Totalitarianism: It Can Happen Here
by Paul Street / August 23rd, 2008 (13)
Democracy Incorporated: Managed Democracy and the Specter of Inverted Totalitarianism
By Sheldon Wolin
(Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 2008)
ISBN-10: 0691135665
ISBN-13: 978-0691135663
Domesticated Democracy
It is by now commonplace to observe that democracy is in a weakened state in the United States. But could it be that the U.S. is no longer a democracy at all, if it ever truly was? According to Princeton emeritus political scientist Sheldon Wolin’s chilling new volume Democracy, Inc: Managed Democracy and the Specter of Inverted Totalitarianism (2008), the United States is becoming a totalitarian state posing …
(Full article …)
http://www.dissidentvoice.org/2008/08/totalitarianism-it-can-happen-here/
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Monday, August 25, 2008
Russia-Georgia CyberWar Assessment
Russia-Georgia CyberWar Assessment
By Aaron Mannes
The Guardian Online just posted an assessment I co-wrote with my friend Jim Hendler (computer science professor at RPI) about the Georgia-Russia cyberwar.
The first modern cyberwar?
Aaron Mannes and James Hendler
Friday August 22 2008
The Russian-Georgian conflict is being described as the first time cyber-attacks have accompanied an actual war. Last year, the Russian-Estonian spat was described as the first modern cyber-war. These descriptions over dramatise events and are a distraction from the more prosaic, but more serious, danger these illicit cyber-actions represent. The technology used in these cyber-conflicts has only limited strategic impact, but represents a major threat to one of the most successful engines of human freedom and opportunity - the World Wide Web itself.
The strikes against Georgian government websites, along with last April's attacks against Estonian websites, were distributed denial of service attacks (DDoS) where many computers simultaneously send messages to a website, preventing legitimate traffic from reaching the site. These attacks are relatively easy to launch, but taking a website down does not affect real world infrastructure and competent IT professionals can counter or at least mitigate DDoS attacks. The increasing volume and sophistication of these attacks is a subject much discussed among IT professionals, but its impact is to create an inconvenience.
Read the complete article here. http://terrorwonk.blogspot.com/2008/08/aaron-mannes-in-guardian-russia-georgia.html
By Aaron Mannes
The Guardian Online just posted an assessment I co-wrote with my friend Jim Hendler (computer science professor at RPI) about the Georgia-Russia cyberwar.
The first modern cyberwar?
Aaron Mannes and James Hendler
Friday August 22 2008
The Russian-Georgian conflict is being described as the first time cyber-attacks have accompanied an actual war. Last year, the Russian-Estonian spat was described as the first modern cyber-war. These descriptions over dramatise events and are a distraction from the more prosaic, but more serious, danger these illicit cyber-actions represent. The technology used in these cyber-conflicts has only limited strategic impact, but represents a major threat to one of the most successful engines of human freedom and opportunity - the World Wide Web itself.
The strikes against Georgian government websites, along with last April's attacks against Estonian websites, were distributed denial of service attacks (DDoS) where many computers simultaneously send messages to a website, preventing legitimate traffic from reaching the site. These attacks are relatively easy to launch, but taking a website down does not affect real world infrastructure and competent IT professionals can counter or at least mitigate DDoS attacks. The increasing volume and sophistication of these attacks is a subject much discussed among IT professionals, but its impact is to create an inconvenience.
Read the complete article here. http://terrorwonk.blogspot.com/2008/08/aaron-mannes-in-guardian-russia-georgia.html
American Jews and the Palestinians The Long Silence
American Jews and the Palestinians
The Long Silence
By HOWARD LISNOFF
For many years, now decades, I have been silent as a Jew about Israel’s relationship to, and treatment of, the Palestinian people and my place as an American Jew in that equation. Recently, I looked back at the Jews who I have known personally, as friends and acquaintances, and examined how their views about Palestinians and Israel have affected me and deepened my silence.
Following the lightning-fast victory of Israel over Egypt and Syria in the Yom Kippur War of 1973, and the resulting improvement in relations between Egypt and Israel after the Camp David Accords in 1978, Israel’s occupation of the West Bank and Gaza Strip appeared solidified. The seeming invincibility of Israel in both the 1967 and 1973 wars led, I believe, to a false perception of invincibility and self-righteousness among many Jews took hold. No longer would Jews be victims, as during the Holocaust, but they would meet any challenge and react with force whenever and wherever a threat appeared. It portrayed Jews as strong as reflected in Israel’s treatment of its neighboring states, and in particular in Israel’s treatment of Palestinians in the West Bank and Gaza Strip. The government of Israel was showing the world how rapid and lethal a response could be to attacks, such as suicide bombings, against the people of Israel. Jews would never again be viewed as weak and subject to vicious mass attacks and attempted genocide as symbolized by the Holocaust. The stereotype of Jews as weak would be destroyed forever! The development of a huge stockpile of nuclear weapons is perhaps a reflection of the interplay between these historic and psychological factors. Who is more impervious to an outside threat than a state that possesses the ultimate power of weapons of mass destruction?
Jews in the U.S. were expected to accept their roles as supporters of whatever policy Israel adopted. Those Jews who wavered would be open to the most vicious attacks. Perhaps no one better typifies this phenomenon than Professor Norman G. Finkelstein, who lost his bid for tenure at DePaul University in May 2008, after a campaign of vicious attacks aimed at silencing his scholarly criticism of Israel’s treatment of the Palestinian people and the industry that had grown up, primarily in the U.S., to profit from the horror of the Holocaust. His books, among them The Holocaust Industry (2000) and Beyond Chutzpah (2005) have drawn stinging attacks. Among his most vehement detractors is Professor Alan Dershowitz of Harvard.
The power of the Jewish lobby in the U.S. is partially explained by studying the monetary might behind that influence. The most powerful of these organizations is the American Israel Public Affairs Committee, which in the 2004 alone had a $33 million budget with a staff of 140.
James David reports in his article “A Passionate Attachment to Israel,” that the Israel lobby had contributed $41 million to congressional and presidential candidates over the past 54 years (2002). University of San Francisco Professor Stephen Zunes states, in the article “The Strategic Functions of U.S. Aid to Israel,” that “more than $1.5 billion in private U.S. funds…go to Israel annually.”
The emergence of the image of Israel as invincible, and any criticism of Israel by Jews viewed as self-loathing and self-hating, is paralleled by the growth of the religious right in the U.S., which sees Israel as part of the biblical prediction of the final war (Armageddon) fought in the Middle East as reflected in the New Testament Book of Revelation. Indeed, the religious Right and Jews are strange bedfellows! Amid all of the rhetoric of moral support Israel would continue to benefit greatly from the largess of the U.S., receiving one-third of total U.S. foreign aid despite the fact that per capita income among Israelis is among the highest in the world. Such is the payoff for occupying the position as acting as an agent for the projection of raw military might in the Middle East by the U.S.
The antithesis of the Jews who were invincible was the self-hating Jew, again, usually any Jew who dared to criticize Israel’s policies toward the people of the West Bank and Gaza Strip. This phenomenon is remarkable for its sheer chutzpah in that the highest values of Jewish life, both religious and secular, are the tolerance and acceptance of others, the universal value of life, the championing of the downtrodden, the belief in fair play, and the search for peace and justice. These values are at the very root of the Jewish peoples’ struggle for survival and irresistible search for knowledge over many millennia. The most bellicose attacks are reserved for Jews who are scholars, artists and intellectuals.
One footnote to the attempt to paint U.S. Jews as universally supporting Israel, and Israel’s handling of the Palestinian issue, was the incessant propaganda campaigns in the media to portray the Palestinian people and their leadership as both totally undemocratic and hostile to the many attempts brokered by Washington to bring peace to the region. In fact, the most recent attempt to create an autonomous Palestinian state in the West Bank and Gaza Strip, during the Clinton administration, wrongly attributed its failure to the leadership of the Palestinians, when the actual territory of a supposed Palestinian state never materialized as part of the negotiations. The so-called “Two State Solution” never existed on paper. Meanwhile, Jewish settlements in the West Bank grew, as does the wall to block off needed access of the people of the West Bank to Israel. Attacks and counterattacks continue.
Most Jews in the U.S. favor an independent Palestinian state in the West Bank and Gaza Strip. However, when questioned further by pollsters, they say that the prospect for peace between Israel and the Palestinian people is dim. I looked at opinion polls of Jews in the U.S. and Israel and their attitudes toward this issue.
Just prior to the Second Intifada, a poll conducted by the Los Angeles Times among Israelis and American Jews showed a minority (44%) of Israeli Jews support the two-state concept compared to 68% of Jews in the U.S. Polls conducted by the American Jewish Committee from 2001 through 2006 indicated that a relatively consistent 54% of American Jews favored the establishment of a Palestinian state.
I examined the relationships I’ve had with several friends and acquaintances to try to learn if the figures cited above are reflected in the opinions of real people. What I found was very disappointing!
I’ve known Robert for twenty-five years. He was a well-regarded and liberal professor. He had become a favorite of students during the Vietnam War because of his strong antiwar stance. I recall one student I had in class for an undergraduate course who had had Robert in a single course as an undergraduate. The student railed at Robert’s liberalism. Robert and I usually spoke several mornings following our workouts at a local community center. During one session I was shocked to hear Robert referring to Israel as “Eretz Israel,”meaning the biblical land of Palestine referred to in the Old Testament. He had always been critical of my criticism of Israeli policy toward Palestinians, but claiming the biblical homeland as solely Jewish was difficult to accept from a person who was otherwise thoughtful and articulate in discussing foreign affairs, and who had been a staunch antiwar spokesperson.
I’ve known Sheila and Paul since taking a graduate course Paul taught. Our families have socialized for years. They are both Orthodox Jews. Paul never served in the military, a position I had no problem with having been a resister during the Vietnam War. Years after our families had grown, and Sheila and Paul’s oldest son had begun college, I was dumbfounded to find a picture of Paul and his son in a local newspaper. They both wore uniforms of the Israel Defense Forces, and the caption beneath their picture stated that they were involved in a summer program to aid the IDF by performing work on an Israeli military base so that soldiers could be freed from those duties.
Rebecca and Philip have been friends for four years. Philip’s father served in the Israeli army during the 1948 Arab-Israeli War. Rebecca holds both an Israeli and U.S. passport, her family having immigrated to Israel after the Holocaust. Recently, while I was visiting with Philip, Rebecca arrived at their house, exiting her car with arms flailing. She could hardly contain her anger. “I just heard a report on National Public Radio. Those monsters are going to allow Al-Jazeera to be broadcast in Vermont. I can’t believe they’ll allow that propaganda on the radio!” What Rebecca was referring to was the decision of one media outlet in one area of Vermont to broadcast Al Jazeera, a news service in the Middle East that has produced a separate English-language counterpart in the U.S.
Philip seethes with anger and animosity toward Palestinians. I cannot bring the subject up when we speak. One wall of their home is covered with pictures and news stories of his father’s exploits during the 1948 war. During the Vietnam War Philip was deferred from the draft because of his employment in the defense industry.
I have known Richard and Diane most of my life. Both of their children have taken part in the March of the Living, a remembrance of the Holocaust and its victims that passes many World War II concentration camps. Both children have traveled in Israel as part of the Birthright Israel program that conducts free tours of Israel for Jews from other countries. Richard is the son of Holocaust survivors. His voice turns to a growl when discussing Palestinians. One of his often-repeated statements is, “You can’t trust an Arab.” It is impossible to engage him in a meaningful debate or discussion about a Palestinian state. I realize that there is a definite psychological impact being a close relative of a Holocaust survivor; however, what I can’t understand is the absence of compassion as a result of the terror that was done to Jews in Nazi Germany.
I also know liberal Jews. They are strongly in favor of the establishment of a Palestinian state; some also favor reparations for Palestinians who left, or were driven from their homes during the 1948 Arab-Israeli War. More typical however, of the people I come in contact with is the man who works out in the gym of a community center. One day I overheard him talking to another person in the gym in support of the wall being constructed between Israel and the West Bank. When I interject, “Don’t you think that building a wall is somewhat reminiscent of the wall constructed around the Warsaw Ghetto during World War II?” He yells, “I can’t believe that a Jew would say such a thing! Are you a maniac? Do you want to harm Israel?”
Israel has not fared well in either the General Assembly or the Security Council of the United Nations, although Israel can depend on U.S. support in the latter. More than half of the resolutions dealing with the Arab-Israeli conflict have either criticized or opposed Israel. In the General Assembly, away from the veto power of the U.S., 429 resolutions relating to Israel have been passed, of which 321 condemned Israel (1967-1989). Resolutions passed relating to Israel involve what is called the “Pacific Settlement of Disputes,” and are not enforceable.
Figures showing the number of deaths resulting from the Second Intifada, the uprising against Israeli rule in the West Bank and Gaza Strip, showed 4,269 Palestinians killed between 2000 and 2006, while 1,017 Israelis were killed during the same period (Other estimates indicate that the number of Palestinian deaths have been far higher). These figures reflect the military superiority of the IDF and their backing, both politically and with military hardware, from the U.S.
In examining my own beliefs as a secular Jew I read Judaism in a Secular Age: A Anthology of Secular Humanistic Thought (1995). I wanted to assess the thinking of Jewish scholars, artists and writers over the past several hundred years to attempt to learn about early attitudes toward the establishment of a Jewish state and its relationship to the people of Palestine. What I found was a generally liberal view of live and let live in relationship to Palestinians who had coexisted with Jews in Palestine prior to the founding of Israel. Consistent with the Jewish secular tradition, I found openness to the high value placed on tolerance of the differences of others.
Over the past decade I have had two interactions with one of the most prominent Jewish organizations in the U.S., the Anti-Defamation League. In 2001 I went to the group after a neighbor threatened me by saying, “Hitler should have killed all the Jews,” because of his reaction to letters against war that were published in the local press. In 2007 I again approached the group after the paper The Truth At Last was left on my driveway. The “paper” contained both racist and anti-Semitic articles. In both cases my impression of the group was that their only concern was to collect data on anti-Semitic incidents.
I think writing this piece has been a kind of purging for my years of silence regarding Israeli treatment of Palestinians in the West Bank and Gaza Strip. As Israeli settlements expand in the West Bank and the blockade of the Gaza Strip continues, I can no longer remain silent.
Howard Lisnoff is an educator and freelance writer.
http://www.counterpunch.org/lisnoff08232008.html
The Long Silence
By HOWARD LISNOFF
For many years, now decades, I have been silent as a Jew about Israel’s relationship to, and treatment of, the Palestinian people and my place as an American Jew in that equation. Recently, I looked back at the Jews who I have known personally, as friends and acquaintances, and examined how their views about Palestinians and Israel have affected me and deepened my silence.
Following the lightning-fast victory of Israel over Egypt and Syria in the Yom Kippur War of 1973, and the resulting improvement in relations between Egypt and Israel after the Camp David Accords in 1978, Israel’s occupation of the West Bank and Gaza Strip appeared solidified. The seeming invincibility of Israel in both the 1967 and 1973 wars led, I believe, to a false perception of invincibility and self-righteousness among many Jews took hold. No longer would Jews be victims, as during the Holocaust, but they would meet any challenge and react with force whenever and wherever a threat appeared. It portrayed Jews as strong as reflected in Israel’s treatment of its neighboring states, and in particular in Israel’s treatment of Palestinians in the West Bank and Gaza Strip. The government of Israel was showing the world how rapid and lethal a response could be to attacks, such as suicide bombings, against the people of Israel. Jews would never again be viewed as weak and subject to vicious mass attacks and attempted genocide as symbolized by the Holocaust. The stereotype of Jews as weak would be destroyed forever! The development of a huge stockpile of nuclear weapons is perhaps a reflection of the interplay between these historic and psychological factors. Who is more impervious to an outside threat than a state that possesses the ultimate power of weapons of mass destruction?
Jews in the U.S. were expected to accept their roles as supporters of whatever policy Israel adopted. Those Jews who wavered would be open to the most vicious attacks. Perhaps no one better typifies this phenomenon than Professor Norman G. Finkelstein, who lost his bid for tenure at DePaul University in May 2008, after a campaign of vicious attacks aimed at silencing his scholarly criticism of Israel’s treatment of the Palestinian people and the industry that had grown up, primarily in the U.S., to profit from the horror of the Holocaust. His books, among them The Holocaust Industry (2000) and Beyond Chutzpah (2005) have drawn stinging attacks. Among his most vehement detractors is Professor Alan Dershowitz of Harvard.
The power of the Jewish lobby in the U.S. is partially explained by studying the monetary might behind that influence. The most powerful of these organizations is the American Israel Public Affairs Committee, which in the 2004 alone had a $33 million budget with a staff of 140.
James David reports in his article “A Passionate Attachment to Israel,” that the Israel lobby had contributed $41 million to congressional and presidential candidates over the past 54 years (2002). University of San Francisco Professor Stephen Zunes states, in the article “The Strategic Functions of U.S. Aid to Israel,” that “more than $1.5 billion in private U.S. funds…go to Israel annually.”
The emergence of the image of Israel as invincible, and any criticism of Israel by Jews viewed as self-loathing and self-hating, is paralleled by the growth of the religious right in the U.S., which sees Israel as part of the biblical prediction of the final war (Armageddon) fought in the Middle East as reflected in the New Testament Book of Revelation. Indeed, the religious Right and Jews are strange bedfellows! Amid all of the rhetoric of moral support Israel would continue to benefit greatly from the largess of the U.S., receiving one-third of total U.S. foreign aid despite the fact that per capita income among Israelis is among the highest in the world. Such is the payoff for occupying the position as acting as an agent for the projection of raw military might in the Middle East by the U.S.
The antithesis of the Jews who were invincible was the self-hating Jew, again, usually any Jew who dared to criticize Israel’s policies toward the people of the West Bank and Gaza Strip. This phenomenon is remarkable for its sheer chutzpah in that the highest values of Jewish life, both religious and secular, are the tolerance and acceptance of others, the universal value of life, the championing of the downtrodden, the belief in fair play, and the search for peace and justice. These values are at the very root of the Jewish peoples’ struggle for survival and irresistible search for knowledge over many millennia. The most bellicose attacks are reserved for Jews who are scholars, artists and intellectuals.
One footnote to the attempt to paint U.S. Jews as universally supporting Israel, and Israel’s handling of the Palestinian issue, was the incessant propaganda campaigns in the media to portray the Palestinian people and their leadership as both totally undemocratic and hostile to the many attempts brokered by Washington to bring peace to the region. In fact, the most recent attempt to create an autonomous Palestinian state in the West Bank and Gaza Strip, during the Clinton administration, wrongly attributed its failure to the leadership of the Palestinians, when the actual territory of a supposed Palestinian state never materialized as part of the negotiations. The so-called “Two State Solution” never existed on paper. Meanwhile, Jewish settlements in the West Bank grew, as does the wall to block off needed access of the people of the West Bank to Israel. Attacks and counterattacks continue.
Most Jews in the U.S. favor an independent Palestinian state in the West Bank and Gaza Strip. However, when questioned further by pollsters, they say that the prospect for peace between Israel and the Palestinian people is dim. I looked at opinion polls of Jews in the U.S. and Israel and their attitudes toward this issue.
Just prior to the Second Intifada, a poll conducted by the Los Angeles Times among Israelis and American Jews showed a minority (44%) of Israeli Jews support the two-state concept compared to 68% of Jews in the U.S. Polls conducted by the American Jewish Committee from 2001 through 2006 indicated that a relatively consistent 54% of American Jews favored the establishment of a Palestinian state.
I examined the relationships I’ve had with several friends and acquaintances to try to learn if the figures cited above are reflected in the opinions of real people. What I found was very disappointing!
I’ve known Robert for twenty-five years. He was a well-regarded and liberal professor. He had become a favorite of students during the Vietnam War because of his strong antiwar stance. I recall one student I had in class for an undergraduate course who had had Robert in a single course as an undergraduate. The student railed at Robert’s liberalism. Robert and I usually spoke several mornings following our workouts at a local community center. During one session I was shocked to hear Robert referring to Israel as “Eretz Israel,”meaning the biblical land of Palestine referred to in the Old Testament. He had always been critical of my criticism of Israeli policy toward Palestinians, but claiming the biblical homeland as solely Jewish was difficult to accept from a person who was otherwise thoughtful and articulate in discussing foreign affairs, and who had been a staunch antiwar spokesperson.
I’ve known Sheila and Paul since taking a graduate course Paul taught. Our families have socialized for years. They are both Orthodox Jews. Paul never served in the military, a position I had no problem with having been a resister during the Vietnam War. Years after our families had grown, and Sheila and Paul’s oldest son had begun college, I was dumbfounded to find a picture of Paul and his son in a local newspaper. They both wore uniforms of the Israel Defense Forces, and the caption beneath their picture stated that they were involved in a summer program to aid the IDF by performing work on an Israeli military base so that soldiers could be freed from those duties.
Rebecca and Philip have been friends for four years. Philip’s father served in the Israeli army during the 1948 Arab-Israeli War. Rebecca holds both an Israeli and U.S. passport, her family having immigrated to Israel after the Holocaust. Recently, while I was visiting with Philip, Rebecca arrived at their house, exiting her car with arms flailing. She could hardly contain her anger. “I just heard a report on National Public Radio. Those monsters are going to allow Al-Jazeera to be broadcast in Vermont. I can’t believe they’ll allow that propaganda on the radio!” What Rebecca was referring to was the decision of one media outlet in one area of Vermont to broadcast Al Jazeera, a news service in the Middle East that has produced a separate English-language counterpart in the U.S.
Philip seethes with anger and animosity toward Palestinians. I cannot bring the subject up when we speak. One wall of their home is covered with pictures and news stories of his father’s exploits during the 1948 war. During the Vietnam War Philip was deferred from the draft because of his employment in the defense industry.
I have known Richard and Diane most of my life. Both of their children have taken part in the March of the Living, a remembrance of the Holocaust and its victims that passes many World War II concentration camps. Both children have traveled in Israel as part of the Birthright Israel program that conducts free tours of Israel for Jews from other countries. Richard is the son of Holocaust survivors. His voice turns to a growl when discussing Palestinians. One of his often-repeated statements is, “You can’t trust an Arab.” It is impossible to engage him in a meaningful debate or discussion about a Palestinian state. I realize that there is a definite psychological impact being a close relative of a Holocaust survivor; however, what I can’t understand is the absence of compassion as a result of the terror that was done to Jews in Nazi Germany.
I also know liberal Jews. They are strongly in favor of the establishment of a Palestinian state; some also favor reparations for Palestinians who left, or were driven from their homes during the 1948 Arab-Israeli War. More typical however, of the people I come in contact with is the man who works out in the gym of a community center. One day I overheard him talking to another person in the gym in support of the wall being constructed between Israel and the West Bank. When I interject, “Don’t you think that building a wall is somewhat reminiscent of the wall constructed around the Warsaw Ghetto during World War II?” He yells, “I can’t believe that a Jew would say such a thing! Are you a maniac? Do you want to harm Israel?”
Israel has not fared well in either the General Assembly or the Security Council of the United Nations, although Israel can depend on U.S. support in the latter. More than half of the resolutions dealing with the Arab-Israeli conflict have either criticized or opposed Israel. In the General Assembly, away from the veto power of the U.S., 429 resolutions relating to Israel have been passed, of which 321 condemned Israel (1967-1989). Resolutions passed relating to Israel involve what is called the “Pacific Settlement of Disputes,” and are not enforceable.
Figures showing the number of deaths resulting from the Second Intifada, the uprising against Israeli rule in the West Bank and Gaza Strip, showed 4,269 Palestinians killed between 2000 and 2006, while 1,017 Israelis were killed during the same period (Other estimates indicate that the number of Palestinian deaths have been far higher). These figures reflect the military superiority of the IDF and their backing, both politically and with military hardware, from the U.S.
In examining my own beliefs as a secular Jew I read Judaism in a Secular Age: A Anthology of Secular Humanistic Thought (1995). I wanted to assess the thinking of Jewish scholars, artists and writers over the past several hundred years to attempt to learn about early attitudes toward the establishment of a Jewish state and its relationship to the people of Palestine. What I found was a generally liberal view of live and let live in relationship to Palestinians who had coexisted with Jews in Palestine prior to the founding of Israel. Consistent with the Jewish secular tradition, I found openness to the high value placed on tolerance of the differences of others.
Over the past decade I have had two interactions with one of the most prominent Jewish organizations in the U.S., the Anti-Defamation League. In 2001 I went to the group after a neighbor threatened me by saying, “Hitler should have killed all the Jews,” because of his reaction to letters against war that were published in the local press. In 2007 I again approached the group after the paper The Truth At Last was left on my driveway. The “paper” contained both racist and anti-Semitic articles. In both cases my impression of the group was that their only concern was to collect data on anti-Semitic incidents.
I think writing this piece has been a kind of purging for my years of silence regarding Israeli treatment of Palestinians in the West Bank and Gaza Strip. As Israeli settlements expand in the West Bank and the blockade of the Gaza Strip continues, I can no longer remain silent.
Howard Lisnoff is an educator and freelance writer.
http://www.counterpunch.org/lisnoff08232008.html
Fledgling Settlements Grow by Stealth Israeli Outposts Seal Death of Palestinian State
Fledgling Settlements Grow by Stealth
Israeli Outposts Seal Death of Palestinian State
By JONATHAN COOK
Migron, West Bank
Yehudit Genud hardly feels she is on the frontier of Israel’s settlement project, although the huddle of mobile homes on a wind-swept West Bank hilltop she calls home is controversial even by Israeli standards.
Despite the size and isolation of Migron, a settlement of about 45 religious families on a ridge next to the Palestinian city of Ramallah, Mrs Genud’s job as a social worker in West Jerusalem is a 25-minute drive away on a well-paved road.
Mrs Genud, 28, pregnant with her first child, points out that Migron has parks, children’s playgrounds, a kindergarten, a daycare centre and a synagogue, all paid for by the government -- even if the buildings are enclosed by a razor-wire fence, and her husband, Roni, has to put in overtime as the settlement’s security guard.
From her trailer, she also has panoramic views not only of Ramallah but of the many communities hugging the slopes that gently fall away to the Jordan Valley.
Long-established Palestinian villages are instantly identifiable by their homes’ flat roofs and the prominence of the tall minarets of the local mosques. Interspersed among them, however, are a growing number of much newer, fortified communities of luxury villas topped by distinctive red-tiled roofs.
These are the Jewish settlements that now form an almost complete ring around Palestinian East Jerusalem, cutting it off from the rest of the West Bank and destroying any hope that the city will one day become the capital of a Palestinian state.
“These settlements are supposed to be the nail in the coffin of any future peace agreement with the Palestinians,” said Dror Etkes, a veteran observer of the settlements who works for the Israeli human rights group Yesh Din. “Their purpose is to make a Palestinian state unviable.”
The majority of the half a million settlers in the West Bank and East Jerusalem, according to Mr Etkes, are “economic opportunists”, drawn to life in the occupied territories less by ideological or religious convictions than economic incentives. The homes, municipal services and schools there are heavily subsidised by the government.
In addition, the settlements -- though illegal under international law -- are integrated into Israel through a sophisticated system of roads that make it easy for the settlers to forget they are in occupied territory surrounded by Palestinians.
But Migron, with its supposed links to the Biblical site where King Saul based himself during his fight against the Philistines, attracts a different kind of inhabitant.
“This place is holy to the Jewish people and we have a duty to be here,” Mrs Genud said. “The whole land of Israel belongs to us and we should not be afraid to live wherever we want to. The Arabs must accept that.”
Unlike the 150 or so official settlements dotted across the West Bank, Migron is an example of what the Israeli government refers to as an “illegal outpost”, often an unauthorised outgrowth from one of the main settlements. Today there are more than 100 such outposts, housing several thousand extremist settlers.
Mrs Genud, however, argues that Israel’s refusal to turn Migron into an authorised settlement, as it has done with many other established outposts, reflects pressure from Washington.
Back in 2003, Israel committed itself to dismantling the more recent outposts under the terms of the Road Map, a US-sponsored plan for reviving the peace process and creating a Palestinian state. Two years later the cabinet approved the removal of 24 outposts, although barely any progress has been made on dismantling them. Israel confirmed its pledge again in January when George W Bush, the US president, visited.
Established six years ago by a group from the nearby settlement of Ofra, Migron is now the largest of the outposts. Two residents -- Itai Halevi, the community’s rabbi, and Itai Harel, the son of Israel Harel, a well-known settler leader -- have demonstrated their confidence in Migron’s future by each building permanent homes.
“We are connected to the water grid, we have phone lines from the national company Bezeq, we have been hooked up by the electricity company and have street lighting,” Mrs Genud said. “We also have a kindergarten paid for by the state and a group of soldiers stationed here to protect us. How can we be ‘illegal’?”
Daniella Wiess, a leader of the most extreme wing of the settlers, agreed. Like the inhabitants of Migron, she said the outpost was first suggested by Ariel Sharon when he was housing minister in the 1990s. It was also among the first outposts to be set up after he became prime minister in 2002.
An official report published in 2005 found that more than $4 million was invested in Migron in its first years, with the money channelled through at least six different ministries.
There is good reason for official complicity in such outposts as Migron. “This place is very strategic,” Mrs Genud said. It looks down on Route 60, once the main road serving Palestinians between Jerusalem and Jenin in the northern West Bank.
Today, even those Palestinians who can get a permit to travel the road find regular sections obstructed by checkpoints or closed for the protection of neighbouring settlements.
“We can also see all the Arabs from here and keep an eye on what they are doing,” she said referring to her Palestinian neighbours. “And in addition, we can see the other settlements and check on their safety.”
But despite its significance to the settlement drive, Migron is under threat. Last week, the Israeli government agreed that the outpost must be destroyed, although it was tight-lipped about when. Few are expecting such a reversal to happen soon. The government’s decision was largely foisted upon it by a series of unforeseen events.
In 2006, several West Bank Palestinians, backed by Israeli peace groups, petitioned Israel’s supreme court claiming that Migron had been built on their private land.
Over the past four decades, Israel has declared nearly two-thirds of the West Bank as “state land”, seizing it on a variety of pretexts and transferring much of it to the jurisdiction of settler councils. According to the figures of the Israeli group Peace Now, the settlers are in direct control of more than 40 per cent of the West Bank.
Land belonging to Palestinians who hold the title deeds, however, has been harder to confiscate. As a result, a dubious industry of front companies both inside Israel and in the occupied territories has been spawned to transfer private Palestinian land to the settlers.
One such company appears to be behind the sale of the land on which Migron was built. A police investigation has revealed that one of the Palestinian owners, Abdel Latif Hassan Sumarin, signed over his power of attorney to an Israeli real estate company in 2004, even though he died in the United States in 1961.
During the court hearings, Israel has been dragging its feet. According to its own figures, there are a dozen outposts built entirely or partially on private Palestinian land -- and the true number may be higher still.
The settlers believe that the decision to destroy Migron, if carried out, would set a dangerous precedent. “They are very afraid that this will become simply the first of many settlements to fall,” Mr Etkes said.
Last week, faced with another hearing before the court, the government finally conceded on Migron -- but only after striking a deal with the main settlement lobby group, the Yesha council. Israel promised that the outpost would go, but not before new homes had been built for Migron’s settlers and they had been relocated en masse to a newly created -- and authorised -- settlement. According to reports in the local media, Migron’s families may be moved only a few hundred metres from their current location to an area of the West Bank designated as “state land”.
“The settlers know that preparation of an alternative site could take years,” said Yariv Oppenheimer, the head of Peace Now, fearful that this was simply a delaying tactic.
Others believe that relocating Migron may, in fact, set back the struggle against the settlements. There is already talk of moving the settlers to the jurisdiction of a neighbouring settlement, Adam.
“The danger is that Migron will be destroyed only to be resurrected in ‘legalised’ form by the government as a new settlement close by Adam,” Mr Etkes said.
Such a suspicion is confirmed by the main settler council, Yesha, which issued a statement last week: “We believe it is possible to find a solution for the outposts that will strengthen the settlements.”
Nonetheless, the residents of Migron, backed by hardline settler groups, are talking and acting tough for the time being. In a show of defiance, they moved another mobile home into the outpost last week. For several months the residents have also been erecting a large stone building close by the outpost that will become a winery.
The settlers’ rabbinical council denounced the threatened loss of the outpost, as did settler leader Gershon Masika, who warned of a bloody confrontation to save it.
Mrs Genud is not sure what she will do if the crunch comes and she has to give up her home and life in Migron. “All of this land is Jewish,” she said. “It would be a big mistake if we give up what is rightfully ours.”
Jonathan Cook is a writer and journalist based in Nazareth, Israel. His latest books are “Israel and the Clash of Civilisations: Iraq, Iran and the Plan to Remake the Middle East” (Pluto Press) and “Disappearing Palestine: Israel's Experiments in Human Despair” (Zed Books). His website is www.jkcook.net.
This article originally appeared in The National , published in Abu Dhabi.
http://www.counterpunch.org/cook08252008.html
Israeli Outposts Seal Death of Palestinian State
By JONATHAN COOK
Migron, West Bank
Yehudit Genud hardly feels she is on the frontier of Israel’s settlement project, although the huddle of mobile homes on a wind-swept West Bank hilltop she calls home is controversial even by Israeli standards.
Despite the size and isolation of Migron, a settlement of about 45 religious families on a ridge next to the Palestinian city of Ramallah, Mrs Genud’s job as a social worker in West Jerusalem is a 25-minute drive away on a well-paved road.
Mrs Genud, 28, pregnant with her first child, points out that Migron has parks, children’s playgrounds, a kindergarten, a daycare centre and a synagogue, all paid for by the government -- even if the buildings are enclosed by a razor-wire fence, and her husband, Roni, has to put in overtime as the settlement’s security guard.
From her trailer, she also has panoramic views not only of Ramallah but of the many communities hugging the slopes that gently fall away to the Jordan Valley.
Long-established Palestinian villages are instantly identifiable by their homes’ flat roofs and the prominence of the tall minarets of the local mosques. Interspersed among them, however, are a growing number of much newer, fortified communities of luxury villas topped by distinctive red-tiled roofs.
These are the Jewish settlements that now form an almost complete ring around Palestinian East Jerusalem, cutting it off from the rest of the West Bank and destroying any hope that the city will one day become the capital of a Palestinian state.
“These settlements are supposed to be the nail in the coffin of any future peace agreement with the Palestinians,” said Dror Etkes, a veteran observer of the settlements who works for the Israeli human rights group Yesh Din. “Their purpose is to make a Palestinian state unviable.”
The majority of the half a million settlers in the West Bank and East Jerusalem, according to Mr Etkes, are “economic opportunists”, drawn to life in the occupied territories less by ideological or religious convictions than economic incentives. The homes, municipal services and schools there are heavily subsidised by the government.
In addition, the settlements -- though illegal under international law -- are integrated into Israel through a sophisticated system of roads that make it easy for the settlers to forget they are in occupied territory surrounded by Palestinians.
But Migron, with its supposed links to the Biblical site where King Saul based himself during his fight against the Philistines, attracts a different kind of inhabitant.
“This place is holy to the Jewish people and we have a duty to be here,” Mrs Genud said. “The whole land of Israel belongs to us and we should not be afraid to live wherever we want to. The Arabs must accept that.”
Unlike the 150 or so official settlements dotted across the West Bank, Migron is an example of what the Israeli government refers to as an “illegal outpost”, often an unauthorised outgrowth from one of the main settlements. Today there are more than 100 such outposts, housing several thousand extremist settlers.
Mrs Genud, however, argues that Israel’s refusal to turn Migron into an authorised settlement, as it has done with many other established outposts, reflects pressure from Washington.
Back in 2003, Israel committed itself to dismantling the more recent outposts under the terms of the Road Map, a US-sponsored plan for reviving the peace process and creating a Palestinian state. Two years later the cabinet approved the removal of 24 outposts, although barely any progress has been made on dismantling them. Israel confirmed its pledge again in January when George W Bush, the US president, visited.
Established six years ago by a group from the nearby settlement of Ofra, Migron is now the largest of the outposts. Two residents -- Itai Halevi, the community’s rabbi, and Itai Harel, the son of Israel Harel, a well-known settler leader -- have demonstrated their confidence in Migron’s future by each building permanent homes.
“We are connected to the water grid, we have phone lines from the national company Bezeq, we have been hooked up by the electricity company and have street lighting,” Mrs Genud said. “We also have a kindergarten paid for by the state and a group of soldiers stationed here to protect us. How can we be ‘illegal’?”
Daniella Wiess, a leader of the most extreme wing of the settlers, agreed. Like the inhabitants of Migron, she said the outpost was first suggested by Ariel Sharon when he was housing minister in the 1990s. It was also among the first outposts to be set up after he became prime minister in 2002.
An official report published in 2005 found that more than $4 million was invested in Migron in its first years, with the money channelled through at least six different ministries.
There is good reason for official complicity in such outposts as Migron. “This place is very strategic,” Mrs Genud said. It looks down on Route 60, once the main road serving Palestinians between Jerusalem and Jenin in the northern West Bank.
Today, even those Palestinians who can get a permit to travel the road find regular sections obstructed by checkpoints or closed for the protection of neighbouring settlements.
“We can also see all the Arabs from here and keep an eye on what they are doing,” she said referring to her Palestinian neighbours. “And in addition, we can see the other settlements and check on their safety.”
But despite its significance to the settlement drive, Migron is under threat. Last week, the Israeli government agreed that the outpost must be destroyed, although it was tight-lipped about when. Few are expecting such a reversal to happen soon. The government’s decision was largely foisted upon it by a series of unforeseen events.
In 2006, several West Bank Palestinians, backed by Israeli peace groups, petitioned Israel’s supreme court claiming that Migron had been built on their private land.
Over the past four decades, Israel has declared nearly two-thirds of the West Bank as “state land”, seizing it on a variety of pretexts and transferring much of it to the jurisdiction of settler councils. According to the figures of the Israeli group Peace Now, the settlers are in direct control of more than 40 per cent of the West Bank.
Land belonging to Palestinians who hold the title deeds, however, has been harder to confiscate. As a result, a dubious industry of front companies both inside Israel and in the occupied territories has been spawned to transfer private Palestinian land to the settlers.
One such company appears to be behind the sale of the land on which Migron was built. A police investigation has revealed that one of the Palestinian owners, Abdel Latif Hassan Sumarin, signed over his power of attorney to an Israeli real estate company in 2004, even though he died in the United States in 1961.
During the court hearings, Israel has been dragging its feet. According to its own figures, there are a dozen outposts built entirely or partially on private Palestinian land -- and the true number may be higher still.
The settlers believe that the decision to destroy Migron, if carried out, would set a dangerous precedent. “They are very afraid that this will become simply the first of many settlements to fall,” Mr Etkes said.
Last week, faced with another hearing before the court, the government finally conceded on Migron -- but only after striking a deal with the main settlement lobby group, the Yesha council. Israel promised that the outpost would go, but not before new homes had been built for Migron’s settlers and they had been relocated en masse to a newly created -- and authorised -- settlement. According to reports in the local media, Migron’s families may be moved only a few hundred metres from their current location to an area of the West Bank designated as “state land”.
“The settlers know that preparation of an alternative site could take years,” said Yariv Oppenheimer, the head of Peace Now, fearful that this was simply a delaying tactic.
Others believe that relocating Migron may, in fact, set back the struggle against the settlements. There is already talk of moving the settlers to the jurisdiction of a neighbouring settlement, Adam.
“The danger is that Migron will be destroyed only to be resurrected in ‘legalised’ form by the government as a new settlement close by Adam,” Mr Etkes said.
Such a suspicion is confirmed by the main settler council, Yesha, which issued a statement last week: “We believe it is possible to find a solution for the outposts that will strengthen the settlements.”
Nonetheless, the residents of Migron, backed by hardline settler groups, are talking and acting tough for the time being. In a show of defiance, they moved another mobile home into the outpost last week. For several months the residents have also been erecting a large stone building close by the outpost that will become a winery.
The settlers’ rabbinical council denounced the threatened loss of the outpost, as did settler leader Gershon Masika, who warned of a bloody confrontation to save it.
Mrs Genud is not sure what she will do if the crunch comes and she has to give up her home and life in Migron. “All of this land is Jewish,” she said. “It would be a big mistake if we give up what is rightfully ours.”
Jonathan Cook is a writer and journalist based in Nazareth, Israel. His latest books are “Israel and the Clash of Civilisations: Iraq, Iran and the Plan to Remake the Middle East” (Pluto Press) and “Disappearing Palestine: Israel's Experiments in Human Despair” (Zed Books). His website is www.jkcook.net.
This article originally appeared in The National , published in Abu Dhabi.
http://www.counterpunch.org/cook08252008.html
Sunday, August 24, 2008
Paula R. Newberg: Pakistan, again
Paula R. Newberg: Pakistan, again
Yale Global Online, 21 August 2008
Before the ink was dry on President Pervez Musharraf's resignation letter, and before Pakistanis could celebrate the end of his nine-year rule, remorse filled the air. Washington and New Delhi, both crucial to Pakistan's stability, quickly lamented the end of one-stop diplomacy, prefacing their official statements with "let's wait and see what democracy brings." Their caution has some merit; after all, Islamabad's fractious politics is often the subject of anxious caricature, at home and abroad. But mourning the end of an illegitimate regime betrays a wearied outlook in an insecure environment already dominated by outsiders. With strife threatening Pakistan's borders and its economy limping, the danger is not that India and the US have lost a comfortable relationship with Musharraf, but that nostalgia will blind them to the opportunities that political change might bring.
Self-fulfilling prophecy is a familiar handmaiden to failed policies in this corner of Asia. Although the false promise of military rule has all too frequently disappointed Pakistanis and their patrons, pliant donors have often invested the military with the attributes they want and hope to see. After 2001, Musharraf was expediently billed as the savior who could save the economy, align Pakistan with the West, stop terrorism, and rid the country of tainted politics. This was myth masquerading as fact in a place where everything, including nuclear technology, was for sale.
By sidestepping the critical relationships that bind citizens to their state -- the very politics Musharraf eschewed so contemptuously – Pakistan lost its bearings. Costumed variously as the tone-deaf general who led the state and the chief executive who ran the army, Musharraf led Pakistan through rapid cycles of cross-border enmity, institutional degradation, political corruption and civil strife that inevitably eluded the "reconciliation" he now claims to have sought.
The narrative of the past nine years echoed those of earlier eras: neighborhood wars and domestic inequities gave sanction to army rule, thwarting civilian politicians whose clumsy attempts at statecraft led to the army's return. Sixty years after independence, Pakistan's tribes and sects still crave a credible accommodation with the state over longstanding grievances and inequities, its politicians still search for meaningful participation, and its leaders seek a place in the region and world.
These needs and intentions -- conflicting, overlapping, firm and fretful – define the state more acutely than its often violated constitution. The dominant story is therefore about the unfinished business of citizenship, about who governs whom, and how and why, and what citizens can expected from their state. The troubling arena of domestic politics is also where Pakistan collides with its neighbors, allies, patrons, and the broader interests of global security.
Pakistan has long viewed its eastern and western borders as front lines for its domestic politics, transposing the failures of its electoral politics into campaigns to achieve strategic advantage. Nowhere is this clearer than in the lightly governed, highly corrupted western border region, where global ambitions encounter local necessity. Here, an anti-terror campaign aims to stop the kinds of extremism that make their ways westward – Al Qaeda cells that seek to undermine Afghanistan and Pakistan, and redesign global mores. Where the West sees criminals, however, Pakistan sees its own citizens, renegade and under-represented though they may be -- staunch sectarians exiting the international state system, and equally stalwart secular nationalists trying to enter it, now caught up in retrograde militancy when their own provincial allegiances fail them.
The conditions of borderland battle, however, have set tribes and militants one other and everyone else: the Pakistan army, NATO and the United States on one side, exgtremist sympathizers within the Pakistan military and intelligence establishments on another, and now, separately, local residents who decry militancy, sectarianism and the incapacity of successively weak Pakistan governments to contain, mitigate and dispell these explosive grievances. Filled with victims of violence and hundreds of thousands of displaced persons, the borderlands have spun out of control partly because Pakistan can't decide whom to please – the Americans fighting Al Qaeda, its own army reluctant to fight other Pakistanis, a jumble of insurgents who are nonetheless citizens in name if not deed – and how best to understand its own interests. To Afghanistan and the West, however, split attention is seen as weakness and more likely, deception.
Similar failures dog Pakistan's dealings with India. Although Musharraf is retrospectively credited by New Delhi with stabilizing Indo-Pakistani relations, his own intelligence forces have been implicated in attacks in India, on Indian civilians working in Afghanistan, a bombing in India's Kabul Embassy, and of course, the Kashmir insurgency. Pakistan reads Kashmir's unrest through the lenses of its owninstabilities, seeing in Hindu-Muslim tensions the same incomplete promises of citizenship that color Pakistani society. It's an accurate appraisal, unseen ironies notwithstanding. But when it leads to interference in Kashmir or in India – and surreptitiously justifies using foreign military assistance to seek an elusive parity with India's military rather than fight terror on its western border – this analysis embraces hostility and duplicity.
Pakistan can afford neither, but it needs more than Musharraf's departure to alter its foreign policy fortunes. The impetus for that change, on the periphery of its governance, offers a ray of hope for the future.
It is rare for citizens to speak truth to power and rarer to win, but Pakistan's civil society overturned Musharraf's abuse of civil liberties, dislodged the president and set the tone and content – if not a sure path to success -- for Pakistan's parliament and parties. Other groups have now followed, including villagers who have chased militants from their homes in the Frontier. Politicians from minority provinces are planning to contest for the presidency. Although the weak ruling coalition may not meet the ethical or efficacy standard set by civil society, disagreements among the major political parties are centered on fundamental policy issues – including the role of the judiciary and the constitution -- and not just positions and favor. Their public disputes are among the most transparent political discussions to which voters have been privy in a very long time.
These domestic issues critically affect the state's fortunes. At least one coalition member, the Awami National Party, recognizes the delicate relationships between citizen rights and border security, and came to office with plans to deal with militants sensitively and responsibly. If this pattern can be carried over to more substantial dealing with Afghanistan and India, and if the desire for peace can lead public opinion and the army toward a more liberal stance on Kashmir, then this fragile government might – unexpectedly, counter-intuitively, no doubt inelegantly – provide the region an opportunity to recast its relationships.
For this to happen, Pakistan will finally have to recognize that cross-border belligerence, on its east and west, cannot overcome its own inequality and poor governance. That is a hard lesson to learn, and one that will stick only if India, Afghanistan and the US take up the challenges it implies: to take a long, serious view of Pakistan's governance and the possibilities it might one day offer the region. This means helping Pakistan to democratize Musharraf's personalized command structure and the electoral system he designed to thwart popular politics, working with parliamentarians with whom they may not agree, and ensuring that Pakistan's government can recognize and represent its own interests, even when they may diverge from their allies and neighbors.
The betting in Pakistan is that the coalition won't last long enough to tackle the economy, let alone the broad problems of disaffection and militancy. That may be. But wait and see won't work for long: for everyone's sake, Pakistan's fledgling government needs help now.
Yale Global Online, 21 August 2008
Before the ink was dry on President Pervez Musharraf's resignation letter, and before Pakistanis could celebrate the end of his nine-year rule, remorse filled the air. Washington and New Delhi, both crucial to Pakistan's stability, quickly lamented the end of one-stop diplomacy, prefacing their official statements with "let's wait and see what democracy brings." Their caution has some merit; after all, Islamabad's fractious politics is often the subject of anxious caricature, at home and abroad. But mourning the end of an illegitimate regime betrays a wearied outlook in an insecure environment already dominated by outsiders. With strife threatening Pakistan's borders and its economy limping, the danger is not that India and the US have lost a comfortable relationship with Musharraf, but that nostalgia will blind them to the opportunities that political change might bring.
Self-fulfilling prophecy is a familiar handmaiden to failed policies in this corner of Asia. Although the false promise of military rule has all too frequently disappointed Pakistanis and their patrons, pliant donors have often invested the military with the attributes they want and hope to see. After 2001, Musharraf was expediently billed as the savior who could save the economy, align Pakistan with the West, stop terrorism, and rid the country of tainted politics. This was myth masquerading as fact in a place where everything, including nuclear technology, was for sale.
By sidestepping the critical relationships that bind citizens to their state -- the very politics Musharraf eschewed so contemptuously – Pakistan lost its bearings. Costumed variously as the tone-deaf general who led the state and the chief executive who ran the army, Musharraf led Pakistan through rapid cycles of cross-border enmity, institutional degradation, political corruption and civil strife that inevitably eluded the "reconciliation" he now claims to have sought.
The narrative of the past nine years echoed those of earlier eras: neighborhood wars and domestic inequities gave sanction to army rule, thwarting civilian politicians whose clumsy attempts at statecraft led to the army's return. Sixty years after independence, Pakistan's tribes and sects still crave a credible accommodation with the state over longstanding grievances and inequities, its politicians still search for meaningful participation, and its leaders seek a place in the region and world.
These needs and intentions -- conflicting, overlapping, firm and fretful – define the state more acutely than its often violated constitution. The dominant story is therefore about the unfinished business of citizenship, about who governs whom, and how and why, and what citizens can expected from their state. The troubling arena of domestic politics is also where Pakistan collides with its neighbors, allies, patrons, and the broader interests of global security.
Pakistan has long viewed its eastern and western borders as front lines for its domestic politics, transposing the failures of its electoral politics into campaigns to achieve strategic advantage. Nowhere is this clearer than in the lightly governed, highly corrupted western border region, where global ambitions encounter local necessity. Here, an anti-terror campaign aims to stop the kinds of extremism that make their ways westward – Al Qaeda cells that seek to undermine Afghanistan and Pakistan, and redesign global mores. Where the West sees criminals, however, Pakistan sees its own citizens, renegade and under-represented though they may be -- staunch sectarians exiting the international state system, and equally stalwart secular nationalists trying to enter it, now caught up in retrograde militancy when their own provincial allegiances fail them.
The conditions of borderland battle, however, have set tribes and militants one other and everyone else: the Pakistan army, NATO and the United States on one side, exgtremist sympathizers within the Pakistan military and intelligence establishments on another, and now, separately, local residents who decry militancy, sectarianism and the incapacity of successively weak Pakistan governments to contain, mitigate and dispell these explosive grievances. Filled with victims of violence and hundreds of thousands of displaced persons, the borderlands have spun out of control partly because Pakistan can't decide whom to please – the Americans fighting Al Qaeda, its own army reluctant to fight other Pakistanis, a jumble of insurgents who are nonetheless citizens in name if not deed – and how best to understand its own interests. To Afghanistan and the West, however, split attention is seen as weakness and more likely, deception.
Similar failures dog Pakistan's dealings with India. Although Musharraf is retrospectively credited by New Delhi with stabilizing Indo-Pakistani relations, his own intelligence forces have been implicated in attacks in India, on Indian civilians working in Afghanistan, a bombing in India's Kabul Embassy, and of course, the Kashmir insurgency. Pakistan reads Kashmir's unrest through the lenses of its owninstabilities, seeing in Hindu-Muslim tensions the same incomplete promises of citizenship that color Pakistani society. It's an accurate appraisal, unseen ironies notwithstanding. But when it leads to interference in Kashmir or in India – and surreptitiously justifies using foreign military assistance to seek an elusive parity with India's military rather than fight terror on its western border – this analysis embraces hostility and duplicity.
Pakistan can afford neither, but it needs more than Musharraf's departure to alter its foreign policy fortunes. The impetus for that change, on the periphery of its governance, offers a ray of hope for the future.
It is rare for citizens to speak truth to power and rarer to win, but Pakistan's civil society overturned Musharraf's abuse of civil liberties, dislodged the president and set the tone and content – if not a sure path to success -- for Pakistan's parliament and parties. Other groups have now followed, including villagers who have chased militants from their homes in the Frontier. Politicians from minority provinces are planning to contest for the presidency. Although the weak ruling coalition may not meet the ethical or efficacy standard set by civil society, disagreements among the major political parties are centered on fundamental policy issues – including the role of the judiciary and the constitution -- and not just positions and favor. Their public disputes are among the most transparent political discussions to which voters have been privy in a very long time.
These domestic issues critically affect the state's fortunes. At least one coalition member, the Awami National Party, recognizes the delicate relationships between citizen rights and border security, and came to office with plans to deal with militants sensitively and responsibly. If this pattern can be carried over to more substantial dealing with Afghanistan and India, and if the desire for peace can lead public opinion and the army toward a more liberal stance on Kashmir, then this fragile government might – unexpectedly, counter-intuitively, no doubt inelegantly – provide the region an opportunity to recast its relationships.
For this to happen, Pakistan will finally have to recognize that cross-border belligerence, on its east and west, cannot overcome its own inequality and poor governance. That is a hard lesson to learn, and one that will stick only if India, Afghanistan and the US take up the challenges it implies: to take a long, serious view of Pakistan's governance and the possibilities it might one day offer the region. This means helping Pakistan to democratize Musharraf's personalized command structure and the electoral system he designed to thwart popular politics, working with parliamentarians with whom they may not agree, and ensuring that Pakistan's government can recognize and represent its own interests, even when they may diverge from their allies and neighbors.
The betting in Pakistan is that the coalition won't last long enough to tackle the economy, let alone the broad problems of disaffection and militancy. That may be. But wait and see won't work for long: for everyone's sake, Pakistan's fledgling government needs help now.
A PATH OUT OF THE DESERT A Grand Strategy for America in the Middle East By Kenneth M. Pollack
New York Times book review -- Sunday, 24 August 2008
A PATH OUT OF THE DESERT
A Grand Strategy for America in the Middle East
By Kenneth M. Pollack
(Reviewed by Max Rodenbeck, Middle East correspondent for The Economist)
Back in 2002, I ran into one of the Brookings Institution's top Middle East hands at the inaugural session of the United States-Islamic World Forum, a now annual event that Brookings sponsors jointly with the government of Qatar. "How's it going?" I asked, expecting to hear about clashing misperceptions across the cultural divide. "Good," came the gruff reply. "They're beginning to realize that they are the problem."
Reading this big, ambitious book by Kenneth M. Pollack, who is the head of research at Brookings's Saban Center for Middle East Policy, it is hard not to wish that what he refers to as Washington's "policy community" would more often realize that they are the problem. It would have been nice, for instance, had Pollack himself thought harder before arguing, in scholarly papers and his widely read 2002 book, "The Threatening Storm," that America had "no choice" but to invade Iraq. That ostensibly sober appraisal, coming from a former C.I.A. analyst, Clinton official and self-described liberal, arguably added more gravitas to the shrill cries for war than any other voice.
Pollack has long since confessed to having been wrong about Iraq. "A Path Out of the Desert" includes other mea culpas. "There has been far too little asking the people of the region themselves what they thought and what they wanted," he ruminates at one point, though the book offers slim evidence of his having pursued this advice. While the administration that Pollack served gets some light wrist-Å]slapping, it is the following eight years of Bush policy that he calls "breathtakingly arrogant, ignorant and reckless."
Many of Pollack's other judgments are as sound as is this criticism of the Bush administration. Since most of the post-cold-war world has stabilized, democratized and prospered, it is probably correct to suggest, as he does, that America should commit itself to helping the messy Middle East come up to par.
His proposal of a Grand Strategy to achieve this, which is to say a generation-long effort of a scale and intensity similar to America's engagement with Europe after World War II, is challenging but not irrational, given the world's growing dependency on Middle Eastern oil. And Pollack is right to say that violence and tyranny are not hard-wired into Islam, and to conclude that the threat of Islamist terror has been overblown. He is also right that internal unrest in Middle Eastern states is quite likely to be a strategic threat, and that this danger will not pass until they manage to produce better schools, more opportunities for youth, wider social justice and more inclusive, accountable government. He is correct, too, in describing the region's current regimes as singularly awful, and even in admitting that George Bush showed unwonted acuity when he called for draining the swamps of extremism by promoting reform.
The argument weakens when Pollack tries to prescribe just what America can do to cure the Middle East. Much of his suggested treatment consists of vague outlines and policy homilies. Out of nearly 500 pages, very few describe concrete measures for how to achieve such things as spreading democracy or upgrading education in the face of governments that mistrust reform and peoples that mistrust America. Among other things, he proposes to increase military aid to friendly regimes. This, he says, can create a kind of golden leash that makes governments more compliant to American wishes.
But surely, one can't help gasping, the last thing more guns will bring is political reform. And surely, those Arabs are not so dumb that they don't read this stuff. Elsewhere, he suggests tying aid to Egypt to the lifting of the country's notorious emergency law. Perhaps he is unaware that Congress has already tried conditioning aid on reform, or that the Egyptians, who have grown skilled at circumventing tiresome Western admonishments, have already amended their constitution to incorporate "emergency" strictures under ordinary law. One is left with the impression that should a Democratic administration hire Pollack to try his Grand Strategy, he might soon be reduced to throwing "spaghetti against the wall" to "see if it sticks," as he quotes a rueful Bush official describing that team's effort to reform the Middle East.
Beyond the reform promotion agenda, which is the book's main thrust, Pollack is surprisingly reticent about the most pressing current issues, namely how to get out of Iraq and what to do about Iran (though in recent op-ed essays he has made it clear that he worries about pulling out of Iraq too quickly). In fact, he simply sketches well-known policy options without passing judgment. And, sadly, this thick book's thinness in ideas is not its only flaw.
Pollack raises loud alarms, for instance, over the Middle East's high rates of population growth, urbanization and joblessness. Actually, these are decades-old trends. He fails to note that population growth rates have plunged in recent years. Some scholars even assert that this phase of "demographic transition," in which there is a relatively high ratio of working-age people to young or old dependents, should accelerate the region's economic growth just as it did America's in the late 19th century, and East Asia's more recently.
Pollack commits errors that, despite his years in the corridors of power and some 70 pages of footnotes, betray a lack of genuine intimacy with his subject. It is not true, as he asserts, that education in the Persian Gulf emirates is largely private. Nor is it true, any longer, that virtually the only foreign investment in Arab countries goes toward pumping more oil: real estate, tourism, banking, telecoms and even heavy industry now lure investors, too.
It is an outdated generalization to state that "Arab bureaucracies . . . create interminable delays with customs regulations, inspections and other red tape." Try telling that to Dubai Ports World, a company that runs 45 container terminals in 29 countries, or to the operators of the giant, state-of-the-art transshipment hubs in Egypt and Morocco that are set to dominate Mediterranean trade. It is even more misleading to assert that "the Arab regimes have implicitly or explicitly backed a range of terrorist groups." Pray, which Arab governments does he mean, and which groups is he talking about?
Pollack also shows a shaky grasp of history. We know that the Ottoman Empire declined and fell, but to have endured for five centuries, and for half those as the biggest state in Europe, the Mediterranean and the Middle East, does not make the Ottomans "unsuccessful." Elsewhere he tells us sagely that "over time, the stagnation of the Arab economies has created considerable poverty," as if there were no poor Arabs before, and as if one of the most startling modern examples of mass impoverishment was not the Clinton-era sanctions on Iraq, which destroyed its middle class and set the stage for postwar chaos.
America gets off rather lightly in genÅ]eral, in Pollack's account, compared with the sad Arabs whom we must help to be like us. We are told, for instance, that the United States only grudgingly became involved in the grisly Iran-Iraq war of the 1980s when it nobly undertook to reflag oil tankers in order to protect the flow of oil. No mention here of Donald Rumsfeld's back-slapping with Saddam Hussein or the supply of satellite intelligence to him or the exchange of American weapons to Iran for hostages — all of which helped prolong the slaughter.
Pollack seems oddly unaware of history's motivating forces. To assert that "what triggers revolutions, civil wars and other internal unrest is psychological factors, particularly feelings of extreme despair," is plain silly. The Boston Tea Party could not have been prevented by Prozac. Similarly, he ascribes feelings to broad categories of Middle Easterners, devoid of any context or explanation. They are "angry populations" who suffer "inchoate frustration" and "a pathological hatred of the status quo." We repeatedly hear of "Arab rage at Israel" and "Arab venom for Israel." Nowhere is there a hint that such attitudes might bear some relation to the plight of the Palestinians, the agony of military defeat or the humiliation of life under Israeli occupation.
In fact, the book's most salient distortions stem from Pollack's protectiveness toward Israel. He makes some absurdly cockeyed assertions, like, "America's support for Israel over the years has even been a critical element in winning and securing Arab allies." He offers misleading false alternatives, declaring, for instance, that there is "absolutely no reason to believe that ending American support for Israel would somehow eliminate" the risk of Islamist zealots taking power and cutting oil exports. How about making aid to Israel, and not just to Arabs, conditional, or aiming at mitigating, rather than eliminating, such risks? Pollack makes a peculiarly acrobatic effort to prove that hostility to Israel is not a prime motivating factor behind militant jihadism, repeating this assertion no fewer than four times in two paragraphs. Has he not bothered to listen to Osama bin Laden's addresses to the American people, where he said that what converted him from dreamer to murderous activist was Israeli bombs falling on Beirut in 1982?
Even more disingenuously, Pollack repeats the myth that Al Qaeda has never attacked Israel. One might argue that its bombings of synagogues in Djerba and Istanbul, and against Jewish targets in Casablanca, in which dozens of people died, were anti-Semitic rather than anti-Israeli. But the November 2002 attacks in Kenya were aimed specifically at Israeli tourists. Thirteen people, among them three Israelis, died in a resort hotel, and had the missiles fired simultaneously at an Israeli charter plane with 261 passengers aboard not missed, this would have been Al Qaeda's goriest "success" since the twin towers. This may seem like nit-picking, particularly since Pollack is, after all, on the side of those who believe it is in America's own interest to make peace between Israelis and Arabs, or at least to pretend to try.
What is troubling about Pollack's view, which is fairly representative of his fellow liberal interventionists, who are likely to be in power soon, is its lack of clarity. Can't we just admit that American support for Israel is strategically burdensome and is driven by the passion of several domestic constituencies rather than cold cost-benefit geopolitics? Can't we see that the temptation to intervene in places like the Middle East arises as much because "they" are weak as because "we" are just and noble? No matter what good will America's "policy community" proclaims toward the Middle East, this mix of blinkered indulgence of Israel and disdain for the rest of the region, as well as a predilection for Wilsonian dreams over achievable goals, suggests we will remain in the wilderness for some time to come.
Max Rodenbeck is the Middle East correspondent for The Economist.
A PATH OUT OF THE DESERT
A Grand Strategy for America in the Middle East
By Kenneth M. Pollack
(Reviewed by Max Rodenbeck, Middle East correspondent for The Economist)
Back in 2002, I ran into one of the Brookings Institution's top Middle East hands at the inaugural session of the United States-Islamic World Forum, a now annual event that Brookings sponsors jointly with the government of Qatar. "How's it going?" I asked, expecting to hear about clashing misperceptions across the cultural divide. "Good," came the gruff reply. "They're beginning to realize that they are the problem."
Reading this big, ambitious book by Kenneth M. Pollack, who is the head of research at Brookings's Saban Center for Middle East Policy, it is hard not to wish that what he refers to as Washington's "policy community" would more often realize that they are the problem. It would have been nice, for instance, had Pollack himself thought harder before arguing, in scholarly papers and his widely read 2002 book, "The Threatening Storm," that America had "no choice" but to invade Iraq. That ostensibly sober appraisal, coming from a former C.I.A. analyst, Clinton official and self-described liberal, arguably added more gravitas to the shrill cries for war than any other voice.
Pollack has long since confessed to having been wrong about Iraq. "A Path Out of the Desert" includes other mea culpas. "There has been far too little asking the people of the region themselves what they thought and what they wanted," he ruminates at one point, though the book offers slim evidence of his having pursued this advice. While the administration that Pollack served gets some light wrist-Å]slapping, it is the following eight years of Bush policy that he calls "breathtakingly arrogant, ignorant and reckless."
Many of Pollack's other judgments are as sound as is this criticism of the Bush administration. Since most of the post-cold-war world has stabilized, democratized and prospered, it is probably correct to suggest, as he does, that America should commit itself to helping the messy Middle East come up to par.
His proposal of a Grand Strategy to achieve this, which is to say a generation-long effort of a scale and intensity similar to America's engagement with Europe after World War II, is challenging but not irrational, given the world's growing dependency on Middle Eastern oil. And Pollack is right to say that violence and tyranny are not hard-wired into Islam, and to conclude that the threat of Islamist terror has been overblown. He is also right that internal unrest in Middle Eastern states is quite likely to be a strategic threat, and that this danger will not pass until they manage to produce better schools, more opportunities for youth, wider social justice and more inclusive, accountable government. He is correct, too, in describing the region's current regimes as singularly awful, and even in admitting that George Bush showed unwonted acuity when he called for draining the swamps of extremism by promoting reform.
The argument weakens when Pollack tries to prescribe just what America can do to cure the Middle East. Much of his suggested treatment consists of vague outlines and policy homilies. Out of nearly 500 pages, very few describe concrete measures for how to achieve such things as spreading democracy or upgrading education in the face of governments that mistrust reform and peoples that mistrust America. Among other things, he proposes to increase military aid to friendly regimes. This, he says, can create a kind of golden leash that makes governments more compliant to American wishes.
But surely, one can't help gasping, the last thing more guns will bring is political reform. And surely, those Arabs are not so dumb that they don't read this stuff. Elsewhere, he suggests tying aid to Egypt to the lifting of the country's notorious emergency law. Perhaps he is unaware that Congress has already tried conditioning aid on reform, or that the Egyptians, who have grown skilled at circumventing tiresome Western admonishments, have already amended their constitution to incorporate "emergency" strictures under ordinary law. One is left with the impression that should a Democratic administration hire Pollack to try his Grand Strategy, he might soon be reduced to throwing "spaghetti against the wall" to "see if it sticks," as he quotes a rueful Bush official describing that team's effort to reform the Middle East.
Beyond the reform promotion agenda, which is the book's main thrust, Pollack is surprisingly reticent about the most pressing current issues, namely how to get out of Iraq and what to do about Iran (though in recent op-ed essays he has made it clear that he worries about pulling out of Iraq too quickly). In fact, he simply sketches well-known policy options without passing judgment. And, sadly, this thick book's thinness in ideas is not its only flaw.
Pollack raises loud alarms, for instance, over the Middle East's high rates of population growth, urbanization and joblessness. Actually, these are decades-old trends. He fails to note that population growth rates have plunged in recent years. Some scholars even assert that this phase of "demographic transition," in which there is a relatively high ratio of working-age people to young or old dependents, should accelerate the region's economic growth just as it did America's in the late 19th century, and East Asia's more recently.
Pollack commits errors that, despite his years in the corridors of power and some 70 pages of footnotes, betray a lack of genuine intimacy with his subject. It is not true, as he asserts, that education in the Persian Gulf emirates is largely private. Nor is it true, any longer, that virtually the only foreign investment in Arab countries goes toward pumping more oil: real estate, tourism, banking, telecoms and even heavy industry now lure investors, too.
It is an outdated generalization to state that "Arab bureaucracies . . . create interminable delays with customs regulations, inspections and other red tape." Try telling that to Dubai Ports World, a company that runs 45 container terminals in 29 countries, or to the operators of the giant, state-of-the-art transshipment hubs in Egypt and Morocco that are set to dominate Mediterranean trade. It is even more misleading to assert that "the Arab regimes have implicitly or explicitly backed a range of terrorist groups." Pray, which Arab governments does he mean, and which groups is he talking about?
Pollack also shows a shaky grasp of history. We know that the Ottoman Empire declined and fell, but to have endured for five centuries, and for half those as the biggest state in Europe, the Mediterranean and the Middle East, does not make the Ottomans "unsuccessful." Elsewhere he tells us sagely that "over time, the stagnation of the Arab economies has created considerable poverty," as if there were no poor Arabs before, and as if one of the most startling modern examples of mass impoverishment was not the Clinton-era sanctions on Iraq, which destroyed its middle class and set the stage for postwar chaos.
America gets off rather lightly in genÅ]eral, in Pollack's account, compared with the sad Arabs whom we must help to be like us. We are told, for instance, that the United States only grudgingly became involved in the grisly Iran-Iraq war of the 1980s when it nobly undertook to reflag oil tankers in order to protect the flow of oil. No mention here of Donald Rumsfeld's back-slapping with Saddam Hussein or the supply of satellite intelligence to him or the exchange of American weapons to Iran for hostages — all of which helped prolong the slaughter.
Pollack seems oddly unaware of history's motivating forces. To assert that "what triggers revolutions, civil wars and other internal unrest is psychological factors, particularly feelings of extreme despair," is plain silly. The Boston Tea Party could not have been prevented by Prozac. Similarly, he ascribes feelings to broad categories of Middle Easterners, devoid of any context or explanation. They are "angry populations" who suffer "inchoate frustration" and "a pathological hatred of the status quo." We repeatedly hear of "Arab rage at Israel" and "Arab venom for Israel." Nowhere is there a hint that such attitudes might bear some relation to the plight of the Palestinians, the agony of military defeat or the humiliation of life under Israeli occupation.
In fact, the book's most salient distortions stem from Pollack's protectiveness toward Israel. He makes some absurdly cockeyed assertions, like, "America's support for Israel over the years has even been a critical element in winning and securing Arab allies." He offers misleading false alternatives, declaring, for instance, that there is "absolutely no reason to believe that ending American support for Israel would somehow eliminate" the risk of Islamist zealots taking power and cutting oil exports. How about making aid to Israel, and not just to Arabs, conditional, or aiming at mitigating, rather than eliminating, such risks? Pollack makes a peculiarly acrobatic effort to prove that hostility to Israel is not a prime motivating factor behind militant jihadism, repeating this assertion no fewer than four times in two paragraphs. Has he not bothered to listen to Osama bin Laden's addresses to the American people, where he said that what converted him from dreamer to murderous activist was Israeli bombs falling on Beirut in 1982?
Even more disingenuously, Pollack repeats the myth that Al Qaeda has never attacked Israel. One might argue that its bombings of synagogues in Djerba and Istanbul, and against Jewish targets in Casablanca, in which dozens of people died, were anti-Semitic rather than anti-Israeli. But the November 2002 attacks in Kenya were aimed specifically at Israeli tourists. Thirteen people, among them three Israelis, died in a resort hotel, and had the missiles fired simultaneously at an Israeli charter plane with 261 passengers aboard not missed, this would have been Al Qaeda's goriest "success" since the twin towers. This may seem like nit-picking, particularly since Pollack is, after all, on the side of those who believe it is in America's own interest to make peace between Israelis and Arabs, or at least to pretend to try.
What is troubling about Pollack's view, which is fairly representative of his fellow liberal interventionists, who are likely to be in power soon, is its lack of clarity. Can't we just admit that American support for Israel is strategically burdensome and is driven by the passion of several domestic constituencies rather than cold cost-benefit geopolitics? Can't we see that the temptation to intervene in places like the Middle East arises as much because "they" are weak as because "we" are just and noble? No matter what good will America's "policy community" proclaims toward the Middle East, this mix of blinkered indulgence of Israel and disdain for the rest of the region, as well as a predilection for Wilsonian dreams over achievable goals, suggests we will remain in the wilderness for some time to come.
Max Rodenbeck is the Middle East correspondent for The Economist.
The New America Foundation/American Strategy Program cordially invites you and your colleagues to a Democratic Convention Policy Forum: CAN THE NEXT
The New America Foundation/American Strategy Program
cordially invites you and your colleagues to a Democratic Convention Policy Forum
CAN THE NEXT PRESIDENT MAKE THE
MIDDLE EAST IRRELEVANT?
WEDNESDAY, 27 AUGUST
9:00 am to 11:30 AM (breakfast and beverages)
COLORADO HISTORY MUSEUM
1300 BROADWAY, DOWNTOWN DENVER
RSVP DIRECTLY TO THIS EMAIL OR TO CLEMONS@NEWAMERICA.NET
For media and other program information, contact Steven Clemons at 202-276-1176 cell or Rebecca Abou-Chedid at 202-256-4096
featuring keynote presentations by
THE HON. JOHN KERRY (D-MA)
CHAIRMAN, SUBCOMMITTEE ON NEAR EAST AFFAIRS,
COMMITTEE ON FOREIGN AFFAIRS, U.S. SENATE
FORMER DEMOCRATIC CANDIDATE FOR PRESIDENT OF THE UNITED STATES
ANNE-MARIE SLAUGHTER
DEAN, WOODROW WILSON SCHOOL OF PUBLIC AND INTERNATIONAL AFFAIRS,
PRINCETON UNIVERSITY
THE HON. JOSCHKA FISCHER
FORMER MINISTER OF FOREIGN AFFAIRS, FEDERAL REPUBLIC OF GERMANY
THE HON. GREG CRAIG
SENIOR NATIONAL SECURITY ADVISOR TO SENATOR BARACK OBAMA
FORMER DIRECTOR, POLICY PLANNING, DEPARTMENT OF STATE
THE HON. MEL LEVINE
SENIOR ADVISOR, OBAMA FOR PRESIDENT
FORMER MEMBER, U.S. HOUSE OF REPRESENTATIVES
and ongoing panel commentary from
STEVE COLL
WASHINGTON CORRESPONDENT, THE NEW YORKER
FORMER MANAGING EDITOR, WASHINGTON POST
AUTHOR, THE BIN LADENS
PRESIDENT, NEW AMERICA FOUNDATION
DANIEL LEVY
FORMER ISRAEL NEGOTIATOR, TABA AND OSLO ACCORDS
PRINCIPAL DRAFTER/ISRAEL, GENEVA ACCORD
SENIOR FELLOW & DIRECTOR, MIDDLE EAST POLICY INITIATIVE,
NEW AMERICA FOUNDATION and CENTURY FOUNDATION
JAMES ZOGBY
PRESIDENT, ARAB-AMERICAN INSTITUTE
ROBERT MALLEY
FORMER SPECIAL ADVISER TO PRESIDENT CLINTON FOR MIDDLE EAST POLICY
DIRECTOR, MIDDLE EAST AND NORTH AFRICA PROGRAM,
INTERNATIONAL CRISIS GROUP
moderator
STEVE CLEMONS
Director, American Strategy Program, New America Foundation
Publisher, www.TheWashingtonNote.com
RSVP directly to this email at clemons@newamerica.net
cordially invites you and your colleagues to a Democratic Convention Policy Forum
CAN THE NEXT PRESIDENT MAKE THE
MIDDLE EAST IRRELEVANT?
WEDNESDAY, 27 AUGUST
9:00 am to 11:30 AM (breakfast and beverages)
COLORADO HISTORY MUSEUM
1300 BROADWAY, DOWNTOWN DENVER
RSVP DIRECTLY TO THIS EMAIL OR TO CLEMONS@NEWAMERICA.NET
For media and other program information, contact Steven Clemons at 202-276-1176 cell or Rebecca Abou-Chedid at 202-256-4096
featuring keynote presentations by
THE HON. JOHN KERRY (D-MA)
CHAIRMAN, SUBCOMMITTEE ON NEAR EAST AFFAIRS,
COMMITTEE ON FOREIGN AFFAIRS, U.S. SENATE
FORMER DEMOCRATIC CANDIDATE FOR PRESIDENT OF THE UNITED STATES
ANNE-MARIE SLAUGHTER
DEAN, WOODROW WILSON SCHOOL OF PUBLIC AND INTERNATIONAL AFFAIRS,
PRINCETON UNIVERSITY
THE HON. JOSCHKA FISCHER
FORMER MINISTER OF FOREIGN AFFAIRS, FEDERAL REPUBLIC OF GERMANY
THE HON. GREG CRAIG
SENIOR NATIONAL SECURITY ADVISOR TO SENATOR BARACK OBAMA
FORMER DIRECTOR, POLICY PLANNING, DEPARTMENT OF STATE
THE HON. MEL LEVINE
SENIOR ADVISOR, OBAMA FOR PRESIDENT
FORMER MEMBER, U.S. HOUSE OF REPRESENTATIVES
and ongoing panel commentary from
STEVE COLL
WASHINGTON CORRESPONDENT, THE NEW YORKER
FORMER MANAGING EDITOR, WASHINGTON POST
AUTHOR, THE BIN LADENS
PRESIDENT, NEW AMERICA FOUNDATION
DANIEL LEVY
FORMER ISRAEL NEGOTIATOR, TABA AND OSLO ACCORDS
PRINCIPAL DRAFTER/ISRAEL, GENEVA ACCORD
SENIOR FELLOW & DIRECTOR, MIDDLE EAST POLICY INITIATIVE,
NEW AMERICA FOUNDATION and CENTURY FOUNDATION
JAMES ZOGBY
PRESIDENT, ARAB-AMERICAN INSTITUTE
ROBERT MALLEY
FORMER SPECIAL ADVISER TO PRESIDENT CLINTON FOR MIDDLE EAST POLICY
DIRECTOR, MIDDLE EAST AND NORTH AFRICA PROGRAM,
INTERNATIONAL CRISIS GROUP
moderator
STEVE CLEMONS
Director, American Strategy Program, New America Foundation
Publisher, www.TheWashingtonNote.com
RSVP directly to this email at clemons@newamerica.net
Timely American wisdom
International Herald Tribune
Timely American wisdom
By Rami G. Khouri
Tuesday, August 19, 2008
BEIRUT:
Few observers expect the ongoing Palestinian-Israeli negotiations between the governments of Mahmoud Abbas and Ehud Olmert to achieve any significant breakthrough during the remaining months of President George W. Bush's term. One reason for the low expectations from the negotiations spawned by the Annapolis meeting in the United States last November is the low-key mediating role of the United States itself.
Ample experiences since the 1970s suggest that active external mediation is essential for success, due to low trust among the main protagonists and the need for foreign security guarantees and development aid that typically seal a peace deal in this region.
Whatever happens in coming months, the stage is set for the next American administration to play an active role in Arab-Israeli peace-making - should it decide to do so.
The odds are that it will, for two key reasons: Arab-Israeli peace-making can impact positively and quickly on almost every other American national interest in the Middle East, and American abstinence from peace-making - as during the past eight years - contributes to aggravating multiple local conflicts and radicalizing trends throughout the region.
If the next American administration takes the plunge, it will have a timely, honest and very practical handbook on which to draw for guidance. The U.S. Institute of Peace (USIP) has just published a compact but rich little book entitled "Negotiating Arab-Israeli Peace: American Leadership in the Middle East."
It is the work of respected scholars and former officials who reviewed America's involvement in Arab-Israeli peacemaking during the last three administrations, covering the Bush-Clinton-Bush eras since 1990.
Headed by former ambassador Daniel C. Kurtzer and USIP senior research associate Scott B. Lasensky, and including William Quandt, Steven Spiegel and Shibley Telhami, the group interviewed some 150 officials and activists in the United States and the Middle East to assess their views of Washington's role as a mediator since the end of the Cold War.
They identified "an alarming pattern of mismanaged diplomacy...both strategic and tactical. ... U.S. involvement has been characterized by fits and starts, errors of omission and commission and fundamental weaknesses in policy formulation and execution. Rhetoric all too often has replaced action....Opportunities were squandered, potential breakthroughs missed and meaningful advances stalled unnecessarily."
Noting that Arab-Israeli peace is a strategic American interest and that Washington's direct involvement is indispensable for success, the study gives George H.W. Bush's administration higher marks than the Clinton or George W. Bush teams.
It then offers 10 lessons learned that should be required reading for any American or other external mediator in the Middle East. The most important ones are: U.S. policy should be made in the United States, not in foreign countries (like Israel, it specifically said). The United States should take initiatives and not only respond to openings, and should transcend incrementalism and aim instead for an endgame, not shying away from offering its own proposals.
Washington should play a strong role as monitor of compliance with agreements reached. Broad and bipartisan domestic support is needed, but policy should not be "held captive to the agendas of domestic groups" (where the study pointed out examples of inordinate influence of pro-Israeli groups).
Washington should use its full diplomatic toolbox judiciously (summitry, economic aid, unofficial diplomacy, assurances and understandings), with strategic objectives in mind, and not only to buy time.
The report's gently devastating critique of actual American performance is coupled with a call for U.S. re-engagement, with several recommendations: The next U.S. administration should make Arab-Israeli peace-making a high priority based on a strategy to end the conflict by locking in the gains of the past while balancing bilateral with multilateral efforts, using nontraditional diplomacy, and reassessing the utility of existing mechanisms such as the Quartet.
A final note addresses the "fact of life" that "Israel plays an outsized role in U.S. politics and diplomacy." The challenge is how to use the U.S.-Israeli special relationship to promote peace for all by crafting a "fair and effective U.S. role," rather than diminishing that special relationship.
The report calls on the next administration to use experts who are as familiar with Arab societies as they are with Israel, so as to "restore the U.S. role to its historical purpose of helping the parties to achieve their core requirements."
The USIP should be commended for this study that reflects the best American tradition of honest self-assessment anchored in facts, rather than partisan ideology. The next administration would do well to read it and ponder its recommendations seriously.
Rami G. Khouri is editor-at-large of The Daily Star and director of the Issam Fares Institute for Public Policy and International Affairs at the American University of Beirut.
Timely American wisdom
By Rami G. Khouri
Tuesday, August 19, 2008
BEIRUT:
Few observers expect the ongoing Palestinian-Israeli negotiations between the governments of Mahmoud Abbas and Ehud Olmert to achieve any significant breakthrough during the remaining months of President George W. Bush's term. One reason for the low expectations from the negotiations spawned by the Annapolis meeting in the United States last November is the low-key mediating role of the United States itself.
Ample experiences since the 1970s suggest that active external mediation is essential for success, due to low trust among the main protagonists and the need for foreign security guarantees and development aid that typically seal a peace deal in this region.
Whatever happens in coming months, the stage is set for the next American administration to play an active role in Arab-Israeli peace-making - should it decide to do so.
The odds are that it will, for two key reasons: Arab-Israeli peace-making can impact positively and quickly on almost every other American national interest in the Middle East, and American abstinence from peace-making - as during the past eight years - contributes to aggravating multiple local conflicts and radicalizing trends throughout the region.
If the next American administration takes the plunge, it will have a timely, honest and very practical handbook on which to draw for guidance. The U.S. Institute of Peace (USIP) has just published a compact but rich little book entitled "Negotiating Arab-Israeli Peace: American Leadership in the Middle East."
It is the work of respected scholars and former officials who reviewed America's involvement in Arab-Israeli peacemaking during the last three administrations, covering the Bush-Clinton-Bush eras since 1990.
Headed by former ambassador Daniel C. Kurtzer and USIP senior research associate Scott B. Lasensky, and including William Quandt, Steven Spiegel and Shibley Telhami, the group interviewed some 150 officials and activists in the United States and the Middle East to assess their views of Washington's role as a mediator since the end of the Cold War.
They identified "an alarming pattern of mismanaged diplomacy...both strategic and tactical. ... U.S. involvement has been characterized by fits and starts, errors of omission and commission and fundamental weaknesses in policy formulation and execution. Rhetoric all too often has replaced action....Opportunities were squandered, potential breakthroughs missed and meaningful advances stalled unnecessarily."
Noting that Arab-Israeli peace is a strategic American interest and that Washington's direct involvement is indispensable for success, the study gives George H.W. Bush's administration higher marks than the Clinton or George W. Bush teams.
It then offers 10 lessons learned that should be required reading for any American or other external mediator in the Middle East. The most important ones are: U.S. policy should be made in the United States, not in foreign countries (like Israel, it specifically said). The United States should take initiatives and not only respond to openings, and should transcend incrementalism and aim instead for an endgame, not shying away from offering its own proposals.
Washington should play a strong role as monitor of compliance with agreements reached. Broad and bipartisan domestic support is needed, but policy should not be "held captive to the agendas of domestic groups" (where the study pointed out examples of inordinate influence of pro-Israeli groups).
Washington should use its full diplomatic toolbox judiciously (summitry, economic aid, unofficial diplomacy, assurances and understandings), with strategic objectives in mind, and not only to buy time.
The report's gently devastating critique of actual American performance is coupled with a call for U.S. re-engagement, with several recommendations: The next U.S. administration should make Arab-Israeli peace-making a high priority based on a strategy to end the conflict by locking in the gains of the past while balancing bilateral with multilateral efforts, using nontraditional diplomacy, and reassessing the utility of existing mechanisms such as the Quartet.
A final note addresses the "fact of life" that "Israel plays an outsized role in U.S. politics and diplomacy." The challenge is how to use the U.S.-Israeli special relationship to promote peace for all by crafting a "fair and effective U.S. role," rather than diminishing that special relationship.
The report calls on the next administration to use experts who are as familiar with Arab societies as they are with Israel, so as to "restore the U.S. role to its historical purpose of helping the parties to achieve their core requirements."
The USIP should be commended for this study that reflects the best American tradition of honest self-assessment anchored in facts, rather than partisan ideology. The next administration would do well to read it and ponder its recommendations seriously.
Rami G. Khouri is editor-at-large of The Daily Star and director of the Issam Fares Institute for Public Policy and International Affairs at the American University of Beirut.
Saturday, August 23, 2008
"Naval Blockade" or All Out War Against Iran? - by Michel Chossudovsky - 2008-08-13
"Naval Blockade" or All Out War Against Iran?
- by Michel Chossudovsky - 2008-08-13
http://globalresearch.ca/index.php?context=va&aid=9817
- by Michel Chossudovsky - 2008-08-13
http://globalresearch.ca/index.php?context=va&aid=9817
http://globalresearch.ca/index.php?context=va&aid=9828
Wag the Dog: How to Conceal Massive Economic Collapse
- by Ellen Brown - 2008-08-14
The President's Plunge Protection Team had come to the rescue
http://globalresearch.ca/index.php?context=va&aid=9828
- by Ellen Brown - 2008-08-14
The President's Plunge Protection Team had come to the rescue
http://globalresearch.ca/index.php?context=va&aid=9828
Missile Defense: Washington and Poland just moved the World closer to War
Missile Defense: Washington and Poland just moved the World closer to War - by F. William Engdahl - 2008-08-15 The most dangerous move towards nuclear war the world has seen since the 1962 Cuba Missile crisis.
http://globalresearch.ca/index.php?context=va&aid=9836
http://globalresearch.ca/index.php?context=va&aid=9836
The Eurasian Corridor: Pipeline Geopolitics and the New Cold War
The Eurasian Corridor: Pipeline Geopolitics and the New Cold War
- by Michel Chossudovsky - 2008-08-22
The ongoing crisis in the Caucasus is intimately related to the strategic control over energy pipeline & transportation corridors.
http://globalresearch.ca/index.php?context=va&aid=9907
- by Michel Chossudovsky - 2008-08-22
The ongoing crisis in the Caucasus is intimately related to the strategic control over energy pipeline & transportation corridors.
http://globalresearch.ca/index.php?context=va&aid=9907
Why the Pentagon Thinks Attacking Iran is a Bad Idea
U.S.News & World Report
Saturday, August 23, 2008
Why the Pentagon Thinks Attacking Iran is a Bad Idea
No one wants a nuclear Iran, but U.S. military leaders worry about the risks and strains of a third war
By Anna Mulrine
Posted August 7, 2008
It was shortly after the bipartisan Iraq Study Group issued its recommendations to Congress in late 2006 that a directive came down from the highest levels of the Pentagon: an order for another war game involving Iran.
Iranian soldiers on parade for President Ahmadinejad.
The study group had proposed that the Bush administration engage in direct diplomatic talks with its nemesis, a nation that Washington says supports terrorism, encourages attacks on U.S. troops in Iraq, and, most ominously, is developing nuclear weapons. The Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff at the time, Gen. Peter Pace, asked the Defense Department's top war gamers to construct a scenario to be played out in early 2007. "We postulated that the president of the United States actually took the advice of the Iraq Study Group seriously and tried to engage diplomatically with Iran," says one defense analyst who took part.
Talks stall. There may be few greater symbols, senior officials point out, than the nation's military gaming diplomacy to illustrate the Pentagon's wariness of war with Iran. Such a conflict remains among the options "on the table," as President Bush reiterated in July, if Iran continues its nuclear program. The alternative approach, the European-led multilateral talks with Iran, stalled this month after the deadline expired on yet an-other offer of economic incentives. Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad vowed that his country would not surrender its "nuclear rights" in the face of U.S. and European demands to halt uranium enrichment, the process that produces fuel for generating electricity and making nuclear bombs. He has also threatened to shut down the Strait of Hormuz, the strategic waterway through which some 40 percent of the world's oil passes, in the event of any American military attack.
In the wake of these events, the Bush administration expressed its exasperation. "In case he hasn't noticed," White House Press Secretary Dana Perino quipped, "we are trying to talk to them."
The Pentagon has noticed, well aware that the White House is capable of doing more than throwing up its hands in frustration. Military leaders recognize the precarious ambiguity of America's red line with Iran—and that of Israel, which says Iran's nuclear program poses an "existential threat." Mindful of these dynamics and engaged in wars on two fronts, there have been few greater proponents for U.S. diplomatic overtures than the Department of Defense.
Since taking over as chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff last year, Adm. Mike Mullen has repeatedly warned—often quite publicly—that military action against Iran, though possible, would be "extremely stressing" for an already overstretched U.S. military. "I'm fighting two wars, and I don't need a third one," Mullen said recently. "There's a real danger of any strike not only causing more instability in the region than there already is," adds a senior military official, "but of actually having the opposite effect of what you want." Secretary of Defense Robert Gates has also weighed in against action, noting recently that it would be "disastrous on a number of levels."
The forthrightness on the part of the top two American defense officials has fed speculation that this is pushback against those within the Bush administration—Vice President Dick Cheney's name often comes up here—who might be inclined to open up a third front for U.S. forces with a strike against Iran. In light of the Iraq experience, "generals are more willing to push back against things they think are stupid, and Gates is more willing to listen," says Andrew Bacevich, professor of international relations at Boston University. "Mullen isn't just saying these things for our benefit—I think it is a real effort to communicate with the civilian leadership."
Or the Pentagon brass is simply stating the obvious, as some senior officials contend, mindful that the final word comes from the White House. "There are lots of opinions about where we're headed with Iran and a lot of healthy discussion" in the administration, says the senior military official. "But to set the debate along the lines of 'to bomb or not to bomb' isn't a fair characterization." Says Pentagon spokesman Geoff Morrell, "The views the secretary has expressed on this issue are entirely his own, and they are entirely consistent with his colleagues in the administration."
The widely held view within the Pentagon is that any military strike on Iran would be a dangerous, highly complicated undertaking. "There's a lot about Iran that we still just don't understand," says the senior military official. "They are very, very hard to predict." Adds the defense analyst, "A lot of generals are saying, 'Are you sure you really want to do this? Are the gains worth the risk?' "
Shadow games. In scenarios routinely war-gamed by the Pentagon, the recurring answer tends to be no. The risks are considerable, and these shadow games—conceptual exercises intended to test out ideas—often end badly for the U.S. side. "In so many scenarios, it's a nightmare," says Bruce Riedel, a former CIA officer and Middle East fellow with the Brookings Institution who has taken part in war games.
One of the biggest nightmares, a land invasion of Iran, is widely dismissed as a nonstarter. "Unless it's happened in the deepest recesses of the Pentagon, I've never been involved in a war game that seriously considered a land invasion of Iran," says the defense analyst. At the Command and General Staff College in Fort Leavenworth, Kan., Maj. Bruce Terry estimated in his widely circulated master's thesis last year that it would take at least four years to mobilize the more than 1 million U.S. troops required for such an endeavor, followed by U.S. casualties in the tens of thousands for each year of occupation.
The working war scenarios involve surgical strikes by cruise missiles and warplanes on key targets, such as Revolutionary Guard facilities and Iranian nuclear sites, often coupled with covert operations on the ground. These attacks have been war-gamed regularly since 2004, according to another defense adviser, and the results point to some considerable stumbling blocks. "The No. 1 problem we have is: 'Where are the targets?' We still have trouble accurately locating all of the pieces of the nuclear program that we need to take out in order to have a relatively decisive effect," says Bacevich.
That uncertainty extends to assessments of when Iran could have nuclear-bomb capability, something that Iranians assert is not their plan. The consensus U.S. intelligence view points to the 2010 to 2015 timeframe, while Israeli estimates predict it as soon as late 2009. The differences reflect disagreements about the intelligence, as well as about what level of capability should be viewed as the weapons threshold.
What is clear is that Iranian nuclear facilities are buried, dispersed, and protected—and U.S. bombs may not be able to reach deeply enough to destroy them. Some are also in close vicinity to schools, hospitals, and other facilities where there could be civilian casualties that would further inflame anti-Americanism across the Muslim world. By most accounts, bombing might set back Iran by only a few years—at a high cost to the United States.
Such strikes come with the prospect of retaliation in the Strait of Hormuz, though such a move would cut off Iran's own oil exports as well. It is a narrow chokepoint, and an Iranian attempt to obstruct tanker traffic would cause oil to soar far above even recent record prices with dire consequences for western economies. Iran could employ swift boat-swarming tactics and the threat of Chinese-made antiship cruise missiles launched from patrol boats and from small islands off its coast. "The Strait is always the key for war games in the Gulf," says Paul Van Riper, a retired Marine three-star general who unleashed an imaginary salvo of Silkworm-style missiles, overwhelming the sensors on U.S. warships, while playing a "red team" country that closely resembled Iran in a now legendary 2002 war game.
"High stress." There is, too, the issue of mines. "Nobody's underestimating Iran's ability to disrupt access to the strait," adds a senior Navy officer who recalls serving on a U.S. warship accompanying Kuwaiti oil tankers in 1988. "People brush over the tanker wars, but the Navy hasn't forgotten," he says. "It was high stress," and two Navy ships were heavily damaged by mines. Despite antimine technology, the officer recalls that the crew set up a chair and built a shade for it, so that a seaman on deck could scan the water round-the-clock for mines. The Navy practiced repelling swarming Iranian swift boats and mounted machine guns for just such an event on the side of its ships.
Most believe that the U.S. military could, with some effort, quickly reopen the strait and most likely sustain little damage at the hands of the 1970s-era planes and weapons that make up the bulk of the Iranian Air Force. But the greater concern is the asymmetric chaos that Iran could unleash in neighboring countries, says Larry Wilkerson, who was chief of staff to Secretary of State Colin Powell. Wilkerson recalls that in his first briefing after taking that job in 2002, the topic was the attacks Iranian-backed Hezbollah could mount against Israel and elsewhere. "They said Hezbollah is the A-team, and not someone we want to take on, because they were essentially 10 or 15 times the capability of al Qaeda," says Wilkerson.
U.S. troops in Iraq likely would face stepped-up attacks by Iranian-backed militias, and the Karzai government in Afghanistan would collapse, says Riedel. "He couldn't choose between us and the Iranians." A U.S. strike, analysts warn, could also have the undesired effect of bolstering Ahmadinejad—as a nation under attack rallies around even an unpopular leader—and alienating the more progressive, anti-Ahmadinejad factions.
An Israeli strike on Iran—with or without U.S. support—would offer all of these risks and more minuses, say senior defense officials. For this reason, in recent meetings in Israel, Mullen "conveyed his less-than-enthusiastic view of an Israeli attack," says a senior military official. Says Riedel, "From an Iranian perspective, Israel would be flying American-made F-15s and F-16s, dropping bombs made in the USA," he adds. "Within the Pentagon, not only do they see the downsides, they tend to think that if someone's going to do this, they don't want to see it outsourced to another air force."
Still, it is in the best interest of the Bush administration to show that it takes Iran's threat to Israel seriously "in hopes of being able to restrain the Israelis," says Bacevich. The decision by scandal-damaged Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Olmert to step down once his party chooses a successor in September creates a new uncertainty. "I don't know whether that keeps an operation from happening. Olmert may want to do this one thing on his way out," says Riedel. "I, for one, am convinced that it's a very real possibility."
That possibility increases each time diplomacy falters. But the Pentagon's diplomatic war game concluded that talking doesn't guarantee resolution, either. There were some useful findings—the benefits of engaging Middle East neighbors, for example. "Regionally, there was very strong interest in limiting Iran's growth and power that we haven't exploited as a country," says the defense analyst.
Yet, just as in real life, direct talks with Iran proved consistently tricky in that exercise. "We could get small concessions and promises to talk again," the analyst adds. "But there were no significant breakthroughs or eurekas that made us say, 'This idea is so wonderful that we need to run down the hall and try it right now.' "
If diplomacy doesn't work, and the military route appears too problem-atic, there is a third possibility: a nuclear-armed Iran. Learning to live with that could be the next challenge Pentagon war gamers—and war planners—will have to face.
Saturday, August 23, 2008
Why the Pentagon Thinks Attacking Iran is a Bad Idea
No one wants a nuclear Iran, but U.S. military leaders worry about the risks and strains of a third war
By Anna Mulrine
Posted August 7, 2008
It was shortly after the bipartisan Iraq Study Group issued its recommendations to Congress in late 2006 that a directive came down from the highest levels of the Pentagon: an order for another war game involving Iran.
Iranian soldiers on parade for President Ahmadinejad.
The study group had proposed that the Bush administration engage in direct diplomatic talks with its nemesis, a nation that Washington says supports terrorism, encourages attacks on U.S. troops in Iraq, and, most ominously, is developing nuclear weapons. The Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff at the time, Gen. Peter Pace, asked the Defense Department's top war gamers to construct a scenario to be played out in early 2007. "We postulated that the president of the United States actually took the advice of the Iraq Study Group seriously and tried to engage diplomatically with Iran," says one defense analyst who took part.
Talks stall. There may be few greater symbols, senior officials point out, than the nation's military gaming diplomacy to illustrate the Pentagon's wariness of war with Iran. Such a conflict remains among the options "on the table," as President Bush reiterated in July, if Iran continues its nuclear program. The alternative approach, the European-led multilateral talks with Iran, stalled this month after the deadline expired on yet an-other offer of economic incentives. Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad vowed that his country would not surrender its "nuclear rights" in the face of U.S. and European demands to halt uranium enrichment, the process that produces fuel for generating electricity and making nuclear bombs. He has also threatened to shut down the Strait of Hormuz, the strategic waterway through which some 40 percent of the world's oil passes, in the event of any American military attack.
In the wake of these events, the Bush administration expressed its exasperation. "In case he hasn't noticed," White House Press Secretary Dana Perino quipped, "we are trying to talk to them."
The Pentagon has noticed, well aware that the White House is capable of doing more than throwing up its hands in frustration. Military leaders recognize the precarious ambiguity of America's red line with Iran—and that of Israel, which says Iran's nuclear program poses an "existential threat." Mindful of these dynamics and engaged in wars on two fronts, there have been few greater proponents for U.S. diplomatic overtures than the Department of Defense.
Since taking over as chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff last year, Adm. Mike Mullen has repeatedly warned—often quite publicly—that military action against Iran, though possible, would be "extremely stressing" for an already overstretched U.S. military. "I'm fighting two wars, and I don't need a third one," Mullen said recently. "There's a real danger of any strike not only causing more instability in the region than there already is," adds a senior military official, "but of actually having the opposite effect of what you want." Secretary of Defense Robert Gates has also weighed in against action, noting recently that it would be "disastrous on a number of levels."
The forthrightness on the part of the top two American defense officials has fed speculation that this is pushback against those within the Bush administration—Vice President Dick Cheney's name often comes up here—who might be inclined to open up a third front for U.S. forces with a strike against Iran. In light of the Iraq experience, "generals are more willing to push back against things they think are stupid, and Gates is more willing to listen," says Andrew Bacevich, professor of international relations at Boston University. "Mullen isn't just saying these things for our benefit—I think it is a real effort to communicate with the civilian leadership."
Or the Pentagon brass is simply stating the obvious, as some senior officials contend, mindful that the final word comes from the White House. "There are lots of opinions about where we're headed with Iran and a lot of healthy discussion" in the administration, says the senior military official. "But to set the debate along the lines of 'to bomb or not to bomb' isn't a fair characterization." Says Pentagon spokesman Geoff Morrell, "The views the secretary has expressed on this issue are entirely his own, and they are entirely consistent with his colleagues in the administration."
The widely held view within the Pentagon is that any military strike on Iran would be a dangerous, highly complicated undertaking. "There's a lot about Iran that we still just don't understand," says the senior military official. "They are very, very hard to predict." Adds the defense analyst, "A lot of generals are saying, 'Are you sure you really want to do this? Are the gains worth the risk?' "
Shadow games. In scenarios routinely war-gamed by the Pentagon, the recurring answer tends to be no. The risks are considerable, and these shadow games—conceptual exercises intended to test out ideas—often end badly for the U.S. side. "In so many scenarios, it's a nightmare," says Bruce Riedel, a former CIA officer and Middle East fellow with the Brookings Institution who has taken part in war games.
One of the biggest nightmares, a land invasion of Iran, is widely dismissed as a nonstarter. "Unless it's happened in the deepest recesses of the Pentagon, I've never been involved in a war game that seriously considered a land invasion of Iran," says the defense analyst. At the Command and General Staff College in Fort Leavenworth, Kan., Maj. Bruce Terry estimated in his widely circulated master's thesis last year that it would take at least four years to mobilize the more than 1 million U.S. troops required for such an endeavor, followed by U.S. casualties in the tens of thousands for each year of occupation.
The working war scenarios involve surgical strikes by cruise missiles and warplanes on key targets, such as Revolutionary Guard facilities and Iranian nuclear sites, often coupled with covert operations on the ground. These attacks have been war-gamed regularly since 2004, according to another defense adviser, and the results point to some considerable stumbling blocks. "The No. 1 problem we have is: 'Where are the targets?' We still have trouble accurately locating all of the pieces of the nuclear program that we need to take out in order to have a relatively decisive effect," says Bacevich.
That uncertainty extends to assessments of when Iran could have nuclear-bomb capability, something that Iranians assert is not their plan. The consensus U.S. intelligence view points to the 2010 to 2015 timeframe, while Israeli estimates predict it as soon as late 2009. The differences reflect disagreements about the intelligence, as well as about what level of capability should be viewed as the weapons threshold.
What is clear is that Iranian nuclear facilities are buried, dispersed, and protected—and U.S. bombs may not be able to reach deeply enough to destroy them. Some are also in close vicinity to schools, hospitals, and other facilities where there could be civilian casualties that would further inflame anti-Americanism across the Muslim world. By most accounts, bombing might set back Iran by only a few years—at a high cost to the United States.
Such strikes come with the prospect of retaliation in the Strait of Hormuz, though such a move would cut off Iran's own oil exports as well. It is a narrow chokepoint, and an Iranian attempt to obstruct tanker traffic would cause oil to soar far above even recent record prices with dire consequences for western economies. Iran could employ swift boat-swarming tactics and the threat of Chinese-made antiship cruise missiles launched from patrol boats and from small islands off its coast. "The Strait is always the key for war games in the Gulf," says Paul Van Riper, a retired Marine three-star general who unleashed an imaginary salvo of Silkworm-style missiles, overwhelming the sensors on U.S. warships, while playing a "red team" country that closely resembled Iran in a now legendary 2002 war game.
"High stress." There is, too, the issue of mines. "Nobody's underestimating Iran's ability to disrupt access to the strait," adds a senior Navy officer who recalls serving on a U.S. warship accompanying Kuwaiti oil tankers in 1988. "People brush over the tanker wars, but the Navy hasn't forgotten," he says. "It was high stress," and two Navy ships were heavily damaged by mines. Despite antimine technology, the officer recalls that the crew set up a chair and built a shade for it, so that a seaman on deck could scan the water round-the-clock for mines. The Navy practiced repelling swarming Iranian swift boats and mounted machine guns for just such an event on the side of its ships.
Most believe that the U.S. military could, with some effort, quickly reopen the strait and most likely sustain little damage at the hands of the 1970s-era planes and weapons that make up the bulk of the Iranian Air Force. But the greater concern is the asymmetric chaos that Iran could unleash in neighboring countries, says Larry Wilkerson, who was chief of staff to Secretary of State Colin Powell. Wilkerson recalls that in his first briefing after taking that job in 2002, the topic was the attacks Iranian-backed Hezbollah could mount against Israel and elsewhere. "They said Hezbollah is the A-team, and not someone we want to take on, because they were essentially 10 or 15 times the capability of al Qaeda," says Wilkerson.
U.S. troops in Iraq likely would face stepped-up attacks by Iranian-backed militias, and the Karzai government in Afghanistan would collapse, says Riedel. "He couldn't choose between us and the Iranians." A U.S. strike, analysts warn, could also have the undesired effect of bolstering Ahmadinejad—as a nation under attack rallies around even an unpopular leader—and alienating the more progressive, anti-Ahmadinejad factions.
An Israeli strike on Iran—with or without U.S. support—would offer all of these risks and more minuses, say senior defense officials. For this reason, in recent meetings in Israel, Mullen "conveyed his less-than-enthusiastic view of an Israeli attack," says a senior military official. Says Riedel, "From an Iranian perspective, Israel would be flying American-made F-15s and F-16s, dropping bombs made in the USA," he adds. "Within the Pentagon, not only do they see the downsides, they tend to think that if someone's going to do this, they don't want to see it outsourced to another air force."
Still, it is in the best interest of the Bush administration to show that it takes Iran's threat to Israel seriously "in hopes of being able to restrain the Israelis," says Bacevich. The decision by scandal-damaged Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Olmert to step down once his party chooses a successor in September creates a new uncertainty. "I don't know whether that keeps an operation from happening. Olmert may want to do this one thing on his way out," says Riedel. "I, for one, am convinced that it's a very real possibility."
That possibility increases each time diplomacy falters. But the Pentagon's diplomatic war game concluded that talking doesn't guarantee resolution, either. There were some useful findings—the benefits of engaging Middle East neighbors, for example. "Regionally, there was very strong interest in limiting Iran's growth and power that we haven't exploited as a country," says the defense analyst.
Yet, just as in real life, direct talks with Iran proved consistently tricky in that exercise. "We could get small concessions and promises to talk again," the analyst adds. "But there were no significant breakthroughs or eurekas that made us say, 'This idea is so wonderful that we need to run down the hall and try it right now.' "
If diplomacy doesn't work, and the military route appears too problem-atic, there is a third possibility: a nuclear-armed Iran. Learning to live with that could be the next challenge Pentagon war gamers—and war planners—will have to face.
Friday, August 22, 2008
Mutually assured destruction in cyberspace
Mutually assured destruction in cyberspace
By Victor Mallet
Published: August 20 2008
The Financial Times
The crisis in Georgia has not only stoked fears of a belligerent Russia. It has also served as a reminder that a new style of warfare – potentially as devastating as those that terrified previous generations – is almost upon us: cyberwar.
Before Russia invaded Georgia, co-ordinated attacks were launched against Georgian government websites, leaving internet servers overloaded and disabled.
This was not the first or the most damaging attack in cyberspace on a sovereign nation by agents suspected of working for another, although it is believed to be the first to coincide with an actual war. Russia was also blamed for a 2007 cyber-assault on Estonia, which asked Nato for help.
However, neither Russian computer interference with its neighbours nor Georgian retaliation should overshadow the greater danger to peace posed by a possible cyberwar pitting China against the west.
As early as 2003, China tested the vulnerability of US military computer networks in a sophisticated operation called "Titan Rain" by the US. In 2007, China hacked into a Pentagon network serving the office of Robert Gates, defence secretary.
China has also launched probing and/or espionage attacks on the UK, Germany, France and Taiwan. "America's vulnerability to cyber-attacks is a critical threat to national security," wrote John Tkacik, senior research fellow at the Asian Studies Center of the Heritage Foundation, in a report this year on the Chinese cyber-threat.
Even allowing for the conservative bent of the Heritage Foundation and possible exaggeration of the China menace, the list of security breaches in Mr Tkacik's paper makes worrying reading for US policymakers. This is particularly so because the US and China have the two biggest populations of internet users – China, with 220m, says it has overtaken the US – and because the US and China will be each other's biggest strategic rival in the future.
Aside from the inflammatory propaganda wars waged by millions of internet users in all international conflicts, the threat to peace from US-China rivalry in cyberspace is significant for two reasons.
First, the US expects to maintain overwhelming military dominance in the Pacific and around the world for at least a generation, but only because of its technological lead and its ability to "see" and control the battlefield electronically from space and from the air. China's recently proved ability to shoot down satellites in orbit and its fast-growing information technology skills erode the US advantage, giving Beijing the chance to wage "asymmetric" warfare using relatively cheap IT capabilities.
Second, planners assume that future wars will involve cyber-attacks to cripple the enemy's entire society by disabling electricity, communications and banking networks.
As luck would have it, Georgia is one of the world's least internet- dependent countries, and the result of this latest cyber-attack was inconvenience not power cuts or financial chaos. That would not necessarily be the case with either China or the US, although opinions are divided about the vulnerability of modern economies to cyberwar.
"I think that the US and China have an ability to shut down each other's societies on the internet today," the far from hawkish Bill Owens, a former vice-chairman of the US joints chiefs of staff who has sought to improve US-China military ties, told the Asia Society in Hong Kong in June. "Cyber-attack by a nation is very different from cyber-attack by a hacker."
The US is now scrambling to counter the cyberwar threat. Admiral Owens, now Asia chief executive of private equity group AEA, is co-chairing a US study into the technological, policymaking, legal and ethical implications of cyber-warfare.
Michael Chertoff, US homeland security secretary, has outlined plans for a "Manhattan project" for IT security involving the sharing of information between government and the private sector. A big and successful attack online, he said, "would have cascading effects across the country and across the world".
It is tempting to dismiss such words as scaremongering. One needs only to recall the false alarm over the supposedly chaos-inducing Y2K bug at the turn of the century, or to point to the immediate physical dangers of nuclear, biological and chemical warfare and the old-fashioned bombs dropped on Georgia.
But the dangers of cyberwar are real, and are made greater by the almost total absence of national policy guidelines or relevant international laws and treaties. There is no agreement, for example, on whether a cyber-attack counts as an act of war, and not even enough experience to know whether a massive attack by one country on another could backfire – for example, by crippling the attacking country itself or one of its allies in another part of the world.
So great are the risks that the nuclear doctrine of mutually assured destruction is already being mentioned as a template for an international understanding, prompting Admiral Owens to recommend an agreement on "no first use of cyber-attack". Such a deal would doubtless take many years of negotiations, but Georgia and Estonia – and doubtless other cyber-conflicts to come – will show it is worth doing.
victor.mallet@ft.com
Copyright The Financial Times Limited 2008
By Victor Mallet
Published: August 20 2008
The Financial Times
The crisis in Georgia has not only stoked fears of a belligerent Russia. It has also served as a reminder that a new style of warfare – potentially as devastating as those that terrified previous generations – is almost upon us: cyberwar.
Before Russia invaded Georgia, co-ordinated attacks were launched against Georgian government websites, leaving internet servers overloaded and disabled.
This was not the first or the most damaging attack in cyberspace on a sovereign nation by agents suspected of working for another, although it is believed to be the first to coincide with an actual war. Russia was also blamed for a 2007 cyber-assault on Estonia, which asked Nato for help.
However, neither Russian computer interference with its neighbours nor Georgian retaliation should overshadow the greater danger to peace posed by a possible cyberwar pitting China against the west.
As early as 2003, China tested the vulnerability of US military computer networks in a sophisticated operation called "Titan Rain" by the US. In 2007, China hacked into a Pentagon network serving the office of Robert Gates, defence secretary.
China has also launched probing and/or espionage attacks on the UK, Germany, France and Taiwan. "America's vulnerability to cyber-attacks is a critical threat to national security," wrote John Tkacik, senior research fellow at the Asian Studies Center of the Heritage Foundation, in a report this year on the Chinese cyber-threat.
Even allowing for the conservative bent of the Heritage Foundation and possible exaggeration of the China menace, the list of security breaches in Mr Tkacik's paper makes worrying reading for US policymakers. This is particularly so because the US and China have the two biggest populations of internet users – China, with 220m, says it has overtaken the US – and because the US and China will be each other's biggest strategic rival in the future.
Aside from the inflammatory propaganda wars waged by millions of internet users in all international conflicts, the threat to peace from US-China rivalry in cyberspace is significant for two reasons.
First, the US expects to maintain overwhelming military dominance in the Pacific and around the world for at least a generation, but only because of its technological lead and its ability to "see" and control the battlefield electronically from space and from the air. China's recently proved ability to shoot down satellites in orbit and its fast-growing information technology skills erode the US advantage, giving Beijing the chance to wage "asymmetric" warfare using relatively cheap IT capabilities.
Second, planners assume that future wars will involve cyber-attacks to cripple the enemy's entire society by disabling electricity, communications and banking networks.
As luck would have it, Georgia is one of the world's least internet- dependent countries, and the result of this latest cyber-attack was inconvenience not power cuts or financial chaos. That would not necessarily be the case with either China or the US, although opinions are divided about the vulnerability of modern economies to cyberwar.
"I think that the US and China have an ability to shut down each other's societies on the internet today," the far from hawkish Bill Owens, a former vice-chairman of the US joints chiefs of staff who has sought to improve US-China military ties, told the Asia Society in Hong Kong in June. "Cyber-attack by a nation is very different from cyber-attack by a hacker."
The US is now scrambling to counter the cyberwar threat. Admiral Owens, now Asia chief executive of private equity group AEA, is co-chairing a US study into the technological, policymaking, legal and ethical implications of cyber-warfare.
Michael Chertoff, US homeland security secretary, has outlined plans for a "Manhattan project" for IT security involving the sharing of information between government and the private sector. A big and successful attack online, he said, "would have cascading effects across the country and across the world".
It is tempting to dismiss such words as scaremongering. One needs only to recall the false alarm over the supposedly chaos-inducing Y2K bug at the turn of the century, or to point to the immediate physical dangers of nuclear, biological and chemical warfare and the old-fashioned bombs dropped on Georgia.
But the dangers of cyberwar are real, and are made greater by the almost total absence of national policy guidelines or relevant international laws and treaties. There is no agreement, for example, on whether a cyber-attack counts as an act of war, and not even enough experience to know whether a massive attack by one country on another could backfire – for example, by crippling the attacking country itself or one of its allies in another part of the world.
So great are the risks that the nuclear doctrine of mutually assured destruction is already being mentioned as a template for an international understanding, prompting Admiral Owens to recommend an agreement on "no first use of cyber-attack". Such a deal would doubtless take many years of negotiations, but Georgia and Estonia – and doubtless other cyber-conflicts to come – will show it is worth doing.
victor.mallet@ft.com
Copyright The Financial Times Limited 2008
IN HAVANA, WAITING FOR OBAMA OR FOR PUTIN?
IN HAVANA, WAITING FOR OBAMA OR FOR PUTIN?
by Rens Lee
As I left Havana earlier this month, Cuba was eagerly
awaiting the United States' November presidential elections.
The buzz around the capital, reportedly from a highly placed
source, was that Barack Obama has already talked to Raul
Castro by phone. Obama has publicly stated that if elected,
he would immediately ease restrictions on Cuban American
travel and remittances placed by the Bush administration in
2004, but maintain the embargo, which has been in place
since 1961, until there is evidence of Cuban democratization
Indeed, no president could unilaterally lift the U.S.
embargo--the main sticking point in U.S.-Cuban relations--
because U.S. law (the 1996 Helms-Burton Act) mandates
preconditions for this, such as legalization of all
political activity and departure of the Castro brothers from
the political scene, that Cuba finds unacceptable. But a new
president who is open to dialogue with America's enemies
could prevail on a solidly democratic Congress to amend or
abrogate the law and thus un-freeze the U.S.-Cuban
relationship.
The embargo bans most U.S. trade with and all investment in
Cuba. While damaging the country's economy, it has obviously
failed in its intended purpose of getting rid of the Castro
regime. Cuba remains a police state in which the population
is subject to a repressive control and, excepting favored
few, lives at or close to the subsistence level.
(Interestingly, the police are among the best paid
professionals in Cuba, earning almost twice the miserly
average wage of $17 per month). Cuba-watchers debate whether
lifting the embargo and flooding the country with U.S.
tourists and businesspersons would erode the legitimacy of
the current regime or breathe new life into it. Yet there
are very good strategic reasons why America should not
continue its policy of isolating Cuba, even in the absence
of positive signs of democratization on the island.
One reason is that the current U.S. policy makes Cuba a
target of opportunity for a resurgent and increasingly
hostile Russia. Vladimir Putin talks openly about "restoring
our position in Cuba," and hints are surfacing in Moscow
that Russia might reestablish a military and intelligence
presence on the island in response to the planned missile
defense shield in Eastern Europe. Points of cooperation
under consideration include use of Cuba as a refueling stop
for long range bombers and for reconnaissance ships and
aircraft, and also reopening of a gigantic Soviet-era
electronic monitoring and surveillance facility at Lourdes,
near Havana. A state visit to Havana in July by hard-line
Deputy Prime Minister Igor Sechin (an ex-KGB member of
Putin's inner circle) and head of Russia's Security Council
Nikolai Patrushev could presage a new strategic dialogue
between Moscow and Havana, even though the visit was
officially touted as investment-related.
It is hardly coincidental that the warming of Cuban-Russian
ties and discussion of a renewed military relationship
follows closely on the accession of Raul Castro as de facto
Cuban leader. Moscow has historically regarded Raul's
brother as a bit of a nut case, stemming from Fidel's
erratic behavior during the Cuban missile crisis, when (in
the Soviet's view) Castro was trying to provoke a U.S.-
Soviet nuclear conflict. With Raul--who resembles a Soviet-
style apparatchik--in charge, Russia may feel more
comfortable about deploying strategic or intelligence assets
on the island.
Another point to consider in reevaluating U.S. Cuba policy--
and for doing so in the short term--relates to Cuba's huge
potential energy reserves located deep offshore in the Gulf
of Mexico, which the U.S. Geological Survey says could
contain 4.6 billion barrels of oil and 9.8 trillion cubic
feet of natural gas. With most of the U.S. east and west
coasts closed to offshore drilling and oil prices at well
above $100 a barrel, and international demand for
hydrocarbons projected to increase massively in future
years, U.S. exploration and development of these deposits
becomes a tempting prospect--a justification of rescinding
the embargo or at least creating an exception to it. Other
energy-dependent countries (such as China and India) already
are negotiating exploration rights, but because Cuba is a
sanctioned country, U.S. companies are forced to stand idly
by.
In sum, current strategic and economic realities argue for
dealing with the communist Cuban regime "as is"--i.e. not
insisting on regime change as a precondition for improving
relations. Opening Cuba to commerce and interchange with the
United States could, as many argue, plant the seeds of
democracy and capitalism there and give Americans some
leverage to moderate the regime's police-state
characteristics. But positioning the United States to
participate in what could be a Cuban energy bonanza and
keeping Cuba out of the orbit of America's geopolitical
competitors represent more immediate challenges that should
guide a new U.S.-Havana dialogue.
by Rens Lee
As I left Havana earlier this month, Cuba was eagerly
awaiting the United States' November presidential elections.
The buzz around the capital, reportedly from a highly placed
source, was that Barack Obama has already talked to Raul
Castro by phone. Obama has publicly stated that if elected,
he would immediately ease restrictions on Cuban American
travel and remittances placed by the Bush administration in
2004, but maintain the embargo, which has been in place
since 1961, until there is evidence of Cuban democratization
Indeed, no president could unilaterally lift the U.S.
embargo--the main sticking point in U.S.-Cuban relations--
because U.S. law (the 1996 Helms-Burton Act) mandates
preconditions for this, such as legalization of all
political activity and departure of the Castro brothers from
the political scene, that Cuba finds unacceptable. But a new
president who is open to dialogue with America's enemies
could prevail on a solidly democratic Congress to amend or
abrogate the law and thus un-freeze the U.S.-Cuban
relationship.
The embargo bans most U.S. trade with and all investment in
Cuba. While damaging the country's economy, it has obviously
failed in its intended purpose of getting rid of the Castro
regime. Cuba remains a police state in which the population
is subject to a repressive control and, excepting favored
few, lives at or close to the subsistence level.
(Interestingly, the police are among the best paid
professionals in Cuba, earning almost twice the miserly
average wage of $17 per month). Cuba-watchers debate whether
lifting the embargo and flooding the country with U.S.
tourists and businesspersons would erode the legitimacy of
the current regime or breathe new life into it. Yet there
are very good strategic reasons why America should not
continue its policy of isolating Cuba, even in the absence
of positive signs of democratization on the island.
One reason is that the current U.S. policy makes Cuba a
target of opportunity for a resurgent and increasingly
hostile Russia. Vladimir Putin talks openly about "restoring
our position in Cuba," and hints are surfacing in Moscow
that Russia might reestablish a military and intelligence
presence on the island in response to the planned missile
defense shield in Eastern Europe. Points of cooperation
under consideration include use of Cuba as a refueling stop
for long range bombers and for reconnaissance ships and
aircraft, and also reopening of a gigantic Soviet-era
electronic monitoring and surveillance facility at Lourdes,
near Havana. A state visit to Havana in July by hard-line
Deputy Prime Minister Igor Sechin (an ex-KGB member of
Putin's inner circle) and head of Russia's Security Council
Nikolai Patrushev could presage a new strategic dialogue
between Moscow and Havana, even though the visit was
officially touted as investment-related.
It is hardly coincidental that the warming of Cuban-Russian
ties and discussion of a renewed military relationship
follows closely on the accession of Raul Castro as de facto
Cuban leader. Moscow has historically regarded Raul's
brother as a bit of a nut case, stemming from Fidel's
erratic behavior during the Cuban missile crisis, when (in
the Soviet's view) Castro was trying to provoke a U.S.-
Soviet nuclear conflict. With Raul--who resembles a Soviet-
style apparatchik--in charge, Russia may feel more
comfortable about deploying strategic or intelligence assets
on the island.
Another point to consider in reevaluating U.S. Cuba policy--
and for doing so in the short term--relates to Cuba's huge
potential energy reserves located deep offshore in the Gulf
of Mexico, which the U.S. Geological Survey says could
contain 4.6 billion barrels of oil and 9.8 trillion cubic
feet of natural gas. With most of the U.S. east and west
coasts closed to offshore drilling and oil prices at well
above $100 a barrel, and international demand for
hydrocarbons projected to increase massively in future
years, U.S. exploration and development of these deposits
becomes a tempting prospect--a justification of rescinding
the embargo or at least creating an exception to it. Other
energy-dependent countries (such as China and India) already
are negotiating exploration rights, but because Cuba is a
sanctioned country, U.S. companies are forced to stand idly
by.
In sum, current strategic and economic realities argue for
dealing with the communist Cuban regime "as is"--i.e. not
insisting on regime change as a precondition for improving
relations. Opening Cuba to commerce and interchange with the
United States could, as many argue, plant the seeds of
democracy and capitalism there and give Americans some
leverage to moderate the regime's police-state
characteristics. But positioning the United States to
participate in what could be a Cuban energy bonanza and
keeping Cuba out of the orbit of America's geopolitical
competitors represent more immediate challenges that should
guide a new U.S.-Havana dialogue.
Ex-Mossad chief: Ahmadinejad is Israel's greatest gift
FP PASSPORT
8/21/08
Ex-Mossad chief: Ahmadinejad is Israel's greatest gift
By Haaretz Service
Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad's incendiary anti-Israel outbursts have united the international community against his country, thus serving a key Israeli interest, former Mossad chief Ephraim Halevy told an American-sponsored Arab satellite television network on Tuesday.
"Ahmadinejad is our greatest gift," Halevy told the Arab language television network Al-Hurra on Tuesday. "We couldn't carry out a better operation at the Mossad than to put a guy like Ahmadinejad in power in Iran."
Halevy added that the Iranian president's extremist statements "proved to everyone that Iran of today is an Iran that is impossible to live with. [Ahmadinejad] unites the entire world against Iran."
Halevy told Time magazine in an interview published last month that an Israeli attack on Iran "could have an impact on us for the next 100 years" and should only be considered as a last resort.
Halevy, who currently heads the Center for Strategic and Policy Studies at Hebrew University in Jerusalem, added that an Iranian attack on Israel would probably have little impact, because Iranian missiles would largely be intercepted by Israel's advanced anti-missile defense system.
Another former senior Mossad official, who reportedly served during Prime Minister Ehud Olmert's administration, told the American magazine that "Iran's achievement is creating an image of itself as a scary superpower when it's really a paper tiger."
An additional Israeli source told Time that Israel sees the period between the U.S. elections in November and the president's inauguration in January as the "window of opportunity" for a possible attack on Iran. The source explained that any military move against Iran would not be carried out before the elections, because it would negatively impact the presidential candidates, especially Republican candidate John McCain and "No Israel leader wants to be blamed for destroying the Republican chances," Time cited the source as saying.
However, the magazine quoted intelligence sources as saying that an Israeli attack on Iran would likely stall the Islamic republic's nuclear aspirations only by "a year or two."
Launching a long-range strike against a multitude of hidden targets in Iran entails huge risks and uncertain rewards, which makes the cost-benefit analysis weigh against an air strike on Iran, according to some senior Israeli officials who urge caution.
8/21/08
Ex-Mossad chief: Ahmadinejad is Israel's greatest gift
By Haaretz Service
Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad's incendiary anti-Israel outbursts have united the international community against his country, thus serving a key Israeli interest, former Mossad chief Ephraim Halevy told an American-sponsored Arab satellite television network on Tuesday.
"Ahmadinejad is our greatest gift," Halevy told the Arab language television network Al-Hurra on Tuesday. "We couldn't carry out a better operation at the Mossad than to put a guy like Ahmadinejad in power in Iran."
Halevy added that the Iranian president's extremist statements "proved to everyone that Iran of today is an Iran that is impossible to live with. [Ahmadinejad] unites the entire world against Iran."
Halevy told Time magazine in an interview published last month that an Israeli attack on Iran "could have an impact on us for the next 100 years" and should only be considered as a last resort.
Halevy, who currently heads the Center for Strategic and Policy Studies at Hebrew University in Jerusalem, added that an Iranian attack on Israel would probably have little impact, because Iranian missiles would largely be intercepted by Israel's advanced anti-missile defense system.
Another former senior Mossad official, who reportedly served during Prime Minister Ehud Olmert's administration, told the American magazine that "Iran's achievement is creating an image of itself as a scary superpower when it's really a paper tiger."
An additional Israeli source told Time that Israel sees the period between the U.S. elections in November and the president's inauguration in January as the "window of opportunity" for a possible attack on Iran. The source explained that any military move against Iran would not be carried out before the elections, because it would negatively impact the presidential candidates, especially Republican candidate John McCain and "No Israel leader wants to be blamed for destroying the Republican chances," Time cited the source as saying.
However, the magazine quoted intelligence sources as saying that an Israeli attack on Iran would likely stall the Islamic republic's nuclear aspirations only by "a year or two."
Launching a long-range strike against a multitude of hidden targets in Iran entails huge risks and uncertain rewards, which makes the cost-benefit analysis weigh against an air strike on Iran, according to some senior Israeli officials who urge caution.
Lessons from a "lost decade"
Lessons from a "lost decade"
Aug 21st 2008
From The Economist print edition
Will America follow Japan into a decade of stagnation?
AS FALLING house prices and tightening credit squeeze America's economy, some worry that the country may suffer a decade of stagnation, as Japan did after its bubble burst in the early 1990s. Japan's property bubble was also fuelled by cheap money and financial liberalisation and—just as in America—most people assumed that property prices could not fall nationally. When they did, borrowers defaulted and banks cut their lending. The result was a decade with average growth of less than 1%.
Most dismiss the idea that America could suffer the same fate as Japan, but some of the differences are overstated. For example, some claim that Japan's bubble was much bigger than America's. Yet average house prices nationwide rose by 90% in America between 2000 and 2006, compared with a gain of 51% in Japan between 1985 and early 1991, when Japanese home prices peaked (see left-hand chart). Prices in Japan's biggest cities rose faster, but nationwide figures matter more when gauging the impact on the economy. Japanese home prices have since fallen by just over 40%. American prices are already down by 20%, and many economists reckon they could fall by another 10% or more.
What about commercial property? Again, average prices rose by less in Japan (80%) than in America (90%) over those same periods. Thus Japan's property boom was, if anything, smaller than America's. Japan also had a stockmarket bubble, which burst a year earlier than that in property. This hurt banks, because they counted part of their equity holdings in other firms as capital. But its impact on households was modest, because only 30% of the population held shares, compared with over half of Americans.
Nor were Japanese policymakers any slower than American ones to cut interest rates and loosen fiscal policy after the bubble burst, contrary to popular misconceptions. The Bank of Japan (BoJ) began to lower interest rates in July 1991, soon after property prices began to decline. The discount rate was cut from 6% to 1.75% by the end of 1993. Two years after American house prices started to slide, the Fed funds rate has fallen from 5.25% to 2% (see right-hand chart). A study by America's Federal Reserve concluded that Japanese interest rates fell more sharply in the early 1990s than required by the "Taylor rule", which establishes the appropriate rate using the amount of spare capacity and inflation.
Japan also gave its economy a big fiscal boost. The cyclically adjusted budget deficit (which excludes the automatic impact of slower growth on tax revenues) increased by an annual average of 1.8% of GDP in 1992 and 1993—similar to America's budget boost this year. Japan's monetary and fiscal stimulus did help to lift the economy. After a recession in 1993-94, GDP was growing at an annual rate of around 2.5% by 1995. But deflation also emerged that year, pushing up real interest rates and increasing the real burden of debt. It was from here on that Japan made its biggest policy mistakes. In 1997 the government raised its consumption tax to try to slim its budget deficit. And with interest rates close to zero, the BoJ insisted that there was nothing more it could do. Only much later did it start to print lots of money.
America's inflation rate of above 5% is an advantage. Not only are real interest rates negative, but inflation is also helping to bring the housing market back to fair value with a smaller fall in prices than otherwise. But in another way America is more exposed than Japan was. When its bubble burst in 1991, Japan's households saved 15% of their income. By 2001 saving had fallen to 5%, which helped to prop up consumer spending. America's saving rate of close to zero leaves no such cushion.
The perils of procrastination
John Makin, at the American Enterprise Institute, a think-tank, argues that monetary and fiscal relief were necessary but not sufficient to revive Japan's economy. The missing ingredient was a clean-up of the banking system, on which Japanese firms were more dependent than their American counterparts. Japanese banks hid their bad loans beneath opaque corporate structures, and curtailed new lending to profitable businesses. A vicious circle developed, whereby banks' bad loans depressed growth which then created more bad loans.
In another new report Richard Jerram, at Macquarie Securities, concludes that America "will not come close to repeating the experience of Japan", because its regulatory system, financial markets and political structure will not let it procrastinate for so long. America has a more transparent regulatory structure which presses banks into recognising losses and repairing their balance-sheets—even if regulators were slow to recognise that the banks were shifting risky securitised assets off their balance-sheets in the first place. But Japan's regulators for a long while were in cahoots with banks over hiding their bad loans.
Over the past year, American banks have been quicker than those in Japan in the 1990s to disclose and write off losses and raise new capital. In Japan it took a long while before the political will was there to use taxpayers' money to plug the banking system. A big test for America's Treasury will be how quickly it recognises the need to nationalise Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac, the teetering mortgage giants.
One advantage over Japan, says Mr Jerram, is that America is spreading the costs of its housing bust across other countries. Foreigners hold a large slice of American mortgage-backed securities. Sovereign-wealth funds have provided new capital for American banks. And America's booming exports have helped to support its economy, thanks to the cheap dollar. In contrast, the yen's sharp appreciation after Japan's bubble burst hurt exports at the same time as domestic demand was being squeezed.
By learning from Japan's mistakes, America can avoid a dismal decade. However, it would be arrogant for those in Washington, DC, to assume that Japan's troubles simply reflected its macroeconomic incompetence. Experience in other countries shows that serious asset-price busts often lead to economic downturns lasting several years. Only a wild optimist would believe that the worst is over in America.
Aug 21st 2008
From The Economist print edition
Will America follow Japan into a decade of stagnation?
AS FALLING house prices and tightening credit squeeze America's economy, some worry that the country may suffer a decade of stagnation, as Japan did after its bubble burst in the early 1990s. Japan's property bubble was also fuelled by cheap money and financial liberalisation and—just as in America—most people assumed that property prices could not fall nationally. When they did, borrowers defaulted and banks cut their lending. The result was a decade with average growth of less than 1%.
Most dismiss the idea that America could suffer the same fate as Japan, but some of the differences are overstated. For example, some claim that Japan's bubble was much bigger than America's. Yet average house prices nationwide rose by 90% in America between 2000 and 2006, compared with a gain of 51% in Japan between 1985 and early 1991, when Japanese home prices peaked (see left-hand chart). Prices in Japan's biggest cities rose faster, but nationwide figures matter more when gauging the impact on the economy. Japanese home prices have since fallen by just over 40%. American prices are already down by 20%, and many economists reckon they could fall by another 10% or more.
What about commercial property? Again, average prices rose by less in Japan (80%) than in America (90%) over those same periods. Thus Japan's property boom was, if anything, smaller than America's. Japan also had a stockmarket bubble, which burst a year earlier than that in property. This hurt banks, because they counted part of their equity holdings in other firms as capital. But its impact on households was modest, because only 30% of the population held shares, compared with over half of Americans.
Nor were Japanese policymakers any slower than American ones to cut interest rates and loosen fiscal policy after the bubble burst, contrary to popular misconceptions. The Bank of Japan (BoJ) began to lower interest rates in July 1991, soon after property prices began to decline. The discount rate was cut from 6% to 1.75% by the end of 1993. Two years after American house prices started to slide, the Fed funds rate has fallen from 5.25% to 2% (see right-hand chart). A study by America's Federal Reserve concluded that Japanese interest rates fell more sharply in the early 1990s than required by the "Taylor rule", which establishes the appropriate rate using the amount of spare capacity and inflation.
Japan also gave its economy a big fiscal boost. The cyclically adjusted budget deficit (which excludes the automatic impact of slower growth on tax revenues) increased by an annual average of 1.8% of GDP in 1992 and 1993—similar to America's budget boost this year. Japan's monetary and fiscal stimulus did help to lift the economy. After a recession in 1993-94, GDP was growing at an annual rate of around 2.5% by 1995. But deflation also emerged that year, pushing up real interest rates and increasing the real burden of debt. It was from here on that Japan made its biggest policy mistakes. In 1997 the government raised its consumption tax to try to slim its budget deficit. And with interest rates close to zero, the BoJ insisted that there was nothing more it could do. Only much later did it start to print lots of money.
America's inflation rate of above 5% is an advantage. Not only are real interest rates negative, but inflation is also helping to bring the housing market back to fair value with a smaller fall in prices than otherwise. But in another way America is more exposed than Japan was. When its bubble burst in 1991, Japan's households saved 15% of their income. By 2001 saving had fallen to 5%, which helped to prop up consumer spending. America's saving rate of close to zero leaves no such cushion.
The perils of procrastination
John Makin, at the American Enterprise Institute, a think-tank, argues that monetary and fiscal relief were necessary but not sufficient to revive Japan's economy. The missing ingredient was a clean-up of the banking system, on which Japanese firms were more dependent than their American counterparts. Japanese banks hid their bad loans beneath opaque corporate structures, and curtailed new lending to profitable businesses. A vicious circle developed, whereby banks' bad loans depressed growth which then created more bad loans.
In another new report Richard Jerram, at Macquarie Securities, concludes that America "will not come close to repeating the experience of Japan", because its regulatory system, financial markets and political structure will not let it procrastinate for so long. America has a more transparent regulatory structure which presses banks into recognising losses and repairing their balance-sheets—even if regulators were slow to recognise that the banks were shifting risky securitised assets off their balance-sheets in the first place. But Japan's regulators for a long while were in cahoots with banks over hiding their bad loans.
Over the past year, American banks have been quicker than those in Japan in the 1990s to disclose and write off losses and raise new capital. In Japan it took a long while before the political will was there to use taxpayers' money to plug the banking system. A big test for America's Treasury will be how quickly it recognises the need to nationalise Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac, the teetering mortgage giants.
One advantage over Japan, says Mr Jerram, is that America is spreading the costs of its housing bust across other countries. Foreigners hold a large slice of American mortgage-backed securities. Sovereign-wealth funds have provided new capital for American banks. And America's booming exports have helped to support its economy, thanks to the cheap dollar. In contrast, the yen's sharp appreciation after Japan's bubble burst hurt exports at the same time as domestic demand was being squeezed.
By learning from Japan's mistakes, America can avoid a dismal decade. However, it would be arrogant for those in Washington, DC, to assume that Japan's troubles simply reflected its macroeconomic incompetence. Experience in other countries shows that serious asset-price busts often lead to economic downturns lasting several years. Only a wild optimist would believe that the worst is over in America.
Thursday, August 21, 2008
The west is strategically wrong on Georgia
FINANCIAL TIMES
August 20 2008
The west is strategically wrong on Georgia
By Kishore Mahbubani
Sometimes small events can portend great changes. The Georgian fiasco may be one such event. It heralds the end of the post cold-war era. But it does not mark the return of any new cold war. It marks an even bigger return: the return of history.
The post cold-war era began on a note of western triumphalism, symbolised by Francis Fukuyama's book, The End of History. The title was audacious but it captured the western zeitgeist. History had ended with the triumph of western civilisation. The rest of the world had no choice but to capitulate to the advance of the west.
In Georgia, Russia has loudly declared that it will no longer capitulate to the west. After two decades of humiliation Russia has decided to snap back. Before long, other forces will do the same. As a result of its overwhelming power, the west has intruded into the geopolitical spaces of other dormant countries. They are no longer dormant, especially in Asia.
Indeed, most of the world is bemused by western moralising on Georgia. America would not tolerate Russia intruding into its geopolitical sphere in Latin America. Hence Latin Americans see American double standards clearly. So do all the Muslim commentaries that note that the US invaded Iraq illegally, too. Neither India nor China is moved to protest against Russia. It shows how isolated is the western view on Georgia: that the world should support the underdog, Georgia, against Russia. In reality, most support Russia against the bullying west. The gap between the western narrative and the rest of the world could not be greater.
It is therefore critical for the west to learn the right lessons from Georgia. It needs to think strategically about the limited options it has. After the collapse of the Soviet Union, western thinkers assumed the west would never need to make geopolitical compromises. It could dictate terms. Now it must recognise reality. The combined western population in North America, the European Union and Australasia is 700m, about 10 per cent of the world's population. The remaining 90 per cent have gone from being objects of world history to subjects. The Financial Times headline of August 18 2008 proclaimed: "West in united front over Georgia" . It should have read: "Rest of the world faults west on Georgia". Why? A lack of strategic thinking.
Mao Zedong, for all his flaws, was a great strategic thinker. He said China always had to deal with its primary contradiction and compromise with its secondary contradiction. When the Soviet Union became the primary contradiction, Mao settled with the US, even though it involved the humiliation of dealing with a power that then recognised Chiang Kai-shek as the legitimate ruler. The west must emulate Mao's pragmatism and focus on its primary contradiction.
Russia is not even close to becoming the primary contradiction the west faces. The real strategic choice is whether its primary challenge comes from the Islamic world or China. Since September 11 2001, the west has acted as though the Islamic world is the primary challenge. Yet rather than devise a long-term strategy to win over 1.2bn Muslims, the west has jumped into the Islamic world with no strategy. Hence there are looming failures in Afghanistan and Iraq and an even more hostile environment in the Islamic world.
Many European thinkers are acutely aware of the folly of many US policies. But they are reluctant to confront the dangers of outsourcing their security to US power. In security, geography trumps culture. Because of geography, Europe has to worry about Islamic anger. Because of the Atlantic Ocean, the US has less reason to do so.
In the US, leading neo-conservative thinkers see China as their primary contradiction. Yet they also support Israel with a passion, without realising this stance is a geopolitical gift to China. It guarantees the US faces a hostile Islamic universe, distracting it from focusing on China. There is no doubt China was the bigger winner of 9/11. It has stabilised its neighbourhood, while the US has been distracted.
Western thinkers must decide where the real long-term challenge is. If it is the Islamic world, the US should stop intruding into Russia's geopolitical space and work out a long-term engagement with China. If it is China, the US must win over Russia and the Islamic world and resolve the Israel-Palestine issue. This will enable Islamic governments to work more closely with the west in the battle against al-Qaeda.
The biggest paradox facing the west is that it is at last possible to create a safer world order. The number of countries wanting to become "responsible stakeholders" has never been higher. Most, including China and India, want to work with the US and the west. But the absence of a long-term coherent western strategy towards the world and the inability to make geopolitical compromises are the biggest obstacles to a stable world order. Western leaders say the world is becoming a more dangerous place, yet few admit that their flawed thinking is bringing this about. Georgia illustrates the results of a lack of strategic thinking.
The writer, dean of the Lee Kuan Yew School of Public Policy (National University of Singapore), has just published 'The New Asian Hemisphere: the Irresistible Shift of Global Power to the East'
August 20 2008
The west is strategically wrong on Georgia
By Kishore Mahbubani
Sometimes small events can portend great changes. The Georgian fiasco may be one such event. It heralds the end of the post cold-war era. But it does not mark the return of any new cold war. It marks an even bigger return: the return of history.
The post cold-war era began on a note of western triumphalism, symbolised by Francis Fukuyama's book, The End of History. The title was audacious but it captured the western zeitgeist. History had ended with the triumph of western civilisation. The rest of the world had no choice but to capitulate to the advance of the west.
In Georgia, Russia has loudly declared
Indeed, most of the world is bemused by western moralising on Georgia. America would not tolerate Russia intruding into its geopolitical sphere in Latin America. Hence Latin Americans see American double standards clearly. So do all the Muslim commentaries that note that the US invaded Iraq illegally, too. Neither India nor China is moved to protest against Russia. It shows how isolated is the western view on Georgia: that the world should support the underdog, Georgia, against Russia. In reality, most support Russia against the bullying west. The gap between the western narrative and the rest of the world could not be greater.
It is therefore critical for the west to learn the right lessons from Georgia. It needs to think strategically about the limited options it has. After the collapse of the Soviet Union, western thinkers assumed the west would never need to make geopolitical compromises. It could dictate terms. Now it must recognise reality. The combined western population in North America, the European Union and Australasia is 700m, about 10 per cent of the world's population. The remaining 90 per cent have gone from being objects of world history to subjects. The Financial Times headline of August 18 2008 proclaimed: "West in united front over Georgia"
Mao Zedong, for all his flaws, was a great strategic thinker. He said China always had to deal with its primary contradiction and compromise with its secondary contradiction. When the Soviet Union became the primary contradiction, Mao settled with the US, even though it involved the humiliation of dealing with a power that then recognised Chiang Kai-shek as the legitimate ruler. The west must emulate Mao's pragmatism and focus on its primary contradiction.
Russia is not even close to becoming the primary contradiction the west faces. The real strategic choice is whether its primary challenge comes from the Islamic world or China. Since September 11 2001, the west has acted as though the Islamic world is the primary challenge. Yet rather than devise a long-term strategy to win over 1.2bn Muslims, the west has jumped into the Islamic world with no strategy. Hence there are looming failures in Afghanistan and Iraq and an even more hostile environment in the Islamic world.
Many European thinkers are acutely aware of the folly of many US policies. But they are reluctant to confront the dangers of outsourcing their security to US power. In security, geography trumps culture. Because of geography, Europe has to worry about Islamic anger. Because of the Atlantic Ocean, the US has less reason to do so.
In the US, leading neo-conservative thinkers see China as their primary contradiction. Yet they also support Israel with a passion, without realising this stance is a geopolitical gift to China. It guarantees the US faces a hostile Islamic universe, distracting it from focusing on China. There is no doubt China was the bigger winner of 9/11. It has stabilised its neighbourhood, while the US has been distracted.
Western thinkers must decide where the real long-term challenge is. If it is the Islamic world, the US should stop intruding into Russia's geopolitical space and work out a long-term engagement with China. If it is China, the US must win over Russia and the Islamic world and resolve the Israel-Palestine issue. This will enable Islamic governments to work more closely with the west in the battle against al-Qaeda.
The biggest paradox facing the west is that it is at last possible to create a safer world order. The number of countries wanting to become "responsible stakeholders" has never been higher. Most, including China and India, want to work with the US and the west. But the absence of a long-term coherent western strategy towards the world and the inability to make geopolitical compromises are the biggest obstacles to a stable world order. Western leaders say the world is becoming a more dangerous place, yet few admit that their flawed thinking is bringing this about. Georgia illustrates the results of a lack of strategic thinking.
The writer, dean of the Lee Kuan Yew School of Public Policy (National University of Singapore), has just published 'The New Asian Hemisphere: the Irresistible Shift of Global Power to the East'
The World Reacts to Russia
RealClearPolitics
August 21, 2008
The World Reacts to Russia
By Victor Davis Hanson
Everyone is distracted by the Olympics. The squabbling here on the campaign trail consumes the media. Two presidential candidates and a lame-duck president all are weighing in on foreign policy. No wonder Vladimir Putin thought it was a good time to invade Georgia.
Apparently the Russian prime minister knew exactly what he was doing but assumed no one in the West did. And he was right.
Our pundits and politicians are all over the map as Putin is variously portrayed as villain, victim, patriot, tyrant -- and more still.
The neoconservatives: We must make Russia pay a terrible price for subverting a democracy. Our policy of promoting liberal governments among the former Soviet republics, with integration into Europe and relations with NATO, was sound, and it cannot be allowed to be aborted by Putin.
Bottom line: Form a ring of democracies around Russia until it sees the light and likewise evolves into a constitutional state.
The paleoconservatives: Putin is only protecting his rightful national interests in his own backyard, which don't really conflict with ours. You have to admire the old brute for taking care of business. Neocons -- and no doubt Israelis in the background -- provoked that Georgian loudmouthed dandy Saakashvili to stick his head in a noose -- so he deserved the hanging he got.
Bottom line: We should cut a deal with our natural ally Putin to keep out of each other's proper sphere of influence -- and let each deal as it wishes with these miserable little third-party troublemakers.
The realists: Don't poke sticks at the Bear. We should define what our strategic interests in the region are. Maybe we can protect Eastern Europe, the Baltic republics and the Ukraine -- but only if we accept that Georgia just isn't part of the equation. We need to back out of the saloon with drawn pistols, and save as much face as we can.
This is a reminder that we forgot the role of honor and fear in international relations when we encouraged weak former Soviet republics merrily to join the West and gratuitously humiliate Russia.
Bottom line: Don't get caught again issuing promises that we can't keep!
The left wing: Putin's unilateral pre-emption was just like our own in Iraq. His recognition of South Ossetia's independence was no different from our own in breakaway Kosovo. So America is just as bad. Russia's attack is the moral equivalent of America arbitrarily removing the tyrant Saddam. It's all about Big Oil and pipelines anyway -- along with Bush, Cheney, Halliburton et al.
Bottom line: Another long overdue comeuppance for the American Empire.
The liberal mainstream: Both sides are at fault. We understand Georgia's plight, but also sympathize with Russia's dilemma. We should consult the United Nations, involve the European Union and encourage European diplomacy. We can learn from the multilateral NATO teamwork in Afghanistan.
Bottom line: Make sure that international institutions don't confuse an empathetic America with cowboy George Bush.
The Europeans: Prioritize! 1) Don't jeopardize gas supplies from, and trade with, Russia; 2) Avoid any confrontation in any form; 3) Make sure that Bush does not do something stupid to draw us too far in, but at least does something to avoid leaving us too far out.
Bottom line: Luckily, Tbilisi is still a long way from Berlin and Paris!
The rest of America: My lord, Putin is acting just like Brezhnev! But they told us that he just wanted to democratize and reform Russia, integrate with NATO and the EU, and help fight radical Islam! So why did he get angry with Georgia when it just wanted to do the same things he was supposed to be doing? That backstabber wasn't honest with us!
Bottom line: Now what?
The more Russia promises to leave Georgia, the more it seems to stay put. One reason may be that Putin keeps counting on us either to be confused, contradictory or angrier at ourselves than at Russia over his latest aggression. And given our inability to speak with one voice, he seems to be absolutely right.
Victor Davis Hanson is a classicist and historian at the Hoover Institution, Stanford University, and author, most recently, of "A War Like No Other: How the Athenians and Spartans Fought the Peloponnesian War." You can reach him by e-mailing author@victorhanson.com.
© RealClearPolitics 2008
August 21, 2008
The World Reacts to Russia
By Victor Davis Hanson
Everyone is distracted by the Olympics. The squabbling here on the campaign trail consumes the media. Two presidential candidates and a lame-duck president all are weighing in on foreign policy. No wonder Vladimir Putin thought it was a good time to invade Georgia.
Apparently the Russian prime minister knew exactly what he was doing but assumed no one in the West did. And he was right.
Our pundits and politicians are all over the map as Putin is variously portrayed as villain, victim, patriot, tyrant -- and more still.
The neoconservatives: We must make Russia pay a terrible price for subverting a democracy. Our policy of promoting liberal governments among the former Soviet republics, with integration into Europe and relations with NATO, was sound, and it cannot be allowed to be aborted by Putin.
Bottom line: Form a ring of democracies around Russia until it sees the light and likewise evolves into a constitutional state.
The paleoconservatives: Putin is only protecting his rightful national interests in his own backyard, which don't really conflict with ours. You have to admire the old brute for taking care of business. Neocons -- and no doubt Israelis in the background -- provoked that Georgian loudmouthed dandy Saakashvili to stick his head in a noose -- so he deserved the hanging he got.
Bottom line: We should cut a deal with our natural ally Putin to keep out of each other's proper sphere of influence -- and let each deal as it wishes with these miserable little third-party troublemakers.
The realists: Don't poke sticks at the Bear. We should define what our strategic interests in the region are. Maybe we can protect Eastern Europe, the Baltic republics and the Ukraine -- but only if we accept that Georgia just isn't part of the equation. We need to back out of the saloon with drawn pistols, and save as much face as we can.
This is a reminder that we forgot the role of honor and fear in international relations when we encouraged weak former Soviet republics merrily to join the West and gratuitously humiliate Russia.
Bottom line: Don't get caught again issuing promises that we can't keep!
The left wing: Putin's unilateral pre-emption was just like our own in Iraq. His recognition of South Ossetia's independence was no different from our own in breakaway Kosovo. So America is just as bad. Russia's attack is the moral equivalent of America arbitrarily removing the tyrant Saddam. It's all about Big Oil and pipelines anyway -- along with Bush, Cheney, Halliburton et al.
Bottom line: Another long overdue comeuppance for the American Empire.
The liberal mainstream: Both sides are at fault. We understand Georgia's plight, but also sympathize with Russia's dilemma. We should consult the United Nations, involve the European Union and encourage European diplomacy. We can learn from the multilateral NATO teamwork in Afghanistan.
Bottom line: Make sure that international institutions don't confuse an empathetic America with cowboy George Bush.
The Europeans: Prioritize! 1) Don't jeopardize gas supplies from, and trade with, Russia; 2) Avoid any confrontation in any form; 3) Make sure that Bush does not do something stupid to draw us too far in, but at least does something to avoid leaving us too far out.
Bottom line: Luckily, Tbilisi is still a long way from Berlin and Paris!
The rest of America: My lord, Putin is acting just like Brezhnev! But they told us that he just wanted to democratize and reform Russia, integrate with NATO and the EU, and help fight radical Islam! So why did he get angry with Georgia when it just wanted to do the same things he was supposed to be doing? That backstabber wasn't honest with us!
Bottom line: Now what?
The more Russia promises to leave Georgia, the more it seems to stay put. One reason may be that Putin keeps counting on us either to be confused, contradictory or angrier at ourselves than at Russia over his latest aggression. And given our inability to speak with one voice, he seems to be absolutely right.
Victor Davis Hanson is a classicist and historian at the Hoover Institution, Stanford University, and author, most recently, of "A War Like No Other: How the Athenians and Spartans Fought the Peloponnesian War." You can reach him by e-mailing author@victorhanson.com.
© RealClearPolitics 2008
Time for U.S. to Embrace Constructive Disengagement from the Mideast
http://www.energytribune.com/articles.cfm?aid=974
Posted on Aug. 20, 2008
By Leon Hadar Time for U.S. to Embrace Constructive Disengagement from the Mideast
Obama
Political observers predict that Barack Obama, who has been critical of the Bush Doctrine of promoting unilateral regime change and spreading democracy in the Middle East, is going to transform U.S. policy there. I'm not holding my breath.
Even under the bestcase scenario, some U.S. troops would probably remain in Iraq and other parts of the Persian Gulf, as a way of demonstrating U.S. resolve to defend the oilproducing countries in the region. Washington would still maintain its strong support for Israel and try to mediate another "peace process."
Indeed, under either a Democratic or a Republican president, one should not be surprised to discover that the major element in the neoconservative agenda – maintaining U.S. military and diplomatic hegemony in the Middle East – will likely remain alive and well, producing the neverending vicious circle: more U.S. military interventions, leading to more antiU.S. terrorism, resulting in more regime changes.
A lack of change in U.S. policy could be due to inertia combined with the influences of entrenched bureaucracies and powerful interest groups. But the most important factor making it likely that U.S. interventionism in the Middle East will continue is the survival of the U.S. Middle East Paradigm MEP, which I described in my book, Sandstorm: Policy Failure in the Middle East. The origins of the MEP go back to end of World War II and the Cold War.
Three factors provided the rationale for ongoing U.S. involvement in the Middle East. The first was what were perceived as the necessities dictated by geostrategy. The assumption was that the Soviet Union sought dominance in the region and had to be contained consequently, the United States replaced Britain and France in the role of protecting the interests of the Western alliance in the Middle East.
The second reason had to do with geoeconomics. Given the larger context of the need to counter Soviet moves, Washington figured it was worth the price to be involved in the Middle East, not only to protect U.S. access to Mideast oil, but also to protect the free access of Western economies to the energy resources in the Persian Gulf. It seemed to make strategic sense during the Cold War to let allies have a "free ride" on U.S. military power.
Third, with the establishment of Israel in 1948, the United States underscored its historic and moral commitment to its survival in the Middle East by helping it maintain its margin of security as it coped with hostile Arab neighbors.
These U.S. policies were very costly, involving alliances with military dictators and medieval despots and covert and overt military intervention. But if one accepted the notion that, based on calculations of national interest, Washington should have been engaged in the Middle East during the Cold War, one was also willing to accept the costs involved – including antiAmericanism that produced oil embargoes, embassies held hostage, and, of course, terrorism.
With the end of the Cold War, however, that factor receded in importance. But U.S. policymakers did not reassess the MEP for U.S. policy. Instead, during the administrations of George H.W. Bush and Bill Clinton, Washington took advantage of the Soviet collapse and the lack of competition from other global powers and emerged as the dominant power in the Middle East, including through the containment of Iraq and Iran, the extension of U.S. military power to the Persian Gulf, and the efforts to mediate peace between Israel and Arab states.
But these same policies ignited more antiAmericanism, and led to the Second Intifada and then to 9/11. From this perspective, 9/11 should have been seen as a challenge to U.S. dominance in the Middle East. But again, no effort was made to reassess the MEP in fact, the policy paradigm was the framework within which the U.S. response was fashioned. The neoconservatives simply offered a different strategy to achieve U.S. regional supremacy – through regime change and the direct occupation of Arab countries, instead of through the more diplomatic strategy and indirect military approach embraced by earlier administrations.
The costs of following neoconservatives' advice have become apparent. But most critics of the Bush administration still fail to offer anything other than different policies to achieve U.S. hegemony in the region they prefer to maintain the current MEP instead of replacing the bankrupt policy paradigm.
But U.S. policymakers need to recognize that the main rationale for U.S. intervention in the Middle East – the Soviet threat – has long since disappeared, and that U.S. military intervention in the region only ignites antiAmericanism in the form of international terrorism. Moreover, the U.S. economy is not dependent on Mideast oil 70 percent of U.S. energy supplies do not originate in the Middle East. The United States is actually more dependent on Latin American oil than it is on Saudi and Persian Gulf oil. And the notion that U.S. policy in the Middle East helps give Americans access to cheap and affordable oil makes little sense, if one considers the military and other costs – including two Gulf Wars – that are added to the price the U.S. consumer pays for driving.
Indeed, U.S. military force is quite likely unnecessary to maintain access to Persian Gulf oil, either for the United States, Western Europe, or Japan. The oilproducing states have few resources other than oil, and if they don't sell it to somebody, they will have little wealth to maintain their power and curb domestic challenges. They need to sell oil more than the United States needs to buy it. If political and military influence is required to keep oil flowing to Western Europe and Japan, and increasingly China, the countries that are truly dependent should be the ones to bear the cost.
The time has come, therefore, to bid farewell to the old MEP and try to draw the outlines of a new policy in the Middle East. There is a need for a longterm policy of U.S. "constructive disengagement" from the Middle East that will encourage the Europeans and other global and regional players to take the responsibility of securing their interests in the region.
Posted on Aug. 20, 2008
By Leon Hadar Time for U.S. to Embrace Constructive Disengagement from the Mideast
Obama
Political observers predict that Barack Obama, who has been critical of the Bush Doctrine of promoting unilateral regime change and spreading democracy in the Middle East, is going to transform U.S. policy there. I'm not holding my breath.
Even under the bestcase scenario, some U.S. troops would probably remain in Iraq and other parts of the Persian Gulf, as a way of demonstrating U.S. resolve to defend the oilproducing countries in the region. Washington would still maintain its strong support for Israel and try to mediate another "peace process."
Indeed, under either a Democratic or a Republican president, one should not be surprised to discover that the major element in the neoconservative agenda – maintaining U.S. military and diplomatic hegemony in the Middle East – will likely remain alive and well, producing the neverending vicious circle: more U.S. military interventions, leading to more antiU.S. terrorism, resulting in more regime changes.
A lack of change in U.S. policy could be due to inertia combined with the influences of entrenched bureaucracies and powerful interest groups. But the most important factor making it likely that U.S. interventionism in the Middle East will continue is the survival of the U.S. Middle East Paradigm MEP, which I described in my book, Sandstorm: Policy Failure in the Middle East. The origins of the MEP go back to end of World War II and the Cold War.
Three factors provided the rationale for ongoing U.S. involvement in the Middle East. The first was what were perceived as the necessities dictated by geostrategy. The assumption was that the Soviet Union sought dominance in the region and had to be contained consequently, the United States replaced Britain and France in the role of protecting the interests of the Western alliance in the Middle East.
The second reason had to do with geoeconomics. Given the larger context of the need to counter Soviet moves, Washington figured it was worth the price to be involved in the Middle East, not only to protect U.S. access to Mideast oil, but also to protect the free access of Western economies to the energy resources in the Persian Gulf. It seemed to make strategic sense during the Cold War to let allies have a "free ride" on U.S. military power.
Third, with the establishment of Israel in 1948, the United States underscored its historic and moral commitment to its survival in the Middle East by helping it maintain its margin of security as it coped with hostile Arab neighbors.
These U.S. policies were very costly, involving alliances with military dictators and medieval despots and covert and overt military intervention. But if one accepted the notion that, based on calculations of national interest, Washington should have been engaged in the Middle East during the Cold War, one was also willing to accept the costs involved – including antiAmericanism that produced oil embargoes, embassies held hostage, and, of course, terrorism.
With the end of the Cold War, however, that factor receded in importance. But U.S. policymakers did not reassess the MEP for U.S. policy. Instead, during the administrations of George H.W. Bush and Bill Clinton, Washington took advantage of the Soviet collapse and the lack of competition from other global powers and emerged as the dominant power in the Middle East, including through the containment of Iraq and Iran, the extension of U.S. military power to the Persian Gulf, and the efforts to mediate peace between Israel and Arab states.
But these same policies ignited more antiAmericanism, and led to the Second Intifada and then to 9/11. From this perspective, 9/11 should have been seen as a challenge to U.S. dominance in the Middle East. But again, no effort was made to reassess the MEP in fact, the policy paradigm was the framework within which the U.S. response was fashioned. The neoconservatives simply offered a different strategy to achieve U.S. regional supremacy – through regime change and the direct occupation of Arab countries, instead of through the more diplomatic strategy and indirect military approach embraced by earlier administrations.
The costs of following neoconservatives' advice have become apparent. But most critics of the Bush administration still fail to offer anything other than different policies to achieve U.S. hegemony in the region they prefer to maintain the current MEP instead of replacing the bankrupt policy paradigm.
But U.S. policymakers need to recognize that the main rationale for U.S. intervention in the Middle East – the Soviet threat – has long since disappeared, and that U.S. military intervention in the region only ignites antiAmericanism in the form of international terrorism. Moreover, the U.S. economy is not dependent on Mideast oil 70 percent of U.S. energy supplies do not originate in the Middle East. The United States is actually more dependent on Latin American oil than it is on Saudi and Persian Gulf oil. And the notion that U.S. policy in the Middle East helps give Americans access to cheap and affordable oil makes little sense, if one considers the military and other costs – including two Gulf Wars – that are added to the price the U.S. consumer pays for driving.
Indeed, U.S. military force is quite likely unnecessary to maintain access to Persian Gulf oil, either for the United States, Western Europe, or Japan. The oilproducing states have few resources other than oil, and if they don't sell it to somebody, they will have little wealth to maintain their power and curb domestic challenges. They need to sell oil more than the United States needs to buy it. If political and military influence is required to keep oil flowing to Western Europe and Japan, and increasingly China, the countries that are truly dependent should be the ones to bear the cost.
The time has come, therefore, to bid farewell to the old MEP and try to draw the outlines of a new policy in the Middle East. There is a need for a longterm policy of U.S. "constructive disengagement" from the Middle East that will encourage the Europeans and other global and regional players to take the responsibility of securing their interests in the region.
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