European Elections: Is the Center Holding?
Elections in Western parliamentary systems are always about the center. The standard situation is one in which there are two dominant parties – one somewhat right of center and one somewhat left of center. There are differences between the policies these parties pursue when in office, but there are also enormous similarities. The election never reflects a profound political split. Rather, it is about recentering the center – what is to be considered the leverage point in the seesaw between the parties.
The rarer situation is about repudiating the center, and therefore repudiating the two erstwhile principal parties that revolve around the center. Such a result throws national politics into major turmoil, and sometimes has considerable impact outside the country as well.
The recent elections in France and Greece illustrate these two situations well. In France, the Socialists defeated the conservative UMP, and have indeed recentered the center. In the larger chaotic situation of the world-system, and particularly that of the European Union, recentering the center in France will have a great impact. But do not expect the actual policies of François Hollande to be radically different from those of Nicolas Sarkozy.
In Greece, quite the contrary happened. The center was dramatically repudiated. Both major parties – the conservative New Democracy and the socialist PASOK – lost more than half the votes they normally had. Their combined total went from about two-thirds of the votes to one-third. PASOK even was reduced to third place, outvoted by a further left coalition of parties, Syriza, which was generally considered the big victor in the election. The basic issue of the elections was the austerity program imposed on Greece by outside forces, and most unflinchingly by Germany. All the parties except the two traditional major parties called for repudiating the austerity measures. The leader of Syriza, Alexis Tsirpas, asserted that the election results made the government’s commitment to the austerity program “null and void.”
What will happen in the next few months? After all three parties with the most votes in Greece – New Democracy, Syriza, and PASOK – have failed to form a government, we are moving to new elections. Syriza may even come in first next time. Since the Greek government will not get further aid, it will have to default on its loans. The German foreign minister has already threatened them with expulsion from the euro zone. There is however no legal way to do this. And since the Greek public seems to think that exiting from the euro zone would solve nothing and probably make matters worse, there will be a deadlock. The Greeks will suffer enormously. But so will many European banks. And so will the German population, even if they are not yet aware of this.
Meanwhile, there will have been new elections in France for the legislature. Observers predict a strong Socialist victory, with however a significant contingent of France’s equivalent of Syriza, the Front de Gauche. The one clear position of Hollande is that growth in Europe must take priority over austerity – a direct challenge to the current German position. So the center will have been further recentered leftward.
The Germans are now under enormous pressure. There is internal discontent leading to electoral losses by Chancellor Merkel’s party, the CDU, and its neoliberal coalition partner, the FDP. The other social-democratic parties in Europe have been encouraged by Hollande’s victory to move somewhat leftward. The two conservative parties in the Italian government coalition have both suffered severe losses in the May municipal elections. There is also, strangely but importantly, pressure by the United States on Germany to move in the direction that Hollande is advocating.
The Germans might resist all of this – until May 31, the date of the Irish referendum. The Irish government was the only member of the Eurozone that made its agreement to the new austerity treaty on which Merkel had insisted, with the support of Sarkozy, contingent on a referendum. The polls had been showing that it was a close call, but the Irish government had felt confident it could win a yes vote. Hollande’s victory may now shift enough voters so that the Irish vote is negative, in which case the austerity treaty is void. This will undermine the German position far more than the Greek repudiation of the center.
What will happen then? The key is what happens in German political life. Angela Merkel, like any good political leader, tries to see which way the wind is blowing. Her language is therefore already beginning to evolve. She may even secretly welcome the outside pressure to do what, from Germany’s own narrow point of view, is the sensible thing, and shore up purchasing power (for German goods, among other things) in the rest of the European Union.
If Germany moves in that direction, the euro and the European Union will survive, and continue to be a major (if chastened) actor on the geopolitical scene. Worldwide, the recentering of Europe as a whole will however not encrust a status quo but rather speed up the geopolitical realignments that are inevitable. Nonetheless, German recentering may help Europe to resist better the coming tsunami of the collapse of sovereign funds and of the dollar as reserve currency.
The entire world is swimming in very choppy waters. Germany may soon join the list of states that are beginning to understand how to navigate amidst chaos. Inflexible governments are their own worst enemy.
May Day: The Return of the Trade-Unions?
Organizing trade unions was a quite radical idea as late as the first half of the nineteenth century. They were illegal almost everywhere. So when the laws prohibiting them were repealed in some European countries, North America, and Australia in the second half of the nineteenth century, it was intended as a concession to the pressures of the workers, actually the urban workers, in the hope and expectation that the working classes would then be less radical in their demands.
In most countries, the trade unions worked closely with the socialist and labor political parties that were coming into existence at the same time. The trade unions were faced with many of the same issues of strategy as the socialist and labor parties. The most important of these issues was whether and in what way they would participate in the electoral processes. As we know, most of them decided they should participate and seek power within state structures.
In addition, the trade unions, just like the socialist and labor parties, decided that the only way they could become strong was for them to employ full-time organizers, which meant creating a bureaucracy that ran the organization. As in the case of all bureaucracies, those holding such posts came to have material and political interests that were not necessarily the same as those of the workers who were their members.
The trade unions became state-oriented, especially since their own organizations were defined as national organizations. They usually proclaimed a nominal internationalism – solidarity with trade unions in other countries. But the internationalism always took second place to protecting the interests of workers and the trade unions in their state.
Even though the trade unions toned down their most radical activities, employers were still resistant to the formation of trade unions in their enterprise. The trade unions had to struggle constantly to obtain the legislation that would permit them to organize, and to win favorable accords in negotiations with the employers. Slowly, slowly, trade unions grew stronger.
The 25-30 years following the end of the Second World War were exceptionally good ones for trade unions worldwide. Their membership numbers and percentages grew, and the benefits they could obtain from the employers grew considerably as well. The incredible expansion of the world-economy during this period created a significant growth in capitalist profits. This meant that, for many employers, work stoppages of any kind were more costly than acceding to trade union demands for greater benefits.
The very favorable situation for trade unions came at a price. Trade unions generally repudiated all remaining radical rhetoric and activities, replacing it with various modes of cooperation with the employers and governments. This often included no-strike pledges for the length of the contracts they had signed.
The trade unions in the wealthier states were therefore politically and psychologically unprepared for the post-1970 worldwide downturn in economic growth and stagnation in capital accumulation. The employers in the wealthiest countries (and more generally, the world right) ceased acceding to workers’ demands for improved benefits. Quite the contrary, they sought to reduce benefits, using the threat of job displacement as a major weapon. They promoted anti-union legislation.
Generally speaking, over the past forty years, this anti-union campaign was successful. Trade unions fought a difficult and often losing battle to retain benefits. Wage levels went down. And membership in trade unions went down sharply. The trade unions often reacted by becoming still more accommodating to employer demands. It didn’t seem to help very much.
Meanwhile, in the countries to which industrial production gravitated (which have recently been called “emerging” countries), initial repression of trade unions led to their radicalization, and they joined in efforts to overthrow oppressive regimes (as in South Korea, South Africa, and Brazil). The trade unions linked themselves to left-of-center parties, which eventually came to power in these countries. But once these parties were in power, the trade unions muted their more radical stances.
The so-called financial crisis since 2007 changed all this. The world saw the emergence of new kinds of radical movements such as Occupy, the indignados, Oxi, and others. And suddenly, we saw trade unions fighting back with a new vigor, and participating in the general uprisings of the working strata, especially since breaking the unions was one of the continuing efforts of rightwing political forces.
Now came the new dilemma. The cultures of the new radical movements and that of the trade unions were quite different. The new movements were “horizontalist” – that is, they believed in bottom-up movements that were not state-oriented, and eschewed the creation of organizational hierarchies. The trade unions were “verticalist” and emphasized planning, discipline, and balanced tactics, coordinated by the central structures.
Yet, clearly, it was in the interest of the trade unions and the new radical movements to work together, or so many of them thought. But what did working together mean? Which of the two cultures would prevail in any cooperation? This has become a matter of major debate on both sides – a debate in which there are some who are intransigent and others who are looking for modes of combining efforts.
The strength of the horizontalist forces is that they can engage the energies and efforts of persons who hitherto have remained passive, either out of a sense of political impotence or a lack of clarity about what was going on and what could be achieved. There is no question that the horizontalist movements have proved very successful so far in doing this. They have clearer long-term strategic vision than the trade unions.
The strength of the trade unions is that they can mobilize a relatively disciplined group of persons and a relatively significant amount of money to throw into the everyday battles that are being fought in communities across the world. They have clearer short-term tactical vision than the horizontalist movements.
May Day celebrates the historic struggle. During a trade-union rally for an eight-hour day in Haymarket Square in Chicago in May 1886, someone threw a bomb, after which some policemen and some civilians were killed. The state accused the “anarchists” and hanged some of them. Haymarket became a symbol for the nascent trade union movement worldwide, which proclaimed May Day to mark it (everywhere but in the United States itself). The “anarchists” were in fact falsely accused and history has exonerated them. But out of their “radical” demands for an eight-hour day, the trade unions were strengthened in their attempts to organize.
We shall see if May Day 2012 will have brought together again the horizontalist and verticalist wings of the struggle against inequalities in the existing world-system. It is only in the combination of a radicalized trade union movement and tactically disciplined horiontalist movements that either will achieve its objectives.
Limping Out of Afghanistan
The two candidates for the U.S. presidency seem to be trying to outshout each other concerning Iran, Syria, and Israel/Palestine. Each is claiming he is doing more to support the same objectives. Isn’t it therefore strange that no similar verbal contest is going on at the moment concerning Afghanistan?
Not so long ago, we were witness to the same Democratic-Republican game about Afghanistan. Which party was the more macho? Remember the concept that a “surge” in troops would win the war, a concept embraced by President Obama in his speech to the U.S. Military Academy in December 2009. Now all of a sudden, since March 2012, it seems to have become a subject no one wants to espouse too loudly.
There are some simple explanations. In the longest war that the United States has ever waged, the war in Afghanistan, the United States has precious little to show for it. The designated enemy, the Taliban, constitute an ever-resilient force, particularly of course in the Pashtun areas, which constitute the largest single ethnic zone in the country.
The United States more or less single-handedly imposed Hamid Karzai, a Pashtun but not a Taliban, as president of Afghanistan. Karzai was not, is not, appreciated by the leaders of the various other ethnic zones in the north and west of the country, who have tried over the years to oust him. These other groups find support in some external powers: Russia, Iran, and India, all of which are as determined as the United States to prevent the return to power of the Taliban. But the United States won’t work with Iran, is doubtful about working with Russia, and doesn’t seem to co-ordinate with India.
In February 2012, some Korans were burned by U.S. soldiers, which led to violent public protests in Afghanistan. Then 16 Afghan children, women, and men were massacred by a U.S. soldier. The United States apologized for both of these, but that hardly calmed the storm. On March 18, President Karzai denounced the Americans in Afghanistan as “demons” engaged in “Satanic acts.” He said Afghanistan was beset by two demons – the Taliban and the Americans.
The New York Times cited an anonymous European diplomat as saying: “Never in history has any superpower spent so much money, sent so many troops to a country, and had so little influence over what its president says and does.”
The United States, trying to salvage its position a little bit, started pulling back. Secretary of Defense Leon Panetta had already said in February that the United States would step back from a combat role not in the end of 2014 as originally planned but by mid-2013. In early April, the United States went further. It announced that it was handing over control of special operations missions (for example, using drones and night raids) to Afghan forces. The U.S. troops would now play only a “supporting” role.
Afghanistan’s Foreign Minister, Zalmai Rassoul, did not sound overly grateful. He announced that, once U.S. and NATO troops left in 2014, Afghanistan would not allow its territory to be a launching pad for drone attacks against Pakistan.
The Pakistanis then delivered a further jab at the United States. On April 12, the parliament approved “unanimously” a list of conditions for improving U.S.-Pakistan relations and reopening the NATO supply routes to Afghanistan. They included an end to drone attacks on Pakistani territory and an “unconditional apology” for killing 24 Pakistani troops in a NATO airstrike in November 2011. The United States is resisting these conditions. But given the now clear divergence of U.S. and Pakistani policy objectives in Afghanistan, it is not clear that the United States can prevail.
Then on April 4, Lawrence Korb, who had been Assistant Secretary of Defense in the Reagan administration, published an article with the headline “Time to let Karzai kick us out.” Korb argued that the United States since 1945 has been “much better at starting wars than ending them satisfactorily.” He pointed to what he considered the unnecessary loss of lives in the last two years of the Korean and Vietnam wars.
The exception, he argued, was Iraq, where the United States has withdrawn because “Iraqi Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki left us no choice.” He cheered: “In Iraq, the U.S. government got lucky.” His conclusion: “Just as al-Maliki forced us to do the right thing, we should allow Karzai to take control of his country as soon as he wants.” Korb is a conservative Republican analyst, who sees maximum advantage to the United States in being forced out of Afghanistan as soon as possible.
Korb is not alone. The Washington Post/ABC News poll, released on April 12, shows that, only 30% of the population say that the war has been worth fighting, and even more remarkably, for the first time, a majority of Republicans agree that it has not been worth it. Two things are happening in terms of U.S. public opinion. First, the Afghans do not seem to be cheering U.S. efforts or military losses. Quite the opposite. Machismo is yielding place in the United States to withdrawal after rebuff. And, secondly, the costs of the war in Afghanistan are astronomical at a moment when the United States, and most particularly conservative Republicans, is seeking to reduce expenditures drastically.
My prediction: Quietly, but surely, President Obama is going to follow Lawrence Korb’s advice.
Elections in France and the United States:The Same and So Very Different
In 2012, two very important and highly contested presidential elections are taking place in France (April 22) and the United States (November 6). Virtually the same issues are being debated in each country, and almost in the same manner. And in both countries, the president is the most powerful political figure. But there is one very great difference between the two: not ideology but the rules of the election. Different rules breed strikingly different electoral tactics.
In both countries, there are two major parties which have historically presented themselves as essentially center-right versus center-left. Observers of most political persuasions agree that the actual policies of the two parties, when in power, are not that different. Yet there do exist a few differences that each feels is crucial, and these differences motivate each group to pursue presidential elections ferociously.
In both countries, there exists what might be called an extreme right and a radical left. The extreme right and the radical left denounce the two “centrist” parties as tweedledum and tweedledee, and call for a political platform that is really right and really left. This plays out however in a quite different manner because of the very different electoral systems.
In the United States, the election takes place in 50 separate units – the states – on a winner-take-all basis for a specific number of votes in what is called an “electoral college.” This system makes it extremely difficult for “third parties” to have any real impact on the decision of who gets elected. Still, there are always some who are unmoved by this and run candidates anyway. Sometimes doing this does affect the results in a few states, and thereby affects the final results. For example, in 2000, some analysts argue that the candidacy of Ralph Nader took enough votes away from the Democratic candidate, Al Gore, to deprive him of electoral victory in two states. And therefore, it is sometimes said, Nader’s candidacy resulted in Bush’s election.
In the past, the extreme right in the United States tended to abstain from electoral participation on the grounds that the Republican Party was too “liberal” for their taste. But about twenty years ago, this group decided that the way to affect the outcome was to go inside the Republican Party and force it, by contesting Republicans that were too “centrist” in party primaries, to choose more “conservative” candidates. These days, this group goes largely by the label of the “Tea Party.” This “entry”-tactic has been highly successful, and the Republican Party has indeed moved significantly to the right in the last dozen years or so.
In France, elections work quite differently. For one thing, they are national; there are no electoral sub-units. For a second, unless a candidate receives more than 50% of the vote, there is always a second round of elections, in which the two parties with the largest percentages on the first ballot are the only choice that is offered.
This system allows, indeed encourages, groups of all political varieties to present a presidential candidate in the first round, since the voters know that they can give their vote on the second round to one of the two principal parties. The first round serves as a demonstration of popular strength, serving primarily to affect, they hope, the policies of the winning party after the second round.
The French system does have one flaw. Both major parties must get enough votes to be in the second round. In 2002, and quite exceptionally, the left-center party, the Socialists, fell just behind the far right party, the Front National, and so was eliminated. Therefore, this year, the Socialists are emphasizing the importance of the “vote utile” (the “useful vote”) so that this doesn’t happen again. The trauma of 2000 for the Democrats in the United States is matched by the trauma of 2002 for the Socialists in France.
Where does this leave us? In the United States, the eventual Republican candidate will present himself as “very” conservative thanks to the pressures of the Tea Party, and thereby risks losing the votes of so-called moderates, who are more “centrist.” The Democratic candidate, who will be President Obama, has disillusioned many of his more ardent supporters by moving strikingly to the right during his first term. He is now trying to win them back by a more “populist” platform, but worries that, in the process, he may lose some of those “disillusioned” Republican moderates. In 2012, there are no significant minor party candidates in view.
In France, the situation is more complicated. The present polls show that the two major party candidates – Nicolas Sarkozy for the right-center party, the UMP, and François Hollande for the left-center party, the Socialists – are running almost even on the first round. However, each has only somewhat fewer than 30% of the vote. The remaining 40-50% are expected to split their votes primarily among three other candidates: Martine LePen for the far right Front National, François Bayrou for a centrist-centrist party (condemning both the UMP and the Socialists for being insufficiently centrist), and Jean-Paul Melenchon for the Left Front who has managed to rally around him most of the radical left votes despite the participation of a number of other far left parties on the ballot.
LePen, Bayrou, and Melenchon are each polling between 14-18% of the votes at the moment. Hence none of them seems likely to get into the second round. Melenchon’s showing has been the great surprise of the election. But it is also predicted that, if the polls show Hollande going down by too much, perhaps half of his present supporters will vote Hollande rather than Melenchon in order not to risk that either LePen or Bayrou edge Hollande out.
However, if Melenchon gets a large vote and Hollande is nonetheless in the second round, two things will be true. One, there will have been a clear message to the Socialists that politically they must move left. And secondly, most Melenchon voters will vote for Hollande on the second round. On the right, however, most LePen voters will be reluctant to vote Sarkozy, and the Front National will not recommend this. Were they to do so, they would undermine the very basis for their existence.
The French system seems to work better for the radical left. The U.S. system seems to work better for the far right. But this is primarily because of different electoral rules.
Israel: Its Fantasies and Its Realities
Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu of Israel visited the United States in the beginning of March 2012. He came to say, once again, that a nuclear Iran would pose an existential threat to Israel, and that Israel reserved the right to take timely action to counter this. President Obama asserted just as vigorously that, yes, a nuclear Iran would pose an existential threat to Israel, and that the United States could not countenance this, but that the timing of Netanyahu was off. Non-military action against Iran should be exhausted first before thinking of other action.
Let us examine the premises. Why would Iran, with nuclear weapons, pose an existential threat to Israel? That is, who believes that, if Iran had nuclear weapons, the Iranian authorities would use them to bomb Israel? Actually, no one in any position of responsibility in Israel, in the United States, or elsewhere in the world believes this. They only say they do.
Let us start with the ostensible arguments. Israeli officials point to the fact that Pres. Ahmadinejad and others have said that they wish to “wipe out” (or some such phrase) Israel. Of course, many experts have pointed out that the translation is incorrect. But even if it were accurate, does that do anything more than repeat the long-standing position of large numbers of people in the Middle East opposing the concept of a Jewish state and favoring various other outcomes to the long-standing dispute?
Why on earth would Iran bomb Israel? They would kill at least as many Arabs as Israelis, if they did. They would be subject to immediate retaliation by Israel, which is well-armed in nuclear weapons. Iran bombing Israel is a fantasy that no responsible leader believes.
So, if they don’t believe it, why do they say it? The answer seems to me clear. Were Iran finally to have a few nuclear weapons, it would indeed change something. It would change the geopolitical balance in the Middle East and weaken politically the position of Israel. It would probably also lead to the rapid acquisition of nuclear weapons by a number of other countries. I think of Saudi Arabia, Egypt, and Turkey, to begin with.
Were either Israel or the United States to bomb Iran preemptively, there would be enormous political consequences immediately. First of all, it would almost certainly be relatively inefficacious in terms of stopping the Iranian project. Secondly, it would weaken politically the position of both Israel and the United States in the whole world. The two reasons together explain why there is so much opposition by the military and intelligence services of both Israel and the United States to the whole military discourse. What they fear is that the discourse would catch on and permit some political leaders not presently controlling the Israeli or U.S. governments to be foolish enough to start the war.
What Israel and the United States are locked into is a lose-lose situation. Whatever they do, they will lose politically. I believe they are aware of this, and neither Netanyahu nor Obama can figure out what really to do, and how to maintain their own political interests internally. So they spend their time blaming each other and blackmailing each other. In the meantime, the Iranian leadership uses the discourse to wave the patriotic banners and strengthen its internal position, which had been under serious assault not so long ago.
Meanwhile, back to Palestine, which remains a real issue for Israel, not a fantasy issue. Hamas has now made the decision to link its strategy to Egypt and the Muslim Brotherhood, which seems to be on the point of controlling the Egyptian government. Fatah clearly fears, correctly, that it might lose control of the West Bank to Hamas. Caught between Hamas and the U.S. government, President Abbas of the Palestine Authority is also in a lose-lose position and also does not know what to do. So he dithers, which does not seem to be the best survival tactic.
The future is with the Palestinian street. And I simply do not believe that it can be kept quiescent. Can Israel come to terms with the Palestinian street? We shall soon find out.
The Syrian Impasse
Bachar al-Assad has risen to the heights of being one of the least popular men in the world. He is denounced as a tyrant, indeed a very bloody tyrant, by almost everyone. Even those governments that refuse to denounce him seem to be counseling him to curb his repressive ways and to make some sort of political concessions to his internal opponents.
So, how is it that he ignores all this advice and proceeds to continue to use maximum force to continue political control of Syria? Why is there no outside intervention to force his removal from office? To answer these questions, let us start with assessing his strengths. To start with, he has a reasonably strong army, and up to now, with a few exceptions, the army and other structures of force in the country have stayed loyal to the regime. Secondly, he still seems to command the support of at least half of the population in what is increasingly being described as a civil war.
The key government posts and the officer corps are in the hands of the Alawi, a branch of Shi’a Islam. The Alawi are a minority of the population and certainly fear what would happen to them if the opposition forces, largely Sunni, were to come to power. In addition, the other significant minority forces – the Christians, the Druze, and the Kurds – seem to be equally wary of a Sunni government. Finally, the large merchant bourgeoisie have yet to turn against Assad and the Baath regime.
But is this really enough? If this were all, I doubt that Assad could really hold out much longer. The regime is being squeezed economically. The opposition Free Syrian Army is being fed arms by Iraqi Sunnis and probably Qatar. And the chorus of denunciations in the world press and by politicians of all stripes grows louder by the day
Yet, I don’t think that, a year or two from now, we will find that Assad is gone or the regime basically changed. The reason is that those who are denouncing him the loudest do not really want him to go. Let us take them one by one.
Saudi Arabia: The Foreign Minister told the New York Times that “violence had to be stopped and the Syrian government not given any more chances.” This sounds really strong until you notice that he added that “international intervention had to be ruled out.” The fact is that Saudi Arabia wants the credit of opposing Assad but is very afraid of a successor government. It knows that in a post-Assad (probably fairly anarchic) Syria, al-Qaeda would find a base. And the Saudis know that al-Qaeda’s number one objective is to overthrow the Saudi regime. Ergo, “no international intervention.”
Israel: Yes, the Israelis continue to obsess about Iran. And yes, Baathist Syria continues to be an Iran-friendly power. But when all is said and done, Syria has been a relatively quiet Arab neighbor, an island of stability for the Israelis. Yes, the Syrians aid Hezbollah, but Hezbollah too has been relatively quiet. Why would the Israelis really want to take the risk of a turbulent post-Baathist Syria? Who would then wield power, and might they not have to improve their credentials by expanding jihad against Israel? And wouldn’t the fall of Assad lead to upsetting the relative quiet and stability that Lebanon now seems to enjoy, and might this not end up with the further strengthening and renewed radicalism of Hezbollah? Israel has a lot to lose, and not too much to gain, if Assad falls.
The United States: The U.S. government talks a good line. But have you noticed how wary it is in practice? The Washington Post headlined an article on Feb. 11, “As carnage builds, U.S. sees `no good options’ on Syria.” The story points out that the U.S. government has “no appetite for a military intervention.” No appetite, despite the pressure of neocon intellectuals like Charles Krauthammer who is honest enough to admit “it’s not just about freedom.” It’s really, he says, about undoing the regime in Iran.
But isn’t that exactly why Obama and his advisors see no good options? They were pressured into the Libyan operation. The U.S. didn’t lose many lives, but did they really gain geopolitical advantage as a result? Is the new Libyan regime, if one can say there is a new Libyan regime, something better? Or is this the beginning of a long internal instability, as Iraq has turned out to be?
So, when Russia vetoed the U.N. resolution on Syria, I can imagine a sigh of relief in Washington. The pressure to up the ante and begin a Libyan-style intervention was lifted. Obama was protected against Republican harassment on Syria by the Russian veto. And Susan Rice, the U.S. Ambassador to the United Nations, could shift all blame to the Russians. They were “disgusting,” she said, oh so diplomatically.
France: Always nostalgic for their once-dominant role in Syria, Foreign Minister Alain Juppé shouts and denounces. But troops? You’ve got to be kidding. There’s an election coming up, and sending troops would not be at all popular, especially since this would be no piece of cake, as was Libya.
Turkey: Turkey has improved its relations with the Arab world incredibly in the last decade. It’s definitely unhappy about the civil war on its borders. It would love to see some kind of political compromise. But Foreign Minister Ahmet Davutoglu is quoted as guaranteeing that “Turkey is not providing arms or support to army defectors.” Turkey wants essentially to be friends to all sides. And besides, Turkey has its own Kurdish question, and Syria might offer active support, which hitherto it has refrained from doing.
So, who wants to intervene in Syria? Perhaps Qatar. But Qatar, however wealthy it is, is scarcely a major military power. The bottom line is that, however loud the rhetoric and however ugly the civil war, no one really, really wants Assad to go. So, in all probability, he will stay.
The Bin Laden Trap: One Down, One to Go
In October, 2001, just after 9/11, I wrote the following:
“The regimes in [Pakistan and Saudi Arabia] are based on a coalition of support from pro-Western modernizing elites and an extremely conservative, popularly-based Islamic establishment. The regimes have maintained their stability because they have been able to juggle this combination. And they have been able to do so because of the ambivalence of their policies and their public pronouncements.
“The United States is now saying, away with ambiguities. The U.S. may prevail, no doubt. But in the process, the regimes in Saudi Arabia and Pakistan may find that their popular base is irremediably eroded….
“Consider that this may have been bin Laden’s plan. His own suicide mission may have been to lead the United States into this trap.”
I believe that Bin Laden has now achieved what he intended in Pakistan. The end of ambiguities has meant that Pakistan is no longer operating geopolitically in the interests of the United States. Quite to the contrary! It has taken its distances, and is pursuing policies in Afghanistan and elsewhere that the United States strongly opposes. One down, one to go.
What is happening in Saudi Arabia? There is no question that Saudi Arabia is recently acting somewhat more independently of the United States than it had been for the past seventy years or so. But it has still not broken definitively with the United States, as Pakistan has now done. Will it do so in the very near future? I think it may.
Consider the multiple internal dilemmas of the regime. The wealth of the top 10% or so of the Saudis has led to sharply increased demands on the state to “modernize” – most visibly in questions concerning women (the right to employment, the right to drive). But the demand for more rights for women is but the tip of the iceberg in a wider call to lessen the constraints of Wahhabi orthodoxy. As the king moves in a steady, but gingerly, fashion to meet these demands, he antagonizes the religious establishment ever more. They are getting quite restless.
In addition, the “modernizing” elite have still other complaints. The Saudi government is essentially a gerontocracy, run by people in their 70s and 80s. In the curious system of succession, the Saudi regime is somewhat like the old Soviet regime in the USSR. There is something akin to a real vote on succession, but it is a vote among a mere dozen or so people. The likelihood that real power can pass to persons in their 50s and 60s is extremely thin, if not impossible. Note however that the group of these “youngsters,” even just within the royal family, has grown considerably in numbers, and they are impatient. Could this lead to a serious split among the very top elite? Quite possibly.
The Saudi regime operates a sort of welfare state for the rest of its citizenry. However, the gap in income and wealth is growing there, just as everywhere in the world. And small increases in redistribution from time to time may merely whet the appetite for further demands rather than calming the lower strata. The middle and lower strata may even (surprise, surprise!) echo the calls of the Arab spring for “democracy.”
And then there’s the Shi’a minority. It is said to be only 10% or so of the population, but it’s probably larger, and more important it is strategically located in the southeast of the country where the largest oil reserves are located. Why should these Shi’a be the only Shi’a in Sunni-dominated countries in the Middle East not to pursue the claims of identity?
The Saudi regime has been trying to play a major role in the geopolitics of the region. They are unhappy about Iran’s policies and aspirations. They are unhappy about Assad’s intransigence in Syria. But they have been, when all is said and done, quite moderate in their approach to these issues in practice. They fear the consequences of dramatic moves. And they find U.S. policy too much governed by its internal needs, and its endless commitment to Israel.
On Israel, too, the Saudis have been very “reasonable.” They do not think their reasonableness has been much rewarded – either by Israel or the United States. They may be ready now to help Hamas in much more overt ways. They perceive nothing “reasonable” in the policies of the Israeli government, nor any prospects that these policies may change soon.
All of this does not add up to a politically stable regime. It certainly does not add up to one that can maintain the “ambiguities” that has permitted it to be an unflinching ally of the United States in the region.
One down, and one to go?
China and the United States: Rivals, Enemies, Collaborators?
The relations of China and the United States are a major preoccupation of the chattering classes (bloggers, the media, politicians, international bureaucrats). The analysis is usually posed as the relation between the declining superpower, the United States, and the rapidly rising “emergent” country, China. In the western world, the relation is usually defined negatively, China being seen as a “threat.” But threat to whom, and in what sense?
There are some who see China’s “rise” as the resumption of a central position on the globe, a central position that they once held and are now resuming. There are some who see it as something very recent – as China’s new role in the shifting geopolitics and world-economic relations of the modern world-system.
Since the middle of the nineteenth century, the relations between the two countries have been ambiguous. On the one hand, in that era, the United States began to expand its trade routes to China. It began to send Christian missionaries. At the turn of the twentieth century, it proclaimed the Open Door Policy which was less directed against China than against other European powers. The United States wanted its share of the spoils. However, very shortly thereafter, it participated along with the other western countries in putting down the Boxer rebellion against imperialist outsiders. And back home in the United States, the U.S. government (and the U.S. trade unions) sought to prevent Chinese from immigrating to the United States.
On the other hand, there was a certain grudging respect for Chinese civilization. The Far East (China plus Japan) were the preferred locus for missionary work, placed above India and Africa, and justified on the assumption that China was a “higher” civilization. It may also have something to do with the fact that neither China nor Japan were directly colonized for the most part and that therefore there was no European colonial power to try to reserve its colonies for its own nationals as proselytizers.
After the Chinese revolution of 1911, Sun Yat-Sen, who had lived in the United States, became a sympathetic figure in U.S. discourse. And by the time of the Second World War, China was seen as an ally in fighting Japan. Indeed, it was the United States that insisted that China receive a permanent seat on the Security Council of the United Nations. To be sure, when the Chinese Communist Party conquered mainland China and established the People’s Republic of China (PRC), China and the United States seemed to become ferocious enemies. In the Korean War, they were on opposite sides, and it was the active military participation of China on the side of North Korea that ensured that the war would end in a deadlock.
Nonetheless, it was but a relatively short time later that Pres. Richard Nixon famously went to Beijing, met with Mao Zedong, and established a de facto alliance against the Soviet Union. The geopolitical world seemed to turn upside down. As part of the accord with the PRC, the United States broke its diplomatic relations with Taiwan (although it continued to stand guarantor against a PRC invasion across the straits). And when Deng Xiaoping became the leader of China, the country entered on a process of slowly opening to market operations and to integration in the trade currents of the capitalist world-economy.
While the collapse of the Soviet Union rendered irrelevant any Chinese-U.S. alliance against it, the relations between the two countries did not really change. They became, if anything, much closer. The situation in which the world finds itself today is that China has a significant balance of payments surplus with the United States, much of which it invests in U.S. Treasury bonds, thereby underwriting the ability of the U.S. government to continue to spend vast amounts of resources on its multiple military activities around the globe (and particularly in the Middle East), as well as to be a good customer for Chinese exports.
From time to time, the rhetoric each government currently uses about the other is a bit harsh, but nowhere near the rhetoric of the Cold War between the United States and the Soviet Union. Still, it is never wise to pay too much attention to the rhetoric. In global affairs, rhetoric is usually intended primarily to have a political effect within one’s own countries, rather than reflecting true policy towards the country at which it is ostensibly aimed.
One should pay more attention to the actions of the two countries. Notice the following: In 2001 (just before 9/11), off Hainan Island, a Chinese plane and a U.S. plane collided. The U.S. plane had probably been spying on China. Some U.S. politicians called for a military response. President George W. Bush did not agree. He more or less apologized to the Chinese, obtaining the eventual return of the airplane and of the 24 captured U.S. airmen. In the various efforts of the United States to get the United Nations to support its operations in various ways, the Chinese often dissented. But they have never actually vetoed a resolution sponsored by the United States. Caution on both sides has seemed to be the preferred form of action, despite the rhetoric.
So where are we? China, as all the major powers today, has a multifaceted foreign policy, engaging with all parts of the world. The question is what its priorities are. I believe that priority number one is its relations with Japan and the two Koreas. China is strong, yes, but would be immeasurably stronger if it were to be part of a northeast Asian confederation.
China and Japan need each other, first of all as economic partners and secondly to ensure that there be no military confrontation of any kind. Despite occasional nationalist flare-ups, they have been visibly moving in this direction. The most recent move is the joint decision to trade with each other using their own currencies, thereby cutting out the use of the dollar, and insulating them from the ever more frequent fluctuations in the dollar’s value. Furthermore, Japan is weighing the uncertainty that the U.S. military umbrella may not last forever and it needs therefore to come to terms with China.
South Korea faces the same dilemmas as Japan, plus the thorny problem of how to deal with North Korea. For South Korea, China is the crucial constraint on the North Koreans. And for China, instability in North Korea would pose an immediate threat to its own stability. China can play for South Korea the role that the United States no longer can. And in the difficult adjustments of China and Japan to their desired collaboration, South Korea (or a putatively united Korea) can play an essential balancing role.
As the United States perceives these developments, is it not reasonable to suppose that it is trying to come to terms with this kind of confederal Northeast Asia as it constructs itself? One could analyze the military posturing of the United States in Northeast, Southeast, and South Asia not as a serious military stance but as a negotiating ploy in the geopolitical game that is being played out over the next decade.
Are China and the United States rivals? Yes, up to a point. Are they enemies? No, they are not enemies. Are they collaborators? They already are more than they admit, and will be much more so as the decade proceeds.
The World Left After 2011
By any definition, 2011 was a good year for the world left – however narrowly or broadly one defines the world left. The basic reason was the negative economic conditions from which most of the world was suffering. Unemployment was high and becoming higher. Most governments were faced with high debt levels and reduced income. Their response was to try to impose austerity measures on their populations while at the same time they were trying to protect their banks.
The result was a worldwide revolt of what the Occupy Wall Street (OWS) movements called “the 99%.” The revolt was against the excessive polarization of wealth, the corrupt governments, and the essentially undemocratic nature of these governments whether or not they had multiparty systems.
It is not that the OWS, the Arab Spring, or the indignados achieved everything they hoped for. It is that they managed to change world discourse, moving it away from the ideological mantras of neo-liberalism to themes like inequality, injustice, and decolonization. For the first time in a long time, ordinary people were discussing the very nature of the system in which they lived; they were no longer taking it for granted.
The question now for the world left is how it can move forward and translate this initial discursive success into political transformation. The problem can be posed quite simply. Even if, in economic terms, there exists a clear and growing cleavage between a very small group (the 1%) and a very large one (the 99%), it does not follow that this is the political division. Worldwide, right-of-center forces still command something like half of the world’s populations, or at least of those who are politically active in any way.
To transform the world therefore, the world left will need a degree of political unity it does not yet have. Indeed, there are profound disagreements about both long-range objectives and short-range tactics. It is not that these issues are not being debated. To the contrary, they are being debated heatedly, and little progress is occurring to overcome the divisions.
These divisions are not new. That doesn’t make them the easier to resolve. There are two major ones. The first has to do with elections. There are not two, but three, positions concerning elections. There is one group that is deeply suspicious of elections, arguing that participating in them is not only politically ineffectual but reinforces the legitimacy of the existing world-system.
The others think it’s crucial to take part in the electoral process. But this group is divided in two. On the one hand, there are those who claim to be pragmatic. They want to work from within – within the major left-of-center party when there is a functioning multi-party system, or within the de facto single party when parliamentary alternance is not permitted.
And of course there are those who decry this policy of choosing the so-called lesser evil. They insist that there is no significant difference between the principal alternative parties and support voting for some party that is “genuinely” on the left.
We are all familiar with this debate and we have all heard the arguments over and over. However, it is clear, at least to me, that if there isn’t some coming together of the three groups concerning electoral tactics, the world left does not have much of a chance of prevailing either in the short or the longer run.
I believe there is a mode of reconciliation. It is to make a distinction between short-term tactics and longer-term strategy. I very much agree with those who argue that obtaining state power is irrelevant to, and possibly endangers the possibility of, the longer-term transformation of the world-system. As a strategy of transformation, it has been tried many times and it has failed.
It does not follow from this that short-run electoral participation is a waste of time. The fact is that a very large part of the 99% are suffering acutely in the short-run. And it is this short-run suffering that is their principal concern. They are trying to survive, and to aid their families and friends to survive. If we think of governments not as potential agents of social transformation but as structures that can affect short-term suffering by their immediate policy decisions, then the world left is obligated to do what it can to get decisions from them that will minimize the pain.
Working to minimize the pain requires electoral participation. And what of the debate between the proponents of the lesser evil and the proponents of supporting genuinely left parties? This becomes a decision of local tactics, which vary enormously according to many factors: size of country, formal political structure, demographics of country, geopolitical location, political history. There is no standard answer, nor can there be. Nor is the answer of 2012 necessarily going to hold for 2014 or 2016. It is not, for me at least, a debate of principle but rather of an evolving tactical situation in each country.
The second basic debate that consumes the world left is that between what I call “developmentalism” and what may be called the priority of civilizational change. We can observe this debate in many parts of the world. One sees it in Latin America in the ongoing and quite angry debates between left governments and movements of indigenous peoples – for example, in Bolivia, in Ecuador, in Venezuela. One sees it in North America and in Europe in debates between environmentalists/Greens and the trade-unions which give priority to retaining and expanding available employment.
On the one side the “developmentalist” option, whether put forward by left governments or by trade-unions is that without such economic growth, there is no way to rectify the economic imbalances of the present-day world, whether we are talking about the polarization within countries or the polarization between countries. This group accuses their opponents of supporting, at least objectively and possibly subjectively, the interests of right-wing forces.
The proponents of the anti-developmentalist option say that the concentration on the priority of economic growth is wrong on two grounds. It is a policy that simply continues the worst features of the capitalist system. And it is a policy that causes irreparable damage – ecological and social damage.
This division is even more passionate, if that is possible, than the one about electoral participation. The only way to resolve it is by compromises, on a case-by-case basis. To make this possible, both groups need to accept the good faith left credentials of the other. It will not be easy.
Can these divisions on the left be overcome in the next five to ten years? I am not sure. But if they are not, I do not believe the world left can win the battle of the next twenty to forty years over what kind of successor system we shall have as the capitalist system collapses definitively.
The United States versus Everybody
Once upon a time, the United States had many friends, or at least relatively obedient followers. These days, it seems to have nothing but adversaries, of all political colorations. What is more, it seems not to be doing too well in its adversarial encounters.
Take what has been happening in November of 2011 and the first half of December. It has had confrontations with China, Pakistan, Saudi Arabia, Israel, Iran, Germany, and Latin America. One can’t say that it has gotten the better part of any of these controversies.
The world interpreted the presence and announcements of Pres. Obama in Australia to be an open challenge to China. He told the Australian Parliament that the United States was determined “to allocate the resources necessary to maintain our strong military presence in this region.” To this end, the United States is deploying 250 Marines to an Australian air base in Darwin (and possibly raising the number in the future to 2500).
This is only one of a number of moves of similar military display in the region. So, as the United States pulls out (or is being forced out) of the Middle East – for both political and financial reasons – it flexes its muscles in the Asia-Pacific region. Is this really believable, given both the U.S. public’s growing reluctance to be involved externally and its urgent demands to reduce expenditures, even in the military? So far, China’s “response” has been virtually a non-response, as if to say that time is on China’s side, even for its relations with the United States, or perhaps especially for its relations with the United States.
Then there’s Pakistan. The United States has thrown down the gauntlet. Pakistan must cease coddling its Islamist movements. It must cease seeking to undermine the Karzai government in Afghanistan. It must cease menacing India with threatened military action in Kashmir. Or what? That’s the problem. It seems, from leaked documents, that the United States was thinking that its last remaining friend in Pakistan, the current president, Asif Ali Zardari, might fire the Army’s leader, Gen. Ashfaq Parvez Kayani. In response, Gen. Kayani arranged that Pres. Zardari go to Dubai for medical treatment. The potential U.S.-backed coup failed. And if the United States tries to retaliate by cutting off financial aid, there’s always China to take its place.
In the Middle East, what Pres. Obama wants above anything else is that nothing dramatic happen between Israel and the Palestinians until, at least, he is re-elected. This doesn’t really satisfy the needs of Saudi Arabia or of Prime Minister Netanyahu in Israel. So they are both proceeding in ways that continue to stir up the pot from the United States’ point of view. And the United States has been put in the position of pleading with them, not commanding or controlling them.
Then there’s Iran, supposedly the main immediate worry of the United States (as it is of Saudi Arabia and Israel). So the United States has been using its most supersecret drones to spy on Iran. Nothing surprising in this, except that it seems that somehow one of these drones landed in Iran. I say “landed” because the key question is why and how did it land. The CIA, whose drone this is, has unconvincingly tried to suggest that some mechanical failure accounts for this. The Iranians have implied that they brought down the plan with cyberaction. The United States says “impossible” – but Debka, the internet’s voice of the Israeli hawks, says it’s true. I for one think it’s likely. In addition, now that the Iranians have the drone, they are working on deciphering all its technical secrets. Who knows? They may publish the secrets for the entire world to know. And then, how secret will the supersecret drones be?
And, oh yes, Germany. As everyone knows, there is a “crisis” in the Eurozone. And Chancellor Merkel has been working very hard to get the Eurozone countries to buy a “solution” that will work for her, both politically within Germany and economically within Europe. She has pressed for a new European treaty that would impose automatic sanctions on Eurozone countries that violate its provisions. The United States thought that this was the wrong approach. The U.S. position was that this was a middle-run action that did not address the very short-term situation. Obama dispatched his Treasury Secretary, Timothy Geithner, to Europe to insist on his alternate suggestions. No matter the details, nor who is wiser. The important thing to note is that Geithner was totally ignored and the Germans have gotten their way.
And finally, the Latin American and Caribbean countries met in Venezuela to found a new organization, CELAC – which are Spanish initials for the Community of Latin American and Caribbean States. Every country in the Americas signed on, except for the two that weren’t invited – the United States and Canada. CELAC is designed to replace the Organization of American States (OAS), which includes the United States and Canada, and has suspended Cuba. It may take a while for the OAS to disappear and only CELAC remain. Still it’s not exactly something they are celebrating in Washington.