Left/Right, Rampant Cross-Dressing

WRT the 18 comments on left vs. right below, Tony Blair tells us that the traditional divide between left and right no longer applies across much of modern public policy. I do like his use of "rampant cross-dressing" to describe the manner in which politicians are nicking each others' ideas. Note however that he still claims that left/right divides persist over "basic values." Perhpas he's referring to David Cameron, who is currently wearing distinctly green clothing, yet still advocates "sharing the proceeds of growth" - i.e. cutting taxes and reducing spending on the NHS etc.

Whatever the implications for national politics, Blair's speech was directed more at the wider world; he says the important distinction these days is between "globalisers" and "closed, protectionist, nativist" types. He likes making these sorts of distinctions, I think it lets him simultaneously have a go at political Islam and the French (he was speaking to News Corp execs in America). Given the collapse of the Doha round, it's apt to moan about people rejecting globalisation in favour of nationalist/protectionist policies. The Economist this week (no point linking as it's subscription-only) is livid about the trade thing, and rightly so.

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Biodiversity, anyone?

So we're facing "catastrophic species loss." Is it something to worry about?
There seem to be a great deal of things to worry about, meaning that prioritisation becomes one of the most significant challenges. I like the approach of the Copenhagen Consensus lot - trying to find out how $50bn could best be spent for the good of mankind. Unfortunately biodiversity doesn't seem to appear on the list at all...

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Ignoring the recent and not so recent past...

Newton’s Third Law states that for every action there is an EQUAL and OPPOSITE reaction...the domino theory, while beautifully simple on paper, did not work before; there is not reason why it should now. Iran has gained relative power because the US overstretched itself to invade Iran's regional counter-weight, Iraq. It is therefore US projection of power rather than weakness that has empowered Iran.

Not surprisingly, William Kristol disagrees but the FT being a balanced paper, printed his article. . . more FT, read on!

NB: This post should be read in conjunction with the 'Lessons from the past' post below

Why Bush should go to Tel Aviv - and confront Iran
By William Kristol



Published: July 16 2006 17:38 | Last updated: July 16 2006 18:51

Why is this Arab-Israeli war different from all other Arab-Israeli wars? Because it’s not an Arab-Israeli war. Most of Israel’s traditional Arab enemies have checked out of the current conflict. The governments of Egypt, Jordan, Iraq, and Saudi Arabia are, to say the least, indifferent to the fate of Hamas and Hezbollah. The Palestine Liberation Organization (Fatah) isn’t a player. The prime mover behind the terrorist groups who have started this war is a non-Arab state, Iran, which wasn’t involved in any of Israel’s previous wars.


What’s happening in the Middle East, then, isn’t just another chapter in the Arab-Israeli conflict. What’s happening is an Islamist-Israeli war. You might even say this is part of the Islamist war on the West--but is India part of the West? Better to say that what’s under attack is liberal democratic civilization, whose leading representative right now happens to be the United States.


An Islamist-Israeli conflict may or may not be more dangerous than the old Arab-Israeli conflict. Secular Arab nationalism was, after all, also capable of posing an existential threat to Israel. And the Islamist threat to liberal democracy may or may not turn out to be as dangerous as the threats posed in the last century by secular forms of irrationalism (fascism) and illiberalism (communism). But it is a new and different threat. One needs to keep this in mind when trying to draw useful lessons from our successes, and failures, in dealing with the threats of the 20th century.


Here, however, is one lesson that does seem to hold: States matter. Regimes matter. Ideological movements become more dangerous when they become governing regimes of major nations. Communism became really dangerous when it seized control of Russia. National socialism became really dangerous when it seized control of Germany. Islamism became really dangerous when it seized control of Iran - which then became, as it has been for the last 27 years, the Islamic Republic of Iran.


No Islamic Republic of Iran, no Hezbollah. No Islamic Republic of Iran, no one to prop up the Assad regime in Syria. No Iranian support for Syria (a secular government that has its own reasons for needing Iranian help and for supporting Hezbollah and Hamas), little state sponsorship of Hamas and Hezbollah. And no Shi’ite Iranian revolution, far less of an impetus for the Saudis to finance the export of the Wahhabi version of Sunni Islam as a competitor to Khomeini’s claim for leadership of militant Islam - and thus no Taliban rule in Afghanistan, and perhaps no Hamas either.


It’s of course true that Hamas - an arm of the Sunni Muslim Brotherhood - is at odds ideologically with Shia Iran, and that Shia and Sunni seem inclined to dislike, even slaughter, each other elsewhere in the Middle East. But temporary alliances of convenience are no less dangerous because they are temporary. Tell the Poles of 1939, and the French of 1940, that they really had little to worry about because the Nazi-Soviet pact was bound to fall apart.


The war against radical Islamism is likely to be a long one. Radical Islamism isn’t going away anytime soon. But it will make a big difference how strong the state sponsors, harbourers, and financiers of radical Islamism are. Thus, our focus should be less on Hamas and Hezbollah, and more on their paymasters and real commanders - Syria and Iran. And our focus should be not only on the regional war in the Middle East, but also on the global struggle against radical Islamism.


For while Syria and Iran are enemies of Israel, they are also enemies of the United States. We have done a poor job of standing up to them and weakening them. They are now testing us more boldly than one would have thought possible a few years ago. Weakness is provocative. We have been too weak, and have allowed ourselves to be perceived as weak.


The right response is renewed strength - in supporting the governments of Iraq and Afghanistan, in standing with Israel, and in pursuing regime change in Syria and Iran. For that matter, we might consider countering this act of Iranian aggression with a military strike against Iranian nuclear facilities. Why wait? Does anyone think a nuclear Iran can be contained? That the current regime will negotiate in good faith? It would be easier to act sooner rather than later. Yes, there would be repercussions - and they would be healthy ones, showing a strong America that has rejected further appeasement.


But such a military strike would take a while to organize. In the meantime, perhaps President Bush can fly from the silly G8 summit in St. Petersburg - a summit that will most likely convey a message of moral confusion and political indecision - to Jerusalem, the capital of a nation that stands with us, and is willing to fight with us, against our common enemies. This is our war, too.


William Kristol is editor of The Weekly Standard; this article appears by arrangement with that publication




Copyright The Financial Times Limited 2006

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Lessons from the past...

Europe can tell Israel how punishing civilians backfires
By Mark Mazower

Yes I know I am an FT freak, but its quite an excellent paper...


Published: July 16 2006 18:51 | Last updated: July 16 2006 18:51

In 1949, Europeans spearheaded an international move to outlaw collective punishment. This came after two world wars in which they had witnessed whole towns and villages razed and civilians executed, conscripted for slave labour or deliberately made homeless. To break with this past, the Fourth Geneva Convention outlawed collective punishment and reprisals against non-combatants. How far away this all seems today. First in Gaza and now in southern Lebanon, the Israeli army has abandoned Geneva’s restraints, retaliating against the kidnapping of its soldiers by blowing up power plants, oil refineries, airports and roads.

As water and electricity supplies run low, humanitarian disaster beckons. Of course, the 1949 Geneva conference, remarkable though it was, certainly did not make collective punishment disappear, in either peace or war. In Stalin’s heyday, entire ethnic groups were deported from their homes in eastern Europe. In their colonies – from Malaya to Kenya – European powers still drew on collective punishment laws to face down armed nationalist insurgencies. In the 19th century, colonial policemen had relied on such decrees to combat cattle thieves and brigands. But there was a military application, too. Among “civilised” states, the laws of war ruled out collective punishment, or strictly limited it on the grounds of proportionality. Applied to small wars against racial “inferiors” in Africa and Asia, however, military men highlighted the need for “harsh, exemplary deterrence” among “savages” whose fanaticism would otherwise blind them to the superior force of their foe.


The significance of the idea of proportionality, on which the laws of war lay such stress, was thereby minimised, notably where the Middle East was concerned. In the 1920s the French shelled Damascus and the British dropped bombs on villages in Iraq and Afghanistan. At the same time, the British brought their Collective Punishment Ordinance to Palestine. Following their departure, Israel, like other post-colonial states, found Britain’s approach to public order remained useful. In the occupied territories, in particular, its armed forces have over the years become addicted to collective punishment as a key weapon in the struggle against snipers, suicide bombings and missiles. Forced relocations, closures, curfews, house demolitions and the destruction of vineyards and orchards have become commonplace.

What started as a matter of collective fines has escalated into tank fire and aerial bombardment. Frustrated at the Israeli Defense Force’s inability to stop Hamas rocket attacks, a respected Israeli commentator now seriously proposes firing an artillery barrage at “a Palestinian locale” every time Israel is hit. The chief of the Israeli general staff, rather less anxious about international reaction than his defence minister, is reported to have wanted to “punish Lebanon and blast its civilian infrastructure back 20 years”. Thus, the principle of collective punishment has been extended to an entire country and threatens to precipitate a regional war.

But although the Israelis may be understandably frightened by the durability of their opponents and the range of their weaponry, they have not necessarily chosen the wisest response.

One reason for the virtual unanimity behind the 1949 Geneva prohibition on collective punishment in wartime was the sense that it was both morally unpalatable and militarily ineffective. Recent history suggested collective punishment usually played into the hands of well-organised and popular insurgencies. The latter may deliberately provoke it – as resistance groups frequently did in wartime Europe – because it often brings new recruits, weakens alternative sources of authority and discredits the perpetrators.

Like Tito’s Yugoslav partisans, militants can retreat and regroup, knowing that anything short of their total annihilation – almost impossible to achieve – will count as victory. Civilians in Gaza and Lebanon may blame Hamas and Hizbollah for provoking Israel but they will blame the Israelis as much if not more. As some of the politicians are well aware, because collective punishment on this scale receives little but condemnation internationally, it will intensify the diplomatic predicament of the Israeli state. This seems a high price to pay for allowing the IDF to flex its muscles.

Who will save civilians from their suffering, and Israel from itself? Not the US, which is paying the price for disengagement. America’s Middle Eastern allies are deeply worried but hamstrung. The threat of a US veto weakens the role of the United Nations Security Council and, because any success Washington may have in restraining Israel is likely to be kept private, it will recoup little credit for anything it does achieve. China is preoccupied with North Korea, and Russia has little leverage. That leaves the Europeans.

In spite of the fact that it is Israel’s number one trading partner, the European Union has still not managed to make its voice count. Yet a regional war will affect Europe more than the US, and the knock-on effects domestically will be incalculable. The Europeans now urgently need to force a ceasefire. With more power at their disposal over Israel in particular than they realise, they should draw once again on their own memories of occupation. The painful lessons that led them to Geneva are no less valid today than they were in 1949.


The writer is professor of history at Columbia University

Copyright The Financial Times Limited 2006

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White House Analysis: 'experts, what do they know?'

Experts challenge White House on Iran’s influence
By Guy Dinmore in Washington

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Published: July 17 2006 23:00 | Last updated: July 17 2006 23:00

From the moment last Wednesday when Hizbollah fighters seized two Israeli soldiers, the Bush administration immediately held Iran and Syria responsible.

The White House mounted a systematic campaign on the US airwaves to get that message across while seeking to put pressure on the G8 summit to unite in confronting those two governments.

That it has become the received wisdom in the US that Iran was directing Hizbollah to deflect international pressure on Tehran’s nuclear programme, is testimony to the Bush administration’s ability to dominate the discourse in the mainstream media. The crisis has also demonstrated how it can rely on the support of the US foreign policy establishment – Democrat and Republican – when it comes to matters of vital national interest to the US and Israel.

Challenging these assertions, Iranian analysts and activists in the US – both those for and against the Iranian theocracy – are warning that such simplified arguments may not only be completely erroneous, but will also complicate the process of calming down the crisis while raising the chances of a direct conflict between Iran and the US.

Akbar Ganji, Iran’s most prominent dissident who recently emerged from six years in prison, began a symbolic hunger strike outside the UN headquarters in New York at the weekend to press for the release of all political prisoners in Iran. But he also said his mission to the US was to prevent the spread of war.

“There are two voices in this – one is the voice of warmongers, terrorists and fundamentalists. The other is the voice of pacifists, pro-democracy activists and freedom-seekers,” he told the FT.

“Unfortunately, the Christian-Jewish-Islamic fundamentalists are stirring up this situation and setting [Lebanon] ablaze,” he said. “They should all be isolated.”

Fatemeh Haghighatjoo, a former reformist member of the Iranian parliament who was barred from seeking re-election by hardliners in 2004, said Iran knew that direct confrontation between Hizbollah and Israel would not benefit Hizbollah.

“For this reason I don’t think Iran is provoking this situation or wants it to be intensified . . . Iran has taken a pragmatic approach in its foreign policy and does not want to get into a serious confrontation with Israel,” argued Ms Haghighatjoo, a visiting scholar at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology.

She concedes Iran has influence over Hizbollah, but says exercising that will become more difficult as Tehran becomes the focus of US pressure.

Ervand Abrahamian, history professor at the City University of New York, doubts Iran has sufficient influence over Hizbollah to calm the situation.

“Hizbollah’s leaders are not the types to take orders from elsewhere,” he says. Mr Abrahamian believes the Bush administration’s main objective remains “regime change”, and does not rule out US air strikes.

An Iranian expert, who is close to Tehran’s thinking and did not wish to be identified, told the FT that Iran was not looking for a crisis in Lebanon at a critical moment in the nuclear diplomacy. He said Iran had received signals from members of the UN Security Council last week that it would be given more time to consider the west’s proposals.

It was inconceivable that Iran had ordered Hizbollah to take Israeli soldiers prisoner. Iran wanted a negotiated way out of the nuclear stand-off, he said. He argued that Israel’s fierce retaliation for the abduction of the soldiers strengthened the hands of US hardliners who did not want such a settlement.

Meanwhile, American neoconservatives are calling for swift military action against Iran.

William Kristol, editor of the Weekly Standard, says Iran and Syria are enemies of both the US and Israel. “We have been too weak, and have allowed ourselves to be perceived as weak,” he wrote, urging the US to consider strikes against Iran’s nuclear facilities. “Why wait?” he said.

Copyright The Financial Times Limited 2006

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