The Failing State of Greece – NYTimes.com

Before we can fix Greece we have to understand the nature of the problem.  What is wrong with this nation-state?

What are we to make of Greece, which borrowed beyond its means and now has been pushed to the brink by its lenders? Is it the “problem child” of Europe, more corrupt and dysfunctional than its neighbors? Is it a special case, as the lenders are saying, hoping that after the write-down of Greek debt last week they won’t have to restructure other ailing euro zone countries’ large public debts? Or is it in fact a harbinger, a vision of how economic collapse transforms a country — or of what happens to democracy when banks become more powerful than political institutions?

While the mainstream political parties suffer under the weight of their own mismanagement and of the austerity they have pledged and reforms they have often struggled to enforce, unemployment and homelessness rise and the European Union inches toward transforming its institutions to get behind a currency battered by fast-moving market forces. Something profound and distressing is happening: the rapid dissolution of a democracy in plain sight. As I stood outside the Attikon last week, I asked myself: Where is the line between a weak state and a failed state?

via The Failing State of Greece – NYTimes.com.

Booklist | ‘The Great Big Book of Horrible Things,’ by Matthew White – NYTimes.com

One of the most common quesitons from the general public for international relations is whether the war and conflict is increasing or declining.  Now the librarian Matthew White has compiled and impressive new tome ranking atrocities by body count.  (Grim, and certainly not cocktail party chatter–but very informative.)

Mr. White’s methodology is simple. He gathers every estimate he can find, including some that mainstream historians might reject as unsavory. (“Beggars can’t be choosers,” he writes.) He throws out the highest and lowest numbers and then calculates the median, arriving at what he acknowledges is often just an informed guess. Deaths from famine and disease stemming from armed conflict count, but natural disasters and purely economic events do not. (“There has to be a core of violence,” he explained.) All sources are listed on his Web site, along with darkly witty ruminations on the inherent uncertainty of numbers, especially where what he calls “mass unpleasantness” is involved.

Mr. White’s estimates are “at the high end of the range,” Mr. Pinker said. But he called Mr. White’s transparency about his sources impressive and his methodology statistically sound, in keeping with the scientific tradition of meta-analysis of previous studies.

via ‘The Great Big Book of Horrible Things,’ by Matthew White – NYTimes.com.

Whither Syria?

Where is Syria heading? (Some answers include a civil war, economic meltdown, or stalemate, albeit with defections.)  A recent Frontline special offers chilling insights into what protesters face from the brutal and consistent government crackdown.

Now the Arab League weighs in:

Arab governments, seeking to reflect popular demand for democratic change, are trying to address the issue without prompting the violent downfall of the Syrian government or international military action, analysts said.

“They all want to appear democratic, proactive and standing up for people because they are so embattled at home,” said Paul Salem, director of the Carnegie Middle East Center in Beirut, Lebanon.

via Arab League Suspends Syria Over Its Crackdown – NYTimes.com.

The Long War Journal offers this helpful list of the key players.

9/11: Did the Qur’an really make them do it?

A poignant post from one of the most important current thinkers on religious studies, Philip Jenkins of Penn State.  He argues that 9/11 didn’t do as much to change our thinking–but we should be able to better understand the Qur’an and its followers, rather than resorting to anti-Islamic tropes:

On reflection, the greatest lesson I learned from the 9/11 horror concerned religion, and specifically how we in the West viewed the great world faiths. And the lessons are as much about Us as about Them. After 9/11, many commentators went beyond focusing on the particular ideology of the perpetrators to speak in terms of a broad clash of cultures and civilizations. They focused intensely on Islam, trying to determine just what features of that faith led its adherents to violence and bloodshed. Many writers have presented Islam as a stark contrast to Christianity and Judaism, and portrayed a struggle of darkness against light.

The Qur’an, in this view, is something like a terrorist manifesto: the book oozes violence, with so many verses about battles, swords and blood. Fanaticism seems hard-wired into the faith. Are the core texts of Islam so repulsive that they will prevent Muslim societies ever evolving to civilized and democratic communities? Why can’t they learn to be like us?

via 9/11: Did the Qur’an really make them do it?.

Anglican church struggles with occupy response | FP Passport

Across the pond, OCW has wreaked havoc on the consciences of Anglican Church leaders who must decide how to deal with the encampments:

In fact, the iconic St. Pauls Cathedral closed its doors to worshippers and tourists last week due to safety concerns for the first time since WWII and joined the CLCs lawsuit last Friday. But since the court action could lead to the forceful removal of protesters, and ultimately violence, the cathedral proceeds without three of its clergymen who have already resigned in protest. One of them, Canon Chancellor Giles Frase, explained his decision to the Guardian:

St. Paul was a tentmaker. If you looked around and you tried to recreate where Jesus would be born — for me, I could imagine Jesus being born in the camp. It is not about my sympathies or what I believe about the camp. I support the right to protest and in a perfect world we could have negotiated. But our legal advice was that this would have implied consent. The church cannot answer peaceful protest with violence.

via Anglican church struggles with occupy response | FP Passport.

NATO War in Libya Shows U.S. Was Vital to Toppling Qaddafi – NYTimes.com

The role that the US played was constant, irreplaceable, and vital–signaling that NATO may not be all its cracked up to be:

The United States military has spent just $1.1 billion in Libya, and in the words of Vice President Joseph R. Biden Jr., “didn’t lose a single life.” He added that “this is more of the prescription for how to deal with the world as we go forward than it has been in the past.”

Libya proved that the leaders of some medium-size powers can be overthrown from a distance, without putting American boots on the ground, by using weapons fired from sea and air with the heaviest load carried by partner nations — in the case of Libya, European allies and even some Arab states.

via NATO War in Libya Shows U.S. Was Vital to Toppling Qaddafi – NYTimes.com.

Philo Dibble, Diplomat and Iran Expert, Dies at 60 – NYTimes.com

Interesting obit on the diplomat Philo Dibble–who played an outsized role in the release of American hikers in Iran.

Philo L. Dibble, 60, a career Foreign Service officer who completed one of his most sensitive and visible diplomatic assignments — helping negotiate the release of two U.S. hikers who had been imprisoned in Iran — 10 days before his death, died Oct. 1 at his home in McLean.

via Philo Dibble, diplomat who helped free U.S. hikers from Iran, dies at 60 – The Washington Post.

Great story in the NYT obit:

He arrived in Beirut, Lebanon, on April 18, 1983, the day a suicide bomber killed more than 60 people in the American Embassy. No one met him at the airport. “He grabbed a cab,” his wife said. “He had a carton of Marlboros — paid the fare in Marlboros.”

When he arrived at the embassy, “it was just smoldering,” Ms. Dibble said. “He got out with his suitcases and people said: ‘You must be the new vice consul. We need you.’ ”

via Philo Dibble, Diplomat and Iran Expert, Dies at 60 – NYTimes.com.

U.S. Ambassador to Syria Describes Attack on Convoy – NYTimes.com

In case you thought that being a diplomat was just “talking”:

In a post on his Facebook page, the American ambassador to Syria, Robert Ford, said the attack on his convoy was more violent than previously reported. … “concrete blocks” … “hit the cars with iron bars…”

via U.S. Ambassador to Syria Describes Attack on Convoy – NYTimes.com.

Drone Wars

Do you agree with the premise of drone wars–that increasing funding and support for remote controlled lethal attacks on accused terrorists constitutes an effective strategy?  A moral one?

What about when it involves an American citizen?  Are we heading down the wrong path?  What comes next?

It appeared to be the first time in the United States-led war on terrorism since the Sept. 11, 2001 attacks that an American citizen had been deliberately targeted and killed by American forces. It was also the second high-profile killing of an Al Qaeda leader in the past five months under the Obama administration, which ordered the American commando raid that killed Osama bin Laden in Pakistan last May.

via American-Born Qaeda Leader Is Killed by U.S. Missile in Yemen – NYTimes.com.

As Michael Ignatieff notes in his free ranging discussion with a panel on 9/11: The Reckoning:

 I’d say the move toward risk-averse military action has been going on for some time. I called Kosovo a “virtual war” precisely because we tried to protect civilians from the air, to eliminate risk to ground troops, and more importantly, to maintain domestic political support for an operation in a faraway place that was always shallow. I think this is a key consideration: no one wants to die for the sake of someone else’s real estate or security, if they can avoid it, and the new technologies — drones etc. — help to square the circle. They allow interventions on the cheap, which is all domestic political considerations will allow. The problem is if the risk to us is low, oversight will be similarly casual. We start killing lots of people rather casually, and lose whatever strategic purpose we were trying to achieve.  via The Reckoning – Roundtable

A magazine treatment by Peter Bergen of the New American Foundation is worth a look, as is this piece by the essayist/polemicist/bomb-thrower Christopher Hitchens, who asks, “if you wouldn’t have killed al-Awlaki, what would you have done?”

The Importance of Trust in the US/Cuba Case

The idea of “trust” has been extolled by political theorist Francis Fukuyama as “a community’s shared expectation of honest, cooperative behavior outside the family) and social capital (the values created by tradition, religion, or other means).”    Trust plays a critical role in diplomacy–as best evidenced in the negative sense by the powerful undermining effect of Wikileaks.

If you have ever wondered “how hard could it be for two countries to develop trust” consider the latest setback in Richardson’s unofficial visit to retrieve a USAID contractor held by the Cuban government.  (We can assume–as David Brooks eloquently writes–that setting government policy and measuring the benefit is difficult.)  The bottom line is that country-to-country relationships are complicated, too.

“Neither side has shown the slightest interest in learning from experience and have demonstrated repeatedly the tragic way in which both sides are condemned to repeat their mistakes,” said Robert A. Pastor, a professor at American University who advises former President Jimmy Carter on Latin America. “It’s not just the Obama people. It’s the new people under Raúl Castro.”

via Bill Richardson Criticizes Cuba After Failed Talks on Alan Gross – NYTimes.com.