Arms and influence

Pants against Nazism

Dunkin' Donuts decided to cave into the silly, attention-grabbing boobs who accused Rachel Ray of sending secret pro-Jihadist signals by wearing a checkered scarf in a recent ad. As Poliblogger says, this "protest" makes about as much sense as a Monty Python skit. Especially since millions of people in the Middle East who are definitely not Jihadists--including Israelis, and even US troops stationed in Iraq--also wear the keffiyah to protect themselves from the desert sun, wind, and sand.

OK, let's start a silly, attention-grabbing protest of our own.

• Hitler wore pants.
• MSNBC's Brian Williams, Tim Russert, and Chris Matthews wear pants.

Draw your own conclusions.

Public diplomacy 101

You're campaigning to be President of the United States. Your campaign tells you that a Christian minister who is supporting you once called Islam as a "conspiracy of spiritual evil," and regularly makes similar disparaging remarks about that religion.

You know that, if elected President, Muslims around the world will remember how you handled this situation. What do you do?

(A) Drop him faster than a greased bowling ball.
(B) In preparation for the inevitable press conference, craft a statement that rejects the minister's words without denouncing the minister personally. (Kinda like, "Hate the sin, love the sinner.")
(C) Describe the minister as "one of the truly great leaders in America, a moral compass, a spiritual guide."

Sigh. Sadly, McCain answered C. After eight years of not-even-half-baked efforts at public diplomacy with the Islamic world, McCain isn't exactly signaling that he'll do a substantially better job.

Keffiyah Kreme

When you spend all your time in a state of manufactured outrage, you start seeing the Devil in every shadow on the wall. That's how, if you see the perky Rachel Ray in a scarf, you might conclude that she is sending secret signals, in a Krispy Kreme ad, to support keffiyah-wearing Jihadists.

By that measure, Barbara "Barafat" Bush yearns for a return to the Caliphate. How else can you explain her choice of dress patterns? Eternal fashion vigilance, everyone!

Treaties and obligations

The White House and Defense Department have, for the last several years, been trying to "explore a new formula for our overseas presence." That's polite language for a permanent presence in the Middle East, based on "status of force agreements" (SOFAs) with countries like Pakistan. A recent diplomatic exchange between the United States and Pakistan provides a window into this campaign.

The United States has learned a hard lesson about democracy and constitutionalism. No declaration of war sanctioned the Iraq war. No Constitutional principle justified the warrantless wiretaps. No American law or treaty allowed Guantanamo Bay. All of these mistakes have hurt, not helped, the real fight against domestic and international terror.

There's another word for a SOFA: treaty. According to the US Constitution, the Senate must ratify any treaty. Using a different word than "treaty" does not change that obligation. The United States is asking Pakistan for permission to operate militarily inside Pakistan, while granting immunity to US personnel for any of their actions during these ventures.

Robots don't enforce the Constitution; people do. Those people--in Congress and the Supreme Court--are ultimately responsible for both any failure to uphold the Constitution, and any consequences that follow.

The Syrian mystery deepens

What was the Syrian site that the Israelis bombed? And why are the Syrians rebuilding it?

Jumping into the gap

Suffering from mental and moral fatigue, many Americans are undoubtedly attracted to simplistic explanations of our foreign policy woes. Simples of all is, "The portions of the world that give us the most trouble are just plain messed up." The unspoken end of that sentence is, "Unlike us."

Case in point: this argument (via Mountain Runner) that the real problem with Pakistan, Iraq, and other countries is their poor luck at being part of the "Gap."

Broadly, most of the world "works."  Aside from troublesome campesinos near the Andes and racist Pacific Islanders, if you are not in the continuous geographical Gap that stretches from the Cape of Good Hope to frontier of Russia, things are going pretty good for you. The chances of you becoming the victim of a suicide bomber, a mass rape, or good ol' fashioned genocide are remarkably small. Regularly there's really bad news from the Gap, such as a camapign of rape fully understandable by our chimpanzee ancestors or today's assassination of a talkative woman, but really, it doesn't effect our lives.

Of course, this "theory" (if such a thin idea merits the word) collapses faster than a third grader's styrofoam model of Stonehenge if it tries to bear the weight of any significant historical evidence:

• Countries that "work" have fallen apart many times. The French Revolution and the Terror, the Russian Revolution and Civil War, the American Civil War...I'm sure I don't need to belabor the obvious examples.
• Many countries outside the so-called "Gap" don't work. If you tar and feather Afghanistan for not "working," you might as well throw in Colombia, Sri Lanka, Nepal, and several other troubled nations. Arguably, the dysfunction of a country like Colombia is worse than, say, Lebanon, since the anti-government forces have fewer incentives to work with any central government. Before you rush to disagree, take a look at the history of the FARC.
• Modernity often undermines modern societies. Without piling our plate from the entire historical social scientific smörgåsbord, let's pick one observation about the political collapse of modern societies. According to many scholars of the rise of fascism and communism in the first half of the 20th century, modern techniques of political organization and mass mobilization led to the overthrow of democratic governments and the consolidation of tyranny. In other words, lacking these political tools, no Somali warlord could wreck a country the way Hitler or Stalin did.
• Not all countries within the "Gap" are failed societies. Turkey is going through a constitutional crisis, but come on, how exactly does it rate worse on the political instability index than, say, Northern Ireland, nestled in the pleasant "green zone" of the Gap map?
• The problems of the "Gap" are not all internal.  The phrase, "We do not know how to pull off large-scale social engineering, but we do know that most of our attempts to do so have failed,"  sounds  as though we're helpless bystanders in the story of Africa and the Middle East. Of course, many of these countries--Nigeria, Iraq, and Lebanon, to pick a few examples from the air--have suffered enormous hardship because of Westerners. The arbitrary national boundaries drawn by former colonial powers are one culprit. So, too, are legacies of Western intervention like Lebanon's constitution, which limited the amount of representation for Muslims, even after the Muslim portion of the population grew steadily from the 1940s through the 1980s.

The none-too-subtle suggestion behind "the Gap" is that African and Middle Eastern political systems are, by their nature, too stupid to live. What drives them into their self-destructive idiocy? Islam often gets the blame (quickly followed by a homily about how it's a religion of love and peace). I'll leave it up to you, Dear Reader, to decide how convincing an explanation that is. It's worth a quick aside, however, that at one point in world history, just a few centuries ago, the Muslim world was a greater force for modernization than the Christian world.

One of the interesting twists is how this simplistic explanation of political instability in the "developing world" mirrors another, equally simplistic one, from a very different political perspective. Check out the world systems theorists from a couple of decades ago for a similar notion about "core" and "periphery" countries.

Time to regroup?

Hamas’ seizure of the Gaza Strip is either the biggest opportunity for progress in the Middle East, or it’s the door that Middle Easterners have slammed in the faces of any outsiders who want to have an influence on events in the region. Either way, it’s the Palestinians who need to decide.

What a tangled web
The Israeli-Palestinian conflict has been the major challenge to compartmentalizing any question about the Middle East. Sure, the connection between Hamas fighters and Iraqi insurgents may be tenuous at best, and there may be nothing that really binds the West Bank and Gaza to the Straits of Hormuz and the Golan Heights. However, the Israeli-Palestinian conflict matters to the potentially restive populations of Middle Eastern states. Not only do these regimes worry about how events in the Occupied Territories can inflame discontent within their own borders, but they have realized how invoking the Palestinian cause can be a useful diplomatic tool, particularly with Europe and the United States. Sometimes, the statement, “I’d love to talk to you about this other issue, but we need to show some progress on the Palestinian question,” is sincere; at other times, it’s a cynical but highly effective dodge.

Unfortunately, the US government has little progress to show on this front of its Middle Eastern policy. During the first half of this decade, the Bush Administration (and, by extension, the extremely uninterested and inert Congress) had hardly anything to say to the Israelis and Palestinians, other than some words of support to the Sharon government. In the last year or so, some portions of the Bush Administration, in particular Secretary of State Condoleeza Rice, have been more “actively engaged.” However, the appearance of work isn’t the same as actual progress, or real willingness to exert serious pressure on both sides. The moment of truth came during Israel’s 2006 assault on Hezbollah. While Israeli aircraft and artillery flattened communities in southern Lebanon, American leaders, Rice included, did little to constrain the violence, waiting instead for the Israeli Defense Forces to decide when to stop.

Bunkering up
Part of American unwillingness to restrain Israel was the Administration’s new policy, based on an even closer partnership with the Saudi and Israeli governments, constituting a major tilt towards Sunni factions in different Middle Eastern conflicts. Since Hezbollah was both Shi’ite and heavily supported by Iran, it would have been highly surprising if the Bush Administration, grasping at any new regional strategy that might work, had put the brakes on Israel’s assault—except, of course, if American decision-makers looked more closely at the details of what was happening. 2006 may go down in the history books as the year when, at least for the time being, the United States lost any hope of being an honest broker in the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, given how much latitude the White House was willing to give its Israeli ally.

It would be a grave mistake to assume that, as a neutral or biased outsider, the United States could have stopped the fissure between Hamas and Fatah from breaking wide open. The choice between these two factions is odious to many Palestinians, so the United States had little power to make either side appear as the better standard-bearer for the Palestinian cause. Fatah is pickled in corruption and cynicism; ironically, Hamas is repeating the mistakes of a younger Fatah, displaying neither interest nor skill at the more compromising political strategy needed to escape the political margins. Revolutionary confrontation feels good, but it doesn’t convince the Israelis or anyone else that Hamas should be trusted to govern even the tiniest of states.

Many Israelis had already doubted that the Palestinians were capable of elevating a generation of leaders interested in making the fabled “final settlement” that would give Palestinians statehood and Israelis security, while also being able to deliver on the Palestinians’ part of the agreement. Hamas’ coup in Gaza seems to confirm these doubts. An even more fundamental question now arises: is there any one faction or coalition capable of representing all Palestinians? If not, the Israelis will “bunker up” until that situation changes.

Likely paralysis
For those who think that the Israelis might seize on this moment to reach a settlement with Fatah about the West Bank, don’t hold your breath. Two obstacles stand in the way. First, the Israelis know that they can’t stop Palestinians from moving between the Gaza Strip and the West Bank, unless Israel is willing to sever all family, business, and other tie between Palestinians living in these two regions. Second, an agreement about Jerusalem that does not include the representatives of a sizeable fraction of Palestinians is no agreement at all.

The United States might benefit for a short time from the Palestinian fissure. Many regional governments, including the Saudis, were already tired of the Palestinians’ political intransigence. US officials might make some short-term progress on other issues, without looking over their shoulders. However, the Israeli-Palestinian conflict will return. If no one invokes it, there will be some new crisis—a shooting, bombing, hostage-taking, whatever—that will bring this ongoing tragedy to the forefront again.
Given the Bush Administration’s partiality to Israel, and disinterest in the Palestinian conflict, it’s hard to imagine US leaders jumping into the thick of the Hamas-Fatah conflict to help resolve it. With Iraq continuing to soak up resources and attention, it’s even harder to imagine that scenario. However, as long as the regional equation does not change, and the Israeli-Palestinian question has the power to complicate other issues, even the best outcome in Iraq will be, from a regional standpoint, only a holding action.

Well, it's something

It's a happy day when you wake up in the morning, the sun is shining, the coffee tastes good, and a possible discussion between the US Secretary of State and the Iranian Foreign Minister is considered to be unremarkable. The forum is yet another Middle East summit, in which the appearance of diplomacy is more important than what actually gets accomplished. (However, these forums always provide a mechanism for private discussions, beyond what the representatives are saying in public.)

We can only hope that Condoleeza Rice has more to discuss with Iran's government than just Iraq--or even just Iraq and Iran's nuclear program. Any discussion that focuses purely on one or both of these issues omits other Iranian interests, such as its energy projects with India, Russia, and other countries. In other words, while security issues top the list, compartmentalizing them removes what little leverage the US government has with Iran. In that case, private diplomacy will look much like public diplomacy at the Sharm al-Sheikh summit, a statement of positions.

[If the name Sharm al-Sheikh sounds familiar, the resort is the location of terrorist attacks in 2005, and an ugly incident in 1985, when an Egyptian soldier killed several Israeli tourists.]

Shifting sands

I never got around to writing about Seymour Hersh's excellent New Yorker article, depicting the quiet shift in strategic priorities in the Middle East. (Unfortunately, as I said in my last post, the "shift" doesn't include a real shift in Iraq war strategy, or the Bush Administration's approach to foreign policy in general.) I'll say this much about Hersh: events are playing out in roughly the way he said they would.

Take, for example, the recent talks between Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Olmert and Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas. Sure, there's nothing substantive happening here. It's too early, and too much has to happen in secret before any important diplomatic steps can occur in public. The fact that both sides want to be seen talking, however, is significant. Neither Olmert or Abbas seems concerned about the appearance of talking, which is often controversial in itself, particularly if meetings raise the expectations of agreements beyond what is actually possible today.

According to Hersh, the Saudis have been working behind the scenes to push the Palestinians to come to some form of settlement with Israel. The second intifada has gone nowhere, and it's a costly distraction from the escalating clash between Sunnis and Saudis across the Middle East. Notice how quiet Hamas is, while Abbas is meeting with Olmert, and proposing the creation of a new "national security council" to solidify presidential power. Curious, isn't it, Watson, that the dog did not bark in the night?

Obviously, settling the Israeli-Palestinian conflict would be a good thing. However, there's a larger strategic context for Israel, the United States, and Saudi Arabia in which this is occurring. If Hersh is correct--and so far, the signs seem to be pointing in the direction he indicated--the US government is increasingly taking sides in the Sunni-Shia conflict.

There will be some upsides to that shift, such as putting pressure on the Israelis and Palestinians to come to a settlement. There will also be some downsides as well. Hersh describes them better than I can summarize here. I'll just say, if you were nostalgic for the 1980s--factional violence in Lebanon, Israel and Hezbollah at each others' throats, an escalating confrontation between the US and Iran,  the Saudis playing the happy third--you may enjoy the next few years. Then again, you might not.

A different sort of junket

Rather than question Senators McCain and Lindsey about their trip, the White House has saved its ire for the delegation of Democratic legislators visiting Syria.

"I think most Americans would not think that the leader of the Democratic Party in the Congress should be meeting with the heads of a state sponsor of terror," White House counselor Dan Bartlett said on CBS' "Face the Nation."

Yes, of course, we all get that, Mr. Bartlett. That's the very reason why the 9/11 Commission, the Baker Commission, and nearly everyone else in the national security commentariat says that the US government should be talking to the Syrians and Iranians. Who knows, with the excessive secrecy around everything the executive branch does, you might be talking to Bashir al-Assad right now. (In fact, we already know about the Administration's program to secretly "rendition" detainees to Syria, where they are imprisoned under horrific conditions.)

However, we've moved past the point where secret negotiations (assuming they exist) about Syria's support for Hezbollah and like-minded groups are producing results fast enough. We're also at a point, Mr. Bartlett, where anyone but your most dedicated followers believe a word you say. As painful as it sounds, it's time for some public diplomacy with Syria and Iran, particularly as the confrontation with Iran gets worse by the week.