Afghan lament
Published: March 28, 2008
By ARNAUD DE BORCHGRAVE
UPI Editor at Large
WASHINGTON, March 28 (UPI) -- "I don't care if it takes another 10 or 20 years, but we cannot allow Afghanistan to fail." So spoke Frank Carlucci, former U.S. defense secretary and national security adviser, at the Council on Foreign Relations. Failure, said Carlucci, would break the Atlantic Alliance and turn the world stage over to the next two global heavy hitters -- China and Russia.
Most of the European members of NATO, while professing solidarity with the United States and NATO over Afghanistan and conceding that it's a make-or-break issue for the trans-Atlantic alliance, are not prepared to stay more than another two years, maximum three. Supplying their, at best, weak troop commitments stationed in the quieter parts of Afghanistan (where there is little Taliban guerrilla activity) is more costly than anticipated. Countries like Belgium, Spain and Italy have limited airlift capacity, and their military transport aircraft are stretched to the breaking point. EU countries that are also members of NATO allowed their defenses to run down since 1989 when the Berlin Wall collapsed and money saved went into the gargantuan appetites of welfare states.
Most European "statesmen/women" concede the need to become more engaged in Afghanistan, but the man/woman-in-the-street questions the need to expend resources in a country that is still hovering between the 15th and 16th centuries. The Taliban was there before we came, argue most Europeans, and will be back even before we leave. With luck, they add, what will follow our withdrawal will accept the education of girls that the Taliban had rejected and ruthlessly stamped out when it ruled the roost between 1996 and 2001.
Afghan's opium poppy crop has grown steadily larger (now 8,300 tons a year, representing two-thirds of the Afghan gross domestic product) since the 2001 U.S. invasion that toppled Taliban's Torquemada, Mullah Mohammed Omar. The one-eyed enforcer of religious fanaticism is still burrowed in the mountain fastness of the Hindu Kush and from time to time still manages to get pronouncements onto the world's satellite TV networks.
Speaking not for attribution about the Afghan narcotics crisis, an Afghan "strategic thinker" said recently the situation was under control and getting better from year to year -- whereupon he was interrupted by a journalist who said he had heard from the intelligence community that almost every minister in President Hamid Karzai's government was "on the take, and if not the minister, his No. 2 or 3 on the minister's behalf, and that ministers were careful to keep their U.S. visas up-to-date in case a hurried exit was suddenly required." The nonplused Afghan smiled, then said, "I thought this was on the record." Advised that it was "off the record," he confirmed everything the journalist had just said.
The high geopolitical stakes and lack of European resolve is NATO's existential crisis. Five former top-ranking military leaders have produced a new NATO "Grand Strategy for an Uncertain World -- Renewing the Trans-Atlantic Partnership," hoping this would discourage heads of government from kicking the Afghan can down the road one more time at the Bucharest, Romania, summit April 2-4. NATO's former uniformed chiefs (Britain's Field Marshal Lord Inge, France's Adm. Jacques Lanxade, Germany's Gen. Dr. Klaus Naumann, U.S. Gen. John Shalikashvili and Holland's Gen. Henk van den Bremen) say experiences gained in Iraq and Afghanistan demonstrate that crisis management in the alliance is obsolete and needs an urgent update. This would have to include everything from prevention to stabilization -- "smart power" in the new geopolitical vernacular.
Unveiling their new strategic document at the Center for Strategic & International Studies, the five military brains concluded there is no single organization capable of dealing with NATO's "out-of-theater" operations. The combined efforts of NATO, the United Nations and the European Union should be brought to bear. NATO needs EU support for its non-military capabilities, while the EU needs NATO for armed forces capable of managing a serious crisis. The United Nations, for its part, lacks the kind of heft that makes national entities pay attention to international political management. So the three entities should conjugate their efforts.
But what the five strategic thinkers skirted was (1) how to motivate awareness among European public opinion of current and future challenges and (2) how to spark political awareness of current and future challenges and political resolve to implement recommendations.
France, now half-in-half-out but more in than out, is banking on the ratification of a new European treaty that would give the EU the means to see itself as a coequal player with the United States, China and Russia. Hopefully, say Europe's strategic thinkers, this would give the EU a permanent president, a common foreign minister authorized to implement a single foreign policy. Common defense would take much longer. Small neighboring countries like Belgium and the Netherlands have separate procurement programs for their armies, navies and air forces. Until last week Belgium was without a government for the past nine months as its two principal ethnic groups -- hard-working, Dutch-speaking Flemish and welfare-dependent, not so hard-working, French-speaking Walloons -- argued over frayed constitutional links. Hardly a promising harbinger for the EU as a global superpower.
In any event, this could not be achieved in time to influence events in Afghanistan, where the clock is running out. The Taliban cannot win militarily. Nor can NATO. But could NATO, the EU and the United Nations build a viable state with modern infrastructure? Certainly not over the next three years. Hence, Carlucci's admonition to stick it out for 10 to 20 years if necessary. Chances of this happening? Slim to none.
© 2008 United Press International. All Rights Reserved.
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Friday, March 28, 2008
Death of the two state solution by Patrick Seale
Death of the Two-State Solution
by Patrick Seale
Released: 28 Mar 2008
http://www.patrickseale.com/
It is now clear beyond reasonable dispute that a two-state solution of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict has passed into the realm of fiction. The project -- if it ever was a real project -- is stone dead.
Some Western politicians, U.S. President George W. Bush among them, continue to pay lip service to the notion of an independent and viable Palestinian state living side-by-side with Israel in peace and security. But their actions belie their words.
There is today no effective pressure on Israel -- either from the United States, or Europe, or indeed from the Arab states themselves -- to end its occupation of Palestinian territories, halt its settlement expansion, or agree to the creation of a Palestinian state. In the absence of such pressure -- and it would have to be severe -- Israel will not comply.
Ever since its emergence on the ruins of Arab Palestine six decades ago, Israel has sought to crush any resurgence of Palestinian nationalism. That determination is as real today as it was then. Israel continues to be driven by the belief that any concession to the Palestinians -- and any recognition of its responsibility for their dispossession -- would undermine Israel's own legitimacy.
Mention of a Palestinian state is, therefore, a cruel charade -- whether the words are uttered by George W. Bush, or France's President Nicolas Sarkozy, or any other leader. When Israel's Prime Minister Ehud Olmert utters the words, they are a blatant exercise in cynicism and hypocrisy.
Already, forty percent of the West Bank has been eaten up by Israeli settlements, closed military areas, nature reserves, Israeli-only roads and the separation barrier, built deep inside Palestinian territory. The rest is fragmented by hundreds of checkpoints. Arab East Jerusalem, the heart of Arab Palestine, is now almost entirely cut off from what remains of the West Bank by a ring of Jewish settlements.
When UNRWA (the UN Relief and Works Agency) first began operations in May 1950, it had some 900,000 destitute Palestinian refugees on its books. Today, there are around 4.5 million in Gaza, the West Bank, Jordan, Lebanon and Syria. The 1.5 million inhabitants of Gaza have been reduced by Israel's siege to begging for their bread. They are kept alive only by UNWRA food packets.
How long can this outrage continue? Israel's oppression of the Palestinians is a gross violation of international humanitarian law, but the world looks the other way. It is easier to condemn China over Tibet.
The current situation in the Palestinian territories raises two stark questions. The first is a question of finance. Can UNWRA raise the $750m it needs this year for its General Fund and its Emergency Appeal? The answer is probably yes. To ease its conscience, and to compensate for its inability to influence Israeli behavior, the international community is likely to pay up -- if reluctantly and late.
The second question is more thought-provoking. How long will the Palestinians endure their present horrific conditions of life -- and the end of their dream of statehood -- before exploding? The polls point to a sharp radicalization of Palestinian society, as the realization sinks in that Israel will yield nothing by negotiation. Certainly, Olmert's desultory talks with Palestinian Authority President Mahmud Abbas have got nowhere -- and will get nowhere.
Some observers predict the outbreak of a third Intifada, more violent than the two previous ones, which erupted respectively in 1987 and 2000. Other observers believe, however, that there is little fight left in the Palestinians. They have been greatly -- and deliberately -- enfeebled by unemployment, malnutrition, a collapsed economy, severe restrictions on movement, not to mention Israel's frequent raids, targeted assassinations, and the incarceration in harsh conditions of over 10,000 Palestinians.
This repression may not, of course, be able to prevent all attacks on Israeli targets, whether inside Israel or abroad. But occasional outbursts of Palestinian violence will immediately be condemned as 'terrorism', and will win Israel international sympathy.
Some would even go so far as to argue that the occupied Palestinian territories are the Israeli equivalent of the rebellious banlieues on the outskirts of French cities. Just as these suburbs erupt angrily from time to time, and are put down, so Israel will not find it beyond its means to keep the territories reasonably quiet, even if it means killing a few hundred people each year.
Hamas and Hizbullah, on Israel's Gaza and Lebanon borders, provide more of a challenge because they seek to acquire a deterrent capability by establishing a "balance of terror" with Israel. But they are essentially little more than self-defense resistance movements, profoundly irritating to the powerful Jewish state, but posing no existential threat to it.
In any event, Israel's leaders seem to think that a little Arab violence -- and the constant security vigilance required to keep it within bounds -- are a price well worth paying for the control and gradual takeover of the whole of historic Palestine.
David Ben-Gurion, Israel's first Prime Minister, is said to have shed bitter tears that the opportunity to seize the entire West Bank and expel the rest of its Arab population was missed in 1948, when the Arab states were routed. Evidently, his successors have by no means given up the goal. Not for nothing have Israel's borders remained undefined to this day.
As the ultra-nationalist religious right steadily gains ground, holding the Israeli government hostage with its claim that the whole of the "Land of Israel" is God-given and cannot be surrendered, it is not surprising that Ehud Olmert has been unable to dismantle a single illegal outpost, in spite of his promise to George W. Bush.
When was the dream of a Palestinian state finally put to rest? Future historians will probably blame the seven years of neglect under George W. Bush, as well as the great influence on his administration of the pro-Israeli neocons, totally opposed to Palestinian statehood.
Any role the European Union could have played to advance Arab-Israeli peace was abdicated when Tony Blair, Britain's former prime minister, split Europe by allying himself with the American neocons in the war against Iraq. In any event, the Israeli-Arab conflict is a subject that divides rather than unites Europe. Still atoning for its Nazi past, Germany cannot bring itself to put any pressure on Israel on behalf of the Palestinians.
On her recent visit to Jerusalem, Germany's Angela Merkel scarcely mentioned the suffering Palestinians at all, except to condemn Hamas' "terror attacks." Israel's security, she said, was Germany's responsibility. "Threats to you are threats to us."
As usual, the Palestinians have been their own worst enemies. They have been plagued by factionalism for most of their modern history, ever since they quarreled over how best to resist the flood of Jewish immigration into Palestine between the world wars. Today, the violent clash between Fatah and Hamas has come at just the wrong moment for Palestinian fortunes.
If, under Yemeni mediation, they manage to patch up their quarrel and reform a National Palestinian Government, Israel will immediately seize on the inclusion of Hamas to suspend the peace talks. For those who do not want peace, any pretext will do.
Little wonder, therefore, that the choice for the Palestinians is between abject surrender and armed resistance. Either way, the future is bleak. Palestinian statehood has become a mirage, fading away into the distance whenever it is approached.
Patrick Seale is a leading British writer on the Middle East, and the author of The Struggle for Syria; also, Asad of Syria: The Struggle for the Middle East; and Abu Nidal: A Gun for Hire.
Copyright © 2008 Patrick Seale
by Patrick Seale
Released: 28 Mar 2008
http://www.patrickseale.com/
It is now clear beyond reasonable dispute that a two-state solution of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict has passed into the realm of fiction. The project -- if it ever was a real project -- is stone dead.
Some Western politicians, U.S. President George W. Bush among them, continue to pay lip service to the notion of an independent and viable Palestinian state living side-by-side with Israel in peace and security. But their actions belie their words.
There is today no effective pressure on Israel -- either from the United States, or Europe, or indeed from the Arab states themselves -- to end its occupation of Palestinian territories, halt its settlement expansion, or agree to the creation of a Palestinian state. In the absence of such pressure -- and it would have to be severe -- Israel will not comply.
Ever since its emergence on the ruins of Arab Palestine six decades ago, Israel has sought to crush any resurgence of Palestinian nationalism. That determination is as real today as it was then. Israel continues to be driven by the belief that any concession to the Palestinians -- and any recognition of its responsibility for their dispossession -- would undermine Israel's own legitimacy.
Mention of a Palestinian state is, therefore, a cruel charade -- whether the words are uttered by George W. Bush, or France's President Nicolas Sarkozy, or any other leader. When Israel's Prime Minister Ehud Olmert utters the words, they are a blatant exercise in cynicism and hypocrisy.
Already, forty percent of the West Bank has been eaten up by Israeli settlements, closed military areas, nature reserves, Israeli-only roads and the separation barrier, built deep inside Palestinian territory. The rest is fragmented by hundreds of checkpoints. Arab East Jerusalem, the heart of Arab Palestine, is now almost entirely cut off from what remains of the West Bank by a ring of Jewish settlements.
When UNRWA (the UN Relief and Works Agency) first began operations in May 1950, it had some 900,000 destitute Palestinian refugees on its books. Today, there are around 4.5 million in Gaza, the West Bank, Jordan, Lebanon and Syria. The 1.5 million inhabitants of Gaza have been reduced by Israel's siege to begging for their bread. They are kept alive only by UNWRA food packets.
How long can this outrage continue? Israel's oppression of the Palestinians is a gross violation of international humanitarian law, but the world looks the other way. It is easier to condemn China over Tibet.
The current situation in the Palestinian territories raises two stark questions. The first is a question of finance. Can UNWRA raise the $750m it needs this year for its General Fund and its Emergency Appeal? The answer is probably yes. To ease its conscience, and to compensate for its inability to influence Israeli behavior, the international community is likely to pay up -- if reluctantly and late.
The second question is more thought-provoking. How long will the Palestinians endure their present horrific conditions of life -- and the end of their dream of statehood -- before exploding? The polls point to a sharp radicalization of Palestinian society, as the realization sinks in that Israel will yield nothing by negotiation. Certainly, Olmert's desultory talks with Palestinian Authority President Mahmud Abbas have got nowhere -- and will get nowhere.
Some observers predict the outbreak of a third Intifada, more violent than the two previous ones, which erupted respectively in 1987 and 2000. Other observers believe, however, that there is little fight left in the Palestinians. They have been greatly -- and deliberately -- enfeebled by unemployment, malnutrition, a collapsed economy, severe restrictions on movement, not to mention Israel's frequent raids, targeted assassinations, and the incarceration in harsh conditions of over 10,000 Palestinians.
This repression may not, of course, be able to prevent all attacks on Israeli targets, whether inside Israel or abroad. But occasional outbursts of Palestinian violence will immediately be condemned as 'terrorism', and will win Israel international sympathy.
Some would even go so far as to argue that the occupied Palestinian territories are the Israeli equivalent of the rebellious banlieues on the outskirts of French cities. Just as these suburbs erupt angrily from time to time, and are put down, so Israel will not find it beyond its means to keep the territories reasonably quiet, even if it means killing a few hundred people each year.
Hamas and Hizbullah, on Israel's Gaza and Lebanon borders, provide more of a challenge because they seek to acquire a deterrent capability by establishing a "balance of terror" with Israel. But they are essentially little more than self-defense resistance movements, profoundly irritating to the powerful Jewish state, but posing no existential threat to it.
In any event, Israel's leaders seem to think that a little Arab violence -- and the constant security vigilance required to keep it within bounds -- are a price well worth paying for the control and gradual takeover of the whole of historic Palestine.
David Ben-Gurion, Israel's first Prime Minister, is said to have shed bitter tears that the opportunity to seize the entire West Bank and expel the rest of its Arab population was missed in 1948, when the Arab states were routed. Evidently, his successors have by no means given up the goal. Not for nothing have Israel's borders remained undefined to this day.
As the ultra-nationalist religious right steadily gains ground, holding the Israeli government hostage with its claim that the whole of the "Land of Israel" is God-given and cannot be surrendered, it is not surprising that Ehud Olmert has been unable to dismantle a single illegal outpost, in spite of his promise to George W. Bush.
When was the dream of a Palestinian state finally put to rest? Future historians will probably blame the seven years of neglect under George W. Bush, as well as the great influence on his administration of the pro-Israeli neocons, totally opposed to Palestinian statehood.
Any role the European Union could have played to advance Arab-Israeli peace was abdicated when Tony Blair, Britain's former prime minister, split Europe by allying himself with the American neocons in the war against Iraq. In any event, the Israeli-Arab conflict is a subject that divides rather than unites Europe. Still atoning for its Nazi past, Germany cannot bring itself to put any pressure on Israel on behalf of the Palestinians.
On her recent visit to Jerusalem, Germany's Angela Merkel scarcely mentioned the suffering Palestinians at all, except to condemn Hamas' "terror attacks." Israel's security, she said, was Germany's responsibility. "Threats to you are threats to us."
As usual, the Palestinians have been their own worst enemies. They have been plagued by factionalism for most of their modern history, ever since they quarreled over how best to resist the flood of Jewish immigration into Palestine between the world wars. Today, the violent clash between Fatah and Hamas has come at just the wrong moment for Palestinian fortunes.
If, under Yemeni mediation, they manage to patch up their quarrel and reform a National Palestinian Government, Israel will immediately seize on the inclusion of Hamas to suspend the peace talks. For those who do not want peace, any pretext will do.
Little wonder, therefore, that the choice for the Palestinians is between abject surrender and armed resistance. Either way, the future is bleak. Palestinian statehood has become a mirage, fading away into the distance whenever it is approached.
Patrick Seale is a leading British writer on the Middle East, and the author of The Struggle for Syria; also, Asad of Syria: The Struggle for the Middle East; and Abu Nidal: A Gun for Hire.
Copyright © 2008 Patrick Seale
Bitter Lemons Middle East Roundtable March 27, 2008: America and Iraq: the next five years
bitterlemons-international.org
Middle East Roundtable
Edition 13 Volume 6 - March 27, 2008
America and Iraq: the next five years
• No more than a gamble - Safa A. Hussein
Failures may happen, but none will bring Iraq to the edge of civil war as in 2006-2007.
• The US army belongs to Iraq - Lawrence Kaplan
The army has immersed itself so thoroughly in Iraq that senior officers back in the United States worry that the force is "out of balance".
• Kurds hold the key for both Turkey and the US - Mustafa Kibaroglu
US policy in Iraq appears much more sensitive to meeting the demands of the Kurdish authority than those of Turkey.
• A US declaration of intent could mitigate looming dangers - Mohammad K. Shiyyab
The failure of US forces to bring the war to a close has divided Americans and the community of nations.
No more than a gamble
Safa A. Hussein
In the last seven years, I have become more reluctant to make predictions about the future of Iraq because of the bitter experience of making a series of wrong assessments. First, against all expectations I witnessed the end of Saddam Hussein and his regime when, for ambiguous reasons, the United States decided to invade Iraq. Also, the war was unexpectedly short and did not destroy Baghdad and its infrastructure. The scale of looting and burning of many state-owned institutions was another unexpected surprise.
Shortly after the war, I expected Iraq to rise again like post-war Japan and Germany. But a few months later, huge unemployment caused by the mistakes of the Coalition Provisional Authority, coupled with the emergence of the insurgency and the rise of al-Qaeda, clearly indicated that Iraq was taking another path.
Again I made a mistaken assessment that within two years, progress in the political process and the build-up of Iraqi forces would lead to the defeat of both the insurgency and al-Qaeda. Yet the year 2005 witnessed deterioration in stability and signs of sectarian violence that increased rapidly in 2006. More than one million Iraqis were displaced either by force for sectarian reasons or because of insecurity and chaos. In the beginning of 2007, when the famous "Fardh al-Kanoon" security plan was announced, realistic expectations were for slow and modest improvements in security. Yet for various unanticipated reasons, the end of 2007 witnessed an improvement in security that challenged all expectations.
In view of all this experience, predicting what might happen in Iraq over the next five years may be no more than a gamble. But it is a challenge that is difficult to resist.
There are many reasons to believe that al-Qaeda will continue to retreat. By 2009, it may lose its bases in Diala and Mosul provinces, and by 2012 it may become a marginal terrorist group based in remote areas along the borders of Diala, Kirkuk and Mosul provinces. However, before the next provincial elections that are planned for the end of this year we may witness a new type of violence: Shi'ite against Shi'ite in the southern provinces and Sunni against Sunni in Anbar and the northern provinces. These struggles may be settled more rapidly in the Sunni provinces than in the South, largely because there are more resources to fight over in the latter.
These struggles will also divert the focus of the local population to the provinces rather than to Baghdad and this may eventually weaken the insurgency. It would then be up to the central government to choose whether to play the role of arbitrator between competing groups or support specific factions and thereby create a new insurgency.
On the national level, it is difficult to see a boost in reconciliation or in government activities, whether in providing basic services or realizing economic growth. The current political system, based on ethnic/sectarian political parties that share power, makes government decision-making and reform difficult. The main political blocs benefit from the existing system. Thus only partial reform is envisioned, and one may anticipate painfully slow progress in all directions: national reconciliation, basic services, economic growth, fighting corruption, etc. Such slow progress will impact hoped-for security gains, and a certain level of tension and violence may continue delaying the return of displaced people.
Failures may happen, but none will bring Iraq to the edge of civil war as in 2006-2007. Thus, during the next five years we may witness a "new normality" where some of the things that used to be possible, like freedom of movement, are no longer available, but the danger level drops and everyday concerns replace the obsession with mere survival.
A slow withdrawal of American forces may be carried out during the next five years. This may not impact security negatively, because it will be compensated partially by the growth of the Iraqi forces and, more important, it will improve the Iraqi government's standing both inside and outside Iraq. Even if a new Democratic president is elected in the US, he/she will come under pressure to sustain the US military commitment to Iraq, perhaps with some modifications.
On the other hand, pressure from Iraqi refugees on the European Union countries may continue, especially from the more than one million Iraqis already resident in Syria and Jordan. The EU may be required to do more about this humanitarian crisis.
The Arab countries, impacted by the changing nature of the internal Iraqi conflict from inter-sectarian to intra-sectarian, may slowly shift from inflaming the sectarian insurgency to a passive monitoring role. After the next Iraqi elections, they may become convinced that the new political system in Iraq has prevailed and that it is better to live with it. This may move them toward a more positive role.- Published 27/3/2008 © bitterlemons-international.org
Safa A. Hussein is a former deputy member of the dissolved Iraqi Governing Council. Prior to joining the Transitional Government he served as a brigadier general in the Iraqi Air Force and worked in the military industry as director of a research and development center. Currently he works in the Iraqi National Security Council.
The US army belongs to Iraq
Lawrence Kaplan
US General David Petraeus elicited a few chuckles when, testifying before the US Congress last September, he inadvertently referred to Iraq as "home". But in the constellation of American bases that loop around the Tigris and Euphrates river valleys, in the spectacle of young Americans knowing Iraqi neighborhoods as well as they know their own, in the profound and sometimes disquieting sense of ownership the US army has about this war--in all of these things there is evidence that Petraeus meant exactly what he said.
Over the years, I've watched the same scene in western and southern Baghdad, Mosul, Ramadi, Sinjar and Tall Afar: American units slowly melt into the landscape, becoming in effect the most powerful of their area's tribes. Absent a functioning government, the US army administers nearly every visible facet of the state, above all the role of honest broker.
Not unlike the Americans in Vietnam and in the Philippines a century ago, the US army in Iraq has even acquired the flavor of its surroundings. This is not the army that resides in the city-states otherwise known as Forward Operating Bases, with their Pizza Huts, traffic cops and morgues. Officers in the "Grand Army of the Tigris", as one of its senior officers calls the American force, dine with local elders at "goat grabs", greet them with "man-kisses" and routinely punctuate their own conversations with the casual "inshallah". The vernacular has even followed the American army home: In the halls of the Pentagon, where nearly every army officer has served at least two tours in Iraq, officers ask whether this or that official has "wasta"--Iraqi shorthand for "influence" or "pull", though with a slightly more corrupt tinge.
The army has immersed itself so thoroughly in Iraq that senior officers back in the United States worry that the force is "out of balance", as US Army Chief of Staff Gen. George Casey put it, and is too fixated on counterinsurgency. But there is another way to view this: Just as the US army that punched through Germany in 1945 bore slight resemblance to the amateurish force routed in North Africa three years before, the hardened units that America fields in Iraq today know the terrain in a way the army of 2003 and 2004 never did.
Whether measured in terms of tactics and techniques improved, operational schemes perfected or the clan loyalties of every house on every street catalogued and memorized, the accumulation of experience counts for everything in this war. In Iraq, roughly half of all casualties tend to be suffered during the first three months of a unit's deployment. What is true in microcosm is also true writ large. In a war where it's nearly impossible to detect intellectual coherence, the Army's learning curve tells a clear story.
In 2005, with other brigades either bulldozing through towns or hunkering down on their outskirts, the Third Armored Cavalry Regiment literally "went native", fanning out across the city of Tal Afar and planting itself in the midst of a once-hostile population center. In 2006, the First Armored Division's First Brigade Combat Team borrowed and improved the template by establishing its own outposts across the brutal city of Ramadi and "flipping" the local tribes. The "surge" brigades then purposefully applied the examples of both cities to Baghdad. Perhaps too late for the home front, but Gen. Petraeus has enshrined the lessons of these places in a theater-wide strategy that is generating undeniable results.
There is, of course, an obvious downside to having an army that all but qualifies for Iraqi citizenship, even apart from the tally in dead and wounded. If the well-worn cliche that the US Army inhabits a different universe from the Iraqis around it is no longer quite true, the reverse certainly is: not even seven thousand miles can fully measure the US army's remove from American society. Having bled so much in Iraq, the officer corps has very little use for the prospect that it may "have to leave our bleached bones on these desert sands in vain", as Centurion Marcus Flavius predicted in his famous letter back to Rome. Five years on, the US army belongs to Iraq.- Published 27/3/2008 © bitterlemons-international.org
Lawrence Kaplan is editor of World Affairs.
Kurds hold the key for both Turkey and the US
Mustafa Kibaroglu
Five years of US occupation in Iraq have had two major effects on Turkey: a deterioration in Turkish-American relations and the transformation, rather than abolition, of perceived threats from Iraq. Their common denominator is Turkey's serious concerns about the aspirations of Iraqi Kurds to independence. From Turkey's perspective, the next five years will to a great extent be shaped by the pace of events on these issues.
The failure of the Turkish parliament on March 1, 2003 to pass a resolution that would allow the stationing of some 60,000 US troops on Turkish territory--which was said to constitute the crux of US strategy in its war on Iraq--demoted Turkey in the eyes of the Bush administration. Furthermore, the development provided justification for the US to elevate the status of the Kurds in northern Iraq to that of "strategic partner" in the region.
Indeed, US interest in the Kurds had already taken a dramatic turn with the 1991 Gulf war at the end of which the "no-fly-zone" imposed by the US sowed the seeds of an autonomous, if not independent, Kurdish entity in northern Iraq. Hence, over the next five years the degree of commitment the US shows in fulfilling the expectations of the Kurds in Iraq and in neighboring countries such as Iran, Syria and Turkey will determine the scope and content of Turkish-American relations and the nature of the threat perceived by Turkey from Iraq.
Until now, and in spite of sporadic and short-term improvements in relations between Turkey and the US, especially at times of high level visits, US policy in Iraq appears much more sensitive to meeting the demands of the Kurdish authority than those of its long-time NATO ally. This suggests that the general nature of Turkish-US bilateral relations will not improve and might even become worse.
An example of this was the unanticipated and much resented attitude of the US during Turkey's recent ground operation against PKK strongholds in northern Iraq. Even though the White House and the Pentagon were in advance provided with detailed information about the scale and purpose of the operation, the undiplomatic statements of US President George W. Bush and Defense Secretary Robert Gates that "the Turks should get out" once again underlined the fact that Washington considers the Kurds in northern Iraq as its primary strategic ally at present and in the future.
The value of the Kurds to the US emanates from a number of factors. First, the Kurds are key to Iraqi integration or indeed disintegration. If the US wants to "transform the greater Middle East", it has to be successful in Iraq so as to set a precedent for the rest of the region. Without the consent of the Kurds, Iraq will not stay united (even if it has already in fact disintegrated).
Second, the Kurds control large oil and gas fields, especially in and around the Kirkuk and Mosul districts that are likely to be exploited by American companies. Third, the Kurds are among the most secular groups in the entire Islamic world. As such, in the age of America's "global war on terror" that is based on the neo-conservative belief that Islamic radicalism feeds terrorism around the world, a Muslim Kurdish community that can ally itself with the West becomes indispensable.
Fourth, the geographical location of Kurdish northern Iraq provides Israel with a "forward defense capability" against threats from Iran and potentially from Pakistan, who have long-range missiles that may carry warheads with weapons of mass destruction. Fifth, Kurdish northern Iraq also lies between Turkey's relatively rich water resources, namely the Tigris and the Euphrates rivers, and US allies in the region including Israel, Jordan, Saudi Arabia and other Gulf monarchies.
The impact on Turkey of developments in Iraq over the next five years will be mainly determined by the extent to which the US is willing and able to mitigate Turkish fears vis-a-vis a possible declaration of independence by Kurds in Iraq. If the next US administration is able to take a wider perspective on world affairs and see where Turkey fits into its strategic calculations, attaining the level of strategic partnership may again be possible and rewarding for both parties.
If not, Turkey's attempts to prevent certain developments in Iraq may well lead to confrontation with the US that will delay America's attempt at building a new Iraqi state and thus "bringing democracy to the Middle East".- Published 27/3/2008 © bitterlemons-international.org
Dr. Mustafa Kibaroglu is the coordinator of the Eurasian and Atlantic Security Studies Program in the Department of International Relations at Bilkent University in Ankara, Turkey.
A US declaration of intent could mitigate looming dangers
Mohammad K. Shiyyab
It is now five years after America's "shock and awe" operation in Iraq, and the US, as much as anyone else, is still in shock from a seemingly endless war with all its consequences. Immediately after the fall of Saddam Hussein, the US administration in Iraq ousted the government there, dismantled all Iraqi security agencies including the army, destroyed the country's infrastructure and occupied the country. To most analysts, this was a strategic blunder--unless the "classified" US strategy called for creating a chaotic situation to justify a long-term occupation of Iraq.
The war on Iraq has caused unprecedented destruction and loss of life, especially among Iraqis. Conservative estimates put the number of Iraqi casualties at no less than one million, most of them civilian. Many of these casualties were the result of internal disputes. The war also contributed to regional instability; five million Iraqis had to flee their country in search of safe sanctuary and four more million are displaced within Iraq itself.
In US President George W. Bush's own words "the war has been longer, harder and more costly than anticipated". To date, over 4,000 Americans have been killed and over 25,000 injured. New figures also indicate the high financial cost of the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan (see a recent book "The Three Trillion Dollar War" by economist and Nobel Prize laureate Joseph Stiglitz, which he co-authored with Harvard University Professor Linda Bilmes).
Furthermore, the war has resulted in two major transnational challenges--the containment of terrorism and the security of oil supplies--though one should not lose sight of the risk of nuclear proliferation. Terrorists operate in political voids, or weak or failing states. Such was the case with al-Qaeda's emergence in Somalia, Sudan and Afghanistan. An obvious target for terrorism is oil-producing states and transit networks. Instability alone will spike oil prices even without a disruption in production or shipping. In extreme cases of "spillover" from major civil wars, civil strife in one state can cause civil strife in another. The loss of oil production from Iraq would be an irritant to the global economy; the loss of another nation's production, such as Saudi Arabia's, would be a catastrophe.
Regionally, humanitarian tragedies have massive security implications. The situation inside Iraq enabled militias to further entrench themselves as ruling bodies and make Iraq more susceptible to terrorist and extremist ideologies. As refugees flow into the region (Jordan hosts about 700,000 refugees), both insurgents and terrorists will move across borders to re-supply, recruit new members and destabilize neighboring states. Jordan, Saudi Arabia, Morocco and others have already been targeted by terrorists.
Iran has realized its ambition in Iraq of a Shi'ite-led government and has exercised its influence through its support for Shi'ite political factions and militias and its religious ties. Indirectly, Iran is strengthened in its regional and international ambitions through US humiliation. A weaker US also gives Iran space to support its regional clients. All of these factors complicate efforts to curb Iran's nuclear program. Iran knows that it has leverage and influence in the region, that the US is in trouble and that it can make things worse for American troops in Iraq.
Bush's strategy in Iraq is to prevent defeat and to hand the problem off to his successor. As a result, more and more Americans understandably want a rapid withdrawal, even at the risk of trading a dictator for chaos and a civil war that could become a regional war. Washington, therefore, needs to formulate a viable exit strategy to end the war. In this context, a declaration of principles regarding American intentions in Iraq and a timetable for the reduction of forces or total withdrawal would be an important stabilizing factor.
While a withdrawal of US troops would precipitate short-term violence, a continued presence would further increase regional tensions. The failure of US forces to bring the war to a close has divided Americans and the community of nations. A further deterioration in the stability of Iraq would no doubt compound the chaos in the Middle East.
Some practical hope for salvation lies with Iraqis themselves. Iraqis must take charge of their future. Iraq's neighbors as well as the international community must now search for a genuine political solution that factors in regional interests.
Three important issues are of major concern to the Iraqi Sunni population: political power sharing, control of oil revenues and the role of Islam in a new government. These major concerns have to be addressed. The Kurds are systematically increasing their control over Kirkuk, a center of oil wealth, which will provoke another source of conflict with Sunnis and perhaps with Shi'ites. However, this could be mitigated if the Kurds agree to oil revenue sharing.
What Iraq needs is a strong central government to manage the greater Baghdad area and to be in charge of foreign policy, defense and oil production. Further, we need a solid security environment, sustained by the presence of adequate Iraqi security forces, to facilitate governance and economic activity. Political agreements need to address grievances between fighting factions in order to build trust and achieve a longer-term solution. A federal Iraq should not be based on ethnic or religious grounds. The US and Iraq's neighbors must press the Kurds to accept such a proposition.
Last but not least, an enhanced role for the United Nations in Iraq might be a step in the right direction and could be kick-started by convening a regional security conference under the auspices of the UN where Iraq's neighbors, including Iran, pledge to support an Iraqi power sharing agreement and respect Iraq's borders.- Published 27/3/2008 © bitterlemons-international.org
General (rtd) Mohammad K. Shiyyab is director of the Cooperative Monitoring Center, Amman. He is a former deputy commander of the Royal Jordanian Air Force.
Bitterlemons-international.org is an internet forum for an array of world perspectives on the Middle East and its specific concerns. It aspires to engender greater understanding about the Middle East region and open a new common space for world thinkers and political leaders to present their viewpoints and initiatives on the region. Editors Ghassan Khatib and Yossi Alpher can be reached at ghassan@bitterlemons-international.org and yossi@bitterlemons-international.org, respectively.
Middle East Roundtable
Edition 13 Volume 6 - March 27, 2008
America and Iraq: the next five years
• No more than a gamble - Safa A. Hussein
Failures may happen, but none will bring Iraq to the edge of civil war as in 2006-2007.
• The US army belongs to Iraq - Lawrence Kaplan
The army has immersed itself so thoroughly in Iraq that senior officers back in the United States worry that the force is "out of balance".
• Kurds hold the key for both Turkey and the US - Mustafa Kibaroglu
US policy in Iraq appears much more sensitive to meeting the demands of the Kurdish authority than those of Turkey.
• A US declaration of intent could mitigate looming dangers - Mohammad K. Shiyyab
The failure of US forces to bring the war to a close has divided Americans and the community of nations.
No more than a gamble
Safa A. Hussein
In the last seven years, I have become more reluctant to make predictions about the future of Iraq because of the bitter experience of making a series of wrong assessments. First, against all expectations I witnessed the end of Saddam Hussein and his regime when, for ambiguous reasons, the United States decided to invade Iraq. Also, the war was unexpectedly short and did not destroy Baghdad and its infrastructure. The scale of looting and burning of many state-owned institutions was another unexpected surprise.
Shortly after the war, I expected Iraq to rise again like post-war Japan and Germany. But a few months later, huge unemployment caused by the mistakes of the Coalition Provisional Authority, coupled with the emergence of the insurgency and the rise of al-Qaeda, clearly indicated that Iraq was taking another path.
Again I made a mistaken assessment that within two years, progress in the political process and the build-up of Iraqi forces would lead to the defeat of both the insurgency and al-Qaeda. Yet the year 2005 witnessed deterioration in stability and signs of sectarian violence that increased rapidly in 2006. More than one million Iraqis were displaced either by force for sectarian reasons or because of insecurity and chaos. In the beginning of 2007, when the famous "Fardh al-Kanoon" security plan was announced, realistic expectations were for slow and modest improvements in security. Yet for various unanticipated reasons, the end of 2007 witnessed an improvement in security that challenged all expectations.
In view of all this experience, predicting what might happen in Iraq over the next five years may be no more than a gamble. But it is a challenge that is difficult to resist.
There are many reasons to believe that al-Qaeda will continue to retreat. By 2009, it may lose its bases in Diala and Mosul provinces, and by 2012 it may become a marginal terrorist group based in remote areas along the borders of Diala, Kirkuk and Mosul provinces. However, before the next provincial elections that are planned for the end of this year we may witness a new type of violence: Shi'ite against Shi'ite in the southern provinces and Sunni against Sunni in Anbar and the northern provinces. These struggles may be settled more rapidly in the Sunni provinces than in the South, largely because there are more resources to fight over in the latter.
These struggles will also divert the focus of the local population to the provinces rather than to Baghdad and this may eventually weaken the insurgency. It would then be up to the central government to choose whether to play the role of arbitrator between competing groups or support specific factions and thereby create a new insurgency.
On the national level, it is difficult to see a boost in reconciliation or in government activities, whether in providing basic services or realizing economic growth. The current political system, based on ethnic/sectarian political parties that share power, makes government decision-making and reform difficult. The main political blocs benefit from the existing system. Thus only partial reform is envisioned, and one may anticipate painfully slow progress in all directions: national reconciliation, basic services, economic growth, fighting corruption, etc. Such slow progress will impact hoped-for security gains, and a certain level of tension and violence may continue delaying the return of displaced people.
Failures may happen, but none will bring Iraq to the edge of civil war as in 2006-2007. Thus, during the next five years we may witness a "new normality" where some of the things that used to be possible, like freedom of movement, are no longer available, but the danger level drops and everyday concerns replace the obsession with mere survival.
A slow withdrawal of American forces may be carried out during the next five years. This may not impact security negatively, because it will be compensated partially by the growth of the Iraqi forces and, more important, it will improve the Iraqi government's standing both inside and outside Iraq. Even if a new Democratic president is elected in the US, he/she will come under pressure to sustain the US military commitment to Iraq, perhaps with some modifications.
On the other hand, pressure from Iraqi refugees on the European Union countries may continue, especially from the more than one million Iraqis already resident in Syria and Jordan. The EU may be required to do more about this humanitarian crisis.
The Arab countries, impacted by the changing nature of the internal Iraqi conflict from inter-sectarian to intra-sectarian, may slowly shift from inflaming the sectarian insurgency to a passive monitoring role. After the next Iraqi elections, they may become convinced that the new political system in Iraq has prevailed and that it is better to live with it. This may move them toward a more positive role.- Published 27/3/2008 © bitterlemons-international.org
Safa A. Hussein is a former deputy member of the dissolved Iraqi Governing Council. Prior to joining the Transitional Government he served as a brigadier general in the Iraqi Air Force and worked in the military industry as director of a research and development center. Currently he works in the Iraqi National Security Council.
The US army belongs to Iraq
Lawrence Kaplan
US General David Petraeus elicited a few chuckles when, testifying before the US Congress last September, he inadvertently referred to Iraq as "home". But in the constellation of American bases that loop around the Tigris and Euphrates river valleys, in the spectacle of young Americans knowing Iraqi neighborhoods as well as they know their own, in the profound and sometimes disquieting sense of ownership the US army has about this war--in all of these things there is evidence that Petraeus meant exactly what he said.
Over the years, I've watched the same scene in western and southern Baghdad, Mosul, Ramadi, Sinjar and Tall Afar: American units slowly melt into the landscape, becoming in effect the most powerful of their area's tribes. Absent a functioning government, the US army administers nearly every visible facet of the state, above all the role of honest broker.
Not unlike the Americans in Vietnam and in the Philippines a century ago, the US army in Iraq has even acquired the flavor of its surroundings. This is not the army that resides in the city-states otherwise known as Forward Operating Bases, with their Pizza Huts, traffic cops and morgues. Officers in the "Grand Army of the Tigris", as one of its senior officers calls the American force, dine with local elders at "goat grabs", greet them with "man-kisses" and routinely punctuate their own conversations with the casual "inshallah". The vernacular has even followed the American army home: In the halls of the Pentagon, where nearly every army officer has served at least two tours in Iraq, officers ask whether this or that official has "wasta"--Iraqi shorthand for "influence" or "pull", though with a slightly more corrupt tinge.
The army has immersed itself so thoroughly in Iraq that senior officers back in the United States worry that the force is "out of balance", as US Army Chief of Staff Gen. George Casey put it, and is too fixated on counterinsurgency. But there is another way to view this: Just as the US army that punched through Germany in 1945 bore slight resemblance to the amateurish force routed in North Africa three years before, the hardened units that America fields in Iraq today know the terrain in a way the army of 2003 and 2004 never did.
Whether measured in terms of tactics and techniques improved, operational schemes perfected or the clan loyalties of every house on every street catalogued and memorized, the accumulation of experience counts for everything in this war. In Iraq, roughly half of all casualties tend to be suffered during the first three months of a unit's deployment. What is true in microcosm is also true writ large. In a war where it's nearly impossible to detect intellectual coherence, the Army's learning curve tells a clear story.
In 2005, with other brigades either bulldozing through towns or hunkering down on their outskirts, the Third Armored Cavalry Regiment literally "went native", fanning out across the city of Tal Afar and planting itself in the midst of a once-hostile population center. In 2006, the First Armored Division's First Brigade Combat Team borrowed and improved the template by establishing its own outposts across the brutal city of Ramadi and "flipping" the local tribes. The "surge" brigades then purposefully applied the examples of both cities to Baghdad. Perhaps too late for the home front, but Gen. Petraeus has enshrined the lessons of these places in a theater-wide strategy that is generating undeniable results.
There is, of course, an obvious downside to having an army that all but qualifies for Iraqi citizenship, even apart from the tally in dead and wounded. If the well-worn cliche that the US Army inhabits a different universe from the Iraqis around it is no longer quite true, the reverse certainly is: not even seven thousand miles can fully measure the US army's remove from American society. Having bled so much in Iraq, the officer corps has very little use for the prospect that it may "have to leave our bleached bones on these desert sands in vain", as Centurion Marcus Flavius predicted in his famous letter back to Rome. Five years on, the US army belongs to Iraq.- Published 27/3/2008 © bitterlemons-international.org
Lawrence Kaplan is editor of World Affairs.
Kurds hold the key for both Turkey and the US
Mustafa Kibaroglu
Five years of US occupation in Iraq have had two major effects on Turkey: a deterioration in Turkish-American relations and the transformation, rather than abolition, of perceived threats from Iraq. Their common denominator is Turkey's serious concerns about the aspirations of Iraqi Kurds to independence. From Turkey's perspective, the next five years will to a great extent be shaped by the pace of events on these issues.
The failure of the Turkish parliament on March 1, 2003 to pass a resolution that would allow the stationing of some 60,000 US troops on Turkish territory--which was said to constitute the crux of US strategy in its war on Iraq--demoted Turkey in the eyes of the Bush administration. Furthermore, the development provided justification for the US to elevate the status of the Kurds in northern Iraq to that of "strategic partner" in the region.
Indeed, US interest in the Kurds had already taken a dramatic turn with the 1991 Gulf war at the end of which the "no-fly-zone" imposed by the US sowed the seeds of an autonomous, if not independent, Kurdish entity in northern Iraq. Hence, over the next five years the degree of commitment the US shows in fulfilling the expectations of the Kurds in Iraq and in neighboring countries such as Iran, Syria and Turkey will determine the scope and content of Turkish-American relations and the nature of the threat perceived by Turkey from Iraq.
Until now, and in spite of sporadic and short-term improvements in relations between Turkey and the US, especially at times of high level visits, US policy in Iraq appears much more sensitive to meeting the demands of the Kurdish authority than those of its long-time NATO ally. This suggests that the general nature of Turkish-US bilateral relations will not improve and might even become worse.
An example of this was the unanticipated and much resented attitude of the US during Turkey's recent ground operation against PKK strongholds in northern Iraq. Even though the White House and the Pentagon were in advance provided with detailed information about the scale and purpose of the operation, the undiplomatic statements of US President George W. Bush and Defense Secretary Robert Gates that "the Turks should get out" once again underlined the fact that Washington considers the Kurds in northern Iraq as its primary strategic ally at present and in the future.
The value of the Kurds to the US emanates from a number of factors. First, the Kurds are key to Iraqi integration or indeed disintegration. If the US wants to "transform the greater Middle East", it has to be successful in Iraq so as to set a precedent for the rest of the region. Without the consent of the Kurds, Iraq will not stay united (even if it has already in fact disintegrated).
Second, the Kurds control large oil and gas fields, especially in and around the Kirkuk and Mosul districts that are likely to be exploited by American companies. Third, the Kurds are among the most secular groups in the entire Islamic world. As such, in the age of America's "global war on terror" that is based on the neo-conservative belief that Islamic radicalism feeds terrorism around the world, a Muslim Kurdish community that can ally itself with the West becomes indispensable.
Fourth, the geographical location of Kurdish northern Iraq provides Israel with a "forward defense capability" against threats from Iran and potentially from Pakistan, who have long-range missiles that may carry warheads with weapons of mass destruction. Fifth, Kurdish northern Iraq also lies between Turkey's relatively rich water resources, namely the Tigris and the Euphrates rivers, and US allies in the region including Israel, Jordan, Saudi Arabia and other Gulf monarchies.
The impact on Turkey of developments in Iraq over the next five years will be mainly determined by the extent to which the US is willing and able to mitigate Turkish fears vis-a-vis a possible declaration of independence by Kurds in Iraq. If the next US administration is able to take a wider perspective on world affairs and see where Turkey fits into its strategic calculations, attaining the level of strategic partnership may again be possible and rewarding for both parties.
If not, Turkey's attempts to prevent certain developments in Iraq may well lead to confrontation with the US that will delay America's attempt at building a new Iraqi state and thus "bringing democracy to the Middle East".- Published 27/3/2008 © bitterlemons-international.org
Dr. Mustafa Kibaroglu is the coordinator of the Eurasian and Atlantic Security Studies Program in the Department of International Relations at Bilkent University in Ankara, Turkey.
A US declaration of intent could mitigate looming dangers
Mohammad K. Shiyyab
It is now five years after America's "shock and awe" operation in Iraq, and the US, as much as anyone else, is still in shock from a seemingly endless war with all its consequences. Immediately after the fall of Saddam Hussein, the US administration in Iraq ousted the government there, dismantled all Iraqi security agencies including the army, destroyed the country's infrastructure and occupied the country. To most analysts, this was a strategic blunder--unless the "classified" US strategy called for creating a chaotic situation to justify a long-term occupation of Iraq.
The war on Iraq has caused unprecedented destruction and loss of life, especially among Iraqis. Conservative estimates put the number of Iraqi casualties at no less than one million, most of them civilian. Many of these casualties were the result of internal disputes. The war also contributed to regional instability; five million Iraqis had to flee their country in search of safe sanctuary and four more million are displaced within Iraq itself.
In US President George W. Bush's own words "the war has been longer, harder and more costly than anticipated". To date, over 4,000 Americans have been killed and over 25,000 injured. New figures also indicate the high financial cost of the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan (see a recent book "The Three Trillion Dollar War" by economist and Nobel Prize laureate Joseph Stiglitz, which he co-authored with Harvard University Professor Linda Bilmes).
Furthermore, the war has resulted in two major transnational challenges--the containment of terrorism and the security of oil supplies--though one should not lose sight of the risk of nuclear proliferation. Terrorists operate in political voids, or weak or failing states. Such was the case with al-Qaeda's emergence in Somalia, Sudan and Afghanistan. An obvious target for terrorism is oil-producing states and transit networks. Instability alone will spike oil prices even without a disruption in production or shipping. In extreme cases of "spillover" from major civil wars, civil strife in one state can cause civil strife in another. The loss of oil production from Iraq would be an irritant to the global economy; the loss of another nation's production, such as Saudi Arabia's, would be a catastrophe.
Regionally, humanitarian tragedies have massive security implications. The situation inside Iraq enabled militias to further entrench themselves as ruling bodies and make Iraq more susceptible to terrorist and extremist ideologies. As refugees flow into the region (Jordan hosts about 700,000 refugees), both insurgents and terrorists will move across borders to re-supply, recruit new members and destabilize neighboring states. Jordan, Saudi Arabia, Morocco and others have already been targeted by terrorists.
Iran has realized its ambition in Iraq of a Shi'ite-led government and has exercised its influence through its support for Shi'ite political factions and militias and its religious ties. Indirectly, Iran is strengthened in its regional and international ambitions through US humiliation. A weaker US also gives Iran space to support its regional clients. All of these factors complicate efforts to curb Iran's nuclear program. Iran knows that it has leverage and influence in the region, that the US is in trouble and that it can make things worse for American troops in Iraq.
Bush's strategy in Iraq is to prevent defeat and to hand the problem off to his successor. As a result, more and more Americans understandably want a rapid withdrawal, even at the risk of trading a dictator for chaos and a civil war that could become a regional war. Washington, therefore, needs to formulate a viable exit strategy to end the war. In this context, a declaration of principles regarding American intentions in Iraq and a timetable for the reduction of forces or total withdrawal would be an important stabilizing factor.
While a withdrawal of US troops would precipitate short-term violence, a continued presence would further increase regional tensions. The failure of US forces to bring the war to a close has divided Americans and the community of nations. A further deterioration in the stability of Iraq would no doubt compound the chaos in the Middle East.
Some practical hope for salvation lies with Iraqis themselves. Iraqis must take charge of their future. Iraq's neighbors as well as the international community must now search for a genuine political solution that factors in regional interests.
Three important issues are of major concern to the Iraqi Sunni population: political power sharing, control of oil revenues and the role of Islam in a new government. These major concerns have to be addressed. The Kurds are systematically increasing their control over Kirkuk, a center of oil wealth, which will provoke another source of conflict with Sunnis and perhaps with Shi'ites. However, this could be mitigated if the Kurds agree to oil revenue sharing.
What Iraq needs is a strong central government to manage the greater Baghdad area and to be in charge of foreign policy, defense and oil production. Further, we need a solid security environment, sustained by the presence of adequate Iraqi security forces, to facilitate governance and economic activity. Political agreements need to address grievances between fighting factions in order to build trust and achieve a longer-term solution. A federal Iraq should not be based on ethnic or religious grounds. The US and Iraq's neighbors must press the Kurds to accept such a proposition.
Last but not least, an enhanced role for the United Nations in Iraq might be a step in the right direction and could be kick-started by convening a regional security conference under the auspices of the UN where Iraq's neighbors, including Iran, pledge to support an Iraqi power sharing agreement and respect Iraq's borders.- Published 27/3/2008 © bitterlemons-international.org
General (rtd) Mohammad K. Shiyyab is director of the Cooperative Monitoring Center, Amman. He is a former deputy commander of the Royal Jordanian Air Force.
Bitterlemons-international.org is an internet forum for an array of world perspectives on the Middle East and its specific concerns. It aspires to engender greater understanding about the Middle East region and open a new common space for world thinkers and political leaders to present their viewpoints and initiatives on the region. Editors Ghassan Khatib and Yossi Alpher can be reached at ghassan@bitterlemons-international.org and yossi@bitterlemons-international.org, respectively.
DECLARATIOMS: Getting Mrs. Clinton by Peggy Noonan
DECLARATIONS
By PEGGY NOONAN
Getting Mrs. Clinton
March 28, 2008
I think we've reached a signal point in the campaign. This is the point where, with Hillary Clinton, either you get it or you don't. There's no dodging now. You either understand the problem with her candidacy, or you don't. You either understand who she is, or not. And if you don't, after 16 years of watching Clintonian dramas, you probably never will.
That's what the Bosnia story was about. Her fictions about dodging bullets on the tarmac -- and we have to hope they were lies, because if they weren't, if she thought what she was saying was true, we are in worse trouble than we thought -- either confirmed what you already knew (she lies as a matter of strategy, or, as William Safire said in 1996, by nature) or revealed in an unforgettable way (videotape! Smiling girl in pigtails offering flowers!) what you feared (that she lies more than is humanly usual, even politically usual).
[Getting Mrs. Clinton]
AP
But either you get it now or you never will. That's the importance of the Bosnia tape.
Many in the press get it, to their dismay, and it makes them uncomfortable, for it sours life to have a person whose character you feel you cannot admire play such a large daily role in your work. But I think it's fair to say of the establishment media at this point that it is well populated by people who feel such a lack of faith in Mrs. Clinton's words and ways that it amounts to an aversion. They are offended by how she and her staff operate. They try hard to be fair. They constantly have to police themselves.
Not that her staff isn't policing them too. Mrs. Clinton's people are heavy-handed in that area, letting producers and correspondents know they're watching, weighing, may have to take this higher. There's too much of this in politics, but Hillary's campaign takes it to a new level.
It's not only the press. It's what I get as I walk around New York, which used to be thick with her people. I went to a Hillary fund-raiser at Hunter College about a month ago, paying for a seat in the balcony and being ushered up to fill the more expensive section on the floor, so frantic were they to fill seats.
I sat next to a woman, a New York Democrat who'd been for Hillary from the beginning and still was. She was here. But, she said, "It doesn't seem to be working." She shrugged, not like a brokenhearted person but a practical person who'd missed all the signs of something coming. She wasn't mad at the voters. But she was no longer so taken by the woman who soon took the stage and enacted joy.
The other day a bookseller told me he'd been reading the opinion pages of the papers and noting the anti-Hillary feeling. Two weeks ago he realized he wasn't for her anymore. It wasn't one incident, just an accumulation of things. His experience tracks this week's Wall Street Journal/NBC poll showing Mrs. Clinton's disapproval numbers have risen to the highest level ever in the campaign, her highest in fact in seven years.
* * *
You'd think she'd pivot back to showing a likable side, chatting with women, weeping, wearing the bright yellows and reds that are thought to appeal to her core following, older women. Well, she's doing that. Yet at the same time, her campaign reveals new levels of thuggishness, though that's the wrong word, for thugs are often effective. This is mere heavy-handedness.
On Wednesday a group of Mrs. Clinton's top donors sent a letter to the speaker of the House, Nancy Pelosi, warning her in language that they no doubt thought subtle but that reflected a kind of incompetent menace, that her statements on the presidential campaign may result in less money for Democratic candidates for the House. Ms. Pelosi had said that in her view the superdelegates should support the presidential candidate who wins the most pledged delegates in state contests. The letter urged her to "clarify" her position, which is "clearly untenable" and "runs counter" to the superdelegates' right to make "an informed, individual decision" about "who would be the party's strongest nominee." The signers, noting their past and huge financial support, suggested that Ms. Pelosi "reflect" on her comments and amend them to reflect "a more open view."
Barack Obama's campaign called it inappropriate and said Mrs. Clinton should "reject the insinuation." But why would she? All she has now is bluster. Her supporters put their threat in a letter, not in a private meeting. By threatening Ms. Pelosi publicly, they robbed her of room to maneuver. She has to defy them or back down. She has always struck me as rather grittier than her chic suits, high heels and unhidden enthusiasm may suggest. We'll see.
What, really, is Mrs. Clinton doing? She is having the worst case of cognitive dissonance in the history of modern politics. She cannot come up with a credible, realistic path to the nomination. She can't trace the line from "this moment's difficulties" to "my triumphant end." But she cannot admit to herself that she can lose. Because Clintons don't lose. She can't figure out how to win, and she can't accept the idea of not winning. She cannot accept that this nobody from nowhere could have beaten her, quietly and silently, every day. (She cannot accept that she still doesn't know how he did it!)
She is concussed. But she is a scrapper, a fighter, and she's doing what she knows how to do: scrap and fight. Only harder. So that she ups the ante every day. She helped Ireland achieve peace. She tried to stop Nafta. She's been a leader for 35 years. She landed in Bosnia under siege and bravely dodged bullets. It was as if she'd watched the movie "Wag the Dog," with its fake footage of a terrified refugee woman running frantically from mortar fire, and found it not a cautionary tale about manipulation and politics, but an inspiration.
* * *
What struck me as the best commentary on the Bosnia story came from a poster called GI Joe who wrote in to a news blog: "Actually Mrs. Clinton was too modest. I was there and saw it all. When Mrs. Clinton got off the plane the tarmac came under mortar and machine gun fire. I was blown off my tank and exposed to enemy fire. Mrs. Clinton without regard to her own safety dragged me to safety, jumped on the tank and opened fire, killing 50 of the enemy." Soon a suicide bomber appeared, but Mrs. Clinton stopped the guards from opening fire. "She talked to the man in his own language and got him [to] surrender. She found that he had suffered terribly as a result of policies of George Bush. She defused the bomb vest herself." Then she turned to his wounds. "She stopped my bleeding and saved my life. Chelsea donated the blood."
Made me laugh. It was like the voice of the people answering back. This guy knows that what Mrs. Clinton said is sort of crazy. He seems to know her reputation for untruths. He seemed to be saying, "I get it."
By PEGGY NOONAN
Getting Mrs. Clinton
March 28, 2008
I think we've reached a signal point in the campaign. This is the point where, with Hillary Clinton, either you get it or you don't. There's no dodging now. You either understand the problem with her candidacy, or you don't. You either understand who she is, or not. And if you don't, after 16 years of watching Clintonian dramas, you probably never will.
That's what the Bosnia story was about. Her fictions about dodging bullets on the tarmac -- and we have to hope they were lies, because if they weren't, if she thought what she was saying was true, we are in worse trouble than we thought -- either confirmed what you already knew (she lies as a matter of strategy, or, as William Safire said in 1996, by nature) or revealed in an unforgettable way (videotape! Smiling girl in pigtails offering flowers!) what you feared (that she lies more than is humanly usual, even politically usual).
[Getting Mrs. Clinton]
AP
But either you get it now or you never will. That's the importance of the Bosnia tape.
Many in the press get it, to their dismay, and it makes them uncomfortable, for it sours life to have a person whose character you feel you cannot admire play such a large daily role in your work. But I think it's fair to say of the establishment media at this point that it is well populated by people who feel such a lack of faith in Mrs. Clinton's words and ways that it amounts to an aversion. They are offended by how she and her staff operate. They try hard to be fair. They constantly have to police themselves.
Not that her staff isn't policing them too. Mrs. Clinton's people are heavy-handed in that area, letting producers and correspondents know they're watching, weighing, may have to take this higher. There's too much of this in politics, but Hillary's campaign takes it to a new level.
It's not only the press. It's what I get as I walk around New York, which used to be thick with her people. I went to a Hillary fund-raiser at Hunter College about a month ago, paying for a seat in the balcony and being ushered up to fill the more expensive section on the floor, so frantic were they to fill seats.
I sat next to a woman, a New York Democrat who'd been for Hillary from the beginning and still was. She was here. But, she said, "It doesn't seem to be working." She shrugged, not like a brokenhearted person but a practical person who'd missed all the signs of something coming. She wasn't mad at the voters. But she was no longer so taken by the woman who soon took the stage and enacted joy.
The other day a bookseller told me he'd been reading the opinion pages of the papers and noting the anti-Hillary feeling. Two weeks ago he realized he wasn't for her anymore. It wasn't one incident, just an accumulation of things. His experience tracks this week's Wall Street Journal/NBC poll showing Mrs. Clinton's disapproval numbers have risen to the highest level ever in the campaign, her highest in fact in seven years.
* * *
You'd think she'd pivot back to showing a likable side, chatting with women, weeping, wearing the bright yellows and reds that are thought to appeal to her core following, older women. Well, she's doing that. Yet at the same time, her campaign reveals new levels of thuggishness, though that's the wrong word, for thugs are often effective. This is mere heavy-handedness.
On Wednesday a group of Mrs. Clinton's top donors sent a letter to the speaker of the House, Nancy Pelosi, warning her in language that they no doubt thought subtle but that reflected a kind of incompetent menace, that her statements on the presidential campaign may result in less money for Democratic candidates for the House. Ms. Pelosi had said that in her view the superdelegates should support the presidential candidate who wins the most pledged delegates in state contests. The letter urged her to "clarify" her position, which is "clearly untenable" and "runs counter" to the superdelegates' right to make "an informed, individual decision" about "who would be the party's strongest nominee." The signers, noting their past and huge financial support, suggested that Ms. Pelosi "reflect" on her comments and amend them to reflect "a more open view."
Barack Obama's campaign called it inappropriate and said Mrs. Clinton should "reject the insinuation." But why would she? All she has now is bluster. Her supporters put their threat in a letter, not in a private meeting. By threatening Ms. Pelosi publicly, they robbed her of room to maneuver. She has to defy them or back down. She has always struck me as rather grittier than her chic suits, high heels and unhidden enthusiasm may suggest. We'll see.
What, really, is Mrs. Clinton doing? She is having the worst case of cognitive dissonance in the history of modern politics. She cannot come up with a credible, realistic path to the nomination. She can't trace the line from "this moment's difficulties" to "my triumphant end." But she cannot admit to herself that she can lose. Because Clintons don't lose. She can't figure out how to win, and she can't accept the idea of not winning. She cannot accept that this nobody from nowhere could have beaten her, quietly and silently, every day. (She cannot accept that she still doesn't know how he did it!)
She is concussed. But she is a scrapper, a fighter, and she's doing what she knows how to do: scrap and fight. Only harder. So that she ups the ante every day. She helped Ireland achieve peace. She tried to stop Nafta. She's been a leader for 35 years. She landed in Bosnia under siege and bravely dodged bullets. It was as if she'd watched the movie "Wag the Dog," with its fake footage of a terrified refugee woman running frantically from mortar fire, and found it not a cautionary tale about manipulation and politics, but an inspiration.
* * *
What struck me as the best commentary on the Bosnia story came from a poster called GI Joe who wrote in to a news blog: "Actually Mrs. Clinton was too modest. I was there and saw it all. When Mrs. Clinton got off the plane the tarmac came under mortar and machine gun fire. I was blown off my tank and exposed to enemy fire. Mrs. Clinton without regard to her own safety dragged me to safety, jumped on the tank and opened fire, killing 50 of the enemy." Soon a suicide bomber appeared, but Mrs. Clinton stopped the guards from opening fire. "She talked to the man in his own language and got him [to] surrender. She found that he had suffered terribly as a result of policies of George Bush. She defused the bomb vest herself." Then she turned to his wounds. "She stopped my bleeding and saved my life. Chelsea donated the blood."
Made me laugh. It was like the voice of the people answering back. This guy knows that what Mrs. Clinton said is sort of crazy. He seems to know her reputation for untruths. He seemed to be saying, "I get it."
The Strange Case of Robert Malley
The Strange Case Of Robert Malley
By Gershom Gorenberg
In The American Prospect , Opinion
March 27, 2008
Of all the recent efforts to smear Barack Obama, none strikes me as stranger than the claims that one of his informal advisers on foreign affairs, Robert Malley, is anti-Israel. This, in turn, is supposed to prove that as president, Obama is liable to institute dangerous changes in U.S. policy toward Israel.
As a campaign trope, the calumny may have begun with Ed Lasky, news editor of the right-wing Web site The American Thinker, who posted a fervid attack on Malley in January. The Committee for Accuracy in Middle East Reporting in America has taken time off from its hawkish media-bashing to post a blast at Malley on its Web site. Journalists regularly speculate on whether the Malley connection will hurt Obama among Jewish voters, though there's no evidence of that. Meanwhile, Malley's diplomatic colleagues -- including Sandy Berger, Dennis Ross, and Martin Indyk -- have issued an open letter defending him.
There's more at work here than the usual, nearly boring, attempts to slime a liberal candidate as anti-Israel for the "sin" of supporting what Israel needs most -- determined diplomatic efforts to achieve peace. Lurking in the background is another of the battles over how Israel-Palestinian history is told. In that fight, the original furious critic of Barack Obama's adviser is former Israeli prime minister Ehud Barak. There's also a lesson about Israeli-Palestinian diplomacy: Besides settling the practical questions, it requires resolving the conflicting narratives about the past. To approach this task, the next president will need not just hard work but a gift with rhetoric, with words.
The Malley story actually goes back to 2001, when the former Clinton foreign-policy staffer began writing about what went wrong at the Camp David summit the summer before. First in The New York Times, then in a joint article with Hussein Agha in The New York Review of Books, Malley described mistakes made by Israel and the United States, not just by the Palestinians, that led to the collapse of the Israeli-Palestinian peace process.
As special assistant to President Clinton for Arab-Israeli affairs, Malley was part of the American negotiating team at Camp David. Today he is the Middle East director for the International Crisis Group and one of many informal advisers to the Obama campaign. Though it should not be necessary to mention this, he is Jewish. Agha, his frequent co-author, is an expert on Palestinian affairs, today at Oxford.
As Malley wrote in the Times, by 2001 the accepted story of the long summit was that "Camp David is said to have been a test that Mr. Barak passed and Mr. Arafat failed." While rejecting that simplistic account, he and Agha did not spare criticism of the Palestinian side. "The Palestinians' principal failing is that they were unable either to say yes to the American ideas or to present a cogent and specific counterproposal of their own," they wrote in their detailed New York Review article. Even more telling is their assertion that for the Palestinians "Oslo ... was not about negotiating peace terms but terms of surrender." This was hardly an attitude likely to lead to creative diplomacy.
But Malley and Agha also described the mistakes of Clinton and, particularly, of Barak. As prime minister, Barak first tried to negotiate with Syria, treating the Palestinians as second priority. More concerned with not upsetting Israeli settlers than with addressing Palestinian concerns, he allowed rapid settlement construction to continue. He prevented any progress in preliminary negotiations, insisting that a peace deal would have to be put together at the conclusive summit. To the Palestinians, these moves radiated arrogance and were an attempt to force them into a corner. Once at Camp David, Barak did go beyond what Israel had offered earlier yet kept his position ambiguous. The Palestinians did make concessions, but neither side went far enough to bridge the chasm between their positions. As for Clinton, his errors began with pushing Arafat into an ill-prepared summit.
No one answered Malley with more outrage than Barak. Barak, once intent on making peace, was trying to salvage his own reputation after the collapse of the process and of his premiership. To do that, he was willing to reinforce a narrative of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict that has deep resonance for many Israelis and Diaspora Jews -- but that warps history, harms peace efforts, and ultimately hurts Israel itself.
Barak delivered his response to Malley and Agha in The New York Review of Books nearly a year later, in an interview with Benny Morris. This in itself was deeply ironic: Among Israeli historians, Morris has been the most insistent that interviews are to be mistrusted, that history can only be constructed through documents. In Morris' description, "Barak continuously shifts between charging Arafat with 'lacking the character or will' to make a historic compromise ... and accusing him of secretly planning Israel's demise." Arafat's plan, he said, was to establish a state only as a step toward gaining all of Palestine. As Morris hints, this is indeed a contradiction, because if Arafat had really regarded any deal as temporary, he could have settled for less.
Barak also asserted an essentialist cultural divide that made agreement impossible: The Palestinians "are products of a culture in which to tell a lie ... creates no dissonance. They don't suffer from the problem of telling lies that exists in Judeo-Christian culture," he told Morris. To explain why he had not succeeded, he argued that success was impossible -- a description that offered much comfort to hawks who had once opposed him.
It will be many years before documents are available to reconstruct what happened at Camp David. In the meantime, Malley and Agha's version rings true for several reasons. Diplomacy is complex, rife with misunderstandings. New York Times correspondent Deborah Sontag, in an extensively researched article, reached a similar picture (also enraging Barak).
My own journalistic experience with Barak suggests that he approached diplomacy belligerently. I interviewed him for The New Republic in 1997, just after he was chosen as leader of the Labor party. When I put my tape recorder down on his desk at the start of the conversation, a Barak aide demonstratively put down another recorder, as if to tell me: "We're keeping track of you." I've never met that gesture of suspicion from any other politician. In the interview, he compared peace negotiations to Greco-Roman wrestling -- "a form of struggle with agreed rules." It makes more sense to accept Barak's a priori description of his negotiating philosophy than his ex post facto explanations. Going to Camp David, Barak was brave in seeking an agreement but was also tragically unsuited by temperament to achieve what he wanted.
What's interesting is how tenaciously Barak's version has been accepted by many supporters of Israel. The reason, I'd suggest, can be found in a superb recent book by Bryn Mawr political scientist Marc Howard Ross, Cultural Contestation in Ethnic Conflicts. (Disclosure: Ross and I have cooperated professionally in the past, and I'm in his acknowledgments.) Ross doesn't deal specifically with Camp David. But he describes the historical narratives that ethnic groups build to explain their past, their present, and their relation to their opponents. The narratives are "compelling, coherent" and link "specific events to that group's general understandings." They are also selective and inaccurate. Disagreement with a group's memory is often perceived as an attack on its identity, if not its existence.
The most common versions of the Israeli and Palestinian narrative share this: Each side perceives the other as wanting to push it out of the land through both aggression and artifice. Those stories helped foil the talks at Camp David. They also shape the post mortems. The story told by Barak, erstwhile peacemaker, reinforces the old story of conflict. Malley's account -- a careful, scholarly telling by a diplomat committed to Israel's future -- is met with ferocious emotion by those who misperceive it as an assault on Israel's very existence. The reaction becomes another obstacle to understanding of the past and to future compromise.
There's two implications here: Precisely because he is committed to Israel's well-being, Barack Obama will do well to listen to Robert Malley's analysis of Israeli-Palestinian diplomacy. But if he has the opportunity, beginning next January, to renew diplomatic efforts, he will need to do more than reconcile conflicting interests. He will have to look for ways to reconcile the conflicting stories. The right choice of words will be critical. It's said that Obama has some skill in that realm.
=
By Gershom Gorenberg
In The American Prospect , Opinion
March 27, 2008
Of all the recent efforts to smear Barack Obama, none strikes me as stranger than the claims that one of his informal advisers on foreign affairs, Robert Malley, is anti-Israel. This, in turn, is supposed to prove that as president, Obama is liable to institute dangerous changes in U.S. policy toward Israel.
As a campaign trope, the calumny may have begun with Ed Lasky, news editor of the right-wing Web site The American Thinker, who posted a fervid attack on Malley in January. The Committee for Accuracy in Middle East Reporting in America has taken time off from its hawkish media-bashing to post a blast at Malley on its Web site. Journalists regularly speculate on whether the Malley connection will hurt Obama among Jewish voters, though there's no evidence of that. Meanwhile, Malley's diplomatic colleagues -- including Sandy Berger, Dennis Ross, and Martin Indyk -- have issued an open letter defending him.
There's more at work here than the usual, nearly boring, attempts to slime a liberal candidate as anti-Israel for the "sin" of supporting what Israel needs most -- determined diplomatic efforts to achieve peace. Lurking in the background is another of the battles over how Israel-Palestinian history is told. In that fight, the original furious critic of Barack Obama's adviser is former Israeli prime minister Ehud Barak. There's also a lesson about Israeli-Palestinian diplomacy: Besides settling the practical questions, it requires resolving the conflicting narratives about the past. To approach this task, the next president will need not just hard work but a gift with rhetoric, with words.
The Malley story actually goes back to 2001, when the former Clinton foreign-policy staffer began writing about what went wrong at the Camp David summit the summer before. First in The New York Times, then in a joint article with Hussein Agha in The New York Review of Books, Malley described mistakes made by Israel and the United States, not just by the Palestinians, that led to the collapse of the Israeli-Palestinian peace process.
As special assistant to President Clinton for Arab-Israeli affairs, Malley was part of the American negotiating team at Camp David. Today he is the Middle East director for the International Crisis Group and one of many informal advisers to the Obama campaign. Though it should not be necessary to mention this, he is Jewish. Agha, his frequent co-author, is an expert on Palestinian affairs, today at Oxford.
As Malley wrote in the Times, by 2001 the accepted story of the long summit was that "Camp David is said to have been a test that Mr. Barak passed and Mr. Arafat failed." While rejecting that simplistic account, he and Agha did not spare criticism of the Palestinian side. "The Palestinians' principal failing is that they were unable either to say yes to the American ideas or to present a cogent and specific counterproposal of their own," they wrote in their detailed New York Review article. Even more telling is their assertion that for the Palestinians "Oslo ... was not about negotiating peace terms but terms of surrender." This was hardly an attitude likely to lead to creative diplomacy.
But Malley and Agha also described the mistakes of Clinton and, particularly, of Barak. As prime minister, Barak first tried to negotiate with Syria, treating the Palestinians as second priority. More concerned with not upsetting Israeli settlers than with addressing Palestinian concerns, he allowed rapid settlement construction to continue. He prevented any progress in preliminary negotiations, insisting that a peace deal would have to be put together at the conclusive summit. To the Palestinians, these moves radiated arrogance and were an attempt to force them into a corner. Once at Camp David, Barak did go beyond what Israel had offered earlier yet kept his position ambiguous. The Palestinians did make concessions, but neither side went far enough to bridge the chasm between their positions. As for Clinton, his errors began with pushing Arafat into an ill-prepared summit.
No one answered Malley with more outrage than Barak. Barak, once intent on making peace, was trying to salvage his own reputation after the collapse of the process and of his premiership. To do that, he was willing to reinforce a narrative of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict that has deep resonance for many Israelis and Diaspora Jews -- but that warps history, harms peace efforts, and ultimately hurts Israel itself.
Barak delivered his response to Malley and Agha in The New York Review of Books nearly a year later, in an interview with Benny Morris. This in itself was deeply ironic: Among Israeli historians, Morris has been the most insistent that interviews are to be mistrusted, that history can only be constructed through documents. In Morris' description, "Barak continuously shifts between charging Arafat with 'lacking the character or will' to make a historic compromise ... and accusing him of secretly planning Israel's demise." Arafat's plan, he said, was to establish a state only as a step toward gaining all of Palestine. As Morris hints, this is indeed a contradiction, because if Arafat had really regarded any deal as temporary, he could have settled for less.
Barak also asserted an essentialist cultural divide that made agreement impossible: The Palestinians "are products of a culture in which to tell a lie ... creates no dissonance. They don't suffer from the problem of telling lies that exists in Judeo-Christian culture," he told Morris. To explain why he had not succeeded, he argued that success was impossible -- a description that offered much comfort to hawks who had once opposed him.
It will be many years before documents are available to reconstruct what happened at Camp David. In the meantime, Malley and Agha's version rings true for several reasons. Diplomacy is complex, rife with misunderstandings. New York Times correspondent Deborah Sontag, in an extensively researched article, reached a similar picture (also enraging Barak).
My own journalistic experience with Barak suggests that he approached diplomacy belligerently. I interviewed him for The New Republic in 1997, just after he was chosen as leader of the Labor party. When I put my tape recorder down on his desk at the start of the conversation, a Barak aide demonstratively put down another recorder, as if to tell me: "We're keeping track of you." I've never met that gesture of suspicion from any other politician. In the interview, he compared peace negotiations to Greco-Roman wrestling -- "a form of struggle with agreed rules." It makes more sense to accept Barak's a priori description of his negotiating philosophy than his ex post facto explanations. Going to Camp David, Barak was brave in seeking an agreement but was also tragically unsuited by temperament to achieve what he wanted.
What's interesting is how tenaciously Barak's version has been accepted by many supporters of Israel. The reason, I'd suggest, can be found in a superb recent book by Bryn Mawr political scientist Marc Howard Ross, Cultural Contestation in Ethnic Conflicts. (Disclosure: Ross and I have cooperated professionally in the past, and I'm in his acknowledgments.) Ross doesn't deal specifically with Camp David. But he describes the historical narratives that ethnic groups build to explain their past, their present, and their relation to their opponents. The narratives are "compelling, coherent" and link "specific events to that group's general understandings." They are also selective and inaccurate. Disagreement with a group's memory is often perceived as an attack on its identity, if not its existence.
The most common versions of the Israeli and Palestinian narrative share this: Each side perceives the other as wanting to push it out of the land through both aggression and artifice. Those stories helped foil the talks at Camp David. They also shape the post mortems. The story told by Barak, erstwhile peacemaker, reinforces the old story of conflict. Malley's account -- a careful, scholarly telling by a diplomat committed to Israel's future -- is met with ferocious emotion by those who misperceive it as an assault on Israel's very existence. The reaction becomes another obstacle to understanding of the past and to future compromise.
There's two implications here: Precisely because he is committed to Israel's well-being, Barack Obama will do well to listen to Robert Malley's analysis of Israeli-Palestinian diplomacy. But if he has the opportunity, beginning next January, to renew diplomatic efforts, he will need to do more than reconcile conflicting interests. He will have to look for ways to reconcile the conflicting stories. The right choice of words will be critical. It's said that Obama has some skill in that realm.
=
What does Bush mean by "Victory in Iraq"?
SLATE
3/25/08
What Does Bush Mean by "Victory in Iraq"?
His grandiose definition makes defeat almost inevitable.
Fred Kaplan
As the toll of Americans killed in Iraq topped 4,000 this week, President Bush publicly vowed "to make sure that those lives were not lost in vain"—that the war's outcome "will merit the sacrifice" and that "our strategy going forward" will be to "achieve victory."
We all wish that this were so. But what does he mean by "victory"?
The definition has evolved, or devolved, in the five years that this war has been raging. Originally, victory was conceived in grandiose terms. The defeat of Saddam Hussein's army and the toppling of his regime would spawn a new democratic Iraq, the example of which would ignite the flames of freedom across the Middle East.
Bush scaled back the standard in a November 2005 speech at the U.S. Naval Academy titled "A Strategy for Victory." This victory will come, he said, "when the terrorists and Saddamists can no longer threaten Iraq's democracy, when the Iraqi security forces can provide for the safety of their own citizens, and when Iraq is not a safe-haven for terrorists to plot new attacks on our nation."
In January 2007, the National Security Council formalized the concept in a document titled "The Iraq Strategy Review," which stated that the "strategic goal" was "a unified democratic federal Iraq that can govern itself, defend itself, and sustain itself, and is an ally in the War on Terror."
Bush and others have heralded much progress in the past year, as the troop surge went into effect and as Gen. David Petraeus devised new tactics based on counterinsurgency principles. Casualties have gone down, in some areas dramatically. The Iraqi army and police have grown in size.
However, by the Bush administration's own standards of success, laid out in the president's speech and the NSC's strategy review, we are no closer to victory now than we were when those documents were drafted. Iraq is not unified, it is only superficially democratic, it cannot govern itself, its security forces cannot provide for the safety of its citizens, and it remains more of a haven for terrorists than an ally in the war against them.
Gen. Petraeus has said many times that there is no strictly military victory to be had in Iraq. The goal of the surge—and, at this point, of the U.S. military presence generally—is to provide enough security, especially in Baghdad, to let the Iraqi factions settle their sectarian disputes and form a unified government. If this political goal isn't achieved, then the surge will have been for naught. And lately, Petraeus has expressed disappointment that the Iraqis have made so little progress on that path.
The instances of progress, especially the reduced casualties (among American soldiers and Iraqi civilians), are valuable for their own sake. But body counts have never proved much. When Americans killed more guerrillas in Vietnam, it didn't mean that we were closer to winning that war. And when insurgents are killing fewer Americans in Iraq today, it doesn't mean that we're closer to winning this war, either. (If you think that it does, you would have to conclude that we're closer to losing the war this month than we were last month because casualties have gone back up.)
The troop surge has been one of several factors that have made life a little less treacherous in Iraq this past year. Another is the "Sunni Awakening," the alliances of convenience between U.S. forces and Sunni insurgents against the common enemy of al-Qaida in Iraq—alliances that were initiated by the Sunnis before the surge began. Still another is the moratorium on violence called by the leading Shiite militia leader, Muqtada Sadr.
But look at what is happening. First, the surge is ending this July, not because it has been successful (as Bush has sometimes claimed) but because of simple math. The five extra combat brigades, which were deployed to Iraq with the surge, each have 15-month tours of duty; the 15 months will be up in July; the final brigade will go home; and the U.S. Army and Marines have no combat brigades ready to replace them. To the extent that the surge has improved life in Baghdad, the end of the surge (the timing of which is inexorable) may make life worse.
Second, the Sunni Awakening is showing its frays. Some of these militias haven't been paid for months, and they're going on strike, refusing to man their checkpoints and battle stations. They are also frustrated by the Shiite-led government's refusal, despite earlier promises, to let them join the Iraqi national army and police force. This is another consequence of the sectarian leaders' failure to settle their disputes and form a unified government.
Finally, the Shiite militias have resumed attacks in southern Iraq, a sign either that Sadr is losing control over his men or that he himself is backing away from the moratorium. In either case, it's unlikely that many Sunni militias—especially given the training and reinforcements they've received from U.S. armed forces—will stand by as the Shiite militias start fighting again.
By the administration's own measures, then, victory in Iraq is not in sight, nor is there much evidence that the road we are treading will lead us toward that destiny.
And yet our president still seems to have little comprehension of what the war that he has spawned is all about.
A White House "fact sheet" titled "Five Years Later: New Strategy Improving Security in Iraq," posted on the occasion of the invasion's fifth anniversary, states:
Defeating the enemy in Iraq will make it less likely we will face this enemy here at home. The terrorists who murder the innocent in the streets of Baghdad also want to murder the innocent in the streets of American cities.
And so, once again, President Bush tries to link the war in Iraq to the attacks of Sept. 11. Once again, he pretends (or does he somehow believe?) that al-Qaida is "the enemy in Iraq." Would that things there were so clear-cut. One big difficulty about fighting in Iraq is that there is no single enemy. The overarching problems are disorder, sectarian strife, a weak central authority, and the absence of legitimate politics in the provinces. AQI is a menacing force, but it is also a small one. If it were destroyed tomorrow, Iraq would be only slightly less messy. (In one way, it might be more messy, at least in the short-run, as the Sunni insurgents who are now our allies would be expected to resume their fight against us after our common enemy is vanquished.)
Just as Bush mistakenly treats Iraq's myriad insurgencies as if they were one—thus making them appear (and perhaps making their warriors feel) mightier than they really are—so he also elevates the stakes of the war, and the requirements of victory, above and beyond any prospect that's feasible.
In his speech at the State Department on Monday, where he restated his goal of achieving "victory," he also said of the fallen soldiers in Iraq that "one day people will look back at this moment in history and say, 'Thank God there were courageous people willing to serve because they laid the foundations for peace for generations to come.' "
A wartime president who has no real allies and whose own military is too small to achieve such lofty goals should begin to scale back his rhetoric so that it has at least a patina of plausibility. By defining victory in Iraq as an outcome that lays "the foundations for peace for generations to come," George W. Bush ensures that defeat is nearly inevitable.W
"
3/25/08
What Does Bush Mean by "Victory in Iraq"?
His grandiose definition makes defeat almost inevitable.
Fred Kaplan
As the toll of Americans killed in Iraq topped 4,000 this week, President Bush publicly vowed "to make sure that those lives were not lost in vain"—that the war's outcome "will merit the sacrifice" and that "our strategy going forward" will be to "achieve victory."
We all wish that this were so. But what does he mean by "victory"?
The definition has evolved, or devolved, in the five years that this war has been raging. Originally, victory was conceived in grandiose terms. The defeat of Saddam Hussein's army and the toppling of his regime would spawn a new democratic Iraq, the example of which would ignite the flames of freedom across the Middle East.
Bush scaled back the standard in a November 2005 speech at the U.S. Naval Academy titled "A Strategy for Victory." This victory will come, he said, "when the terrorists and Saddamists can no longer threaten Iraq's democracy, when the Iraqi security forces can provide for the safety of their own citizens, and when Iraq is not a safe-haven for terrorists to plot new attacks on our nation."
In January 2007, the National Security Council formalized the concept in a document titled "The Iraq Strategy Review," which stated that the "strategic goal" was "a unified democratic federal Iraq that can govern itself, defend itself, and sustain itself, and is an ally in the War on Terror."
Bush and others have heralded much progress in the past year, as the troop surge went into effect and as Gen. David Petraeus devised new tactics based on counterinsurgency principles. Casualties have gone down, in some areas dramatically. The Iraqi army and police have grown in size.
However, by the Bush administration's own standards of success, laid out in the president's speech and the NSC's strategy review, we are no closer to victory now than we were when those documents were drafted. Iraq is not unified, it is only superficially democratic, it cannot govern itself, its security forces cannot provide for the safety of its citizens, and it remains more of a haven for terrorists than an ally in the war against them.
Gen. Petraeus has said many times that there is no strictly military victory to be had in Iraq. The goal of the surge—and, at this point, of the U.S. military presence generally—is to provide enough security, especially in Baghdad, to let the Iraqi factions settle their sectarian disputes and form a unified government. If this political goal isn't achieved, then the surge will have been for naught. And lately, Petraeus has expressed disappointment that the Iraqis have made so little progress on that path.
The instances of progress, especially the reduced casualties (among American soldiers and Iraqi civilians), are valuable for their own sake. But body counts have never proved much. When Americans killed more guerrillas in Vietnam, it didn't mean that we were closer to winning that war. And when insurgents are killing fewer Americans in Iraq today, it doesn't mean that we're closer to winning this war, either. (If you think that it does, you would have to conclude that we're closer to losing the war this month than we were last month because casualties have gone back up.)
The troop surge has been one of several factors that have made life a little less treacherous in Iraq this past year. Another is the "Sunni Awakening," the alliances of convenience between U.S. forces and Sunni insurgents against the common enemy of al-Qaida in Iraq—alliances that were initiated by the Sunnis before the surge began. Still another is the moratorium on violence called by the leading Shiite militia leader, Muqtada Sadr.
But look at what is happening. First, the surge is ending this July, not because it has been successful (as Bush has sometimes claimed) but because of simple math. The five extra combat brigades, which were deployed to Iraq with the surge, each have 15-month tours of duty; the 15 months will be up in July; the final brigade will go home; and the U.S. Army and Marines have no combat brigades ready to replace them. To the extent that the surge has improved life in Baghdad, the end of the surge (the timing of which is inexorable) may make life worse.
Second, the Sunni Awakening is showing its frays. Some of these militias haven't been paid for months, and they're going on strike, refusing to man their checkpoints and battle stations. They are also frustrated by the Shiite-led government's refusal, despite earlier promises, to let them join the Iraqi national army and police force. This is another consequence of the sectarian leaders' failure to settle their disputes and form a unified government.
Finally, the Shiite militias have resumed attacks in southern Iraq, a sign either that Sadr is losing control over his men or that he himself is backing away from the moratorium. In either case, it's unlikely that many Sunni militias—especially given the training and reinforcements they've received from U.S. armed forces—will stand by as the Shiite militias start fighting again.
By the administration's own measures, then, victory in Iraq is not in sight, nor is there much evidence that the road we are treading will lead us toward that destiny.
And yet our president still seems to have little comprehension of what the war that he has spawned is all about.
A White House "fact sheet" titled "Five Years Later: New Strategy Improving Security in Iraq," posted on the occasion of the invasion's fifth anniversary, states:
Defeating the enemy in Iraq will make it less likely we will face this enemy here at home. The terrorists who murder the innocent in the streets of Baghdad also want to murder the innocent in the streets of American cities.
And so, once again, President Bush tries to link the war in Iraq to the attacks of Sept. 11. Once again, he pretends (or does he somehow believe?) that al-Qaida is "the enemy in Iraq." Would that things there were so clear-cut. One big difficulty about fighting in Iraq is that there is no single enemy. The overarching problems are disorder, sectarian strife, a weak central authority, and the absence of legitimate politics in the provinces. AQI is a menacing force, but it is also a small one. If it were destroyed tomorrow, Iraq would be only slightly less messy. (In one way, it might be more messy, at least in the short-run, as the Sunni insurgents who are now our allies would be expected to resume their fight against us after our common enemy is vanquished.)
Just as Bush mistakenly treats Iraq's myriad insurgencies as if they were one—thus making them appear (and perhaps making their warriors feel) mightier than they really are—so he also elevates the stakes of the war, and the requirements of victory, above and beyond any prospect that's feasible.
In his speech at the State Department on Monday, where he restated his goal of achieving "victory," he also said of the fallen soldiers in Iraq that "one day people will look back at this moment in history and say, 'Thank God there were courageous people willing to serve because they laid the foundations for peace for generations to come.' "
A wartime president who has no real allies and whose own military is too small to achieve such lofty goals should begin to scale back his rhetoric so that it has at least a patina of plausibility. By defining victory in Iraq as an outcome that lays "the foundations for peace for generations to come," George W. Bush ensures that defeat is nearly inevitable.W
"
Thursday, March 27, 2008
Pakistani Negotiation with the Islamists by William Pfaff
Pakistani Negotiation with the Islamists
William Pfaff
Paris, March 25, 2008 – The worst current news about Pakistan comes from Washington, criticizing the reported intention of Pakistan's new coalition government to negotiate with the militants responsible for recent bombings in that country.
Washington objects to negotiations, saying – as it always does when it comes to talking with enemies – that negotiations would be a signal of weakness, "encouraging" Islamic militants. Encouraging them, one supposes, in what Washington contends is their program to take over Pakistan, Afghanistan, and then the world.
Bush government policy has only one mode: toughness, intimidation and threat, despite the demonstrated failure of this to defeat the Taliban resurgence in Afghanistan or to influence domestic disorder and violence inside Pakistan (or for that matter, in Iraq). A recent Washington report on anti-terrorist policy as a whole said that officials are considering fundamental policy change, since after six and a half years "they now recognize that threats to kill terrorist leaders may never be enough to keep America safe."
The news of the new Islamabad government's shift in stance has come at a time when American officials had begun to exploit the freer hand granted them by President Pervez Musharraf for direct operations against Islamist leaders inside Pakistan, particularly by unmanned rocket-launching CIA drones, operating on what, on more than one occasion, has proven disastrously bad intelligence. This is how the Israelis operate in the Palestinian territories and Gaza, but one would think that no recommendation.
Enlarging the American role in Pakistan has invited popular hostility.
One reason for the fall of General Musharraf was that he had come to be seen as the agent of American policy rather than a defender of Pakistan's own interests.
When the new prime minister, Yousaf Raza Gilani, took office this week, it was not an intelligent decision for Washington to send both Deputy Secretary of State John Negroponte and Assistant Secretary of State Richard Boucher to confer with Musharraf as well as other officials, inviting Pakistani press comment that they had come to put pressure on the new government.
Thought also has been given in Washington to the feasibility of cultivating Musharraf's successor as commander of the Pakistani army, General Ashfaq Parvez Kayani, as a possible successor strongman, should the civilian coalition government prove uncooperative. However General Kayani gives sign of wanting to keep the army out of further interference in politics. Renewed collaboration with the Bush administration is not likely to be a smart career move.
The new Pakistani government intends to take a new look at its cooperation with the U.S. in waging NATO and Washington's war against the Taliban. Washington should listen, because the war currently is futile. Both NATO and U.S. officers say that the Taliban cannot be defeated in the field so long as their bases inside Pakistan are secure and the Afghan peasantry remains alienated from the U.S.-supported government in Kabul.
The argument that the struggle with the Taliban has to be won in Pakistan is reasonable, but "winning" is an ambiguous term in these circumstances. The notion that western forces could be any more effective in the badlands of tribal Pakistan than they are inside Afghanistan, trying to win hearts and minds with artillery and air strikes, is absurd. The Pakistanis are not going to do the job for NATO -- against their own countrymen.
The Taliban threat to Afghanistan can only be countered with political measures, and that is what the new Pakistan government is proposing. This is good news, not bad.
Former Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif, the other major figure in the new government, has said that the army is the "wrong instrument" for dealing with the situation. He has made the interesting comment that Pakistan should have less U.S. aid, which undermines Pakistan's own initiatives, and should use its own resources to support its own policy. He says that Pakistan's security should not be sacrificed "to protect other countries." Fair enough. He expects an "exhaustive" debate by the new parliament on how to respond to the Islamist threat.
The recent Pakistan national election resulted in a remarkable success by secular forces over the religious parties, contrary to ingrained American fears about the ascendance of the Islamic movement. In an important article in the current New York Review of Books, the historian William Dalrymple (who writes from Pakistan and lives in New Delhi) describes the elections as having been a triumph by the urban middle classes (from which the lawyers came, whose protests had so much to do with Musharraf's fall) against a rural vote controlled by feudal landowners. He judges the elections "free and fair" and an unequivocal vote for "moderate, secular democracy."
The new government offers the possibility of a constructive approach to dealing with the Islamists. Let it try. What Washington and NATO are now doing in Afghanistan is unmistakably headed for failure.
© Copyright by Tribune Media Services International. All Rights Reserved.
William Pfaff
Paris, March 25, 2008 – The worst current news about Pakistan comes from Washington, criticizing the reported intention of Pakistan's new coalition government to negotiate with the militants responsible for recent bombings in that country.
Washington objects to negotiations, saying – as it always does when it comes to talking with enemies – that negotiations would be a signal of weakness, "encouraging" Islamic militants. Encouraging them, one supposes, in what Washington contends is their program to take over Pakistan, Afghanistan, and then the world.
Bush government policy has only one mode: toughness, intimidation and threat, despite the demonstrated failure of this to defeat the Taliban resurgence in Afghanistan or to influence domestic disorder and violence inside Pakistan (or for that matter, in Iraq). A recent Washington report on anti-terrorist policy as a whole said that officials are considering fundamental policy change, since after six and a half years "they now recognize that threats to kill terrorist leaders may never be enough to keep America safe."
The news of the new Islamabad government's shift in stance has come at a time when American officials had begun to exploit the freer hand granted them by President Pervez Musharraf for direct operations against Islamist leaders inside Pakistan, particularly by unmanned rocket-launching CIA drones, operating on what, on more than one occasion, has proven disastrously bad intelligence. This is how the Israelis operate in the Palestinian territories and Gaza, but one would think that no recommendation.
Enlarging the American role in Pakistan has invited popular hostility.
One reason for the fall of General Musharraf was that he had come to be seen as the agent of American policy rather than a defender of Pakistan's own interests.
When the new prime minister, Yousaf Raza Gilani, took office this week, it was not an intelligent decision for Washington to send both Deputy Secretary of State John Negroponte and Assistant Secretary of State Richard Boucher to confer with Musharraf as well as other officials, inviting Pakistani press comment that they had come to put pressure on the new government.
Thought also has been given in Washington to the feasibility of cultivating Musharraf's successor as commander of the Pakistani army, General Ashfaq Parvez Kayani, as a possible successor strongman, should the civilian coalition government prove uncooperative. However General Kayani gives sign of wanting to keep the army out of further interference in politics. Renewed collaboration with the Bush administration is not likely to be a smart career move.
The new Pakistani government intends to take a new look at its cooperation with the U.S. in waging NATO and Washington's war against the Taliban. Washington should listen, because the war currently is futile. Both NATO and U.S. officers say that the Taliban cannot be defeated in the field so long as their bases inside Pakistan are secure and the Afghan peasantry remains alienated from the U.S.-supported government in Kabul.
The argument that the struggle with the Taliban has to be won in Pakistan is reasonable, but "winning" is an ambiguous term in these circumstances. The notion that western forces could be any more effective in the badlands of tribal Pakistan than they are inside Afghanistan, trying to win hearts and minds with artillery and air strikes, is absurd. The Pakistanis are not going to do the job for NATO -- against their own countrymen.
The Taliban threat to Afghanistan can only be countered with political measures, and that is what the new Pakistan government is proposing. This is good news, not bad.
Former Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif, the other major figure in the new government, has said that the army is the "wrong instrument" for dealing with the situation. He has made the interesting comment that Pakistan should have less U.S. aid, which undermines Pakistan's own initiatives, and should use its own resources to support its own policy. He says that Pakistan's security should not be sacrificed "to protect other countries." Fair enough. He expects an "exhaustive" debate by the new parliament on how to respond to the Islamist threat.
The recent Pakistan national election resulted in a remarkable success by secular forces over the religious parties, contrary to ingrained American fears about the ascendance of the Islamic movement. In an important article in the current New York Review of Books, the historian William Dalrymple (who writes from Pakistan and lives in New Delhi) describes the elections as having been a triumph by the urban middle classes (from which the lawyers came, whose protests had so much to do with Musharraf's fall) against a rural vote controlled by feudal landowners. He judges the elections "free and fair" and an unequivocal vote for "moderate, secular democracy."
The new government offers the possibility of a constructive approach to dealing with the Islamists. Let it try. What Washington and NATO are now doing in Afghanistan is unmistakably headed for failure.
© Copyright by Tribune Media Services International. All Rights Reserved.
Book Review: No Time to Declare Independence by William Tucker: Gusher of Lies by Robert Bryce
WALL STREET JOURNAL
3/26/08
BOOK REVIEW
No Time to Declare Independence
WILLIAM TUCKER
Gusher of Lies
By Robert Bryce
(Public Affairs, 371 pages, $26.95)
When it comes to "energy independence," American politics has discovered a new spirit of bipartisanship. Hillary Clinton, Barack Obama and John McCain all call for it, in one form or another -- in the name of fighting global terrorism, global warming or merely global price spikes at the pump. And of course the phrase is a cliché outside the world of politics, too, showing up in earnest op-eds and green-shaded pronouncements. Well, Robert Bryce is having none of it.
In "Gusher of Lies," Mr. Bryce declares that "energy independence is hogwash." There is not a chance in the world, he says, that we're going to kick our "oil addiction." Our economy runs on oil and will continue to do so for a long time to come. There are no "Manhattan Projects" on the horizon. Not even the big bad oil companies are "energy independent" anymore. Mr. Bryce notes that oil companies now own only 10% of the world's oil reserves. Everything else is claimed by national governments.
And trends don't favor an American version of energy independence anyway. As U.S. onshore production has slowly played out, the western Gulf of Mexico has been punctured like a pincushion. And yet the eastern Gulf (i.e., Florida) and the East and West coasts won't let drilling rigs anywhere near their waters. And don't even mention the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge, still untouchable.
No, the gushers are elsewhere these days. America's oil production peaked in 1970; non-OPEC oil production peaked about five years ago. Oil power is shifting even more toward the Persian Gulf. Jubail (a port in Saudi Arabia) and Dubai (in the United Arab Emirates) are fast becoming industrial and financial centers on a scale to defy the Western imagination. Halliburton moved its top executives to Dubai in 2007, and little wonder.
What about the imperatives that are so often evoked on behalf of "energy independence"? On global warming, Mr. Bryce is an agnostic, but he notes that, with China adding the equivalent of France to its electrical grid every year -- 90% of it in coal -- talk about reducing global carbon emissions is just prattle. As for the geopolitical aspect of energy independence -- starving bad regimes into reform -- Mr. Bryce believes it to be wishful thinking. We're never going to isolate Iran, he argues. The Iranians are building pipelines to Pakistan and India and signing multibillion-dollar natural-gas deals with China. "The one being isolated on the energy front isn't Iran," he argues; "it's the U.S." If by some miracle oil prices were to plunge dramatically (the result of energy independence and a drop in demand), "there's no evidence -- none -- to support the assertion," Mr. Bryce claims, "that an oil price crash will lead to reform" in troublesome Islamic countries.
Instead we should be thinking of energy "interdependence" in a world where we, quite properly, export what we have in abundance and import what we can't produce for ourselves. The search for "alternative" fuels is, in Mr. Bryce's view, a costly byway. He saves particular scorn for ethanol, "the largest scam in our nation's history," assembling 50 pages of evidence to show that, if anything, the energy-intensive effort to distill ethanol out of the nation's corn crop diminishes our energy supply. Yet ethanol production has become entangled with that other impossible-to-repeal boondoggle, agricultural subsidies.
For all his confidence and expertise, Mr. Bryce can be a little weak in some areas. He rightly notes that both American and Canadian natural-gas production has peaked, but then he talks casually about importing vast quantities from Russia and Iran. Bringing this gas across the oceans, however, will involve liquefying it, adding a huge price premium -- if we ever get the receiving terminals built in the first place. Even with "energy interdependence," natural gas is going to be much more expensive in the future. On nuclear energy, Mr. Bryce is even weaker. At one point he refers to uranium as a "fossil fuel"; and he doesn't seem to grasp nuclear's greater-by-orders-of-magnitude energy potential.
Mr. Bryce's ultimate counsel -- that we should forget about what Arab countries are doing with their petrodollars and learn to get along -- is also hard to accept. It ignores all those stories about the third cousins of oil sheiks showing up in al Qaeda training camps with suitcases full of cash. But it's hard to ignore Mr. Bryce's main point -- that politicians and pundits are woefully uninformed about energy. When you hear a presidential candidate or a TV talking head calling for energy independence, or claiming that we can reduce carbon emissions by 60% or 70%, or pointing to windmills, ethanol and solar panels as the energy future of the American economy, you can be fairly certain that they are wasting their own energy on false promises and futile schemes.
Mr. Tucker's "Terrestrial Energy: How a Nuclear-Solar Alliance Can Rescue the Planet" will be published in August by Bartleby Press.
3/26/08
BOOK REVIEW
No Time to Declare Independence
WILLIAM TUCKER
Gusher of Lies
By Robert Bryce
(Public Affairs, 371 pages, $26.95)
When it comes to "energy independence," American politics has discovered a new spirit of bipartisanship. Hillary Clinton, Barack Obama and John McCain all call for it, in one form or another -- in the name of fighting global terrorism, global warming or merely global price spikes at the pump. And of course the phrase is a cliché outside the world of politics, too, showing up in earnest op-eds and green-shaded pronouncements. Well, Robert Bryce is having none of it.
In "Gusher of Lies," Mr. Bryce declares that "energy independence is hogwash." There is not a chance in the world, he says, that we're going to kick our "oil addiction." Our economy runs on oil and will continue to do so for a long time to come. There are no "Manhattan Projects" on the horizon. Not even the big bad oil companies are "energy independent" anymore. Mr. Bryce notes that oil companies now own only 10% of the world's oil reserves. Everything else is claimed by national governments.
And trends don't favor an American version of energy independence anyway. As U.S. onshore production has slowly played out, the western Gulf of Mexico has been punctured like a pincushion. And yet the eastern Gulf (i.e., Florida) and the East and West coasts won't let drilling rigs anywhere near their waters. And don't even mention the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge, still untouchable.
No, the gushers are elsewhere these days. America's oil production peaked in 1970; non-OPEC oil production peaked about five years ago. Oil power is shifting even more toward the Persian Gulf. Jubail (a port in Saudi Arabia) and Dubai (in the United Arab Emirates) are fast becoming industrial and financial centers on a scale to defy the Western imagination. Halliburton moved its top executives to Dubai in 2007, and little wonder.
What about the imperatives that are so often evoked on behalf of "energy independence"? On global warming, Mr. Bryce is an agnostic, but he notes that, with China adding the equivalent of France to its electrical grid every year -- 90% of it in coal -- talk about reducing global carbon emissions is just prattle. As for the geopolitical aspect of energy independence -- starving bad regimes into reform -- Mr. Bryce believes it to be wishful thinking. We're never going to isolate Iran, he argues. The Iranians are building pipelines to Pakistan and India and signing multibillion-dollar natural-gas deals with China. "The one being isolated on the energy front isn't Iran," he argues; "it's the U.S." If by some miracle oil prices were to plunge dramatically (the result of energy independence and a drop in demand), "there's no evidence -- none -- to support the assertion," Mr. Bryce claims, "that an oil price crash will lead to reform" in troublesome Islamic countries.
Instead we should be thinking of energy "interdependence" in a world where we, quite properly, export what we have in abundance and import what we can't produce for ourselves. The search for "alternative" fuels is, in Mr. Bryce's view, a costly byway. He saves particular scorn for ethanol, "the largest scam in our nation's history," assembling 50 pages of evidence to show that, if anything, the energy-intensive effort to distill ethanol out of the nation's corn crop diminishes our energy supply. Yet ethanol production has become entangled with that other impossible-to-repeal boondoggle, agricultural subsidies.
For all his confidence and expertise, Mr. Bryce can be a little weak in some areas. He rightly notes that both American and Canadian natural-gas production has peaked, but then he talks casually about importing vast quantities from Russia and Iran. Bringing this gas across the oceans, however, will involve liquefying it, adding a huge price premium -- if we ever get the receiving terminals built in the first place. Even with "energy interdependence," natural gas is going to be much more expensive in the future. On nuclear energy, Mr. Bryce is even weaker. At one point he refers to uranium as a "fossil fuel"; and he doesn't seem to grasp nuclear's greater-by-orders-of-magnitude energy potential.
Mr. Bryce's ultimate counsel -- that we should forget about what Arab countries are doing with their petrodollars and learn to get along -- is also hard to accept. It ignores all those stories about the third cousins of oil sheiks showing up in al Qaeda training camps with suitcases full of cash. But it's hard to ignore Mr. Bryce's main point -- that politicians and pundits are woefully uninformed about energy. When you hear a presidential candidate or a TV talking head calling for energy independence, or claiming that we can reduce carbon emissions by 60% or 70%, or pointing to windmills, ethanol and solar panels as the energy future of the American economy, you can be fairly certain that they are wasting their own energy on false promises and futile schemes.
Mr. Tucker's "Terrestrial Energy: How a Nuclear-Solar Alliance Can Rescue the Planet" will be published in August by Bartleby Press.
Palestinians Need a Powerful Advocate by Linda Heard
Palestinians Need a Powerful Advocate
Arab News, Tuesday, March 25, 2008
Linda Heard, sierra12th@yahoo.co.uk
The concept of America as an honest broker in the Israel-Palestine conflict is obsolete. The US was never an honest broker, but it doesn't even bother pretending any more. Dick Cheney recently told the Israeli premier the US commitment to Israel's security is unshakeable and warned the Palestinians that violence against Israel would kill their hopes of a state. And while it's true that the current administration will shortly be emptying their desks, the three presidential hopefuls sound as though they're singing from the Bush administration's hymn sheet.
Democratic front-runner Barack Obama had this to say on peace in the Middle East: "That effort begins with a clear and strong commitment to the security of Israel — our strongest ally in the region and its only established democracy. That will always be my starting point".
His rival Hillary Clinton, who backs a US Embassy in Jerusalem, has said she would cut off aid to Palestinians should they unilaterally declare an independent state, while Republican nominee John McCain has characterized Israel's enemies as "evil".
I could list the candidates' regular junkets to Tel Aviv and pilgrimages to the American Israel Public Affairs Committee (AIPAC), but I won't bore you. You get the point. Everybody with half a brain gets the point. So, in this case, why are Palestinian leaders relying on the good offices of the US to get them a state?
To give this premise context, say, you had a business partner who embezzled your company and left you with nothing but debts. Would you hire his lawyer, who also happened to be his best buddy, to represent you in court? Of course not! And neither would you enlist your mother-in-law to save your crumbling marriage if you had any sense.
Yet this is exactly what the Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas is doing. It seems that, on Washington's instructions, he manipulated a breach with Hamas — as we know from leaked State Department memos — and he's now asking Washington to become more proactive as a broker. And, let's face it: They've had little success at the job throughout the past decades. Any firm with their record of failure would surely have been sacked an age ago.
Even if by some miracle the Annapolis meeting actually produced the required goods in the long run, a US-brokered Palestinian state would consist of nothing more than crumbs from Israel's table, which I fear the beleaguered Palestinian leadership would be pressured to accept as a better than nothing option.
Where does all this leave the Palestinian people? Precisely nowhere!
When they fight back, which as an occupied people is their right under international law, they are labeled terrorists. When they organize peaceful demonstrations, nobody takes any notice. When they invoke a slew of UN resolutions passed in their favor, all they get are yawns from the international community in return. Israel has killed thousands, imprisoned tens of thousands and is incarcerating 1.5 million Palestinians in the world's largest open-air jail, Gaza, yet, as far as Washington is concerned, Israel remains the victim/hero.
If there is ever to be a viable Palestinian state, a new paradigm is needed. Instead of one powerful so-called "honest broker", each side in the conflict should have its own powerful advocate.
The idea that Israelis and Palestinians should negotiate one-on-one, as George W. Bush has suggested on more than one occasion, won't work in this case simply because one side has military clout and the other hasn't. This is akin to a deer negotiating with a leopard over the menu of the day when, of course, the deer will end up as lunch.
So who might be up for the job of Palestinian advocate?
Forget the EU for a start. Its major players talk a good talk, but, when push comes to shove, they'll fall in behind the US. China has got the muscle and the independence, but the Middle East is traditionally outside its geopolitical sphere of influence. Looks hopeless, doesn't it? But wait, there is one candidate itching for the job: Russia. Russia's Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov has been canvassing regional support for his country's potential role as mediator during his visit, last week, to Israel, Syria and the West Bank. Russia has called for an end to Israel's settlement expansion and also offered to host a peace conference later this year to reinforce Annapolis.
Naturally, Israel is less than enthusiastic. Mahmoud Abbas, on the other hand, has publicly welcomed Russia's involvement. Provided Moscow is seriously committed to finding a solution rather than posturing for effect, President Abbas should consider the following.
First, he should patch up relations with Hamas in the spirit of last week's Yemeni-brokered reconciliation agreement. A divided Palestine is a weak Palestine.
Second, he should refuse to negotiate directly with Israel or to show up for smiley photo-ops with visiting American politicians.
Third, as with most disputes, he should simply tell the other side, "Talk to my lawyer".
If Russia is willing to take on the job, then it should be supported and offered incentives by every single member of the Arab League as well as sympathetic OIC members.
Whatever happens, the Palestinians must quit putting their faith in duplicitous Uncle Sam and seek a new plan with a new partner, one that would have their interests rather than those of their enemy at heart.
Arab News, Tuesday, March 25, 2008
Linda Heard, sierra12th@yahoo.co.uk
The concept of America as an honest broker in the Israel-Palestine conflict is obsolete. The US was never an honest broker, but it doesn't even bother pretending any more. Dick Cheney recently told the Israeli premier the US commitment to Israel's security is unshakeable and warned the Palestinians that violence against Israel would kill their hopes of a state. And while it's true that the current administration will shortly be emptying their desks, the three presidential hopefuls sound as though they're singing from the Bush administration's hymn sheet.
Democratic front-runner Barack Obama had this to say on peace in the Middle East: "That effort begins with a clear and strong commitment to the security of Israel — our strongest ally in the region and its only established democracy. That will always be my starting point".
His rival Hillary Clinton, who backs a US Embassy in Jerusalem, has said she would cut off aid to Palestinians should they unilaterally declare an independent state, while Republican nominee John McCain has characterized Israel's enemies as "evil".
I could list the candidates' regular junkets to Tel Aviv and pilgrimages to the American Israel Public Affairs Committee (AIPAC), but I won't bore you. You get the point. Everybody with half a brain gets the point. So, in this case, why are Palestinian leaders relying on the good offices of the US to get them a state?
To give this premise context, say, you had a business partner who embezzled your company and left you with nothing but debts. Would you hire his lawyer, who also happened to be his best buddy, to represent you in court? Of course not! And neither would you enlist your mother-in-law to save your crumbling marriage if you had any sense.
Yet this is exactly what the Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas is doing. It seems that, on Washington's instructions, he manipulated a breach with Hamas — as we know from leaked State Department memos — and he's now asking Washington to become more proactive as a broker. And, let's face it: They've had little success at the job throughout the past decades. Any firm with their record of failure would surely have been sacked an age ago.
Even if by some miracle the Annapolis meeting actually produced the required goods in the long run, a US-brokered Palestinian state would consist of nothing more than crumbs from Israel's table, which I fear the beleaguered Palestinian leadership would be pressured to accept as a better than nothing option.
Where does all this leave the Palestinian people? Precisely nowhere!
When they fight back, which as an occupied people is their right under international law, they are labeled terrorists. When they organize peaceful demonstrations, nobody takes any notice. When they invoke a slew of UN resolutions passed in their favor, all they get are yawns from the international community in return. Israel has killed thousands, imprisoned tens of thousands and is incarcerating 1.5 million Palestinians in the world's largest open-air jail, Gaza, yet, as far as Washington is concerned, Israel remains the victim/hero.
If there is ever to be a viable Palestinian state, a new paradigm is needed. Instead of one powerful so-called "honest broker", each side in the conflict should have its own powerful advocate.
The idea that Israelis and Palestinians should negotiate one-on-one, as George W. Bush has suggested on more than one occasion, won't work in this case simply because one side has military clout and the other hasn't. This is akin to a deer negotiating with a leopard over the menu of the day when, of course, the deer will end up as lunch.
So who might be up for the job of Palestinian advocate?
Forget the EU for a start. Its major players talk a good talk, but, when push comes to shove, they'll fall in behind the US. China has got the muscle and the independence, but the Middle East is traditionally outside its geopolitical sphere of influence. Looks hopeless, doesn't it? But wait, there is one candidate itching for the job: Russia. Russia's Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov has been canvassing regional support for his country's potential role as mediator during his visit, last week, to Israel, Syria and the West Bank. Russia has called for an end to Israel's settlement expansion and also offered to host a peace conference later this year to reinforce Annapolis.
Naturally, Israel is less than enthusiastic. Mahmoud Abbas, on the other hand, has publicly welcomed Russia's involvement. Provided Moscow is seriously committed to finding a solution rather than posturing for effect, President Abbas should consider the following.
First, he should patch up relations with Hamas in the spirit of last week's Yemeni-brokered reconciliation agreement. A divided Palestine is a weak Palestine.
Second, he should refuse to negotiate directly with Israel or to show up for smiley photo-ops with visiting American politicians.
Third, as with most disputes, he should simply tell the other side, "Talk to my lawyer".
If Russia is willing to take on the job, then it should be supported and offered incentives by every single member of the Arab League as well as sympathetic OIC members.
Whatever happens, the Palestinians must quit putting their faith in duplicitous Uncle Sam and seek a new plan with a new partner, one that would have their interests rather than those of their enemy at heart.
John McCain's Foreign Policy Speech
March 26, 2008
Transcript from the New York Times
John McCain's Foreign Policy Speech
The following is the text as prepared for delivery of Senator John McCain's speech on foreign policy to the Los Angeles World Affairs Council, as provided by his presidential campaign.
When I was five years old, a car pulled up in front of our house in New London, Connecticut, and a Navy officer rolled down the window, and shouted at my father that the Japanese had bombed Pearl Harbor. My father immediately left for the submarine base where he was stationed. I rarely saw him again for four years. My grandfather, who commanded the fast carrier task force under Admiral Halsey, came home from the war exhausted from the burdens he had borne, and died the next day. In Vietnam, where I formed the closest friendships of my life, some of those friends never came home to the country they loved so well. I detest war. It might not be the worst thing to befall human beings, but it is wretched beyond all description. When nations seek to resolve their differences by force of arms, a million tragedies ensue. The lives of a nation's finest patriots are sacrificed. Innocent people suffer and die. Commerce is disrupted; economies are damaged; strategic interests shielded by years of patient statecraft are endangered as the exigencies of war and diplomacy conflict. Not the valor with which it is fought nor the nobility of the cause it serves, can glorify war. Whatever gains are secured, it is loss the veteran remembers most keenly. Only a fool or a fraud sentimentalizes the merciless reality of war. However heady the appeal of a call to arms, however just the cause, we should still shed a tear for all that is lost when war claims its wages from us.
I am an idealist, and I believe it is possible in our time to make the world we live in another, better, more peaceful place, where our interests and those of our allies are more secure, and American ideals that are transforming the world, the principles of free people and free markets, advance even farther than they have. But I am, from hard experience and the judgment it informs, a realistic idealist. I know we must work very hard and very creatively to build new foundations for a stable and enduring peace. We cannot wish the world to be a better place than it is. We have enemies for whom no attack is too cruel, and no innocent life safe, and who would, if they could, strike us with the world's most terrible weapons. There are states that support them, and which might help them acquire those weapons because they share with terrorists the same animating hatred for the West, and will not be placated by fresh appeals to the better angels of their nature. This is the central threat of our time, and we must understand the implications of our decisions on all manner of regional and global challenges could have for our success in defeating it.
President Harry Truman once said of America, "God has created us and brought us to our present position of power and strength for some great purpose." In his time, that purpose was to contain Communism and build the structures of peace and prosperity that could provide safe passage through the Cold War. Now it is our turn. We face a new set of opportunities, and also new dangers. The developments of science and technology have brought us untold prosperity, eradicated disease, and reduced the suffering of millions. We have a chance in our lifetime to raise the world to a new standard of human existence. Yet these same technologies have produced grave new risks, arming a few zealots with the ability to murder millions of innocents, and producing a global industrialization that can in time threaten our planet.
To meet this challenge requires understanding the world we live in, and the central role the United States must play in shaping it for the future. The United States must lead in the 21st century, just as in Truman's day. But leadership today means something different than it did in the years after World War II, when Europe and the other democracies were still recovering from the devastation of war and the United States was the only democratic superpower. Today we are not alone. There is the powerful collective voice of the European Union, and there are the great nations of India and Japan, Australia and Brazil, South Korea and South Africa, Turkey and Israel, to name just a few of the leading democracies. There are also the increasingly powerful nations of China and Russia that wield great influence in the international system.
In such a world, where power of all kinds is more widely and evenly distributed, the United States cannot lead by virtue of its power alone. We must be strong politically, economically, and militarily. But we must also lead by attracting others to our cause, by demonstrating once again the virtues of freedom and democracy, by defending the rules of international civilized society and by creating the new international institutions necessary to advance the peace and freedoms we cherish. Perhaps above all, leadership in today's world means accepting and fulfilling our responsibilities as a great nation.
One of those responsibilities is to be a good and reliable ally to our fellow democracies. We cannot build an enduring peace based on freedom by ourselves, and we do not want to. We have to strengthen our global alliances as the core of a new global compact -- a League of Democracies -- that can harness the vast influence of the more than one hundred democratic nations around the world to advance our values and defend our shared interests.
At the heart of this new compact must be mutual respect and trust. Recall the words of our founders in the Declaration of Independence, that we pay "decent respect to the opinions of mankind." Our great power does not mean we can do whatever we want whenever we want, nor should we assume we have all the wisdom and knowledge necessary to succeed. We need to listen to the views and respect the collective will of our democratic allies. When we believe international action is necessary, whether military, economic, or diplomatic, we will try to persuade our friends that we are right. But we, in return, must be willing to be persuaded by them.
America must be a model citizen if we want others to look to us as a model. How we behave at home affects how we are perceived abroad. We must fight the terrorists and at the same time defend the rights that are the foundation of our society. We can't torture or treat inhumanely suspected terrorists we have captured. I believe we should close Guantanamo and work with our allies to forge a new international understanding on the disposition of dangerous detainees under our control.
There is such a thing as international good citizenship. We need to be good stewards of our planet and join with other nations to help preserve our common home. The risks of global warming have no borders. We and the other nations of the world must get serious about substantially reducing greenhouse gas emissions in the coming years or we will hand off a much-diminished world to our grandchildren. We need a successor to the Kyoto Treaty, a cap-and-trade system that delivers the necessary environmental impact in an economically responsible manner. We Americans must lead by example and encourage the participation of the rest of the world, including most importantly, the developing economic powerhouses of China and India.
Four and a half decades ago, John Kennedy described the people of Latin America as our "firm and ancient friends, united by history and experience and by our determination to advance the values of American civilization." With globalization, our hemisphere has grown closer, more integrated, and more interdependent. Latin America today is increasingly vital to the fortunes of the United States. Americans north and south share a common geography and a common destiny. The countries of Latin America are the natural partners of the United States, and our northern neighbor Canada.
Relations with our southern neighbors must be governed by mutual respect, not by an imperial impulse or by anti-American demagoguery. The promise of North, Central, and South American life is too great for that. I believe the Americas can and must be the model for a new 21st century relationship between North and South. Ours can be the first completely democratic hemisphere, where trade is free across all borders, where the rule of law and the power of free markets advance the security and prosperity of all.
Power in the world today is moving east; the Asia-Pacific region is on the rise. Together with our democratic partner of many decades, Japan, we can grasp the opportunities present in the unfolding world and this century can become safe -- both American and Asian, both prosperous and free. Asia has made enormous strides in recent decades. Its economic achievements are well known; less known is that more people live under democratic rule in Asia than in any other region of the world.
Dealing with a rising China will be a central challenge for the next American president. Recent prosperity in China has brought more people out of poverty faster than during any other time in human history. China's newfound power implies responsibilities. China could bolster its claim that it is "peacefully rising" by being more transparent about its significant military buildup, by working with the world to isolate pariah states such as Burma, Sudan and Zimbabwe, and by ceasing its efforts to establish regional forums and economic arrangements designed to exclude America from Asia.
China and the United States are not destined to be adversaries. We have numerous overlapping interests and hope to see our relationship evolve in a manner that benefits both countries and, in turn, the Asia-Pacific region and the world. But until China moves toward political liberalization, our relationship will be based on periodically shared interests rather than the bedrock of shared values.
The United States did not single-handedly win the Cold War; the transatlantic alliance did, in concert with partners around the world. The bonds we share with Europe in terms of history, values, and interests are unique. Americans should welcome the rise of a strong, confident European Union as we continue to support a strong NATO. The future of the transatlantic relationship lies in confronting the challenges of the twenty-first century worldwide: developing a common energy policy, creating a transatlantic common market tying our economies more closely together, addressing the dangers posed by a revanchist Russia, and institutionalizing our cooperation on issues such as climate change, foreign assistance, and democracy promotion.
We should start by ensuring that the G-8, the group of eight highly industrialized states, becomes again a club of leading market democracies: it should include Brazil and India but exclude Russia. Rather than tolerate Russia's nuclear blackmail or cyber attacks, Western nations should make clear that the solidarity of NATO, from the Baltic to the Black Sea, is indivisible and that the organization's doors remain open to all democracies committed to the defense of freedom.
While Africa's problems -- poverty, corruption, disease, and instability -- are well known, we must refocus on the bright promise offered by many countries on that continent. We must strongly engage on a political, economic, and security level with friendly governments across Africa, but insist on improvements in transparency and the rule of law. Many African nations will not reach their true potential without external assistance to combat entrenched problems, such as HIV/AIDS, that afflict Africans disproportionately. I will establish the goal of eradicating malaria on the continent -- the number one killer of African children under the age of five. In addition to saving millions of lives in the world's poorest regions, such a campaign would do much to add luster to America's image in the world.
We also share an obligation with the world's other great powers to halt and reverse the proliferation of nuclear weapons. The United States and the international community must work together and do all in our power to contain and reverse North Korea's nuclear weapons program and to prevent Iran -- a nation whose President has repeatedly expressed a desire to wipe Israel from the face of the earth -- from obtaining a nuclear weapon. We should work to reduce nuclear arsenals all around the world, starting with our own. Forty years ago, the five declared nuclear powers came together in support of the Nuclear Nonproliferation Treaty and pledged to end the arms race and move toward nuclear disarmament. The time has come to renew that commitment. We do not need all the weapons currently in our arsenal. The United States should lead a global effort at nuclear disarmament consistent with our vital interests and the cause of peace.
If we are successful in pulling together a global coalition for peace and freedom -- if we lead by shouldering our international responsibilities and pointing the way to a better and safer future for humanity, I believe we will gain tangible benefits as a nation.
It will strengthen us to confront the transcendent challenge of our time: the threat of radical Islamic terrorism. This challenge is transcendent not because it is the only one we face. There are many dangers in today's world, and our foreign policy must be agile and effective at dealing with all of them. But the threat posed by the terrorists is unique. They alone devote all their energies and indeed their very lives to murdering innocent men, women, and children. They alone seek nuclear weapons and other tools of mass destruction not to defend themselves or to enhance their prestige or to give them a stronger hand in world affairs but to use against us wherever and whenever they can. Any president who does not regard this threat as transcending all others does not deserve to sit in the White House, for he or she does not take seriously enough the first and most basic duty a president has -- to protect the lives of the American people.
We learned through the tragic experience of September 11 that passive defense alone cannot protect us. We must protect our borders. But we must also have an aggressive strategy of confronting and rooting out the terrorists wherever they seek to operate, and deny them bases in failed or failing states. Today al Qaeda and other terrorist networks operate across the globe, seeking out opportunities in Southeast Asia, Central Asia, Africa, and in the Middle East.
Prevailing in this struggle will require far more than military force. It will require the use of all elements of our national power: public diplomacy; development assistance; law enforcement training; expansion of economic opportunity; and robust intelligence capabilities. I have called for major changes in how our government faces the challenge of radical Islamic extremism by much greater resources for and integration of civilian efforts to prevent conflict and to address post-conflict challenges. Our goal must be to win the "hearts and minds" of the vast majority of moderate Muslims who do not want their future controlled by a minority of violent extremists. In this struggle, scholarships will be far more important than smart bombs.
We also need to build the international structures for a durable peace in which the radical extremists are gradually eclipsed by the more powerful forces of freedom and tolerance. Our efforts in Iraq and Afghanistan are critical in this respect and cannot be viewed in isolation from our broader strategy. In the troubled and often dangerous region they occupy, these two nations can either be sources of extremism and instability or they can in time become pillars of stability, tolerance, and democracy.
For decades in the greater Middle East, we had a strategy of relying on autocrats to provide order and stability. We relied on the Shah of Iran, the autocratic rulers of Egypt, the generals of Pakistan, the Saudi royal family, and even, for a time, on Saddam Hussein. In the late 1970s that strategy began to unravel. The Shah was overthrown by the radical Islamic revolution that now rules in Tehran. The ensuing ferment in the Muslim world produced increasing instability. The autocrats clamped down with ever greater repression, while also surreptitiously aiding Islamic radicalism abroad in the hopes that they would not become its victims. It was a toxic and explosive mixture. The oppression of the autocrats blended with the radical Islamists' dogmatic theology to produce a perfect storm of intolerance and hatred.
We can no longer delude ourselves that relying on these out-dated autocracies is the safest bet. They no longer provide lasting stability, only the illusion of it. We must not act rashly or demand change overnight. But neither can we pretend the status quo is sustainable, stable, or in our interests. Change is occurring whether we want it or not. The only question for us is whether we shape this change in ways that benefit humanity or let our enemies seize it for their hateful purposes. We must help expand the power and reach of freedom, using all our many strengths as a free people. This is not just idealism. It is the truest kind of realism. It is the democracies of the world that will provide the pillars upon which we can and must build an enduring peace.
If you look at the great arc that extends from the Middle East through Central Asia and the Asian subcontinent all the way to Southeast Asia, you can see those pillars of democracy stretching across the entire expanse, from Turkey and Israel to India and Indonesia. Iraq and Afghanistan lie at the heart of that region. And whether they eventually become stable democracies themselves, or are allowed to sink back into chaos and extremism, will determine not only the fate of that critical part of the world, but our fate, as well. That is the broad strategic perspective through which to view our efforts in Iraq and Afghanistan. Many people ask, how should we define success? Success in Iraq and Afghanistan is the establishment of peaceful, stable, prosperous, democratic states that pose no threat to neighbors and contribute to the defeat of terrorists. It is the triumph of religious tolerance over violent radicalism.
Those who argue that our goals in Iraq are unachievable are wrong, just as they were wrong a year ago when they declared the war in Iraq already lost. Since June 2007 sectarian and ethnic violence in Iraq has been reduced by 90 percent. Overall civilian deaths have been reduced by more than 70 percent. Deaths of coalition forces have fallen by 70 percent. The dramatic reduction in violence has opened the way for a return to something approaching normal political and economic life for the average Iraqi. People are going back to work. Markets are open. Oil revenues are climbing. Inflation is down. Iraq's economy is expected to grown by roughly 7 percent in 2008. Political reconciliation is occurring across Iraq at the local and provincial grassroots level. Sunni and Shi'a chased from their homes by terrorist and sectarian violence are returning. Political progress at the national level has been far too slow, but there is progress.
Critics say that the "surge" of troops isn't a solution in itself, that we must make progress toward Iraqi self-sufficiency. I agree. Iraqis themselves must increasingly take responsibility for their own security, and they must become responsible political actors. It does not follow from this, however, that we should now recklessly retreat from Iraq regardless of the consequences. We must take the course of prudence and responsibility, and help Iraqis move closer to the day when they no longer need our help.
That is the route of responsible statesmanship. We have incurred a moral responsibility in Iraq. It would be an unconscionable act of betrayal, a stain on our character as a great nation, if we were to walk away from the Iraqi people and consign them to the horrendous violence, ethnic cleansing, and possibly genocide that would follow a reckless, irresponsible, and premature withdrawal. Our critics say America needs to repair its image in the world. How can they argue at the same time for the morally reprehensible abandonment of our responsibilities in Iraq?
Those who claim we should withdraw from Iraq in order to fight Al Qaeda more effectively elsewhere are making a dangerous mistake. Whether they were there before is immaterial, al Qaeda is in Iraq now, as it is in the borderlands between Pakistan and Afghanistan, in Somalia, and in Indonesia. If we withdraw prematurely from Iraq, al Qaeda in Iraq will survive, proclaim victory and continue to provoke sectarian tensions that, while they have been subdued by the success of the surge, still exist, as various factions of Sunni and Shi'a have yet to move beyond their ancient hatreds, and are ripe for provocation by al Qaeda. Civil war in Iraq could easily descend into genocide, and destabilize the entire region as neighboring powers come to the aid of their favored factions. I believe a reckless and premature withdrawal would be a terrible defeat for our security interests and our values. Iran will also view our premature withdrawal as a victory, and the biggest state supporter of terrorists, a country with nuclear ambitions and a stated desire to destroy the State of Israel, will see its influence in the Middle East grow significantly. These consequences of our defeat would threaten us for years, and those who argue for it, as both Democratic candidates do, are arguing for a course that would eventually draw us into a wider and more difficult war that would entail far greater dangers and sacrifices than we have suffered to date. I do not argue against withdrawal, any more than I argued several years ago for the change in tactics and additional forces that are now succeeding in Iraq, because I am somehow indifferent to war and the suffering it inflicts on too many American families. I hold my position because I hate war, and I know very well and very personally how grievous its wages are. But I know, too, that we must sometimes pay those wages to avoid paying even higher ones later.
I run for President because I want to keep the country I love and have served all my life safe, and to rise to the challenges of our times, as generations before us rose to theirs. I run for President because I know it is incumbent on America, more than any other nation on earth, to lead in building the foundations for a stable and enduring peace, a peace built on the strength of our commitment to it, on the transformative ideals on which we were founded, on our ability to see around the corner of history, and on our courage and wisdom to make hard choices. I run because I believe, as strongly as I ever have, that it is within our power to make in our time another, better world than we inherited.
Thank you.
Transcript from the New York Times
John McCain's Foreign Policy Speech
The following is the text as prepared for delivery of Senator John McCain's speech on foreign policy to the Los Angeles World Affairs Council, as provided by his presidential campaign.
When I was five years old, a car pulled up in front of our house in New London, Connecticut, and a Navy officer rolled down the window, and shouted at my father that the Japanese had bombed Pearl Harbor. My father immediately left for the submarine base where he was stationed. I rarely saw him again for four years. My grandfather, who commanded the fast carrier task force under Admiral Halsey, came home from the war exhausted from the burdens he had borne, and died the next day. In Vietnam, where I formed the closest friendships of my life, some of those friends never came home to the country they loved so well. I detest war. It might not be the worst thing to befall human beings, but it is wretched beyond all description. When nations seek to resolve their differences by force of arms, a million tragedies ensue. The lives of a nation's finest patriots are sacrificed. Innocent people suffer and die. Commerce is disrupted; economies are damaged; strategic interests shielded by years of patient statecraft are endangered as the exigencies of war and diplomacy conflict. Not the valor with which it is fought nor the nobility of the cause it serves, can glorify war. Whatever gains are secured, it is loss the veteran remembers most keenly. Only a fool or a fraud sentimentalizes the merciless reality of war. However heady the appeal of a call to arms, however just the cause, we should still shed a tear for all that is lost when war claims its wages from us.
I am an idealist, and I believe it is possible in our time to make the world we live in another, better, more peaceful place, where our interests and those of our allies are more secure, and American ideals that are transforming the world, the principles of free people and free markets, advance even farther than they have. But I am, from hard experience and the judgment it informs, a realistic idealist. I know we must work very hard and very creatively to build new foundations for a stable and enduring peace. We cannot wish the world to be a better place than it is. We have enemies for whom no attack is too cruel, and no innocent life safe, and who would, if they could, strike us with the world's most terrible weapons. There are states that support them, and which might help them acquire those weapons because they share with terrorists the same animating hatred for the West, and will not be placated by fresh appeals to the better angels of their nature. This is the central threat of our time, and we must understand the implications of our decisions on all manner of regional and global challenges could have for our success in defeating it.
President Harry Truman once said of America, "God has created us and brought us to our present position of power and strength for some great purpose." In his time, that purpose was to contain Communism and build the structures of peace and prosperity that could provide safe passage through the Cold War. Now it is our turn. We face a new set of opportunities, and also new dangers. The developments of science and technology have brought us untold prosperity, eradicated disease, and reduced the suffering of millions. We have a chance in our lifetime to raise the world to a new standard of human existence. Yet these same technologies have produced grave new risks, arming a few zealots with the ability to murder millions of innocents, and producing a global industrialization that can in time threaten our planet.
To meet this challenge requires understanding the world we live in, and the central role the United States must play in shaping it for the future. The United States must lead in the 21st century, just as in Truman's day. But leadership today means something different than it did in the years after World War II, when Europe and the other democracies were still recovering from the devastation of war and the United States was the only democratic superpower. Today we are not alone. There is the powerful collective voice of the European Union, and there are the great nations of India and Japan, Australia and Brazil, South Korea and South Africa, Turkey and Israel, to name just a few of the leading democracies. There are also the increasingly powerful nations of China and Russia that wield great influence in the international system.
In such a world, where power of all kinds is more widely and evenly distributed, the United States cannot lead by virtue of its power alone. We must be strong politically, economically, and militarily. But we must also lead by attracting others to our cause, by demonstrating once again the virtues of freedom and democracy, by defending the rules of international civilized society and by creating the new international institutions necessary to advance the peace and freedoms we cherish. Perhaps above all, leadership in today's world means accepting and fulfilling our responsibilities as a great nation.
One of those responsibilities is to be a good and reliable ally to our fellow democracies. We cannot build an enduring peace based on freedom by ourselves, and we do not want to. We have to strengthen our global alliances as the core of a new global compact -- a League of Democracies -- that can harness the vast influence of the more than one hundred democratic nations around the world to advance our values and defend our shared interests.
At the heart of this new compact must be mutual respect and trust. Recall the words of our founders in the Declaration of Independence, that we pay "decent respect to the opinions of mankind." Our great power does not mean we can do whatever we want whenever we want, nor should we assume we have all the wisdom and knowledge necessary to succeed. We need to listen to the views and respect the collective will of our democratic allies. When we believe international action is necessary, whether military, economic, or diplomatic, we will try to persuade our friends that we are right. But we, in return, must be willing to be persuaded by them.
America must be a model citizen if we want others to look to us as a model. How we behave at home affects how we are perceived abroad. We must fight the terrorists and at the same time defend the rights that are the foundation of our society. We can't torture or treat inhumanely suspected terrorists we have captured. I believe we should close Guantanamo and work with our allies to forge a new international understanding on the disposition of dangerous detainees under our control.
There is such a thing as international good citizenship. We need to be good stewards of our planet and join with other nations to help preserve our common home. The risks of global warming have no borders. We and the other nations of the world must get serious about substantially reducing greenhouse gas emissions in the coming years or we will hand off a much-diminished world to our grandchildren. We need a successor to the Kyoto Treaty, a cap-and-trade system that delivers the necessary environmental impact in an economically responsible manner. We Americans must lead by example and encourage the participation of the rest of the world, including most importantly, the developing economic powerhouses of China and India.
Four and a half decades ago, John Kennedy described the people of Latin America as our "firm and ancient friends, united by history and experience and by our determination to advance the values of American civilization." With globalization, our hemisphere has grown closer, more integrated, and more interdependent. Latin America today is increasingly vital to the fortunes of the United States. Americans north and south share a common geography and a common destiny. The countries of Latin America are the natural partners of the United States, and our northern neighbor Canada.
Relations with our southern neighbors must be governed by mutual respect, not by an imperial impulse or by anti-American demagoguery. The promise of North, Central, and South American life is too great for that. I believe the Americas can and must be the model for a new 21st century relationship between North and South. Ours can be the first completely democratic hemisphere, where trade is free across all borders, where the rule of law and the power of free markets advance the security and prosperity of all.
Power in the world today is moving east; the Asia-Pacific region is on the rise. Together with our democratic partner of many decades, Japan, we can grasp the opportunities present in the unfolding world and this century can become safe -- both American and Asian, both prosperous and free. Asia has made enormous strides in recent decades. Its economic achievements are well known; less known is that more people live under democratic rule in Asia than in any other region of the world.
Dealing with a rising China will be a central challenge for the next American president. Recent prosperity in China has brought more people out of poverty faster than during any other time in human history. China's newfound power implies responsibilities. China could bolster its claim that it is "peacefully rising" by being more transparent about its significant military buildup, by working with the world to isolate pariah states such as Burma, Sudan and Zimbabwe, and by ceasing its efforts to establish regional forums and economic arrangements designed to exclude America from Asia.
China and the United States are not destined to be adversaries. We have numerous overlapping interests and hope to see our relationship evolve in a manner that benefits both countries and, in turn, the Asia-Pacific region and the world. But until China moves toward political liberalization, our relationship will be based on periodically shared interests rather than the bedrock of shared values.
The United States did not single-handedly win the Cold War; the transatlantic alliance did, in concert with partners around the world. The bonds we share with Europe in terms of history, values, and interests are unique. Americans should welcome the rise of a strong, confident European Union as we continue to support a strong NATO. The future of the transatlantic relationship lies in confronting the challenges of the twenty-first century worldwide: developing a common energy policy, creating a transatlantic common market tying our economies more closely together, addressing the dangers posed by a revanchist Russia, and institutionalizing our cooperation on issues such as climate change, foreign assistance, and democracy promotion.
We should start by ensuring that the G-8, the group of eight highly industrialized states, becomes again a club of leading market democracies: it should include Brazil and India but exclude Russia. Rather than tolerate Russia's nuclear blackmail or cyber attacks, Western nations should make clear that the solidarity of NATO, from the Baltic to the Black Sea, is indivisible and that the organization's doors remain open to all democracies committed to the defense of freedom.
While Africa's problems -- poverty, corruption, disease, and instability -- are well known, we must refocus on the bright promise offered by many countries on that continent. We must strongly engage on a political, economic, and security level with friendly governments across Africa, but insist on improvements in transparency and the rule of law. Many African nations will not reach their true potential without external assistance to combat entrenched problems, such as HIV/AIDS, that afflict Africans disproportionately. I will establish the goal of eradicating malaria on the continent -- the number one killer of African children under the age of five. In addition to saving millions of lives in the world's poorest regions, such a campaign would do much to add luster to America's image in the world.
We also share an obligation with the world's other great powers to halt and reverse the proliferation of nuclear weapons. The United States and the international community must work together and do all in our power to contain and reverse North Korea's nuclear weapons program and to prevent Iran -- a nation whose President has repeatedly expressed a desire to wipe Israel from the face of the earth -- from obtaining a nuclear weapon. We should work to reduce nuclear arsenals all around the world, starting with our own. Forty years ago, the five declared nuclear powers came together in support of the Nuclear Nonproliferation Treaty and pledged to end the arms race and move toward nuclear disarmament. The time has come to renew that commitment. We do not need all the weapons currently in our arsenal. The United States should lead a global effort at nuclear disarmament consistent with our vital interests and the cause of peace.
If we are successful in pulling together a global coalition for peace and freedom -- if we lead by shouldering our international responsibilities and pointing the way to a better and safer future for humanity, I believe we will gain tangible benefits as a nation.
It will strengthen us to confront the transcendent challenge of our time: the threat of radical Islamic terrorism. This challenge is transcendent not because it is the only one we face. There are many dangers in today's world, and our foreign policy must be agile and effective at dealing with all of them. But the threat posed by the terrorists is unique. They alone devote all their energies and indeed their very lives to murdering innocent men, women, and children. They alone seek nuclear weapons and other tools of mass destruction not to defend themselves or to enhance their prestige or to give them a stronger hand in world affairs but to use against us wherever and whenever they can. Any president who does not regard this threat as transcending all others does not deserve to sit in the White House, for he or she does not take seriously enough the first and most basic duty a president has -- to protect the lives of the American people.
We learned through the tragic experience of September 11 that passive defense alone cannot protect us. We must protect our borders. But we must also have an aggressive strategy of confronting and rooting out the terrorists wherever they seek to operate, and deny them bases in failed or failing states. Today al Qaeda and other terrorist networks operate across the globe, seeking out opportunities in Southeast Asia, Central Asia, Africa, and in the Middle East.
Prevailing in this struggle will require far more than military force. It will require the use of all elements of our national power: public diplomacy; development assistance; law enforcement training; expansion of economic opportunity; and robust intelligence capabilities. I have called for major changes in how our government faces the challenge of radical Islamic extremism by much greater resources for and integration of civilian efforts to prevent conflict and to address post-conflict challenges. Our goal must be to win the "hearts and minds" of the vast majority of moderate Muslims who do not want their future controlled by a minority of violent extremists. In this struggle, scholarships will be far more important than smart bombs.
We also need to build the international structures for a durable peace in which the radical extremists are gradually eclipsed by the more powerful forces of freedom and tolerance. Our efforts in Iraq and Afghanistan are critical in this respect and cannot be viewed in isolation from our broader strategy. In the troubled and often dangerous region they occupy, these two nations can either be sources of extremism and instability or they can in time become pillars of stability, tolerance, and democracy.
For decades in the greater Middle East, we had a strategy of relying on autocrats to provide order and stability. We relied on the Shah of Iran, the autocratic rulers of Egypt, the generals of Pakistan, the Saudi royal family, and even, for a time, on Saddam Hussein. In the late 1970s that strategy began to unravel. The Shah was overthrown by the radical Islamic revolution that now rules in Tehran. The ensuing ferment in the Muslim world produced increasing instability. The autocrats clamped down with ever greater repression, while also surreptitiously aiding Islamic radicalism abroad in the hopes that they would not become its victims. It was a toxic and explosive mixture. The oppression of the autocrats blended with the radical Islamists' dogmatic theology to produce a perfect storm of intolerance and hatred.
We can no longer delude ourselves that relying on these out-dated autocracies is the safest bet. They no longer provide lasting stability, only the illusion of it. We must not act rashly or demand change overnight. But neither can we pretend the status quo is sustainable, stable, or in our interests. Change is occurring whether we want it or not. The only question for us is whether we shape this change in ways that benefit humanity or let our enemies seize it for their hateful purposes. We must help expand the power and reach of freedom, using all our many strengths as a free people. This is not just idealism. It is the truest kind of realism. It is the democracies of the world that will provide the pillars upon which we can and must build an enduring peace.
If you look at the great arc that extends from the Middle East through Central Asia and the Asian subcontinent all the way to Southeast Asia, you can see those pillars of democracy stretching across the entire expanse, from Turkey and Israel to India and Indonesia. Iraq and Afghanistan lie at the heart of that region. And whether they eventually become stable democracies themselves, or are allowed to sink back into chaos and extremism, will determine not only the fate of that critical part of the world, but our fate, as well. That is the broad strategic perspective through which to view our efforts in Iraq and Afghanistan. Many people ask, how should we define success? Success in Iraq and Afghanistan is the establishment of peaceful, stable, prosperous, democratic states that pose no threat to neighbors and contribute to the defeat of terrorists. It is the triumph of religious tolerance over violent radicalism.
Those who argue that our goals in Iraq are unachievable are wrong, just as they were wrong a year ago when they declared the war in Iraq already lost. Since June 2007 sectarian and ethnic violence in Iraq has been reduced by 90 percent. Overall civilian deaths have been reduced by more than 70 percent. Deaths of coalition forces have fallen by 70 percent. The dramatic reduction in violence has opened the way for a return to something approaching normal political and economic life for the average Iraqi. People are going back to work. Markets are open. Oil revenues are climbing. Inflation is down. Iraq's economy is expected to grown by roughly 7 percent in 2008. Political reconciliation is occurring across Iraq at the local and provincial grassroots level. Sunni and Shi'a chased from their homes by terrorist and sectarian violence are returning. Political progress at the national level has been far too slow, but there is progress.
Critics say that the "surge" of troops isn't a solution in itself, that we must make progress toward Iraqi self-sufficiency. I agree. Iraqis themselves must increasingly take responsibility for their own security, and they must become responsible political actors. It does not follow from this, however, that we should now recklessly retreat from Iraq regardless of the consequences. We must take the course of prudence and responsibility, and help Iraqis move closer to the day when they no longer need our help.
That is the route of responsible statesmanship. We have incurred a moral responsibility in Iraq. It would be an unconscionable act of betrayal, a stain on our character as a great nation, if we were to walk away from the Iraqi people and consign them to the horrendous violence, ethnic cleansing, and possibly genocide that would follow a reckless, irresponsible, and premature withdrawal. Our critics say America needs to repair its image in the world. How can they argue at the same time for the morally reprehensible abandonment of our responsibilities in Iraq?
Those who claim we should withdraw from Iraq in order to fight Al Qaeda more effectively elsewhere are making a dangerous mistake. Whether they were there before is immaterial, al Qaeda is in Iraq now, as it is in the borderlands between Pakistan and Afghanistan, in Somalia, and in Indonesia. If we withdraw prematurely from Iraq, al Qaeda in Iraq will survive, proclaim victory and continue to provoke sectarian tensions that, while they have been subdued by the success of the surge, still exist, as various factions of Sunni and Shi'a have yet to move beyond their ancient hatreds, and are ripe for provocation by al Qaeda. Civil war in Iraq could easily descend into genocide, and destabilize the entire region as neighboring powers come to the aid of their favored factions. I believe a reckless and premature withdrawal would be a terrible defeat for our security interests and our values. Iran will also view our premature withdrawal as a victory, and the biggest state supporter of terrorists, a country with nuclear ambitions and a stated desire to destroy the State of Israel, will see its influence in the Middle East grow significantly. These consequences of our defeat would threaten us for years, and those who argue for it, as both Democratic candidates do, are arguing for a course that would eventually draw us into a wider and more difficult war that would entail far greater dangers and sacrifices than we have suffered to date. I do not argue against withdrawal, any more than I argued several years ago for the change in tactics and additional forces that are now succeeding in Iraq, because I am somehow indifferent to war and the suffering it inflicts on too many American families. I hold my position because I hate war, and I know very well and very personally how grievous its wages are. But I know, too, that we must sometimes pay those wages to avoid paying even higher ones later.
I run for President because I want to keep the country I love and have served all my life safe, and to rise to the challenges of our times, as generations before us rose to theirs. I run for President because I know it is incumbent on America, more than any other nation on earth, to lead in building the foundations for a stable and enduring peace, a peace built on the strength of our commitment to it, on the transformative ideals on which we were founded, on our ability to see around the corner of history, and on our courage and wisdom to make hard choices. I run because I believe, as strongly as I ever have, that it is within our power to make in our time another, better world than we inherited.
Thank you.
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