Its beyond obvious that the Arab-Israeli conflict is a cancer on the Middle East. According to Shafeeq Ghabra, a political science professor at Kuwait University, “Basically, this is a region stuck in time, stuck in space and in history and in conflict.” To wit: “The Arab-Israeli conflict reinforces the puritanical, radical, traditional and also the authoritarian because everyone holds onto what they have and there is no third way.”
By many measures, the Arab world is slipping further and further behind in its ability to compete globally. Perhaps the single greatest drag on the region, one that afflicts wealthy Persian Gulf states as well as poorer countries like Egypt, is the quality of schools. International trends in math and science among fourth- and eighth-grade students show that in math, for example, among fourth-graders, the bottom four nations out of 36 were Tunisia, Kuwait, Qatar and Yemen. In science, eighth-grade students in Qatar placed second to last.
The inability of Arab governments to take any collective or decisive action on Gaza is rooted in two basic trends, said Rami Khoury, the director of the Issam Fares public policy institute in Beirut. Most Arab regimes are terrified of Islamist movements like Hamas, which represent the greatest threat to their legitimacy. Many, including Egypt and Jordan, face challenges at home from their own popular versions of the Muslim Brotherhood, Hamas’s ideological parent. Most Arab leaders are also reluctant to provoke the United States and Israel (with which Egypt and Jordan have peace treaties).
For those reasons, Egypt and Saudi Arabia have refused to endorse a meeting of the Arab League. They do not want to be embarrassed by figures like Syria’s president, Bashar al-Assad, who — like his Iranian allies — has won points with an angry Arab public by supporting Hamas and inveighing against the passivity of other Arab leaders.
What do you think about the idea of a League for Democracies? Valuable UN-supplement, or a watering-down of a self-assured country bloc? Vote below, but only after reviewing this discussion–
Phillipp Bobbitt, whose far-reaching books combining grand strategy, philosophy, history, and international relations are downright fascinating (Senator John McCain praised Terror and Consent as “the best book I’ve ever read on terrorism,” , Henry Kissinger called Bobbitt, “perhaps the most important political philosopher today,” while Tony Blair praised The Shield of Achilles and Senator Hillary Clinton discussed it in her Barbara Jordan Lecture) , argues for the League:
The provenance of any proposal is no reason for its adoption—or rejection—but I would note that Madeleine Albright was an advocate of an alliance of democracies in the 1990s, and since 9/11 its principal authors have been Ivo Daalder, a senior adviser to Barack Obama, James Lindsay, a former NSC official in the Clinton administration, the Republican nominee for the presidency, John McCain and one of his senior advisers, Robert Kagan. This bipartisan support may be simply a function of different conceptions of the same concept, but it is indicative at least of the broad interest in such an idea in the US.
David Hannay takes the con position:
All these, you may say, are a former diplomat’s quibbles. But my doubts about the alliance are a good deal more fundamental than that. Is this really the moment, relatively soon after the ending of the cold war, for us to be systematising a division of the world between democratic sheep and undemocratic goats? Would that not simply play into the hands of the hardliners in Moscow and Beijing (and perhaps also in Washington) who want nothing more than a return to the frozen certainties of the cold war; not to speak of the non-aligned who will once more play one camp off against the other? Will not such a new division make it even harder to build a consensus for the handling of the great global challenges which face us all—trade, climate change, nuclear disarmament and non-proliferation? And what legitimacy, let alone legality, would a self-selected grouping such as this really hope to achieve if it were to move from simply being a talking shop to action?
This progressive perspective in TNR by Nina Hachigian, Senior Vice President at the Center for American Progress Action Fund and the co-author of The Next American Century: How the U.S. Can Thrive As Other Powers Rise :
To work effectively with rising democracies, though, Washington policymakers will need to put assumptions of common viewpoints aside, and invest time in understanding how counterparts in Delhi, Pretoria, and Brasilia actually view subjects like democracy promotion and human rights. Barack Obama makes a point of saying he will listen to the world, and that’s what it will take to move forward with these partners.
Further, while there is no question the world needs to build new institutions, and to renew our existing ones, to solve our 21st century problems, many of those problems–climate change, terrorism, poverty, non-proliferation–cannot be tackled by democracies alone. To address them, we are going to have to sit across the table from some nations that do not share our form of government, like China, Russia and Iran. That’s not exciting. But that’s what’s needed.
As groups (large or small) interact, make decisions, coalesce, and do battle groupthink is always an interesting consideration. Bob Woodward’s new book in the series about W’s Presidency gets panned in this review, but does make one wonder about how the wheels of government have been turning.
No doubt Woodward isn’t’ a fan–although the first book was considered to capture a ‘Rovian’ snapshot of Bush’s leadership.
Excerpt:
Mr. Woodward tells us that Ms. Rice never took her complaints about unduly rosy military reports to Mr. Bush because “the president almost demanded optimism” and because she “claimed that as secretary of state, she didn’t feel it was appropriate to criticize” Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld or military commanders. In another chapter, Mr. Woodward tells us that Mr. Hadley, put in charge of a secret 2006 review of the war (reportedly kept under close guard because of White House fears that news coverage might hurt Republican chances in the mid-term elections), so “hero-worshipped” the president that he often sidelined his own analytic methods to embrace Mr. Bush’s certainties.
The Veep has gone to Georgia and promised “Georgia will be in our alliance.” Is this a promise that the U.S. can deliver upon?
Richard Holbrooke says the next major foreign policy issue for Obama or McCain will be Afghanistan, but regardless the winner–the U.S. must learn how to manage alliances, provide leadership, and work through issues like Georgia. He notes that we didn’t go to war over Berlin, and–echoing Robert Gates–managed to stay out of a hot conflict during the entire Cold War. Likewise, we won’t go to war to defend Georgia.
For the US and its Western allies, Georgia has both geopolitical and ideological significance. Georgia is a key transit point for pipelines that bypass the Russian oil and gas network – part of a long-term US effort to limit Russian influence on global energy supplies and provide alternatives to Middle Eastern oil. In addition, Georgia is seen as an exemplary democracy that deserves to be defended.
RUSSIA
Rumors abound about what this means for Medvedev’s relationship to Putin, as well as Russia’s worldview: self-defense? expansionist?
According to Strugatsky, “small victorious wars are harmful to an authoritarian state” because they then act as if they have won the right to do whatever they please “over their own economy and in general over their own people,” an attitude that does not bode well for Russia’s future.
Some have suggested that because of the war, the Russian media has been creating a new world view among Russians, the novelist says. But that is not the case. The media “are supporting a world view that already exists. And our world view – that of the mass population – remains totalitarian: ‘They must fear us.’ ‘We are the best.’” and so on.
Russian natavists are stirring up the dust at home, even as others see this as a chance for the Securitat to reign in the masses.
Another interesting view: Is this Russia’s Iraq–an economic blunder that will limit its ability to operate militarily and economically, much as the Middle East conflict has limited U.S. policymaker options?
What’s at stake (their interests):
For Russia, there is also a lot at stake. Georgia is its immediate neighbor, and Russia has had troops in the separatist regions since the early 1990s; many of the regions’ people are Russian citizens (though granting citizenship has itself been partly a strategy to extend influence). Russia perceives NATO expansion and Western pipeline politics as geopolitical threats; a resolute response in Georgia sends a clear message to the West and former Soviet states that they cannot ignore Russia’s interests.
Finally, a clear-headed legalistic analysis as to who is to blame (cutting through the rhetoric, and the most useful post to read in full if you want a careful analysis of the Georgian conflict:
So, has Russia acted illegally? Western politicians uniformly proclaim that it has, but the legal standards do not easily support such a confident assertion. Certain acts are unquestionably illegal, and even if they are being conducted by South Ossetian irregulars, Russia is responsible. But the West’s real anger has been reserved for Russia’s decision to carry the war into Georgia proper, and on that point, the balance of international law probably favors the Russians’ right to defend themselves – even if, as many speculate, they were secretly glad Georgia handed them the opportunity. Georgia struck first – resorting to violence rather than continued negotiations (in fact, the very day Georgia attacked, another round of ceasefire talks was to have taken place) – and in the legal analysis, that matters.
More from Gorby (bottom quote)–but first, after listening to T. Friedman across the page, some of this makes sense:
After the collapse of the Soviet Union, I was among the group — led by George Kennan, the father of “containment” theory, Senator Sam Nunn and the foreign policy expert Michael Mandelbaum — that argued against expanding NATO, at that time.
It seemed to us that since we had finally brought down Soviet communism and seen the birth of democracy in Russia the most important thing to do was to help Russian democracy take root and integrate Russia into Europe. Wasn’t that why we fought the cold war — to give young Russians the same chance at freedom and integration with the West as young Czechs, Georgians and Poles? Wasn’t consolidating a democratic Russia more important than bringing the Czech Navy into NATO?
All of this was especially true because, we argued, there was no big problem on the world stage that we could effectively address without Russia — particularly Iran or Iraq. Russia wasn’t about to reinvade Europe. And the Eastern Europeans would be integrated into the West via membership in the European Union.
Maybe its not so much a return to power politics as much as colliding cool calculations on national interest:
In recent days, Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice and President Bush have been promising to isolate Russia. Some American politicians have threatened to expel it from the Group of 8 industrialized nations, to abolish the NATO-Russia Council and to keep Russia out of the World Trade Organization.
These are empty threats. For some time now, Russians have been wondering: If our opinion counts for nothing in those institutions, do we really need them? Just to sit at the nicely set dinner table and listen to lectures?
Indeed, Russia has long been told to simply accept the facts. Here’s the independence of Kosovo for you. Here’s the abrogation of the Antiballistic Missile Treaty, and the American decision to place missile defenses in neighboring countries. Here’s the unending expansion of NATO. All of these moves have been set against the backdrop of sweet talk about partnership. Why would anyone put up with such a charade?
Whither the institutional quick fix? What happened to the Doha Round? No more world policeman debate; we’re trying to figure out how to play nice in the sandbox with diffused power among the US, EU, China, India, et al. Even Accenture has MNC’s prepped for the big quiz. Reality bites. The result:
Groups with a strong narrow interest are able to block larger groups with a diffuse but generalized interest. The narrow Chinese interest in Sudanese oil blocks the world’s general interest in preventing genocide. Iran’s narrow interest in nuclear weapons trumps the world’s general interest in preventing a Middle East arms race. Diplomacy goes asymmetric and the small defeat the large.
David Brooks (above) is on track to becoming my go-to guy for big picture reductionist columnizing. I’m not sure that I share his optimistic conclusion for the League of Democraciesidea–a la McCain–but, er, I want to believe….
For more on the idea of a multipolar world, Parag Khanna is still a discussion leader over at New American Foundation.
The pragmatic side of Lula, the union leader who was always a negotiator, has paid off,” said Kenneth Maxwell, a historian at Harvard University and a columnist for the Brazilian newspaper Folha de São Paulo. “While Chávez grabs the headlines, the debate over whether Brazil is becoming a regional power is moot,” he said. “Brazil has actually made it to that level, but in a very nonbombastic way.”
When I lived in Brazil during the late 1980’s, I was fascinated with the political varieties already experienced by this vast, dynamc country. I also found great pleasure looking out of our apartment window on the 21st floor down into the neighboring public tennis courts where members of the Partido Comunista do Brasil (PCB), President Lula’s former party, occasionally staged rallies. In 1988, Brazil held its first elections, bringing Fernando Colar de Melo in as its first elected cheif executive. Although I learned little of importance gazing down on the party gatherings, I have watched Brazil’s politics evolve over twenty years with a particular interest in the political evolution of the current president.
Although some predicted great economic and political ruin when the former Communist-turned-Socialist cum populist took the reigns of the largest country in South America, Lula now appears to be established as a capable leader and astute negotiator in some key areas. In particular, he may employ some of the most effective rhetoric where he praises his rival and neighbor, Hugo Chavez even as he subtly outmaneuvers him on economic, political, diplomatic, and other fronts–vying for regional influence and obtaining a great deal of power for this country today, a country that many people call o pais do futuro, or country of the future.
According to Simon Romero and Alexi Barrionuevo in the Times, Lula’s skillful approaches include the following tactics:
Praising Chavez’s bombast in public, while trying to temper him in private
Pragmatism, in contrast to idealistic and grandiose rhetoric
Avoiding direct public confrontation with Venezuela, but building friendships with neighboring countries through brokering economic, security and other deals–including within Venezuela
Utilizing all of these ties to trump Chavez’s proposed ALBA, creating their own regional trading block, Unasur
Praising Chavez’s Bank of the South, a competitor for the World Bank, but days later starts a new branch of B.N.D.E.S, its own development bank in Uruguay
Enjoying good luck (petroleum discovery off the coast of Tupi) leading to oil economic power and future membership in OPEC–aside Venezuela
A new bloc for the Mediterranean–spearheaded by the French–has been put on hold. Even within Sarko’s own government his idea for a union of geographically connected Mediterranean countries, conceived by Henri Guaino but introduced before his own government was organized, caused consternation. His Ministry of Foreign had issues–not to mention the Spanish, and Germans.
Imagine some of the countries gathering around the dining room table: France at the head, Spain, Italy, Greece, Syria, Jordan, Israel, Libya, Algeria, Tunisia, and Turkey–already in tough negotiations regarding its EU membership status.
