Offense and Newsweek

2005-05-18T08:46:00.000-04:00

Andrew Sullivan says just about all that needs to be said about the Newsweek story today. The media must call McClellan's bluff and investigate Guantanamo as vigorously as possible. Glenn Reynolds' (and many others') focus on Newsweek rather than the torture/Qur'an flushing is shameful. And the press has a duty to push further on the torture story - not to retreat because due to McClellan and Reynolds and co. Here's a key quote from Andrew (though everything he has today is great):

Hasn't the White House now challenged the entire news media to find out what the allegations are and whether they have merit? If these stories are true, will the media have "blood on its hands" for reporting them? Or is the real responsibility to be found among those officials who constructed the policies that made such abuses possible?

Meanwhile, I weirdly-enough find myself once again agreeing with Tom Friedman. Just as Glenn Reynolds' outrage towards Newsweek rather than torture at Guantanamo seems morally vacuous, so does outrage in the Muslim world towards the Qur'an flushing rather than the 400+ Iraqi civilians killed this past month (to say nothing about the hundreds of thousands of Sudanese civilians killed). As Friedman says: "The best way to honor the Koran is to live by the values of mercy and compassion that it propagates."

The Newsweek Riots

2005-05-17T08:32:00.000-04:00

While going to a koshary restaurant over the weekend with an Egyptian friend, the Newsweek story about flushing a Qur'an came up. "If you want to know why we all hate America and Americans," my friend told me, "this one story explains everything."

Indeed. This one small story tells everything you need to know about the politics of the Muslim world, America, and the War on Terror. Nobody looks good - the murdering Muslim Afghani rioters, the regional public opinion that doesn't condemn their reactions, the obscene torturers in Guantanamo, the craven Pentagon bureaucrats who control them, the American pundits and bloggers who rave about Newsweek while ignoring the Guantanamo abuse, and finally the spineless Newsweek editors themselves.

Let me start with Afghanistan, where there were 17 deaths as a result of the angry riots. This is deplorable and barbaric - much more deplorable and barbaric than flushing a Qur'an. The direct moral responsibility for these deaths lies with the murderers themselves. To so otherwise - that any who inform Afghans or Muslims about Qur'anic desecration must expect murderous riots - is racist nonsense, denying whole peoples rationality and morality.

Let's move back a little to the story that prompted these riots. Newsweek reported on May 9th that DoD investigators have confirmed that some particular instances of abuse occured at Guantanamo, including leading a detainee around with a collar and dog leash, and flushing a Qur'an down the toilet. Here's the key part of that story:

Investigators probing interrogation abuses at the U.S. detention center at Guantanamo Bay have confirmed some infractions alleged in internal FBI e-mails that surfaced late last year. Among the previously unreported cases, sources tell NEWSWEEK: interrogators, in an attempt to rattle suspects, flushed a Qur'an down a toilet and led a detainee around with a collar and dog leash.

After the riots, many pundits and bloggers started to blame Newsweek for its irresponsibility in publishing the story. The Pentagon, of course, denied the report, claiming that these allegations - made by Guantanamo detainees - had need been satisfactorily confirmed. The blogosphere, as well as many print columnists, went crazy; Slate has a nice summary of the general tenor of the reaction. It's not pretty.

Giving in to the uproar rather quickly, Newsweek editor Mark Whitaker issed this statement on Sunday before retracting the article completely yesterday. Here's a taste of the statement:

Our original source later said he couldn't be certain about reading of the alleged Qur'an incident in the report we cited, and said it might have been in other investigative documents or drafts. Top administration officials have promised to continue looking into the charges, and so will we.

Now was that original story completely off? Only in the sense that the Pentagon source no longer stood by his story that an official report was to be published finding those allegations credible. But it's still possible that such a report was in the wings, and the minute Afghanistan blew up the relevent section was immediately excised. Even if the report wasn't in the wings, it's not particularly important. Whether that abuse makes it into a Pentagon report or not may be important for those of us interested in honesty and a reforming Pentagon, but says very little about whether or not the abuse - and the Qur'an flushing - actually occured.

As Susan Hu has found, this story was already out in the public sphere, in the Philadelphia Inquirer in January, and in a Human Rights Watch report on Guantanamo detention conditions. The source for these reports were Guantanamo detainees themselves. Are they trustworthy? Here's Andrew Sullivan in response:

we cannot know for sure - yet - if these allegations are real, or propaganda. But we do know for certain that other "techniques" designed to use religion as an interrogative tool have been deployed, including the smearing of fake menstrual blood on detainees' faces. This religious warfare was also deployed at Abu Ghraib. I wrote in my review of the official records of the torture:

One Muslim inmate was allegedly forced to eat pork, had liquor forced down his throat and told to thank Jesus that he was alive. He recounted in broken English: "They stripped me naked, they asked me, 'Do you pray to Allah?' I said, 'Yes.' They said 'Fuck you' and 'Fuck him.'" Later, this inmate recounts: ''Someone else asked me, 'Do you believe in anything?' I said to him, 'I believe in Allah.' So he said, 'But I believe in torture and I will torture you.'"

The man cited, Charles Graner, was found guilty of detainee abuse. So we have evidence of the abuse of Islam by U.S. interrogators; we have four citations of the Koran incident; Newsweek has not retracted the story; and more will no doubt come out. One thing worth reiterating: the notion that this obscenity simply couldn't have happened in the U.S. military (something I believed two years ago) is no longer an operative assumption. We know that incidents like this have happened. And even now, the administration is not denying it outright.

After all that we've learned about Abu Ghraib and the Bush administration's care-free relationship with torture, I think we - at the very least - owe the benefit of the doubt to the detainees' allegations.

So let's say that this Qur'an flushing actually occured. Newsweek's original article - or the main point about the abuse occuring - becomes absolutely essential. To the extent that the US is a democracy with a free press that acts as a check to prevent (illegal) abuses of power in the government, articles like the seem to be the definition of what the press ought to be doing. If this article has done grave damage to the American PR campaign in the Muslim world, then the blame lies entirely at the Pentagon (or perhaps even the White House). As the Pentagon has shown, it's enormously reluctant to do anything about the torture issue, and is reluctant to even give up its prerogative to torture in the future. So the press ought to be throwing every violation of the Geneva conventions into the headlines - because this may be the only thing that may convince this administration to act morally (and legally). Even if these detainee allegations are false, because administration policy has relied so much on torture, it changes nothing. It's completely responsible for the press to give the detainees the benefit of the doubt and air the allegations publicly.

But Newsweek caved, and the rabid blogosphere is still insisting that it repent even more. My Egyptian friend is right. This situation is all you need to know to understand the current situation of the war on terror - and nobody comes out looking good.

Kissinger's (Plagiarist? Un-copyedited?) Redux

2005-05-16T08:45:00.000-04:00

Kissinger has an amazingly odd piece today in the Washington Post that contains huge chunks of the piece he wrote for the IHT on Thursday. Both pieces open and close the same, but in the middle they go into some strikingly different directions. (Both, oddly, contain the blatantly non-factual assertion that the Israeli invasion of Lebanon occurred in 1981, rather than 1982. Thanks to Praktike for noticing that on Thursday. It's sort of dumbfounding that the editors at both the IHT and the Post would miss such a thing though. I commented on Kissinger's outrageous analysis of Israel's motives when the first article came out.) The IHT version seems to focus much more on critiquing Bush's democratization policy. Most notable there - and most markedly absent from the Post version today - was the following quote:

Though advanced as a new doctrine, the regime-change prescription follows well-established precedent. It was the impetus behind the religious wars of the 17th century, the wars of the French Revolution in the 18th and early 19th centuries, the Holy Alliance, the Trotskyite version of Communism, and the contemporary Muslim jihad.

I think Kissinger hoped to play to different audiences: Europe with the IHT, and Washington with the Post. But Henry, everybody uses the internet these days, so I'm sure nobody in DC missed that hilarious comparison. It's removal from the Post piece only accentuates it.

But the new material in the Post version of the piece is worth looking at - if still abhorrent. Here's a taste:

Strategy must begin with the recognition that the freedom agenda does not make geopolitical analysis irrelevant. There are issues for which crusading strategies tend to be off the mark. The rise of China is, in essence, a geopolitical challenge, not a primarily ideological one.

U.S. relations with India are another case in point. During the Cold War, India saw no imperative to support the cause of democracy against communism. Its national interest was not involved in issues such as the freedom of Berlin. Now India is, in effect, a strategic partner, not because of compatible domestic structures but because of parallel security interests in Southeast Asia and the Indian Ocean, and vis-a-vis radical Islam.

If India is a strategic partner not because of any shared democratic domestic structure, then isn't it just as reasonable that China could become a similar partner - with similar security interests vis-a-vis N. Korea and similarly worried about radical Islam due to Xinjiang? And couldn't India be considered a greater geopolitical challenge, as its population will surpass China's within my lifetime (though probably not within Kissinger's), and its economy may well do the same?

I'm not actually making those arguments, but when you look at the world through Kissinger's glazed realpolitik lenses, it all becomes a game, and joining China against India makes just as much sense as the reverse.

Another Scathing Voice on Uzbekistan

2005-05-16T08:26:00.000-04:00

Craig Murray, the British Ambassador to Uzbekistan from 2002 to 2004, has a scathing critique of America's Uzbekistan policy in today's Guardian. He makes several fantastic points, about how democratic protesters don't have the opportunity that their equivilents in Georgia, Ukraine and Kyrgystan had - elections, and how the American airforce base at Khanabad is hardly essential to the effort in Afghanistan. But here's where Murray's critique hits its stride (and makes me question the praise I just had for Jack Straw):

So the Uzbek people can keep on dying. They are not worth a lot of cash, so who cares? I travelled to Andijan a year ago to meet the opposition leaders, and kept in touch. I can give you a direct assurance that they are - or in many cases were - in no sense Islamist militants. They died an unwanted embarrassment to US foreign policy. We will doubtless hear some pious hypocrisies from Jack Straw. But when I was seeking funding to support the proto-democrats, the Foreign Office turned me down flat.

The US will fund "human rights" training in Uzbekistan but not help for the democratic opposition, in contrast to its policy elsewhere in the former Soviet Union. When Jon Purnell, the US ambassador, last year attended the opening of a human rights centre in the Ferghana valley, he interrupted a local speaker criticising repression. Political points, Purnell opined, were not allowed.

Indeed.

More on Uzbekistan

2005-05-16T07:33:00.000-04:00

CJ Chivers, one of the Times' best foreign correspondents, has a garbled summary of what's happening in eastern Uzbekistan right now that sounds like he very recently got off the plane. He's a good source because his article is demonstrative of just how hard it is to figure out what's going on out there. Chivers is quite reluctant to embrace the APs figure of 500 deaths in from the violence, but he pulls out an amazing old quote from Karimov about wanting to rip off heads:

"I am prepared to rip off the heads of 200 people, to sacrifice their lives, in order to save peace and calm in the republic," he told reporters in 1999, after a bus hijacking ended with a shootout that left nine people dead. "If my child chose such a path, I myself would rip off his head."

Chivers is also reluctant to say exactly who was responsible for the Andijon prison break and riots. What it resurgent Islamic Movement of Uzbekistan Islamists, democrats, or merely aggrieved people acting out general discontent? We don't really know. What we do know is that the government has gone ape-shit.

What then is the reaction abroad? Chivers quotes Russian foreign minister Sergei Lavrov saying that the uprising is a "Taliban-style provacation". Meanwhile, let's compare the reaction of the UK and the US.

Here's British foreign minister Jack Straw:

I am extremely concerned by reports that Uzbek troops opened fire on demonstrators in Andizhan. I totally condemn these actions and I urge the Uzbek authorities to show restraint in dealing with the situation and look for a way to resolve it peacefully.

How does he analyze the situation?

Staff from the British Embassy in Tashkent have visited the region, reporting what they can of the situation, but much remains unclear both about what happened in Andizhan and about how the situation arose.

How will the UK respond?

The UK has consistently made clear to the authorities in Uzbekistan that the repression of dissent and discontent is wrong and they urgently need to deal with patent failings in respect of human and civil rights. This approach is shared by our partners in the European Union. As we approach the UK's presidency of the EU we will use the collective weight of the EU to put across this argument to the Uzbek authorities to address shortcomings in economic and political governance and inadequacies in the development of democratic institutions.

And what about American policy? Here's the tireless Scott McClellan at the White House:

Well, I know that the Department of State has been in touch with our embassy there, and so they probably will be talking more about this at their briefing, as well. We have had concerns about human rights in Uzbekistan, but we are concerned about the outbreak of violence, particularly by some members of a terrorist organization that were freed from prison. And we urge both the government and the demonstrators to exercise restraint at this time. The people of Uzbekistan want to see a more representative and democratic government, but that should come through peaceful means, not through violence. And that's what our message is.

Over at the State Department, Richard Boucher fills in the gaps. Specifically, how does the US analyze the situation?

We have been looking at this situation. We have been following it closely. I would note that while we have been very consistently critical of the human rights situation in Uzbekistan, we are very concerned about the outbreak of violence in Adijan, in particularly the escape of prisoners, including possibly members of the Islamic Movement of Uzbekistan, an organization we consider a terrorist organization. I think at this point we're looking to all the parties involved to exercise restraint, avoid any unnecessary loss of life. But we are continuing to follow the situation closely.

How will America respond?

Our primary concern has to be the situation of Americans. We have -- our Embassy has checked on Peace Corps volunteer and -- Peace Corps volunteers and some of the other Americans who are in that area, and they are safe. They've reached out through the Warden system to contact Americans and encourage all Americans to stay inside and avoid the protests. I'd note as well that Uzbekistan's Government has provided increased protection for our diplomatic facilities.

Indeed. The Bush administration shows no sign at all of pushing against Karimov at all, or of doing anything about the possible massacres occuring out in the Fergana Valley. While the UK (and EU) are reluctant to point fingers for who is behind the protests, the Bush administration seems ready to swallow Karimov's explanations completely. Moreover, the only concern they mention about the situation is the safety of Americans there - and even that gives the opportunity for another call-out to the Karimov government.

The dominant view of US-European relations under Bush is that the Europeans are wary of Bush's Wilsonian tones, and are much more interesting in economic realpolitik. But this Uzbek situation is putting that theory to the test, and it doesn't look like it's holding up. While the Bush administration says that its had concerns about human rights in Uzbekistan in the past, Straw and the EU say they condemn Uzbekistan's current human rights abuses, while they promise to work to promote economic and democratic institutions there.

This is all public rhetoric, of course, so it doesn't necessarily reflect pressures that are being applied behind the scenes. But I thought democratic public rhetoric was supposed to be the Bush administrations forte?

The Karimov Debate

2005-05-15T13:33:00.000-04:00

Returning to the windy Kaplan piece, I was particularly struck by his argument for what to do in Uzbekistan. Here's the excerpt:

The Asia expert Mark Helprin has argued that while we pursue our democratization efforts in the Middle East, increasingly befriending only those states whose internal systems resemble our own, China is poised to reap the substantial benefits of pursuing its interests amorally—what the United States did during the Cold War. The Chinese surely hope, for example, that our chilly attitude toward the brutal Uzbek dictator, Islam Karimov, becomes even chillier; this would open up the possibility of more pipeline and other deals with him, and might persuade him to deny us use of the air base at Karshi-Khanabad. Were Karimov to be toppled in an uprising like the one in Kyrgyzstan, we would immediately have to stabilize the new regime or risk losing sections of the country to Chinese influence.

This argument is obviously very familiar from the Cold War - it was perhaps put most eloquently by Jeane Kirkpatrick in her famous Commentary piece that caught the eye of President-elect Reagan, Dictatorships & Double Standards. The thrust of the argument was that the US must support autocratic (as opposed to totalitarian) regimes in countries where there was threat of communist (totalitarian) success. Kirkpatrick charged Carter with allowing such regimes to collapse due to his over-concern with human rights. (Kirkpatrick's main examples were of course Iran and Nicaragua.) Authoritarian regimes, according to Kirkpatrick, left the fundamental institutions of the country fundamentally in place - so that democracy could conceivably grow - while totalitarian regimes attempted to reorder everything. Both Shi'ite theocracy in Iran and communism in Nicaragua, according to this view, were crippling authoritarian systems.

Today in Uzbekistan there is of course no threat of communism. The main threats people like to cite are radical Islamism and China. Uzbekistan's Islam Karimov likes to talk about the first threat. Here's the elderly tyrant in the Steven Lee Myers' write-up:

"Their aim is to unite the Muslims and establish a caliphate," Mr. Karimov said of militants who stormed Andijon's prison early Friday, the Russian news agency Interfax reported from the Uzbek capital, Tashkent. "Their aim is to overthrow the constitutional regime," he said.

Karimov's Tashkent regime is constitutional inasmuch as every state in the world has some sort of constitution; possessing a constitution has little to do with the government if it's inadequate or ignored. But I don't think anybody contends in good faith that Karimov has a democratic bone in his body. But they are susceptible to his evocation of the Islamist specter. Let's move to that. The IWPR has a nice explanation of the violence that's afflicted Uzbekistan for the past year. There is indeed the threat of Hizb-u-Tahrir, who allegedly killed some fifty people a year ago, were also possibly behind the attacks on the US and Israeli embassies last July. But since then, most of the uproar has been against governmental abuses. The invaluable Ahmed Rashid wrote in December that the Karimov regime has begun closing down its borders and attempting to isolate the country. It's pulled out of the CIS mutual defense pact, and causes difficulties for US supply caravans from bases in the country to Afghanistan (on top, of course, of continuing its destabilizing support of ethnically-Uzbek General Dostum). To say that aiding Karimov is part of a battle against Islamism, in either Uzbekistan or Afghanistan, seems like a tough sell.

However, at least he's not in the China camp, says Kaplan. Indeed. Where to start?

Containment has always been an uncomfortable policy, but I'm about to argue it wasn't necessary for much of the Cold War. However, we're not yet, as much as Kaplan wishes otherwise, in a Cold War with China. To push for the moral compromises that comes from containment (mainly Kirkpatrick's embrace of authoritarians) for a prospective Cold War is completely unacceptable. Particularly if this new Cold War were completely non-ideological. If Kaplan wants America to abandon its embrace of Wilsonian democratization - as he quite explicitly does - then whether Uzbekistan is in an American or Chinese (or Russian) sphere of influence will make very little difference morally or for the people of Uzbekistan. It will merely be part of a new realpolitik Great Game. Or the continuation of one, for since the end of the Cold War, the world has been to content to support authoritarians throughout while pushing for oil and natural gas. But are the costs worth it, particularly if you accept at all Bush's analytical linkage of authoritarianism and radical Islamism? (Obviously Bush himself accepts these links, which is why his uncomplicated support of Karimov is so glaringly hypocritical and counter-productive.)

Perhaps Uzbekistan is another way to engage China. Any economist will tell you that China will increasingly need more oil and natural gas, and anybody with a map will see that it makes quite a bit of sense for much of the Central Asian oil to go east. If America agreed to such a deal, it might lesson China's need for oil from, say, West Africa. Moreover, China could be encouraged to help US anti-terrorist efforts in Central Asia, because the destabilization from Islamist terrorists would have a great effect on China. (This may be playing with the devil, however. China's human rights abuses in Xinjiang are at least comparable to Karimov's in the Fergana valley.)

There are obviously no easy solutions here. But supporting Karimov in order to fight Islamism is counter-productive, and supporting him in order to contain China creates a materialistic American foreign policy that simply isn't worth fighting for.

Chinese Democratization?

2005-05-15T08:23:00.000-04:00

Conrad makes another point - missing in the analysis of Kaplan, Schwarz and Kagan - that there's also the issue of internal Chinese reform. It seems to me that there are two ways to interpret the recent anti-Japanese demonstrations. They could be a recurrence, as Conrad mentions, of the "hundred flowers campaign" - letting the government see who's interested in protests in general, and then locking them up. But they struck me as quite similar to what was happening in Egypt (and around the Arab world) three years ago, when massive protests were occuring almost daily against Israel and its incursions into the Occupied Territories. While the government winked at, and even organized, several of these protests, it also occasionally arrested the organizers and beat back protesters with massively-deployed security forces. Today, of course, there are hardly any anti-Israeli protests, but almost every day people take to the street to protest for democracy and against the Emergency Law and even Mubarak himself. I don't if this example at all pertains to China, but it's certainly nice to think so.

A Cautionary View

2005-05-15T08:09:00.000-04:00

Robert Kagan (not to be confused with Kaplan) has an interesting rumination on China's rise in the Washington Post today. He's right to notice the paternalistic tone of the discussion on how to "manage the rise", and also the complete inability of any of us to know what manner of rise it will be - we are indeed peering off into the fog. China has never had the 19th century imperialist ambitions that plagued so much of Europe, but then Japan hadn't had them either, until the end of that century. This is why the hyper-nationalism evident in some of the Chinese protests is just a little worrying.

How to Achieve Engagement?

2005-05-15T06:27:00.000-04:00

I think Conrad and I are in agreement about the Atlantic articles - realpolitik will only exacerbate any US/Chinese rivalries. The goal must be to work China into the great system rather than moving to a Bismarkian balance of powers. I differ from Conrad, I suppose, on his interpretation of Kaplan's argument; I don't think Kaplan's goal is quite the same as the engagement of Schwarz. Conrad quotes Kaplan saying that China must be dissuaded "so subtly that over time the rising behemoth would be drawn into the PACOM alliance system without any large-scale conflagration - the way NATO was ultimately able to neutralize the Soviet Union".

But there is a huge difference between a PACOM alliance system and NATO - as Kaplan himself was quick to point out. One system is maintained explicitly at the behest and whims of the Pentagon, and the other system at least has the appearance of a broader multilateral institution. I think the neo-conservative critique of the UN, NATO, and other multilateral institutions has been grievously naive about those institutions. The critique (and I think Kaplan subscribes to it) swallows the far more liberal analysis that these institutions must promote equality on the world stage. But none of these institutions have ever done anything of the sort. Rather, they've been thoroughly dominated by the US and one or two other powers. They're an amazing means of maintaining US power while not quite setting off world public opinion. Kaplan talks about NATO's end coming with Kosovo and then Afghanistan, but these wars - particularly the latter - only demonstrate the usefulness of the institution to those interested in maintaining US power. America basically conducted the wars by itself (and with the Northern Alliance in Afghanistan), but under the mantle of institutional multilateralism.

Coming back to PACOM, I can't see any reason why China would be tempted at all to join a PACOM alliance system whose fluctuations would be determined by the whims of Washington. An institutional regional security body with the vitality of NATO, however, would provide a much better incentive to pulling the Chinese in - or might at least neutralize China as NATO did the Soviet Union.

One way of bringing China in to a notion of collective security may be found with the North Korean situation. Tom Friedman had one of his better moments last week, I think, when he discussed the issues of proliferation vis-a-vis North Korea and Iran. He made the point that China could easily stop the North Korean nuclear program:

All China has to say to Kim Jong Il is: "You will shut down your nuclear weapons program and put all your reactors under international inspection, or we will turn off your lights, cut off your heat and put your whole country on a diet. Have we made ourselves clear?" One thing we know about China - it knows how to play hardball when it wants to, and if China played hardball that way with North Korea, the proliferation threat from Pyongyang would be over.

China doesn't do so, Friedman contends, because it relies on the US to stop North Korea, and because it isn't particularly alarmed at the idea of a nuclear Pyongyang. But it should be, as a nuclear Pyongyang could set off an Asian arms race with Seoul and Tokyo both attempting to go nuclear - a situation I'm sure China wouldn't welcome. Therefore the immediate goal of US policy should be to convince China that its interests - just like American interests - lie within collective security and a non-nuclear North Korea. Which is to say that encouraging China to increase its international weight in the context of collective security now may forestall a more competitive and unilateral China later.

Global Engagement

2005-05-14T21:21:00.000-04:00

Philip has brought two very interesting Atlantic Monthly articles on China to my attention: one by Robert Kaplan, the other by Benjamin Schwarz. It seems to me that Schwarz hits the nail on the head: the fundamental problem with a realpolitik mindset is its potential self-fulfilling nature. A fundamental given for realists like Kaplan is that maximizing power, both absolute and relative, should be the primary goal of any state. The U.S. dominance of current international power relations is historically unparalleled; to a realist, it is obvious that the U.S. must do all that it can to increase that dominance, or at the very least, maintain its current level. But this would involve, as Kaplan suggests, taking a confrontational stance towards China. As Schwarz points out, by doing so, the U.S. might well create an enemy where none needs exist. Of course, Schwarz’s argument is also based on the realist idea of a balance of power, i.e. states like Russia and China will naturally form alliances to try to balance U.S. hegemony. Where he deviates from realist thinking is his suggestion that it might be in U.S. interests to welcome, or at least “acquiesce” to, China’s reemergence as a dominant power in Asia, whereas Kaplan clearly expects the U.S. to “confront” China in the coming decades. However, the distance between the two positions is not as far as it seems at first glance. Both see China’s military rise as both natural and inevitable. Both would ideally like to see this happen without a U.S.-China war. (Kaplan’s goal is to “dissuade China so subtly that over time the rising behemoth would be drawn into the PACOM alliance system without any large-scale conflagration—the way NATO was ultimately able to neutralize the Soviet Union”.) Clearly, there are a number of places where such a war could break out without warning (Taiwan and North Korea are the most prominent examples), so it is impossible to make any concrete predictions about what will happen. The best that any analyst can do is try to minimize the risk of such a war- and here I think that Schwarz’s recommendations are more likely to succeed than Kaplan’s. One central question that neither article addresses is whether China’s leadership will be able to continue to develop economically without granting its citizens any more political freedom or making any moves towards democracy. Schwarz and Kaplan seem to assume that the status quo will hold. But remember, Tiennanmen Square happened just 11 years after China began to open up its economy. Since then, for 16 years political dissent has been forcefully silenced, but it would be foolish to think that it’s not there under the surface. It’s quite possible that the avowedly anti-Japan demonstrations of recent months were also partially a reflection of suppressed domestic dissent. One of my teachers pointed out that the Chinese government’s actions regarding these demonstrations seems very reminiscent of the “hundred flowers campaign” of 1956, when the government asked all patriotic citizens to engage in constructive criticism of its policies, carefully took down the names of all who did so, and then rounded them all up the following year. (Mao apparently said that he had deliberately let the “snakes crawl out of their holes”). Fast forward to 2005: the government first seems to give tacit consent to the demonstrations, then it traces the email lists and arrests most of the leaders. There’s no proof here, but the actions certainly seem similar. If China ever did successfully democratize, it would naturally strengthen the pro-engagement arguments of analysts like Schwartz. But this is easier said than done, especially in a country of more than a billion people. And here again, a confrontational U.S. approach could backfire, by increasing popular support for the authoritarian regime controlling the country. As usual, I think that a course of engagement has the chance of success, both as a way of minimizing the risk of war and as a way of encouraging (or at least not hindering) any possible democratization movement that might arise. The lesson here is a much broader one than just China. Start with the fact that the U.S. benefits from being on top of a peaceful world order of increasing globalization. Next, consider that if U.S. power is ever eclipsed by another rising power, it would be very much in U.S. interests for this shift to occur in the context of a strengthened peaceful world order (rather than by a World War, for example). Either way, the U.S. stands to gain by bringing as much of the world as it can into this system. Of course, the assumption that increased economic engagement with authoritarian states like North Korea, Iran and China increases the prospects of democratization is an unproven one. But at the very least, a world hegemon that seemed focused on a global policy of economic engagement would be much less threatening than one seems determined to confront any state it dislikes.

Poor Mr. Chafee

2005-05-13T08:29:00.000-04:00

On the surface of things, Lincoln Chafee's Bolton vote makes no sense. Obviously he was under extreme administration pressure, but the GOP has just as much to loose from Chafee's vote as he does - namely, a Senate seat. Michael Crowley has an analysis of Chafee's current position today, but it doesn't provide the needed rationale for Chafee's vote. Obviously, he's not a particularly smart politician - his refusal to vote for W, and his flirtation with switching parties did little for him in Rhode Island and nothing for him in Washington.

But step back a little, and consider Chafee's options. If he'd voted against Bolton, that would completely enrage and humiliate the administration. Theoretically, he could jump parties, but as Crowley explains, he's already locked himself into the GOPs 2006 campaign apparatus. Moreover, if he did jump ship, there's no guarantee he could survive the Democratic primaries.

But couldn't Chafee have just stayed with the GOP after voting against Bolton? As the only Republican to have any chance at all keeping the Rhode Island seat, couldn't Chafee essentially do as he pleased, guaranteed that the GOP, from Frist to Mehlman, would still have to support him?

That's the math. But the only conceivable explanation I can find is that the White House has decided that it will give up the Rhode Island seat in order not to suffer a Bolton defeat. The White House could basically have said: if you vote against Bolton, you loose all GOP support, and maybe we'll encourage and even back conservative Cranston Mayor Laffey in the primaries - guaranteeing Chafee's defeat and the loss of the seat.

If this is the correct interpretation - and I can't think of anything else that makes sense - then Chafee was between a rock and a hard place. Now he'll get full GOP support in the general election, but this has become a huge vote, and I think Chafee may have just lost the race. As for the White House, this is indicative of how much capital it was willing to spend on Bolton. Just imagine what they must have said to Hagel and Murkowski. And just imagine what Voinovich has been - and will be - going through. Being a moderate is no fun these days.

What is Henry Kissinger Talking About?

2005-05-12T10:58:00.000-04:00

I'm not sure what compelled me to read it, but Kissinger's largely dismissable defense of realpolitik over in the IHT today did contain this wowzer:

Three times since 1958 - the United States that year, Syria in 1976 and Israel in 1981 - foreign intervention held the ring in Lebanon to prevent collapse into violence and to arbitrate among the Christian, Sunni, Shiite and Druze groups that constitute the Lebanese body politic.

The Israeli invasion of Lebanon prevented a collapse into violence? The Israelis arbitrated among the various Lebanese confessional groups? What conceivable defense of this could Kissinger make? If what followed the Israeli invasion wasn't a collapse into violence, what is? If the Israelis were honest brokers attempting to arbitrate, then what are we to make of their support of the fascist Phalangists? This is like saying, to pick from the headlines, that the Soviet defeat of the Nazis in the Baltics was a liberation. By throwing such nonsense in here, it's hard to take anything else Kissinger has to say seriously.

That Bolton Nomination

2005-05-11T07:10:00.000-04:00

I think it's going to happen. Chafee looks like he is again falling into line with the administration, Lugar says he has all the Republicans in place, and it's hard to imagine Voinovich - and even harder to imagine Hagel - breaking ranks. Today Baker (who I proposed as a fill-in for Bolton) and Meese have an op-ed in the Times supporting Bolton. So what's the score?

1) The Bush administration will have spent enormous capital on this nomination by the end. Condi Rice, who isn't particularly fond of Bolton behind closed doors, has stepped up to defend him. So she should earn some capital with Bolton's bakers at the Pentagon and at the VPOTUS's office. I'm not sure what Senators Chafee, Voinovich, Mikulski, or Hagel might be asking in return for their vote, but they'll certainly be getting it. But having spent so much capital to fill this post, administration resources may be depleted for upcoming battles on the Hill.

2) Powell has unmistakably moved away from the administration. His opposition to Bolton may not in the end succeed, but I can't imagine he's a popular figure at the White House right now. I say if Powell has already given up on his famous loyalty to the Bush clan (after they gave up on him), he should move completely into the opposition. But such is the stuff dreams are made of. Armitage, meanwhile, offered the most luke-warm support possible, probably to keep his name in the running should a certain Mr. Rumsfeld not finish out his term.

3) Bolton will have an incredibly short leash for a job that already has very little influence. Rice went to the mat for Bolton, and now he'll be obligated to follow her orders - she'll have much more control over him than Powell and Armitage ever did.

4) Chafee, by wavering so publicly for so long and then supporting Bolton, will have created a significant campaign issue for his upcoming run in Rhode Island. None of the other wavering Republicans on the committee face the immediate electoral consequences of this vote like Chafee.

5) The press will have once again failed. Bolton's defenders have consistently claimed that his defect is simply one of "managerial style". I even fell for this for a bit. But the crucial issue, as Joe Biden has constantly repeated, is intimidation of intelligence analysts. Yet the Republican framing seems to have won. On the surface, the Times guest column today comparing Bolton's personality to that of a psychopath isn't particularly flattering. But it accepts the Bolton defenders' claim that the issue is simply management - and it concludes that Bolton's style can even make for good management (much the same argument is made here). Perhaps. But the issue is that politicization of intelligence - intimidating intelligence analysts - makes for an intelligence situation that the country can little afford. The problem here is that in this administration, Bolton's intimidation of intelligence analysts is only the tip of the iceburg; serious attention to this issue would lead back to Feith, Rumsfeld, and even Cheney.

The Georgian Visit

2005-05-10T07:14:00.000-04:00

Bush's visit to Georgia seems like the highlight of his trip. He's a popular guy in Tblisi, as Peter Wallsten reports in the LATimes. I think much of the hype - Bush staying well past schedule - was coordinated rather than spontaneous, but either way it's a clever move - simple public diplomacy.

Georgia is important in any number of issues, the least of which is Bush's democracy policy. (Though Wallsten's description of Saakashvili as a "symbol of Bush's second-term agenda" of democracy promotion is a little puzzling, as the Rose Revolution occured in the summer of '03.) Although there's nowhere in Bush's press conference with Saakashvili or his public speech a rebuke for Saakashvili's worrying non-democratic tendancies, such things wouldn't have been public, and we can only hope they were brought up in private. (Though it sounds like Saakashvili acted much more the technocrat than the democrat in their private discussion.)

But there was much more. In his Freedom Square speech, Bush seemed to oppose Russian interference in Georgia. Here's the AP report:

In a line that appeared directed at Russian President Vladimir Putin, Bush declined to support the bid of two separatist regions aligned with Moscow to gain independence from Georgia. ''The sovereignty and territorial integrity of Georgia must be respected ... by all nations,'' Bush said.

This is crucial. Just as Charles Taylor has been playing at destabilizing West Africa, Putin has been playing at maintaining a destabilized Caucasia. Russian support for Abkhazia and South Ossetia (for a backgrounder on those breakaways, see here) is partly motivated by their high Russian populations, partly by their associations (particularly coastal Abkhazia's) as Soviet vacation grounds, and partly as a card to play against Chechen rebels in the Georgian Pankisi gorge. But my reading of the geopolitics is that Russia's main goal (and this was true under Yeltsin-Shevarnadze) is to keep Georgia destabilized so that it can't really turn towards NATO and the EU, and it can't, say, maintain the Baku-Tblisi-Ceyhan pipeline, which promises intense competition for Russian oil and natural gas in European markets. Bush's strong support for Saakashvili and Georgia, therefore, has much to do with his Wilsonianism, but also with stemming Putin's ruthless neo-imperial Caucasian policies.

Finally, here's Bush from the Freedom Square address on democracy in general (again from the AP):

''Now across the Caucuses in central Asia and the broader Middle East we see this same desire of liberty burning in the hearts of young people,'' Bush said. ''They are demanding their freedom and they will have it.''

I think Bush still has to extend his Wilsonian democracy-promotion further east to central Asia (is this what he referred to several times as the "greater Middle East"?) - he's not doing particularly well, for instance, in Uzbekistan (or, for that matter, just to the south in Azerbaijan). If Mubarak needs to be pressured in Egypt, don't Karimov and Aliyev deserve similar pressure?

Putin's Russia

2005-05-10T06:48:00.000-04:00

Russian author Victor Erofeyev has an interesting oped in the Times today, where he brazenly dismisses half the Russian population as, well, let me just quote him:

Half of the population - elderly people, the poor, those not very well educated and resentful of perestroika - see the creeping rehabilitation of Stalin as a return to true values. They are ready to erect monuments to Stalin the Victor around the country. They are not disconcerted by his political crimes, for which they sometimes produce justifications that are beyond all comprehension. There is no more logic in all this than there would be in Jews suddenly deciding to erect a monument to Hitler.

The other half of the population Erofeyev labels "enlightened". I like this. There may be sympathetic explanations for Soviet nostalgia among many Russians - particularly those who lost out on the less-than-fair privatization under perestroika and then Yeltsin. But I can't think of anything that could possibly justify rehabilitating Stalin - or anything quite as cognitively dissonant.

All of this explains why I've been fairly happy with Bush's tough rhetoric with Putin on his VE-day tour. I think Putin's current policies, and neo-imperialist nationalist rhetoric aren't doing anybody any good - they're certainly not helping Russia's relations with most former Soviet Republics. Praktike has an interpretation of Bush's current trip that "the Bush administration has decided to become more aggressive in challenging Russian bullying in its near abroad while offering Russia a way towards better relations and WTO membership."

This seems to me a good interpretation of current administration policy, and a good policy. It does very little good to isolate Putin any more than he already is, but it's a similarly bad idea to acquiesce to his interference in Georgia and the other former republics. The question remains, if Putin's current rhetoric and foreign policy relies on neo-imperialism and Stalinist nostalgia, isn't more confrontation in store? Confrontation that could push Putin away from Brussels and towards Beijing? Is there any way around this?

The Hillary Articles

2005-05-09T07:55:00.000-04:00

Two articles on Hillary are worth commenting on. One is Joe Klein's column for Time yesterday coming out against a Clinton candidacy, and the other is Peter Beinart's much-needed column in the Post that Hillary hasn't shifted to the center - she's always been there. Let me say about Beinart that I agree with just about everything in the column. I've been long confused about why people associate Hillary with the far left of the Democratic party. Her muddle of a health plan was such a muddle because she strenuously avoided single-payer national health insurance. The obvious conclusion is that Hillary's supposed far-Left orientation was much more the result of the 90s culture wars than any ideological identification on her part.

Much of Klein's opposition to a Hillary run is that it would bring back these culture wars and the media circus of the Clinton scandals. I won't argue that the media isn't dying for another circus - it's structurally set up to rely on Lewinskys, Elians, Schiavos and runaway brides - but I simply don't think old Clinton scandals have much valence any more - let alone in two years. Ellen Goodman pointed out last month that the argument that Hillary is too divisive a candidate is completely ridiculous - it's hard to think of a more divisive candidate that George W. Bush, but he went and won with a solid majority. Furthermore, although Klein is right that a centrist uniter would be great, I'm not sure that one is possible. The political machinery in the US, I'd argue, is itself structurally set up to create divisiveness - look how John Kerry went from a boring, staid unknown to a divisive figure in six months. Whoever is nominated, in either party, will become divisive. In fact, Hillary may have a distinct advantage because so much of her personal baggage was aired years ago, and people went through such strong emotions over her that they may be ready for another look.

Klein is right to warn that a Clinton nomination is far from a fait accompli. Her weakest point is her lack of personal charisma, and it's quite possible that she'll be the Dean of '08 - go into the race as a foregone conclusion, only to be swept aside by an underdog. But with that warning in place, I think Klein is far off the mark in terms of Hillary's current prospects and liabilities.

The Ugandan Dilemma

2005-05-09T07:26:00.000-04:00

Last month I commented on a Marc Lacey article in the Times regarding the Acholi forgiveness ceremonies, and whether they could take the place of ICC prosecution of Lord's Resistance Army leaders in northern Uganda (and now in southern Sudan). I wrote that the ideal solution "is fairly close to what's happening: aggressively use the ICC indictments as a complimentary policy to the 2000 amnesty policy and the traditional forgiveness ceremonies."

This week's Economist visits this same issue. It turns out that the above solution is not what's happening. Here's the relevant paragraph:

The ICC was first invited to consider the northern Ugandan conflict in January 2004, by the Ugandan government. Earlier this year, the government appeared to be having second thoughts. President Yoweri Museveni spoke of “convincing the ICC to drop their indictment if the LRA rebels surrender”. But Luis Moreno-Ocampo, the court's chief prosecutor, turned a deaf ear, and the government has now relented. Mr Moreno-Ocampo is expected to apply to the court's pre-trial chamber for arrest warrants against half a dozen rebel chiefs by the end of this month.

The ICC seems dangerously wrong here. One of the main arguments against the ICC, outside of the usual national-sovereignty pap, is that it has the potential to prolong conflict. Announcing indictments against leaders currently in power provides a huge incentive to those leaders to grip onto their power at all costs. Therefore in the name of justice for past wrongs, the ICC could indirectly assure future wrongs.

Now in some situations this argument is inapplicable. Take the Sudan, for instance. The Bashir-Taha oligarchy ruling from Khartoum would be severely undercut but public disclosure of the still sealed indictments sent by the UNSC to the ICC last month regarding war criminals in Darfur. Even if some Sudanese officials are named (as I suspect Mukhabbarat chief and American friend Salah Abdullah Gosh is), the public shaming can only hurt them - because the Khartoum government is sensitive to international shaming, and is as I type negotiating the details of a North/South coalition government with southerner John Garang as VP.

But Uganda is a situation that very nicely fits that general criticism of the ICC - and it's therefore a shame that it become the first ICC case. Joseph Kony, who is brutal and crazy, needs every incentive he can get to stop his inhuman war. The ICC indictment is like promising a stick, eliminating the carrot, and then because the ICC has no military means of apprehending Kony or his LRA cronies, letting the Ugandan government handle the rest. And it's not just any carrot that the ICC eliminates - its a home-grown, locally-sensitive carrot - much more meaningful in terms of helping Ugandans move past the war than a trial in the Hague. All of which is to say that the ICC is only exacerbating this still deadly conflict.

If this is how the ICC intends to act, is the ICC really worthy of support?

Bush in the Baltics

2005-05-08T07:01:00.000-04:00

Although I'm not a neo-conservative eagerly awaiting a new Cold War, I am a fan of Bush's current tour of the former USSR. Emphasizing the harmful impact of Soviet occupation of the Baltics and Eastern Europe is important - if it offends Russian nationalism, then that speaks more to the faults of current Russian nationalism than to the emphasis itself. (I'm particularly impressed that Bush emphasizes America's own role in acquiescing to Soviet expansionism at Yalta.) Emphasizing Lukashenko's tyranny is even more important - and Bush does it admirably.

One thing that struck me in Elizabeth Bumiller's write up of Bush's press conference with the three Baltic presidents was the following: Mr. Bush also did not dispute the premise of a question from a reporter implying that the United States was behind revolutionary change in Georgia, Ukraine and Kyrgyzstan. Really? Here's the transcript, with the question apparantly coming from AP journalist Jennifer Loven:

Q There's also some criticism that the U.S. is behind the revolutionary change in Georgia, Ukraine and Kyrgyzstan. What do you say to talk that the U.S. is inappropriately meddling in the neighborhood?

PRESIDENT BUSH: ...Revolution -- I think you said the word, "revolution" -- freedom is universal. Freedom is etched in everybody's soul. And the idea of countries helping others become free, I would hope that would be viewed as not revolutionary, but rational foreign policy, as decent foreign policy, as humane foreign policy.

I repeat to you that I think countries ought to feel comfortable with having democracies on their borders. After all, democracies are peaceful countries. Democracies don't fight each other, and democracies are good neighbors. You know, it's amazing how far this continent has come because of the freedom movement. Sixty years ago -- it's really not all that long ago in the march of history, is it? It's pretty long if you're 30 years old, like you are, but -- but 60 is not all that long for an old guy like President Adamkus. (Laughter.) But now we're standing here talking about other parts of the world taking for granted that Europe is whole, free, and at peace. It shows how much life has changed as a result of people embracing an ideology that encourages peace.
And we now have the same opportunity, this generation has the same opportunity to leave behind lasting peace for the next generation, by working on the spread of freedom and democracy. And the United States has got great partners in doing what I think is our duty to spread democracy and freedom with the three nations represented here.

And so my trip here, Jennifer, is to say as clearly as I can to the people of these three great countries, thank you for your sacrifices; thank you for your courage; and thank you for your willingness to elect people who are willing to spread freedom and peace around the world.

While he didn't question the premise of Loven's question, he didn't really answer the question either. In fact, he basically completely ignored the question and talked about democracy and the courage of the Baltics. Fair enough - it would do nobody any good for the US to acknowledge its role in Ukraine, Georgia and Kyrgystan.

/Kristof on Condoms

2005-05-08T06:18:00.000-04:00

Nick Kristof nails the criticism of the new Pope (and, implicitly, the old Pope): what matters far more than the Pope's positions on sexuality, sex scandals, Europe or anything else is the position against condoms. I can respect and sympathize with pro-life positions; I can even understand the opposition to homosexuality. But opposing contraception - when there's not yet any unborn fetal life at stake - seems ridiculous, completely without justification, and immoral. Kristof has much the same point, in words more subtle and eloquent.

A Georgian Update

2005-05-07T11:18:00.000-04:00

"We have been waiting for a visit from an American president for 200 years," Shalva Natelashvili, head of the Georgian opposition Labor Party, told CJ Chivers in today's Times. That's quite touching, if only a little hyperbolistic. But the sentiment is real - Georgia has moved completely into the US axis, and its now being rewarded. How significant is this move? Very. Consider that Georgia, the birthplace of Stalin, was only five years ago firmly in the Russian axis under ex-Soviet apparatchik Shevarnadze. Since Mikhail Saakashvili came to power almost two years ago, Georgia has sent troops to Kosovo, Afghanistan and Iraq. Within weeks the Baku-Tblisi-Ceyhan pipeline - running from Baku's huge oil fields through Georgia (to avoid Armenia) and then across Turkey - will be opened. The pipeline is an American-backed project that will provide significant competition to Russian oil in European markets.

But Saakashvili's leadership has been far from spotless. The question is whether it's a one step forward, two steps backward affair, or the reverse. Georgian academic Ivlian Haindrava doesn't seem particularly optimistic. She writes that for every Saakashvili triumph - his assertion of control over Ajaria (a rebelious province bordering Turkey, long brutally ruled-over by Aslan Abashidze), for instance - there is a subsequent travesty. According to Haindrava, Saakashvili attempted "to replace Abashidze’s totalitarian grip with one-party rule by the president’s National Movement; elections to the Ajarian parliament in June 2004 were a missed opportunity in terms of democratic process and transparency; the new constitutional law on the status of Ajaria reduced its powers to the purely symbolic; and the new elite that came to power there disappointed local people by its high-handed behaviour in office."

Saakashvili has one of the toughest jobs on the planet - not only must he integrate the province of Ajaria into the Georgian state, he must face the open rebellions in South Ossetia and Abkhazia - the latter backed quite heavily by Putin's Russia. I'm convinced that Saakashvili is earning his characterization as technocrat - his proposal to eliminate 90 percent of licences and permits required for businesses is fantastic - but I'm hardly convinced that he's much interested in democracy. [The question is perhaps would a full-blooded real-life democrat have the ability to pull Georgia together?] A complete-Saakashvili centralization of power, and move away from democracy, would of course be awful for Georgia, but it would also set a bad precedent for the likes of Yushchenko.

Anyway, it will be interesting if Bush will nudge Saakashvili away from his authoritarian tendencies as he is so ostentatiously attempting with Putin.

One final note - Chivers has this to say about the February death of the Georgian PM:

the asphyxiation in February of Prime Minister Zurab Zhvania has led to conspiracy theories that are at once dark, distracting and bizarre. The United States has examined Mr. Zhvania's death and called it accidental, the result of fumes leaking from an improperly installed gas heater.

.....is there anybody alive who sincerely believes that it was accidental?

The Armitage "Endorsement" of Bolton

2005-05-07T10:15:00.000-04:00

I'm not entirely sure that the headline in the Post yesterday is really true to the content of the article. Here's the money quote about Powell buddy Rich Armitage's Bolton support:

Asked if Bolton was a good choice, Armitage replied, "It was the president's choice and I support my president."

If that's an endorsement, it's about the most luke-warm endorsement I can imagine. Yes, Armitage also praised Bolton's intelligence, but refusing to comment on whether Bolton was a good choice sounds like something of an anti-endorsement. Indeed, as Jim Hoagland reported, Armitage was a mentor to virtually all the State Department employees who have come out against Bolton. I suppose there might be a lead, therefore, in Armitage's not publicly opposing Bolton, but it looks to me like he's doing everything but...

The Obasanjo Meeting

2005-05-07T10:00:00.000-04:00

About Thursday's meeting - Taylor was brought up, but not to much effect.

Here was MacClellan a couple hours before the meeting: "we've been engaged with this with Nigeria, as well as those other countries and organizations that I mentioned. And we will continue to do so. We believe a way needs to be found for him to be held to account for the crimes he committed. And that's something we share with Congress."

And here was Obasanjo: "We are concerned that whoever has done wrong will be brought to justice...But the terms under which he (Taylor) was taken out of that place, which must allow us to be able to conduct foreign policy with credibility, must be borne in mind. So we have agreed that we will explore how we work together to achieve what needs to be achieved."

Now obviously this is a sensitive matter for Obasanjo, and the White House can't publicly reprimand him. So "belief in a way to be found to hold him to account" may be the best we can expect, publicly. But the solution seems so obvious. Obasanjo is rightly worried about Nigeria's credibility if it reneges on its agreement with Taylor, but Taylor has already reneged. If Nigeria or the US - or even some other country - provides evidence of Taylor's continued politicking, that ought to be enough for Nigeria to kick him out without breaking its word.

Quotes of the Day, I and II

2005-05-05T10:00:00.000-04:00

I:

I have never understood why conservative entrepreneurs are so all-fired pious and Bible-thumping, let alone why so many of them claim Jesus as their best friend and personal savior. The Old Testament is bad enough: The commandments forbid us even to envy or covet our neighbor's goods, and thus condemn the very spirit of emulation and ambition that makes enterprise possible. But the New Testament is worse: It tells us to forget thrift and saving, to take no thought for the morrow, and to throw away our hard-earned wealth on the shiftless and the losers.

And II:

[H]undreds of thousands of young Americans are now patrolling and guarding hazardous frontiers in Afghanistan and Iraq. Is there a single thinking person who does not hope that secular forces arise in both countries, and who does not realize that the success of our cause depends on a wall of separation, in Islamic society, between church and state? How can we maintain this cause abroad and subvert it at home? It's hardly too much to say that the servicemen and -women, of all faiths and of none, who fight so bravely against jihad, are being stabbed in the back by the sunshine soldiers of the "crusading" right. What is one to feel but rage and contempt when one reads of Arabic-language translators, and even Purple Heart-winning frontline fighters, being dismissed from the service because their homosexuality is accounted a sin?

- Christopher Hitchens, writing in the WSJ today. Although he is so often ridiculous, arrogant, and a little loopy, I do love that contrarian atheist Brit.

Must Read

2005-05-05T07:13:00.000-04:00

Reihan Salam, the prolific New Republic staffer, has temporarily taken over Noam Schieber's place at &c. I'm continually tempted to link her posts with supporting arguments far less articulate than her, but instead I'll just say check her out.

Thomas Frank Squeezes His One Idea

2005-05-05T06:12:00.000-04:00

I know it's been out there for a while, but I finally read Thomas Frank's New York Review of Books essay on the 2004 election. Basically it's an extension of Frank's book What's the Matter with Kansas? to the election. Frank had a very interesting thesis with his book, and he's been promoting it ceaselessly for the past year. The thesis is that the dominance of the Republican party comes from its Machiavellian manipulation of moral issues and symbolism. Lower income middle American voters, Frank contends, would vote for Democrats if they were voting in their own economic interests. But lower income middle America is instead solid Republican terrritory, and Frank contends that this is largely because Republicans run on issues like abortion, guns, homosexuality and cultural class issues, while betraying their constituency economically. Here's a paragraph from Frank's current essay:

Conservatives generally regard class as an unacceptable topic when the subject is economics—trade, deregulation, shifting the tax burden, expressing worshipful awe for the microchip, etc. But define politics as culture, and class instantly becomes for them the very blood and bone of public discourse. Indeed, from George Wallace to George W. Bush, a class-based backlash against the perceived arrogance of liberalism has been one of their most powerful weapons. Workerist in its rhetoric but royalist in its economic effects, this backlash is in no way embarrassed by its contradictions. It understands itself as an uprising of the little people even when its leaders, in control of all three branches of government, cut taxes on stock dividends and turn the screws on the bankrupt. It mobilizes angry voters by the millions, despite the patent unwinnability of many of its crusades.

I think there's a lot to this analysis. As seen in the Schiavo affair, conservatives are eager to showboat on "moral issues" where there's actually little they can do. Gay marriage is another example - on the federal level there's little that can be done by Congress of the White House. The FMA is basically dead-in-the water, even if Republicans put political muscle into trying to pass it, which they're not doing. (The White House dropped the issue in January, Frank notes.) Much of this thesis has seeped - through Frank's prodigious efforts - into conventional discourse in Washington. Here's an excerpt from the New Republic's marvelous dissection of Bill Frist's cravenness:

Religious conservatives believe--and the press has constantly reminded them--that they provided the margin of victory for Bush's reelection. Indeed, these conservatives now see themselves as the most powerful constituency of the country's dominant political party. And yet, for all their supposed political power, gay marriage and abortion are still constitutional; prayer in school and public displays of religious paraphernalia are, for the most part, not. Faced with this set of facts, fundamentalist conservatives can conclude one of two things: that they have been duped--which is to say, the GOP never intended to enact their agenda; it simply used them to win reelection--or that some insidious external force has intervened to block that agenda. The GOP leadership, which would prefer not to anger the James Dobsons of the world, has a strong interest in promoting the latter explanation. And so Americans are treated to an ever-expanding list of all-powerful bogeymen. To the list of golden oldies like activist judges, the liberal press, Hollywood elites, Manhattan elites, Berkeley elites, et cetera, conservatives have recently added the likes of George Soros, Michael Schiavo, and, of course, those chronically filibustering, anti-religious Senate Democrats.

Frank's argument is that the conservatives use that long (and familiar) list of bogeymen to distract lower-income middle-Americans from their true enemies: the plutocracy running the GOP, that's determined to cut their own taxes, destroy unions, and make bankruptcy laws more harsh.

The problem with Frank's argument, as many critics have pointed out, is that it's amazingly arrogant. Locked in his analysis is the assertion that Middle America doesn't know what's best for it: if voters were voting in their real interests, the Democrats would have a lock on power. But shouldn't voters be able to decide what's in their own interest? If they believe that gay marriage is a far more important issue than the state of the economy, who the hell is Frank to say otherwise? Here's an example from Frank's essay, where he describes time spent in West Virginia:

This is a place where the largest private-sector employer is Wal-Mart and where decades of bloody fights between workers and mine owners gave rise to a particularly stubborn form of class consciousness. It does not stand to gain much from Bush's tax cuts and his crackdown on labor unions. But if class is a matter of cultural authenticity rather than material interests, John Kerry stood about as much of a chance there as the NRA's poodle did of retrieving a downed duck. As I toured the state's valleys and isolated mining towns, I spotted Bush posters adorning even the humblest of dwellings and mobile homes. Voters I spoke to told me they planned on voting Republican because of their beliefs regarding abortion or gun control.

You can almost feel the contempt. Franks completely fails to answer why voters shouldn't vote on abortion and gun control. There's a possible point to be made, that voting on abortion or gun issues might not necessarily mean voting Republican - that John Kerry could have done a better job, for instance, in demonstrating that his views on gun control weren't substantively different from Bush's. But Frank doesn't make this point. In his mind, the economy ought to be these voters' central concern, and the only reason it wasn't was because the Democrats had failed to make it a central issue - and had failed to run on the leftist economic plank that Frank favors. (There's also the possibility that many of these voters at the center of Frank's thesis are attracted by Bush's economic policies - for instance, that they want tax cuts for the wealthy because they imagine themselves wealthy one day, or simply because they believe in certain libertarian principles.)

If these voters' central concerns revolve around issues like gun rights and abortion the obvious solution to me seems to be to engage them on these issues. This is something that some Democrats - like a certain Mrs. Clinton - are already doing, by staking out an anti-abortion but pro-choice position, for instance. Frank makes no good argument why this strategy is any worse than his strategy - which is to convince these voters that they have misplaced priorities. But speaking of priorities, Frank fails to take into account the main priority of much of the electorate - national security. In my analysis of the 2004 election (though I did initially fall for the day-after "moral values" analysis), the Republican's expoitation of national security played a much bigger role than their exploitation of cultural class. Kerry's abiding failure, then, was not that he didn't adopt a Bob Shrum model of class politics and leftist economics, but that he failed to exploit the national security issue. I still believe that the country would have been safer under a president Kerry, but with his vacillation on Iraq, his complete reliance on his Vietnam resume, his toying with isolationist rhetoric (money in Iraq could be going to firehouses in the States), and his general lack of message and incompetence, Kerry completely failed to reassure people that he could handle national security.

Democrats have a lot to learn from the 2004 election, but I don't think Thomas Frank is the man to give the lesson.

Bush's Neglected Africa Policy

2005-05-05T05:00:00.000-04:00

I've been too quick to praise the Bush foreign policy as of late. There are a number of recent articles that have me questioning any Bush administration credibility at all. First, there is the story broke by the LATimes last week about administration ties to Sudanese intelligence. Nick Kristof, in his scathing critique of Bush's Darfur policy (the President's reluctance to discuss the region, and now Deputy Sec. of State Zoellick's refusal to repeat Powell's declaration that there is indeed genocide), provides some possible justifications for administration links to the Khartoum government. The administration doesn't want to endanger the fragile north/south peace process in Sudan - that long war, after all, resulted in many more deaths than Darfur has seen. And the administration doesn't want to close the channel it has with Sudanese intelligence, as it's a valuable part of the war on terror.

The first concern is legitimate, and there's absolutely no reason that the Bush administration shouldn't have strong diplomatic and humanitarian relations with the Khartoum government - the Abuja peace accords must be maintained. The second concern I stumbled over initially when I read that LATimes article last week. The Sudan, after all, is prime Al Qaeda territory, and once was home to bin Laden himself. Surely that's too valuable a channel to be given up?

But the war on terror, as the Bush Administration has constructed it, isn't confined to Al Qaeda. It's a war against the nihilism that is terror, and for the forces of freedom and democracy. This is the administration's own rhetoric. And is there a better example of nihilistic terror than the genocidal Khartoum-backed janjaweed forces in Darfur? One of the key figures behind this genocidal campaign is Salah Abdullah Gosh, the head of the Sudanese mukhabarrat (intelligence) - one of the key figures the CIA has been dealing with, one whom they flew to DC only recently for intelligence consultations.

Now there are many grey issues in the Mideast, and in the struggle against terrorism in particular. I don't think the US should limit itself to working with the morally pure - first of all because the US government is a far cry from being so, and secondly because there would be nobody, in this region or elsewhere, to work with. Thus I don't object to intelligence cooperation with Saudi Arabia, Israel, Egypt, and even Syria. I support the American accord with Europeans and most Lebanese to bring Hizbollah into the Lebanese political mainstream. However, there ought to be red lines, and genocide seems a good place to start. For the CIA to establish close ties with Gosh makes a mockery of its war on terror. (For more on the Sudanese situation, see Amy Goodman's Democracy Now discussion with LATimes reporter Ken Silverstein and with Africa Action director Salih Booker and Congressman Donald Payne.)

Moving on in Bush administration follies in African policy, Rep. Ed Royce has a timely oped in the NYTimes today about the administration's curious reluctance to bring Charles Taylor to justice. President Obasanjo of Nigeria is visiting the White House today. Now Obasanjo is a relatively impressive statesman. In 1979 he handed over the reigns of the government, which he'd seized in a military coup, to a democratically-elected civilian. Since 1999, when Obasanjo returned to office (this time through elections), he's done some good things for Nigeria, although there are worries that he may be looking to extend his current-term of office past 2007, and like so many African big men before him, stay in office for life. In terms of regional leadership, Obasanjo has a fair record: he's been integral to the peace talks in the Sudan, both the North/South talks and the Darfur talks, and Nigerian troops have been vital components of UN and AU forces all over West Africa and in Darfur. Obasanjo played a much more questionable role, along with the despicable Thabo Mbeki, of creating a "dialogue" between Mugabe and his opponents in Zimbabwe - a dialogue that amounted to little more for cover for the Zimbabwean dictator's continuing reign of terror. Finally, Obasanjo helped end the Liberian crisis two summers ago by agreeing to take Charles Taylor. It's perhaps understandable that he's reluctant to give up Taylor - his word is at stake - but his reluctance doesn't explain Bush's reluctance to raise the issue with him.

Bush obviously has a lot to talk about with Obasanjo, from Darfur to AIDS policy to Zimbabwe to oil (Nigeria is close to Venezuela in terms of oil exports to the US - and obviously it has much closer relations). However, Charles Taylor remains a destabilizing force (if only by telephone) to much of West Africa, and Bush and Rice have little reason not to even put him on the agenda.

The Bush administration has done much good in its African policy. On the whole, it's given the continent more attention than the Clinton administration ever did. The AIDS initiative has helped, but there was also the Administration's early attention to the North/South peace accords in the Sudan, and Bush's well-crafted intervention in Liberia - and removal of Taylor. Both of those initiatives are at stake right now. To secure its already impressive work, the administration needs to start putting real pressure on Khartoum - cutting intelligence ties, reemphasizing the concerns about genocide, and pressuring China and Russia over their arms sales - and need to bring Charles Taylor to justice.

The Immigration Debate

2005-05-03T06:59:00.000-04:00

Kenneth Baer has an interesting piece on what Republicans can learn from the Tories' failed use of immigration in the British elections. His general thesis - that the Tories overplayed their hand, and came off appearing racist (indeed, I'd say that they went beyond "appearing" - appealing to this "nativist id" seems to me the real thing), seems to me quite accurate. I'd differ from Bael only on the necessity of his advice for Republicans - I think the Bush and Rove understand enough not to play to the nativism in their party, and they've basically elected to leave immigration off the agenda. (For instance - what ever happened to Sensenbrenner and the intelligence bill compromise that promised to put immigration reform at the top of the agenda?)

It seems likely to me that any '08 Republican nominee would be smart enough to continue this strategy, particularly as the Latino population becomes an increasingly important, and numerous, constituency. But there is the possibility that Tom Tancredo could jump into the primary race, and pull the other Republicans to the right on immigration. In which case Baer is completely right - the Republicans would be doing themselves no political favors. However, does this mean those of us who aren't apt to support a Republican nominee in '08 ought to hope for a Tancredo run?

Three small notes:

1) One thing Baer doesn't examine is why Lynton Crosby, who engineered John Howard's reelection in Australia playing the anti-immigration card, should have so little success doing the same thing for Michael Howard in the UK? Is the UK more tolerant, or are other factors simply more important?

2) One example of where this phenomenon is being played out in the States is the precipitous decline in Scwarzenegger's poll numbers in California. Obviously there's more to it than Schwarzenegger's praise of the minutemen, but that didn't help, did it?

3) What exactly is Baer talking about here?

Unlike in the United States, immigration is a rather new issue in modern British politics, brought to the fore in the past few years as more Eastern European countries entered the European Union (thus allowing their citizens to work in Britain) and as the United Kingdom's strong economy made it the European destination of choice for refugees.

Has he never heard of Enoch Powell? I'd argue that British nativism has a rather strong history - though it's reasonable enough to say that its not as strong a history as in the US.

The Dirty War that is Iraq

2005-05-02T09:48:00.000-04:00

The often banal Bob Herbert has an amazing column today interviewing a soldier about American behavior in Iraq. Here's some choice paragraphs:

The officer's comment was a harbinger of the gratuitous violence that, according to Mr. Delgado, is routinely inflicted by American soldiers on ordinary Iraqis. He said: "Guys in my unit, particularly the younger guys, would drive by in their Humvee and shatter bottles over the heads of Iraqi civilians passing by. They'd keep a bunch of empty Coke bottles in the Humvee to break over people's heads."

...Mr. Delgado said he had witnessed incidents in which an Army sergeant lashed a group of children with a steel Humvee antenna, and a Marine corporal planted a vicious kick in the chest of a kid about 6 years old. There were many occasions, he said, when soldiers or marines would yell and curse and point their guns at Iraqis who had done nothing wrong. He said he believes that the absence of any real understanding of Arab or Muslim culture by most G.I.'s, combined with a lack of proper training and the unrelieved tension of life in a war zone, contributes to levels of fear and rage that lead to frequent instances of unnecessary violence.

None of this should be surprising. When you send a bunch of kids to Iraq with no training for guerrila warfare, no understanding of the culture around them, and they're shot at constantly, it's hard to expect anything different.

The first thing to say about this is that for the vast majority of this abuse, it's the higher-ups - particularly at the Pentagon - who are to blame. These people - and among them I include Rumsfeld and Wolfowitz and company, but also Tommy Franks and Ricardo Sanchez - these people knew that they were sending troops into Iraq in the spring of 2002, yet they did nothing to begin training them in the culture and society, and there's been little counter-insurgency training since the insurgency began. Perhaps after two years of insurgency, and continued American presence in the Mideast increasingly certain, the Pentagon would be doing things differently. Think again. Donald Rumsfeld has moved out of the public arena and back into his mission of transforming the Pentagon. Spencer Ackerman's eye-opening article of the transformation - the focus is on the upcoming Quadrenniel Defense Review (QDR) - includes this eye-opening graph:

During a February discussion at the Heritage Foundation, a top Pentagon policy aide, Ryan Henry, was asked how the lessons of the Iraq war would inform the QDR. Henry immediately launched into a disquisition about the military utility of speed and tactical maneuverability--lessons perfectly appropriate for the 21-day march to Baghdad but essentially irrelevant to the two-year occupation of Iraq that followed. His answer reflected a persistent tendency of Rumsfeld's: an impulse to treat the occupation and the insurgency as unpleasant after-effects of the war rather than its central facts.

This may seem like bureaucratic infighting, but in my mind this complete lack of planning and negligence to prepare troops for the realities of what the American military will be facing is directly related to what Bob Herbert is writing about. This is why I've long thought Don Rumsfeld was the worst of Bush's war cabinet, and everyday he stays on the job wounds America, and increases the irresponsibility of the president.

But the behavior of troops in Iraq cannot and ought not to be completely laid at the feet of the evil or inept bureaucrats at the Pentagon and CENTCOM. War is a dirty thing, and any who advocate it have to realize that even the cleanest war rarely adheres to the Geneva Conventions. Therefore those who supported the Iraq war, myself included (though my intellectual support meant absolutely nothing), must come to terms with the abuses detailed by Herbert.

And we must come to terms with what the war has created. Peter Maass has an essential article in yesterday's Time's Magazine about the Iraqi government's counterinsurgency operations. The whole article is worth reading, but here's the well-supported thesis:

The template for Iraq today is not Vietnam, to which it has often been compared, but El Salvador, where a right-wing government backed by the United States fought a leftist insurgency in a 12-year war beginning in 1980. The cost was high -- more than 70,000 people were killed, most of them civilians, in a country with a population of just six million. Most of the killing and torturing was done by the army and the right-wing death squads affiliated with it.

In Iraq the El Salvador model works through a counter-insurgency led by those who had been in power under Saddam Hussein: Baathists from his Republican Guards and special forces who are just as familiar with torture and extrajudicial executions as any 80s right-wing death squad leader. The American actors, of course, have been much of the same people: John Negroponte, James Steele, and a whole cadre of people at the top of the Bush administration who defended Reagan's Latin America policies. It's enough to make you nauseous.

It's possible that a counter-insurgency can only be won through a dirty war. But can such a dirty win lead to the nominal goals of the Iraq campaign - multi-confessional democracy and a better life for the Iraqi populace?

The Sharansky Resignation

2005-05-02T09:09:00.000-04:00

Although it's a relatively minor event that won't derail the Sharon government, the resignation of Natan Sharansky yesterday is definitely worth remarking upon. The conventional analysis of this is that Sharansky is a figure on the far-right of the Israeli body politic, and that he's opposed to Sharon's Gaza withdrawal - i.e., Sharon's moderation. But this completely misses the mark. Sharansky objects to Sharon's de-linking of Gaza withdrawal and further political liberalization in the PA, and Sharansky "also objected strongly to Mr. Sharon's intention to separate the Israeli economy as much as possible from the Palestinian one, arguing that Israel will not find real security in physical borders or walls, but only in a Palestinian state that is truly democratic and free, politically and economically."

I think it's useful to think of Israeli politics not as one long spectrum from left to right but rather as a circle. Sharon has artfully brought Likud to the "centrist" position of Gaza withdrawal, using the demographic argument (if there aren't two states, Palestinians will soon outnumber Jews). But he's even more artfully brought Labour, an old fan of the demographic argument, to the same position, winning its support for the partition wall. This "centrist" position can basically be called the partition position. Pull Israelis out of Gaza and parts of the West Bank, put up a wall between the two polities, and completely disengage economically. Labour and its "leftist" allies will quibble with Likud about how much of the West Bank to pull out of, but that's relatively unimportant - they all now accept the fundamentals of partition.

Now look at Sharansky's position. Although his move will be interpreted as mere obstructionism - the Russian immigrant refusing any compromise with his Palestinian neighbors, it's nothing of the sort. Rather Sharansky rejects partition in itself. "Israel will not find real security in physical borders or walls" but has to consistently engage with Palestinians. This fundamental difference of opinion - engagement vs. partition - puts Sharansky much close to B'tselem, say, than Sharon's Likud. Sharansky is still more likely to paint his argument in terms of Israel's security, while B'tselem restricts itself almost completely to the language of human rights, but ultimately the two accept the same general framework.

I've never been a fan of the mainstream Israeli left, of course. Labour, and even Peace Now, always seemed much more concerned with just making the Palestinian problem go away than in actual justice for Palestinians. Since the collapse of Oslo and the beginning of the 2000 Intifada, the Israeli left has pulled away from its original limited concern for the Palestinians, and become increasingly in favor of the partition wall.

I'm an advocate of the binational state, of course. But barring that, or before that's possible, there must be two functioning and interacting states. A Palestinian state would simply be dead in the water if it was completely cut off from Israel; how, for example, would Gaza survive at all? And as Sharansky points out, this would be a recipe for a failed state and further instability. Although Israelis rightly complain that Arafat and many of his PA cohorts never acted in good faith (though they ignore that Peres, Netenyahu and Barak rarely did either), the solution isn't unilateral disengagement, and it's certainly not partition. Historically, partition is almost never the answer.

Double-dose of Zakaria

2005-05-01T10:14:00.000-04:00

Fareed Zakaria has two major articles out today with very similar themes; one is a long Newsweek story on the emergence of China, the other is a Times book review of Tom Friedman's new book. In both stories Zakaria includes the statistic that 80% of Walmart's suppliers are from China (which comes to $18 billion in goods per year). The point, of course, is that the world is increasingly connected, China is emerging as a great power, and the sphere of conflict is increasingly economical rather than military. Zakaria seems to differ very little from Friedman these days in terms of ideology - though both of them struggle for title of preeminent pundit for their joint views. To get a gyst of these views, take a passage Zakaria approvingly cites from Friedman:

Friedman describes his honest reaction to this new world while he's at one of India's great outsourcing companies, Infosys. He was standing, he says, ''at the gate observing this river of educated young people flowing in and out. . . . They all looked as if they had scored 1600 on their SAT's. . . . My mind just kept telling me, 'Ricardo is right, Ricardo is right.' . . . These Indian techies were doing what was their comparative advantage and then turning around and using their income to buy all the products from America that are our comparative advantage. . . . Both our countries would benefit. . . . But my eye kept . . . telling me something else: 'Oh, my God, there are just so many of them, and they all look so serious, so eager for work. And they just keep coming, wave after wave. How in the world can it possibly be good for my daughters and millions of other young Americans that these Indians can do the same jobs as they can for a fraction of the wages?' ''

The solution from both men (and I'd tend to agree) for the United States is intelligent competition and emphasis on education. As I referenced last week in my post on Chinese textiles, Friedman continually discusses the need for better science education, and Zakaria is keen to emphasize the fact that even American higher education is increasingly relying on foreign students in the sciences, who themselves are increasingly returning home after their educations. Zakaria also exposes a critical weakness for the American economy: the astronomic prices of health-care, and the lack of national health plan, which leads many firms unable to compete due to exhorbitant benefits.

Moving to China, I'm highly suspicious of Zakaria's analysis of Chinese nationalism, or as he terms it, hypernationalism. Obviously hypernationalism is a worrying thing: where fifteen years ago Beijing's streets were filled with students protesting for democracy, today they're filled with students jingoistically protesting against Japan. Zakaria sets up the equation as this, that the Chinese government "does not know what to do with a group like the Patriots Alliance, an Internet-based hypernationalist group that has organized the biggest demonstrations in the country in six years." This looks to me like Zakaria is moving in the direction of questioning whether Chinese democracy is a good thing. Not for the old reasons of "Eastern values" or even smarter economic planning, but because democracy might unleash hypernationalist forces much more aggressive than the Communist Party. This argument would be a variant on the traditional argument in favor of US support for mideast tyrants: democracy could lead to a one-off victory for Islamists. I'm obviously not a fan of this argument, but if anybody is moving to make it, it's Zakaria, who is famously suspicious of democracy.

Complete '08 Wrapup

2005-04-29T13:31:00.000-04:00

The National Journal cover story by James Barnes has a great roundup of the current field of candidates, Republican and Democrat, for the '08 race. As I've written before, I'm inclined to go with the growing conventional wisdom in the GOP that Hillary will be the Democratic nominee. (Barnes hypothesizes at the beginning that often super-early front-runners, such as Cuomo in '92 or Gore or Bradley in '04, often don't jump into the race. But to contend that Hillary has had anything other than this race in mind for the past six years is a huge stretch of the imagination.) Anyway, here's the conventional GOP wisdom:

There's a growing sentiment among Republicans that their party will be up against her in 2008 and that she won't be easy to keep out of the Oval Office. "She projects strength and the capacity to run the country, to pick smart people, to know when to compromise. Those are things that the last few years have proven to me she can do," said GOP Rep. Cole. "I don't see any of our guys who could beat her -- at least not today."

I'm not so sure about there being no Republicans to beat Hillary. I think either Jeb Bush or John McCain could potentially do it, but Barnes seems to conclude that Bush is sincere in his refusal to run, and McCain has little chance in the Republican primaries. Now I'm leery of that analysis. Obviously right now the Religious Right is looking quite cocksure, but that only means it has a long way to fall. If it keeps up repeat performances of the Schiavo debacle, maintains its full-throated support of Delay and its opposition to the morning after pill, and if it overplays its hand in the coming judicial battles, then it's quite possible to envision a humiliating defeat.

All of which is to say that the GOP primary voters in '08 may be decidedly more pragmatic than the party base appears right now. And any pragmatism helps John McCain or Rudy Giuliani get the nomination. As for the other moderates? I love Hagel but I don't think he'll have the resources to even obtain the funds to mount a campaign. And George Pataki and Mitt Romney have nowhere near enough charisma. GOP pragmatism, then, is something Hillary ought to be hoping against. If the GOP were to nominate Bill Frist or (ha!) Rick Santorum, Hillary would walk to the victory in a landslide.

(Things to watch for, then, are whether Jeb Bush looks sincere in his pledge not to run, and Haley Barbour. I think the Mississippi governer is something of the dark horse here.)

Protectionism Rears Its Ugly Head

2005-04-29T09:23:00.000-04:00

Clay Risen writes a needed riposte to the demagoguery coming out of Washington, Paris and Brussels right now over the current flood of Chinese textiles. His main argument is that while the threatened renewal of quotas probably wouldn't ignite a trade war with China, which simply can't afford it, they would do immeasurable harm to the credibility of the US and EU on the principles of free-trade. Of course it would be hard to label any of the politicians in Washington, Paris or Brussels strident free-traders, particularly when you look at agricultural subsidies in the US and EU or the Bush administration's embarrassing steel tariffs. However, reimposing textile quotas and reneging on the agreement from the Uraguay round of the GATT talks ten years ago would indeed set a new level of hypocrisy.

I think Risen's argument against this protectionism could even be broadened. While I agree with him that China wouldn't start a trade war in response to renewed quotas, it would certainly not take them lying down, and would want something in return. And are the fading textile industries in the States and Europe really worth making a major issue with China, particularly when there are so many pressing issues to raise with that country - such as calming down the tension across the straights of Taiwan, or the Chinese arms trade with the Sudan and Iran? (Let alone China's support for the Myanmar junta and its own internal human rights record - particularly in places like Xinjiang.) Even ignoring the ideological hypocrisy that would be exposed through renewed import quotas, they would expend too much needed political capital.

Particularly glaring with the textile issue is the fact that the US and EU had a whole decade to prepare their respective textile industries for the competition - and they did nothing. Risen writes that "in an ideal world the leaders of developed nations would have spent the last decade preparing for the influx, using late-1990s surpluses to upgrade their textile sectors." But of course they did nothing of the sort.

I hate to do it, but this links in nicely with what Tom Friedman wrote today. Friedman writes about the complete failure of America's educational system to prepare its students for the knowledge-based, "human-capital" economy. This is something people have been talking about for at least a decade, but little has happened. If Clinton or Bush had used the revenues from the artificially high textile prices to start funding job-training programs for the soon-to-be displaced textile workers, than perhaps the 17,000 jobs already lost to the flood of cheap textiles wouldn't be such an unmitigated tragedy. Market changes are always harsh, particularly to those at the bottom of the ladder, but there were ten years to prepare for this one. Ten years which Washington wasted. Protectionism isn't the answer here. Let's turn to education and - gasp - foresight.

Fox relents

2005-04-28T13:32:00.000-04:00

Vicente Fox is giving up the prosecution of Obrador. All that remains is to watch the polls - was Obrador's support based on Fox's ridiculous persecution? Or does he actually have a solid power base?

Darfur

2005-04-28T13:24:00.000-04:00

My article on external actors in Darfur is finally up. It's a little dry, but then so is this blog. It's interesting looking at how the international community has responded to the Darfur genocide. Nobody comes out looking good, but the Chinese, bankrolling the Khartoum government, look awful, while the Bush administration has at least had its heart in the right place. I fully support Zoellicks recent floated idea of bringing in NATO. I think the ideal, and most realistic solution, is imposing some sort of NATO-enforced no-fly zone over Darfur, while pumping up the number and mandate of the AU troops on the ground. Then the UNSC should give some serious attention to pressuring the Khartoum government into cooperating with the ICC and severing its ties with the janjaweed. Finally, there's got to be some way to pressure China. Obviously it's not about to cut its oil ties with Khartoum, but I think concerted pressure could cut off the arms...

The Tories Melt Away...

2005-04-27T10:46:00.000-04:00

Well, not quite melt. But I don't think anybody, not even Michael Howard, expects the Blair to loose. The question is, what exactly does this all mean? Adam Nagourney interestingly enough compares the post-Thatcher Tories to the post-Clinton Democrats, but that seems a little off to me. First of all, the dynamic of the Liberal Democrats in the UK, currently running not far behind the Tories in the polls, makes any comparison murky. (There's no party filling up space on the American right, for instance, other than the Republicans.) The way I see it, Blair has succeeded in moving Labour quite far to the right, to the point where I'd call Blair a Thatcherite. That makes things difficult for the Tories, of course, because (as Nagourney points out), extreme social positions don't do much for them, and they're left flirting with anti-immigrant bigotry. This leaves the disaffected Left, who look set to vote in strong margins for the Liberal Dems and Charles Kennedy. It's not hard to see, if this trend continues for maybe another decade, that the Conservative Party simply won't be on the map, and Labour will represent the Right.

There's more at work in politics than ideology. There's also charisma, something Tony Blair still seems to have in spades, and something utterly lacking in the Tories. Think of the leaders of the Conservative Party of the past decade - Howard, Hague, Major.... there's been no dynamic politician since Thatcher. Labour, however, looks to have more coming. See Sir Robert Worcester's poll analysis yesterday, where he explains that Gordon Brown, Blair's appointed successor, is trusted much more than the PM. I simply see no future for the Tories in the current picture...

Syria: Finally Gone?

2005-04-27T10:32:00.000-04:00

Syria's last official troops left Lebanon yesterday, well over a decade past when they'd worn out their welcome. This can only be interpreted as a triumph for the Bush administration, particularly Condi Rice (but also, of course, Jacques Chirac). However, Joshua Landis in Damascus posts an article he received, of uncertain verifiability, claiming that Assad's inner circle plans to set up covert intelligence networks throughout Lebanon. While the article must be taken with a grain of salt, I'm inclined to believe it - it's hard to swallow that Syria would simply walk out of Lebanon without attempting to covertly keep some intelligence there. Landis also links to a great, though very long, piece by Evan Osnos in the Chicago Tribune about Bashar and the dynamics at the top of his government.

I'm starting to harp a little, aren't I?...

2005-04-27T08:44:00.000-04:00

But the Bolton story only grows. Before I jump into today's developments, let me just amend what I wrote before. I've been berating myself for falling for the spin of Kristol and Novak. The issue that's derailing Bolton's nomination aren't his managerial tactics, but rather, as Joe Biden explained the other day, his bullying and intimidation of intelligence analysts who weren't giving him the intelligence he wanted. This, much more than ideology, should be a disqualifying problem for Bolton, and indeed it's also one of the major faults of the larger Bush administration - much more so than ideology.

Indeed, perhaps this is part of the reason that Bush has all his troops in the field - Rice, Cheney and Rove - attempting to resuscitate the confirmation. (Rove, in a particularly desperate comparison, compared Bolton to Moynihan.) Elizabeth Bumiller has a nice round-up of White House strategy, and how a Bolton rejection would effect the White House. One particularly creative "Republican lobbyist with close ties to the White House" tries to spin a potential loss as beneficial. I don't buy it. The UN would be delighted, of course, Powell would have won a major battle, and perhaps even Rice and Foggy Bottom will be happy. But it would be an unspinnable defeat for the White House on Capital Hill.

Even if the White House succeeds in strong arming the wavering moderates on Foreign Relations, it will have used significant political capital to do so - and it needs all the political capital it can get for the upcoming battles on Senate rules, Social Security and judges. My guess is that the nomination will be withdrawn before May 12, because the White House won't want to waste muscle it can't afford, and will simply cut its losses.

For something more crazy than that prediction, see Tom Friedman's wild idea that the White House should nominate Bush pere instead of Bolton (or, failing that, Clinton). I doubt Friedman wants to be taken seriously on this, more likely he's simply making a rhetorical point. But following this line of thinking, if the Bolton nomination actually collapses, why not move away from the Cheney/Rumsfeld axis and throw in somebody from Bush I - somebody like Baker or Scowcroft, or possibly even Dennis Ross? They'd certainly receive a longer leash from Rice than Bolton ever would have, they'd be greeted much more favorably on the international scene, and consequently they'd actually have the potential to shake things up in New York.

Interpretations of the Bolton meltdown

2005-04-25T12:00:00.000-04:00

A couple assorted notes about the commentary on the Bolton confirmation:

1) Noam Schieber had an uncharacteristically non-sensical observation on Friday, that Lincoln Chafee was the big loser from the sudden loss of support on the Foreign Relations committee. He makes a good point that Chafee was basically, by intending to vote for a nominee who he obviously opposes, was "abdicating his responsibility as a US senator". Chafee's subsequent anti-Bolton statements, after Voinovich jumped ship, do indeed make him look like an opportunist. But will this really mean much in Rhode Island? The subtleties of the issue - Chafee's initial reluctance to oppose his party - won't be apparent to 99% of Rhode Island voters. I find it hard to see how Matt Brown could really exploit the situation.

2) Bill Kristol has spilled considerable ink in defense of John Bolton ever since Rice announced the nomination. His latest defense in the Weekly Standard is of course rather incoherent, but one needs only a minimum amount of logic for preaching to the choir. For those of us not in the choir, the very beginning of the column makes little internal sense. Bork's views were misrepresented in his hearings, Kristol explains, and his consequent rejection meant a loss for "sound constitutionalism". But this was, of course, exactly how Bork's views were represented. If his views - which is to say an anachronistic reliance on 18th century patricians while deciding the fundamental issues of governance - and "sound constitutionalism" are one in the same, then they weren't misrepresented. They were just presented.

3) This comes to a fundamental problem Kristol shares with other defenders of Bolton, such as Bob Novak. They object to a nominee being rejected for ideological reasons, but then they object for a nominee being rejected for professional (or managerial) reasons. Should then the only criteria for Senate approval be no law-breaking and no-intern problems? I tend to think that ideology is more important than managerial style, but certainly senators should have the right to consider both. And certainly Bolton seems to fail both tests for a majority of the senators on Foreign Relations. No matter how weaselly this majority may seem to Kristol and Novak, that's what comes from separation of powers. Eh.

Obrador no Chavez

2005-04-23T10:24:00.000-04:00

Rossana Fuentes Berain writes in the Post today that Obrador is no Chavez. I'm happily convinced. However, I'm not entirely convinced ought to do nothing about the Mexican situation. A few words of protest from the State Department would at least end the impression of blatant hypocrisy about Bush's new democratic foreign policy.

'06 and '08 Speculation

2005-04-23T09:25:00.000-04:00

Time for some idle speculation. Let me state at the outset that I'm inclined to support Hillary for '08, but even if I decide against doing so (which would probably be because I'd swung to Biden), I don't buy the argument that she's unelectable. As Ellen Goodman wrote on Thursday, the idea that Hillary is too polarizing is preposterous, particularly when one of the most polarizing presidents in modern history was just reelected half-a-year ago. The election fight is over a tiny portion of the population, and the polarization of the rest of the population isn't necessarily a reason to discount a Clinton candidacy.

There's a lot between now and a general election, however. First of all, there's Hillary's '06 reelection for Senate. Right now, despite the bile from Stop Her Now, it's hard to imagine any way Hillary could be stopped. One great question is what will George Pataki do. It looks increasingly like he doesn't stand a chance in a statewide election. While Pataki's statewide approval ratings have plummeted in the past year, Spitzer's are quite strong in the governor's race. And in either a gubernatorial or Senate race Pataki would face opponents with much larger war-chests than his. Much more likely, I think, is that Pataki won't run for anything in '06, and will instead focus on Iowa in '08. Does Pataki stand any chance in a run for president? Absolutely not. He doesn't have the charisma, and he's not nearly conservative enough to win the Iowa caucuses, let alone NH or SC, for the Republican primaries. It seems to me that if Pataki is realistic he would be exploring Iowa in order to basically run for VP.

Which leaves Rudy Giuliani, who is also eyeing his prospects for '08. I'm even more skeptical about a Giuliani candidacy - national or statewide - than I am about a Pataki candidacy. Guiliani's incredible popularity is derived almost solely from 9/11, and his extremely liberal social positions wouldn't let him win any Republican national primary. Meanwhile, it's hard to see Upstate voters electing a former mayor of NYC to either the governor's office or to the Senate.

So let's say both Hillary and Spitzer sail through the '06 elections. Spitzer, already with a national profile, emerges as a realistic candidate for '12 or '16 (joining Barack Obama). And Hillary remains the easy favorite for '08. Hillary would face one immediate problem. Iowa campaigning involves at least a year in the state, and she wouldn't realistically be able to begin presidential campaigning until a moderate amount of time had elapsed from her Senate reelection. Bob Novak therefore reports today that one strategy for Hillary may be to skip Iowa altogether. This would be exceedingly easy to do if Gov. Vilsack were in the race - because he would effectively end the competition there, as Harkin did in '92. Speculating beyond Novak - might Clinton make a deal with Vilsack for him to run in exchange for a cabinet post or even the VP slot?

Then we come to the question of who Hillary's Primary opponents might be. Kerry seems increasingly determined to give it another go in '08, but I don't see how he has any realistic chance. He wouldn't even enter the '08 campaign, as Gore could've entered in '04, as the biggest-name candidate. And no matter how much Kerry feels he deserves the presidency, I think the much better model for him to look at, and certainly the one Democrats will be looking at, is Adlai Stevenson, not Richard Nixon. Next comes Joe Biden, who is one of my favorite senators, with all the right credentials and ideas on national security and foreign policy. However, Biden has a long Senate career - which makes for hard-to-defend and embarrassing votes - and he has a tendency to seem petty and impetuous, and to shoot himself in the foot with the press.

All of which is to say that I agree with Newt Gingrich that Hillary basically has a lock on the Democratic nomination for '08. Hillary has had her eye on this race since '99, and I can't recall any wrong moves. She's voted with the '08 race in mind, she's reached out across the aisle in repeated shows of bipartisanship, she's been quite visible on the Armed Services Committee, she's moved to the center but maintained the love of her base, and she's helped raise money for almost every prominent Democrat in the country. On top of all of that, she's hardly a novice at a national campaign, and she's married to one of the sharpest political minds alive.

The only real question in my mind is who Hillary might face in the general election.

On that Bolton nomination...

2005-04-22T06:54:00.000-04:00

It is rather heartening to watch this Bolton nomination fall apart, first from the Voinovich defection earlier this week to the news that both Chafee and Hagel were having second thoughts. Now comes the news that Colin Powell talked to the recalcitrant senators, and didn't have too many kind words for Mr. Bolton. I don't buy the denials from Powell's office that he didn't initiate the conversations, by the way. Powell has something of a record of pushing against the White House off the record and then denying that he ever did so. Anyway, bravo Colin. Let's hope he succeeded in derailing it.

Political Fictions Changes

2005-04-21T07:47:00.000-04:00

So the format of Political Fictions will hopefully be changing from now on, most notably with other voices. I still plan on writing on here as much as I can, but I've invited some other people to post whenever they feel like doing so. If there are any other readers who are interested in jumping into the fray, then by all means tell me and I'll send you an invite. I've also added, retroactively, some discussion on East Asian politics between me, my brother (Conrad), my father (John) and my cousin (Jove). If you're at all interested in reading that, it begins maybe two weeks ago (available in archives). Thanks.

Holbrooke in the Post

2005-04-20T08:17:00.000-04:00

Richard Holbrooke has rather effusive praise for Condi Rice in today's Washington Post. Fair enough, I think she deserves much of it. He brings to light two important shifts in Bush foreign policy - not vetoing the Darfur ICC resolution, and Zoellick's call last week for NATO support for AU troops on the ground. I've been consistently impressed with the Bush administration's Sudan policy - from sending Danforth to end the North/South war, to its attention to Darfur. Of course, the failure to focus on Darfur more is grave, and the administration isn't doing close to enough. But it surpasses Clinton's response to Rwanda, and it is certainly preferable to the Chinese response.

An interesting note about Holbrooke's call-outs: Annan, Clinton and Corzine. This is a curious list. Jon Corzine, of course, is perhaps the most passionate Senator on the Darfur issue. But a close second is Republican Sam Brownback; the two senators wrote an op-ed last week in favor of more pressure on Darfur, including possible boots on the ground. Holbrooke talks about support for a NATO role - perhaps he's referring to this bill - introduced by Joe Biden? But then why isn't Holbrooke mentioning Biden or Brownback? It's not really stepping out on a limb to think that perhaps, despite his praise for Rice's job, Holbrooke is eager to have it, and he's already throwing his support behind the most likely person to give it to him...

As for the rest of the article, Holbrooke of course knows the Kosovo situation quite well, and it's hard to disagree with his contention that final status talks are needed there, with particular attention paid to the Serb minority.

The New Pope

2005-04-20T07:28:00.000-04:00

Many commentators are trying to think of good things to say about Benedict XVI, but it seems to me that the best thing that could be said about the former member of the Hitler Youth is that he's already quite old, and his reign won't be as long as his predecessor's.

Anne Applebaum, one of my favorite columnists, works hard to paint the emergence of Ratzinger as a spark for the re-entry of religion into European debate. Her evidence seems to be that Ratzinger's European blood and German origins would make it hard for him to ignore. I don't see why. His hard-line positions seem eminently ignorable, particularly for vehemently secular and liberal Europe.

Andrew Sullivan, as a devout and conflicted Catholic, has some of the most interesting reflections on Ratzinger. Here's an excerpt where he quotes from an old article he wrote about the then-Cardinal:

Since I wrote those words, Ratzinger's immersion in political culture wars has become even deeper. I also cover his radical innovations on the role of women, gays and conscience. A woman should follow the "roles inscribed in her biology"; gays are inherently disposed to "intrinsic moral evil"; conscience as the modern world understands it is illusory. Yes, we have a new Pope. Just like the old one, but without any of his redeeming features.

Andrew also notes that Ratzinger has publicly opposed Turkey's entry into the EU. The more I read, the more ridiculous this Pope looks.

But let me try harder to say something nice. Benedict XVI's identifies one of his main priorities as ecumenism, and a continued dialogue with other religions. This can only be a positive thing. Inter-religious dialogue is perhaps most meaningful when it's between doctrinal conservatives. It seems to me that dialogue between a UCC minister and a reform Rabbi is going to descend into relativist mush must faster than dialogue between an ultra-conservative Cardinal and the Sheikh of Al Azhar. But whether the latter dialogue is any more productive is another issue...

The Iran Dilemma

2005-04-19T08:33:00.000-04:00

Jan Mouawad has an insightful article today on Iran's oil situation, and its use of oil and natural gas contracts to build alliances - most notably with India and China. I have several comments:

1) It's particularly revealing that Iran doesn't have the refining capacity to handle its own oil consumption, and therefore imports $2 billion in fuel each year (at expensively subsidized prices). This stinks of a colonial setup where a country mines its natural resource but then has to ship it abroad and pay exorbitantly for it in its consumer-ready form. That this setup still remains, and that Iran hasn't put some of that money it uses to subsidize consumer prices into expanding refining capacity, is rather indicative of a lack of good governance, eh?

2) Mouawad writes that there "is no guarantee, though, that Iran's clients will necessarily turn into political allies." Indeed, I'd hardly expect China or India to start championing Iran in the international arena. However, what strengthening economic alliances does do is make multilateral sanctions - particularly UNSC-imposed sanctions - increasingly unlikely. China desperately needs all the oil it can get, and I don't think it shares the American and European sense of urgency about Iranian nukes. It certainly doesn't share their concern about Iranian lack of democracy.

3) This situation makes the unilateral sanctions imposed by the US a bit ridiculous, doesn't it? Let's start with a basic rule of sanctions: multilateral sanctions are much much more effective than unilateral sanctions. And unilateral sanctions in particular loose their potency the longer they've been in place. Which is to say that if sanctions don't produce the desired result in their first year or two, they probably never will.

In this instance, as with the Sudan, American unilateral sanctions might be actually counterproductive. Imagine Clinton hadn't pushed through the 1996 Iran-Libya Sanctions Act, and that there were also no sanctions on the Sudan. Conoco would be all over those countries, as would several other American companies. This means that China would have less of the Iranian market, and Iran and the Sudan would be providing less of its needs. All of which would make proposed multilateral sanctions (which are much needed in the Sudan) more feasible.

But the problem with sanctions, unilateral or multilateral, is that they're self-perpetuating. It would be disastrous right now for the US to end its sanctions of Iran or the Sudan, for such a move would be interpreted, in the current climate, as an endorsement the respective governments.

A Mexican caudillo?

2005-04-19T08:08:00.000-04:00

Carmen Boullosa writes in the Times today about the Obrador situation in Mexico. While she doesn't critique the US government's failure to discuss the Mexico situation, as Harold Meyerson did so eloquently last week, she is utterly scathing towards the Fox administration and his PRI allies. She makes two crucial points - that the Fox government is just shooting itself in the foot by helping Obrador's popularity, and that it's doing irreparable harm to tenuous Mexican democracy. Even if Obrador somehow manages to survive the current crisis and is able to run legtimately in the election (the alternative being popular sentiment that the election is invalid), the current imbroglio risks creating a Mexican caudillo in Obrador. What on earth does Fox think he's doing?

Pacifist Overthrows of Dictatorship

2005-04-18T08:20:00.000-04:00

I'm no longer a pacifist, but I often regret it. I no longer believe that the moral consistency of pacifism is itself entirely moral when it meets certain real-world situations. However, I still believe that in most situations a pacifist solution is more effective than a military solution - the obvious example being the wave of revolutions over the past several years - from Serbia to Georgia to Ukraine - that were successful with almost no bloodshed. One key actor in these revolutions - and in the expanding business of exporting Otpor-like revolutions - is Peter Ackerman, and Franklin Foer has a must read article on Ackerman in this week's New Republic. If you're not registered for TNR online, tell me and I can email you the article. Or just buy the magazine - the rest of the issue is, not surprisingly, eminently readable.

Models of Justice in Uganda

2005-04-18T08:06:00.000-04:00

Marc Lacey has an article today about the dilemma of how to deal with the Lord's Resistance Army in northern Uganda. The Museveni government has recommended to the ICC that it issue (well-deserved) arrest warrants for the LRA leadership. But a delegation of Acholi chiefs, leaders of the tribe the LRA comes from, went to Brussels to argue that the arrest warrants would only make the LRA leadership more desperate, and a much better solution would be the traditional tribal forgiveness ceremony. Here's a quote from the article about the ceremony itself:

The other day, an assembly of Acholi chiefs put the notion of forgiveness into action. As they looked on, 28 young men and women who had recently defected from the rebels lined up according to rank on a hilltop overlooking this war-scared regional capital, with a one-legged lieutenant colonel in the lead and some adolescent privates bringing up the rear. They had killed and maimed together. They had raped and pillaged. One after the other, they stuck their bare right feet in a freshly cracked egg, with the lieutenant colonel, who lost his right leg to a bomb, inserting his right crutch in the egg instead. The egg symbolizes innocent life, according to local custom, and by dabbing themselves in it the killers are restoring themselves to the way they used to be.

Next, the former fighters brushed against the branch of a pobo tree, which symbolically cleansed them. By stepping over a pole, they were welcomed back into the community by Mr. Acana and the other chiefs.

"I ask for your forgiveness," said Charles Otim, 34, the rebel lieutenant colonel, who had been abducted by the rebels himself, at the age of 16, early in the war. "We have wronged you."

This sounds like an amazing ceremony, and it's obviously a much better model than anything relying on the ICC. However, this forgiveness model is based on the perpetrator requesting forgiveness - and that's certainly not likely to come from Joseph Kony. The ideal solution, it seems to me, is fairly close to what's happening: aggressively use the ICC indictments as a complimentary policy to the 2000 amnesty policy and the traditional forgiveness ceremonies. But give an escape clause to the ICC arrest warrants on the LRA leadership - if they participate in the amnesty, and beg forgiveness, let the warrants be dropped.

Asian Politics [John]

2005-04-18T03:50:00.000-04:00

China's military buildup is unquestionably cause for concern, especially when linked to the often crude chauvinism employed by the government. The $30 billion figure is a conservative one. Global Security puts the figure at $55 billion with a note giving a likely range of $45 to $85 billion. For some perspective on what is probably the most highly militarized region on the planet, the same site gives a figure of $44.7 billion for Japan (a far higher per capita expenditure than China), $16.2 billion for S. Korea, $8 billion for Taiwan, and $50 billion for Russia, another Asian power. And then of course there is the US at $466 billion.

The Chinese are clearly flexing their diplomatic muscles, especially in Asia. But at least some of their military build-up can be seen as defensive in nature, in reaction to perceived threats from the US and Japan in particular. Thus a sane US foreign policy ought to be to stop posturing and really work for the defusing of situations like North Korea and Taiwan and for a reversal of the military build-up. Instead we see the Americans selling sophisticated arms to their client states - including the just announced sale of F-16s to Pakistan with the obscene suggestion by Rice that the Indians can buy them as well. How much of US foreign policy is driven by the military and military industries is an open question, but it must be very considerable.

Asian Politics [Phil]

2005-04-17T17:55:00.000-04:00

Conrad - Thanks for your analysis of the textbook issue in Japan. You're right that the Japanese situation sounds a little different from Turkey - there seems to be complete denial among Turkish academics and intellectuals, at least in Turkey itself, of any Armenian genocide. (On a related topic, William Dalrymple has a great article in the second-to-last issue of the New York Review of Books where he talks about the battle over India's textbooks - the RSS and company, as you might imagine, aren't particularly interested in objective historiography. But there have also been extreme attacks on those who are.)

John - you say that you worry about Japan, but it seems to me the region as a whole deserves some worry. You note that Japan already has one of the strongest forces in the region, and it has indeed been putting significant resources into its military for the past decade. But so, then, has China. This VOA article isn't particularly insightful, but it contains some important details, including the fact that real spending on the Chinese military is probably more than $30 billion annually, with much attention focused on modernization. A November DoD report notes China's military presence in SE Asia (including, incidentally, Burma) and identifies the primary goals of the new military strategy are "to protect the sea lanes through which much of its oil travels and to build its capability for a possible confrontation with Taiwan." For the former goal I'd just note again the Chinese military presence in Central Asia and Africa (going back to that Atlantic article), and the latter motive is at the center of the discussion we've been having. Where does the buildup over the Straights of Taiwan lead to? And is the US justified in trying to scuttle the EU/China arms deal in light of this Asian remilitarization?

I think I agree with Conrad and John that maintaining the status quo is probably the best option for the China/Taiwan dispute particularly vis-a-vis US policy. But that becomes increasingly difficult, as forces in both China and Taiwan aren't at all interested in the status quo. (Dad - you say that the Bush administration has been less adept than its predecessor at maintaining the status quo. Can the blame for the current escalation therefore be placed on them?) The question then becomes how to stand down from the crisis.

On the subject of oil, Conrad, your search for a silver lining, which is one I basically agree with, is particularly interesting because it's the argument made by many who scoff at conservation. That is: there's no need to put money into energy conservation right now; the best incentive for conservation will be the market itself, and as oil becomes increasingly scarce there will be increasing research into alternative energy sources as well as conservation.

So that silver lining is there, but I imagine we both agree that energy conservation should be a priority before the barrel climbs above $100. This chump at the Heritage Foundation is complaining about oil prices and brings up two specific pieces of national legislation: an ethanol mandate to mix the fuel into gasoline, and a McCain/Lieberman bill that would restrict the total amount of fossil fuels and oil that can be consumed in the US. This guy thinks both bills are poor ideas - he thinks the government should be making oil more affordable - but I'm all in favor of getting the price up (even if it's a drag on the economy right now). At some point advocating a significant national tax on gas won't mean political suicide. However, right now Bush appears to still be focused almost exclusively on the supply side of the equation.

On Chavez

2005-04-16T13:00:00.000-04:00

This is a scathing indictment of Chavez, who increasingly appears just another tyrant - one with Castro as his model. (Thanks to A.M. Mora y Leon.)

Greek Cyprus' Power Play

2005-04-16T12:35:00.000-04:00

The probable next president of Turkish Cyprus, Mehmet Ali Talat, looks quite promising - he's a firm advocate of the Annan-brokered peace plan that the current president, Rauf Denktash, opposed. He promises, once elected, to appeal to the president of Greek Cyprus, Tassos Papadopoulos, to return to the peace plan.

I fear, however, that Papadopoulos will do no such thing. Papadopoulos was of course the man who led the successful opposition to the peace plan a year ago in Greek Cyprus, and his fundamental calculations haven't changed. The Greek Cypriot Republic is now a member of the EU, and therefore has the ability to veto the entry of any new member into the union - including, of course, Turkey. For Turkey to even begin the accession negotiations with the EU this October it needs to normalize relations with Greek Cyprus. Therefore as time goes on the Turkish leadership - which always seems pained to have to deal with the Cyprus issue - will grow increasingly desperate for some sort of peace plan. Which means, according the the calculations of the Greek Cypriot Republic, that its bargaining power is only increasing, and it can come much closer to its maximalist goals than the Annan plan allowed.

The problem here is that even if a referendum on a peace plan much closer to the maximalist Greek position were passed by the population of Northern Cyprus, it wouldn't bode well for the integration of the island. Some sort of compromise is needed for real peace on the island - and the current stalemate isn't helping advance that goal.

The only organization that could possibly influence this stalemate, however, is the EU. And it seems quite possible that few in Brussels are eager to end a stalemate that could eventually derail the Turkish accession to the EU.

Let's hope I'm too cynical.

Bringing Taylor to Justice

2005-04-16T12:02:00.000-04:00

It is rather shocking to think that Charles Taylor has been allowed such free reign in Nigeria after being forced from power in Liberia. Evidently he has not only violated the terms of his asylum deal with Nigeria by remaining in close contact with supporters from Liberia, but he has been active in other region-destabilizing activities, including an assassination attempt against President Conte of Guinea. Needless to say, Taylor has proved the lengths he's willing to go to in order to destabilize West Africa and then profit from such destabilization; preventing a Taylor restoration should be a prime goal of US African policy.

The Monrovia News has a good article discussing the increasing agitation from Capital Hill to bring Taylor to justice, while Ryan Lizza has an analysis of why the administration, and State in particular, have been so reluctant to move on Taylor (it's not incredibly clear to me why Nigerian President Obasanjo is so reluctant to give Taylor up). Particularly alarming from the Lizza piece is the contention that the US was paying Taylor to maintain a strong relationship with Qaddafi in the early 90s in order to gain intelligence on the Libyan dictator. Here's the key quote:

Subsidizing and encouraging Taylor's relationship with Qaddafi--who was in turn funding Taylor's guerrilla movement and is almost as responsible as Taylor for the past 15 years of West African violence--would undoubtedly rank as one of the more appalling U.S. foreign policy operations in recent years. But previous U.S. relationships with Manuel Noriega, Slobodan Milosevic, and Saddam Hussein did not stop us from confronting them when the time came. And, as some Bush supporters argued during the run-up to the war with Iraq, past complicity with a war criminal makes the United States more responsible to bring the outlaw to justice, not less.

Asian Politics [Conrad]

2005-04-14T16:00:00.000-04:00

Regarding the Japanese textbook issue, I should first point out that themajor newspapers and TV news programs provide an unabashedly pro-governmentview of the world. To find the kind of critical take on government actionsthat we expect in the West, you have to go to the smaller newspapers,magazines, etc. Given this, it’s probably no surprise that the coverage ofthe textbook issue has mostly focused on the fact that the Chinese and theKoreans (among others) are angry about the contents of the Japanesetextbooks, and not as much on the question of whether the textbooks mightactually be whitewashing history.

I just finished reading an extremely long list of Korean grievances withJapan’s textbooks, which include the downplaying of wartime atrocities butgo much further than that- in some cases the objections have to do withdetails of ancient history. While I’m not sure about the merits of eachspecific claim, I have no doubt that many of the claims are valid; certainlythe textbooks do downplay wartime atrocities. However, while the formaleducation system may not teach Japanese citizens much about theseatrocities, it’s certainly not hard to find out about them. Many Japanesehistorians have written graphically about them, and such histories can befound in any bookstore in the country. Of course, other historians havetried to deny the extent of the atrocities, or even in some cases their veryexistence (the Rape of Nanking, for example), and both types of books can befound side by side. I don’t know the extent of the situation in Turkey, butI don’t think that the Japanese situation is as extreme; certainly, theleftist historians who describe the actual atrocities sell at least as wellhere in Japan as the rightist revisionists.

What does your average Japanese citizen know/believe about Japanese behaviorbefore and during the war? Not as much as if all the details were taught inschool, certainly. But I suspect that very few citizens are ignorant of thefact that the Japanese military oppressed the citizens of Japan’s colonies,even if they don’t know all the details.

Regarding the issue of apology- a number of Japanese politicians, includinga few Prime Ministers, have issued apologies for Japanese wartime behavior,which in a way makes the issue more difficult. Most Koreans, Chinese, andcitizens of other former Japanese colonies view the apologies asinsufficiently genuine, or insufficiently numerous, or both. It’s hard tosay what the correct number of apologies is, or to define what makes anapology genuine, but if the measuring stick is the degree of forgiveness onthe receiving end, then Japan clearly has a long way to go. There’s noquestioning the fact that Japan has not put nearly as much effort intoapologizing as Germany has. And the facts that the Japanese governmentcontinues to issue whitewashed textbooks, and that Koizumi keeps visitingYasukuni shrine (without considering the possibility of moving the warcriminals back to their original graves, from which they were moved toYasukuni in the ‘70’s) all seem to give the lie to the apologies that havebeen issued to date.

However, many Japanese have very mixed feelings about the entire issue.Most of the Japanese people I’ve talked to acknowledge that the Japanesemilitary behaved atrociously during the war, and they feel sorry for thepeople of the former colonies; at the same time, they feel that they’ve beenconstantly apologizing for sixty years now, and they want to move on. Thismakes it harder for Japanese politicians to issue further apologies. Butthere certainly is an opportunity for a grand gesture by a farsighted PrimeMinister: if he were to simultaneously order the war criminals removed fromYasukuni Shrine, give a detailed acknowledgement of and apology for Japanesewar crimes in all of its former colonies, and order the textbooks rewrittento reflect the now-acknowledged facts, the international goodwill thusaccrued would more than compensate for the political backlash from Japaneseconservatives. Koizumi is never going to make any such move. But thechance is there for a future Prime Minister.

As a side note, I should also point out that Korea and China have their owntextbook dispute at the moment: China’s considering using textbooks thatclaim that the ancient Korean kingdom of Koguryo was in fact a regionalgovernment of China. Understandably, the Koreans vigorously object.

On Taiwan: my comparison with the U.S. Civil War was perhaps not the mostapt. I simply wanted to point out that an appeal to the “right” ofself-determination alone is not enough to establish a valid claim forbreaking away and forming a separate country. If self-determination werethe overarching, compelling moral claim that some see it as, then theConfederacy would have had as much justification as any other breakawaycountry. However, as Jove and Phil have pointed out, Taiwan’s argument forindependence is much stronger than just self-determination; the facts thatit is a democracy potentially breaking away from an authoritarian regime,and that it has functioned as an essentially independent country for thelast sixty years, are both very good reasons to support Taiwaneseindependence.

Of course, not all Taiwanese see independence as the ideal goal. If Chinawere ever to successfully democratize, I think that Taiwan might decide, byreferendum, to reunify with China. I also believe that China cannotcontinue its current course of economic growth and political repressionforever; when change does come, I think that it will be a result ofdemocratic demands coming from a newly empowered middle class that’s nolonger content to be controlled by a small oligarchy. Because of this, Ithink that the prospects for eventual democratization in China are good, andthat therefore the status quo in Taiwan, while not ideal, is not as bad asit might seem. As John points out, China really does see Taiwan as a keypart of its identity, and it truly would go to war over the issue. (Myroommate in D.C., Xiyi, has made this point repeatedly to me). If thestatus quo continues without war breaking out for as long as it takes forChina to democratize, then I think that China itself might perhaps be morewilling to see a true referendum take place in Taiwan, and to abide by theresults, especially because opinion polls would probably show a betterchance that such a referendum would turn out in China’s favor.

Moving on – the anti-Japanese demonstrations in China have made for quitegripping news. Keep your eyes open; there are more demonstrations scheduledfor this weekend. I think that the Chinese government is more than capableof repressing such demonstrations, as is clear from the complete lack of anysuch large-scale demonstrations against the Chinese government itself since1989. Clearly, then, these demonstrations have at least tacit governmentalapproval. However, the government is walking a fine line here. I don’tthink that the Chinese government wants to provoke a real confrontation withJapan or the US, but it can’t afford to be seen domestically as overlyaccommodating to either country.

On ASEAN, I have to agree with Phil- as far as I understand (and I haven’tstudied it much yet, though I will in the coming months), ASEAN isoverwhelmingly focused on economic cooperation, and denouncing the Myanmarjunta would be completely out of character. I’d be delighted to see itevolve into more of a forum for promoting democracy and human rights, butI’m not holding my breath.

Ballooning US debt is obviously a key issue in its relationship with China.It’s going a bit to far to say that it’s financed by Chinese banks alone-Japanese and European banks are just as important- but with the current sizeof the debt, a selloff by any of the major debt holders would lead theothers to sell out of self-preservation, and the results would bedisastrous. The steady decline of the dollar since the beginning of theBush Administration just makes matters worse; the lower the dollar, thelower the value of all that U.S. debt being held by foreign banks. We’rejust lucky that the dollar’s decline has been relatively gradual; if it everstarted to fall quickly, it would be almost impossible for foreign bankersto justify holding all of those dollars.

Oil prices: obviously anything that sets off a global depression is badnews, but as long as the rising prices stop short of sparking such adisaster, there is a silver lining, namely that oil in the $70, $80, or$90/barrel range (or more) is the one thing that can override the BushAdministration’s refusal to consider alternate energy sources. At thatprice level, the entire world will be pursuing every alternate energy sourcethat it can. For all of the damage that such prices could do to the globaleconomy (and to the chances for political development in oil-producingstates) in the short run, in the long run it might be the best thing for theworld as a whole, especially if the increased pressure finally produced atrue alternative to oil as the primary industrial energy source.

In the meantime, we have conflicts like the dispute between Japan and Chinaover drilling rights in the East China Sea (or the Japan Sea, as it’s knownhere). I must say that I was bemused when I clicked on the link that Philipprovided. This morning, as I was eating breakfast, I watched as an expertgave a detailed explanation of the drilling rights controversy on TV. Usinghigh-tech computer graphics, he showed how the controversy began because the Chinese oil rig, while located in Chinese waters, recently began drawing oilfrom a reservoir that crossed the boarder into Japanese waters, and how mostof the reservoir (and therefore most of the oil inside it) is actually onthe Japanese side. It’s only natural, therefore, that Japan should allowcompanies to drill into the same reservoir on the Japanese side.

Conspicuously absent was the second line on the BBC map, showing the boarderas claimed by China, which would clearly place the entire reservoir inChinese waters. In other words, while both sides agree that the current rigis in Chinese waters, much of the oil that the rig is pumping actually liesin disputed territory. That being the case, there seems to be fault on bothsides- China should have consulted with Japan before it began drawing oil,but at the same time when Japan starts drilling the Japanese rig itself willbe in disputed territory, which is an even shakier position.

Asian Politics [John]

2005-04-14T15:01:00.000-04:00

This is certainly an interesting time to be observing China, given the PRC government's very public fights with Taiwan and Japan, all of the news about their oil diplomacy (and the related developments related to India), and of course their very ambivalent relations with the Americans.

On the question of Taiwan, while I am certainly sympathetic to the Taiwanese with their very lively democracy (lively to the point of an arguably stolen presidential election, for I think that the assassination attempt on Chen Shuibian may well have been fabricated) in contrast to the authoritarian chauvinism of China, I would caution against underestimating the gravity of the Taiwan issue to the Chinese. Even though an historical case can be made that Taiwan is not part of China (over the past 110 years, Taiwan has only been ruled by a regime on the mainland for 4 years - 1945-49), the idea that Taiwan is an essential part of China resonates broadly with Chinese and is one that the PRC would go to war over, if necessary. With luck, a more liberal and democratic China and creative ways of configuring nation and sovereignty might in the future bring about some solution to the dilemma, but in the meantime, any US government needs to walk a fine line, providing low profile support for the status quo. Clinton did it quite successfully, while Bush has made things worse.

Finally, I do worry about Japan. I agree with Phil that the Japanese have not addressed their wartime history in any satisfactory way, as evidenced by the current textbook controversy as well as Koizumi's visits to the Yasukuni Shrine. Japanese textbook descriptions of WWII have been disrupting Japan's relations with its East Asian neighbors for decades now, and the Ministry of Education seems to have learned nothing from the past protests. On the subject of remilitarization, Conrad, it seems to me that past measure to strengthen the "Self Defense Forces" have not been so minor, and that Japan already has one of the strongest military forces in the region, and one that could be dramatically increased with some ease, given its high proportion of officers and non-commissioned officers.

Putin's Perspective

2005-04-14T07:11:00.000-04:00

William Pfaff, the American IHT columnist, gave a spirited attempt at appreciating Putin's point of view yesterday. It's undeniable that the increasing American and Western presence in much of the former Soviet Union - from its bases in Uzbekistan and Azerbaijan to its support of regime-toppling movements in Kyrgystan, Ukraine and Georgia - is quite upsetting and even provoking to the Russian elite. But I'm not sure what Pfaff means us to make of this upset.

Western support of the awful privatization schemes throughout the former USSR, which resulted in new plutocracies, was perhaps a mistake. But then Pfaff states that a "system of swindling, robbery, asset-stripping and appropriation of public resources was created then that Putin is now trying to reverse," and then Pfaff goes on to defend the prosecution of Khodorkovsky. Yikes.

It's not at all clear to me that Putin is indeed trying to reverse the plunder of the 90s. In his first years in power, it is true that Putin worked to stem the excesses of the Yeltsin years. But his campaign against Khodorkovsky, by any measure of the imagination, was much more politically motivated. Of course Khodorkovsky was guilty of rule-breaking in the 90s - it would be hard to find any of the current economic elite in Russia who wasn't. But Putin singled Khodorkovsky at the exact moment the billionaire was emerging as a realistic threat to Putin's personal political power. Since the arrest, of course, it looks much more like Putin is mainly interested in consolidating his power base and transfering the weath of the Yeltsin plutocracy to one controlled by Putin.

Pfaff blithely dismisses the Western concerns in the Khodorkovsky business about "market freedom", but investor confidence is no small matter in a Russia that desperately needs capital. (And yet this week, of course, Russia announced that it was hitting TNK-BP with a $760 million dollar tax bill from '01.)

There's a difference between appreciating Putin's position and adopting it. The man and his government are feeling increasingly embattled in the international arena - with its former European empire moving in with the EU, and its former Central Asian empire now flirting with both the West and China. Yet this is only the follow-up to Yeltsin's '91 advice to "take as much freedom as they could manage". For the EU to shy away from Ukrainian entry, or the US to shy away from supporting democratic movements in Central Asia and the Caucases, would be taking Putin's perspective too much into consideration. Tread lightly. But tread.

Repetition

2005-04-14T07:04:00.000-04:00

So Andrew Sullivan posted the same Quote of the Day as me. Sorry.

Quote of the Day

2005-04-14T06:14:00.000-04:00

I was pleased to see John Paul II's papacy come to an end. On one of his other visits to the United States the pope condemned an "[American] culture that seeks to declare entire groups of human beings . . . to be outside the boundaries of legal protection." That's rich coming from the man who ordered bishops here to oppose civil rights laws that protect gays and lesbians (including hate-crime laws), leaving us "outside the boundaries of legal protection." In 2003 a Vatican screed condemned not only gay marriage but also adoptions by gays and lesbians. Allowing us to adopt children, the Vatican said, "would actually mean doing violence to these children." (Hmm. Violence against children . . . perhaps we should defer to the Catholic Church's expertise on that subject?) And two days before my boyfriend and I celebrated our 10th anniversary in February, the pope rose from his deathbed just long enough to describe gay marriage as part of an "ideology of evil." Gee, J.P., you shouldn't have.

What's maddening about this pope's signature gay bashing is this: When the pope—the dead one, the next one, the one after that—says something stupid about homosexuality, straight folks take it to heart. The church's efforts have helped defeat gay rights bills, led to the omission of gays and lesbians from hate-crime statutes, and helped to pass anti-gay-marriage amendments. But when a pope says something stupid about heterosexuality, straight Americans go deaf. And this pope had plenty to say about heterosexual sex—no contraceptives, no premarital sex, no blowjobs, no jerkin' off, no divorce, no remarriage, no artificial insemination, no blowjobs, no three-ways, no swinging, no blowjobs, no anal. Did I mention no blowjobs? John Paul II had more "no's" for straight people than he did for gays. But when he tried to meddle in the private lives of straights, the same people who deferred to his delicate sensibilities where my rights were concerned suddenly blew the old asshole off. Gay blowjobs are expendable, it seems; straight ones are sacred.

- Dan Savage, writing in his syndicated column, Savage Love. In my book John Paul II did far greater harm in his condemnation of contraception than in his ridiculous and bigoted homophobic commentary. But Dan is always funny.

Asian Politics [Phil]

2005-04-13T14:23:00.000-04:00

It sounds like all of us are in agreement about Taiwan, and its right to democracy and self-determination. I'm not entirely convinced, though, about Jove's contention that "Japan, like Germany, has in large measure atoned for its past sins and displayed a firm commitment to democracy post-1945." My general impression is that Japan has atoned for, and come to terms with, its imperial crimes much less than in Germany, where for so many years the Holocaust industry was a national pasttime. Continuing on with this general (and perhaps ignorant) impression, it's seemed to me that Japan is much closer to, say, Turkey, with a whole historic industry built up around denial - just as Turks like to deny the Armenian genocide, so many Japanese historians contest accounts of, say the Rape of Nanking. As for democracy - obviously it helps create the forum for such a discourse about historical rights and wrongs, but that doesn't necessarily mean that a discourse has taken place. Obviously Conrad and John will know much more about this, so I'm interested in their perspectives.

About ASEAN - I'm not sure what you mean by strength, Jove. It's seemed to me that the driving concern of ASEAN is economic, and secondarily security. I don't see any of the countries involved stepping up to pressure the Myanmar junta any time soon. And indeed, the junta can play to economic and security concerns quite well - for the former it can offer significant natural resources and cooperation with pipelines, and to the latter it can paint its problems with rebels into the same picture as the military struggles faced by Thailand, Indonesia, the Philipenes, and Malaysia. A stronger ASEAN only means increased pressure on the Myanmar junta if there is increased concern for democracy and human rights in some of those other countries, and I don't really see that right now.

As for the macro-level discussion of the emerging China and its relationship to the US, in my book the most important factor here is the ballooning US debt, now at 3 trillion, that is in effect financed by Chinese banks. For the moment, of course, the isn't a relationship of dependence but of interdependence. The US needs China to fund its spending hikes and tax cuts, but China needs to US market to buy its exports. But China is moving into other markets, and eventually it will be able to afford the costs of refusing to prop up the US and the dollar, because it will be able to rely on markets in India, Europe and Latin America. This doesn't mean that it will, but it does mean that if you want to look at the Sino-US relationship as one of carrots and sticks, the American carrots and sticks are rapidly shrinking, while the Chinese carrots and sticks are growing. (Boy that's some phallic imagery there.)

I agree with you that the Chinese-Indian warming relationship and the resolution of their border dispute is quite promising. I'd also recommend Sunday's Times article about the relationship, written by Somini Sengupta and Howard French, both former West and Central Africa correspondents from the Times now heading the branches in India and China respectively. I found particularly interesting their cooperation over African petroleum - China building refineries in the Sudan and India building a pipeline.

A note about oil, which is my current obsession. Increasing number of analysts predict that we may be reaching the oil peak - that is, the peak in global production after which diminishing amounts of oil will be produced, which combined with booming demand means skyrocketing prices - as much as over $100/barrel, which could spark a global depression. (Many interpret ChevronTexaco's recent purchase of Unocal as an indication it believes this analysis, and is accordingly racing to buy up as much production as possible.) The implications of this, if true, are many. The first being the overwhelming importance of energy conservation and the disastrous ramifications of the Bush administration's refusal to do anything. But the second is that the strategic importance of oil producing regions and countries - particularly the Mideast, Central Asia, Venezuela and West Africa - is poised only to increase, and the intensity of competition for their oil between the US, the EU, China and India could only increase as well. Thirdly, the potential for political development in oil-producing states decreases as well. For instance, China has been particularly loathe to support any step that might result in UN sanctions on the Sudan or Iran because it sees their oil as increasingly necessary.

Right now I think there is more cooperation between states than competition. Elizabeth Kolbert has a nice piece about the ANWR in this weeks Talk of the Town, but neglects to mention one vital aspect of it - there's very little refining capacity on the West Coast, so most of the crude pumped out of the ANWR might be destined for East Asia and China in particular.

And what of the conflicts that come from competition? One of them might be this dispute between Japan and China over drilling rights in the East China Sea. But another issue is central Asia. Many have explained Putin's inflammatory Georgia policy (particularly his support of the rebellions in Abkhazia and Ajaria) by saying he's trying to prevent the Baku-Tblisi-Ceyhan pipeline from coming online, and therefore cutting into a virtual Russian monopoly over distribution of Caspian oil. Isn't it possible that Putin will get into similar mischief further east is China's long sought after pipeline from Kazakhstan begins to be built? (Already some are claiming that China's increased repression of the Western Uighurs - see this HRW report - is at least partially motivated by it's planned pipeline from Xinjiang, which would potentially be linked up with the Kazakh pipeline.)

Internal Administration Politics

2005-04-13T11:37:00.000-04:00

Gregory Djerejian had an interesting post about the Bolton nomination yesterday. Before I jump into what he said, let me just say that it looks like Bolton basically has the job - the testimony is over, and Chafee doesn't seem particularly eager to vote against Bolton. I get the distinct impression that many of the Republican senators on the Foreign Relations Committee will be holding their noses while voting, but don't particularly want to oppose the president in his nominees. This is fair enough - I'm fully confident that Lugar and Hagel have no qualms opposing the president over policy. Anyway, this leaves the questions of why is Bolton being sent to the UN, and how will he behave there?

First question: is this a demotion or a promotion? There's a prominent view that Bush's moving three prominent undersecretary neocons out Washington - Bolton to the UN, Wolfowitz to the World Bank, and Feith to retirement - was a sign of diminishing neocon strength. But it could just as equally, for Bolton and Wolfowitz at least, be a sign of new neocon prominence - Bush is determined to permanently change international institutions now, not just the executive branch. I'm not entirely sure I agree with either analysis, and it may be too soon to tell (if Rumsfeld is indeed on his way out in the next several months, his replacement might be quite indicative). Djerejian doesn't seem to really know what to make of Bolton either - he calls the appointment a promotion, but then says it indicates the power of the VP. Hunh?

My major point, however, is about Bolton's upcoming role. Djerejian has this to say about Bolton's relationship with Powell:

I can't be the first person to notice, by the way, that Bolton's former boss Colin Powell is conspicuous by his silence on this nomination. Some of the things reported about Bolton's conduct with respect to, say, the North Korea negotiations reflect rather badly on Powell. They suggest a Secretary not fully in control of his own department -- not the first suggestion we had along those lines, of course, but still.

From every account I read, Bolton was forced onto Powell, who had to face a Cheney/Rumsfeld stooge as his number two in addition to having to constantly face Cheney/Rumsfeld. Has anybody ever suggested that Powell was ever fully in control at State? It seems to me that his integrity always came because he persevered in spite of such impediments as Bolton. But what does this all imply for Bolton at the UN? From all accounts Rice has had just as chilly relations with the Cheney/Rumsfeld faction as her predecessor. She does have considerably more sway with the president than Powell did, however, so she was able to refuse Bolton as her number two, and had him replaced with Zoellick. But if he acted completely independently of Powell, will Rice's connection with Bush be enough to keep Bolton under control? (As Djerejian says, the UN ambassador should "do and say only what the Secretary of State tells him to".) I'm highly skeptical.

The Test of US Democratization Policy

2005-04-13T11:08:00.000-04:00

Harold Meyerson's important piece in the Post today makes some great points about US foreign policy. I've been increasingly struck by the similarities between Ayman Nour, the Egyptian dissident running for president, and Andres Manuel Lopez Obrador, the mayor of Mexico City running for president. Both face possible jail time from their respective governments that would effectively disqualify them from the presidential race. In Egypt, Mubarak has been moved enough by domestic and international pressure to allow, constitutionally, for a contested election. But he's determined to prevent any real contested election. In Mexico, PAN and PRI, who succeeded in crippling Mexico's economy for the past four years and the seventy before that, respectively, to prevent the popular leader of the leftist PRD party from coming to power.

However, only the Egyptian government has received any sort of pressure from the US to stop its persecution of Nour. According to the State Department, as Meyerson points out, the equally ridiculous Mexican prosecution of Obrador is an "internal matter". Now I don't know too much about Obrador, and while his overtures to Chavez aren't particularly promising, they don't indicate whether he'd be a Chavez or a Lula. But with the US so blatantly hypocritical in its refusal to advocate fair play in Mexico, Obrador surely won't feel obligated to return any favors if he does come into power. And A.M. Mora y Leon had a point the other day, when he explained that the current campaign against Obrador has ownly marshaled his popularity, and the Mexican government might not be able to withstand the popular sentiment if it succeeds in disqualifying him from running.

One more note about the Obrador/Nour comparison. Where the Mexican government's campaign against Obrador has only strengthened the mayor's popularity, the Egyptian government's campaign against Nour has done quite well. Every day there are articles and editorials in the government press about Nour being an American stooge, and I've started to hear the same stuff from my Egyptian friends. (I don't know of course, how closely Nour is tied to the States - though his positions are often quite critical of the US - but it's hard to label Mubarak himself as anything other than an American stooge.) This, I think, is a key indication of how relatively democratic the two societies are.

Asian Politics [Jove]

2005-04-12T11:55:00.000-04:00

China is undoubtedly poised to take the number 2 or 3 slot in the international ordering of power soon. The question of how it deals with its neighbours during this ascendancy is obviously one of the big questions of the day. I noticed this week that China made a series of overtures to India regarding their border disputes. I think this news is extremely promising as India, with its solidly democratic history and desire for regional stability, can probably have a moderating effect on China. Regarding Taiwan, I am unsympathetic to China’s hardline here and don’t see the connection to Lincoln and the South. The South was the economic engine of the republic and Lincoln understood this. And the major issue dividing North and South (outside of economics) was slavery. The major divisive issue between China and Taiwan (as I understand it) has to do with democracy (on Taiwan’s part) and national identity (on China’s part). When the choice is between preserving China’s sense of its own national identity (here we could also talk about Tibet) or letting Taiwan pursue democratic development, I’ll side with democracy every time.

On a macro level, it seems the question confronting this US administration, and those to follow, will be how to deal with China strategically. I think the two main ways to ensure peaceful relations with China and the West during the coming century will involve economic integration and engagement on the one hand and measured steps to dilute or counter China’s regional hegemony subtly. The carrot and stick. I would therefore think that a slow build-up of Japan’s military and continuing to strengthen South Korea’s military capabilities are positive steps. I would also favour a stronger ASEAN, one that is willing to, say, condemn the generals in Myanmar and take steps against them.

I think Japan, like Germany, has in large measure atoned for its past sins and displayed a firm commitment to democracy post-1945. I don’t know much about the text book issue, but I would hope that behind closed doors, the US and others are pressuring Japan to come clean and admit their past wrongs.

Refuting Barak

2005-04-12T08:59:00.000-04:00

There was a time when thoughtful doves praised Ehud Barak; it's hard to think any Israeli who deserves such praise less. All sides deserve significant responsibility for the failure of Camp David in 2000, but Barak and the late Arafat deserve specific responsibility for the outbreak of the four year Intifada. It was Barak's overwhelming and unbalanced response to the uprising in its first days that made it spiral out of control. Moving beyond his performance as PM, Barak has always struck me as thoroughly morally reprehensible; I once heard him joke about his days in the IDF, and once accidentally killing several Palestinian civilians in Beirut.

All of this is to say that the man shouldn't be taken seriously, and neither should his arguments, some of which are on display in today's Guardian. Standing out in Barak's rather simpering defense of Sharon's current position is the claim that the recently announced construction of the Maale Adumim settlement should "not be perceived as a danger to the peace process". Here's the full quote:

a partial bureaucratic approval of an old construction plan in the city of Maale Adumim, adjacent to Jerusalem, should not be perceived as a danger to the peace process. All the diplomatic pressure on Israel, in this specific case, is not justified, simply because the Palestinians have already agreed this major bloc will stay under Israel's authority - if not at Camp David, in many other exchanges of ideas. While the construction plan is far from being implemented on the ground, threats by Saeb Erekat (or Abbas) that its authorisation "closes the door to peace" takes us back to a gloomy period where short-term political gains are put before long-term benefits.

Let's take this apart a little bit. First of all, Barak presents this as a small bureaucratic step in an old construction plan - in other words, it was already a fait accompli, and any who object to such a bureaucratic step are merely playing politics. Secondly, Barak describes Maale Adumim as merely a "city" - neglecting to mention that it is legally a settlement in the West Bank. Thirdly, and perhaps most importantly, Barak neglects to mention the geography of Maale Adumim, and how construction of the new settlement will help close off Arab East Jerusalem from the rest of the West Bank - quite a huge issue, in terms of facts on the ground. The more we focus on the long term, as Barak seems to urge, the more problematic this construction becomes.

It's absolutely reasonable for Barak to demand that the Palestinian Authority focus on disarming the Palestinian terror infrastructure, not simply control it. But Abbas faces an even greater threat of Civil War than Sharon, and much less resources to fight such a war. So it seems even more reasonable that the minimum both sides could do is not provoke - not create new facts on the ground, and certainly not build new settlements.

Quote of the Day

2005-04-12T08:36:00.000-04:00

We discovered these horrible back dealings in the nuclear black market, but at that point the Bush Administration wanted Pakistan's help in finding Osama bin Laden. This is a year before the election. So at that time we gave Musharraf a pass and let him go on TV and do his thing and pretend that was good enough, that he would put Khan under house arrest and whatever he learned from him he would relay to us.

The deal was extended when Musharraf gave us intelligence on Iran and its nuclear posture. The payback for him was that we dropped the demand that Khan be turned over to the IAEA or us for interrogation directly. We've backed off on the ultimately more important issue of stateless nuclear arms, of a weapon getting into the hands of a terrorist group. That's a huge tradeoff, with enormous consequences.

-Seymour Hersh in an interview at the Progressive

The Passion of Lincoln Chafee

2005-04-12T08:11:00.000-04:00

Although I gather he has a reputation as an intellectual lightweight, I've always been rather impressed with Lincoln Chafee. I saw him speak at a presentation at Brown about Cuba where he implored the audience to visit Cuba before Castro's death, when the island will be spoiled by capitalism. It's rather hard to think of any Republicans, senators or otherwise, who would express a similar sentiment.

Therefore it will be interesting to see what Chafee does with his pivotal role on the Bolton nomination. I'm already disappointed with Lugar's acquiescence to Bolton, and Chafee is now really the only person between Bolton and the job. As demonstrated by the refusal to pressure Chafee on the part of other Republicans, including uber-conservative George Allen, I think Chafee's in a strong position. He already refused to endorse or even vote for Bush in the '04 election, and he's utterly free to not tow the party line here. Any retaliation on the part of the Republican leadership, as they're obviously quite aware, could make Chafee pull a Jeffords, or even move over to the Democrats. Both of these options are available, since the only thing Chafee needs to keep his seat in the overwhelmingly Democratic Rhode Island is his name.

Kristof on the Media

2005-04-12T07:53:00.000-04:00

My favorite Times columnist is Nick Kristof. While he isn't as fun as Brooks or Tierney, and isn't as influential as Friedman or Dowd, he seems like the most morally serious of the columnists. His column today is worth reading, but I think his analysis is a little off. It's certainly true that the number of people who claim to trust the media has plunged quite precipitously, but I'm not sure this translates into a drop of public support of the free press. Two statistics that Kristof throws off are particularly revealing: that less than a third of Democrats trusts the Times, and less then a third of Republicans trust Fox News. Even the core audience of these two huge media organizations don't trust them. Does this mean that the media ought to struggle hard to regain its credibility? Perhaps. But isn't also possible that the real shift has been in the public - which is much more critical of all information it receives, from advertisements to doctors' diagnoses to media stories? Isn't this a good thing?

There was a day, of course, when people sat down to Walter Cronkite on the CBS evening news for half-an-hour a day and trusted everything they saw. I know few people these days who accept information that uncritically, and I don't see how this is a bad development.

The Times Editorial Page

2005-04-12T07:34:00.000-04:00

I don't know about y'all, but I'm reeling from the new columnist schedule at the Times, with Safire gone, Rich back on board, and Tierney's first column today. (I was most disoriented on Sunday, when Dowd and Friedman were nowhere to be seen.) Anyway, I think the changes are mostly good - though I'm not thrilled to see Frank Rich back from his exile in Arts and Leisure; I find his huge columns pompous and bloated. But on the evidence of today's column, Tierney is a great voice to fill Safire's conservative spot. While I gather he's a bit of a free-market fanatic, he doesn't take himself as seriously as Safire, and he throws in some fun historical anecdotes. I was won over by his finish, however, where he mocks the current punditry surrounding the new pope's election, asking to be allowed "to pontificate unencumbered by actual information. We can theorize that the Italian delegation is following Karl Rove's strategy of "solidifying the base." We can ruminate on a third world cardinal following the Bob Shrum strategy of building a coalition of "the people against the powerful." Columnists have built careers on less."

Wolfowitz at the World Bank

2005-04-11T19:40:00.000-04:00

While I'm full-heartedly opposed to Bush's attempt to send John Bolton to the UN, I've had much more mixed feelings about Wolfowitz. Sebastien Mallaby's great piece at the New Republic today allays my fears about Wolfowitz a little, but it's magnificent in its defense of the institution, and such a defense is needed.

Take George Monbiot's stinging article in the Guardian two days ago, where he claims to support Wolfowitz because any other choice would provide the illusion that the bank was doing something good. This, in Monbiot's view, is manifestly false. Monbiot's most intense attack on the Bank (and in particular on McNamara, who Monbiot claims was much worse a bank president than many claim) is as follows:

McNamara was the man who concentrated almost all the bank's lending on vast prestige schemes (highways, ports, dams) while freezing out less glamorous causes such as health, education and sanitation. Most of the major projects he backed have, in economic or social terms or both, failed catastrophically. It was he who argued that the bank should not fund land reform because it "would affect the power base of the traditional elite groups". Instead, as Catherine Caufield shows in her book Masters of Illusion, it should "open new land by cutting down forests, draining wetlands and building roads to previously isolated areas". He bankrolled Mobutu and Suharto, deforested Nepal, trashed the Amazon and promoted genocide in Indonesia. The countries he worked in were left with unpayable debts, wrecked environments, grinding poverty and pro-US dictators.

There are several criticisms here. The first is that the Bank is apt to invest in vast "prestige" projects while ignoring more pressing human needs. In this regard the Nam Theun 2 dam in Laos that Monbiot cites is indeed worrying. However, as to the charge of bankrolling Mobutu and Suharto, Mallaby makes it quite clear that the Bank has grown increasingly aware of the need for democracy and rule of law, and has grown reluctant to lend to dictators. (Well, reluctant enough not to give to tyrants such as Mugabe, who seems to be approaching the same playing field as Mobutu.)

I find Mallaby's point of view much more palatable, partially because I'm probably closer in my neo-liberalism to him than to Monbiot (though he makes some important points), but also because Monbiot is completely negative - seeing in the Bretton-Woods institutions only something to attack, and nothing to reform. So I'll stick with Mallaby, and hope that Wolfowitz is up to the challenge.

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Two incidental notes:

1) I'd love to find a longer analysis of Wolfowitz's time spent as Ambassador to Indonesia. Mallaby says he advocated aid to NGOs opposing Suharto, but he was of course at the same time helping the Reagan administration funnel billions into the Indonesian military. A moral calculus of his time there would be interesting.

2) I think the explanation of the different proposals from the Bush and Blair governments is quite indicative. The Bush administration has been advocating less loans and more grants. This is great. But it's with the question of debt-relief that the two countries diverge. Here's the relevant quote:

...On top of that, the Bush administration wants the Bank to forgive all past loans to an especially miserable subset of its poor clients. For the clients, this is naturally great news. But, for the Bank, it means forgoing future repayments. The combination of debt relief and grants would deprive the Bank's soft loan kitty of a large chunk of its future resources. Unless donors compensated the Bank by stumping up more cash, the Bank's operations in its poorest client countries would contract substantially. What's more, once some countries get debt relief, it will be hard to deny other supplicants. The cost of forgiveness to the Bank could snowball.
Wolfowitz could head off this threat....Great Britain's government has advanced a variation of debt relief that would be good for poor countries without hurting the Bank. Under the British proposal, rich countries would take over highly indebted countries' debt service payments, so the countries would get relief while the Bank would still get its money.

This seems to speak to the Bush administration's general faults. Its instinct here is correct, but it doesn't think of who might foot the bill, and its proposal would lead to a potential loss of investment in the Bank. The British proposal, on the other hand, is equally morally appropriate, but much less financially reckless. Not everybody wins with debt-relief; somebody has to pay the bill. And it's both reasonable and appropriate that the lending companies, who do in the final analysis benefit economically quite a bit from the lending system, are the ones to do so. The Bush administration is loathe to do so, of course, because the more many spent on the developing world is the less money spent on tax cuts. Or, more realistically, is a much larger national deficit.

Enforce the Travel Ban Already

2005-04-11T19:06:00.000-04:00

The British press seems to be having a field day with the fact that Prince Charles shook Robert Mugabe's hand at the Pope's funeral (though in my book this doesn't seem as dramatic as Moshe Katsav shaking Khatami's hand). This article from the Mirror is indicative of the tennor of the attack. It seems to me that the lead is rather buried... how the hell does Mugabe keep on getting around the EU travel ban? Officially Mugabe was able to attend the funeral - and two years ago to attend an EU/African union summit in Paris, and three years ago attend a UN food summit in Rome - because the ban can't do anything if he's attending a summit under the auspices of an international body. And the Vatican's can invite whomever it pleases to its events, because it's independent of Rome. Fair enough. But can't Rome prevent Mugabe from making "courtesy calls on various officials"? And couldn't Mugabe's wife have been prevented from her Paris shopping two years ago - for she wasn't taking part in the EU-Africa summit? (And what was Mugabe doing at that summit in the first place?)

Finally, and I realize that there's nobody really in charge of things right now at the Vatican, but why on earth was Mugabe invited in the first place, particularly when he's facing such fierce opposition from Archbishop Ncube?

Hitchens on the Pope

2005-04-11T13:09:00.000-04:00

We've finally - thank god - moved beyond the purely hagiographic analysis of the Pope's life in the news cycle. (We've basically moved to the point where for the next week, while waiting for the Cardinals' puff of smoke, the media will run just about any analysis of anything Pope-related.) I'd been waiting since the long death for Christopher Hitchens to throw in some wildly offensive, iconoclastic words, and he has not disappointed. Here's the best part:

Unbelievers are more merciful and understanding than believers, as well as more rational. We do not believe that the pope will face judgment or eternal punishment for the millions who will die needlessly from AIDS, or for his excusing and sheltering of those who committed the unpardonable sin of raping and torturing children, or for the countless people whose sex lives have been ruined by guilt and shame and who are taught to respect the body only when it is a lifeless cadaver like that of Terri Schiavo. For us, this day is only the interment of an elderly and querulous celibate, who came too late and who stayed too long, and whose primitive ideology did not permit him the true self-criticism that could have saved him, and others less innocent, from so many errors and crimes.

Triumphalism?... Considering David Rieff

2005-04-11T11:26:00.000-04:00

Two years ago I wrote a lengthy piece for a class at Brown about what I called "liberal internationalists" - intellectuals at home somewhere in the center-left who advocated an active US role in pursuit of liberal ideals throughout the world. I included a large number of people, but the big ones were Michael Ignatieff, Samantha Power, David Rieff, Christopher Hitchens, and Michael Walzer. Obviously there are significant faultlines between each of these intellectuals, but all of them seemed to me intellectually rigorous in their pursuit of a liberal internationalist American foreign policy.

A month or two ago I wrote a hasty email to Andrew Sullivan in which I expressed my amazement with the successes of the Bush administration, and my reassessment of my opinion of them. I knew at the time that I was being hasty, and while I'm still rather impressed with the changes that have swept throughout the Mideast, I'm a little more skeptical. David Rieff, one of that coterie of liberal internationalists, is much more skeptical. His op-ed in the Journal two weeks ago makes several important and cogent criticisms of the general project of the Bush foreign policy, and even with liberal internationalism itself. Let's start with the most important criticism: that the triumphalism over Iraq is completely unjustified. Here's Rieff:

what Ayatollah Sistani has done is used the democratic process to secure power for the Shiite community....it is less that he and his fellow ayatollahs in Najaf share Washington's project of democratizing the Middle East so much as the Bush administration's commitment to initiate the vast project of a social transformation of a whole region by force of arms happened to dovetail with Shiite political ambitions and that the moment these interests no longer dovetail, it will become clear what kind of Iraqi society American blood and treasure has really brought into being. And that is assuming the war against the insurgency really is being won: The fact that two years after Saddam Hussein's fall the road to the Baghdad airport is still not fully controlled by U.S. forces and Iraq is still importing oil suggests that the outcome is still very much in doubt.

Indeed. The Sistani point is particularly needed. It was only three weeks ago, of course, that Tom Friedman was talking about nominating Sistani for a Nobel, and lauding his progressivism. Is Sistani a progressive? There's absolutely no way to know. But he's certainly clever, and if he's not progressive, as in the scenario outlined by Rieff, he's certainly intelligent enough to know that the Shi'a interests dovetail nicely with the Wilsonian progressivism coming out of Washington. I can only hope that he's sincere in his devotion to political liberalism, but Rieff is absolutely correct to be concerned that he's not, and absolutely right to excoriate those who are so convinced otherwise.

Consider a moment what Lebanese Druze leader Walid Jumblatt told Lee Smith recently during Smith's Well Traveled blog for Slate last month (if you missed it, by the way, Smith's blog was must-reading - his political acumen is perfect, and his delight at the country make the travelogue stuff gripping). Jumblatt is of course the oft-quoted opposition leader who said that Lebanon's "Cedar Revolution" could never have happened without the invasion of Iraq. And there's certainly a case to be made that Jumblatt's merely adopting Washington's popular rhetoric to the same political effect as Sistani. But this is how Smith sums up Jumblatt's position:

While Arab reformers or opposition leaders may not love Bush or how the president has handled the situation in all its particulars, they recognize an opportunity for positive change in the region. U.S. support, as Jumblatt himself made clear in the Washington Post, is not the "kiss of death"; rather, as we all learned watching Saddam slaughter the people we had encouraged to rise against him in 1991, it is the withdrawal of U.S. support that costs lives. The problem isn't our idealism and innocence in conjunction with our power, it's American fickleness, our national Attention Deficit Disorder, that is dangerous to the world.

Jumblatt's statement is striking not just because it goes against the conventional wisdom (well-founded wisdom - here in Egypt Ayman Nour, the main potential challenger to Mubarak in the upcoming elections, is everywhere derided as an American stooge), but because it goes against one of Rieff's main points - that the new consistency of Bush's policies is not necessarily good. Jumblatt seems to contend that it is only with a consistent American dedication to democracy and reform are these things possible. I'm inclined to agree with him. If Mubarak knew that the US would react with only a wrist-slap should he respond to the current daily anti-regime protests with massive repression, there's no doubt in my mind that he would have done so. If Bashar al-Asad wasn't so flustered by the international pressure against him and by his desperation to get into the West's good graces, he would not be withdrawing from Lebanon or, more strikingly, giving citizenship to some 300,000 Kurds who have racistly been denied it for some forty years (this was in Al Hayat, April 3).

But Rieff goes even further, questioning whether democracy is even desirable. Here I part ways with him completely. First of all, I'm inclined to agree with Amartya Sen about democracy, human rights and development. But about the Middle East itself, and the "existential" threat to American society that the lack of democracy plays - I'll give him a little. I see no existential threat anywhere on the horizon that compares to the Cold War threat of nuclear annihilation. Terrorism is not such a threat, even if the States were to see several more 9/11 s. But terrorism is certainly related to the lack of democracy in the Mideast (although there are several other major causes as well). And this lack of democracy and political rights is crippling the region.

I was particularly struck in the most recent Arab Human Development Report (here's the PDF link to the Executive Summary) by how the authors link the lack of political freedom with cultural problems, particularly education and clannism. About the former, the authors write "Once children enter school, they find an educational institution, curricula, teaching and evaluation methods which tend to rely on dictation and instill submissiveness. This learning environment does not permit free dialogue and active exploration and consequently does not open the doors to freedom of thought and criticism."

It doesn't take a great amount of imagination to see how this faulty education, combined with a crippling lack of opportunity (unemployment rates around 20-30 percent) and no opportunity for public expression, is a recipe for disaster - particularly within the region itself. How this mutates into a threat to Europe and the States is much more complicated - we need to consider the alienation of the immigration process, Islamist ideology, and issues of nuclear proliferation - but in any event it seems hard to conclude that democratization shouldn't be a primary goal of US foreign policy. And Rieff hasn't even convinced me that it's at all futile.

Asian Politics [Phil]

2005-04-09T11:14:00.000-04:00

Conrad - One Chinese grievance that's constantly brought up is the textbooks in Japan, and how they deal with the country's imperial history. I'm particularly curious about this because people are constantly screaming about textbooks here in the Mideast, particularly vis-à-vis Israel and Palestine. But how much is the topic debated and analyzed in Japan? Is most of the domestic dialogue about the issue focused on the fact of Chinese outrage, or is some of it self-critical?

This issue has particular valence because it seems a re-militarized Japan wouldn't look quite as threatening if it weren't appearing in conjunction with renationalization - stuff like Koizumi's cemetery visits.

As for the topic of self-determination, it is indeed a thorny one. What does the right of self-determination, for instance, imply for massive states like Iraq or the Sudan which have rather arbitrary borders and huge internal diversity. The recent peace accords in the Sudan between the North and South allow for a Southern referendum in several years, and many credit this breakthrough with encouraging the rebellion in Darfur, which was met with the genocidal response of a Khartoum government terrified of the country disintegrating. I'm not sympathetic with the Khartoum government, but their fears are understandable (just as Chinese fears of losing Tibet and Xinjiang is understandable). However, I see none of these subtleties in the Taiwan situation, where the island has been functionally independent for over sixty years.

Moving on - two articles today struck me. One was the Times article about massive Chinese nationalist protests calling for a boycott of Japanese products. The other was this little polemic envisioning a US/Chinese Cold War in Latin America.

My first comment with both of these is that contrary to the likes of Fred Stackelbeck, Jr., who appears to be one of those conservatives stuck in the past (referring to the evils of "communist China" - notice the lowercase), China is anything but communist. While the buildup in Cuba may be militarily motivated, growing Chinese presence in the Americas - particularly BC and Venezuela - is economic and capitalist (and centered around oil). Moreover, what we're seeing is not a new Cold War - the emerging political chill between China and the US and Japan must be contextualized by the enormous trade between the three countries, and the enormous economic interdependence.

But what are we seeing? The emerging economic struggle between China and the US in the developing world combined with the recent political chill can't be a good development. And is it possible to speak of an emerging Chinese sphere of influence - with rapidly strengthening political and economic ties with Cuba, Venezuela, Iran, Syria and the Sudan, and of a new Great Game in Central Asia and Africa? (See this Atlantic article - the link is PDF.)

East Asian Politics [Conrad]

2005-04-09T01:24:00.000-04:00

John -

I completely agree with your ideas about Japanese remilitarization; if the Japanese went all-out to become a global military power, the consequences would be disastrous. However, I don't think that it's an all-or-nothing proposition. There is a large segment of the Japanese populace that agrees with your idea that the strongest position for Japan is to maintain its newly acquired moral authority, and the steps taken in recent years to strengthen the Japanese military have all been very small, precisely because of the strength of that sentiment (one that is somewhat shared even by some of the proponents of a stronger Japanese military). U.S. pressure is certainly a factor, but there are many counterbalancing forces. Reforming the Constitution is a potentially dramatic step, but I would be very surprised if even a reformed Constitution flat-out rejected the idea of Article IX. If, as I expect, Japan continues to slowly move in the direction of a stronger military (as it has consistently been doing in recent years), the crucial question will be the size of the steps it takes, and how it explains them to its neighbors in East Asia.

Phil -

Johnson's lack of respect for Taiwanese self-determination is certainly annoying, but it mirrors the attitude of many Chinese observers. Xiyi (my roommate in D.C.), for example, thinks that it's fine for the Taiwanese to choose their own future, as long as they choose to reunify with the mainland. To be fair, there is some question about when the principle of self-determination should apply; after all, in our own Civil War Lincoln overrode the South's appeal to that principle. Xiyi sees the Taiwanese situation as very analogous.

As for the question of what constitutes the basis of U.S. foreign policy, I completely agree that it's a mistake to reduce it to any one factor. Moreover, I tend to disagree with the classical realist view of the state as a unitary actor in the first place. In certain contexts, such an analysis is warranted (the U.S. certainly exhibited unified responses to Pearl Harbor and 9/11), but I think that most of the time a more multifaceted view of the different groups vying for power within the U.S. government yields a better understanding of how governmental decisions are made.

Looking at U.S. foreign policy towards East Asia, I think that State Department negotiators in the six-party talks have probably been making a genuine effort to achieve progress in those talks. Moreover, I think that many people throughout the U.S. government would be delighted to see a Kantian peace in East Asia. However, I would be very surprised if there aren't influential figures, both in the Pentagon and in the Administration, who see the value in maintaining a certain level of conflict in East Asia as a pretext for maintaining the U.S. military presence there (and thereby also making profits for U.S. arms dealers). It's hard to know exactly how influential this view might be, especially because I have no hard data to back myself up, but I do think that the Pentagon would be very reluctant to give up its position in East Asia. Certainly, as you point out, Rumsfield has been restructuring the troops, but only to a certain extent; he also wants to move the U.S. Army First Corps to Japan from the West Coast, which would centralize command and control of the Asian theater here in Japan (a far cry from moving out of the region).

East Asian Politics [John]

2005-04-08T22:12:00.000-04:00

The one point I would take issue with, Conrad, has to do with the possibility of Japanese remilitarization. I follow your point about the positive possibilities of Japanese distance from the US, but I think that the more direct result of remilitarization would be acute dismay among East Asian countries, added instability in North Korea, and quite possibly an accelerated arms race with China. The shadow of WWII continues to loom large in those countries. I think that it would be far better for Japan to make use of whatever moral capital it possesses thanks to Article IX and its lack of nuclear arms and become a forceful advocate for non-military solutions throughout the region. That is, of course, wishful thinking in the extreme given the reality of Koizumi and the conservatives in power, but it could offer the core of an alternative vision for the progressive opposition.

East Asian Politics [Phil]

2005-04-08T17:37:00.000-04:00

Conrad -

Two more things that particularly irked me about the Johnson article was his scorn for Taiwanese independence. It's one thing to be skeptical of the hawks at the Pentagon who love throwing out inflammatory quotes, but it seems to me that the ideal liberal position vis-à-vis Taiwan is centered around respect for self-determination. A more realist and realistic position may be necessary, but that doesn't mean self-determination deserves the scorn Johnson heaps on it. Also, Johnson faults Bolton with dealing impoliticly with N. Korea, but he seems to object more to the actual contents of Bolton's statement (which from what I've read seem quite true) rather than Bolton's lack of diplomacy. Attacking the Bush administration doesn't and shouldn't mean defending the Pyongyang regime.

I need to backtrack a little to say that I don't think the US centers its foreign policy around arms sales. I tend to be quite skeptical of any who reduce US foreign policy - particularly in such major countries - to any one factor. For instance, it's tempting to analyze the Mideast in terms these terms; the US has made billions upon billions by selling arms to all sides - Israel, Egypt and Saudi Arabia. But I highly doubt any US president or administration has intentionally jumped into the peace process with the intention of prolonging or exacerbating the hostilities.

So I'm also not completely convinced by your Korean-American friend’s argument, particularly about Asia. (I could be completely off in what follows...) Didn't Rumsfeld announce a month before the elections some major restructuring of US troops, moving them out of Europe and S. Korea, and focusing much more on the Gulf? It seems to me that the US position towards N. Korea is much more the product of neglect and incompetence than studied toleration - for I'm not convinced that the administration would truly mind a Kantian peace in East Asia. Rumsfeld in particular seems dedicated to reigning in the military and focusing in on A) dumb technology and B) key strategic interests (mainly oil and gas) in the Mideast and Central Asia. But I could be far off here. The clique that Johnson rights about, for instance, has nothing to do with the Rumsfeld/Cheney neocons. So it could be that various sections of the administration view grand imperial policy quite differently, particularly vis-à-vis Asia.

East Asian Politics [Conrad]

2005-04-08T10:05:00.000-04:00

About idea that the U.S. structures its foreign policy around arms sales- it would be naive to think that the prospect of arms sales plays no part in the making of U.S. foreign policy, especially this Administration's. That being said, I don't think that they're the determining factor. A related factor that seems more essential is one that a Korean-American friend of mine at GW put forward, namely that it is in U.S. interests to maintain a certain level of tension in any given region of the world.

We were discussing East Asia, in particular, and he pointed out that if the situations in Taiwan and the Korean Peninsula were peacefully resolved, there would cease to be any excuse for the U.S. to maintain its overwhelming military presence in East Asia. The threats of war with China over Taiwan and war with North Korea over its nukes not only allow the U.S. to sell arms, they also give it the perfect excuse to maintain its position as a globe-straddling military superpower. This logic can be extrapolated to the world at large; in a world of perfect Kantian perpetual peace, not only would the U.S. public balk at maintaining the global military force that we have today, but the countries that house U.S. military bases would themselves reject the U.S. presence.

I don't think that perpetual peace is about to break out anytime soon. But I would argue that arms sales are just one of the benefits that the U.S. accrues from being the sole superpower in a world of moderate tensions. Clearly, an all out war with China (for example) could prove so damaging to the U.S., both militarily and economically, that it might lose its superpower status; the key is to keep tensions high enough that subordinate countries agree to house U.S. bases (and buy U.S. arms), while avoiding any major wars.

Seen in this light, the lack of progress in the six-party talks in Korea makes much more sense. North Korea doesn't feel any particular need to give up its nukes; the U.S. is willing to tolerate a nuclear North Korea as long as it does not use those nukes; and some have argued that even South Korea doesn't mind North Korean nukes, given that if the two countries manage to reunify peacefully, they would become South Korean (or simply Korean) nukes. Any set of talks in which the key participants are satisfied with the status quo is bound to fail.

Critiquing Chalmers Johnson [Phil]

2005-04-08T07:05:00.000-04:00

I agree wholeheartedly with Conrad's critiques (I'd been thinking the exact same thing about his description of the Chinese nuclear sub incident.) The article made for frustrating reading as an overall balanced analysis - I certainly learned a lot - kept on being undercut by snide remarks.

As to the motives of the Bush administration, I was particularly struck by Johnson's idea that the exacerbation of the tensions on the part of the US may be part of a strategy to help sell arms to Japan and more specifically Taiwan. I was completely taken aback by how overtly the administration played its hand recently in South Asia - lifting Bush pere's arms embargo on Pakistan and the next day offering India more arms sales to compensate. I would not put structuring US foreign policy around arms sales past this administration.

Critiquing Chalmers Johnson [Conrad]

2005-04-08T00:46:00.000-04:00

There's no question that the Bush policies have exacerbated tensions with China. Thomas Barnett describes the group of thinkers within the Pentagon that's been waiting with baited breath for China's rise as a near-peer military threat to the U.S., so that they could go back to a Cold-War style mindset; I suspect that there are any number of Bush Administration figures who would welcome such a development. Let's hope that doesn't happen.

As for democratization in China and the Taiwan issue, I neglected to clarify my meaning. I understand that much of the Chinese public sees Taiwan as a crucial part of China; my argument is that democratization could actually improve prospects for reunification. If I were Taiwanese, I would certainly feel much more favorable about rejoining the mainland if its political system were a bit more in tune with my own.

Finally, the issue of Japanese "remilitarization" is also a much more nuanced one than Johnson seems to imply. As I understand it, Johnson sees it as a starkly bad idea; he argues that it will increase tensions with China and the rest of East Asia, and that the only impetus behind it is to "turn Japan into what Washington neo-conservatives like to call the "Britain of the Far East" - and then use it as a proxy in checkmating North Korea and balancing China".

He's probably right, as far as Washington's motives go. But remilitarization would also allow Japan to begin to pursue a foreign policy independent from Washington's. Johnson points out that relocating the U.S. Army First Corps to Camp Zama would not only increase the burden on the local Japanese population, it would also "inevitably implicate Japan in the daily military operations of the American empire". The only logical way for the Japanese to remove themselves from this American empire is by pursuing the very remilitarization that Johnson sees as needlessly provocative.

I have very mixed feelings about this topic; I think that the Japanese renunciation of force for the last fifty years is a major achievement, and I don't want to see that end. At the same time, I think that there's an entirely understandable desire on the part of many Japanese to pursue a more independent foreign policy, and a stronger military capability would certainly help them do this. I don't think that the topic is as black and white as Johnson portrays it.

Critiquing Chalmers Johnson [John]

2005-04-07T22:48:00.000-04:00

Conrad -

Thanks for your thoughtful response to the Johnson piece. I agree with your criticisms. Johnson in recent years has had a tendency to sound overly polemical, and to focus almost exclusively upon US (and Japanese) sins. The Chinese offer manifold causes for concern, not the least of which is the combination of their authoritarian political system and their sometimes bellicose nationalism. However, I think that Johnson is absolutely right in arguing that Bush policies have exacerbated the situation, especially with regard to Taiwan, where Clinton was fairly successful at pursuing a policy of deliberate ambiguity. Also, I am not at all sure that democratization in China would solve the Taiwan issue. Democracies can be manipulated, as Bush has shown us, and the idea that Taiwan is a crucial to China's identity seems to be pretty widespread in the Chinese public.

Critiquing Chalmers Johnson [Conrad]

2005-04-07T01:43:00.000-04:00

I’ve just finished reading this Chalmers Johnson article. It’s very well written, and it certainly covers all of the major events that I am aware of in recent years. As to his main conclusion – that the prospect of Sino-Japanese confrontation is a major threat to East Asian relations – I must certainly agree. However, the article’s tone does suffer a bit from Johnson’s tendency to identify beforehand the good guys and the bad guys, and use that as a filter for interpreting events.

To take just one example, he reports the Chinese submarine incident in the following way:

On November 10, the Japanese navy discovered a Chinese nuclear submarine in Japanese territorial waters near Okinawa. Although the Chinese apologized and called the sub's intrusion a "mistake", Defense Agency director Ono gave it wide publicity, further inflaming Japanese public opinion against China.

Two points here. First, this is a *nuclear* submarine that we’re talking about here. If the Chinese were acting in a reasonable and natural fashion in holding the U.S. spy plane for 11 days in 2001 in order to assuage domestic Chinese opinion regarding this “provocation” (an interpretation of Johnson’s that I agree with), wasn’t Director Ono being equally reasonable in publicizing this nuclear provocation on China’s part?

Second, the consistent choice of words like “inflaming public opinion” throughout the article is also somewhat one-sided. (Other examples: pro-independence speeches by Taiwanese President Chen Shui-bian are “polemics” that help “over-stimulate” the Taiwanese; the booing of the Japanese anthem by Chinese spectators is “undoubtedly not an accident”; friendly efforts by Chinese officials towards Japan are efforts to “appease Tokyo”, etc.) In fact, China’s government has been just as deliberate about manipulating Chinese public opinion, using nationalist anti-U.S. and anti-Japanese sentiments as a means of shoring up popular support for the aging Communist Party. Johnson fails to note this.

I said earlier that I agreed with his conclusion that the prospect of Sino-Japanese confrontation is a major threat to East Asian relations, and I do. But he also seems to imply that the sole source of this potential conflict is the joint U.S.-Japanese push towards Japanese remilitarization. Certainly, this one major source of potential conflict. But wouldn’t you agree that the Communist Party’s attempt to stave off democratic opposition by focusing nationalist sentiment on U.S., Japan, and Taiwan is equally to blame? There is an internal conflict between China’s ever-increasing economic liberalization and global integration and its refusal to consider political liberalization. I think that if China were to move towards democratization, prospects for integration with Taiwan would be vastly improved, and the potential for conflict with Japan and the U.S. greatly decreased.

I suspect that this article was written for a Chinese audience (given that it’s published by the Asia Times), which would explain the lack of any criticism of China, as well as his pro-reunification and anti-U.S. and Japan stances. Again, I did enjoy reading the article, and I found it very informative. Much of Johnson’s criticism of the U.S. and Japan is dead-on. Were he to cast that same critical eye on all sides, I think that Johnson could come up with a truly impressive summary of current East Asian politics.

Back

2005-04-03T11:18:00.000-04:00

So after an extended absence, I'm back. I'm writing from Cairo, where it looks like I'll be living for a while. I've spent the past two months traveling through Turkey and Syria, and in the latter place I was close to the center of many of the tumultuous rumblings currently being felt throughout the Mideast. Cairo, of course, is feeling rumblings of its own, and these look like they will only pick up as the September elections approach. (Or before. The main question - will the elections be able to be seriously contested - remains to be seen. The first big test is what happens at the trial of Ayman Nour in June. Nour is the head of the newly formed Al Ghad -Tomorrow - Party, and his announcement that he intends to oppose Mubarak was greeted with the Public Prosecutor charging in the criminal courts. He's facing cooked charges of fraudulantly faking names on the petition that started his party.)

But Cairo is a fascinating place to be, as always, and I think that being here Political Fictions will focus more on the Middle East, though I'm not about to disavow any other subject.

The Feebleness of Theory

2005-01-03T20:09:00.000-05:00

Mark Bauerlein has a great review of Just Being Difficult? Academic Writing in the Public Arena, a compilation defending the bad writing of certain academics. He naturally tears the book apart, something that is quite satisfying to read. This hits home for me, as I went to Brown where phrases like "interrogating a discourse" hit me over the head everyday. However, tearing apart Butler or Spivak, as Bauerlein points out, is quite easy, but is rather pointless, as most public intellectual discourse already ignores them.

Eastern Congo

2004-12-20T21:00:00.000-05:00

In the middle of Marc Lacey's great piece yesterday about the renewed fighting in the eastern Congo, Lacey threw in the statistic that "more than 31,000 civilians continue to die monthly here, from disease and malnutrition, as well as from machetes and AK-47's". This statistic is mind-blowing, and it does leave the impression that the eastern Congo is in competition with Darfur as the worst humanitarian crisis facing the world today. As for the renewed fighting, it's a little clear what exactly is happening. Reuters today has 100,000 civilians fleeing the fighting within the past week, while the UN has over 30,000 with increasingly instability, as well as the report that fighting appears to have stopped. Hopefully this last report is correct, but there's still the issue of the inherent instability in the region. Kagame's threat in November to re-invade the Congo was irresponsible, and it can only be good news that he now denies even having made that threat (though he often falsely denied that the Rwandan Government had anything to do with the troops who invaded in '98). But I'm slightly sympathetic to Kagame's position in as much as the Rwandan Hutu forces that have had sanctuary in the eastern Congo for the past decade must be disarmed. If the Congolese government can't do this, and it doesn't look like it can, then perhaps this is something the UN forces should do...

The Persuasion Model

2004-12-17T16:48:00.000-05:00

Two great opinion pieces make much the same point this week. In the New Yorker, George Packer compares the differences between democratization in Ukraine and in Iraq. In the Times today, Timothy Garton Ash makes much the same case, but adds the Turkish situation, saying that the "European Union's agreement to open membership negotiations with Turkey will be a bigger contribution to winning the war on terrorism than the American-led occupation of Iraq." What unites both articles is praise for the model of persuasion: democratic and liberal progress being made without military force, but with intensive civil and diplomatic effort, and significant and real carrots. The events on the streets of Kiev occured with many Ukrainians focused to the west, on the EU, and with the help of many American NGOs, most particularly the National Endowment for Democracy and the Open Society. The situation in Ankara, which has ended its war with the Kurds, reformed many of its most grievous human rights problems, and retreated from it's hard-line stance on Cyprus, owes much to Ankara's hopes of joining the EU.

It's easy to contrast this model with the Bush model, but Iraq is already mired in anarchy, and it's abundantly clear to just about everybody, even most American conservatives, that the neoconservative model of democratization is, at best, immensely flawed. What's more beneficial, though, is applying this model of persuasion to other situations. Israel and Palestine come to mind, but so does Iran. Iran has a thriving civil society and a solid infrastructure for democracy, if no democracy itself. Right now the issue of the day vis-a-vis Iran is persuading it to abandon its nuclear designs, and the best means to do this is through diplomatic persuasion. But democratization must also be a western goal, for both the people of Iran and the stability of the region and the world, and here we ought to examine the European model in Ukraine and Turkey.

Turkey and the EU

2004-12-17T16:03:00.000-05:00

Today's news out of Brussels that Turkey will be invited to begin membership talks next year can only be construed as a good thing. As Suat Kiniklioglu wrote in the IHT yesterday, the "Turkish republic continues to be a great experiment that cannot be allowed to fail. Turkey's friends and allies share an equal responsibility in this great experiment. It is here that the issue of EU membership matters the most."

There are of course a number of difficult hurdles that have been erected to full Turkish membership. Ultimately I still wouldn't place any money on full membership actually happening; after all, Cyprus is a full member of the EU now, and therefore able to veto any offer of membership, and Tassos Papadopolous demonstrated earlier this year that he feels no urgency to reconcile with Turkey. (Turkey is, of course, on the wrong side of the Cyprus issue, and its military occupation must not continue.) Furthermore, even if the Cyprus issue were resolved, there's still the matter of deep-seated European unease over Turkey, some of which is founded in bigotry.

A Short Break

2004-12-13T14:29:00.000-05:00

Sorry that I haven't been on here all weekend; I've been working on my grad school applications, but I should be done by Wednesday, and then posting back on here by Thursday. In the meantime, in the small chance any of you haven't seen it yet, I highly recommend Peter Beinart's piece from last week: A Fighting Faith. I'm still sorting out what I think about it, but it's definitely a must-read.

Rumsfeld's Pentagon

2004-12-09T13:31:00.000-05:00

Gregg Jaffe has a nice article in the Wall Street Journal today about Rumsfeld's transformational plans for the Pentagon. These plans are remarkable for both what they exclude and what they include. Here's a key graf:

Unlike past scenarios, which were oriented around conventional wars in places such as North Korea and Iraq, the new scenarios will force the military to prepare to fight messy counterinsurgency wars while simultaneously dealing with potentially catastrophic attacks by terrorists or rogue nations on the U.S. and allies using nuclear weapons.

Although most of the quotes here keep on pushing the idea that the military has to be ready to fight non-conventional wars, here we're back to catastrophic attacks by rogue nations on the US and "allies using nuclear weapons". What? Obviously we haven't completely moved beyond the threat of state actors: the prospect of the Pakistani or North Korean regimes crumbling, and their nuclear weapons falling into the hands of rogue generals, is one that ought to be keeping folks in Arlington up at night. But even in these worst-case scenarios, the immediate threat wouldn't be to the US but to India and South Korea, respectively. That is unless the weapons fall into the hands of terrorists, but the threat of terrorists with nuclear bombs is the same weather the bombs came from Pakistan or from the black market. So why does the fixation on states remain?

And why, for that matter, is there nothing said of peacekeeping? There's quite a lot said about counterinsurgency, but that's only one small part of the new mission of the Pentagon. Unfortunately, in Iraq it seems that counterinsurgency is the overriding concern right now - see Matthew Yglesias' comments about the electricity situation, which has sunk back below pre-war levels. Until the Pentagon learns to take these unglamorous duties seriously - as Europe already does - any broad reviews will border on counter-productive.

Scandal

2004-12-09T13:08:00.000-05:00

There are two important stories out there right now that ought to be the talk of Washington. Dana Priest in the Post reports that the CIA retaliated against an operative who refused to falsify his reports on prewar estimate of Iraqi WMD. This retaliation came in the form of investigations into allegations that he had sex with an asset and embezzled money, so the CIA's defense will obviously be that the operative's new allegations (and lawsuit) are fabricated to extricate himself from those investigations. It's obviously too early to know who's telling the truth, but here's the nub of the allegation:

The unnamed operative is a 23-year officer of Middle Eastern descent who spent much of his career on secret and covert operations to collect intelligence on and interdict weapons of mass destruction, the lawsuit says. In 2002, the lawsuit says, the CIA officer "attempted to report routine intelligence" from a human asset "but was thwarted by CIA superiors." It goes on to say that he was subsequently approached by a senior desk officer "who insisted that Plaintiff falsify his reporting," and that when he refused, the "management" of the CIA's Counterproliferation Division ordered that he "remove himself from any further 'handling' " of the unnamed asset, who is referred elsewhere in the document as "a highly respected human asset."

Over on Salon, David DeBatto reports that in June of 2003 Sgt. Frank Ford was shipped out of Iraq due to "combat stress" 36 hours after reporting that he had witnessed five incidents of torture of Iraqi detainees. All subsequent psychiatric examinations, not surprisingly, found Sgt. Ford "completely normal". Here's the most shocking graf from this story, which the DOD is now investigating:

Col. C. Tsai, a military doctor who examined Ford in Germany and found nothing wrong with him, told a film crew for Spiegel Television that he was "not surprised" at Ford's diagnosis. Tsai told Spiegel that he had treated "three or four" other U.S. soldiers from Iraq that were also sent to Landstuhl for psychological evaluations or "combat stress counseling" after they reported incidents of detainee abuse or other wrongdoing by American soldiers.

Imagine, for a moment, that the Democrats controlled the Senate and/or the Congress? Is there any way there would not be full-fledged congressional inquiries being opened up into these stories as we speak? It's obviously true that the Republican Congress, particularly the House, has been pretty fiesty and not willing to simply tow the White House line. However, this rebellion has been from the right of the president; it's hard to imagine Duncan Hunter or Jim Sensenbrenner trying to get to the bottom of these stories. But both of these stories are mere addendums to the larger scandals of the pre-war intelligence and the use of torture abroad, and if this Congress were at all responsible, the White House would be daily dealing with the fall out from the scandals (and people like Rumsfeld would not be staying on for another four years).

Mubarak Jumps In

2004-12-08T14:19:00.000-05:00

What to make of Egypt's frenetic activity on the Israeli issue this week? I'm refering to the prisoner exchange, the quickly denied announcement on Egyptian state television that the Israelis and Palestinians had reached an agreement on the principles of a final deal, and the interview with the Israeli embassy official on Egyptian television. Mubarak has always been much more interested in facilitating peace in Israel and Palestine than in reforming Egypt at all. (Egypt which is many times more populous than Israel/Palestine.) My guess is that Mubarak saw the death of Arafat as a reminder of his own mortality - he's 76 - and as one last chance for him to really push a peace through. After all, Mubarak was with Sadat for the original Camp David, and he must have it ingrained in his head that Israel and Palestine is where his legacy is to be cemented. And in a way he's right; the world seems pretty uninterested in Egypt's staggaring unemployment and economic stagnation, its corrupt oligarchy, or its thousands of jailed and tortured political prisoners and gay men.

Immigration Reform is Next

2004-12-08T11:18:00.000-05:00

The Hill has a great account of what happened yesterday in the Republican conference. Denny Hastert comes out looking particularly feckless, a mere hostage first the far right of the conference and then to the White House. Here's his spokesman, James Feehery: “The Speaker believes [immigration reform] is a priority for the next year...We had the wrong people in charge at the conference level." Moving beyond the spiteful sentiment, what exactly will this immigration reform entail?

Hopefully somebody on the Hill or at the White House understands the idea of soft power, to borrow from Joseph Nye. I worry that "immigration reform" means making it increasingly difficult for any immigrants to come here. Here's Nye on foreign students' difficulties coming to the States.

Quote of the Day

2004-12-08T11:14:00.000-05:00

WALLACE: You, at one point, said about Donald Rumsfeld that you felt that he had been, quote, "irresponsible" in not putting troops into Iraq — more troops, sooner. You've also been critical of his roll in the Abu Ghraib prison scandal. What are your feelings about the decision to allow him to stay on at the Pentagon?

MCCAIN: I respect the president's decision. The president was re-elected. And I respect his right to do so.

WALLACE: And your feelings about Don Rumsfeld?

MCCAIN: Well, I have to say that I want to work with Secretary Rumsfeld because he will be the secretary of defense for an undetermined length of time. And I want to work with him. And I want to do the best that I can for the country.

WALLACE: That's not a vote of confidence.

MCCAIN: No, it's not.

- Chris Wallace Interviewing John McCain on Fox News Sunday

Against Divide and Rule

2004-12-07T19:31:00.000-05:00

Andrew Sullivan has one of the most misguided articles I've ever seen written by him in the New Republic today. He's eager to be optimistic about the situation in Iraq, and while I applaud the desire, I find his rationale severely lacking. The only conceivably positive statistic Sullivan cites is the poll finding large majorities of Iraqis hopeful about the future and not expecting civil war. However, polls are hardly evidence of cogent analysis - I'm sure large majorities of British would have been similarly optimistic in 1938, or Lebanese in 1974.

Sullivan goes from annoyingly Pollyanna-ish to completely misguided right about here:

The coalition has learned a critical tactic in neo-imperial governance: divide and rule. From the Romans to the Brits, it has long been a useful strategy.

Perhaps this was a useful and critical tactic for the Romans and the Brits, but that misses the point: the Romans and Brits were interested in a permanent imperial rule. America, theoretically, is not. What were the fruits of the British tactic of divide-and-rule, after the British pulled out? How about India and Pakistan, or Cyprus, or Israel and Palestine? For that matter, we shouldn't forget that Rwanda was the recipient of the French using the critical tactic of divide and rule. In short, it's possible divide and rule worked well for imperial powers seeking to prolong their rule, though I'm not too sure about it. But it certainly is not advisable for imperial powers uncomfortable in their rule, seeking to instill independence, co-existence and democracy.

Sullivan continues:

By working with the grain of Iraqi ethnic tension, specifically the pent-up hostility of Kurds and Shia toward the Sunnis, who for decades ran the country, the United States has been able to gain leverage against the largely Sunni insurgency. So as Sunni Falluja was pummeled, the Shia were quiet and Kurdish troops actually took part in the operation.

Sullivan then acknowledges that this is a "potentially dangerous ploy" that could lead to civil war. Right. And dousing oneself in gasoline and then lighting a match is a potentially dangerous stunt that could lead to incineration. I'm simply flabbergasted at Sullivan. His analysis of the situation is mostly right on the money. He states that the "Kurds and the Shia understand that their interest today lies in a successful election." Of course the Shia understand this: with an imminent national election, they see power in their grasp. And of course Moqtada al-Sadr has jumped into the political process: he has his eyes on the same power, and wants as much of it for himself as possible. (About the Kurds I'm not sure I agree with Sullivan's analysis: I see quite a bit of frustration on the streets of Iraqi Kurdistan.) But how the blazes do you go from that analysis to any sort of optimism? And how historically blind can we be, to advocate a repetition of some of the worst mistakes of history?

The Isolationist Extremes

2004-12-07T19:14:00.000-05:00

I don't think there's any reason to be terribly shocked that Pat Buchanan is joining far left writers in the Guardian and the Nation in condemning the American role in the Ukraine. Buchanan admonishes America for its "post-modern" coups that were successful in Georgia and Serbia - evidently he laments the passing of Shevarnadze and Milosevic through peaceful, democratic means. What we can learn from Buchanan and his allies on the extremities of the right and left is that reflexive opposition of American policy is about as intelligent as reflexive praise - which is to say, not very.

Please, No

2004-12-07T18:55:00.000-05:00

Kerry swung by Iowa today - en route to his vacation home in Idaho. Now I was generally a fan of Kerry in the primaries, and by Nov. 2 I was even enthusiastic about him. But please John, you wouldn't be successful in a second run, you'd just obscure the real contender for a longer period of time. Please just enjoy your many vacation homes with Theresa.

Rewarding Failure

2004-12-07T18:09:00.000-05:00

I just can't get over the fact that Bush is reappointing Rumsfeld to Secretary of Defense. Ever since he pushed Powell out, I've been telling myself that it's still possible that Rumsfeld could go. But it isn't. Here's why this is a tragedy:

1) Abu Ghraib.

Although this issue was all but forgotten during the presidential campaign, this scandal - which was and is hardly confined to Abu Ghraib - has done incalculable harm to the country. It's hard to imagine that the responsibility for the torture in Iraq, Afghanistan and Cuba doesn't lead directly to the Pentagon, if not the White House. But president Bush's refusal to blame anybody other than the individual footsoldier shows that he either refuses to face the facts or, more disturbingly and increasinly more likely, he doesn't care.

2) Iraq.

Beyond the tragedy and shame of Abu Ghraib, there is the catastrophic failure that has been the Iraq war. This war has been wildly mismanaged since before it even began, and this mismanagement came directly out of the Pentagon. It was the Pentagon, after all, that tossed away the State Departments plans for the post-war. It was most likely the Pentagon behind Bremer's catastrophic decisions to disband the Iraqi army and to emphasize deBaathification over competency. And it was the Pentagon that refused for over a year and a half to increase the gravely insufficient amount of troops in Iraq.

3) The Military.

Rumsfeld's major goal at Defense - since before 9/11 - has been to restructure the military. What he wants to do, put simply, is outsource as much of the human needs as possible (this means the military infrastructure, translation, intelligence and even security - it was a private firm, after all, protecting Bremer- must all be outsourced), and then to throw billions upon billions into hi-tech weaponry, thus "modernizing" the military. If we are to accept the terms of the Bush "War on Terror" however, a war against non-hierarchical terrorist cells spread all over the world, Rumsfeld's restructuring is the exact wrong path. What's needed in this war, and in our war in Iraq, is a stronger commitment to intelligence (particularly human intelligence), and a massive commitment to human resources: peacekeeping in failed states from Afghanistan to the Horn of Africa is absolutely crucial to fighting this war. But Rumsfeld is completely uninterested.

4) The Bush Second Term

There was a chance that Bush was going to turn in these next four years, that he was going to abandon the reckless ideologues across the Potomac and at the Naval Observatory and become pragmatic: attend to the deficit, devote attention to the Middle East, create a real energy policy. I argued after Bush appointed Rice to State that this still didn't indicate what direction he intended on taking, because all we can really know about Rice's politics is that they reflect the president's. But now we know what direction Bush intends to take, and he's not turning at all.

Intelligence Reform

2004-12-07T17:55:00.000-05:00

Well I was wrong about this one. The only reason that the House is voting on this bill this evening is because the White House put some muscle into it. Duncan Hunter stood down, with some mild language changes allowing him to save face, and Hastert looks to have been reprimanded for allowing passage of the bill to be derailed two weeks ago.

I'm not sure how I feel about this bill, which is basically a vast bureaucratic shuffle. It hews closely to the recommendations of the 9/11 committee, and that committee certainly knows a lot more about the issue than I could. However, the failures of intelligence addressed by the 9/11 committee are quite different from the other recent vast intelligence failure - that of the pre-war estimates of Iraq. In the first instance, the intelligence agencies seemed to have failed because of competing and non-communicating agencies. In the second instance, intelligence agencies seem to have failed because of intense pressure from their higher ups - political appointees, mainly - to find something. Therefore the solution to the first instance - centralizing all intelligence under a director who works closely with the White House - would only exacerbate the problems that led to the second instance. Right?

We can rejoice, however, that the Pentagon, and therefore a certain Defense Secretary, will lose some power...