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By Barry Rubin
Here's today's evidence that we are now living in Middle East 2.0 instead of the old version.
First, a definition:
Middle East 1.0: Characterized by Arab nationalist domination, competition among the strongerArab states to lead the region and by the weaker ones trying to survive those campaigns. Arab-Israeli conflict is a real enterprise. Roughly 1952-2000 or so. International aspect: Cold War competition between the United States and USSR and, near the end, US as sole superpower.
Middle East 2.0: Characterized by a battle between Arab nationalist regimes and revolutionary Islamists. An Iran-led bloc (Syria, Hamas, Hizballah, Iraqi insurgents) seeking regional hegemony. Israel and most Arab states have parallel interests; Arab states (except for Syria) put low priority on conflict. International aspect: Will the West support the moderates or appease the radicals.
The latest occasion is an interview of Prince Saud al-Faisal, the Saudi foreign minister with Maureen Dowd of the New York Times. Of course, there are the usual rhetorical flourishes about Israel but the passion and focus is clearly on Iran and various Islamist terrorists. (“There is nothing wrong with keeping the terrorists on the run,” says the prince.)
This is the same man who told Secretary of State Hillary Clinton that sanctions would be too slow in stopping Iran from getting nuclear weapons and the United States better do something quick. Here he says he prefers a resolution through the UN but it isn't clear what that means.
It's funny that in the West the region is being discussed, written about, and taught as if we were back in the 1970s. There is a particular obsession with the idea that everything is about the Arab-Israeli conflict. But if the Saudis talk like this publicly (you can imagine what they say privately) it's a sign of how changed everything is in Middle East 2.0's world.
Read this carefully. The prince says:
“There are no troops arrayed on the border of Israel waiting for the moment to say, ‘Attack Israel. Nobody is going to fight them and threaten their peace. But they didn’t accept that. So it makes one wonder, what does Israel want?”
Now you can take this as propaganda, and of course Israel does have a lot to worry about: Iran, Syria, Hamas, Hizballah, Arab countries being overthrown by Islamist warmongers, nuclear weapons, terrorism, and agreeing to a Palestinian state that then begins phase two of an effort to destroy Israel. It also needs agreement that any peace treaty permanently end the conflict, that Palestinian refugee be resettled in Palestine, that a Palestinian state is really going to block cross-border raids, and that foeign armies (notably those of Iran and Syria) aren't going to enter the West Bank.
Even Dowd, not known as being sympathetic to Israel, understand some of this and makes the remarkable statement: "If anyone deserves to be paranoid, of course, it’s Israel. But Israel can’t be paranoid because paranoia is the mistaken perception that people are out to get you."
But Faisal isn't just trying to score points. He is trying to get across the point that Saudi Arabia's government doesn't want a war with Israel and prefer the conflict to go away. It can't and won't make a formal peace but the Saudis certainly don't think the way they did decades ago.
And when Faisal talks about “no troops arrayed on the border....Nobody is going to fight them and threaten their peace," how does that look if one subtitutes Saudi Arabia for Israel? The Saudis and other Gulf Arab states (along with Lebanon and Iraq) are now on the front line and under threat more than Israel is right now. Faisal know it and so should we all.
Barry Rubin is director of the Global Research in International Affairs (GLORIA) Center and editor of the Middle East Review of International Affairs (MERIA) Journal. His latest books are The Israel-Arab Reader (seventh edition), The Long War for Freedom: The Arab Struggle for Democracy in the Middle East (Wiley), and The Truth About Syria (Palgrave-Macmillan). His new edited books include Lebanon: Liberation, Conflict and Crisis; Guide to Islamist Movements; Conflict and Insurgency in the Middle East; and The Muslim Brotherhood. To read and subscribe to MERIA, GLORIA articles, or to order books. To see or subscribe to his blog, Rubin Reports.
Monday, March 8, 2010
Going Backward? Understanding and Attempts to Resolve the Israel-Palestinian Conflict
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By Barry Rubin
Last September, President Barack Obama said before a large audience at the UN that within two months there would be intensive, direct, final status talks between Israel and the Palestinians. Sort of a Camp David III. Now, six months later we are back in the pre-1992 era of indirect talks.
Yet reporters still ask, and write, that this might be the prelude to some grand breakthrough and a comprehensive peace deal. When will they ever learn? Never, apparently.
Note that it is important for the two sides to meet but the reason is to deal with far more immediate tasks: coordination on economic and security issues particularly. I guess I'm going to have to go on for decades saying that there won't be a comprehensive peace agreement for decades.
Before we start, though, one more point that is very important. When I say that the continuation of the conflict is mainly the fault of the Palestinian side, I'm not doing that to score political points. Who cares? The world will go on in precisely the same way whatever people think after reading articles.
You need to understand whose fault it is because it's impossible to understand what's going on without comprehending that reality. Nothing makes sense. After all, if Palestinians yearn for their own country and are suffering so horribly, why do they keep rejecting a peace agreement on the basis that they might--at worst--have to give up, say, five percent of the territory they claim?
But to return to the timeline, a simple reminder about one small point regarding Israel-Palestinian issues tell more than 100 op-eds. The Palestinian Authority (PA) will now probably engage in indirect talks with Israel and this will be hailed as a great step forward by Western media and governments, a triumph for the Obama Administration.
In fact, however, this sets the conflict back to around 1992, before direct talks began in Washington for the first time. And the PA must be dragged, kicking and screaming, into doing even that much.
Aren’t they in a hurry to get a state? No.
Here are four misunderstandings that block Western understanding of the issue:
--The importance of the Arab-Israeli conflict has fallen steadily in the Middle East. Yet it is widely viewed in the West as the central issue in the region.
--The Israel-Palestinian conflict is not solvable at present. Yet it is widely viewed in the West as easily and quickly solvable.
--The reason the conflict is not solvable at present is because of the extremism of Hamas and the intransigence of the PA. Yet it is widely viewed in the West as all being Israel’s fault.
While some Israeli positions would certainly cause problems in reaching a compromise peace agreement—most notably over small areas of east Jerusalem—the PA’s official leadership is too weak to make the necessary deals, the PA’s ruling party is too radical and has the goal of total victory, and the PA’s public has not been prepared for the necessary steps.
The best way to stop building on, and even fully remove, settlements on the West Bank would be to make a peace treaty in which all settlements would be removed from the territory of a Palestinian state. (Though, with Palestinian agreement, some could be incorporated into Israel as part of territory swaps. Indeed, the Obama Administration has accepted this idea.)
--Finally, the PA has full control over all the Palestinians in the West Bank except in about 20 percent of Hebron controlled by Israel according to an agreement made by the PA in 1997 . West Bank. While Israel still occupies part of the land and east Jerusalem, there is no occupation regarding the Palestinian population itself. Israeli soldiers and roadblocks only appear in response to periods of high terrorism. It is in the hands of the PA to avoid these problems.
Come to think of it, while the PA, and its supporters abroad, constantly complain about the arrangements on the ground as being unfair and oppressive, every aspect of these things was agreed to by the PA in exchange for other concessions in previous agreements.
If the Palestinians are so desperately oppressed by the settlements and so miserable because of the occupation, why has it taken 16 years, until March 2010, for the PA to get around to ordering 30,000 Palestinian workers not to hold jobs on the settlements and to bar settlement products from Palestinian stores?
And if the Palestinians are under such Israeli control how could it do so with no Israeli effort to block the PA from doing so?
Indeed, even this step comes only after the PA was embarrassed into doing so by internal political criticism and the fact that it has fallen behind European countries in their stance.
Incidentally, the PA will do nothing to help these additional unemployed, nor will oil-rich Arab states kick in additional money for the creation of jobs. Perhaps Western donors will support them through welfare payments. If someone is found working despite the ban he might be killed, either by the PA’s militias or after a trial for collaboration.
At any rate, these misunderstandings and realities shows the difference between the image and reality of the issues which bedevils any comprehension of what’s going on and hence any possibility of improving the situation.
Barry Rubin is director of the Global Research in International Affairs (GLORIA) Center and editor of the Middle East Review of International Affairs (MERIA) Journal. His latest books are The Israel-Arab Reader (seventh edition), The Long War for Freedom: The Arab Struggle for Democracy in the Middle East (Wiley), and The Truth About Syria (Palgrave-Macmillan). His new edited books include Lebanon: Liberation, Conflict and Crisis; Guide to Islamist Movements; Conflict and Insurgency in the Middle East; and The Muslim Brotherhood. To read and subscribe to MERIA, GLORIA articles, or to order books. To see or subscribe to his blog, Rubin Reports.
By Barry Rubin
Last September, President Barack Obama said before a large audience at the UN that within two months there would be intensive, direct, final status talks between Israel and the Palestinians. Sort of a Camp David III. Now, six months later we are back in the pre-1992 era of indirect talks.
Yet reporters still ask, and write, that this might be the prelude to some grand breakthrough and a comprehensive peace deal. When will they ever learn? Never, apparently.
Note that it is important for the two sides to meet but the reason is to deal with far more immediate tasks: coordination on economic and security issues particularly. I guess I'm going to have to go on for decades saying that there won't be a comprehensive peace agreement for decades.
Before we start, though, one more point that is very important. When I say that the continuation of the conflict is mainly the fault of the Palestinian side, I'm not doing that to score political points. Who cares? The world will go on in precisely the same way whatever people think after reading articles.
You need to understand whose fault it is because it's impossible to understand what's going on without comprehending that reality. Nothing makes sense. After all, if Palestinians yearn for their own country and are suffering so horribly, why do they keep rejecting a peace agreement on the basis that they might--at worst--have to give up, say, five percent of the territory they claim?
But to return to the timeline, a simple reminder about one small point regarding Israel-Palestinian issues tell more than 100 op-eds. The Palestinian Authority (PA) will now probably engage in indirect talks with Israel and this will be hailed as a great step forward by Western media and governments, a triumph for the Obama Administration.
In fact, however, this sets the conflict back to around 1992, before direct talks began in Washington for the first time. And the PA must be dragged, kicking and screaming, into doing even that much.
Aren’t they in a hurry to get a state? No.
Here are four misunderstandings that block Western understanding of the issue:
--The importance of the Arab-Israeli conflict has fallen steadily in the Middle East. Yet it is widely viewed in the West as the central issue in the region.
--The Israel-Palestinian conflict is not solvable at present. Yet it is widely viewed in the West as easily and quickly solvable.
--The reason the conflict is not solvable at present is because of the extremism of Hamas and the intransigence of the PA. Yet it is widely viewed in the West as all being Israel’s fault.
While some Israeli positions would certainly cause problems in reaching a compromise peace agreement—most notably over small areas of east Jerusalem—the PA’s official leadership is too weak to make the necessary deals, the PA’s ruling party is too radical and has the goal of total victory, and the PA’s public has not been prepared for the necessary steps.
The best way to stop building on, and even fully remove, settlements on the West Bank would be to make a peace treaty in which all settlements would be removed from the territory of a Palestinian state. (Though, with Palestinian agreement, some could be incorporated into Israel as part of territory swaps. Indeed, the Obama Administration has accepted this idea.)
--Finally, the PA has full control over all the Palestinians in the West Bank except in about 20 percent of Hebron controlled by Israel according to an agreement made by the PA in 1997 . West Bank. While Israel still occupies part of the land and east Jerusalem, there is no occupation regarding the Palestinian population itself. Israeli soldiers and roadblocks only appear in response to periods of high terrorism. It is in the hands of the PA to avoid these problems.
Come to think of it, while the PA, and its supporters abroad, constantly complain about the arrangements on the ground as being unfair and oppressive, every aspect of these things was agreed to by the PA in exchange for other concessions in previous agreements.
If the Palestinians are so desperately oppressed by the settlements and so miserable because of the occupation, why has it taken 16 years, until March 2010, for the PA to get around to ordering 30,000 Palestinian workers not to hold jobs on the settlements and to bar settlement products from Palestinian stores?
And if the Palestinians are under such Israeli control how could it do so with no Israeli effort to block the PA from doing so?
Indeed, even this step comes only after the PA was embarrassed into doing so by internal political criticism and the fact that it has fallen behind European countries in their stance.
Incidentally, the PA will do nothing to help these additional unemployed, nor will oil-rich Arab states kick in additional money for the creation of jobs. Perhaps Western donors will support them through welfare payments. If someone is found working despite the ban he might be killed, either by the PA’s militias or after a trial for collaboration.
At any rate, these misunderstandings and realities shows the difference between the image and reality of the issues which bedevils any comprehension of what’s going on and hence any possibility of improving the situation.
Barry Rubin is director of the Global Research in International Affairs (GLORIA) Center and editor of the Middle East Review of International Affairs (MERIA) Journal. His latest books are The Israel-Arab Reader (seventh edition), The Long War for Freedom: The Arab Struggle for Democracy in the Middle East (Wiley), and The Truth About Syria (Palgrave-Macmillan). His new edited books include Lebanon: Liberation, Conflict and Crisis; Guide to Islamist Movements; Conflict and Insurgency in the Middle East; and The Muslim Brotherhood. To read and subscribe to MERIA, GLORIA articles, or to order books. To see or subscribe to his blog, Rubin Reports.
Sunday, March 7, 2010
How to Make Defeatism Look Good: Let’s Give Up and Cheer the Islamists
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By Barry Rubin
I’m not going to bash or rant about a Newsweek article about Turkey by Owen Matthews—shocking and dangerous as it is--but rather talk about what is wrong and inaccurate about it. That article is part of a new wave of defeatism sweeping the West, though it still remains subordinate to the more ostensibly attractive idea that there is no real conflict or at least one easy to fix by Western concessions.
Here’s the title: “The Army Is Beaten: Why the U.S. should hail the Islamists.” Yes, we should thank the Islamists for taking over Turkey. But wait a minute! The ruling AK party says it isn’t Islamist. Indeed, I have been viciously attacked by them in the Turkish media for saying so. Up until now the line--including that from the regime itself--has been that we shouldn’t be afraid of them because they are really just democrats. But now some are willing to face the truth and still sugarcoat it.
Matthews writes:
“The political logic should be simple. The arrest of a shadowy group of generals for allegedly plotting a bloody coup should be a victory for justice. The end of military meddling in politics should be a victory for democracy. And greater democracy should make a country more liberal and more pro-European.”
Each of these sentences makes a false assumption and must be examined a bit.
Sentence one: Arresting military officers is only a victory for justice if they are guilty. Why does the author assume they are guilty? In fact, the claims are ludicrous. That a group of officers created a 5000 page plan for a coup that involved attacking mosques and massive attacks on civilians. It is one of a series of such accusations for which no real evidence has been presented, in which a widely disparate group of people have been arrested as alleged conspirators when their sole connection is that they are critics of the government.
This is ridiculously gullible. It’s like the famous sentence by a newsweekly magazine that even if the Hitler diaries were forgeries (they were) that would tell us a great deal about the history of the time. If in fact the arrests were trumped-up to tame the army so that the current regime can impose a dictatorship in practice it was not a victory for justice but for injustice. Iran, Syria, Hamas, Hizballah, and Islamists in general lie a lot (and a lot more than democratic government) so why should they be taken at their word, especially when any serious examination of evidence shows the truth.
Sentence two: Of course, in general, keeping the army out of politics is a victory for democracy, but that ignores the specific history of Turkey. The army has viewed itself and been accepted there as the guardian of democracy. This history is certainly imperfect but when the country has been sliding into anarchy in the past or fallen into the hand of those who threatened to destroy the republic, the army has stepped in briefly, gotten civilians to reorganize things on a stable basis, and quickly gone back into the barracks.
The Turkish army is not like those of the Third World which hunger for power, destroy democracy, and unleash corrupt and repressive regimes. On the other hand, this article--and many others--show ignorance about the actual shifts in Turkey.
For example, there is no awareness that the regime is seizing control of the media; that the party leader (which means the prime minister for the ruling party) simply picks candidates for parliament as he pleases; that the reforms have strengthened the prime minister's power and not parliamentary democracy; and that women are being forced out of high positions. Merely weakening the army doesn't mean more democracy when in almost every other respect there is less.
Sentence three: If indeed—as is the case—the regime is systematically cracking down on the free media and imposing its control over all the institutions. This is not leading to greater but to less democracy. There should be a lot more reporting on what's happening within the country instead of just repeating the regime's claims.
Indeed, the author states:
“And with the last major obstacle to the ruling AK Party's power gone, Turkey's conservative prime minister, Recep Tayyip Erdogan, will be free to implement his vision of a more Islamic Turkey. More democracy, then, doesn't necessarily lead to more liberalism, either.”
The assumption here is that this is what the Turkish people want. Yet it should be noted there are some big problems for that claim. Turkey’s electoral system is so weighted that the AK has received near-monopoly control on the basis of a vote that in most parliamentary democracies would have produced a coalition government.
Moreover, many or most Turks who voted for the AK weren’t doing so because they wanted Islamism—as public opinion surveys clearly show--but because they thought (mistakenly, even according to this author) that it was a mildly conservative party.
And finally, the AK is seizing control over institutions so as to be sure that it will never lose another election. It is destroying Turkish democracy, a point made rather obvious by a long list of such actions over non-military institutions like the civil service, courts, and media. The author—and many others—are simply taking the regime’s word for it and ignoring what the government is actually doing.
The author concludes by saying: “It's also clear that Turkey under the AK Party will remain a Western ally, and NATO will remain Ankara's most important strategic partner.”
Then, this unusually candid if wrong author explains:
“How do we know? The AK Party says so, and it has no real options. There's no rival alliance, not with Iran, the Arab world, or Russia, which could possibly rival the clout Turkey has, with the second-largest Army in NATO.”
Of course, Turkey has options. And here is the option the regime has chosen: To keep as much as possible the Western alliances while the content of its policy favors radical Islamist forces.
Incidentally, this "no option" argument is the root of a huge amount of confusion in the Middle East. Supposedly, Iran has "no option" but to become moderate; Syria has "no option" but to dump Iran; the Palestinian Authority has "no option" but to make peace. Yet over and over again the local forces find an option that they are quite happy to pursue other than the one laid out for them by Western observers. They have their own view of the world, ideology, and goals (often the goal of the regime being to amass wealth and stay in power).
And one of the key factors in this process is that--rightly or wrongly--they think they are winning so why should they change course or make compromises? And certain other ideas are calculated into their list of options: soon Iran has nuclear weapons. And the divine being is on their side. And the West is weak, stupid, cowardly, and easily fooled.
Turkey is one of the main places they think they are winning, according to Syria and Iran.
Now of course, the Turkish government doesn’t have to say: America stinks and we’re pulling out of NATO. It can keep the benefits of these relationships, having their cake and eating it, too. But in practice Turkey is moving closer to Iran and Syria, with the leaders of both of these two countries openly pointing out that fact. The question is what does it mean for Turkey to be a Western ally in a practical sense? If it supports Iran, Syria, Hizballah, and Hamas, just how does Ankara function as a Western ally? It’s meaningless.
So, the article concludes, “The world would be wise to side with the AK Party, not seek a return of the discredited generals.” I’m not sure why the generals are supposed to be discredited by ludicrous accusations orchestrated by an anti-American (in practice) government which needs to destroy them. Rather, it is the current regime in Turkey that should be discredited.
Still, it’s a pretty neat trick when a regime repressing Turkish democracy and increasingly siding with the enemies of the West can convince people in the West that this is a good thing.
Incidentally, the New York Times has only a slightly more nuanced editorial than the Matthews article. Among other things, it take at face value that the story about the military planning a coup was broken by a small "independent" newspaper in Turkey. Actually, that publication is a front from the regime and is most unreliable--a point one might expect the Times to have discovered. The story was part of the regime's strategy, not some journalitic scoop.
As the theme song to the television show “MASH” put it:
“The game of life is hard to play,
I'm going to lose it anyway,
The losin' card I'll someday lay;
So this is all I have to say...
“That suicide is painless…
And I can take or leave it if I please.”
The Western world should reject playing that particular card as its strategy.
Barry Rubin is director of the Global Research in International Affairs (GLORIA) Center and editor of the Middle East Review of International Affairs (MERIA) Journal and of Turkish Studies journal. His latest books are The Israel-Arab Reader (seventh edition), The Long War for Freedom: The Arab Struggle for Democracy in the Middle East (Wiley), and The Truth About Syria (Palgrave-Macmillan). His new edited books include Lebanon: Liberation, Conflict and Crisis; Guide to Islamist Movements; Conflict and Insurgency in the Middle East; and The Muslim Brotherhood. To read and subscribe to MERIA, GLORIA articles, or to order books. To see or subscribe to his blog, Rubin Reports.
By Barry Rubin
I’m not going to bash or rant about a Newsweek article about Turkey by Owen Matthews—shocking and dangerous as it is--but rather talk about what is wrong and inaccurate about it. That article is part of a new wave of defeatism sweeping the West, though it still remains subordinate to the more ostensibly attractive idea that there is no real conflict or at least one easy to fix by Western concessions.
Here’s the title: “The Army Is Beaten: Why the U.S. should hail the Islamists.” Yes, we should thank the Islamists for taking over Turkey. But wait a minute! The ruling AK party says it isn’t Islamist. Indeed, I have been viciously attacked by them in the Turkish media for saying so. Up until now the line--including that from the regime itself--has been that we shouldn’t be afraid of them because they are really just democrats. But now some are willing to face the truth and still sugarcoat it.
Matthews writes:
“The political logic should be simple. The arrest of a shadowy group of generals for allegedly plotting a bloody coup should be a victory for justice. The end of military meddling in politics should be a victory for democracy. And greater democracy should make a country more liberal and more pro-European.”
Each of these sentences makes a false assumption and must be examined a bit.
Sentence one: Arresting military officers is only a victory for justice if they are guilty. Why does the author assume they are guilty? In fact, the claims are ludicrous. That a group of officers created a 5000 page plan for a coup that involved attacking mosques and massive attacks on civilians. It is one of a series of such accusations for which no real evidence has been presented, in which a widely disparate group of people have been arrested as alleged conspirators when their sole connection is that they are critics of the government.
This is ridiculously gullible. It’s like the famous sentence by a newsweekly magazine that even if the Hitler diaries were forgeries (they were) that would tell us a great deal about the history of the time. If in fact the arrests were trumped-up to tame the army so that the current regime can impose a dictatorship in practice it was not a victory for justice but for injustice. Iran, Syria, Hamas, Hizballah, and Islamists in general lie a lot (and a lot more than democratic government) so why should they be taken at their word, especially when any serious examination of evidence shows the truth.
Sentence two: Of course, in general, keeping the army out of politics is a victory for democracy, but that ignores the specific history of Turkey. The army has viewed itself and been accepted there as the guardian of democracy. This history is certainly imperfect but when the country has been sliding into anarchy in the past or fallen into the hand of those who threatened to destroy the republic, the army has stepped in briefly, gotten civilians to reorganize things on a stable basis, and quickly gone back into the barracks.
The Turkish army is not like those of the Third World which hunger for power, destroy democracy, and unleash corrupt and repressive regimes. On the other hand, this article--and many others--show ignorance about the actual shifts in Turkey.
For example, there is no awareness that the regime is seizing control of the media; that the party leader (which means the prime minister for the ruling party) simply picks candidates for parliament as he pleases; that the reforms have strengthened the prime minister's power and not parliamentary democracy; and that women are being forced out of high positions. Merely weakening the army doesn't mean more democracy when in almost every other respect there is less.
Sentence three: If indeed—as is the case—the regime is systematically cracking down on the free media and imposing its control over all the institutions. This is not leading to greater but to less democracy. There should be a lot more reporting on what's happening within the country instead of just repeating the regime's claims.
Indeed, the author states:
“And with the last major obstacle to the ruling AK Party's power gone, Turkey's conservative prime minister, Recep Tayyip Erdogan, will be free to implement his vision of a more Islamic Turkey. More democracy, then, doesn't necessarily lead to more liberalism, either.”
The assumption here is that this is what the Turkish people want. Yet it should be noted there are some big problems for that claim. Turkey’s electoral system is so weighted that the AK has received near-monopoly control on the basis of a vote that in most parliamentary democracies would have produced a coalition government.
Moreover, many or most Turks who voted for the AK weren’t doing so because they wanted Islamism—as public opinion surveys clearly show--but because they thought (mistakenly, even according to this author) that it was a mildly conservative party.
And finally, the AK is seizing control over institutions so as to be sure that it will never lose another election. It is destroying Turkish democracy, a point made rather obvious by a long list of such actions over non-military institutions like the civil service, courts, and media. The author—and many others—are simply taking the regime’s word for it and ignoring what the government is actually doing.
The author concludes by saying: “It's also clear that Turkey under the AK Party will remain a Western ally, and NATO will remain Ankara's most important strategic partner.”
Then, this unusually candid if wrong author explains:
“How do we know? The AK Party says so, and it has no real options. There's no rival alliance, not with Iran, the Arab world, or Russia, which could possibly rival the clout Turkey has, with the second-largest Army in NATO.”
Of course, Turkey has options. And here is the option the regime has chosen: To keep as much as possible the Western alliances while the content of its policy favors radical Islamist forces.
Incidentally, this "no option" argument is the root of a huge amount of confusion in the Middle East. Supposedly, Iran has "no option" but to become moderate; Syria has "no option" but to dump Iran; the Palestinian Authority has "no option" but to make peace. Yet over and over again the local forces find an option that they are quite happy to pursue other than the one laid out for them by Western observers. They have their own view of the world, ideology, and goals (often the goal of the regime being to amass wealth and stay in power).
And one of the key factors in this process is that--rightly or wrongly--they think they are winning so why should they change course or make compromises? And certain other ideas are calculated into their list of options: soon Iran has nuclear weapons. And the divine being is on their side. And the West is weak, stupid, cowardly, and easily fooled.
Turkey is one of the main places they think they are winning, according to Syria and Iran.
Now of course, the Turkish government doesn’t have to say: America stinks and we’re pulling out of NATO. It can keep the benefits of these relationships, having their cake and eating it, too. But in practice Turkey is moving closer to Iran and Syria, with the leaders of both of these two countries openly pointing out that fact. The question is what does it mean for Turkey to be a Western ally in a practical sense? If it supports Iran, Syria, Hizballah, and Hamas, just how does Ankara function as a Western ally? It’s meaningless.
So, the article concludes, “The world would be wise to side with the AK Party, not seek a return of the discredited generals.” I’m not sure why the generals are supposed to be discredited by ludicrous accusations orchestrated by an anti-American (in practice) government which needs to destroy them. Rather, it is the current regime in Turkey that should be discredited.
Still, it’s a pretty neat trick when a regime repressing Turkish democracy and increasingly siding with the enemies of the West can convince people in the West that this is a good thing.
Incidentally, the New York Times has only a slightly more nuanced editorial than the Matthews article. Among other things, it take at face value that the story about the military planning a coup was broken by a small "independent" newspaper in Turkey. Actually, that publication is a front from the regime and is most unreliable--a point one might expect the Times to have discovered. The story was part of the regime's strategy, not some journalitic scoop.
As the theme song to the television show “MASH” put it:
“The game of life is hard to play,
I'm going to lose it anyway,
The losin' card I'll someday lay;
So this is all I have to say...
“That suicide is painless…
And I can take or leave it if I please.”
The Western world should reject playing that particular card as its strategy.
Barry Rubin is director of the Global Research in International Affairs (GLORIA) Center and editor of the Middle East Review of International Affairs (MERIA) Journal and of Turkish Studies journal. His latest books are The Israel-Arab Reader (seventh edition), The Long War for Freedom: The Arab Struggle for Democracy in the Middle East (Wiley), and The Truth About Syria (Palgrave-Macmillan). His new edited books include Lebanon: Liberation, Conflict and Crisis; Guide to Islamist Movements; Conflict and Insurgency in the Middle East; and The Muslim Brotherhood. To read and subscribe to MERIA, GLORIA articles, or to order books. To see or subscribe to his blog, Rubin Reports.
Zbigniew Brzezinski on Iran: Still Clueless After All These Years
Now serving subscriber 9,462. Please sign up now!
By Barry Rubin
I remember it as if it were yesterday. January 20, 1977. I was visiting an esteemed professor at Georgetown University and we were talking about the new Carter Administration. The conversation went to Zbigniew Brzezinski who was going to be the new national security advisor. Mark my words, said the professor, who knew the man well and had studied international relations for decades, this country will live to regret that he is in office.
He was right. Brzezinski played a leading role in the mismanagement of U.S. policy toward the Iranian revolution and hostage crisis (for details, see my book Paved with Good Intentions). Brzezinski is one of those people who has a huge reputation and yet it is hard to see why. Every few years he comes up with a grand theory and clever phrase to describe the status of the world. He's proven wrong, but both errors and theory are soon forgotten when he invents a new one. Since I worked in close proximity for several years I was able to observe this phenomenon first-hand.
Reportedly, he played a role as advisor when the Obama Administration was getting started. I don't think he plays any major role now but it shows the continuity of his influence with policymakers and prestige with the media.
Now Brzezinski has given us his view of the current situation of Iran. It is fairly typical of his opus. It's not that everything he says is bad. A lot of it is conventional and obvious: try to stop Iran from getting nuclear weapons and if it does then warn it against using them, give guarantees to countries in the region, and provide some support to the opposition.
In the longer run, he adds, Iran will change:
"This is a country with a growing urban middle class, a country with fairly high access to higher education, a country where women play a great role in the professions," he says. "So it is a country which I think, basically, objectively is capable of moving the way Turkey has moved."
The problem here is not the over-optimism on Iran but the unintentional irony of his reference to Turkey. "The way" Turkey has moved is toward Islamism, the same direction that Tehran went in some thirty years earlier. And to apply what happened in Turkey in the 1920s, during a very different era, to the current situation in Iran shows a breathtaking lack of both knowledge and seriousness.
But more dangerous than this is the very conventionality of his response. The idea that, as Gerald Seib writes up the interview:
"There's a chance, he thinks, that Iran isn't seeking to possess actual nuclear weapons, but trying to become `more like Japan, a proto-nuclear power' with a demonstrated ability to make nuclear arms without actually crossing that line."
And that a U.S. policy can succeed in, again Seib's wording, succeed in "coaxing it into more responsible behavior." or that a U.S. defense umbrella "should be sufficient to deter Iran."
Because Brzezinski doesn't seriously consider the irrational (or perhaps it would be better to say radical ideology and high level of risk-taking) aspects of the regime while, even more important, not taking into account the political effect of Iranian nuclear weapons on a region he once called the "arc of crisis." Will an Obama Administration have the credibility for its guarantees to be taken seriously by those whose survival is at stake and will consider appeasement a better bet?
Equally left out is how having the confidence engendered by the possession of nuclear weapons would make Iran bolder in subverting other countries and sponsoring terrorism without shooting off the missiles.
Again, a policy of guarantees plus containment, sanctions and supporting the opposition is certainly a framework for dealing with a nuclear Iran. Yet to set up such a system and think that it is sufficient or that the only threat is a direct Iranian nuclear attack in the current context of Washington thinking is to soothe policymakers into dangerous complacency.
One day, someone will write a devastating intellectual biography of Brzezinski. I look forward to reading it.
Barry Rubin is director of the Global Research in International Affairs (GLORIA) Center and editor of the Middle East Review of International Affairs (MERIA) Journal. His latest books are The Israel-Arab Reader (seventh edition), The Long War for Freedom: The Arab Struggle for Democracy in the Middle East (Wiley), and The Truth About Syria (Palgrave-Macmillan). His new edited books include Lebanon: Liberation, Conflict and Crisis; Guide to Islamist Movements; Conflict and Insurgency in the Middle East; and The Muslim Brotherhood. To read and subscribe to MERIA, GLORIA articles, or to order books. To see or subscribe to his blog, Rubin Reports.
By Barry Rubin
I remember it as if it were yesterday. January 20, 1977. I was visiting an esteemed professor at Georgetown University and we were talking about the new Carter Administration. The conversation went to Zbigniew Brzezinski who was going to be the new national security advisor. Mark my words, said the professor, who knew the man well and had studied international relations for decades, this country will live to regret that he is in office.
He was right. Brzezinski played a leading role in the mismanagement of U.S. policy toward the Iranian revolution and hostage crisis (for details, see my book Paved with Good Intentions). Brzezinski is one of those people who has a huge reputation and yet it is hard to see why. Every few years he comes up with a grand theory and clever phrase to describe the status of the world. He's proven wrong, but both errors and theory are soon forgotten when he invents a new one. Since I worked in close proximity for several years I was able to observe this phenomenon first-hand.
Reportedly, he played a role as advisor when the Obama Administration was getting started. I don't think he plays any major role now but it shows the continuity of his influence with policymakers and prestige with the media.
Now Brzezinski has given us his view of the current situation of Iran. It is fairly typical of his opus. It's not that everything he says is bad. A lot of it is conventional and obvious: try to stop Iran from getting nuclear weapons and if it does then warn it against using them, give guarantees to countries in the region, and provide some support to the opposition.
In the longer run, he adds, Iran will change:
"This is a country with a growing urban middle class, a country with fairly high access to higher education, a country where women play a great role in the professions," he says. "So it is a country which I think, basically, objectively is capable of moving the way Turkey has moved."
The problem here is not the over-optimism on Iran but the unintentional irony of his reference to Turkey. "The way" Turkey has moved is toward Islamism, the same direction that Tehran went in some thirty years earlier. And to apply what happened in Turkey in the 1920s, during a very different era, to the current situation in Iran shows a breathtaking lack of both knowledge and seriousness.
But more dangerous than this is the very conventionality of his response. The idea that, as Gerald Seib writes up the interview:
"There's a chance, he thinks, that Iran isn't seeking to possess actual nuclear weapons, but trying to become `more like Japan, a proto-nuclear power' with a demonstrated ability to make nuclear arms without actually crossing that line."
And that a U.S. policy can succeed in, again Seib's wording, succeed in "coaxing it into more responsible behavior." or that a U.S. defense umbrella "should be sufficient to deter Iran."
Because Brzezinski doesn't seriously consider the irrational (or perhaps it would be better to say radical ideology and high level of risk-taking) aspects of the regime while, even more important, not taking into account the political effect of Iranian nuclear weapons on a region he once called the "arc of crisis." Will an Obama Administration have the credibility for its guarantees to be taken seriously by those whose survival is at stake and will consider appeasement a better bet?
Equally left out is how having the confidence engendered by the possession of nuclear weapons would make Iran bolder in subverting other countries and sponsoring terrorism without shooting off the missiles.
Again, a policy of guarantees plus containment, sanctions and supporting the opposition is certainly a framework for dealing with a nuclear Iran. Yet to set up such a system and think that it is sufficient or that the only threat is a direct Iranian nuclear attack in the current context of Washington thinking is to soothe policymakers into dangerous complacency.
One day, someone will write a devastating intellectual biography of Brzezinski. I look forward to reading it.
Barry Rubin is director of the Global Research in International Affairs (GLORIA) Center and editor of the Middle East Review of International Affairs (MERIA) Journal. His latest books are The Israel-Arab Reader (seventh edition), The Long War for Freedom: The Arab Struggle for Democracy in the Middle East (Wiley), and The Truth About Syria (Palgrave-Macmillan). His new edited books include Lebanon: Liberation, Conflict and Crisis; Guide to Islamist Movements; Conflict and Insurgency in the Middle East; and The Muslim Brotherhood. To read and subscribe to MERIA, GLORIA articles, or to order books. To see or subscribe to his blog, Rubin Reports.
Yitzhak Rabin's Vision and the Direction of Middle East Politics
By Barry Rubin
I’ve long been a big Yehuda Avner fan. He writes terrific articles about his personal experiences as advisor to many Israeli prime ministers and as a high-level diplomat. But nothing prepared me for the story he tells in his new book, The Prime Ministers: An Intimate Narrative of Israeli Leadership, published by Toby Press (of which I’m also a big fan. I urge you to look at their catalogue, much of which consists of translated novels avialable nowhere else).
On November 1, 1995, just three days before Prime Minister Yitzhak Rabin was assassinated, Avner asked him why he made the Oslo agreement deal with Yasir Arafat. Rabin’s answer is extremely close to my own analysis fifteen years later: that the great issue of this era in the Middle East is the battle of nationalists versus Islamists; that this factor offered a chance to reduce or eliminate the Arab-Israeli conflict; but that if the Islamists won things would be much worse.
Rabin explained that the Middle East was characterized increasingly by growing instability in many states. Of special importance was “Iranian-inspired (and financed) Islamic fundamentalism” which threatened most of the area’s countries and had already brought the deaths of hundreds of thousands of people.
According to Avner, Rabin continued that this situation had brought common interests between most Arab states and Israel since their “long-term strategic interest is the same as ours””and they recognize “they have less to fear from Israel than from their Muslim neighbors, not least from radicalized Islamic powers going nuclear.”
The triumph of the Islamists would make resolution of the Arab-Israeli conflict impossible (not that it was so easy before) since they would turn it into a solely religious conflict. “And while a political conflict is possible to solve through negotiation and compromise, there are no solutions to a theological conflict. Then it is jihad – religious war: their God against our God. Were they to win, our conflict would go from war to war, and from stalemate to stalemate.”
Rabin concluded:
“And that, essentially is why I agreed to Oslo and shook hands, albeit reluctantly, with Yasir Arafat. He and his PLO represent the last vestige of secular Palestinian nationalism. We have nobody else to deal with. It is either the PLO or nothing. It is a long shot for a possible settlement, or the certainty of no settlement at all at a time when the radicals are going nuclear.”
If Rabin had lived five years more he might well have (I think probably would have) concluded that a comprehensive political settlement with Arafat was also impossible. He already suspected that. But it was still better to work with the PLO’s heir, the Palestinian Authority, then to watch Hamas take over. Indeed, it did take over the Gaza Strip. And Islamism produced two wars for Israel, with Hizballah in 2006 and with Hamas in 2009. Today, too, Iran’s drive for nuclear weapons is a far more visible factor than it was fifteen years ago.
The nationalists in general were unwilling or unable to make a comprehensive peace with Israel, though one should not forget Egypt and Jordan making at least a treaty, but the rest of Rabin’s vision came true. May his memory be even more blessed.
Barry Rubin is director of the Global Research in International Affairs (GLORIA) Center and editor of the Middle East Review of International Affairs (MERIA) Journal. His latest books are The Israel-Arab Reader (seventh edition), The Long War for Freedom: The Arab Struggle for Democracy in the Middle East (Wiley), and The Truth About Syria (Palgrave-Macmillan). His new edited books include Lebanon: Liberation, Conflict and Crisis; Guide to Islamist Movements; Conflict and Insurgency in the Middle East; and The Muslim Brotherhood. To read and subscribe to MERIA, GLORIA articles, or to order books. To see or subscribe to his blog, Rubin Reports.
I’ve long been a big Yehuda Avner fan. He writes terrific articles about his personal experiences as advisor to many Israeli prime ministers and as a high-level diplomat. But nothing prepared me for the story he tells in his new book, The Prime Ministers: An Intimate Narrative of Israeli Leadership, published by Toby Press (of which I’m also a big fan. I urge you to look at their catalogue, much of which consists of translated novels avialable nowhere else).
On November 1, 1995, just three days before Prime Minister Yitzhak Rabin was assassinated, Avner asked him why he made the Oslo agreement deal with Yasir Arafat. Rabin’s answer is extremely close to my own analysis fifteen years later: that the great issue of this era in the Middle East is the battle of nationalists versus Islamists; that this factor offered a chance to reduce or eliminate the Arab-Israeli conflict; but that if the Islamists won things would be much worse.
Rabin explained that the Middle East was characterized increasingly by growing instability in many states. Of special importance was “Iranian-inspired (and financed) Islamic fundamentalism” which threatened most of the area’s countries and had already brought the deaths of hundreds of thousands of people.
According to Avner, Rabin continued that this situation had brought common interests between most Arab states and Israel since their “long-term strategic interest is the same as ours””and they recognize “they have less to fear from Israel than from their Muslim neighbors, not least from radicalized Islamic powers going nuclear.”
The triumph of the Islamists would make resolution of the Arab-Israeli conflict impossible (not that it was so easy before) since they would turn it into a solely religious conflict. “And while a political conflict is possible to solve through negotiation and compromise, there are no solutions to a theological conflict. Then it is jihad – religious war: their God against our God. Were they to win, our conflict would go from war to war, and from stalemate to stalemate.”
Rabin concluded:
“And that, essentially is why I agreed to Oslo and shook hands, albeit reluctantly, with Yasir Arafat. He and his PLO represent the last vestige of secular Palestinian nationalism. We have nobody else to deal with. It is either the PLO or nothing. It is a long shot for a possible settlement, or the certainty of no settlement at all at a time when the radicals are going nuclear.”
If Rabin had lived five years more he might well have (I think probably would have) concluded that a comprehensive political settlement with Arafat was also impossible. He already suspected that. But it was still better to work with the PLO’s heir, the Palestinian Authority, then to watch Hamas take over. Indeed, it did take over the Gaza Strip. And Islamism produced two wars for Israel, with Hizballah in 2006 and with Hamas in 2009. Today, too, Iran’s drive for nuclear weapons is a far more visible factor than it was fifteen years ago.
The nationalists in general were unwilling or unable to make a comprehensive peace with Israel, though one should not forget Egypt and Jordan making at least a treaty, but the rest of Rabin’s vision came true. May his memory be even more blessed.
Barry Rubin is director of the Global Research in International Affairs (GLORIA) Center and editor of the Middle East Review of International Affairs (MERIA) Journal. His latest books are The Israel-Arab Reader (seventh edition), The Long War for Freedom: The Arab Struggle for Democracy in the Middle East (Wiley), and The Truth About Syria (Palgrave-Macmillan). His new edited books include Lebanon: Liberation, Conflict and Crisis; Guide to Islamist Movements; Conflict and Insurgency in the Middle East; and The Muslim Brotherhood. To read and subscribe to MERIA, GLORIA articles, or to order books. To see or subscribe to his blog, Rubin Reports.
Friday, March 5, 2010
Pardon Me, Obama Administration, But Isn't Your Policy on Fire?
By Barry Rubin
The story of the U.S. engagement with Syria and the sanctions issue regarding Iran’s nuclear program are fascinating. Each day there’s some new development showing how the Obama Administration is acting like a deer standing in the middle of a busy highway admiring the pretty automobile headlights.
Or to put it a different way, it is like watching the monster sneak up behind someone. Even though you know he’s not going to turn around, you can’t help but watch in fascinated horror and yelling out: “Look out!” But he pays no attention.
So I’m not just writing about these two issues in isolation but as very appropriate symbols of everything wrong with Western perceptions of the Middle East (and everywhere else) and the debates over foreign policy (and everything else) nowadays.
On Syria, for the most recent episodes of the story see here and here but, briefly, the Syrian government keeps punching the United States in the face as Washington ignores it.
But now, on March 1, a new record is set. The place: State Department daily press conference; the main character, departmental spokesman Philip J. Crowley. A reporter wants to know how the administration views the fact that the moment the U.S. delegation left after urging Syrian President Bashar al-Asad to move away from Iran and stop supporting Hizballah, Syria’s dictator invited in Iran’s dictator along with Hizballah’s leader and Damascus moved closer to Iran and Hizballah. Indeed, Asad said regarding Hizballah, "To support the resistance is a moral, patriotic and legal duty."
In other words, the exact opposite of what the United States requested. Is the government annoyed, does it want to express some anger or threat?so
Let’s listen:
MR. CROWLEY: Well, I would point it in a slightly different direction. It came several days after an important visit to Damascus by Under Secretary Bill Burns….We want to see Syria play a more constructive role in the region. We also want – to the extent that it has the ability to talk to Iran directly, we want to make sure that Syria’s communicating to Iran its concerns about its role in the region and the direction, the nature of its nuclear ambitions….”
In other words, I’m going to ignore the fact that the first thing that Asad did after Burns’ visit was a love fest with Iran and Hizballah. But even more amazing, what Crowley said is that the U.S. government thinks Syria, Iran’s partner and ally, is upset that Iran is being aggressive and expansionist. And it actually expects the Syrians to urge Iran not to build nuclear weapons!
One Lebanese observer called this approach, “Living in an alternate universe.”
Meanwhile, as the administration congratulates itself on explaining to Syria that it should reduce support for Hizballah, Israeli military intelligence releases an assessment that Syria is giving Hizballah more and better arms than ever before.
Oh wait! Now it's March 3 so time for something new. The ófficial Syrian press agency reports that Syria's government opposed an Arab League proposal to support indirect Palestinian Authority-Israel negotiations. Syria's Foreign Minister Walid al-Moallem asserted that Syria is "no way part" of the consensus supporting the plan.
But guess what? First, Senator John Kerry opened a meeting of his Senate Foreign Relations Committee by erroneously praising Syria as supporting the plan, giving this as an example of Damascus's moderation. The New York Times quoted from the Syrian report, making it sound like Moallem is praising the United States, but left out the paragraphs attacking the U.S.-backed plan! And the State Department circulated the Times article as proof of its success in winning over Syria when in fact Syrian behavior proved the exact opposite!
Oh, and that's not all! Not only did Syria oppose the plan but it attacked the Arab states that supported the U.S. effort and blasted the Palestinian Authority for not following the path of resistance, that is urged it to carry out terrorist violence against Israel.
Hey, that's not all either. Syria also issued a statement accusing Israel of "framing" it by dropping uranium particles from the air to make it seem that Syria had been building a nuclear reactor for making nuclear weapons. Not exactly evidence of rational moderation I'd say.
Meanwhile, on the Iran front, it is now March 2010 and still—six months after the first administration deadline and three months after the second deadline—there are no additional sanctions on Iran yet. In fact, the process has barely started.
Even former Democratic presidential candidate and head of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee John Kerry has taken a stronger stance than the administration.
He supports the congressional call for tough sanctions to block Iran’s energy industry which easily passed both houses. “I believe that the most biting and important sanctions would be those on the energy side.” But the Obama administration wants far more limited sanctions focused on a small group in the regime elite.
Yet sanctions are getting further away rather than closer. Secretary of State Hillary Clinton hinted at this by pulling back from her early prediction of sanctions by April, now saying it might be “some time in the next several months."
At the same time, we have endless evidence that the claim the Russians (and Chinese and others) are coming, to support sanctions, is nonsense. Just before meeting with Clinton to discuss the issue, Brazilian President Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva (or Lula for short) explained, "Peace in the world does not mean isolating someone." (Quick, invite him to explain this to the anti-Israel forces in Europe and elsewhere).
But it’s outright amusing to see the efforts to spin the Russian and Chinese position. In this regard, the prize for this week should be won by an AP dispatch. The headline is: “Russia moves closer to Iran sanctions over nukes.”
And what is the basis for this claim that there has just been “the strongest sign to date that the Kremlin was prepared to drop traditional opposition to such penalties if Tehran remain obstinate?” This statement from President Dmitry Medvedev:
“We believe that [engagement with Iran is] not over yet, that we can still reach an agreement," he said. "But if we don't succeed, Russia is ready — along with our partners…to consider the question of adopting sanctions."
Get it? When Russia decides that talking with Iran won’t work, then at that point—how long from now would that be?—it will “consider” sanctions. Actually, he said the same thing last August, a statement trumpeted in September by the New York Times as proving Obama’s policy was working.
There is more clarity with the Chinese, sort of, though the pretense is also made that they might do something. But Chinese Foreign Ministry spokesman Qin Gang put it this way: "We believe there is still room for diplomatic efforts and the parties concerned should intensify those efforts." At most, the optimists suggest, in the words of this Reuters dispatch:
“China will resist any proposed sanctions that threaten flows of oil and Chinese investments, but most believe it will accept a more narrowly cast resolution that has more symbolic than practical impact.”
Yes, that’s the kind of thing that already existed four years ago. Some progress.
Is it too much to ask policymakers to pay attention to what’s going on occasionally?
So let's leave it to Ahmadinejad to sum up how things seem to Iran, Syria, Hamas, Hizballah, and lots of Arabs both pro- and anti-American:
The Americans, Ahmadinejad said, “not only have failed to gain any power, but also are forced to leave the region. They are leaving their reputation, image, and power behind in order to escape.…The [American] government has no influence [to stop].…the expansion of Iran-Syria ties, Syria-Turkey ties, and Iran-Turkey ties--God willing, Iraq too will join the circle...."
In other words, Obama Administration policy isn't making the radicals more moderate but rather--by feeding their arrogance and belief in American weakness--making them more aggressive.
The story of the U.S. engagement with Syria and the sanctions issue regarding Iran’s nuclear program are fascinating. Each day there’s some new development showing how the Obama Administration is acting like a deer standing in the middle of a busy highway admiring the pretty automobile headlights.
Or to put it a different way, it is like watching the monster sneak up behind someone. Even though you know he’s not going to turn around, you can’t help but watch in fascinated horror and yelling out: “Look out!” But he pays no attention.
So I’m not just writing about these two issues in isolation but as very appropriate symbols of everything wrong with Western perceptions of the Middle East (and everywhere else) and the debates over foreign policy (and everything else) nowadays.
On Syria, for the most recent episodes of the story see here and here but, briefly, the Syrian government keeps punching the United States in the face as Washington ignores it.
But now, on March 1, a new record is set. The place: State Department daily press conference; the main character, departmental spokesman Philip J. Crowley. A reporter wants to know how the administration views the fact that the moment the U.S. delegation left after urging Syrian President Bashar al-Asad to move away from Iran and stop supporting Hizballah, Syria’s dictator invited in Iran’s dictator along with Hizballah’s leader and Damascus moved closer to Iran and Hizballah. Indeed, Asad said regarding Hizballah, "To support the resistance is a moral, patriotic and legal duty."
In other words, the exact opposite of what the United States requested. Is the government annoyed, does it want to express some anger or threat?so
Let’s listen:
MR. CROWLEY: Well, I would point it in a slightly different direction. It came several days after an important visit to Damascus by Under Secretary Bill Burns….We want to see Syria play a more constructive role in the region. We also want – to the extent that it has the ability to talk to Iran directly, we want to make sure that Syria’s communicating to Iran its concerns about its role in the region and the direction, the nature of its nuclear ambitions….”
In other words, I’m going to ignore the fact that the first thing that Asad did after Burns’ visit was a love fest with Iran and Hizballah. But even more amazing, what Crowley said is that the U.S. government thinks Syria, Iran’s partner and ally, is upset that Iran is being aggressive and expansionist. And it actually expects the Syrians to urge Iran not to build nuclear weapons!
One Lebanese observer called this approach, “Living in an alternate universe.”
Meanwhile, as the administration congratulates itself on explaining to Syria that it should reduce support for Hizballah, Israeli military intelligence releases an assessment that Syria is giving Hizballah more and better arms than ever before.
Oh wait! Now it's March 3 so time for something new. The ófficial Syrian press agency reports that Syria's government opposed an Arab League proposal to support indirect Palestinian Authority-Israel negotiations. Syria's Foreign Minister Walid al-Moallem asserted that Syria is "no way part" of the consensus supporting the plan.
But guess what? First, Senator John Kerry opened a meeting of his Senate Foreign Relations Committee by erroneously praising Syria as supporting the plan, giving this as an example of Damascus's moderation. The New York Times quoted from the Syrian report, making it sound like Moallem is praising the United States, but left out the paragraphs attacking the U.S.-backed plan! And the State Department circulated the Times article as proof of its success in winning over Syria when in fact Syrian behavior proved the exact opposite!
Oh, and that's not all! Not only did Syria oppose the plan but it attacked the Arab states that supported the U.S. effort and blasted the Palestinian Authority for not following the path of resistance, that is urged it to carry out terrorist violence against Israel.
Hey, that's not all either. Syria also issued a statement accusing Israel of "framing" it by dropping uranium particles from the air to make it seem that Syria had been building a nuclear reactor for making nuclear weapons. Not exactly evidence of rational moderation I'd say.
Meanwhile, on the Iran front, it is now March 2010 and still—six months after the first administration deadline and three months after the second deadline—there are no additional sanctions on Iran yet. In fact, the process has barely started.
Even former Democratic presidential candidate and head of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee John Kerry has taken a stronger stance than the administration.
He supports the congressional call for tough sanctions to block Iran’s energy industry which easily passed both houses. “I believe that the most biting and important sanctions would be those on the energy side.” But the Obama administration wants far more limited sanctions focused on a small group in the regime elite.
Yet sanctions are getting further away rather than closer. Secretary of State Hillary Clinton hinted at this by pulling back from her early prediction of sanctions by April, now saying it might be “some time in the next several months."
At the same time, we have endless evidence that the claim the Russians (and Chinese and others) are coming, to support sanctions, is nonsense. Just before meeting with Clinton to discuss the issue, Brazilian President Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva (or Lula for short) explained, "Peace in the world does not mean isolating someone." (Quick, invite him to explain this to the anti-Israel forces in Europe and elsewhere).
But it’s outright amusing to see the efforts to spin the Russian and Chinese position. In this regard, the prize for this week should be won by an AP dispatch. The headline is: “Russia moves closer to Iran sanctions over nukes.”
And what is the basis for this claim that there has just been “the strongest sign to date that the Kremlin was prepared to drop traditional opposition to such penalties if Tehran remain obstinate?” This statement from President Dmitry Medvedev:
“We believe that [engagement with Iran is] not over yet, that we can still reach an agreement," he said. "But if we don't succeed, Russia is ready — along with our partners…to consider the question of adopting sanctions."
Get it? When Russia decides that talking with Iran won’t work, then at that point—how long from now would that be?—it will “consider” sanctions. Actually, he said the same thing last August, a statement trumpeted in September by the New York Times as proving Obama’s policy was working.
There is more clarity with the Chinese, sort of, though the pretense is also made that they might do something. But Chinese Foreign Ministry spokesman Qin Gang put it this way: "We believe there is still room for diplomatic efforts and the parties concerned should intensify those efforts." At most, the optimists suggest, in the words of this Reuters dispatch:
“China will resist any proposed sanctions that threaten flows of oil and Chinese investments, but most believe it will accept a more narrowly cast resolution that has more symbolic than practical impact.”
Yes, that’s the kind of thing that already existed four years ago. Some progress.
Is it too much to ask policymakers to pay attention to what’s going on occasionally?
So let's leave it to Ahmadinejad to sum up how things seem to Iran, Syria, Hamas, Hizballah, and lots of Arabs both pro- and anti-American:
The Americans, Ahmadinejad said, “not only have failed to gain any power, but also are forced to leave the region. They are leaving their reputation, image, and power behind in order to escape.…The [American] government has no influence [to stop].…the expansion of Iran-Syria ties, Syria-Turkey ties, and Iran-Turkey ties--God willing, Iraq too will join the circle...."
In other words, Obama Administration policy isn't making the radicals more moderate but rather--by feeding their arrogance and belief in American weakness--making them more aggressive.
Thursday, March 4, 2010
How Political Correctness Stifles Intellectual Correctness: An Ivy League Experiment
By Barry Rubin
A friend just told me about an experience he had teaching at an Ivy League university that sums up a lot of the problem with American education nowadays.
One day he went into his history class and began lecturing with a long and spirited defense of slavery. The students were amazed and appalled, asking “How can you say such things?”
Let me interrupt here to make two points. First, none of the students apparently seemed to think he might not mean what he was saying, which tells how much they have become used to hearing only what has already become pre-digested "truth." Second, the professor is an African-American. Of course, if he wasn’t his talk would probably have ended his academic career right there.
He explained to the students that it was not enough to oppose something—like slavery—by merely assuming it was wrong. You must make a good coherent case on the other side. And this requires taking very seriously arguments you may find repugnant but which in some cases—even if not this specific one—could even persuade you that you don’t already possess the full truth.
The professor added, “I won’t accept your merely saying that it is immoral. You have to give me social, economic, political, and other arguments against it.”
In other words, the test for any idea is not whether it meets some pre-existing political standard of what is socially acceptable nowadays (Political Correctness, multiculturalism, and non-hate speech) outside of which everythig is automatically an evil lie. The test is whether it corresponds to reality in some way (that is based on evidence), has consistent arguments (that is, based on logic), and all the other tools of rational thought (for example, handling exceptional cases, having some predictive capability, employing reliable sources, to strive for the closest possible approximation of objective truth even if they could never achieve that perfectly, etc).
I asked him what happened next. He said that about two students understood what was going on and did a good job of meeting his challenge. The rest had no idea of how to respond.
This reminds me of a story I heard from another professor who proposed that a broad reading list should be established for a course which gave a range of views. The professor teaching the course replied that such an idea was old-fashioned and boring. "What I do in my course is explain in the first class that the world's problems are caused by the United States and I spend the rest of the course proving it."
The point is that a short history of American education (and that in some other places in the West) over the last few decades might go like this:
Stage 1: What we are now told were the “bad old days” in which students were indoctrinated to be patriotic and think America was a good society with few if any faults; the cowboy were always the good guys, and the focus was on only some groupings.
Stage 2: The transition, during which students were given a balanced story, with both America’s virtues and its shortcomings presented. (At best, that included an explanation about how the system was free enough to allow for advocacy of change and good enough to make reforms without massive conflict or collapse.)
Of particular importance, during this period students were encouraged to think for themselves, be critical but rational, to question what they were being taught.
Stage 3: The current era. Things have come full circle and even more so. Students in many cases are indoctrinated to be anti-patriotic and think America was a bad society with few if any virtues. They are encourged not to question authority and might be ridiculed or punished for doing so.
But the shortcoming now isn’t just the indoctrinating content of many courses, in humanities and social science at least, it is the failure to teach good methodology. How bizarre that we’ve come full circle to an era where students are not encouraged to think for themselves, given one “correct” view point to the exclusion of others, and thus cannot develop coherent, logic-based arguments.
A friend just told me about an experience he had teaching at an Ivy League university that sums up a lot of the problem with American education nowadays.
One day he went into his history class and began lecturing with a long and spirited defense of slavery. The students were amazed and appalled, asking “How can you say such things?”
Let me interrupt here to make two points. First, none of the students apparently seemed to think he might not mean what he was saying, which tells how much they have become used to hearing only what has already become pre-digested "truth." Second, the professor is an African-American. Of course, if he wasn’t his talk would probably have ended his academic career right there.
He explained to the students that it was not enough to oppose something—like slavery—by merely assuming it was wrong. You must make a good coherent case on the other side. And this requires taking very seriously arguments you may find repugnant but which in some cases—even if not this specific one—could even persuade you that you don’t already possess the full truth.
The professor added, “I won’t accept your merely saying that it is immoral. You have to give me social, economic, political, and other arguments against it.”
In other words, the test for any idea is not whether it meets some pre-existing political standard of what is socially acceptable nowadays (Political Correctness, multiculturalism, and non-hate speech) outside of which everythig is automatically an evil lie. The test is whether it corresponds to reality in some way (that is based on evidence), has consistent arguments (that is, based on logic), and all the other tools of rational thought (for example, handling exceptional cases, having some predictive capability, employing reliable sources, to strive for the closest possible approximation of objective truth even if they could never achieve that perfectly, etc).
I asked him what happened next. He said that about two students understood what was going on and did a good job of meeting his challenge. The rest had no idea of how to respond.
This reminds me of a story I heard from another professor who proposed that a broad reading list should be established for a course which gave a range of views. The professor teaching the course replied that such an idea was old-fashioned and boring. "What I do in my course is explain in the first class that the world's problems are caused by the United States and I spend the rest of the course proving it."
The point is that a short history of American education (and that in some other places in the West) over the last few decades might go like this:
Stage 1: What we are now told were the “bad old days” in which students were indoctrinated to be patriotic and think America was a good society with few if any faults; the cowboy were always the good guys, and the focus was on only some groupings.
Stage 2: The transition, during which students were given a balanced story, with both America’s virtues and its shortcomings presented. (At best, that included an explanation about how the system was free enough to allow for advocacy of change and good enough to make reforms without massive conflict or collapse.)
Of particular importance, during this period students were encouraged to think for themselves, be critical but rational, to question what they were being taught.
Stage 3: The current era. Things have come full circle and even more so. Students in many cases are indoctrinated to be anti-patriotic and think America was a bad society with few if any virtues. They are encourged not to question authority and might be ridiculed or punished for doing so.
But the shortcoming now isn’t just the indoctrinating content of many courses, in humanities and social science at least, it is the failure to teach good methodology. How bizarre that we’ve come full circle to an era where students are not encouraged to think for themselves, given one “correct” view point to the exclusion of others, and thus cannot develop coherent, logic-based arguments.
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