AmbassadorBlog

A Mexican Standoff in the Middle East

The Syrian body count since March 15, the beginning of the Syrian revolution, is estimated at about 9,000 and growing.  Of those, between 2500 and 3000 were Syrian military and security forces tasked with putting down the rebellion. To deal with the violence the United Nations has invoked "crippling" sanctions, named an envoy - Kofi Annan, called for a ceasefire, brokered a peace plan and ceasefire (which is in the process of unraveling), and issued a Security Council statement. We have all committed to the UN proposition of the responsibility to protect.  And our policy is to support human rights internationally with practical measures to punish violators.

So, given our policy and our commitments, what are ten conclusions we can draw from the last ten months in Syria. 

1. Sanctions do not work in the short run when the country being sanctioned retains the support of major trading partners and deals in a commodity, oil, in high demand.

2. The UN cannot enforce its decisions or offer even a credible threat in the absence of unity on the Security Council, which does not exist in the case of Syria.

3. A government that historically and currently has been willing to murder its own people to reestablish control is not gong to be deterred by threats, statements and hand wringing.

4. A leadership that has everything to gain by hanging tough and nothing to to lose by hanging tough will hang tough. 

5. The West, driven by NATO the EU and the United States has been sapped of energy by Iraq, Afghanistan, Libya and economic distress.

6. Human rights are in the category of "nice to have" but not if the price is too great..

7. Global attention span to a humanitarian crisis is very limited when other more important issues like the US elections and economic problems are grabbing the headlines.

8. 6000 civilian deaths and 3000 military hardly reach the level of qualifying as an international crisis. It is not the deaths that are driving international attention but the fear of infection in neighboring states and a sectarian bloodbath.  

9. Large sectors of Syrian society — including most minority groups like the Christians, Druse and Alawites, along with much of the middle class and business owners — do not support the rebels and fear the likely alternative, the Muslim brotherhood, which, they fear, is motivated by revenge for generations of Alawite suppression. 

10. International, and particularly US, action to arm and support the rebels will result in greater military and economic support for Assad by Iran and Russia.  And while such support can extend the conflict and raise the body count, it will not overcome the military superiority of Assad's forces without direct Western military intervention as in Libya under considerably less favorable conditions. 

By virtue of its past actions and rhetoric, the UN, egged on by the US, has driven itself into a corner with no apparent way to enforce its decisions on Syria and with no way to provide any incentive for Assad and his supporters to exit the scene peacefully. In the process the UN has proven to be toothless.

As for the US, having staked our position, driven by the opposition, on a requirement for regime change, we have very little room for maneuver.

And for Assad, who has had graphic examples in Iraq and Libya of what happens when a dictator loses control, the incentives go all the wrong way. 

There are no Saudis who will act as a refuge for Assad as they did for Ben Ali in Tunisia, since the Sunni Saudis are siding with the Sunni rebels against the Iranian backed Shiites and Alawites,

Kofi Annan has latched on to the possibility of help from Iran, but Iranian help would be expensive and the bill would probably be delivered in the 4+1 talks on Iran's nuclear program - a bill neither we nor the Israelis are willing to pay.

So what happens next.  What we are seeing is backtracking.  The Arab League is no longer prepared to take an active role and has modulated its blistering attacks on Assad. 

Kofi Annan, speaking for the Secretary General and the UN, is not demanding that Assad step down.  The US is still beating the drums of election year politics but, other than a pledge of $12 million in humanitarian aid, is not riding to the rescue and continues to reject arming the rebels.

The Gulf states are putting up money to pay the rebels and are allegedly buying arms to defeat the Iranian allies in Damascus. They can extend the conflict but not end the conflict.

Meanwhile, UK PM David Cameron said yesterday that there will be "a day of reckoning for Assad's crimes,"  and U.K. Foreign Minister William Hague said yesterday that the process would begin "of seeking the referral by the Security Council of the situation in Syria to the International Criminal Court."

These are threats that are guaranteed to encourage Assad to back down.  What are they thinking? The answer is that they are thinking about their domestic politics. Under the circumstances, given the membership of the UN Security Council and the anti Assad rhetoric in the West and in the Sunni Arab world, all the doors seem to be locked.  The Syrians have said that they will honor the ceasefire but will respond to attacks by the rebels. 

The world is saying to the Syrians "it is my way or the highway" and the Syrians are saying "over my dead body."

If Assad prevails despite the UN and Western pressure, it will be an object lesson and invitation to every dictator or potential dictator in the world to hang tough.  If Assad loses and is strung up from the nearest lamppost it will equally be an object lesson to the world's dictators. 

This is a cautionary tale, whether it is military intervention, sanctions or calls for regime change, we need to have an exit plan before we go out on a limb or into combat.  Human rights is an admirable, theoretical good until it becomes an actual expensive albatross.  

Taps for UN Peacekeeping?

The Security Council members, led by the British, French and Americans, have stretched the meaning of peacekeeping to the point that the concept today is unrecognizable and increasingly unrealistic. In the late forties and fifties the idea was to station military officers to observe the actions of waring parties to make certain that they stuck to the agreements that they had negotiated. Peacekeepers were not supposed to come into harms way because their presence was at the request of the conflicting parties and they were seen as neutral observers.  A blue helmet bought the wearer immunity.  Thus, it was a cheap way to keep everyone honest and to assure each side in a dispute that the other was not taking advantage of a ceasefire to improve its military position for another round of fighting.  It made sense and it worked.

Peacekeepers who were interposed between two disputants, with the disputants full agreement, gave each side an excuse for not breaking the truce or ceasefire.  It was only when Nassar demanded the withdrawal of UNEF I, for example, that the '67 war between Israel and Egypt became inevitable. Up to that point Nassar had been able to tell the Arab and non-aligned world that he could not break through the UN positions by force in order to go to war against Israel.  Once the international force was gone, Nassar had no choice if he wanted to retain his credentials as the leader of the Arab and non-aligned worlds.  

A similar consideration has led up to now to stabilization of the post 1967 lines between Syria and Israel. It was not convenient for either side to upend a UN arrangement that was seen as keeping the parties from war and gave each the cover for not escalating occasional flareups.  These were all cases where stable countries were involved, staring at each other across an abyss, but commanding disciplined forces and speaking with one voice. 

Increasingly, those conditions do not exist in peacekeeping operations today.  When peacekeeping is proposed, the clarity of two contending parties has often been absent. Sides are fragmented into factions with different agendas and forming at best a loose confederation subject to breakup at any moment.  Countries are divided along historic fault lines such that there is no reliable central authority. Differences are deeply engrained in race, sect, tribe, religion and history.  Alliances are formed and reformed and your friend today may be your enemy tomorrow.  Under these circumstances it is virtually impossible to stay neutral or at least to be seen by all contesting parties as neutral.  Blue helmets are not nearly as imposing as guns if the guns are seen to be supporting the enemy. 

For many years the UN was immunized from being embroiled in messy conflicts by virtue of the US - Soviet confrontation and consequent inability of the Security Council to act except in rare circumstances. The Security Council was saved by its own immobility and thus was only called on for clear and agreed tasks. Since the collapse of the Soviet Union there has been no natural set of brakes, no excuse for the Security Council not to act when hostilities erupt.  

So peacekeeping has had to evolve along with the nature and complexity of the conflicts involved. It is no longer enough to put a thin blue line between combatants.  Now there have to be lawyers, accountants, economists, police, and politicians to put Humpty Dumpty back together again.  And the question has come to be whether or not all the king's horses and all the king's men can put Humpty Dumpty together again.   We have moved from peacekeeping to social engineering and nation building and it is not at all clear that the UN is the right vehicle to undertake these roles and, if it is, whether it is organized and financed to do the job.  

The price tag for missions has skyrocketed.  The original mission in the Middle East of an observer force, UNTSO, is still operational and costs $70 million a year.  The Observers along the India-Pakistan border only cost $21 million.  But new missions, the so called "robust" missions like the hybrid Darfur mission has a price tag of $1.7 billion a year, the Congo is $1.5 billion and in Sudan with two missions the UN is spending a billion dollars a year.  And those prices only cover the peacekeepers, not the associated costs of security, aid, consultants and in-country support costs. 

In 1990 there were less than 14,000 uniformed peacekeepers, today there are 98,639 from 114 countries.  How long will governments agree to provide soldiers and how long will parliaments agree to pay for them as budgets are tightened around the world?

Peacekeeping has been a valuable tool for diplomacy, but if Rwanda, Somalia, Darfur, and Bosnia are any indication the tool has lost its edge and now risks undercutting other critical UN operations as belt tightening takes its toll across the UN board.  It is time to reduce the UN profile in peacekeeping and to turn to ad hoc groups of countries to police their own problems.  It is time to rely on regional organizations or combinations thereof to do the heavy lifting. And if agreement and cost sharing cannot be reached on a regional or ad hoc basis, so be it.  If Rwanda did not stimulate the African Union to act to avoid genocide, then the blood is on their hands.  If the OAS cannot police Haiti then why should the UN be asked to do so? Countries will not take on the responsibility for these problems so long as someone else is there to pick up the heavy burden. Have we fallen into the trap of the international community being the first responder when it should be the last resort?          

 

 

What do we do with 10 billion people?

Apparently we are going to add three billion people to the global population by the end of this century.  Given the fact that the world just hit 7 billion people, it will mean providing for 10 billion by the year 2100 and still growing.  The first billion took from the beginning of man to the 1800's.  A second billion took 120 years, Two more billion in 55 years by 1975.  Six in 23 years by 1998 and now seven after 13 more years in 2011.  Can we do it?  Can the world feed, house, and care for all these people?  The answer is a qualified yes.

The question centers on the availability of resources.  In the early 1800s, Thomas Robert Malthus suggested that population increase is limited by the means of subsistence.  It hasn't worked so far, largely because of scientific advances in agriculture  and mechanization that have opened new areas for farming and  massively increased the productivity of our farmers.  

We humans seem to be able to survive on ever decreasing plots of land while making them ever more productive.  From 1950 to 2000 in the US the average amount of milk produced per cow increased from 5,314 pounds to 18,201 pounds per year (+242%), the average yield of corn rose from 39 bushels to 153 bushels per acre (+292%), and each farmer in 2000 produced on average 12 times as much farm output per hour worked as a farmer did in 1950.(http://www.ers.usda.gov/publications/EB9/eb9.pdf) Presumably that performance can be replicated in other parts of the world. 

As the yields have increased the need for labor has decreased.  The US farm population is less that 3 million and it sustains a food industry employing more than 20 million. But the number of farms is declining.  A new generation of computer driven robots will soon replace many of today's farm workers. Robots with artificial intelligence are being developed to plough and seed fields, and feed cows. 

The Israelis are working on a robotic mellon picker that can tell if the mellon is ripe. "Watermerlon is grown in 90 countries with worldwide production exceeding 50 billion pounds per year. The United States is the world's fourth largest producer. According to the Department of Agriculture 70% of American households buy watermelon. The essential 'robotic' blending of intelligent sensing with mechanical actuation can be found in vision-guided tractors, product grading systems, planters and harvesters, applicators for fertilizers and pest control. Robot manipulators can divide plant material for micropropagation in sterile conditions; others can skin fruit for canning." http://ishitech.co.il/0903ar3.htm

Robots with artifical intelligence are being developed to plough and seed fields, and feed cows. Indoor production of plants is increasing and gene splicing is allowing researchers to produce commercial volumes of vanilla in labs eliminating the soil the cultivation, the harvest and the farmer (http://www.converge.org.nz/pirm/nutech.htm)  A fully automated farm is likely possible in the next 25 years.

There will no doubt be problems as we try to accommodate to a more crowded world. Technology, invention, investment and equitable distribution can solve most of them.  The problem does not depend so much on numbers of babies born as it does on their productivity.  And productivity has been steadily increasing for over a century (http://groups.csail.mit.edu/mac/users/rauch/worktime/).  If you use the output of the average worker in 1950 working a 40 hour week as your base, average worker today would need only 11 hours to produce the same quantity and at a much higher level of quality.  

Much of the world is facing unemployment and underemployment even in areas enjoying 9% growth per year.  China has been growing at 10.3% and yet in 2009 still had 4.3% unemployment.  Egypt, before the revolution was growing at 5.1% with an unemployment rate of 9.7%.  And these figures do not include the underemployed.  Think about the future of clerical workers, for example, in the US. In 2004 there were 31 million general office clerks, 1.5 milliion office administrative supervisors and 4.1 million secretaries.  Their salaries ranged from $23,000 to $41,030. And many have been replaced by machines. But how many secretaries are left? And how many will be left in 10 more years? 

Retail sales personnel numbered about 4.5 million jobs. Medium hourly wage was $9.89  in 2008.  But as companies look for ways to maximize profits, they also look for ways to reduce their most expensive input - labor with its increasingly expensive benefits. The manufacturing and service sectors are continuously embracing new technology that can replace people at a lower price.   Even old technology is stunning in its efficiency.  "A human teller can handle up to 200 transactions a day, works 30 hours a week, gets a salary anywhere from $8,000 to $20,000 a year plus fringe benefits, gets coffee breaks, a vacation and sick time... In contrast, an automated teller can handle 2,000 transactions a day, works 168 hours a week, costs about $22,000 a year to run, and doesn't take coffee breaks or vacations." http://www.converge.org.nz/pirm/nutech.htm. Nor does it need health insurance.   

It is easy to visualize a world in the not so distant future, where many jobs and entire sectors of employment will be replaced by more efficient, reliable and cheaper machines and artificial intelligence. So what are we going to do with the redundant people?  The greatest problem we may face in the future is not what we need to do to accommodate the basic needs of more people, but how we keep them productively occupied.  Work has been our means of keeping score, whether it is by virtue of income or status or both. If we do not have productive work, how in today's terms, do we validate our lives.  There are just so many holes of golf that a person can play.   This is the most challenging problem of the next half century.   

 

 

 

 

 

A Green Future - Cash or Climate?

As we enter the season of Presidential politics, we can expect the discourse to become more partisan, less objective and at times downright silly.  There are very serious and far reaching issues that the country must come to grips with and there are arguments that should be heard on both sides. It is not productive, therefore, to hide the issues in an avalanche of rhetoric, misinformation and ignorance. One particularly important and divisive element of the debate is one of the oldest in our country, the role of the States and the role of the Federal Government.  It is a legitimate question.  Certainly, there are grounds to be concerned about the intrusion of the Federal Government into our daily lives and to worry about excessive regulation and its impact on economic growth.  But, to carry on this debate, as if we were still living in the 18th century, is not very productive for dealing with today's global problems. 

Some of the problems we will have to deal with over the next fifty years will not stop at our borders, either those of our home states or of our nation.  States acting on their own or even in coordination with one another are not sufficient to the task.  Similarly, the United States cannot hope to meet some potential and actual foreseeable threats to the well being of our people without international cooperation that involves US leadership.  It is a pipe dream to think we can go it alone, and it is a nightmare to contemplate the results if we try to do so.  Not only does it not make sense in these circumstances to speak of “states rights,” it also makes no sense to speak of “fortress America.”

Governor Perry of Texas questioned whether human activity is causing global warming even though up to 98% of climate scientists believe that the linkage is clear.  But, for the sake of argument, let’s say he is right: human activity is not causing global warming.  However, even he cannot deny that ice caps are melting and temperature measurements over time seem to indicate a warming trend.  Whatever the cause of this trend, whether it is human activity or cyclical patterns, the effect of warming on us will be the same.  If the world is getting warmer, that will have an impact on growing seasons, food supply, disease transmission, flooding, weather patterns, and so on.  Furthermore, the impact will be unevenly distributed within our country and globally. 

There are at least three ways to deal with this: 1. Kick the can down the road, ignore it, stick our heads in the sand - the Perry solution - and hope it all turns out OK; 2. try to slow the process down by adjusting human behavior so that we are not adding to the problem by speeding up and intensifying the cyclical process of warming – the EPA solution of curtailing CO2 among other steps (Now taken off the table by President Obama in the face of industry opposition.); or 3. Start planning and acting now to prepare ourselves to live with a warmer world and begin to take steps toward environmental remediation.

Steps to adjust current behavior was the direction the EPA and the President were taking, but it was blocked by well funded business and political interests who beat the drums of jobs and recession leading Obama to cave in.   Realistically, so long as adjustment will lead to reduced profitability, nothing will happen, at least until after the 2012 election and only with difficulty thereafter given the composition of our Congress, the Supreme Court, and our campaign financing laws (or lack thereof).

Steps toward remediation will also incur costs now, and while it might well actually create jobs in the short term, it would be pilloried by the Tea Party as yet another government hand out and expansion of Federal encroachment on our American way of life.  Thus, the temptation at all levels of government and certainly among the bulk of conservative voters, will be to put off today what can be done tomorrow.  It is easier to question the science and to blame the scientists for feathering their own nest than the wealthy who have feathers in abundance.  The easy path is the Perry path. 

Given our annual budget process based on annual expenditures, and in the absence of a separate national investment budget for the long term, it does not appear that our two party system will be able to embrace short term sacrifice to gain long term benefits.  Look at how wrenching and inconclusive our recent debt debate was.  There was a plethora of rhetoric about saddling future generations with our present debt.  But, God forbid we should equalize the current burden to solve the longer term problem.  Tax the wealthy, cut farm subsidies, extend the age of social security? Or none of the above.  The effects of the debt burden on future generations seems to be a concept that people can understand only in terms of placing the burden of sacrifice on others. So we do nothing and hope for the best.  The Perry solution is the easiest. And, guess who will have to pay the ultimate price?

Do We Care About Israel?

The Palestinian issue originally achieved strategic importance for the US primarily as a result of the Cold War and the US-Soviet competition for allies in the strategic Middle East. With the end of the cold war there has been a sometimes-serious debate about just how important the issue is to the United States. For the most part its importance has been assumed. Everybody knows it is important – but is it really important to us? 

If the record of US involvement in trying to resolve this problem over the past ten years is any indication, we don’t care, at least not very much.  Or at the most, we only care episodically. Once Bill Clinton failed to strike a deal in 2000, and blamed the Palestinians for the failure, the Palestinians resorted to violence in their second intifada. And perhaps that is one reason that we care – the fear that violence will escalate and embroil a region, which dominates the world’s lines of communication and its energy supply.  But past eruptions of violence in two intifadas hardly caused a ripple on the international stage. Oil continued to flow, US ships transited the Suez Canal, and we maintained solid relations with most of the Arab world.   

Another possible problem is that whenever Middle East peace talks led to an apparent dead end, either the Palestinians or the Israelis did something about it.  And we may not like what they do. Right now, the Palestinians are engaged in two initiatives – reconciliation talks between Fatah in the West Bank and Hamas in Gaza – And a Palestinian drive for UN membership - that will have an impact on the international community, on the region, on Israel, and on us.

The Israelis for their part, are threatening unilaterally to annex large portions of the West Bank for their existing settlements and to build many more if either of the Palestinian efforts is successful. If there is still any chance of a two state solution, and that is questionable, this would just about put paid to the possibility.  So perhaps the problem is back on the agenda and we can answer the question of why it is important to us.

One answer is that the Middle East is rapidly changing, and our policy must take these changes into account. There are three primary factors that are altering the landscape. 

First. A very large cohort of young, better-educated and better-connected Arabs is coming of age. What we are seeing in the Arab world is a population bomb. The Middle East North Africa youth population is among the largest in the world. And they communicate with one another and with the world. Governments can no longer isolate their people from the world.

Second. Entrenched leaders can no longer control the agenda. For almost 50 years, the United States has seen the Middle East as a collection of autocratic leaders, with the exception of Israel and possibly Lebanon. By contrast, every public opinion poll showed the Arab people consistently supporting the Palestinian cause, but the people had no voice. The last three months have turned that logic on its head. Leaders can no longer count on a passive, cowed constituency – the street will be heard. 

And third.  Demographics are working against Israel as a democratic Jewish state. In 2050, in the area of Israel, the West Bank and Gaza there will be 8.8 million Jews and 12.4 million Arabs according to UN statistics. Whatever your system of counting and given the passage of enough time, the result of an Arab majority between the Jordan river and the Med is inevitable.

AP Feb 2, 2010 quoted Ehud Barak, Israel's Minister of Defense: "The simple truth is, if there is one state" including Israel, the West Bank and Gaza, "it will have to be either binational or undemocratic. ... if this bloc of millions of Palestinians cannot vote, that will be an apartheid state."

So who is winning?

Given the continued growth of settlements and the difficulty of uprooting people once they are settled, the Palestinians are on the losing side. 

Given the demographics in the region - Israel is on the losing side. 

Former Prime Minister Ehud Olmert told Ha'aretz in 2008, "if the day comes when the two-state solution collapses," Israel will face "a South-African style struggle for voting rights." Once that happened, he warned, "the state of Israel is finished." Under these circumstances Israelis will depend ever more on US support to sustain their state. And we will be increasingly isolated in the world. 

These are unpalatable choices that we may be called on to make. And we would be wise to think about them now so that we are prepared for the future. And for those who oppose the compromises necessary for at two state solution, let them put forward their ideas on how to avoid this population bomb as well as the spreading settler tide.  

Anyone who suggests that our vital interests are not engaged in the future of Palestine and of Israel will have to explain how we can sustain our position in the region if popular opinion, flush with Facebook success, forces governments to abandon us. And we will have to look in the mirror to decide if we have been the best friend that Israel could have had.  

 

 

Unintelligent Intelligence

For ten years at least and more likely 15, and most certainly since March 6. 2010 when President Mubarak of Egypt underwent gall bladder surgery, we have known that the 82 year old President of Egypt could die or be incapacitated at any moment.  We have also known that there was no clear path for succession.  Structurally, Mubarak had fixed the system so that his son Gamal could take over.  But there were serious doubts that the Egyptian military would accept a civilian like Gamal or accept the ignominy of copying Syria by passing the torch down the family line. Egyptian pride is a characteristic we know very well.  So we knew that the actuarial tables suggested an end in sight and that the process for succession was uncertain.  

So why was it a surprise when demonstrations peaked in Cairo and Mubarak was forced out by his military? Why was there no contingency plan on the shelf for an event that was unpredictable only in its timing? And why were we caught flat footed when two-thirds of the population, those who are under 30, said, Enough, "Kifayya."  And yet the Administration lurched from "Mubarak is not a dictator" to "Egypt is stable" even while the TV cameras were documenting a massive protest. Where was our intelligence community and who was advising our President, Vice President and Secretary of State? 

Prediction and sooth saying are very much the same thing - brilliant when proven correct and forgotten when proven wrong.  The signs were there - unemployment of the under 30's, an educated youth population without jobs and prospects, cultural barriers to the unemployed for marriage and family, an underpaid and undereducated police force, a judicial system that depends on confessions rather than forensics and investigation for convictions, a conscript military with the officers running a parallel state, a system of crony capitalism that enriched the connected and ignored the rest, the palliative of reasonable economic growth by the IMF's numbers that somehow never reached the people. 

But Mubarak had survived for 30 years. Our predisposition was to assume that he would survive for the next thirty.  What was the tipping point that would suggest that what had worked in the past would no longer work today? And who was paying attention to the 20 somethings who were about to lead a revolution?

Now we have another example of the failure of our intelligence.  We have just learned from Rafid Ahmed Alwan al-Janabi, also known by the codename "Curveball," that he made up the reports of Saddam Hussein's mobile biological labs in Iraq.  And with those reports Secretary of State Colin Powell went before the world at the UN and accused Saddam Hussein of accumulating weapons of mass destruction - weapons that only existed in al-Janabi's mind and in his desperation to push the United State into war.  This despite the fact that the CIA's European chief had already raised doubts about the report and about al-Janabi.  Yet the Administration, through the CIA Director and others, pressed Powell hard with the absolute certainty that comes from true believers. 

In the case of Mubarak, we had a strong predisposition to accept his likely survival and so we were not prepared.  With curveball we had a key portion of our political establishment that wanted to believe in him so that we could justify the invasion of Iraq.  

We need to do better.  We need to break the chains of assumptions and expectations and predispositions and agendas.  We need to put analysis and critical thinking before ideology,political party, and the lessons of the past.  (We may have learned those past lessons too well.) And we need an analytical capability in our intelligence community that is immune from politics and changing administrations.  We have the talent.  But even if we had such an institution, would we listen to it? 

 

 

 

 

Netanyahu 2, Abbas 1, & Obama 0

If we were keeping score on the question of negotiations between the Palestinians and Israel based on the New York meeting on Tuesday, we would have to award Prime Minister Netanyahu two points, the Palestinian President Abbas one point, and President Obama no points.  Obama certainly did not get much joy from Netanyahu in New York.  In the peace process, as an American negotiator, you can gauge how well you are doing by the number of right wing Israeli settlers protesting outside the Prime Minister's residence after a round of talks. The streets were empty today.  Of course, you can always count on the Israeli Foreign Minister, Avigdor Lieberman to tell it like it is without the diplomatic coating that Netanyahu is so careful to preserve.  According to the Israeli press, Lieberman said on Wednesday that Netanyahu's summit with Obama was a victory because it took place even though Israel rebuffed Obama's demand on settlements. Member of Knesset Danny Danon, from Likud's right flank was obviously jubilant and, at the same time insulting to President Obama when saying that he hopes "the summit stops the Hollywood movie in which Obama lives."

We do not know what went on in private between Obama and Netanyahu.  We don't know if there were promises made.  But Dennis Ross, who was in on the meetings, went down this road with me before in negotiations with Netanyahu the last time he was Prime Minister.  So Dennis knows that what is said in private does not always occur in fact. And, to be honest, how could the Prime Minister of Israel accommodate a full settlement freeze or a serious lockdown on expansion given the government he has cobbled together.  No Israeli Prime Minister has been able to do this in a sustained way in the past, and Netanyahu is a most unlikely candidate to be the exception. Look at the numbers and tell me how Netanyahu could sustain his government if he compromises on the settlements issue.  He can't even count on the right wing of his Likud party, let alone Yisrael Beitenu, Jewish Home, or the United Torah Judaism party.  George Mitchell knows better.  He made it clear after the meeting that a settlement showdown is not a precondition for resuming negotiations.   And Netanyahu made clear that the settlements issue can only be considered in the context of the final status negotiations.  "But we have to talk in order to talk about it," Netanyahu said. 

But what will they talk about?  That is the question Obama has to face.  If the Israeli coalition government would fall over the settlements issue, would it not be more likely to fall over any compromise or even any gesture on Jerusalem?  Or on refugees?  And how are we going to negotiate borders without impinging on settlements? This is déjà vu for me.  We seem to be fighting our way back to Menahem Begin's formula for Palestinian autonomy - a Palestinian government in the mind but not on the ground.  That no doubt would satisfy Prime Minister Netanyahu and his coalition. 

But what about the Palestinians?  The pressure was not on them in this round.  They have just as many internal political problems as the Israelis do.  Only in Abu Mazen's case the costs of compromise are likely to be renewed civil war and violence and possibly even his life.  So the Palestinians probably sighed a sigh of relief that they got out of New York without having to challenge Hamas and without undercutting their relationship with President Obama while leaving Israel to take the blame. 

Perhaps President Obama will have to stop thinking about this problem in the short term and stop looking for a quick fix.  It seems clear that no progress is possible on the critical issues so long as the Israeli government continues in its current configuration.  And in all probability no progress can really be expected so long as the Palestinians are a hair's breadth away from committing mutual suicide.  So perhaps the Palestinian Prime Minister Salem Fayyed has it right.  This may be the time for the Palestinians to get their act together and form a credible government in the service of the Palestinian people.  And it may be time for Israelis to consider their future and decide whether or not they want peace to be held hostage by a rigid minority of the settler movement.  Or we can just mark time until Palestinians living on land from the Jordan river to the Mediterranean outnumber their Jewish neighbors.  Then what?

Arab gestures, facts on the ground, and the shrill hysteria of incitement.

As a part of the package the Obama Administration is working out with Israel on the settlements freeze and return to negotiations, there is reportedly a promise of some gestures from the Arab world in the form of opening trade offices and providing overflight rights for Israeli commercial aircraft to link Israel to Asia. Arguably, these would be positive steps in creating a better atmosphere for peace, but would they make a significant difference? In fact, they are not likely to change attitudes where they count the most - in Israel and Palestine.

Last June, The Harry S. Truman Institute for the Advancement of Peace published a poll of Israeli Jewish and Palestinian attitudes toward peace (http://truman.huji.ac.il/poll-view.asp?id=279). The results were not very encouraging.  While the majority of Israeli Jews felt that the conflict with the Palestinians imposed a high to unbearable cost on Israel, a similar number believed that Israel could bear that price for decades and even forever.  What those numbers should be telling the Arab rejectionists and the hostile regime elements in Gaza is that Israel can live with a sustained level of violence indefinitely.  Too many Palestinians got the wrong message from the Israeli excursions into Lebanon and their withdrawal under pressure.  In fact, if the shelling from Gaza starts up again, most Israelis believe a military solution to that problem is possible.  30% would reoccupy Gaza and over half of all Israelis think that Israel can overthrow the Hamas regime in Gaza if it so desires.

What I found striking about the poll was the fact that 62% of Jewish Israelis thought that the aspiration of the Arabs, in the long run, was to conquer the state of Israel and of that number, 42% thought the goal was to destroy a significant part of the Jewish population in Israel.  If that is your assumption about the people you are expected to negotiate with, then the price for any concessions would seem to be too high. This cynical attitude about the prospects of living in peace is reflected at many points in the survey on both sides.  65% of Palestinians and 63% of Israelis believe it is impossible to reach a final status settlement these days.

Gestures by the Bahrainis or Qataris, or any other Arab state, are not going to change these numbers.  To imagine that peace is possible on this foundation of deep mutual antipathy and mistrust really stretches credulity. Peace may be a function of Prime Ministers and Presidents, but it is ultimately dependent on the people of both sides.  Confidence has to be built from somewhere below zero where it currently resides.  That will only happen when the voices of reason can out-shout the voices of intolerance and irrationality, when children are taught facts rather than slogans, when the media no longer points the camera at the loudest voice in the room, and when we get back to efforts to purge ourselves, our schools and our media of incitement.

We tried it once in 1998 as a result of the Wye agreement.  We formed an anti-incitement committee and even had meetings for several months.  Unfortunately, only the Americans took it seriously. As a result, it was still born. Perhaps the Obama Administration should consider leading a new effort, but this time with the energy and eloquence of the President of the United States. Peace is not going to come from clever formulas and untenable compromises.  It will only come when the people who are most affected want it to come, and believe in it.  That is not the case today.   

The Thirteenth Palestinian Government

From the earliest days, once the Egyptian President, Anwar Sadat forced the United States back in 1978 to take an active role in resolving the Palestinian problem, we have largely focused our efforts on security and the key final status issues like borders and Jerusalem.  President Bush embraced the  policy of a two state solution, but aside from some discussions in the context of the Autonomy negotiations and in the Oslo process years ago, there has been very little focus on what the Palestinian State will look like, how it will be organized and what are the premises on which it will be based. Presumably, these are questions that the Palestinians will have to answer in due course.  But, it is very hard for me to imagine that Israel, or for that matter the United States, is a disinterested party.  Will the Palestinian state look like Gaza under Hamas?  If that is the expectation then it is not very likely that negotiations on the final status, even if started, would ever result in an agreement.  

What we have all known for a long time is that Israel will not accept a hostile, independent state in the West Bank and Gaza and nor should it.  If there was ever any doubt of this, all we need to do is to examine the Israeli and US reaction to Hamas' rule over Gaza.  The Israelis will have to know who their neighbors are and will have to have a high degree of confidence that once a Palestinian state is established, it will not become a launching pad for attacks on Israel.  Without a substantial degree of mutual confidence, issues like security, settlements, borders, Jerusalem and refugees cannot be resolved.  This is not only a question of lines on a map.  It is also a question of intentions.

Certainly, the Palestinian record thus far does not fill one with confidence.  The divided polity, the clinging to rhetoric instead of reality, the record of corruption in the Palestinian National Authority,  and failure to govern effectively even in areas where the Authority has sway, creates the expectation of failure, instability, and continued hostility toward Israel as the path of least resistance.  Palestinians have been reluctant to take on the hard issues of coming to grips with their internal differences using the excuse that with the Israelis hovering over every decision and intervening at will, the Palestinians cannot determine their own vision or begin the construction of their own state.  They have been unwilling to take the difficult steps of forging a common Palestinian vision and policy in the absence of the concrete governmental structure of a State in being - until now.  

Now the Palestinian National Authority is advancing a new approach in its program of the thirteenth government entitled "Palestine: Ending the Occupation, Establishing the State" published in August 2009.  This is a document that has received little notice in the media, but which lays out a picture of a Palestinian state that could, if implemented, enable a constructive process of peace making.  The document includes a forward by Salam Fayyad, the Palestinian Prime Minister that sets out the objectives of the Government for the next two years as a "full commitment to this state-building endeavor" and emphasizes that such a program is "critical" to the "creation of the independent state of Palestine on the Palestinian territory occupied in 1967, with East Jerusalem as its capital."  Fayyad's formulation in his cover letter is interesting since it is not found in the document itself.  He refers to "East" Jerualem - the document consistently refers to "Jerusalem" without any modifier.  The document itself has problems such as repeated references to UN General Assembly Resolution 194, which established the "right of return" of Palestinian refugees to their homes based on their free choice.  However, the document assigns responsibility of dealing with the refugees to the Palestinian Liberation Organization and not to the Palestinian Authority or its government.  

The agenda that the program of the 13th government has set out is surprisingly detailed, which is unusual for political documents that have to appeal to a broad constituency.  What is even more surprising is the level of self-criticism that is implied by the document. Repeated references to the need for auditing government functions would appear to be in response to the heavy criticism of the Authority as being corrupt.  It would also tend to indicate that over the 17 years that the Palestinian Authority has been in existence, virtually no reforms have taken place, no strategic plan has been developed, no consensus on goals and vision has been reached, and that there has been little or no effort to establish the foundation for a viable Palestinian state.  A lot of the credit for this dysfunctional history has to be laid at the feet of Yasser Arafat whose style of governing was divide, conquer and never decide. 

While one could nit-pick the program. Certainly there are aspects that will cause heartburn particularly within the Palestinian community, but also among some Israelis.  Furthermore, there is a long distance between statements of intention and facts on the ground.  It remains to be seen if Abu Mazen and Salam Fayyad can deliver on the vision and reform.   But it is virtually certain, in my view, that without such an effort on the part of the Palestinians, there will be no peace agreement, no Palestinian state, and no respite from terrorism.  The program's success is, as Prime Minister Fayyad says, essential if a peace agreement is to be reached. The program is predicated on and designed to help achieve the unification of the Palestinian polity, without which I do not give the peace process a snowball's chance of succeeding.  This is the very first time that we have seen a concrete, rational, official Palestinian projection of what a Palestinian state might look like and how it could sustain peace as a democracy based on the rule of law. That has been an important missing ingredient in all the past efforts to concoct a peace between Israelis and the Palestinians. We should give Salam Fayyad our full support and help him make his vision real.  

245- "A Time for Every Season"

President Obama said on April 11, in his weekly radio and Internet address that major obstacles such as climate change, the global financial crisis, terrorism and nuclear proliferation demand coordinated action to overcome.  He said. "These are challenges that no single nation, no matter how powerful, can confront alone,"  "The United States must lead the way. But our best chance to solve these unprecedented problems comes from acting in concert with other nations."

It is a nice sentiment, and on the face of it, it seems logical and persuasive.  But can the world act in concert? And on what? The one overriding truth of the nation state system as we know it is that states will act in their own perceived self-interest even if that comes at the expense of other states and long term goals. And the perception of self-interest is almost inevitably short term. It would certainly seem to be in the broad interest of mankind to curtail carbon emissions and at least slow global warming.  But polar bears are not as important as the  survival and competitive advantage of your business community and the jobs and profits they produce.  And the lobbyists and shareholders of those businesses are not likely to let up the pressure on their members of Congress to reach global agreements that give competitive advantage to China or India. 

Recent history has not been kind to global efforts to solve problems.  The Doha round is dead - the victim of conflicting North-South interests and the inability of nation states to compromise when faced with political pressure at home.  The  Fifth World Conference on Women was deferred in 2005 due to fear that the gains of the 1995 conference would be lost in the face of positions on abortion and the human rights of women adopted by the Bush administration.  United Nations Climate Change Conference in Copenhagen, is set for 7-18 December 2009, but success is far from certain.  The Obama administration is currently in the process of back tracking from early statements on climate change and a cap and trade system for carbon emissions.

The United Nations Security Council has been blocked from effective action in Darfur to save lives and has been unable to confront Sudan’s president Bashir to restore humanitarian aid to its former level. The International Criminal Court issued an indictment of Bashir, which the African Union and Arab League ignored.  The Security Council cannot even act effectively to enforce its own resolution against North Korean missile testing and had to settle for a watered down Presidential statement, which everyone knows who has worked at the UN is a toothless face saver for an embarrassed Council.  Afghanistan is going backwards as NATO countries argue over policy and participation.  The President is rebuffed by the Iranians in his effort to open a door.  And he was far short of his goals at the G20.  Where is the leadership that President Obama is talking about?

In the early 90’s after the fall of the Berlin Wall, the world came together and marked major progress on trade, intellectual property, population problems, women’s rights, and a plethora of Security Council, NATO, and AU interventions in global hot spots.  Education about global health and international systems to deal with pandemics were instituted. Growth pulled millions of people out of poverty.  Most of the world, except for the United States came together on climate change at Kyoto. 

The difference between then and now was that then wealth was expanding and more people and states could share in the pie.  Today, contraction means that states and individuals are trying to hold on to those larger slices at the expense of others.  The industrialized country leadership has pledged to avoid protectionism, but protectionism is insidious and does not have to mean new openly restrictive measures.  It can mean the failure to correct existing imbalances that favor the few at the expense of the many.  For example, it can mean the collapse of negotiations over agriculture in the Doha round.  Protectionism can mean the failure to reach agreement on a new climate agreement at the UN Conference in December.  It can mean buy America provisions in legislation and failure to compete for massive new expenditures under the stimulus package.

Perhaps this is not a time for bold new international initiatives.  Perhaps we should take a page out of the book of the organizers of the Fifth World Conference on Women and be satisfied to protect that which has already been gained and defer that which exceeds our capacity right now while we work to restore growth and wealth.  President Obama is correct that our future depends on our ability to act in concert with others.  But in that process, we have to be realistic about the nature of that concert.  Let us focus on what can be done now and leave for later global initiatives that will inevitably divide us today and create a downward spiral of beggar thy neighbor.

305 - A New Al Qaeda Strategy?

On Friday, March 27, President Obama announced his plans for Afghanistan focusing on the fight against Al Qaeda and the Taliban in both Afghanistan and Pakistan.  “The situation is increasingly perilous,” he said. He also warned that al Qaeda “is actively planning attacks on the U.S. homeland from its safe haven in Pakistan.”  He added: “We have a clear and focused goal to disrupt, dismantle and defeat al Qaeda in Pakistan and Afghanistan, and to prevent their return to either country in the future.”  Obama will deploy 4,000 more troops in addition to the 17,000 he has already commited adding up to more than 60,000 troops.  Expenditures will increase about 60% above the current $2 billion a month to about $3.2 billion a month.  The 82nd Airborne Division, rather than reservists, will act as trainers to double the Afghan army to 134,000 by 2011.  He also called for a dramatic increase in US development assistance for both countries, significantly increased US civilian presence on the ground and a five year program for Pakistan of $1.5 billion a year.  Finally, he said that we would establish benchmarks as we had done in Iraq over the past two years. 

If all of this sounds vaguely familiar, it is no surprise since the team that gave you Iraq over the past two years is the same team that is now in charge in Afghanistan. While we have certainly made progress in Iraq and the team deserves considerable credit for the change, the question is whether or not the same medicine will work in Afghanistan and Pakistan. The conditions are quite different.  The topography in Waziristan and Afghanistan is a terrorist’s dream compared to the topography in Iraq.  The tribal culture is far more intense and tightly knit in Afghanistan than it was in Iraq.  The poverty level is considerably greater in Afghanistan and the educational level lower.  If you want to fuel terrorism, what you need is poverty and money.  And the Taliban has both.  The money comes from the drug trade, the poverty is a given.  And with money, you can buy support and corrupt the institutions of government that could stand against you. 

One wonders whether or not with $3.2 billion a month we could not outspend, out-corrupt and out-buy the Taliban.  That is not the way we want to operate, but until we can dry up the Taliban and al-Qaeda financial resources and immunize the local population from the Taliban’s bribary and barbarity, it is hard to see how we will be able to develop the system of intelligence and local reporting that can defeat our enemies.  NATO continues to be divided on how to deal with the Opium industry since it is the lifeblood of so many Afghanis.  But unless we can come up with an effective strategy for strangling Taliban and al-Qaeda resources, any gains we may make are likely to be subject to reversal.

But lets look on the positive side.  Let’s say we are fully effective and we can blunt the Taliban and al-Qaeda in Pakistan and Afghanistan, the question I have to ask is whether or not we will have solved the problem of al Qaeda? There are some clues that are worrisome.

March 17, 2009, Yemeni security authorities said that a suicide bomber who killed four South Korean tourists in Yemen was trained in Somalia.  Acording to a Reuters report, tens of thousands of Somali refugees arrive in Yemen each year while the Yemen government fights an insurgency in the north putting Yemen at risk of becoming a failed state.  Yemen’s problems could then spill over into Saudi Arabia.  Yemen authorities have rounded up dozens of militants linked to al-Qaeda.

On March 18, 2009 another man blew himself up in Yemen trying to attack South Korean investigators.  These attacks followed calls by Al Qaeda leaders for attacks on non-Muslim foreigners in the Arabian Peninsula.

On February 25 the press reported that Islamist militants in Somalia have rejected any compromise and will fight until Somalia is a strict Islamist state.  Meanwhile educated Somalis are leaving the country in droves.

On March 25 the press reported that a tape released by the al-Qaeda number two Ayman al-Zawahri called on the Sudanese to undertake jihad against the “crusade” being orchestrated by the West against Sudan. 

In January 2009 the press reported that a former Guantanamo Bay detainee, Abu Sayyaf al-Shihri, released to Saudi Arabia, had shown up in Yemen as the deputy leader of al-Qaeda’s Yemeni branch.

According to the Timesonline in July 2008, success in Iraq against al-Qaeda has led the terrorists to flee to Yemen, Afghanistan, Pakistan, India and Thailand with the largest contingent going to North Africa.  An arc of terror is taking shape in Libya, Tunisia, Algeria, Morocco and Mauritania, according to the article. 

There is more, but on the face of it, victory in Iraq has led to an enhanced al-Qaeda presence in failed states where Islamic fundamentalism has taken root and training facilities can sustain a steady conveyor belt of suicide bombers and fighters. So the question is, can we afford to focus all our attention and resources on Pakistan and Afghanistan while al-Qaeda turns its attention to the more accommodating environments of failed states?  In short, can we afford to turn our backs on Darfur, Somalia, Yemen and a number of other states that are at risk?