The End of Jacobinism? Minorities, States, and Violence
There is no state in the modern world without “minorities.” Or to put it another way, there is in every state some group that is socially defined as the high status group, whether this is defined by race, religion, language, ethnicity, or some combination of these attributes. And there are always others who do not share these attributes. The “minorities” almost always have less access to economic, political, and socio-cultural rights. They are in that elementary sense oppressed and feel that they are oppressed. Usually they seek in one way or another to obtain the equal status to which they feel they are entitled as citizens of the state. A minority is not a numerical concept. There are some “minorities” that constitute the majority of the citizenry.
Any reader of the world press knows the famous cases: the Kurds in Turkey, the Catholics in Ulster, the Basques in Spain, indigenous peoples in the Andean states, African-Americans in the United States, untouchables in India, Tibetans in China, the southern Sudanese in the Sudan, the Saharans in Morocco. And the list continues.
Quite often, especially in the last forty years, frustrated in their search for more rights – to get access to better jobs, to use their language or practice their religion, to establish autonomous institutions or to be represented adequately in the legislature – they have turned to violence. If such a minority is grouped geographically in a relatively compact zone, they have sometimes sought secession.
The governments are generally resistant to the idea of granting “minority” groups collective rights. Most states are Jacobin in spirit. The state claims the moral right to deal directly with each individual, and not pass through intermediary groups or institutions. The question is what the state does when it is faced with politically-organized “minorities” that pursue their objectives via violent uprising.
The initial instinct is usually to use state force to repress the group that rises up. And initially this usually works. States by and large have a good deal of force at their disposal and are seldom reluctant to use it to maintain state “order.” But in some cases, the group that has risen up is able to be sufficiently cohesive that it can persist. And in that case, we enter a situation of civil war that can last for a very long time.
Ultimately, the choice is with the state. It can seek to settle the conflict politically, or not. Settling the conflict politically means essentially a compromise – the granting of a sufficient proportion of the rights demanded, often including regional autonomy, in return for the renunciation by the “minority” group of the idea of secession.
To arrive at such a “compromise” requires a combination of several factors: a relative military standstill, some degree of outside geopolitical support for the “minority” in question, and relative exhaustion on both sides. This is what seems to have happened in Ulster. This is what may happen in Turkey and in Spain. In the Sudan, the government overplayed its cards and the Southern Sudan was able to secede. This is what the Chinese government is determined will not happen there.
While the political situation is different in important ways everywhere, it seems clear that the claims of “minority” groups for more collective rights is gaining strength worldwide in the geoculture of the world-system. Jacobinism as an ideology has had its day. The states would be wise to consider the possible frameworks for political “compromise” on these issues.
The World Consequences of U.S. Decline
A decade ago, when I and some others spoke of U.S. decline in the world-system, we were met at best with condescending smiles at our naivety. Was not the United States the lone superpower, involved in every remote corner of the earth, and getting its way most of the time? This was a view shared all along the political spectrum.
Today, the view that the United States has declined, has seriously declined, is a banality. Everyone is saying it, except for a few U.S. politicians who fear they will be blamed for the bad news of the decline if they discuss it. The fact is that just about everyone believes today in the reality of the decline.
What is however far less discussed is what have been, what will be the consequences worldwide of this decline. The decline has economic roots of course. But the loss of a quasi-monopoly of geopolitical power, which the United States once exercised, has major political consequences everywhere.
Let us start with an anecdote recounted in the Business Section of The New York Times on August 7. A money manager in Atlanta “hit the panic button” on behalf of two wealthy clients who told him to sell all of their stocks and invest the money in a somewhat insulated mutual fund. The manager said that, in 22 years of doing his business, he had never had such a request before. “This was unprecedented.” The newspaper called this the Wall Street equivalent of the “nuclear option.” It went against the sanctified traditional advice of a “steady-as-you-go approach” to swings in the market.
Standard & Poor’s has reduced the credit rating of the United States from AAA to AA+, also “unprecedented.” But this was a quite mild action. The equivalent agency in China, Dagong, had already reduced U.S. creditworthiness last November to A+, and now has reduced it to A-. The Peruvian economist, Oscar Ugarteche, has declared the United States a “banana republic.” He says that the United States “has chosen the policy of the ostrich, hoping thereby not to scare away hopes [for improvement].” And in Lima this past week, the assembled Finance Ministers of the South American states have been discussing urgently how best to insulate itself from the effects of U.S. economic decline.
The problem for everyone is that it is very difficult to insulate oneself from the effects of U.S. decline. Despite the severity of its economic and political decline, the United States remains a giant on the world scene, and anything that happens there still makes big waves everywhere else.
To be sure, the biggest impact of U.S. decline is and will continue to be on the United States itself. Politicians and journalists are talking openly of the “dysfunctionality” of the U.S. political situation. But what else could it possibly be but dysfunctional? The most elementary fact is that U.S. citizens are stunned by the mere fact of decline. It’s not only that U.S. citizens are themselves suffering materially from the decline, and are deeply afraid that they will suffer even more as time goes on. It’s that they have deeply believed that the United States is the “chosen nation” designed by God or history to be the model nation in the world. They are still being assured by President Obama that the United States is a “triple-A” country.
The problem for Obama and for all the politicians is that very few people still believe that. The shock to national pride and self-image is formidable, and it is sudden as well. The country is coping very badly with this shock. The population is seeking scapegoats and lashing out wildly, and not too intelligently, at the presumed guilty parties. The last hope seems to be that someone is at fault, and therefore the remedy is to change the people in authority.
In general, the federal authorities are seen as the ones to blame – the president, the Congress, both major parties. The trend is very strong towards more arms at the level of the individual and a cutback of military involvement outside the United States. Blaming everything on the people in Washington leads to political volatility and to local internecine struggles, ever more violent. The United States today is, I would say, one of the least stable political entities in the world-system.
This makes the United States not only a country whose political struggles are dysfunctional, but one unable to wield much real power on the world scene. So, there is a major drop in the belief in the United States, and its president, by traditional U.S. allies abroad, and by the president’s political base at home. The newspapers are full of analyses of the political errors of Barack Obama. Who can argue with this? I could easily list dozens of decisions Obama has made which, in my view, were wrong, cowardly, and sometimes downright immoral. But I do wonder whether, if he had made all the much better decisions his base thinks he ought to have made, it would have made much difference in the outcome. The decline of the United States is not the result of poor decisions by its president, but of structural realities in the world-system. Obama may be the most powerful individual in the world still, but no president of the United States is or could be today as powerful as the presidents of yesteryear.
We have moved into an era of acute, constant, and rapid fluctuations – in exchange rates of currency, in rates of employment, in geopolitical alliances, in ideological definitions of the situation. The extent and rapidity of these fluctuations leads to an impossibility of short-run predictions. And without some reasonable stability of short-term (three years or so) predictions, the world-economy is paralyzed. Everyone will have to be more protectionist and inward-looking. And standards of living will go down. It is not a pretty picture. And although there are many, many positive aspects for many countries because of U.S. decline, it is not certain that, in the wild rocking of the world boat, other countries will in fact be able to draw the profit they hope from this new situation.
It is time for much more sober long-term analysis, much clearer moral judgments about what the analysis reveals, and much more effective political action in the effort, over the next 20-30 years, to create a better world-system than the one in which we are all stuck today.
“Racing for the Lifeboats: Did the Euro Make It?”
The official line almost everywhere is that the world-economy will look good again soon, if only we do this or that. The fact is that no one – neither governments nor megabanks nor even blinkered economists – really believes this.
The world is in a depression, teetering on the edge of a really major crash. No one anywhere will be exempt from the negative effects of this crash, even if a few lucky ones manage to make money out of it. The prime concern of every government is not how to do well, but how to do less badly than other states.
The world press’s attention has been focused on the very public debates in the United States, the Eurozone, and yes China. But this doesn’t mean that other states – big or small, apparently growing or obviously stagnant – are not equally concerned, if often less able to maneuver than the biggest players.
In July, amidst great drama, the Eurozone seemed to enact a political compromise of sorts. Will this enable the European Union (EU) to do “less badly” than its many competitors? I think it may. But to see what really went on, we have to move past the complicated economic decisions. No one seems to agree what was really agreed upon, and even less whether this will do any good in terms of the economic dilemmas that the Eurozone countries face.
The compromise was political, not economic, and the major consequence will be political. What the Eurozone countries managed to do was to save the euro as a single currency. Some think this marvelous; others a disaster. But the point is that they saved it. And in terms of the ongoing geopolitical struggles in the world, this will enable Europe to remain a major player.
CarstenVolkery, writing in Der Spiegel, summed up the decisions this way: “European leaders on [July 21] pushed through a second bail-out package for debt-stricken Greece, one which includes a surprisingly high level of private participation. In addition, the Eurozone backstop has been given new powers, making it look suspiciously like a European IMF.”
The prior economic debate about the Greek debt (and that of other Eurozone countries) had all the standard ingredients. At one extreme were those preaching full faith in the “market” no matter what the consequences. The most extreme of these wanted to push Greece out of the Eurozone (although legally this seems almost impossible). At the other extreme were those preaching economic solidarity based on a neo-Keynesian emphasis on (re)creating effective demand – a “mini-Marshall Plan.”
The underlying political problem was the internal politics of different countries. A Keynesian solution was deeply unpopular in Germany and Mrs. Merkel reasonably feared electoral disaster if she went along. A neo-liberal solution risked severe popular unrest in Greece, Spain, and eventually many other countries. The great compromiser turned out to be none other than France’s Nicholas Sarkozy, who fought for the new powers given to the European Financial Stability Facility (EFSF) and celebrated publicly what he termed the beginnings of a European Monetary Fund. Even Mrs. Merkel agreed that the comparison was not implausible.
Mrs. Merkel won the concession she wanted – involvement of private investors. And the European Central Bank (ECB) finally agreed to give its blessing too. The EFSF will issue its own bonds and those who hold Greek bonds can exchange them for these new bonds, whose interest rates will presumably be lower. The IMF through its new director, Christine Lagarde, agreed that the effect of all this would be positive for everyone. Of course, this new arrangement allows the IMF to be less involved, at a time when its own resources are stretched. Even Great Britain, not a member of the Eurozone, applauded the compromise.
Is this some kind of magic that will “save” Europe? Not at all. First of all, there are still players trying to undo the compromise. The electoral consequences are yet to be seen.
Why did Sarkozy, the post-Gaullist heir of De Gaulle, become the architect of a compromise that moved Europe closer to a common governance structure? Two reasons really. On the one hand, after a series of political setbacks, it looks good, in terms of France’s next elections, that Sarkozy has achieved something in foreign policy. The French polls indicate that his ratings did in fact go up.
The second reason, however, is quite Gaullist. De Gaulle was opposed to more federalism in Europe because he thought it served U.S. interests at the expense of France’s interests. But today, more “federalism” in Europe serves Europe’s (and France’s) interests at the expense of U.S. interests. A collapse of the Eurozone would have eliminated western Europe as a major player in the interstate system – and strengthened the dollar at a time that the dollar needs all the help it can get.
Voices on the left of the left constantly complain that the Eurozone is basically a neoliberal institution, protecting the banks and hurting the little guys. This is largely true. What I have never understood is why anyone thinks the left would do better with a series of totally separate states. It seems to me that the neoliberal forces would be all the more powerful if the European Union were to disappear.
The bottom line is that the EU and its Eurozone will do “less badly” in the major collapse that is coming soon. That’s perhaps not much of an achievement, but in the race to the lifeboats, Europe may be at least guaranteed to launch one.
The U.S.-Pakistan Alliance: Ever More Shaky
The United States and Pakistan have been close geopolitical allies almost since the birth of Pakistan in 1948. They have needed each other in the past. They need each other today. But their priorities and policy objectives have moved further and further apart. They are both appalled by the idea that the close alliance may end. But it may.
The origin of the alliance was rather simple and straightforward. In the process of British withdrawal from India, two states came into existence, not one. Essentially, Pakistan broke away from India. Pakistan and India have been in steady conflict ever since. For each the greatest fear derives from the actions of the other. There have been three wars between the two – in 1947-48, in 1965, and in 1971. The first two were over Kashmir, the result of which was a de facto partition which neither side has ever accepted as legitimate. The third was over Bangladesh’s secession from Pakistan, in which India sided with Bangladesh.
One result of the continuing conflict was the refusal of both countries to sign the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Accord, and the development by each of nuclear weapons. India started first, probably in 1967. Pakistan followed, probably in 1972. By 1998, both had completed the process and had a stockpile of weapons. Nuclear weapons may have had the same positive effect on the two countries that they had on the United States and the Soviet Union – an undeclared superprudence about military hostilities, for fear of the consequences.
India pursued from the outset a policy of non-alignment in the Cold War. The United States basically defined this policy as one tilting towards the Soviet Union. To limit the impact of this perceived tilt, the United States joined forces with Pakistan. While Pakistan hoped for U.S. support to recover the half of Kashmir it didn’t control, what the United States wanted from Pakistan was its support for U.S. geopolitical control of the Moslem world to its west – Afghanistan, Iran, and the Arab world. The United States realized that the condition for this was internal stability in Pakistan. It therefore supported a succession of internally-repressive military regimes. It was not at all unhappy when the military deposed and then executed the one civilian leader, Zulfikar Ali Bhutto, who in the 1970s tried to pursue a nationalist foreign policy independent of U.S. control.
Pakistan and the People’s Republic of China were born in the same year. China too pursued a policy of close friendship with Pakistan. Its motives were not too different from that of the United States. China did not appreciate India’s links with the Soviet Union, especially since it regarded (and still regards) India as a political and economic rival in Asia, one with whom they too had a war or “border conflict” in 1962. Nor has China appreciated the continuing support the Indian government has given the Dalai Lama.
There were three things that began to upset the U.S.-Pakistan cozy arrangement in the last twenty years. The first was the collapse of the Soviet Union and therefore the end of the “cold war.” This was combined with the end of the Nehru program of internal state-sponsored development and its replacement by a neo-liberal program inspired by the Washington Consensus. Suddenly, relations between India and the United States warmed up considerably, to the chagrin of Pakistan, and indeed of China.
Secondly, the internal politics of neighboring Afghanistan changed as well. In the 1980s, Pakistan and the United States joined forces against the Soviet Union’s military involvement in Afghanistan, which Gorbachev ended. But then what? It is no secret that the Pakistani intelligence service, the ISI, strongly backed the takeover by the Taliban of the Afghan government. But the Taliban regime offered its country as a convenient base for al-Qaeda, which the United States came to regard as its nemesis, even before al-Qaeda’s successful attack of 9/11 on U.S. soil.
Thirdly, with the overthrow of the Taliban in 2002 by a U.S.-led invasion, al-Qaeda forces retreated to secure bases in Pakistan. Al-Qaeda’s program was, if not to take over directly the government of Pakistan, at least to force it to weaken, even break, its ties with the United States. Although Pakistan today has a civilian prime minister, real power still lies with the armed forces. And within the armed forces, the ISI still seems to play a very strong, perhaps determining, role.
The cumulation of the three changes led to a situation in which, as of about 2005, the United States and Pakistan seemed to agree on very little of any importance. But the two countries seemed nonetheless to remain tied to each other, seemed to think that they still needed each other. Still, they became increasingly suspicious of each other’s motives and actions.
From the point of view of the U.S. government, Pakistan was the major source of outside support for the Afghan Taliban with whom the U.S. (and NATO) forces were in direct conflict. One part of this support came from the so-called Pakistan Taliban who were hard to distinguish from al-Qaeda. The second part of this support came from the ISI and perhaps from wider branches of Pakistan’s military.
It became increasingly obvious to the United States that the Pakistan military was neither willing nor able to contain the Pakistan Taliban/al-Qaeda forces. Worse, some of the Pakistan military may have colluded actively with them. The U.S. reaction was to intervene directly in Pakistan in two ways. The first was using its drones to attack directly targets they deemed dangerous. Of course, drones are notoriously hard to manipulate. There has been a great deal of “collateral damage,” to the constant and repeated protest of the Pakistani government. The second way was to pursue on its own the finally successful search for Osama bin Laden, without informing the official Pakistani authorities, whom the United States clearly did not trust not to leak information about the intended attack.
If the United States no longer trusts the Pakistani authorities, suspicion is even greater in the other direction. Pakistan has one great guarantee of its security – its nuclear weapons. As long as they have these, they feel defended against India and against anyone else. They believe, quite firmly, that the United States would like somehow to take possession of this stock. This is not entirely irrational, in that the United States does fear that al-Qaeda, or other hostile forces, might be able to get access to these weapons and that the Pakistani government may not be a position to stop this. Of course, such a putative U.S. attempt to take control of the stock is far from a practical proposition. But there are no doubt people in the U.S. government who do think about this.
So now each side is playing its cards with each other. The United States is threatening to cut off, or drastically reduce, financial and military aid. The government is encouraged in this path by a U.S. Congress that is basically hostile to the alliance with Pakistan. Pakistan is retaliating by withdrawing the troops it had stationed on the Afghan border, making it easier than ever for the Pakistan Taliban to send military aid to the Afghan Taliban. Pakistan is also reminding the United States that it has another powerful ally, China. And China is quite happy to continue to support Pakistan.
The weakness of Pakistan’s regime is internal. Can it continue to control an increasingly anarchic situation? The weakness of the United States is that it doesn’t have any real options in Pakistan. Playing it really tough with the Pakistani regime might undo its efforts to withdraw from Afghanistan (and Iraq and Libya) with minimal damage.
Humala’s Triumph in Peru: America’s Defeat (revised)
Ollanta Humala was elected President of Peru on June 5, 2011. The one sure loser in this election was the United States, whose ambassador, Rose Likins, scarcely hid her open campaigning for Humala’s opponent in the second round, Keiko Fujimori. What was at stake in this crucial election in Latin America?
Peru is a key country in the geopolitics of South America for a number of reasons: its size, its heritage as the locus of the Inca empire, its locus as a fount of the Amazonia River, its ports on the Pacific, and its recent history as the site of a major struggle between nationalist forces and pro-American elites.
In 1924, Victor Raúl Haya de la Torre, a Peruvian intellectual and Marxist – a quite unorthodox Marxist – founded the Alianza Popular Revolucionaria Americana (APRA), which was intended to be a pan-American anti-imperialist organization. APRA flourished in Peru, although it was severely repressed. What was original about APRA, unlike most left movements in the Americas, was its understanding that the majority of Peru’s peasantry were indigenous Quechua-speaking peoples who had been systematically excluded from political participation and cultural rights. After 1945, APRA began to lose some of its radical edge but still had a strong popular base. Only the death of Haya de la Torre prevented his election as President in 1980.
Peru’s governments remained in conservative hands until 1968, when scandals over oil leases were the spark for a military coup by nationalist officers led by Gen. Juan Velasco Alvarado. They seized power and established a Revolutionary Government of the Armed Forces.
The Velasco government nationalized the oil fields, and then multiple other sectors of the economy. It invested heavily in education. More than that, it made it bilingual education, elevating Quechua to co-equal status with Spanish. The government launched programs of agrarian reform and import-substitution industrialization.
Its foreign policy moved sharply to the left. Peru cultivated good relations with Cuba, and purchased military equipment from the Soviet Union. After Pinochet’s overthrow of the Allende government in Chile in 1973, relations between Peru and Chile became tense. There was even talk of war when finally in 1975 Velasco was deposed by conservative military forces. And Peru thus ended its seven-year period of military-led nationalism with a left socio-economic program.
When Alan García, as leader of APRA, was elected President in 1985, he briefly renewed the left tradition by proposing a moratorium on external debt. But he was soon blocked in this effort, and then moved rightward to embrace neo-liberalism. Peru at this time faced several insurrections, the most famous of which was the Sendero Luminoso, which based its activity in the Andean regions of Quechua and Aymara peasantries.
In the 1990 elections, a now quite unpopular García faced the famous novelist and noted Conservative thinker and aristocrat, Mario Vargas Llosa, who ran on a purely neo-liberal economic platform. Unexpectedly, a little-known Peruvian of Japanese extraction, Alberto Fujimori, won in the three-way split. Fujimori’s voting strength derived largely from voter rejection of the aristocratic style of Vargas Llosa.
Fujimori turned out to be a tough dictatorial type who successfully used the army to crush Sendero Luminoso as well as urban insurrectionary groups. To ensure his power, Fujimori did not hesitate to close down Congress, interfere with the judiciary, and extend his second term. But the high degree of corruption and harsh rule led to his overthrow. He fled to Japan. He was later extradited from Chile, tried for his crimes in a Peruvian court, and sentenced to a long prison term.
His successor in 2001, Alejandro Toledo, continued the neoliberal program. And in 2006, Alan García again ran for president. He faced a former military officer, Ollanta Humala, who was openly supported by Hugo Chavez, support that hurt his prospects, as did attacks on his human rights record as an army officer. García won and continued and amplified the neoliberal path. The economy flourished because of the world boom in mineral and energy exports. But the mass of the population was left out of the benefits. Typically, the government allowed transnational corporations to seize land in the Amazonian region to exploit its mineral resources. The indigenous movements resisted, leading to a massacre in June 2009, called the Baguazo.
It is in this last period that Peru became the focal point of two geopolitical struggles. One was between Brazil and the United States. Under Lula’s presidency, Brazil had been struggling with considerable success to achieve South American autonomy through the construction of regional structures like UNASUR and Mercosur. The United States sought to counter Brazil’s program by creating a Pacific Alliance of Mexico, Colombia, Chile, and Peru based on free trade agreements with the United States. In addition, Colombia, Peru, and Chile launched a project for an integrated stock exchange, whose Spanish acronym is MILA. And Peru’s armed forces actively linked up with the U.S. military’s Southern Command.
The second geopolitical struggle was between China and the United States in the search for privileged access to South America’s mineral and energy resources. Peru once again was a key site.
What allowed Humala to win the election this time was three things. On the one hand, Humala turned openly and publicly to a Brazilian social-democratic path. No longer any mention of Chavez. Humala met often with Lula and talked of Peru’s becoming a “strategic partner” of Mercosur.
The second critical element was the very strong endorsement he received from Vargas Llosa. Vargas Llosa, the conservative aristocrat, said it would be a catastrophe for Peru to elect Fujimori’s daughter, who would release her father from prison, and continue his disreputable ways. Vargas Llosa caused a serious split in conservative forces.
The third critical element was the attitude of the Peruvian left, which had long had its reservations about Humala. As Oscar Ugarteche, a leading left intellectual, wrote for the Latin American press service, Alai-AmLatina, “for all of us Humala is a question mark but Fujimori is a certainty.”
Ugarteche summed up the election by saying that “What is most significant about it, however, is the return of Peru to South America.” We shall see how much Humala will be able to achieve internally in terms of redistribution and restoring the rights of the indigenous majority. But the U.S. geopolitical counteroffensive, the Pacific Alliance, is undone.
(Revised on July 5, 2011)
The Coming Israeli Tsunami?
The Palestinians are pursuing their project of seeking a formal recognition of their statehood by the United Nations when the General Assembly convenes in the fall. They intend to request a statement that the state exists within the boundary lines as they existed in 1967 before the Israeli-Palestinian war. It is almost certain that the vote will be favorable. The only question at the moment is how favorable.
The Israeli political leadership is well aware of this. There are three different responses that are being discussed by them. The dominant position seems to be that of Prime Minister Netanyahu. He proposes ignoring such a resolution totally and simply continuing to pursue the Israeli government’s present policies. Netanyahu believes that, for a very long time, there have been resolutions adopted by the U.N. General Assembly that have been unfavorable to Israel, all of which Israel has successfully ignored. Why should this one be any different?
There are a few politicians on the far right (yes, there is an even further right position than that of Netanyahu) who say that, in reprisal, Israel should formally annex all of the presently occupied Palestinian territories and end all talk of any negotiations with the Palestinians. Some of them also want to force an exodus of non-Jewish populations from this expanded Israeli state.
Former Prime Minister (and present Defense Minister) Ehud Barak, whose political base is now almost non-existent, is warning Netanyahu that he is being unrealistic. Barak says that the resolution will be a tsunami for Israel, and that therefore Netanyahu would be wisest somehow to make a deal with the Palestinians now, before the resolution passes.
Is Barak right? Will this be a tsunami for Israel? There is a good chance that he is. There is however virtually no chance that Netanyahu will heed Barak’s advice and try seriously to make a deal with the Palestinians before then.
Consider what is likely to happen in the General Assembly itself. We know that most (maybe all) countries in Latin America and a very large percentage of countries in Africa and Asia will vote for the resolution. We know that the United States will vote against it and try to persuade others to vote against it. The uncertain votes are those of Europe. If the Palestinians can get a significant number of European votes, their political position will be much reinforced.
So, will the Europeans vote for the resolution? That depends in part on what happens throughout the Arab world in the next two months. The French have already hinted openly that, unless they see significant progress in Israel-Palestinian negotiations (which are not even occurring at the moment), they will support such a resolution. If they do, it almost certain that southern European governments will join them. So may the Nordic countries. It is a more open question whether Great Britain, Germany, and the Netherlands are ready to join them. If these countries do decide to go with the resolution, this may resolve the hesitations of various east European countries. In this case, the resolution would obtain the vast majority of Europe’s votes.
We need to look therefore at what is going on in the Arab world. The second Arab revolt is still in full swing. It would be rash to predict exactly which regimes will fall and which will hold tight in the coming two months. What does seem clear is that the Palestinians are on the verge of launching a third intifada. The Palestinians, even the most conservative among them, seem to have given up hope that there can be any negotiated arrangement with Israel. This is the clear message of the agreement between Fatah and Hamas. And given that the Arab populations of virtually every Arab state are in direct political revolt against their regimes, how could the Palestinians remain relatively quiet? They will not remain quiet.
And if they do not remain quiet, what will other Arab regimes do? All of them are having a difficult enough time, to say the least, handling the uprisings in their own countries. Actively supporting a third intifada would be the easiest position to take as part of the effort they are making to regain control of their own country. Which regime would dare not support the third intifada? Egypt has already moved clearly in that direction. And King Abdullah of Jordan has hinted that he too would do so.
So imagine the sequence: a third intifada, followed by active Arab support for a third intifada, followed by Israeli intransigence. What will the Europeans then do? It is hard to see them refusing to vote for the resolution. We could easily arrive at a vote with only Israel, the United States, and a very few tiny countries voting against, and perhaps a few abstentions.
This sounds like a possible tsunami to me. Israel’s major fear for the past few years has been “delegitimization.” Would not such a vote precisely encrust the process of delegitimization? And would not the isolation of the United States in this vote further weaken its position in the Arab world as a whole? What then will the United States do?
The Political Quandary of Barack Obama
The President of the United States is considered to be the most powerful single individual in the modern world. What Barack Obama is learning to his chagrin is that he still has enormous power to do harm. But he has virtually no power to do good. I think he realizes this, and doesn’t know what he can do about it. The fact is that there is very little he can do about it.
Take his biggest single concern at the moment – the second Arab revolt. He didn’t start it. He was obviously taken by surprise when it began, as was almost everyone else. His immediate response was to think, correctly, that it posed great dangers to the already shaky geopolitical order in the region. The United States sought in every way it could to limit the damage, maintain its own position, and restore “order.” One can’t say that the United States has been very successful. Every day in every way the situation has become more disorderly and beyond the control of the United States.
Barack Obama is by conviction and by personality the quintessential centrist. He seeks dialogue and compromise between “extremes.” He acts with due reflection, and makes major decisions prudently. He is in favor of slow, orderly change – change that doesn’t threaten the basic system of which he is not merely a part but the ordained central figure and most powerful single player.
He is today constrained on all sides from playing this role. Nonetheless, he continues to try to play it. He is obviously saying to himself, what else can I possibly do? What happens, as a result, is that other players (including those who were once upon a time his subordinate allies) defy him openly, and shamelessly, and get away with it – diminishing his power further.
Netanyahu addresses the U.S. Congress, which enthusiastically and endlessly applauds his dangerous self-interested nonsense as though he were George Washington reincarnated. It was a direct slap in the face of Barack Obama, even though Obama had already, in speaking to AIPAC, withdrawn de facto his timid attempt to propose the 1967 Israel/Palestine borders as the basis of a solution.
The Saudi government has made it very clear that it will do everything in its power to defend existing regimes in the Arab world and is angry at Obama’s occasional concession to “human rights” language. Pakistan’s government is telling Obama very clearly that, if it tries to be tough with it, they have a firmer friend in China. The Russian, Chinese, and South African governments have all made it very clear to Obama that, if the United States tries to get Security Council action against Syria, it will not have their support and it probably couldn’t get even a simple majority of votes – echoes of Bush’s failure in 2003 with the second Iraq resolution. In Afghanistan, Karzai is calling on NATO to stop drone attacks. And the Pentagon is feeling pressure to pull out of Afghanistan on the grounds that it is too expensive.
Lest one think that U.S. weakness is exclusively a Middle East issue, take a look at Honduras. The United States had virtually endorsed the coup against now former President Zelaya. Because of the coup, Honduras was suspended from the Organization of American States (OAS). The United States then struggled hard to get Honduras restored to full membership in the OAS on the grounds that a new president had been formally elected. Latin American governments resisted this because Zelaya had not been allowed to return with all phony legal charges dropped.
What happened next? Colombia (supposedly the U.S.’s best friend in Latin America) and Venezuela (supposedly the U.S.’s nemesis in Latin America) got together and jointly arranged with the Honduran government in power Zelaya’s return under Zelaya’s conditions. Secretary of State Clinton smiled wanly at this de facto rebuff to U.S. diplomacy.
Finally, Obama is in trouble with the U.S. Congress over the war in Libya. Under the War Powers Act, Obama was supposed to be able to commit troops in Libya only for 60 days without explicit further endorsement by Congress. Sixty days have now passed, and there has been no Congressional action. Continuing the Libyan action is clearly illegal, but Obama is unable to get the endorsement. Nonetheless, Obama remains committed to the Libyan action. And U.S. involvement could escalate. So he can do the harm, but not the good.
Meanwhile, Obama is concentrating on getting re-elected. He stands a good chance of achieving this. The Republicans are moving further and further to the right, and politically they are no doubt overdoing it. But once re-elected, the president of the United States will have even less power than today. The world is moving on at a rapid pace. In a world with so many uncertainties and unpredictable actors, the most dangerous “loose gun” is turning out to be the United States.
Osama is Dead: What Difference Does This Make?
Osama bin Laden was killed in Abbottabad, Pakistan on May 2, 2011, Pakistan time. He was killed by U.S. Seals forces in a special operation ordered by the U.S. president. The whole world knows this, and reactions to this event have been extremely diverse. But has this death changed anything anywhere? Does it matter?
The first question that most people are posing is whether this death signals the demise of al-Qaeda. It has become clear for some time that al-Qaeda today is not a single organization but rather a franchise. If Osama directly commanded any group, it was those located in Pakistan and Afghanistan. There are what seem to be autonomous structures calling themselves al-Qaeda in other parts of the world, and notably in Iraq, Yemen, and the Maghreb. These groups have paid symbolic homage to Osama but have made their own operational decisions.
In addition, the actual combative and political power of the various groups seems to have been in decline for some time. The most important reason for this has not been the killing of al-Qaeda leaders by the United States or other governments but the sense among most other Islamist forces that they could achieve more of their aims by more political routes. The killing of Osama may inspire some immediate al-Qaeda attempts at “revenge” but it is not likely that this will do much to slow down the growing irrelevance of al-Qaeda on a world scene.
Will the death of Osama change the situation in either Pakistan or Afghanistan? Pakistan’s government was already shaky before this. There is now public grumbling in both Pakistan and the United States about what did the Pakistani government know and when did it know it. The Pakistani government’s official line is that it knew nothing of Osama’s location for about seven years in a villa next door to their main military academy. And it also claims that it knew nothing in advance about the U.S. raid and deems it to have been an illegitimate infringement of Pakistani sovereignty.
Neither argument is very plausible. Of course it knew where Osama was living, or at least some Pakistani officials knew. How could they not? And of course, the U.S. government knew that Pakistan knew but wasn’t telling them. This was all part of the difficult, ambiguous relationship of the two allies for at least the last ten years. Will Osama’s death change that? I doubt it. The alliance remains mutually necessary.
As to whether the Pakistanis were informed of the pending U.S. raid, it depends on which Pakistanis. Clearly, the U.S. wanted to keep the raid secret from any one in Pakistan who might have interfered with it or alerted Osama. But did no-one know? We have two pieces of contrary information that have come out. The Guardian published a piece after Osama’s death reporting, on the basis of conversations with U.S. and Pakistani officials, that former Pakistan President Musharraf made an agreement with President George W. Bush in 2001, in which Musharraf agreed in advance to a unilateral U.S. raid on Osama whenever it located him, with the provision that the Pakistanis would denounce it publicly afterwards. Musharraf now denies this but who believes him?
There is a piece of even more persuasive evidence. Xinhua, the official Chinese news agency, published a story the very day of Osama’s death, citing eye-witnesses that electricity was cut off in the area during the operation – indeed for two hours before it occurred – which could only have been done by some Pakistani agency that knew of the forthcoming raid. The Chinese have at least as good an internal intelligence operation in Pakistan as the United States. So it seems probable that, while some Pakistani agencies were kept in the dark, others coordinated with the United States.
At the U.S. end, some members of Congress are agitated about the fact that the Pakistanis must have known Osama was living in Abbottabad, and wish therefore to cut off, or reduce, financial and military aid to Pakistan. But clearly this would be counter to the maintenance of any U.S. influence in Pakistan, and it is unlikely that any real change in current relations will be made.
As for Afghanistan, it is clear that, for some time, the Taliban have been taking their distance from al-Qaeda and Osama, in order to pursue their own return to power. Osama’s death can only reinforce their position within Afghanistan, and hasten the process by which the United States is being pushed out, something that will make the U.S. military basically very happy. Some in the United States will say that this “victory” permits them to make the necessary political deal with the Taliban. And some who were opposed to U.S. intervention in the first place will say that this proves there is no longer a plausible threat that justifies continuing U.S. presence there. That this scenario is possible can be seen in the anguished outcry among non-Pashtun elements in the north of Afghanistan against drawing either conclusion.
So does the killing of Osama at least make a difference in the United States? Well, yes it does. President Obama took a big political risk in conducting the operation, and especially in conducting it by using a Seals force rather than by bombing the residence. Had it gone wrong in any way, he would have been sunk politically. But it didn’t go wrong. And all the Republican arguments that he was a weak leader, especially in military matters, have been undone. This will no doubt help him in the coming elections. But again, as many commentators have been pointing out, this will help him only a bit. The economy is still the big internal issue in U.S. politics. And Obama’s re-election and Democratic prospects in the Congressional elections will be affected most of all by pocketbook issues in 2012.
So, how much difference does Osama’s death make? Not too much.
War-Weariness in the United States?
The United States is currently engaged in three wars in the Middle East – in Afghanistan, Iraq, and now Libya. The United States has bases all around the world, in more than 150 countries. It has tense relations currently with North Korea and Iran, and has never ruled out military action.
The war in Afghanistan, when it began in 2002, had very strong support from U.S. public opinion, and indeed a great deal of support in other countries. The war in Iraq had almost as much support from U.S. public opinion when it began in 2003, but a lot less support in other countries. Now the United States is halfway into Libya. Less than half the U.S. public is supportive, and there is very much opposition in the rest of the world.
The most recent polls in the United States show opposition not only to the Libyan operation but now to remaining in Afghanistan as well. Pollsters are talking of “war-weariness,” as well they might, since it is hard to argue that the United States has been victorious in any of these conflicts.
The Libyan conflict is heading toward a long morass. In Afghanistan, everyone is trying to figure out a political solution, which would have to involve the Taliban joining the government, and perhaps even in a short time coming to full power. In Iraq, the United States is scheduled to withdraw its troops on December 31. It has offered to leave 20,000 troops there longer, provided the Iraqi government requests it, and does this very soon. Iraqi Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki might be tempted but the Sadrists have told him that, if he does this, they will withdraw their support and his government would fall.
The most interesting thing, however, is what is likely to occur in the next year in U.S. internal politics, as it moves forward to a presidential election. Since 1945, the Republican Party has campaigned as the party that strongly supports the military and has accused the Democratic Party of being soft. The Democrats have always reacted by seeking to prove that they were not soft, and in practice there has not been too much difference in the actual policies that were pursued, whichever party held the office of president. Indeed, the biggest wars – Korea and Vietnam – were both started under Democratic presidents.
The Democratic Party has always had a group, considered its left wing, that have been critical of these wars, and this group continues to exist and to protest. But, among elected politicians, these Democrats have always been a minority, one that was largely ignored.
The Republican Party was more united around a program of steady support for the military and for the wars. There were rare Republican politicians who had a different view. They were drawn from the libertarian wing of the party, and the most notable person who incarnated this view was Rep. Ron Paul of Arizona. He was also one of the few politicians who thought the unlimited U.S. support for Israel was a bad idea.
At the moment, here is where we stand on the race for the presidency. Barack Obama will be the Democratic candidate. He is unchallenged within the party. The Republican picture is quite the opposite. There are ten to twelve candidates for the nomination, and not one of them is a clear favorite. The party race is wide open.
What does that mean for foreign policy? Ron Paul is seeking the nomination. In 2008, he had almost no support at all. Now he is doing much better in the campaigning. This is in part because of his strong positions on fiscal policies, but his positions on the war are attracting attention. In addition, a new candidate has entered the ring. He is Gary Johnson, former Republican Governor of New Mexico. Also a libertarian, he is even stronger on the war issues than Paul. Johnson calls for total and immediate withdrawal from Afghanistan, Iraq, and Libya.
Given the wide spread of support for the various potential candidates, there are undoubtedly going to be television programs where all the Republican candidates will speak and debate. If Johnson makes the war issue his big campaign argument, this ensures that all the Republican candidates will have to address it.
Once that happens, we will discover that the so-called Tea Party Republicans are deeply split on the war involvements. Suddenly, the whole of the United States will be debating this issue. Barack Obama will find that the centrist position he has been trying to maintain has suddenly moved leftwards. In order to remain a centrist, he too will have to move left.
This will be a major turning-point in U.S. politics. The idea that the troops should come home will become a serious possibility. Some will fume with anger because the United States will thus be exhibiting weakness. And in some ways this will be true. It is part of U.S. decline. What it will remind U.S. politicians, however, is that fighting wars requires serious support in public opinion. And in this combination of geopolitical and economic pressures that everyone is feeling, war-weariness is a very serious factor from here on in.
The Middle East: Allies in Disarray
For the last fifty years, United States policy in the Middle East has been built around its very close links with three countries: Israel, Saudi Arabia, and Pakistan. In 2011, it is at odds with all three, and in very fundamental ways. It is also in public discord with Great Britain, France, Germany, Russia, China, and Brazil over its current policies in the region. It seems almost no one agrees with or follows the lead of the United States. One can hear the agonizing frustration of the president, the State Department, the Pentagon, and the CIA, all of whom see a situation careening out of control.
Why the United States has created such an incredibly close alliance with Israel is a matter of much debate. But it is clear that for many years the relationship has been getting ever tighter, and more and more on Israeli terms. Israel has been able to count on financial and military aid and the never-failing veto of the United States in the U.N. Security Council.
What has happened now is that both Israeli politicians and its U.S. base of support have moved steadily rightwards. Israel is holding on tight to two things: eternal delays on serious negotiations with Palestine and the hope that someone will bomb the Iranians. Obama has been moving in the other direction, at least as much as U.S. internal politics will let him. The tensions are high and Netanyahu is praying, if he does pray, for a Republican presidential victory in 2012. The crisis point may however come before that when the U.N. General Assembly votes to recognize Palestine as a member state. The United States will find itself in the losing position of fighting against this.
Saudi Arabia has had a cozy relationship with Washington ever since Pres. Franklin Roosevelt met with King Abdul Aziz in 1943. Between them, they were able to control the politics of oil worldwide. They collaborated in military matters and the United States counted on the Saudis to hold other Arab regimes in check. But today the Saudi regime feels highly threatened by the second Arab revolt and is very upset by the willingness of the United States to sanction the dethroning of Mubarak by his military as well as by U.S. critiques, however mild, of Saudi intervention in Bahrain. The priorities of the two countries are now quite different.
In the era of the Cold War, when the United States regarded India as far too close to the Soviet Union, Pakistan obtained the full backing of the United States (and China), whatever its regime. They worked together to aid the Mujahideen in Afghanistan and force the withdrawal of Soviet troops. They presumably were working together to stem the growth of al-Qaeda. Two things have changed. In a post-Cold War era, the United States has been developing much warmer relations with India, to the frustration of Pakistan. And Pakistan and the United States are in strong disagreement about how to handle the ever-growing strength of both al-Qaeda and the Taliban in Pakistan and Afghanistan.
One of the principal objectives of U.S. foreign policy since the collapse of the Soviet Union has been to keep western European countries from developing autonomous policies. But today, the three major countries – Great Britain, France, and Germany – are all doing that. Neither the tough line of George W. Bush nor the softer diplomacy of Barack Obama seems to have slowed that down. The fact that France and Great Britain are now asking the United States to take a more active lead on fighting Gaddafi and Germany is saying just about the opposite is less important than the fact that all three are saying these things very loudly and strongly.
Russia, China, and Brazil are all playing their cards carefully in terms of their relations with the United States. All three oppose U.S. positions on just about everything these days. They may not go all the way (such as using vetoes in the Security Council) because the United States still has claws it can use. But they are certainly not cooperating. The fiasco of Obama’s recent trip to Brazil, where he thought he could get a new approach from President Dilma Rousseff – but he couldn’t – shows how little clout the United States has at present.
Finally, U.S. internal politics have changed. The bipartisan foreign policy has slipped into historical memory. Now, when the United States goes to war as in Libya, public opinion polls show only about 50% support in the general population. And politicians of both parties attack Obama for being either too hawkish or too dovish. They are all waiting to pounce on him for any reversal. What this may do is to force him to escalate U.S. involvement all over the place and thereby exacerbate the negative reaction of all the one-time allies.
Madeleine Albright famously called the United States the “indispensable nation.” It is still the giant on the world scene. But it is a lumbering giant, uncertain of where it is going or how to get there. The measure of U.S. decline is the degree to which its erstwhile closest allies are ready both to defy its wishes and to say so publicly. The measure of U.S. decline is the degree to which it does not feel able to state publicly what it is doing, and to insist that all is really under control. The United States actually had to cough up a very large sum of money to arrange the release from prison of a CIA agent in Pakistan.
The consequences of all this? Much more global anarchy. Who will profit from all of this? That, at the moment, is a very open question.