November, 2007

Friday, November 30, 2007

Did The Quartet Turn Into A Soloist?

As The Middle East Times points out, this weeks Annapolis conference signalled more than just America's return to the Middle East peace process. By not mentioning Russia, the UN, or the EU once (other than an oblique reference to the "road map" issued by "the Quartet"), the conference's joint declaration also signalled a unilateral American role in monitoring the negotiations between the Palestinians and Israelis, as well as judging the resulting agreement.

That might come with some downside, given the fact that it's primarily EU funding that has financed the Palestinian Authority's development efforts, and that Russia has been very vigorously pursuing its own interests in the Middle East. Everyone's going to have to be on board for the outcome to be durable, which makes it curious that they're already left out from the very start.

Posted by Judah in:  The Middle East   

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Friday, November 30, 2007

Transparency

Willy Lam over at The Jamestown Foundation has got some background on the "Hong Kong harbor" incident. It turns out China had a massive military maneuver going on off its southeast coast at the time:

The military drills, which started on November 19, covered a wide swath of the Pacific, including sensitive terrain east of Taiwan and north of the Philippine archipelago. While official PLA media have been reticent about the exercises, Hong Kong papers and military-related websites in China noted that their purpose was to simulate a "pincer attack" on Taiwan as well as a naval blockade...

...Military analysts noted that PLA authorities did not want the Kitty Hawk battle group—whose 8,000-odd sailors had earlier planned to spend Thanksgiving in Hong Kong—to be in the vicinity... On a deeper level, the Kitty Hawk incident reflected Beijing’s anger at Washington's plan to sell Taiwan a $940 million upgrade to its Patriot II anti-missile shield.

Lam also mentions that the tardy decision to deny the Kitty Hawk's previously approved visit, followed by a quick reversal approving the visit for "humanitarian reasons" (the American sailors were on Thanksgiving leave with their families) demonstrates the lack of coordination between the Communist Party, the Chinese government, and the military. The same thing was suggested after the global outcry over the Chinese military's destruction of an outdated orbiting satellite earlier this year, when the Chinese government seemed to be taken by surprise not only by the violence of the world's reaction, but by the fact that the anti-sat strike had even taken place.

So in addition to developing transparency and improved communications with the American military command, the Chinese general staff might want to consider improving their communications with the Chinese government.

Posted by Judah in:  China   

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Friday, November 30, 2007

The View From Their Window

Once you get past the poor translation, this People's Daily op-ed on America's "capabilities of overseas interference" is pretty encouraging for anyone who takes a bearish view of America's influence in the world. According to Liu Weidong, a researcher at China's Institute of American Studies, a number of factors do in fact contribute to a relative decline in our global influence. Primary among them are the changes wrought by globalization. All roads no longer necessarily lead to Rome; bi-lateral and multi-lateral ties are increasingly being forged independently of the major powers. Beyond that, our soft power has taken a hit in the aftermath of the Iraq debacle. And finally, the folks most associated with interventionism (the so-called vulcans) "...have gone downhill...", to use the author's formulation.

But a relative decline is not the same thing as bottoming out. Here's Liu, rotten translation and all:

Nnevertheless, the primary factor for the successful intervention of global affairs is the hard power. In term of hard power or strength, the United States still ranks first. Its intervention capacity via the combination of economic means with coordinated military threat and remote or distance strikes remains very powerful and formidable...

Moreover, from a long-term point of view, the U.S. does not have a matching foe in a relatively long period to come. Although some regional powers have grown in strength, they do not intend to challenge its status and so they neither firmly support nor stay in a vehemently opposition to the intervention actions of the United States. This point is indicated distinctly by recent postures of the new French and German leaders to amend their ties with the U.S. respectively.

Liu minimizes the difference between the interventionist reflex of Republicans and Democrats, distinguishing them instead by their areas of interest and preferred methods (or as he puts it, "...What different is nothing but their focuses of attention and ways of solution they are good at.") Here's how he concludes:

...Global stability in the years ahead is, to a great extent, decided by how the American people relard or look upon international disputes, and whether or not they are able to contain and how to contain their government.

I think those of us horrified at the Bush administration's handling of foreign policy in the aftermath of 9/11 have a tendency to paint a very alarmist picture about how far our standing in the world has fallen. I know I'm guilty of it from time to time. I'm flagging this not because I think Liu's analyses is especially original or authoritative, but more to remind us all that regardless of how glum our own perception of America's standing in the world might be, the rest of the world still has a pretty healthy respect for American power, even if it's only our ability to screw things up even more. Despite everything we've squandered in blood, treasure and prestige over the past six years, we remain the pre-dominant world power, and perhaps the only one really capable of seriously considering the type of unilateral interventionism we've pursued during that time.

It will take a lot of work and effort, but should we decide both to elect a reasonable president and to contain the inevitable urge to excess that comes with such incommensurate capabilities, there's no reason to believe we can't rehabilitate our standing to reflect the true power we still possess.

Posted by Judah in:  China   International Relations   

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Friday, November 30, 2007

PKK Update

When Turkish Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan met with President Bush in Washington to discuss the PKK three weeks ago, northern Iraq was in a state of high alert, with rumors of war swirling and tensions at the boiling point. At the outcome of the meeting, President Bush had promised to take concrete steps to address Turkey's grievances, and Prime Minister Erdogan basically agreed to hold off on plummeting the only stable region in Iraq into conflict and chaos.

So where do things stand now? Kind of a mixed bag. On the positive side, Germany just extradited two PKK militants back to Turkey, which is a strong symbolic gesture considering that one of Turkey's grievances was that no one seemed to be taking their terrorist problem very seriously. In particular, the Turks had complained about western European countries allowing known agents of the PKK to operate with relative impunity, despite the PKK being on the EU's list of terrorist organizations.

It also seems like the Iraqi Kurds, and in particular hardliner Massoud Barzani, have actually decided to crack down hard on the PKK, setting up checkpoints along the arteries leading south from their mountain camps to prevent them from re-supplying. As a result, a report last week had the PKK attempting to re-locate their base of operations into Iran. But since the environment is no less hostile there, another report today suggested they are trying to move their camps to an Armenian-controlled region in Azerbaijan.

Both of these developments, when combined with American forces providing the Turkish special forces with actionable real time intelligence, would seem to have obviated the need for a Turkish cross-border operation.

So why a mixed bag? Because despite the progress, the Turkish Prime Minister's office two days ago authorized the army to conduct just such an operation. You'll remember that the Turkish parliament authorized the use of force last month, which is what brought this lingering crisis to the front burner. Erdogan's authorization could be interpreted as the final green light the military needed before engaging in an operation of their choosing.

There's no guarantee they will actually do so. The Kandil mountains where the PKK bases are located are already a difficult theater of operations. Everything I've read indicates that the winter weather makes them all but impenetrable. On the other hand, perhaps the Turkish military is motivated by the desire to pen the PKK in before they have a chance to re-locate their bases. Either way, this situation just went from "wait-and-see" to "keep your eyes peeled".

Posted by Judah in:  Iraq   Turkey   

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Friday, November 30, 2007

Petty Officers?

An AFP report claims that the US pressured Japan to cancel a scheduled tour of an Aegis-equipped warship for visiting Chinese sailors. The ostensible reason was concern that the Chinese might manage to glean some useful information about the cutting edge defense technology. But it's hard not to wonder if it doesn't have something to do with China's recent refusal to grant American vessels entry to Hong Kong harbor.

Japan denied that there was any American pressure, claiming the reason for the cancellation was that the ship was not in port. The visit by the Chinese destroyer is the first port call of the Communist Chinese navy in Japan.

Update: Add another navy vessel to the list of American ships to which China has refused to grant entry to Hong Kong harbor. The Reuben James' request for a New Year's Eve visit was denied at the same time that the Kitty Hawk was turned away last week. This little naval protocol spat seems to be rising to the level of a "perplexing" diplomatic incident.

Posted by Judah in:  China   International Relations   

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Friday, November 30, 2007

Sign Of Life

It's hard to know how to feel about the video recovered by Colombian police showing that Ingrid Betancourt is still alive. On the one hand, relief that there's still hope in this very personal tragedy for her family. On the other, an enormous sadness to see the images of such a proud, courageous and combative woman in captivity.

My first impressions of the still photos were that she'd been broken by her ordeal. After viewing the video, though, her regard seems less blank (as it's described in the French language article) so much as interiorized. Her body language, too, seems to demonstrate that she's wary, resigned to the intrusive camera, weakened even. But also overwhelmingly interiorized, un-defeated, coiled as if ready to spring into action when the opportunity presents itself.

She's now been held prisoner for five years, an amount of time that ceases to be a parenthesis in the course of a life and becomes an integral part of its text. My heart goes out to her and her family.

Posted by Judah in:  Las Americas   

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Thursday, November 29, 2007

The Gloves Are Off

There's the makings of what looks like a serious power struggle, both factional and institutional, going on in Tehran right now. The battle pits President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad's hardline supporters against Hashemi Rafsanjani's reformists, as well as the executive branch against the judiciary, all in the context of the run-up to next spring's Parliamentary elections that are shaping up to be hotly contested.

Those of you who read through all of my detailed (read: obsessive) posting on Iran will remember Hossein Mousavian, a former spokesman for Iran's nuclear negotiator under reformist President Khatami. Mousavian was arrested and released in May, only to be re-charged two weeks ago with passing classified nuclear information along to the British embassy in Tehran.

On Tuesday, an investigating magistrate dismissed the espionage charges, handing down only a suspended sentence for a lesser charge of "propaganda against the system". Yesterday, Ahmadinejad pushed back, threatening to release tapes of Mousavian's conversations with British diplomats, and demanding that the case be re-opened.

Mousavian has received support not only from his reformist allies, but also from a close advisor to the Ayatollah Khameini. More significantly, conservatives within Ahmadinejad's faction have also spoken out in his defense, signalling a possible erosion in the President's support.

I'll be watching this one as it unfolds, since it should provide a pretty good glimpse of the state of play in Tehran. Given the reformists' vocal criticism of Ahmadinejad's handling of the nuclear crisis, any sign that they've retaken the pole position in Iranian domestic political jockeying could be a very significant development.

Posted by Judah in:  Iran   

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Thursday, November 29, 2007

A Brewing Storm?

I recently did a post about the military hotline that China and the US recently agreed to establish. Among other things, here's what I concluded:

China is one area where the Bush administration doesn't get some credit it deserves. The amount of trust-building measures and joint exercises that have taken place is actually pretty surprising, if you think about where things started (the Hainan airmen) as well as some of the provocation China has engaged in since (the anti-satellite test).

But as if to demonstrate that it never pays to rush a compliment of the Bush administration into print, along comes the Hong Kong harbor controversy:

The saga of a U.S. aircraft carrier being denied entry to Hong Kong at Thanksgiving took a bizarre turn Nov. 29, when China denied saying the whole affair had been a misunderstanding.

The White House said Chinese Foreign Minister Yang Jiechi had told President George W. Bush as much Nov. 28...

"Reports that Foreign Minister Yang said in the United States that it was a misunderstanding do not accord with the facts," Chinese Foreign Ministry spokesman Liu Jianchao told a news conference.

China later had a change of heart and granted entry, but by that time the Kitty Hawk carrier group was on its way back to Japan. Be that as it may, if the denial of entry wasn't a misunderstanding, is it possible our friends in Peking were trying to pass along a little message? Here's Liu again:

"We think that generally communication, talks and exchanges are progressing smoothly. Both sides have smooth communication on bilateral and international issues," he added. "But it should be pointed out that recently, bilateral relations have been interfered with and damaged by mistaken actions by the U.S. For example, U.S. leaders have met the Dalai Lama. Also on the Taiwan question, China approves of the U.S. opposing Taiwan’s U.N. entry referendum. At the same time, we have grave concern with U.S. arms sales to Taiwan."

In addition to turning away the Kitty Hawk, China also recently denied access to Hong Kong harbor to two American minesweepers seeking refuge from a "brewing storm":

China's denial of their request violated "an unwritten rule among seamen that if someone is in need, regardless of genus, phylum or species, you let them come in -- you give them safe harbor," Keating said.

"Jimmy Buffet has songs about it, for crying out loud," he said.

We've got a lot of fragile (nuclear eggs) in our China basket at the moment. The North Korean declaration of activities is due to the Six Nations group any day now. And once Javier Solana delivers his EU report on Iran's nuclear program, negotiations will begin in earnest for a third round of Security Council sanctions. Maybe this is just China's way of reminding the Bush administration that if we want a quid, we've got to be willing to give up some quos.

Posted by Judah in:  China   

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Thursday, November 29, 2007

You Be The Judge

Armchair Generalist on today's DoD blogger's roundtable with Dr. Ali Al-Dabbagh, the Government of Iraq Official Spokesman:

I was more irritated by two of the "correspondents" in our group...The other bozo was from Armed Forces Press Service - he asked (and I'm not kidding), "would you like to express your appreciation to all the US service men and women who want to know their service counted?" Al-Dabbah said some nice things about sacrifice and Iraq's appreciation. What a maroon.

American Forces Press Service on today's DoD blogger's roundtable with Dr. Ali Al-Dabbagh, the Government of Iraq Official Spokesman:

The government of Iraq appreciates the efforts and sacrifices of U.S. servicemembers engaged in the country's fight against insurgents, and it desires a continued American troop presence as Iraqi security forces improve in numbers and capability, an Iraqi government spokesman said today.

Yup. I think Jason nailed it. The guy's a maroon.

Posted by Judah in:  Iraq   Media Coverage   

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Thursday, November 29, 2007

Some Of His Best Friends...

[I "broke" this story last June, but it didn't gain much traction. In light of Mitt Romney's remarks this week about not appointing a Muslim to his cabinet, it seemed like it might be worth re-posting.]

After a couple e-mails to the Romney campaign asking whether I was correct in concluding that of the 50 members of his Faith & Values Steering Committee, not a single one was Jewish, Muslim or Mormon, and if so, what the reasoning behind that was, I got this four-word response:

Paul Driessen is Jewish.

So there you have it, ladies and gentlemen. Mitt Romney's Faith & Values Steering Committee doesn't even include his own faith & values. Or Muslims'. Jews, on the other hand, are disproportionately over-represented compared to relative population (2% of the committee vs. 1.6% of the population).

I've contacted the World Jewish Committee, the Anti-Defamation League, the Council on American-Islam Relations, and the Islamic Society of North America to see if they have any thoughts on the matter. I'll keep you posted.

[No one ever got back to me with their thoughts on the matter.]

Posted by Judah in:  Politics   

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Thursday, November 29, 2007

Funny Accents

Mitt Romney's squabble with Rudy Giuliani over illegal immigrants working in his mansion got quite a bit of blog attention. But this little line seemed to pass under the radar:

Romney: ...If you hear someone that's working out there -- not that you've employed, but that the company has -- if you hear someone with a funny accent, you as a homeowner are supposed to go out there and say, I want to see your papers? (Emphasis added.)

Now I think it would be difficult for anyone to define exactly what makes an accent funny, as opposed to being just, well, an accent. But I also think we all know who Romney was referring to.

As an example, when I was a young college drop-out working in a restaurant on the Upper East Side of Manhattan, I noticed how often diners stopped to ask where the lovely hostesses were from (Sweden), where the charming waiter was from (Brazil), and even where the gregarious owner was from (Brooklyn). But not once did I ever notice anyone ask where my fellow food runners were from (India and Bangladesh), where the hardworking busboys were from (Ecuador), or where the no-nonsense handyman was from (Guatemala, where he'd been a practicing physician). Most of us have a coded understanding, whether conscious or not, of what makes one accent "exotic" and "interesting", and another "funny" and "threatening". Some of us work hard to recognize and compensate for that reflex. In today's GOP, it's celebrated.

In fairness to Romney, he followed up soon thereafter with this question, again directed at Giuliani:

...You now are responsible for going out and checking the employees of that company, particularly those that -- that might look different or don't -- doesn't have an accent like yours, and ask for their papers? I don't think that's America...

But I think the dog whistle was very clearly sounded for those who were intended to hear it.

Posted by Judah in:  Politics   

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Thursday, November 29, 2007

Made In Iran

This week, Iran announced that it had built a new homegrown missile with a range of 1250 miles. Then yesterday it followed that up by announcing the launch of a first-in-its-class domestically produced submarine. Now my understanding based on what I've read in the military press is that it pays to take these sorts of announcements from Tehran with a grain of salt, as the technological expertise usually leaves something to be desired. On the other hand, what is significant here is that, a) Iran feels the need to publicize what amounts to second-strike capabilities; and b) that it is emphasizing its domestic production. (Iran already has three Russian-built subs patrolling the Persian Gulf.)

The first demonstrates that, for all the apparent ratcheting down of rhetoric recently, Tehran still feels very acutely under threat of an attack. We already saw the counterintuitive ways such a mindset can play out in Saddam Hussein's decision-making process before the Iraq War. So it's important to take that into account as we dial in our policy from here on out.

The second gets to the heart of what's at stake, I think, for Tehran in its standoff with the Bush administration. Psychologically speaking, this is a regime that desperately wants to be taken seriously. I think it also offers the possibility of an effective political line of approach: If you want to be taken seriously, you must integrate into the global order responsibly.

What we neglect by adopting an overly hostile worldview is that the emergence of new poles of power presents enormous opportunities as well as various risks. Influence and legitimacy bring with them obligations of responsibility. You can already begin to see the impact of China's emerging influence on its role in the global order. The same is true of India.

It's time we started taking advantage of this principle with regards to Iran as well.

Posted by Judah in:  Foreign Policy   Iran   

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Wednesday, November 28, 2007

Second Rock

It turns out we have a model of a planet experiencing a "runaway greenhouse effect" right next door. The latest orbital probe of Venus has led European Space Agency scientists to speculate that our neighbor in the solar system was once partially covered with water.

"Probably because Venus was closer to the sun, the atmosphere was a little bit warmer and you got more water very high up," he said.

As water vapour is a greenhouse gas, this further trapped solar heat, causing the planet to heat up even more.

It was a "positive feedback" - a vicious circle of self-reinforcing warming - that eventually caused the planet to become bone dry.

Talk about an uninviting environment, by the way: 457 degrees farenheit on the surface, with sulfuric acid-laced clouds. Ouch.

Update: And speaking of bone dry, this article on the coming water scarcity is pretty thought-provoking. 

Posted by Judah in:  The Natural World   

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Wednesday, November 28, 2007

A Piece Of The Nuclear Pie

Add India to the list of countries angling for a share of the Middle East's growing market for civil nuclear programs. Of course, rogue nuclear programs are the flip side of the coin of the enormous contracts and fierce competition involved in the nuclear industry, and the problem's only going to get worse as the demand for nuclear energy continues to spread. The challenge facing the nuclear non-proliferation regime is not only how to contain the clandestine transfer of technology, but also how to legitimately determine which countries can be trusted with nuclear dual-use technologies, and which can't. As of now, it's a political process played out at the Security Council. The current impasse with regards to sanctions for Iran show the difficulty of achieving consensus, while the Iraq War demonstrates the dangers of acting unilaterally in the face of lack of consensus.

It's also important to remember that there's absolutely nothing that requires a country to join the Nuclear Suppliers Group in order to engage in nuclear technology transfers. India, for instance, is not a NSG member but has voluntarily agreed to abide by the NSG's guidelines. Iran is not a member, and there's no telling what their export standards would be should anyone take them up on their standing offer of nuclear assistance. What's more, there's nothing illegal about a country exporting nuclear technology, so long as their own laws permit it. If such transfers take place clandestinely, it's because the receiving country might be a signatory to the NPT. But even there, being in non-compliance with a voluntary treaty is something of a legal fiction, especially if alternative sources of nuclear technology transfer make the NPT penalties less constrictive.

Ultimately, the normalization of nuclear technology transfers outside the NPT regime will render the regime itself irrelevant. So far the only response we've come up with to such a possibility is a rule of exception (India can operate outside the NPT with impunity; Iran can't), with the United States serving as final arbiter and guarantor. I'd prefer to see an institutional facelift providing for a central enrichment program integrated into the NPT that would alleviate the need for individual countries to develop their own. But given the enormous contracts of the nuclear industry, I won't hold my breath.

Posted by Judah in:  Odds & Ends   

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Wednesday, November 28, 2007

Clear!

By the way, am I the only one who saw the irony in Dick Cheney's pacemaker needing a jump start on the same day that there was finally some good news on the Israeli-Palestinian peace process? They better get the defibrillators (spellcheck thanks to GS) ready if Olmert and Abbas actually do manage to sign a final status agreeement by the end of next year.

Posted by Judah in:  The Middle East   

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Wednesday, November 28, 2007

Scratch That

In the midst of doing some background searches for a post about how the standoff over selecting Lebanon's next President looked likely to continue past Friday, and how factional violence has already started breaking out in the north, I came across this AP dispatch reporting that Saad Hariri's majority party has removed its objection to selecting Lebanon's army chief as President. Since the General in question, Michel Suleiman, is apparently respected for his impartiality by Hezbollah, all that's left to do is to revise the constitution to allow an active military man to sit as president.

Last week, I'd read in the French press that if Lebanon doesn't slide into chaos as a result of its presidential impasse, it will be because the army is widely respected and pretty solidly on top of things. Looks like they were pretty much spot on.

Posted by Judah in:  The Middle East   

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Wednesday, November 28, 2007

Let's You And Him Fight

Hugo Chavez and Colombian President Alvaro Uribe start calling each other names, and the loser is... Nicolas Sarkozy. Huh? you might be wondering. Simple.

When Sarkozy took office in May, one of his first acts as President was to call Uribe and personally intervene to get the liberation of Ingrid Betancourt back onto the front burner. Why? Because like the Bulgarian nurses, the liberation of Betancourt -- a French-Colombian dual citizen whose husband and daughters live in Paris -- would be a high-profile success story that would demonstrate Sarkozy's ability to get results.

And it's that desire above all others -- to be perceived as the man who gets the job done when all others have failed -- that led Sarkozy to accept an offer from Hugo Chavez to negotiate directly with FARC, Betancourt's captors, when common sense and good judgment would have argued for some measure of reserve.

Chavez immediately went ahead and pulled a Sarkozy (ie. hogging the spotlight) and flew into Paris last week promising good news. Most of the French government and media assumed that meant proof of a sign of life for Betancourt. For Chavez, though, the good news was more or less that he got a great photo op at the Elysees Palace. Basta.

In the meantime, Uribe has barred Chavez from any further involvement in mediating Betancourt's release. The first reports I read referred to his "unauthorized" conversations with Sarkozy as a pretense, but the article I linked to above mentions Chavez's direct conversations with unnamed Colombian generals.

So Sarkozy ends up with quite a bit of egg on his face in the aftermath of his Chavez lovefest. Not only has whatever momentum on the Betancourt negotiations been lost, but he also lent Chavez an enormous amount of legitimacy, with absolutely nothing to show for it in return. Sacre bleu.

Posted by Judah in:  La France Politique   Las Americas   

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Wednesday, November 28, 2007

The Front Lines

I haven't had a lot to say about the riots that have broken out the past few nights in the outlying districts of Paris, mainly because it's such a replay of exactly what happened two years ago that there's little left to say. The major difference being that instead of stones being thrown, there have been reports of hunting rifles fired and footage of Molotov cocktails being exploded.

This past May I interviewed Rost, a French rapper who released a song predicting the 2005 riots just before they broke out. (It was immediately censored from the French radio.) He made it clear that nothing had changed in the intervening two years, except for the kids' expectations being a bit higher because of the recent presidential elections. He ended the interview by describing the message he delivered to the UMP parliament members he knows from his own political activism:

Tell Monsieur Sarkozy that when he chooses his cabinet members, that he gives them a marching order: Respect us in the ghettos. Because we won't tolerate all the injustices we've suffered all these years any longer. We won't tolerate them any longer. From now on, we'll go to the front.

I caught up with Rost in September, just after I got to Paris, and he was feeling pretty glum about the prospects for avoiding the worst. Two nights ago, just as he had predicted, a police spokesman characterized the violence as "urban warfare".

Watching one of the round-table talk shows that the French are so good at last night, I heard a French politician very matter-of-factly say that the problem could be solved in ten years with effort, commitment and funding. Lacking any one of those three, he went on, we're destined to play out the same scenario every few years.

Unfortunately, once the current violence dies down, so too will any interest in addressing the root causes of the problem. Until two years from now, that is, when the same guests will be invited to the same television studios to repeat the same tired cliches. That's how the French handle the problem of "les banlieues".

Posted by Judah in:  La France Politique   

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Wednesday, November 28, 2007

The Emerging World

It's old hat by now to talk about the Iraq War unlocking Iran's regional influence, creating the threat of a "Shiite Crescent" across the Middle East. What's getting less attention is the way in which Iran is engaged in a diplomatic effort to develop both bi-lateral and multi-lateral global alliances, in particular in Asia and South America. The goal of the effort, according to Benedetta Berti at PINR, is twofold. First, to consolidate China's support as an added Security Council rampart against sanctions. Second, to create a viable network of economic and strategic alliances so as to improve its position in the event of failed negotiations on the nuclear front leading to increased sanctions on the part of the US and EU.

It's important not to get too alarmist about Iran's ability to court countries like Venezuela and North Korea. The fact that it's successfully sealing energy deals with Pakistan (and most likely India), on the other hand, and pressuring the Shanghai Cooperation Organization to upgrade it from observer to active member merit more attention. Not because Iran threatens to become anything more than a well-connected, oil-rich minor power. But because it demonstrates the ways in which the post-post-9/11 world is increasingly taking shape.

In retrospect, 9/11 did not, in fact, change everything. Neither did our reaction to it. Combined, though, they managed to accelerate the development of the multi-polar world that inevitably must arise to counterbalance America's disproportionate power and influence. The run-up to the Iraq War demonstrated the limits of the multi-polar world's (as it was then constituted) deterrent power vis a vis an America bent on acting unilaterally. The aftermath of the war, on the other hand, has demonstrated the limits of America's ability to accomplish its strategic objectives when it goes it alone.

It seems intuitively obvious that while America's ability to wield its power unilaterally is destined to further decline, the influence wielded by alternative poles of power in the world is almost certain to grow. Iran's strategy of developing a broad network of alliances with emerging powers is one example of how that trend might take shape.

There needn't be anything defeatist or fatalistic about this view. An intelligent foreign policy would attempt to position America at the forefront of influencing the emerging poles' integration into the global order. Instead, the Bush administration has taken an enormous global reserve of sympathy and solidarity with the United States, in particular after the attacks of 9/11, and squandered it, much like it squandered the Clinton budget surplus.

I'm convinced there's still time to reverse course and rehabilitate America's image around the world. It will take a lot work, patience and humility, but it can be done. Perhaps most importantly, it will demand changing our habits. Instead of commanding, we'll have to start leading. And instead of talking, we should be doing a good deal more listening.

Posted by Judah in:  Foreign Policy   International Relations   Iran   

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Tuesday, November 27, 2007

If This Is Success

The last thing I heard before going to bed last night was a French news report on the Annapolis summit stating that the Israelis and Palestinians couldn't even agree on a joint statement to read at summit's end. So I was pleasantly surprised to learn that they did at least manage to hammer one out over the course of the day, allowing President Bush to get his "handshake photo op".

Be that as it may, the actual content of the statement doesn't seem to actually warrant an international conference, much less anything approaching high expectations. Which might be why Eli Yoshai, the head of Israel's ultra-orthodox rightwing Shas party, told Haaretz that:

...The speeches at the Annapolis conference [were] "dreams" and out of touch with a reality where Palestinian Authority Chairman Mahmoud Abbas is incapable of fighting terror or establishing control.

Yishai added that the Shas party has no intention of leaving the government in protest to the joint Israeli-Palestinian statement reached at the conference, saying that there is no reason to do so as the agreements have no possibility of being carried out.

Of course, Yishai's refusal to remove Shas from the government coalition might have more to do with the fact that it will be better placed to saboutage any negotiations from within Olmert's majority than from the outside. But that's just another reason not to get one's hopes too high, and a reminder of how disproportionate an influence extremists have on both sides of the conflict.

On the other hand, maybe there's something to the counterintuitive idea that two leaders as weak as Olmert and Abbas are can hammer out a peace treaty, since it's about the only thing either of them can do to satisfy public opinion, which supports peace on both sides of the conflict. The problem, as always, is in the details. And in the fact that Hamas doesn't recognize Abbas' authority to negotiate. And in the fact that the Likoud is never more than a suicide bombing away from regaining power in Israel. And so on ad nauseum.

I'd like nothing more than to be pleasantly surprised by what follows. But it's not a good sign when a supposedly successful peace summit leaves you feeling this despondent about the actual chances for peace.

Posted by Judah in:  The Middle East   

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Tuesday, November 27, 2007

How Low Can You Go?

Two articles in the French press give you an idea of just how weak the dollar really is right now. According to Le Monde, in the twelve months between August 2006 and July 2007, Southeast Asian and Japanese investors -- including central banks -- bought 32 billion Euros worth of French government bonds, compared to only 14 billion Euros they invested in American government debt. The article quotes an official from the Chinese central bank reaffirming that the dollar is and will remain their principle reserve currency. A demonstration of faith that didn't prevent China from reducing its position in American debt since March.

Meanwhile, to add insult to injury, Marianne reports that with the dollar now at only 66% of the Euro, outsourcing telecommutable jobs to the United States has become an attractive option for French CEO's. Not, of course, as attractive as outsourcing them to Russia, India or Brazil. But, hey, it's a start.

Posted by Judah in:  Markets & Finance   

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Monday, November 26, 2007

Hell: The Business Model

Posting has been light for a number of reasons, most prominent among them a nightmarish passage through the seventh ring of Hell, otherwise known as French internet service providers. Actually, anytime you've got the words "French" and "service" in the same sentence, you know you're in for major headaches, but this is the second time I've added an internet account to an existing line in this country, and it's the second time that I've come dangerously close to stalking a call center with murderous thoughts in my heart. The last time it happened, I began referring to Wanadoo, my service provider, as Botswanadoo.

This time I was led back and forth, from France Telecom/Orange's customer service to tech support and back again, at least five or six times over the course of two weeks, with a good part of each call spent on endless hold. (Keep in mind that in France, you get charged by the minute for a service call.) It's pretty much incontrovertible at this point that at least two "customer service reps" basically told me whatever it took to get me off the line without actually doing a thing to resolve the problem, and another told me he'd done what actually needed to be done but didn't actually do it. All of them told me they had no way of communicating between the two services, which turned out to be patently untrue. So now, almost three weeks after requesting the account, two weeks after my wifi line was installed and configured, and two sets of access codes later, my account still has not been activated to allow me to connect to the server.

It was supposed to have been taken care of by the end of the afternoon today, but here we are, going on 7:30 pm Paris time and I'm still working off a spotty public access wifi connection that comes and goes and bumps me every time someone else logs on, meaning that only one out of every five clicks actually goes anywhere. If this is what the internet is going to be like once bandwidth dries up, I can only say that I hope there are still working printing presses around when it happens. Because I, for one, will be going back to the old paper and ink edition.

To be continued...

Posted by Judah in:  Odds & Ends   

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Sunday, November 25, 2007

License To IL

Laura Rozen directs our attention to this Yossi Melman Haaretz piece, which adds yet another veil of uncertainty onto the Israeli airstrike in Syria two months ago. Melman cites an Israeli professor who, after analyzing satellite photos, claims the Syrian site was not a reactor after all, but a nuclear bomb-assembling plant. The explicit assumption is that Syria was already in possession of the fissionable material necessary for constructing the bomb, and the implicit assumption is that it came from the only place on Earth where fissionable material is not held very accountable to the international community's standards of non-proliferation. Which gives me the perfect excuse to unload this photo, which I've titled "The Mack" and have been holding onto for just such an occasion.

This story had lain dormant for long enough that I was beginning to wonder whether or not it would re-surface. Of course, given the lack of any meaningful attempt to actually reveal what took place, as well as the epistemological challenges involved in using "intelligence" to convince anyone of anything anymore, there are two possibilities about the latest theory, namely 1) the phony reactor meme had been conclusively debunked, so it was necessary to find a new phony meme to alarm people about the threat posed by North Korea; or 2) the phony reactor meme doesn't even come close to doing justice to how seriously IL Kim Jong really is.

I've always dismissed the worst-case scenario that has one country (usually Pakistan, North Korea and lately Russia) just handing over a bomb to another country (usually Iran and lately Syria) in a fit of pique over an American unilateral military intervention, mainly because it seems farfetched, but also because it seems implausible to assume that any of those countries would assume the risks of actually transporting a nuclear device. Anything approaching appropriate security measures would almost guarantee attracting surveillance attention, and any attempt to sneak the thing in would leave it too vulnerable to interception.

But if the Melman story is true (and that's a big if), Kim Jong-il decided it just ain't no thang to sling some plutonium on The Corner of All Corners, the Middle East. And that's ill.

Posted by Judah in:  Dear Leader   Media Coverage   The Middle East   

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Sunday, November 25, 2007

Cartoon Reality

Last March, a news item about "bandwidth hogs" having their internet service cut off got me speculating about what internet usage would like once user demand outstrips available bandwidth. If a report just released by Nemertes Research is any indication, the answer is rolling brown-outs in about 3-5 years, unless ISP's invest $40-55 billion in infrastructure buildouts. That's 60-70% more than current outlay projections.

As I said then, on a lifestyle level we'll certainly look back on the days when we fired off a viral video to a friend just for laughs the way a man dying of thirst in the desert thinks back to his last water balloon fight. On a more serious note, net neutrality and the politics of bandwidth access will take on added significance, magnifying the importance of the outcome of today's policy battles.

On an even broader societal level, internet usage isn't the only activity we'll look back on with a sense of innocent wonder at the luxury we took so much for granted. Yesterday an acquaintance who works as a hedgefund analyst told me about a conference she'd attended recently. The featured speaker, Mikhael Gorbachev, spoke very matter-of-factly about oil at $300 per barrel in the near- to mid-term future. The potential impact on car and air travel is obvious; my acquaintance predicted a time not far off where only the global management elites (CEO's and heads of state) will enjoy the privilege of air travel. Globalization will increasingly refer exclusively to an exchange of capital and commodities, with little of the personal and virtual mobility we currently associate with it surviving.

I keep thinking that the sub-prime crisis is the defining metaphor for our historical moment: a last-gasp, credit-based mirage to fuel the tail end of a speculative bubble. So much of our current way of life is financed by virtual credit instruments whose solidity is based exclusively on the strength of our resolve to ignore their lack of foundation. Like Wily Coyote running past the cliff's edge, everything functions so long as no one looks down. The problem, of course, in reality as in the cartoons, arises when Roadrunner inevitably ambles over and nonchalantly chirps, "Mee-meep."

Posted by Judah in:  Markets & Finance   Odds & Ends   

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Friday, November 23, 2007

Itchy Trigger Finger

This MoJo profile of Mikey Weinstein, founder of the Military Religious Freedom Foundation, made me wonder. Is it a coincidence that of all the branches of the military, Christian evangelicals have overwhelmingly chosen to infiltrate the Air Force? That is, after all, where most of the nukes are and these are, after all, people who are itching for the rapture. Good thing Weinstein's on the case. People who believe they're going to survive armageddon should definitely not be in charge of its delivery system.

Posted by Judah in:  Odds & Ends   

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Friday, November 23, 2007

Open Source Chaos

In addition to a wave of Stateside optimism, the Anbar Awakening in Iraq has also given rise to a gathering new meme about how to address counterinsurgency, the War on Terror, and the challenges facing failed states in a globalized world. According to this new line of thinking, exemplified by this John Robb post and this Robert Kaplan essay, nation-building -- characterized by establishing democratic institutions and top-down political reconciliation -- doesn't work, especially in quasi-autonomous tribal societies like Anbar province in Iraq and the Federally Administered Tribal Areas in Pakistan.

According to Robb, "Politics and populations in our new global environment fragment faster than they can be assembled into cohesive entities." Robb's answer to "temporary autonomous zones and open-source insurgency"? What he calls "open source militias": Spontaneous, local militia movements that arise in reaction to the inevitable excesses of the initial insurgencies. These militias we do little to shape, supporting them only once they've taken form.

Kaplan limits his argument to the Iraq and Pakistan theatres, but it's easy to see how easily it might be generalized to apply to any location where kinship bonds trump national identity and local tribal loyalties take precedence over allegiance to a distant central government. In such areas, pragmatic opportunism dictates that we align counterinsurgency efforts with local tribal power structures, regardless of the implications for a broader democratizing agenda. For Kaplan, "Progress...means erecting not a parliamentary system, but a balance of fear among tribes and sectarian groups."

Now I don't think either Robb or Kaplan is necessarily wrong here, although it's ironic that Kaplan uses a principle of progressive social science (cultural relativism) to justify a principle of reactionary colonial rule (divide and conquer). But what's significant about their approach, which is sure to gain traction, is that it represents a sort of glum, post-9/11 pessimistic version of the euphoric, post-Cold War optimism that heralded the end of the nation-state and the coming of a harmonic global order. In Robb and Kaplan's vision, instead of being surpassed through supra-national agglomeration or reconfigured on the molecular level through direct NGO action, the state has been effectively put out of reach through a process of controlled atomization. Here's Robb:

The use of a plethora of militias to fight a global open source insurgency from Nigeria to Mexico to Iraq to Pakistan is effective within a grand strategy of delay (it holds disorder at bay while allowing globalization to work). Most beneficially, it eliminates the need for nation-building, massive conventional troop deployments, and other forms of excess.

That's about it in a nutshell: a grand strategy of delay. Needless to say, Robb's oblique reference to "allowing globalization to work" is the key to understanding the argument.

As I said, I don't think either Robb or Kaplan is necessarily wrong. To begin with, there are areas in the world where the writ of the national government is a legal fiction. Beyond that, their vision corresponds to the practical necessities of American foreign policy in its current interventionist formulation. But it's important to remember that the two counterinsurgency wars we're currently fighting, in Iraq and in Afghanistan/Pakistan, are wars that we created. In Iraq, as a direct consequence of removing a non-democratic but functioning state, and in Afghanistan/Pakistan as an indirect consequence of our Soviet-era Afghanistan policy, which instigated the very sort of contained chaos that gave rise to Al Qaeda and which both Robb and Kaplan now suggest we try to manage. (To his credit, Robb does raise the caveat of whether we'll be able to manage "something this complex or this messy".)

As importantly, local populations delivered up to globalization are very often exploited like just another raw commodity. In the absence of nation states to defend their interests, that's how globalization "works". Which is why I'd argue for a middle ground between euphoric post-nation state utopianism and Machiavellian failed nation state pragmatism, one that defends the centrality of the nation state, reinforces its effectiveness, equips it to provide the basic needs and services for its constituents, and encourages it (as much as is reasonably possible) to respond to their grievances and reflect their aspirations.

All of these interventions take enormous effort, strong and effective mult-lateral institutions, and time -- in short, the "forms of excess" that Robb seeks to avoid. But in the long run, they offer a better chance for building a sustainable international order, capable of dealing with the existential, strategic and ethical challenges we have no choice but to overcome if we as a species are to survive.

Posted by Judah in:  Foreign Policy   Global War On Terror   Iraq   Pakistan   

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Friday, November 23, 2007

The Witching Hour

At midnight tonight, Lebanese President Emile Lahoud's term in office will come to an end, and barring a miracle, the country will enter into a constitutional crisis, as no one has been selected to succeed him. The possible consequences of the standoff range from destabilizing to catastrophic, and the Lebanese military is already in a state of alert in the capital.

Besides Lebanon itself, the big loser in the entire affair is France, which has been engaging in a diplomatic effort since July to encourage all the parties to reach a compromise solution. In the past few weeks, President Nicolas Sarkozy has dispatched top advisors to Damascus to offer a broad deal to the Syrians (a progressive normalization of diplomatic relations with the West in return for facilitating a compromise), and yesterday placed a direct call to Syrian President Bashar Assad to discuss the impasse. Meanwhile, Foreign Minister Bernard Kouchner has been in Beirut all week trying unsuccessfully to hammer out a deal. Here's how Le Figaro assesses the failure of Sarkozy's diplomatic intitiative:

A happy ending would have...marked the success of Elysee's strategy to reposition France in the region.

The cancellation of the presidential election, on the other hand, is a humiliating blow, even if Paris only played the role of facilitator in this affair. It will also, to some degree, be interpreted abroad as a sign of the powerlessness of French diplomacy which, despite all its efforts, was unable to weigh in on the events in Lebanon, the only country in the Middle East where she is still supposed to exercise a strong influence.

Lebanon has long been a chessboard on which regional powers play out their strategic rivalries, and the current constitutional impasse is no exception. Specifically, it sheds some light on some recent evolutions in France's regional diplomacy, and in particular its increasingly hard line on Iran. As Le Fig points out, Lebanon is supposed to be France's hole card in Middle Eastern politics. But an increasingly influential Iran, through its support of Hizbollah, diminishes France's ability to deliver the goods, as seen by today's failure.

What's more, should the situation in Lebanon result in violence or longterm instability, the heat on Iran, who will almost surely be scapegoated for it, will likely go up a few notches.

Update: According to Nouvel Obs, the parliamentary session to elect the president has been postponed until next Friday. Nevertheless, President Lahoud is still expected to leave office at midnight tonight, leaving the country with no one exercising the consitutional responsibilities of president for a week.

Posted by Judah in:  Iran   La France Politique   The Middle East   

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Thursday, November 22, 2007

Iran's Parallel Nuclear Track

The other day I flagged a story about Iran's ambassador to Syria offering Iran's assistance in developing a civil nuclear program, mainly because the remark seemed comically ill-timed. But today I ran across another story in the Iranian press reporting that Iran has offered its assistance to Egypt in the aftermath of Cairo's announcement that it would be seeking to develop a civil nuclear program. And yesterday, also, Saeed Jalili, Iran's chief nuclear negotiator and head of its National Security Council, formulated an Iranian nuclear cooperation policy based on "...opposition to weapons of mass destruction, preventing proliferation of nuclear weapons as well as peaceful use of nuclear energy..."

If these articles are any indication, Iran is actually serious about becoming a regional supplier of civil nuclear technology. This would be a significant and destabilizing development, and not just because Iran's own civil program is not in compliance with the NPT according to the IAEA's latest report. As things stand, a country needs to be a member of the 44-nation Nuclear Suppliers Group in order to share nuclear material and technology under the auspices of the nuclear non-proliferation regime. And the chances of the US allowing Iran to accede to the group are somewhere between none and zero.

Which suggests that Tehran is testing the waters for introducing a parallel nuclear non-proliferation regime. It's actually a pretty cagey move. By offering to help the rest of the region develop nuclear capability, it assuages the fears that the Iranian program has raised among its rivals. And by presenting the image of a self-sufficient Muslim nuclear cooperation network, it appeals to regional pride.

I'm speculating as to Iran's intentions, and what's more, I don't think it's very probable that anything will come of its proposals. But the scenario raises the question of how to keep the nuclear non-proliferation dam from breaking should the psychological barriers to dual use nuclear proliferation fail. Already, three of the four nuclear states that remain outside the NPT (Pakistan, Israel and N. Korea) have at one time or another engaged in covert proliferation. As India emerges as a global power, it's only natural that it will begin to feel unfairly constrained by its nuclear pariah status, especially as the fierce industrial competition for civil nuclear contracts heats up.

Eventually, the constraining logic of the NPT will be called into question by enough states so as to challenge its legitimacy. And if we want to have any hope of keeping the nuclear genie in the lamp for the next half-century, we'd better have a revamped system that takes into account the changed realities of the nuclear landscape before that happens.

Posted by Judah in:  Iran   

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Thursday, November 22, 2007

The Other War

I've gotten used to thinking of the situation in Afghanistan as an irritating stalemate, with the Taliban seizing outposts that we're not really bothering to defend, but posing no real existential threat to the Afghan government. But this just-released report from the Senlis Council, an English think tank "known for its expertise on Afghanistan" according to Le Monde, describes things in significantly more alarming terms than a harmless game of whack-a-mole:

The insurgency now controls vast swaths of unchallenged territory including rural areas, some district centres, and important road arteries. The Taliban are the de facto governing authority in significant portions of territory in the south, and are starting to control parts of the local economy and key infrastructure such as roads and energy supply. The insurgency also exercises a significant amount of psychological control, gaining more and more political legitimacy in the minds of the Afghan people who have a long history of shifting alliances and regime change.

The depressing conclusion is that, despite the vast injections of international capital flowing into the country, and a universal desire to 'succeed' in Afghanistan, the state is once again in serious danger of falling into the hands of the Taliban. (All emphases in original.)

In addition to benefitting from a popular upswelling of non-ideological economic and political grievances, the Taliban is also gaining valuable technical assistance from an influx of experienced foreign fighters from the Iraq insurgency. (Which raises the obvious question of whether the decrease in violence in Iraq needs to be assessed on a regional, as opposed to a national, scale.)

As a remedy, Senlis proposes doubling the NATO-ISAF forces in the country from 40,000 to 80,000, removing the restrictions various countries have placed on the rules of engagement for their troops, and authorizing operations within Pakistan's frontier tribal areas. That's in addition to a massive increase in development aid. (All emphases mine.)

Of course, since none of that is going to happen, it's worth considering what Senlis thinks is an increasingly likely scenario: a Taliban return to Kabul in 2008.

This is really where Democrats should be doing more to make the GOP pay for its linkage of Iraq to the War on Terror. Because if Iraq and Afghanistan really are two fronts in the same war, then the good news coming out of Baghdad needs to be weighed against the bad coming out of Kabul. And if by invading Iraq we created a strategic alliance between Saddam Hussein's officer corps and Bin Laden's foot soldiers, then Dick Cheney's pre-war Iraq-Al Qaeda flimflam has actually become a self-fulfilling prophesy.

Beyond that, as Matthew Yglesias has been arguing all week, the lesson to be drawn from the entire enterprise is what it shows about the limitations of preventive war and/or regime change as a non-proliferation policy. Which means we desperately need to come up with a plan B, because with the region-wide stampede for nuclear "energy" programs, things are only going to get worse.

So far, if the US-India deal is any indication, the Bush administration's preferred method is still the "rule by exception" on a case-by-case basis. It would be nice to see someone try to pin the candidates down on a broad policy vision, because along with global warming and globalization, this is going to be the determinant foreign policy issue of the coming decade.

Posted by Judah in:  Afghanistan   Foreign Policy   

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Thursday, November 22, 2007

You Talkin' To Me?

Happy Thanksgiving, everybody. Enjoy yourselves. No holiday here, so I'll be posting. Feel free to check in from time to time.

Posted by Judah in:  Odds & Ends   

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Wednesday, November 21, 2007

Ex-Presidents

It's not getting much notice in the American press, but former President Jacques Chirac was placed under formal investigation today by a magistrate investigating a corruption scandal that took place while Chirac was both Mayor of Paris and head of the RPR political party. That's one step short of an indictment in the French criminal justice system. One of his longtime political allies, Alain Juppé, was already convicted three years ago for his role in the scheme, which basically used phony jobs on the City Hall payroll to pay RPR employees for their political work. (No accusations of personal enrichment have ever been associated with the scandal.) Common wisdom had it at the time that Juppe was taking the fall for Chirac, who wrapped himself in Presidential immunity to postpone facing any charges while he himself was still in office.

I'm not sure what it is about ex-presidents, but they seem to have a way of becoming instantly more sympathetic to me pretty much as soon as they're out of office. I remember fighting off the wave of revisionist sentimentality that followed Nixon's death, and I'm a sucker for this type of thing. I admit that as much as I despised Ronald Reagan while he was President, I find it hard not to admire what he did restore to America, which in retrospect was, I think, a sense that we'd make it through the rough spots.

So needless to say, I don't see the point in going after a 75 year-old man who's spent his entire life in government and who once "incarnated France", as the presidential oath here puts it. True, democracy means no one being above the law. But I think the punishment should be the humiliation and disgrace of being impeached from office, which is a mechanism that didn't exist here until Chirac amended the constitution to include one just months before leaving office. I don't see who benefits, though, by throwing "France" in jail.

Posted by Judah in:  La France Politique   

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Wednesday, November 21, 2007

Viral Intelligence

Via Andrew Sullivan comes this Matt Drudge interview:

...We're now in a totally new era where information is information and you just really have to set your own threshold in what you believe.

Just because you get it from an established source doesn't mean it's true.

This is relevant, if somewhat tangential, to a point I've been meaning to make about the evolution in what's known as "actionable intelligence". It used to be that actionable intelligence referred to intelligence that was so unimpeachable that it rendered a military response not only possible, but ipso facto legitimate and justified. (Think the satellite photos of the Cuban missile installations that President de Gaulle didn't even need to see to believe.)

All that has changed in the post-"slam dunk" era. Now actionable intelligence is anything that, by meeting Drudge's standards with enough people, creates the political climate necessary for military action to be possible. (Think Bush's "sixteen words" or Colin Powell before the UN Security Council.)

In practice it means that instead of intelligence generating the necessary course of action, a pre-determined course of action generates the necessary intelligence. Bush and Cheney have been particularly egregious offenders, but in all likelihood they won't be an isolated case. To be clear, this is more than just exagerrating an incident, like Tonkin Bay, or even provoking one. It's a reflection of how epistemology has been effected by the information age. The defining feature, as Drudge says, is no longer the relationship between a source's authority and the truth. It's between an individual piece of information and each individual's belief.

And as far as I can tell, the increased transparency of the information age will do nothing to mitigate the effect of this dynamic. Partly because, as Drudge says, in an information environment devoid of authority, facts don't necessarily get the best of falsehoods. But also because people's sense of what's true is very often based on innuendo and association, rather than information. Mention Osama Bin Laden and Saddam Hussein in the same sentence often enough and a sizable amount of people will be of the opinion that attacking Iraq is part of the War on Terror. The transparent falseness of the conclusion does nothing to mitigate the propaganda value of the technique.

Posted by Judah in:  Media Coverage   

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Wednesday, November 21, 2007

Just Not Another Texan

Recently I had a long argument with a friend about why this isn't true. I don't know the ins and outs of Bill and Hillary Clinton's power-sharing arrangement, but it's clear that she wasn't just Mrs. Clinton the way Laura is Mrs. Bush. America has a long tradition of First Ladies who stood out from the "Good Housekeeping/Better Homes and Gardens" archetype. Eleanor Roosevelt, of course, sets the standard. Roslyn Carter was another. Whether you admire her or despise her, Hillary Clinton definitely falls into this category. What's more, her work as First Lady was more closely intertwined with the President's function than the first two, who blazed their own trails.

As for today's "Re: foreign policy experience" campaign press release battle, the one criteria that everyone's ignored -- oddly enough, given that foreign policy is all about dealing with foreigners -- is how the candidates are perceived abroad. And on that score, Hillary Clinton is a known and recognized commodity among foreign policy makers, widely respected and by no means considered unqualified for the job of representing the United States to the world by the people who represent the world to the United States.

Barack Obama, on the other hand, is certainly less of a known quantity, but there's every reason to believe that people abroad would take him just as seriously and be just as impressed by him as everyone who has ever crossed the guy's path his entire life. It's possible that some of our strategic rivals might see fit to test him out early on in his term more than they would Hillary (think China and the Hainan airmen), but it's not certain.

Finally, a quick glance at post-War presidencies is enough to demonstrate that foreign policy experience or the lack thereof is far from a predictive factor with regards to performance. George W. Bush had none and the results have been disastrous. Bill Clinton had just as little with the results being a relatively successful mixed bag. Reagan, Carter, Kennedy and Truman had no meaningful foreign policy experience to speak of. Neither did FDR, for that matter, unless you count his appointment as Asst Secretary of the Navy during WWI. Ike, Nixon and Bush I, meanwhile, were all pretty fluent in the ins and outs of international diplomacy when they entered office. And on the whole, history treats all of them pretty well.

In fact, if you examine American post-War presidencies, it becomes clear that when the foreign policy hand you're dealt includes dominant military power, hegemonic economic influence, infectious cultural inventiveness and a tightly-knit network of alliances, it's pretty difficult to seriously screw things up. All of them stumbled, some of them fell. But all of them, save two (Bush II and LBJ), had their major successes that strengthened the country's standing as well.

So there's really no way of predicting, based on experience, whether someone will be a successful foreign policy president. There does seem to be a predictive factor for foreign policy failure, though, and it's not lack of experience. It's being from Texas.

Posted by Judah in:  Foreign Policy   Politics   

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Wednesday, November 21, 2007

Clueless

One of the stranger aspects of being an ex-pat New Yorker in Paris is that it's possible to wake up on Wednesday morning, November 21, and still not realize that tomorrow is Thanksgiving. Wow. To say that it kind of snuck up on me would be an understatement.

Last year, my sister flew in, the Lil' Feller and I met her in Paris, and we all celebrated Thanksgiving with a delicious catered meal at a friend's house. This year I'll be at a parent's association meeting at his new school. The irony is that I've offered to give a presentation on American culture for the kids at some point. What's the old saw? Those that can't do, teach?

Posted by Judah in:  Odds & Ends   

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Tuesday, November 20, 2007

Ready To Go Nuclear

This strikes me as pretty poor timing:

On November 19, Iran voiced its readiness to cooperate with Syria in the field of peaceful nuclear activities should Syria be interested, Iranian Ambassador to Syria Mohammad Hassan Akhtari said. During a press conference in the Iranian Embassy in Damascus, he explained that such cooperation does not exist at the present time...

"Our relations with Syria are significant and special. If Syria is ready to go nuclear, we are ready to cooperate with her," said Akhtari.

I don't think those are the kinds of gestures Mohamed ElBaradei had in mind when he called on Iran to show some confidence-building measures in his IAEA report earlier this week. On the other hand, as long as Israel is going to the trouble of bombing Syria's nuclear sites, the least the Iranians can do is make sure they're really nuclear.

Posted by Judah in:  Iran   The Middle East   

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Tuesday, November 20, 2007

A Woman's Worth

Another women's rights advocate has been arrested in Iran. Maryam Hosseinkhah, a journalist who has been active in the campaign to change discriminatory laws against women, was jailed when she was unable to come up with bail. Here's the web site, Change For Equality, that got her in trouble with the authorities. Here's a video that they put together to highlight their cause. (I'll try to get it embedded here on the site to make it easier to share.) And here's a list of the laws they're trying to change, which include:

• rewriting marriage and divorce laws to include women's right to self-determination;
• raising the age of legal responsibility for girls from 9 years old (the age for boys is 14);
• granting women the same legal "worth" as men in both liability and inheritance law (they're currently valued at half a man's worth).

The heart of the mobilization is an effort to gather One Million Signatures in support of their demands, a door to door campaign that also allows them to educate people around the issues. You can sign the online version of the petition here.

I don't want to get too sanctimonious, and I don't know what kind of impact we can have on their struggle. But I did want to call attention to these women. They're pretty damn courageous. Take a look at the video and you'll see what I mean.

Posted by Judah in:  Iran   

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Tuesday, November 20, 2007

Going Long Gone

The superficial parallels between Lebanon and Iraq are striking. Both countries have experienced or are in the midst of multi-factional, multi-sectarian civil wars. Both have a neighbor (Syria in Lebanon's case, Iran in Iraq's) intent on integrating the country into its sphere of influence. Both have another neighbor (Israel in Lebanon's case, Turkey in Iraq's) that reserves the right to conduct cross-border military operations in response to terrorist attacks.

So anyone who buys into the "going long" strategy in Iraq, whereby a massive American occupation over twenty years would eventually lead to a stable power-sharing agreement in Baghdad, would do well to take a look at what's going on in Lebanon these days: seventeen years post-conflict, and that country's complicated power-sharing mechanism is deadlocked, with the very real threat of armed conflict as a result.

There's still a few days left to avoid a constitutional crisis, and there's no guarantee that the worst-case scenarios will play out. But what's significant is how persistent the factional, sectarian and political rivalries that tore the country apart remain, how fragile their resolution is proving to be, and how easily manipulated they are by regional rivals (Syria, Iran, the US and Israel) who don't hesitate to interfere in Lebanon's domestic affairs to advance their strategic interests.

Something to think about when considering the costs of stabilizing Iraq.

Posted by Judah in:  Iraq   The Middle East   

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Tuesday, November 20, 2007

The Fogged Goggles Of War

I understand why Kevin Drum needed a drink after reading this Anne Applebaum column about the collateral damage of Iraq. Applebaum begins by correctly describing the impact of the Iraq War on our credibility, and as I wrote yesterday, Congressional Democrats would do well to pay attention to the way she frames her assessment of the good news out of Iraq (short version: don't get too excited about it).

But after acknowledging the difficulty of convincing people to take anything we say seriously when they basically no longer take anything we say seriously, Applebaum goes on to lament that in such a climate of distrust, we'll never be able to convince our European allies of the need for a military strike. Which effectively leaves us with a policy of crossing our fingers and hoping that Iran either doesn't end up with a bomb, or remains deterrable if it does.

Now, as things stand, I think a unilateral strike on Iran would be disastrous, so to see this kind of stuff on the WaPo editorially page definitely makes me want to reach for a drink, too. I'm also not convinced that the chances of the crossed fingers approach resulting in acceptable outcomes are zero, although that doesn't make it a very attractive policy option.

But having said that, I think that on a broader level, the Iran standoff illustrates the way in which the Iraq War has fogged our own (meaning war opponents) goggles a bit as well. Take for instance Matthew Yglesias' use of a Richard Holbrooke quote about Saddam Hussein and Iraq from back in January 2001 to illustrate the risks of a hawkish Hillary Clinton presidency. As Kevin Drum later pointed out, a hard line on Saddam Hussein was perfectly reasonable in January 2001.

As for Iran's nuclear program, I think that in the absence of the Iraq fiasco, a hard and even bellicose line would be widely regarded as reasonable today as well. In fact, were it not for the aftermath of the Iraq War, there probably would be broad domestic support for a unilateral strike -- or at least the credible threat of the use of force -- and probably tacit support in both Europe and the Middle East as well.

Now that's not to say that such a consensus would have been any more correct today than it was in the run-up to the Iraq War, either on the facts or on the strategic consequences of such a strike. But if in the absence of the Iraq War, the Iran nuclear standoff would have risen to the level of liberal hawks' threat threshhold (which I think is the case), the question becomes, What has the Iraq War changed? Are we simply adjusting our foreign policy to the realities on the ground, or have we re-considered the underlying principles that led to the mistakes in the first place? I think it's a discussion that's worth having, if only to find out whether we're being pragmatic or wise.

Posted by Judah in:  Iran   Iraq   Media Coverage   

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Tuesday, November 20, 2007

It's All About The Benjamins

It turns out that in addition to being motivated by resentment of the US occupation, Iraqi insurgents are also strongly influenced by the money Al Qaeda in Iraq pays them to carry out attacks. That, according to a WaPo telephone interview with an AQI mid-level management type currently detained by the Iraqi military. The similarities to how we've gotten Sunni tribes in Anbar to target AQI instead of American troops are strikingly obvious and warrant no discussion.

But the article also brought to mind a point I'd been meaning to make about the confusion in Iraq War terminology. For most of the first three years of the war, the term "insurgency" referred (perhaps inaccurately so) to the combined activities of Iraqi Sunnis and foreign agents of AQI. Earlier this year, though, there was a push to distinguish between the two and increasingly identify AQI as the source of all our problems. Then last month, it was reported that AQI was on the verge of extinction, largely as a result of the celebrated Anbar Awakening. So now here we are, back to reading about "the insurgency" or "insurgents" in articles that are ostensibly referring to AQI, but whose agents are now Iraqis and whose viability may or may not be "significantly more upbeat than the one offered by Iraqi and U.S. officials".

Back in June, Josh Marshall addressed the question of terminology, and I think it bears a re-examination. Amid all the reports of progress and reduced casualties in Iraq, as well as those documenting the violence's migration (if in reduced intensity) to the north of Iraq, it would be useful to know just who it is we're fighting over there now. For starters, I'd like to know exactly who is currently participating in attacks, who and what they're targeting (which is not the same thing as who actually gets hit), and whether or not they represent new participants in the insurgency or seasoned veterans. The last point is significant, because if the insurgency is able to regenerate its ranks, it means that while violence might be dropping, the aggregate number of violent actors might very well be increasing, something that reflects badly on hopes of longterm reconciliation.

Of course, none of that is possible if the major media outlets give the administration a pass by parroting its newspeak.

Posted by Judah in:  Iraq   

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Tuesday, November 20, 2007

I Can't Hear You, David

Is American music really more segmented that it was twenty years ago, as David Brooks maintains? And is that a reflection of the increasing segmentation of society in general? If that's so, then the segmentation he describes allows for an enormous amount of cross-pollenization. Most of the music I hear these days is the outcome of such a complicated ancestry that it would take ten or twelve hyphens to accurately describe it. That it might have its own name and audience is more a reflection of sophisticated marketing techniques than the music itself, whose audience overlaps the marketing frontiers anyway.

Brooks seems overly concerned by the fact that it's increasingly rare to see any single group develop the kind of overwhelming popularity of the Beatles, Rolling Stones, U2 or Bruce Springsteen. But that's a result of the enormously increased offer, and the evolution in music and pop culture's influence on society. Songs and books no longer change us, like "Hound Dog" and "On The Road" did fifty years ago. They accompany us.

It's also unrealistic to expect music to have the same impact on our lives at the age of forty, fifty and sixty years old as it did when we were teenagers. There are still songs changing kids' lives the way The Beatles changed Steven Van Zandt's forty-odd years ago. We just can't hear them anymore.

Posted by Judah in:  Arts & Letters   

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Tuesday, November 20, 2007

Sarko The Silent

This NY Times article captures something that I'd noticed the other day about French press coverage of the transport strikes. After months of all-Sarko, all the time, the French President has been strangely silent the past week, letting his Prime Minister and Labor Minister do the talking. This is traditionally the way things are supposed to operate, with the President functioning as a sort of political Deus Ex Machina: guarding himself from being too closely associated with the details of day-to-day governance in order to intervene with more authority when needed.

In this case, Sarkozy's discretion is facilitated by the press coverage's narrative line, which is focusing less on the details of the conflict -- which boil down to very little in terms of actually addressing the pension fund's deficit -- and more on the public's perception of the strike. And for the time being, that's working in Sarkozy's favor, as most people are royally pissed off about having their lives disrupted for the sake of a minority pension plan.

But the coverage reflects a larger truth, namely that the strike and the negotiations that frame it are largely a symbolic confrontation intended to clarify the balance of power between the government's mandate for reform and the unions' ability to protect (their) workers' interests. The outcome of the current standoff over the "special pension" that effects relatively few will set the stage for later reforms to the general pension and labor laws designed to liberalize France's economy.

Sarkozy's strategy is clever in that it forces the unions to choose between two unattractive options. A symbolic strike over symbolic reforms has a very real negative impact on public opinion; rolling over provides the government with momentum for a reform package that is sure to become increasingly less symbolic as it progresses.

The unions, for their part, have demonstrated their ability to make things very inconvenient for everyone else if they don't like what they see at the negotiating table. And that was during a normal week in November. A similar strike during the holiday season's peak traffic would raise the pain threshhold considerably. The question now is whether they'll be willing to do so again.

Posted by Judah in:  La France Politique   

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Monday, November 19, 2007

Hold The Confetti

It turns out that Stephen Biddle's best-case scenario by which recent encouraging developments in Iraq might solidify into stable outcomes entails the continued presence of 80-100,000 American troops for 20-30 years, with just one added ingredient: A whole lot more of the same dumb luck that conspired to save our ass in the first place. So I'm officially backing off from any declarations of an Iraqi endgame until further notice.

That said, it does seem like the new dynamics in Iraq warrant at least a holding pattern to see whether they stick. They certainly make another round of the Congressional Democrats' humiliating, masochistic war-funding strategy an ill-advised exercise in pathetic futility. There were certainly arguments to be made for opposing the Surge and pulling the plug on the War this past spring. They are less compelling now, whether or not the longterm chances for a satisfactory outcome have been fundamentally improved.

At any rate, the drawdown of the Surge has already begun. So a more effective political approach would be to simply applaud the recent turn of events, set a date for reassessing the situation once the Surge has been fully drawn down, and call attention to the risks our new strategic alliances have created. I don't think it would hurt to try to get a more active UN involvement in the peacekeeping and nation-building efforts, in a civilian capacity for sure, with the possibility of turning some of the symbolic functions now carried out by Coalition contingents to UN Blue Helmets.

Most importantly, Democrats need to pound the message home that fortuitous as it may be, the recent improvement in the security environment does nothing to change the underlying strategic catastrophe in terms of lives, money, prestige and influence lost as a result of the Iraq fiasco.

Posted by Judah in:  Iraq   

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Monday, November 19, 2007

Yes, But...

Kaveh Afrasiabi makes some good points as usual in his Asia Times Online piece about the IAEA's Iran report (which I finally tracked down here). Yes, Iran has made "substantial progress" in cooperating with the IAEA, especially on providing a paper trail documenting its declared nuclear activities. Yes, all the declared nuclear material is present and accounted for. Yes, more information is on the way, consistent with Iran's obligations under the working agreement it signed in August. Yes, in light of Iran's cooperation, the UN Security Council's demand that Iran suspend uranium enrichment -- especially with no attached timeframe -- and the resulting sanctions regime is on tenuous ground under the NPT. Yes, Iran's intransigence about possessing its own nuclear fuel cycle is a result of twenty years of frustrated above-board attempts to strike deals for a civilian nuclear program, demonstrated once again in the difficulty it is having in getting Russia to ship the nuclear fuel necessary to get the Bushehr reactor online.

Yes, but...

The major sticking point in the report is not Iran's increased cooperation with monitoring its declared activity. It is its refusal to provide more transparency to verify that there is no undeclared activity taking place as well. That is extremely significant in this case because for twenty years Iran clandestinely pursued a nuclear enrichment capacity, and acquired materials and technology on the nuclear black market, in contravention of the NPT to which it was a signatory. It might very well be that the resulting program is a strictly civilian one. But it was nonetheless developed secretly.

Now granted, it's impossible to prove that something does not exist. Iraq War supporters' obstinate refusal to acknowledge that there were no Iraqi WMD's is a case in point. But the IAEA report clearly states that Iran could do considerably more to alleviate any suspicions. Which makes the report, contrary to what Afrasiabi maintains, a mixed bag.

A mixed bag is ostensibly a win for Iran, because it makes a third round of UN sanctions very unlikely. I'm convinced that whether or not a third round of sanctions is just or even necessary, a report that facilitated the realistic threat of a third round of sanctions (ie. a report that brought the Russians and Chinese on board) would have served as a major catalyst for defusing this standoff through diplomatic means. And that would have been a win for everyone.

Posted by Judah in:  Iran   

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Monday, November 19, 2007

Reach Out And Touch Someone

It came as something as a shock to me when I learned a few months back that the US and China had never established a "hotline" to prevent the kinds of misunderstandings that lead to accidental nuclear armageddons. Fortunately, the news came in the context of an article reporting that the Chinese and American militaries were making progress on putting one in place. That agreement was finally sealed two weeks ago, and here's what the People's Daily Online has to say about it:

In a nutshell, it can be said that the China-US military hotline is sure to add more mutual military trust to the security cooperation of the two nations and in the Asia-Pacific region as a whole, and it will play a still more positive role in enhancing the high-level military exchanges and cooperation, further increasing their mutual trust, and dispelling any of their doubts or suspicions.

China is one area where the Bush administration doesn't get some credit it deserves. The amount of trust-building measures and joint exercises that have taken place is actually pretty surprising, if you think about where things started (the Hainan airmen) as well as some of the provocation China has engaged in since (the anti-satellite test).

Meanwhile, in case you thought that hotlines were all about nail-biting crisis management, think again. Take the Cold War-era hotline to the Kremlin, for instance, which continues to function to this day:

...It is tested hourly, with the Pentagon sending a message every even hour, and Moscow sending one back every odd hour. Both sides transmit in an agreed-upon code and avoid any political or controversial test messages.

Mostly, operators on either side of the hot line try to test each other's translation skills with selections from obscure texts. For example, the U.S. operators will send their Russian counterparts recipes for chili, or articles on the psychology of pets. The Russians might then respond with excerpts from their great novelists, or a treatise on the history of invention in the ancient world. But the battle of wits is cordial, and some hot line operators have even met face-to-face at government functions.

This is the sort of thing that's important to remember when considering the longterm evolution of all our strategic rivalries. Namely that a cordial battle of wits is as realistic an endgame scenario as a mushroom cloud.

Posted by Judah in:  China   Odds & Ends   Russia   

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Saturday, November 17, 2007

Time For A Friedman Unit?

Like most people (and all bloggers), I like to think I've got a developed analytical sense and an ability to parse through news cove