Arms and influence

Ambassador Mfhrmhmmfrh!

I don't know what to feel about this story concerning Israel's hapless ambassador to El Salvador. Sure, it's funny, at first glance, but I can't help but feel sorry for the guy. For the rest of his life, every job interview will start, "Say, aren't you the guy...?"

The compound fallacy

IN THE NEWS
Here's something I noticed in the article about former President Bush's recent trip to Abu Dhabi, in which he heard some very harsh comments about his son, the current President:

Bush added: "How come everybody wants to come to the United States if the United States is so bad?"

Note to Bush Senior: Your son does not equal the United States.

Eighties nostalgia

IN THE NEWS
Israeli attacks into Lebanon have not only resumed, but intensified. Since the US government has demonstrated no interest in constraining the Israelis, the accidental killing of over 50 civilians, including 37 children, in the twice-tragic town of Qana, caused only a pause in the Israeli campaign. If the external power with the most leverage over Israel were at odds with the Olmert government's strategy, the Qana tragedy might have been the end of Israeli operations in Lebanon.

Escalating the attacks won't change the outcome of this war. Israel may destroy more missile launchers, kill more Hezbollah fighters, and change the physical conditions in southern Lebanon to make it less hospitable for Hezbollah. The war will not, however, destroy Hezbollah as an organization, or drive a wedge between Hezbollah and the Lebanese who support or tolerate its actions. Israel's strategy will also not cut off Hezbollah's sources of foreign support, from Syria and Iran.

That conclusion, of course, is based on the assumption that Israel will withdraw from Lebanon. It's possible, though unlikely, that the Olmert government might reach the same conclusion about the war, and decide a more permanent presence in southern Lebanon will be necessary to keep Hezbollah at bay. This "presence" could be less an occupation, and more a regular series of incursions. Either way, Israel would be switching from the defensive posture it had against Hezbollah to something else.

Whatever form this new strategy takes, it will not be as simple as a switch from the strategic defensive to the strategic offensive. If you send out regular patrols from a firebase, you're not attacking; you're simply doing a better job of defending a fixed position. Israel's options with Lebanon are much the same, writ large: either keep the point of engagement with Hezbollah where it was before this war, on the border or just inside Israel, or move it to some distance inside Lebanon.

Hezbollah, of course, would be forced to respond. The opportunities for kidnapping and bombarding Israeli civilians would diminish. The new operational target would be the Israeli military. Hezbollah's goals would be the same: eliminate or weaken its political rivals in Lebanon; manufacture the animosities and fears that drive more people to support a radical, militant Islamic party like Hezbollah; cement the assistance it receives from outside Israel. Rocket attacks on Israeli towns are one way to achieve these goals; returning Lebanon to the conditions of the 1980s is another.

In fact, the situation that Israel has created is arguably better for Hezbollah. Before the Israeli attacks, Hezbollah had lost political ground in Lebanon. The Hariri assassination led to the withdrawal of its Syrian patron. Not only did Hezbollah suffer politically for its close ties with Syria, but political parties that led or joined the "Cedar Revolution" gained in popularity and clout.

Today, with Israeli bombs dropping on Lebanon, questions of popularity or clout appear meaningless. The men and women who led the peaceful and successful campaign to kick out Syria are powerless to defend Lebanon against Israel. Syrian and Iranian aid to Hezbollah now seems necessary, not problematic. Rather than devising ways to disarm Hezbollah, rival politicians are hiding in basements or fleeing from the war zone.

The Middle East has changed since the Eighties, but Eighties nostalgia seems to be in. There isn't an Iran-Iraq War, but there is a major insurgency in Iraq, with Iran as an indirect participant. The Sunni-Shi'ite fault line doesn't run along the Iran-Iraq border, but it does fall somewhere between Samarra and Basra. Saudi Arabia and the emirates may be supporting Israel as a proxy for fighting Shi'ites, but their interests are no more aligned with the United States than they were twenty years ago. American forces may not be based in Saudi Arabia, but 140,000 of them are in Iraq for an indefinite period.
The US Navy may not be skirmishing with Libyan MIGs and Iranian patrol boats, but Americans are fighting a much nastier enemy, the different insurgent factions in Iraq, and suffering far higher casualties. Lebanon may not have devolved to the multi-sided civil war of the 1980s, with Israel thrown into the mix, but Lebanon has gone a few steps down that dark road. Syria may not be governed by Hafez al-Assad, who may not have ever been able to live peacefully with his neighbors, but the current president, his son, Bashr al-Assad, is undoubtedly seeing few incentives to pursue an accommodating foreign policy, particularly since the US government has declared its intention to depose him. Israel may not be fighting the first intifada, but it has been living with a second, far nastier Palestinian uprising for longer than the first intifada lasted.

As frustrating as the Middle East was before 2001, it is far more vexing today. George W. Bush's hastily-sketched blueprint for remodeling the Middle East was worse than irrelevant. It actively contributed to creating this "Forward Into The Past" situation in the Middle East. The occupation of Iraq, the freedom of action granted Israel, the rejection of diplomacy with Syria and Iraq, and no visible changes in the US relationship with Saudi Arabia and the Gulf emirates are all deliberate US foreign policy choices that have led, since 2001, to where the Middle East is today. In some ways, the situation is better than it was in the 1980s. For example, Lebanon has not fallen as far as it did in the early Eighties. In other ways, the Middle East today is far worse than it was in the 1980s.

How bad is it?

IN THE NEWS
Over the last few days, I've heard a consistent question about the escalating violence in Israel and Lebanon: How bad is it? The question has many aspects, so I'll address each one.

How much suffering are people in Lebanon, Israel, and the Occupied Territories likely to endure? Quite a bit. Hezbollah's strategy is largely a success, getting Israel to attack southern Lebanon. The attacks strengthen Hezbollah's political standing in Lebanon, and conflict makes it easier to get material support from Iran. Israel isn't likely to back off, even after any rescue of its two kidnapped soldiers. In the minds of Israeli leaders, larger issues are at stake, most importantly, yet another demonstration of how far Israel is willing to go to respond to Palestinian terrorism. Hamas certainly has little interest in slowing down the violence, especially since the crisis has knocked its political rivals in Palestinian politics completely out of the picture.

How bad is this conflict for Israeli interests? Very bad. Israel may have needed to respond to the kidnapping, but it certainly did not need to respond in quite this fashion. The assaults into the Gaza Strip and southern Lebanon make Israel look like the villain to many of its supporters, and they imply that any small band of militants can lure the Israelis into this kind of overreaction. There's even less likelihood that, any time soon, the Israelis will have a moderate Palestinian leadership with whom it can negotiate. The crisis has also deepened a political crisis in Israel itself: public opinion in the last several years has reflected despair with any hope for a final settlement with the Palestinians. Without some credible hope for a better future, Israeli politics is reduced to a near-tribal need for retribution.

How bad is this conflict for Palestinian interests? Very bad. Complete Palestinian sovereignty will not happen until the average Israeli feels physically secure. The recent crisis leads to exactly the opposite conclusion: the Israelis withdrew from Gaza; the Palestinians elected Hamas; and now Israel is fighting a regional war. Meanwhile, the crisis has made any alternative leadership—not just Fatah, but any independent, pro-settlement faction—seem to be on the wrong side of history.

How bad is this conflict for US interests? Very bad. Like Israel, the United States is certainly responsible for mishandling this crisis. The Bush Administration's obvious pro-Israel tilt—far greater than any presidential administration in the last few decades—was already a problem. Now, having passed on opportunities to pressure Israel harder and more visibly on settlements and other issues, the Administration is acting as though Israel bears no blame for events going beyond the kidnapping of two Israeli soldiers. Since the invasion of Iraq has failed to re-write the equations that govern Middle Eastern politics, we're back to the traditional role of the US as an honest broker—a role that President Bush is refusing to play. His recent unguarded statements aside, Bush seems to be weirdly fixated on Syria, which has both little to gain from the crisis, and no apparent contribution to creating it in the first place.

Will the conflict continue to escalate? Not immediately, unless Israel decides to repeat the mistake it made in the 1980s of turning border skirmishes in southern Lebanon into a rationale for invading the rest of the country. No Arab coalition is going to counterattack Israel to "save" the Palestinians. (Public rhetoric aside, many Arab governments privately doubt, given the Palestinians' track record of shooting themselves in the foot, that the Palestinians are even capable of being "saved.") The risk of involving other countries increases, however, if Hamas or Hezbollah successfully uses the territory of other neighboring countries—most likely, Jordan—to launch further attacks.

The best chance for ending this conflict lies with the United States. If the Bush Administration can convince the Olmert government that its recent actions have been counterproductive, there will be a chance for the violence to abate. The factions that should matter—Lebanese leaders who don't support Hezbollah effectively taking their country hostage; Palestinian leaders willing to continue down the long, difficult road towards a final settlement; Israeli leaders who think that maximum force is not the necessary response to every terrorist incident—can then have a chance to deal with thorny problems, such as pulling the fangs of Hezbollah and the most dedicated Palestinian militants. Outside countries can support any efforts, as frustratingly slow and qualified as progress often appears.

There is no alternate route to where we want this part of the Middle East to arrive. Further violence at the current level won't resolve anything. Escalating the violence—increasing their intensity, or broadening the theater of operations—won't eliminate Hezbollah or Hamas, and can only make a bad situation worse. Rather than grousing about how Kofi Annan should "make something happen," Bush needs to start using the carrots and sticks his own government can use with the parties involved—again, most critically, Israel.

The Barbary Wars, part I

IN THE NEWS
I've recently read Frank Lambert's The Barbary Wars: American Independence in the Atlantic World. I'll have a lot to say about this excellent little book, a real eye-opening account of the real issues for the United States during its first clash with Muslim states. The issues were not, as the "clash of civilizations" crowd might like to believe, an inescapable friction between Christianity and Islam, or powerful Western nations and the developing world.

I've read a lot of accounts of the Barbary Wars, and until now, none of them did justice to them. Some have focused on operational details, such as Stephen Decatur's famous raid; others have mentioned this on-again, off-again conflict as an annoying distraction from the real first foreign policy challenge to the American republic, relations with Britain and France. Lambert points out how both axes of conflict, with the Barbary states and Europe, rotated in the same direction: the early American republic's assertion of its sovereignty.

When the American colonies won their independence from Great Britain, they lost the protection of the British Navy. Consequently, American commerce in the Mediterranean became vulnerable to the predations of corsairs from Algiers, Tunis, and Tripoli. American leaders struggled with this direct challenge from the Barbary states, and the indirect challenge from Great Britain, which frequently encouraged the corsairs to attack American ships. Even a single pirate attack could drive shipping insurance through the roof, making it economically impractical to continue American trade through the lucrative Mediterranean shipping routes. Obviously, these attacks also humiliated the United States, which was more than just an image problem. If the United States could not protect its citizens and property from a gaggle of pirates, how then would the great European nations treat the United States, except as a semi-comical minor power? Since the United States was regularly clashing with Britain and France on the high seas, the importance of the Barbary Wars grew beyond just trade in the Mediterranean.

The Barbary Wars echo many of the problems the United States faces today in the Middle East. The main enemy operates as a loose, flexible network that is difficult to track down and defeat. Barbary pirates operated in swift vessels that could operate in shallow waters, letting them slip by the initial American blockades. The efforts of European navies to defeat the Barbary states provided little comfort. European warships failed to run the elusive pirate ships to heel. Consequently, bombarding the cities of Algiers, Tunis, and Tripoli accomplished very little. Even when Europeans captured or sank a corsair ship, another enterprising privateer captain took his place.

European countries eventually accepted the situation, preferring to pay tribute and ransom, rather than engage in pointless and expensive military campaigns. However, the United States had a much harder time swallowing this idea. "Millions for defense, and not a penny for tribute" fit American views better than making a humiliating and expensive peace with the Barbary states. Leaving American idealism out of the picture, the cost of tribute proved to be outrageously high, and the Barbary states regularly broke agreements. The turnover rate for the leaders of these "weak states" was high, and any new dey or bashaw usually thanked his followers by giving them the license to resume piracy.

The choices facing Adams, Jefferson, and Madison resembled the ones posed to later Presidents dealing with the Near East and North Africa. Should the United States reach some accommodation with these countries, such as it did in modern times with Saudi Arabia? Should it contain its more aggressive enemies, such as Iraq and Libya? Or should it  "go for the throat," as the current President did with Iraq?

This first post seeks only to point out the meaningful parallels between the Barbary Wars and contemporary conflicts. I'll talk about the conclusions we might draw in some follow-up posts.

The Alliance for Something

IN THE NEWS
Between the 9/11 attacks and the invasion of Iraq, there was a brief discussion within media and policy circles about a "Marshall Plan for the Middle East." Given the obvious differences between Europe in the 1940s and the Middle East today, it was easy to dismiss the idea. The Middle East is far less economically developed, and democracy is far too infrequent. A Marshall Plan-like investment in countries like Egypt, Saudi Arabia, and Yemen looked like a bad investment, so people quickly discarded the idea.

However, the Marshall Plan may have been the wrong starting point. Later in the Cold War, the United States pondered what to do about a troublesome region that was also economically undeveloped, bereft of democracy and the rule of law, and the source for far more bad news than good. Revolutionaries capitalized on the weakness of regimes and the discontent within societies. Escalating revolutionary and counterrevolutionary violence was the predictable result. The revolutionaries in this region made common cause with America's enemies, threatening US interests on the periphery.

The region in question was Latin America, and the first vigorous respose the United States made to these problems was the Alliance for Progress. Far from ignoring the differences between Europe and Latin America, the Kennedy Administration made a practical case for focusing American attention and resources on countries that faced more intractable problems than, say, post-war Italy and France.

Like the Middle East today, every country in the Middle East was not alike. For example, there were extremes of wealth and poverty both within societies and between countries. Relatively cosmopolitan countries like Argentina--very European in some aspects, if you squinted a bit--contrasted sharply with vastly poorer countries like Honduras. Within even the poorest countries, wealthy elites defended their privileged position versus a large, itinerant population. While the sons and daughters of this elite attended American and European universities, the average person endured privations that were practically unthinkable in New York, London, and Paris. Sound familiar?

Even if the Alliance for Progress had failed to "fix" the deeply-rooted problems of Latin America, the program kept American foreign policy focused on the region beyond momentary crises. The Kennedy Administration had a specific program in mind, and a national security rationale for pursuing it. The American public could rally behind this program, which indirectly gave Americans reasons to stay "engaged" with Latin America, despite its knotty problems.

The United States always suffers from a low attention span in foreign affairs. A superpower always finds it challenging to stay focused on any one region for very long, while troubles brew in other parts of the world. While Latin America dropped off the radar in the 1970s, it came back with a vengeance in the 1980s. A President as different from Kennedy as Ronald Reagan was could pick up where the Alliance for Progress left off, with the same consensus about why Latin America matters (even if Reagan's approach to handling Latin America was far different than Kennedy's).

Without something like the Alliance for Progress, the disappointment in Iraq may turn into a larger impatience with the Middle East. The problems within and between countries like Iran and Iraq, Egypt and Lebanon, Saudi Arabia and Syria are, in fact, deeply-rooted. The United States cannot topple these problems with a single swing of an axe. Framed correctly, however, the challenge of the Middle East can become exactly the sort of challenge Americans are willing to face--even when the successes are not always easy to identify.

The Hamas "landslide"

IN THE NEWS
Fruits and Votes has features this interesting post about the Palestinian election. It's clear that many Palestinians were sick to death of Fatah's corruption--something that people in Washington, DC should not have been surprised to learn. However, the electoral system played its part in the lopsided Hamas victory.

Weapons of mensch destruction

IN THE NEWS
Armchair Generalist rightly points out that our government usually omits Israel when discussing the nuclear arms race in the Middle East and the Indian subcontinent. While you might dismiss the omission, I think it's worth holding the US government's feet to the fire on this point. First of all, our public diplomacy in the Middle East has proven ineffective since 9/11, in large part because of the Bush Administration's tilt (more like a tree falling, actually) in the direction of Israel.

Of course, Israel developed this program because of multiple attacks on its territory, often aiming to wipe Israel off the map. Of course, you could easily justify the United States refusing to bring it up when it was still unconfirmed. However, everyone knows that Israel has a nuclear weapons program, so what's the point of overlooking it, other than to cement the impression that the Bush Administration sees little or no wrong in Israeli policies?

Mentioning the Israeli nuclear program in the same breath as its Iranian program can only
help Israel. The Israelis started the program when they faced the risk of losing a conventional war of national survival against Syria, Iraq, Egypt, and any other Arab country that wanted a piece of the action. It continued it through the time when the Ba'ath regime in Iraq was pursuing its own nuclear program at the same time it was trying to whip up pan-Arab support with aggressive anti-Israeli statements. And now, Israel has a deterrent against the Iranian bomb. Even if you think that the Israelis were wrong in how they pursued their nuclear ambitions--for example, they collaborated with the apartheid regime in South Africa, which gave them the rights to test a weapon off the African coast--you can still see why the Israelis felt they needed The Bomb.

Turkey at the crossroads

IN THE NEWS
The November issue of Current History has an excellent article about the strained relations between Turkey and the United States. The Iraq invasion has thrown a spanner into the works: where once the two NATO allies cooperated closely on maintaining the no-fly zone in northern Iraq, curbing attacks by Kurdish radicals, and dealing with Afghanistan during and after the 2001 invasion, Turkey and the United States are now at odds over many of these issues.

For example, the over-extended counterinsurgency campaign in Iraq has shifted resources away from helping the Turks deal with the PKK, a Kurdish independence group responsible for bombing vacation resorts and other targets in Anatolia. The current government of Turkey, formed by the Justice and Development Party (AK) after the November 2002 elections, has been trying to deal with the Kurdish problem while reassuring the  army, the chief guarantor of a secular Turkish government, that the AK has no intention of imposing Shari'a law on the country. The Justice and Development Party's leaders need the army, but it can't let it operate without constraint. While the generals may want to deal with the Kurdish problem directly, they already created a major diplomatic incident during one botched covert operation against the PKK. The Justice and Development Party's inexperience has contributed to this messy situation, making it harder for the Party to collaborate with the military and the United States.

However, these are the unavoidable side-effects of recent events, such as the invasion of Iraq and the election of the Justice and Development Party. Much of the strain between Ankara and Washington, however, is eminently avoidable, as the Current History article explains. For example, the American request to position ground forces in Turkey to open a northern front in the 2003 invasion of Iraq was clearly a mistake. The northern front wasn't militarily necessary, as US military leaders themselves admit, and it created a highly-charged situation in both Turkish politics and US-Turkish relations. (See the article or other sources for details.)

The biggest fault line in the relationship falls along the Bush Administration's policy of pre-emptive war. Turks are outraged over the US claim that, even when there's only a whiff of a future threat from a country, it reserves the right to attack it. The choice of Iraq as the first exercise of this principle has also antagonized the Turks. If most of the 9/11 hijackers were Saudis, why not put Saudi Arabia on this list? If the point of US foreign policy is regime change, when will the Administration put more pressure on Israel to grant the Palestinians their own state? Given the Iraq invasion was originally justified on the basis of WMDs that didn't exist, might the United States blunder into another war, with even more bad consequences for the US relationship with Turkey? And why can't US leaders stop making dumb statements about how Turkey, a steadfastly secular regime since 1922, is a model Islamic state?

The good news is that a change in US doctrine can dramatically improve relations with Turkey. The bad news, of course, is that the Bush Administration, lashing out against increasing criticism against its post-9/11 foreign policy, doesn't seem inclined to reconsider.

Egypt, by an Egyptian

IN THE NEWS
Thanks to praktike for the pointer to this excellent blog by an Egyptian woman. As she says, there is no homogeneous "man or woman in the street" way of understanding a country like Egypt. However, exposing yourself to the words of a few thoughtful Middle Easterners is at least a start.

P.S. I miss the blog, The Religious Policeman. I wish he'd start writing again.