The Republic of Dissent

Seriousness, facts and terror plots

Glenn Greenwald on the 'Iranian terrorist plot" to kill the Saudi Ambassador to the US:

[...] why would Iran possibly wake up one day and decide that it wanted to engage in a Terrorist attack on U.S. soil when it could much more easily kill Saudi officials elsewhere? and if Iran and its Quds forces are really behind this inept, hapless, laughable plot, then nothing negates the claim that Iran is some Grave Threat like this does [...]

I, for one, am waiting for something more conclusive and convincing than assertions by Holder and co. about what the facts show for I have learned in the Bush and the Obama years not to take claims about terrorism and national security threats at face value for they have become too influenced by ideology and politics.

Skepticism is required for it cools down things to make the issue facts rather than fears and beliefs.  In short, I'm waiting for the Obama to show me the money instead of trying to scare me by appealing to my conviction that Iran is a country with a dangerous government!

Foresight and narrow-mindedness

Fraser Nelson over at the Spectator's Coffee House can't step out his way to see the forest through the trees:

In Egypt, the army look like they are settling in. If there is regime change, I doubt that whoever takes over will be pro-Western (the crowds will likely remember that the tear gas used on them was dispensed in canisters saying “Made in USA”). The grim fact remains that Iran is racing towards the bomb, and if they succeed then the Sunni world – in Saudi Arabia and Cairo – will likely follow suit. I’d love to see some wind of change blowing through Arab street, but I still fear that we’re heading for a multi-polar nuclear standoff in the only part of the world which is mad enough to use nuclear weapons. I do hope I’m wrong.

The trouble with Nelson isn't that he may be wrong or can be right, but rather that he sees Egypt not as a country like his own or any 'normal' one (I would use Western, but I don't believe in the existence of the West or in the division of the world between the West and the rest). Egypt to Nelson is a means to an end or worst a part of a jungle whose happenings must not be allowed to disturb the peace and stability of the 'modern world.'  The issue isn't about what the events of Egypt means for the rest of the world, but about what they mean for Egyptians. It is alarming to realize that too many including the prominent members of the Obama administration haven't learned from the greatest mistakes of the past. Doing so would have taught them that tolerating wrongs to avoid the worst never works in international politics for the simple reason that it legitimates the worst by delegitimating the moral arguments against it.

Thus, tying to the fall of Mubarak to the nuclearisation of Iran and of the whole middle east is like tying the fall of Louis XVI to the rise of anarchy in Europe and of the reign of terror. History isn't gastronomy and Egyptians are thus neither ingredients nor slaves of a predictable or controllable future.

Own goal

The statement of the day from Gideon Rachman:

It would be a classic Israeli own goal, if their assault on the Gaza ships sank the choices of a new resolution on Iran.

Iran in 1975

A great video on Iran in 1975 (via). It's frightening to see how religious or any kind of political revolutions can alter the face of a country.

Failing sanctions and Iran

Distressing fact from James Joyner's post on the ineffectiveness of the regime of sanctions against Iran:

America's regime of sanctions on Iran are ineffective but we're likely to see more of them.

What's the point of sanctions if it's known that they don't work? Well, it is to give the appearance of action, resilience, and of strength when as the sanctions against Iraq for example showed that they always lead to the inevitable: confrontation or acceptance of the feared outcome. The US is using sanctions to gain time in the hope that the situation will either change in Iran, i.e. another revolution, or on the world stage that would force, Russia  to join the US and its allies to form a block to have Iran to give up its nuclear ambitions. My opinion is that neither possibility is likely.

The power and seductiveness of Apocalypse politics

Juan Cole on the new delusion of Ahmadinejad:

Not only is Ahmadinejad the Iranian equivalent of a truther, he is also the mirror image of the Christian Zionists. That brand of evangelicals in the US believes that the establishment of Israel throughout geographical Palestine, i.e. the complete annexation of the West Bank and perhaps the expulsion of its Palestinian residents, will hasten the return of Christ.
Ahmadinejad holds the opposite. It is in his view the collapse of what he calls the Zionist regime and the emergence of a state for all Palestinians, whether Jewish, Christian or Muslim, that will provoke the Promised One to come. In Shiite Islam, the promised one is the return of the 12th Imam, Muhammad al-Mahdi, the lineal descendant of the Prophet Muhammad. In Muslim folk belief it is sometimes alleged that when the Mahdi comes, Jesus will also return, and they will join forces to prepare the world for the Judgment Day.

Why do I have the feeling that Iran is going to be a Nuclear state no matter was the US and its allies does? May be it is because there is nothing or rather few things that states can do, no matter how powerful they are collectively when another one who cannot be bribed has decided that it was the right afforded to them by God or whatever else to get a nuclear bomb and even welcomes confrontation for nationalistic or religious reasons,

Avoiding spectacular failure

Quote of the afternoon from Judah Grunstein on what he calls Obama's "modest failure" on Iran:

Instead of a shift in the underlying strategic logic of how to contain Iran's nuclear ambitions, the Obama administration essentially tried to pass off a "new & improved" version of the Bush administration's carrot and stick approach, or what Dennis Ross called "better carrot & better stick."
(...) And as I have argued previously, even the administration's lukewarm Iran engagement has made it clear that it is now the Iranians who are unwilling to take yes for an answer. But that's little consolation if it comes up short of the desired strategic payoff.
As Bobby Z put it, "There's no success like failure, and failure's no success at all." In trying to avoid a spectacular failure, Obama has come away with a modest one instead.

The imperial reflex and the post 9/11 world

Pankaj Mishra argues convincingly, I have to say, that the United States and the "West" still have imperial reflexes, which are preventing them from acknowledging the realities of the post 9/11 world, an era where the East and the rest of the world are no longer scared of them and have their own ideas about how things are going to be. Sugary excerpt:

Decolonisation seems to have dented little the sense of superiority that since 1945 has made American leaders in particular consistently underestimate the intensity of nationalist feeling in Asia and Africa. In proposing cash bribes for the "moderate" Taliban, the Obama administration reminds one of FDR's bright idea about the original inhabitants of Palestine: "What about the Arabs?" he once asked the Zionist leader Chaim Weizmann. "Can't that be settled with a little baksheesh?"(...)The Chinese, Indians, Iranians and other emerging powers too have an idea of what they owe to themselves: the richness of the world that the west first claimed for itself. But while getting what they want, they won't claim the sanction of a superior morality and civilisation. Indeed, the long and appalling history of European hypocrisy in Asia and Africa may be why Beijing dispenses altogether with talk of Chinese values as its strikes deals with nasty regimes in Africa, and why even democratic India keeps mum about the advantages of regular elections as it tries to offset Chinese influence over Burma's military despots. 

Reading Mishra's article forces me to ask myself whether America's most influential mark on the world was that it made it so cool and often so stylish to be a hegemon that now every country wants to be one and to exercise power in the same way. I'm coming to the realization that the post 9/11 world is one with a bunch of countries who have fallen in love, whether they want to be admit it or not with the American style of power, even as they resents it when it affects them. America is John Wayne and we know that there was a time when every man, no matter where he came from, wanted to be John Wayne even when he hated the fact that he was killing "Indians" and shooting from the hip without much finesse, sophistication or awareness of the sensibilities of others.

A slow and painful decline !?

I love reading Kenneth Anderson especially when he compares both France and America and makes some thought-provoking points about Obama and the views of his administration on American and and American power. Sugary excerpt :

The question is whether President Obama is genuinely signaling a new paradigm.  Multilateralism as a signal of the Tired Superpower that wants to refocus inwards and let the rest of the world deal with its own problems?  Or what every first term American president always does – try to focus on the domestic issues that got him elected?  One can’t say with certainty at this point – what the President would like to do is clear; not clear whether political events will let him.
Nuclear weapon in Iran?  We’ll sing kumbayah at the Security Council and be presented with the remarkable spectacle of an openly incredulous French president reminding an American president that, tacitly, that as he speaks the Iranians knit together the pieces of their nuclear weapons.  It’s quite an exchange, and not one that initially even penetrated the warm syrup of the NYT or other American mainstream media, presumably because it didn’t fit many existing narratives, about the United States, about France, about many things.
But at the same time, American conservatives wonder why on earth, if there were no Israel to worry about, they should worry overmuch about a nuclear Iran aimed at Europe, when the Europeans have themselves been so relaxed about it.  If, in an alternate universe, the Middle East contained no Israel and never had, would America have much reason to care about nukes pointed at Europe?  When the Europeans have themselves been so unconcerned about it?  Not our world, of course, and we do worry correctly about both Tel Aviv and Paris, but that’s because – let’s be clear – we’re not multilateralists in things that truly count.  But then, what I have always admired about every senior intellectual I’ve known in France is that they are not multilateralists, either, not truly, and whether of left or right, whether they want to be or not, they are pour la France, Gaullists down to their toenails.
If you doubt it for a moment, watch closely the two YouTube videos of Sarkozy and Royal singing La Marsillease [Marseillaise]  the night Sarkozy won.  They both mean it, more so, I’m afraid, than Obama, husband or wife, or any of my academic friends in the administration, for whom something as embarrassing as the national anthem is to be strictly limited to ball games, and God forbid anyone be preserved on a FB photo putting a hand over one’s heart.  It’s Gaullist because it is finally not about justice or morality or any of the stuff that tends to move Americans and which, to be sure, moves me – it’s about honor. They’re not finally multilateralists, either, not when it comes to “France-of-Caverns,” to cite Rene Char: and therefore let us be more French.
The United States has done the inward-turning before, and notably following military defeat, in the post-Vietnam 1970s.  It appears, at this juncture, that the United States is moving to accept “soft” defeat – finally do what James Fallows, for example, has always wanted to do, simply declare victory and come home – both in Afghanistan and Iraq.  Enable the Obama administration to focus on achieving two fond dreams at once – domestic social democracy and, by reason of the domestic cost of that burden, ensure that the United States cannot play the role of ultimate security guarantor in the world over the longer term.

I don't think that Professor Anderson is right, but I think that he is on to something. I think that most Americans have no idea that they are hated also because they are number one and too often refuse to apologize for it.  It is like being the Yankees in Baseball or being Brazil in soccer if Brazil where the dominant superpower. I'm wondering whether Obama is willing to the right for America if it  means losing his popularity not only abroad, but also in America and within the press corp. Unlike conservatism, I have no doubt that Obama is American and loves his country,  I'm just wondering whether he understands the rest of the world and that being loved may be impossible for America and its leaders as long as it is a superpower. What worries is what will happen if Obama finds out that he has to be Bush -like in order to protect American interests.

C'est compliqué

Haideh Daragahi on Iran, its uprisings, Shadi Sadr and women's rights:

In the Western media's interpretation of the presidential election and its aftermath, Iran is caught up in the rivalry between political factions within the religious power elite. But irrespective of differences of interest and opinion, none of the factions have openly questioned the Islamic dictatorship as a system. Two weeks ago, when Rafsanjani, the heavyweight political figure and super capitalist, chose to take an openly oppositional stance towards the supreme leader Khamenei in his Friday sermon in Tehran, the gist of his message was that the religious social structure was in crisis and should be saved.
Shadi Sadr articulates a third voice which, despite the barbarism of the security forces, was heard loud and clear in the demonstrations and discussions throughout the country in the weeks following the elections. Her horizon lies far above the bickering about the number of votes cast in favour of this or that candidate of this or that faction of the power elite. In her article she outlines a direction - for the opposition struggle in general and the women's movement in particular - that corresponds to the new political reality.
One of her arguments addresses the very real threat that the women's struggle will be bypassed if the new social movement succeeds. Here she is bearing in mind the bitter lessons of the history of women's struggle as well as the fate of Iranian women's rights after the 1979 revolution. In the current protests two factors have been conspicuous: the age and the sex of the participants. Women and the youth have been at the forefront of the protests on the streets. Shadi Sadr regards these two social groups as the forces of the future.

Berlusconi is everywhere

While Martin Amis compared Ahmadinejad to Reagan,  Slavoj Žižek compares him to Berlusconi:

To put it in Freudian terms, today’s protest movement is the ‘return of the repressed’ of the Khomeini revolution.
What all this means is that there is a genuinely liberatory potential in Islam: we don’t have to go back to the tenth century to find a ‘good’ Islam, we have it right here, in front of us. The future is uncertain – the popular explosion has been contained, and the regime will regain ground. However, it will no longer be seen the same way: it will be just one more corrupt authoritarian government. Ayatollah Khamenei will lose whatever remained of his status as a principled spiritual leader elevated above the fray and appear as what he is – one opportunistic politician among many. But whatever the outcome, it is vital to keep in mind that we have witnessed a great emancipatory event which doesn’t fit within the frame of a struggle between pro-Western liberals and anti-Western fundamentalists. If we don’t see this, if as a consequence of our cynical pragmatism, we have lost the capacity to recognise the promise of emancipation, we in the West will have entered a post-democratic era, ready for our own Ahmadinejads. Italians already know his name: Berlusconi. Others are waiting in line.
Is there a link between Ahmadinejad and Berlusconi? Isn’t it preposterous even to compare Ahmadinejad with a democratically elected Western leader? Unfortunately, it isn’t: the two are part of the same global process. If there is one person to whom monuments will be built a hundred years from now, Peter Sloterdijk once remarked, it is Lee Kuan Yew, the Singaporean leader who thought up and put into practice a ‘capitalism with Asian values’. The virus of authoritarian capitalism is slowly but surely spreading around the globe. Deng Xiaoping praised Singapore as the model that all of China should follow. Until now, capitalism has always seemed to be inextricably linked with democracy; it’s true there were, from time to time, episodes of direct dictatorship, but, after a decade or two, democracy again imposed itself (in South Korea, for example, or Chile). Now, however, the link between democracy and capitalism has been broken.This doesn’t mean, needless to say, that we should renounce democracy in favour of capitalist progress, but that we should confront the limitations of parliamentary representative democracy.

I don't shared this view point, but it is difficult to disagree with the assertion that the link between democracy and capitalism is been broken or at least is no longer self-evident. It is so sad to say and surely not sympathetic enough to say, but so far nothing that has happened in Iran has surprised me. The script has been followed. I think that the spectators are just waiting impatiently for the end of the movie while the actors still have to figure out how much they are willing to risk to change the script.

Ahmadinejad and Ronald Reagan

I have to say that it's hard for me not to find Martin Amis interesting and even entertaining especially when he finds a way to tie together Ahmadinejad and Reagan. Sugary excerpt:

The American politician whom Ahmadinejad most closely resembles – in one vital respect – is Ronald Reagan. General similarities, I agree, are hard to spot. Ahmadinejad doesn't live on a ranch with a former starlet. Reagan didn't have a degree in traffic control. Ahmadinejad doesn't use Grecian 2000 (as his rapidly greying hair triumphantly attests). Reagan, as a young man, wasn't involved in the murder of political adversaries. And so on. But what they have in common is this: both figures are denizens of that stormlit plain where end-time theology meets nuclear weapons.
Now we can return, for a while, to dissimilarities. Ahmadinejad is not checked and balanced by democratic institutions. Reagan did not actually spend public money on civic preparations for the Second Coming, and was not the product of a culture saturated in ecstatic fantasies of morbid torment. Ahmadinejad does not have a temperament in which "simple-minded idealism" (in Eric Hobsbawm's formulation) might lead him to recognise "the sinister absurdity" of the arms race. And Reagan was not answerable to some millenarian vicar in the holy city of, say, Baltimore. Finally, whereas Reagan wielded enough firepower to kill everyone on earth several times over, Ahmadinejad does not yet have his Button.
Jesus Christ, according to both presidents, is due very shortly, but in Ahmadinejad's vision the Nazarene will merely form a part of the entourage of a much grander personage – the Hidden Imam. Who is the Hidden Imam? In the year 873, the bloodline of the Prophet came to an end when Hasan al-Askari (in Shiism, the 11th legitimate imam) died without an heir. At this point, among the believers, a classic circularity took hold. It was assumed that there must be an heir; there was no record of his existence, they reasoned, because extraordinary efforts had been made to conceal it; and extraordinary efforts had been made because this little boy was an extraordinary imam – the Mahdi, in fact, or the Lord of Time.

Remaining America

I agree with this:

The White House Press corps loves to laugh condescendingly at Helen Thomas because, tenaciously insisting that our sermons to others be applied to our own Government, she acts like a real reporter (exactly as -- according to Politico's Josh Gerstein -- White House reporters "could be seen rolling their eyes and shifting in their seats" when Obama called on The Huffington Post's Nico Pitney, who has done some of the most tireless work on Iran, gave voice to actual Iranians, and posed one of the toughest questions at the Press Conference).  The premise of Thomas' question was compelling and (contrary to Obama's dismissal) directly relevant to Obama's answers:  how is it possible for Obama to pay dramatic tribute to the "heartbreaking" impact of that Neda video in bringing to light the injustices of the Iranian Government's conduct while simultaneously suppressing images that do the same with regard to our own Government's conduct?

Just another almost revolution

Douglas Muir explains why Ahmadinejad will win. I have to say that I can't believe that serious people are thinking that he will lose and Iran will have changed regime in the next couple of weeks. As I have said previously, we have seen this movie before.

Wake me up at the end of the movie

I can't bring myself to be riveted by the whole Iran thing because the story  is hyped by the media which, I sense is waiting with unhealthy anticipation for an explosion, for the image, the interview, the thing, the moment that will bring more attention not so much to Iran, but to the courage of journalists covering the story. I feel as if I'm in a crowded theater watching a poorly made movie with an average cast who lacks the patience required to let the story evolve and speak for itself. I've seen all of this before and what are missing in this case, yet again, are distance, good reporting and something other than expected and cliché analysis about the struggle of a people for freedom. It's sad to say but I think this story will only become compelling at its end when the emphasis will shift from speed to accuracy and from syrupy clichés to singularity and fractured realities.

Faith and political reforms

Oliver Kamm on Obama's Cairo speech, Islam, and political reforms:

I'm uneasy about an American President (or sometime British Prime Minister, for the same applies to Tony Blair) declaring as a matter of policy deep respect for Islam. I can see the political imperative for doing so and (in the case of the statesmen concerned) the sincerity of the sentiment. But the proper attitude of a constitutional democracy towards religious faith is not respect but disinterest (i.e. neutrality). Our societies defend religious liberty and conscience. That's the least, but also the limit, of how the state should treat religion.
There's a pragmatic reason for such a stand. The Islamic faith is a fact of life and a huge influence on the world order. It's essential for peace and justice that Islam be dominated by elements that make their accommodation with democratic values, modern mores and secular education. To speak in an undifferentiated way of Islam and its achievements does not give the right message to those elements: to political reformers, religious moderates and heroic secular forces in autocratic states. Their voices need to be heard and encouraged, in the same way that dissidents in the Soviet bloc were given heart by an explicit commitment (in the Helsinki Final Agreement of 1975) to human rights.
That was the missing element in Obama's address. And when you see the pictures of demonstrators demanding freedom in Tehran, you have to conclude that the omission was not even good politics.

I'm agnostic on this issue as I am on most Obama's speeches because I don't think that speeches are good substitutes for policy. Kamm has a point, but I wonder if all of this fluff matters.

Sense and sensibility

I agree with Paul Krugman on this:

The Bush administration was obviously — yes, obviously — telling tall tales in order to promote the war it wanted: the constant insinuations of an Iraq-9/11 link, the hyping of discredited claims about a nuclear program, etc.. And the question was, should you stand up against that? Not many did — and those who did were treated as if they were crazy.
I’ll never trust “sensible” opinion again. But for those who stayed “sensible” through the test, it’s a moment they’d like to see forgotten. That, I believe, is the real reason so many want to let torture and everything else go down the memory hole.

Games and Ahmadinejad

Adrian Hamilton calls the walkout of the EU at Durban II during Ahmadinejad's speech childish and he even compares him to Sarkzoy:

Isn't it time western diplomats just grew up and stopped these infantile games over President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad? All that this play-acting over boycotting of conferences because of his presence and walking out because of his words achieves is to flatter his ego, boost his poll ratings at home and play into the hands of an Israel that is desperate to prove Iran the gravest threat to its existence.
True, Iran's President is not the world's most endearing character. Some of the things he says are certainly contentious. But he is far from the most offensive leader on the block at the moment. With Silvio Berlusconi sounding off about women and sex, and Nicolas Sarkozy sounding off about everything from the quality of his fellow leaders to the unsuitability of Muslims to join the civilised nations, and a Polish president, Lech Kaczynski, giving his views on gays, Europe could claim its fair share of premiers who should not be allowed out in public.

I agree that the walkout was childish but because it was predictable that Ahmadinejad was going to do what he did and that the most adult act would have been not to invite him or not to participate to the masquerade, which was Durban II. As to the comparison between Sarko and Ahmadinejad, it is laughable because there is still  an important distinction between clownesque behavior and despicable beliefs.

Enduring and exiled voices

Nana Asfour has, in Bookforum, a worth-reading article on Iranian-American women novelists. She makes the point that the fact that those writers are exiled makes them in fact less able than Iranian women still living in Iran to write about present-day Iran in their novels. I am not sure that I agree with Asfour because I think that sometimes exile gives people the required distance to desacralize their homeland in order not only to write about it, but to dare to deconstruct or re-imagine it through fiction. Sugary excerpt:

Regardless of how much or how little Iranian parents reflect on the loss of their homeland, that sense of loss is inevitably transferred to their children. These novels are the product of the children of the immigrant generation; Iran continues to both define and elude them, and fiction provides a vehicle to explore that distant and tumultuous country. Contemporary Iran in particular remains elusive. For those writers based in America, it is a recent history they have not experienced. For now, the task of chronicling present-day Iran is left to the novelists who reside there. (Emphasis added)

[…] Iranian writers, unhindered by censorship and persecution in the United States, are seeking to define themselves, as well as the meaning of their national identity. As Nahai has noted in regard to the sudden proliferation of books on Iran in America, “Iranian women are writing, I imagine, because they live in a place and at a time when they can speak the truth without fear of morbid consequences,” adding, “I think exile has been so good for Iranians, especially for the women.” The late Edward Said, himself an émigré, reflected that “in the United States, academic, intellectual and aesthetic thought is what it is today because of refugees from fascism, communism and other regimes given to the oppression and expulsion of dissidents.” And yet, while expatriate fiction has been for the most part the domain of male writers (Nabokov, Huxley, Auden, and so on), this wave of Iranian women writers is charting a new literary voice—one by women and, for the most part, about women.

On Sarkozy and Blair

Arthur Goldhammer  who has a good blog on French politics has an interesting answer to the question whether Sarkozy has replaced Blair as America's best ally and Bush's best friend. He argues that the change that comes with Sarkozy is, so far, merely about form and not substance. Sugary excerpt:

Nothing has yet forced Sarkozy to stake out a position opposed to the US. He appears to believe that there is little to be gained from maintaining a staunch position against past U. S. actions. Chirac had hoped to lead a coalition of the unwilling, but it never materialized. Passive resistance is not really a viable foreign policy option. Thus far, Sarkozy has signaled only that he does not wish to stand on principle. He is willing to reconcile with the U. S., but that tells us nothing about which American policies he will support and which he will oppose. A judgment will have to await a defining event. The statements made thus far on Iran don't really indicate where the two countries are likely to converge or diverge. To say that one is opposed to an Iranian nuclear weapon is cheap talk until it comes to doing something about it, and how Sarkozy perceives the risks involved in possible courses of action is not at all clear to me. We constantly hear about how much he likes America, but so did Chirac, who was fond of telling stories about his Cadillac convertible and summer working as a soda jerk at the Howard Johnson's adjacent to my alma mater (HoJo's is now a MicroCenter computer discount store--times change, as do regimes). Nostalgia for halcyon days in Cambridge did not determine Chirac's policy when push came to shove; nostalgia for jogs in Central Park and speedboating on Winnepasaukee won't determine Sarkozy's policy either.

I agree with Goldhammer for I think that Sarkozy can afford to remain vague and can surf on his love for America, but simply declaring it because of the weakness of an ending Bush administration. The test for the US American relationship is going to come at the beginning of the new American president term unless something drastic happens with Iran. 

The perils of a simplistic and manichean world view

Believing Hawkish France on Iran

Oliver Kamm finds France to be more credible than the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) on Iran:

Who is the more reliable source? The Nobel peace laureate or the hawkish right-wing French government? On a balance of probability, the answer is obvious. It has to be the French government.

[…] The IAEA under Hans Blix had failed comprehensively to grasp how far advanced had been Saddam Hussein's nuclear weapons programme. At the start of the Gulf War, Iraq had been two or three years away from producing enriched uranium. The IAEA belatedly found out after the reversal of Iraq's annexation of Kuwait, when the German government provided missing information about Saddam's centrifuge programme. We know that Iran acquired centrifuge designs in the mid-1990s, having bought them from the rogue Pakistani scientist A.Q. Khan, who in turn had stolen them from a European consortium.

I am not surprised that Kamm finds the French to be credible when they are hawkish because the mixture of testosterone and Sarkozyst toughness is just virile enough to appeal to him. However, by focusing on credibility, Kamm ducks the issue, which is whether, assuming that France and he are right, all of this talk, which almost seems to welcome a confrontation with Iran, helps. In other words, the issue is not whether Iran is dangerous or not, but anything short of war will deal with the danger because tough talk, disputes about how far along Iran nuclear power matter only if there is  a consensus that the use of force is not only unavoidable, but necessary. In other words, Podhoretzism and diplomacy don’t go together.

Zizek on Kouchner and militaristic humanism

Slavoj Zizek has an essay on Turkey on Comment is Free in which he argues that it is a thorn on the side of a hollow Western consensus on intervention and that it is challenging the notion of European identity. He makes the following statement about the French Foreign minister Bernard Kouchner to elaborate his view that there exist a new global order:

When the newly elected French president, Nicolas Sarkozy, nominated Kouchner, the great humanitarian, as the head of Quai d'Orsay, even some of Sarkozy's critics hailed this as a pleasant surprise. Now the meaning of this nomination is clear: the return of the ideology of "militaristic humanism". The problem with militaristic humanism resides not in "militaristic" but in "humanism". Under this doctrine, military intervention is dressed up as humanitarian salvation, justified according to depoliticised, universal human rights, so that anyone who opposes it is not only taking the enemy's side in an armed conflict but betraying the international community of civilised nations.

This is why, in the new global order, we no longer have wars in the old sense of regulated conflict between sovereign states in which certain rules apply (the treatment of prisoners, the prohibition of certain weapons, etc). We instead confront violations of the rules of universal human rights; they do not count as wars proper, and call for the "humanitarian pacifist" intervention of the western powers - especially in the case of direct attacks on the US or other representatives of the new global order. One can hardly imagine a neutral humanitarian organisation such as the Red Cross mediating between the warring parties, organising the exchange of prisoners, and so on. For one side in the conflict already assumes the role of the Red Cross - it does not perceive itself as one of the warring sides but as a mediating agent of peace and global order.

The key question is, thus: who is this "we" on behalf of whom Kouchner, Blair et al are speaking? Who is included in it and who is excluded? Is this "we" really "the world", the apolitical community of civilised people acting on behalf of human rights?

I hope that Zizek is wrong about Kouchner. I have the feeling that the Iran Nuclear crisis is going to show whether he is reading our world right and whether militaristic humanism has made a long term comeback and is creating a new global order.

Toasts over baguettes

Patrice de Beer writes the following on Sarkozy and France’s “new” foreign policy:

If the traditional French arrogance remains and "Sarko" looks as much at ease in putting pressure on his European colleagues to follow French unilateral initiatives as were his Gaullist predecessors like General de Gaulle or Jacques Chirac, his unabashed closeness to America and her values, including its TV series, is quite new in French politics.

In respect of Nato, Sarkozy is keen on a full return to the integrated structures of an organisation France had left under de Gaulle in 1966. He has called for France to play "her full role" in the Atlantic alliance. His defence minister has added that if France is one of Nato's best pupils she is not drawing from it all the benefits she feels entitled to. The new president is also keener in having Nato concentrate more on military issues and not growing global.

Nicolas Sarkozy evidently wishes to avoid appearing as subservient to Washington as, for instance, Tony Blair was. He has publicly fixed his own limits to the French-American alliance - by pushing for stronger measures against global warming or by saying (in his first speech after being elected) that if France was America's closest ally, her support could not be taken for granted on all issues.

Sarkozy's hard line is likely to please a Bush administration which is short of foreign friends while domestic opposition to the war in Iraq keeps growing. His position on Iran, while toughening, remains that diplomacy is still the priority of the day and that all steps must be taken to avoid war; but it is nevertheless moving closer to Washington's strategy to put all options - including war - on the table. True, there is an Iranian threat which could destabilise the whole middle east and spread to the rest of the world, but the new French diplomacy seems to have shifted from its traditional multilateralism towards unilateralism a la Bush.

Patrice de Beer is unable to see the forest through the trees. Sarkozy isn’t George Bush and he isn’t agreeing with him on Iran and on other issues because he wants France to be closer to America, but because his vision of the world is Manichean. Sarkozy believes that the world is separated between the West and the rest and that the West has the duty to defend the world against extremism and fundamentalism by any means necessary. This is what Sarkozy meant when during his visit to Maine with Bush he asserted that the United States and France were part of the same family. This assertion was a way to say that blood is thicker than water and that when your family is under attack, you defend it, and you don’t fight over petty things such as style and values because your survival is as stake. The fundamental change that has occurred in France is that Sarkozy, much like Blair, believes that France must stand with the United States and that it is never grand for it to stand against the US. After the second war, there were numerous confrontations between Churchill and de Gaulle during which Churchill told bluntly the French president that the UK would always chose the United States over France and during which, de Gaulle emphasized always stubbornly the idea of French Grandeur, which meant that France had to be itself to be FRANCE. Sarkozy is simply taking a different course of action, by choosing to be Churchill and by showing with his actions that le général made a historic mistake for after all Gaullism led France astray.

Kouchner, war, and the past

Bernard Kouchner defends himself against the accusation that he is a warmonger in an interview by making the following statements:

[…] What I said was: "War would be the worst possible thing." And that's what I am determined to prevent, through unremitting negotiation. […] It's important to me. I'm not a warmonger. I have been fighting for peace for the past 40 years. I have seen the wounded and the dead, at the front, under fire. I know what I'm talking about.  […] I understand that this word scares the Germans. But I don't want to hide behind diplomatic niceties. You will not hear me making bizarre statements like "high-intensity conflicts." The Americans mention "surgical strikes." My goodness!

I have the feeling that Kouchner is struggling with the apparent inconsistencies between whom he is used to be and whom he is becoming. He seems to be trying to decide it is possible to be himself today, that is an old leftie in his sixties who has accepted difficult compromises, which the young Kouchner I believe would have rejected without renouncing his past or whether his present in fact justifies his past. Kouchner’s tribulations reminds me of the ones of Joschkar Fischer in the sense that he has to decide whether pragmatism is  a value of in itself or only valuable if it serves a bigger purpose. Fischer, as Paul Berman showed in his excellent book Power and the Idealists: Or, The Passion of Joschka Fischer, and its Aftermath, demonstrated that it was possible to evolve from being a idealist who protests to one who believes that power doesn’t just corrupt, but can also change the world for after all politics matter. Kouchnerism is at the moment schizophrenic because Kouchner hasn’t yet reconciled the French doctor who liked to defend impossible causes and to give a voice to the voiceless with the older politician who has decided to ally himself with Sarkozysm to change the world. The key question is whether it is possible to reconcile the two Kouchners or whether he is going to have to accept to become a man who breaks up with his past. The trouble for Kouchner is that the young Kouchner may have set the bar too high for the old one by making his idealism a leitmotiv for his activism and his refusal of the trappings and ambiguities that came with compromise and power. Kouchner used to be Robin Hood and the question is how does one become someone else after being an insaisissable hero?

Waking up, Différence, and alignment

Hilary Krieger has an interesting article in the Jerusalem Post on Sarkozy, Kouchner and the impact of Sarkozysm on French foreign policy. Her article whose tilte is Vive la difference seems to be arguing that now that France has a pro-American president, it is allowed to be different. In other words, the problem, before Sarkozy became the republican monarch of the French, was that France was naïve, egocentric and blinded by its anti-Americanism and pacifism. Sugary excerpt:

In case he [George Bush] needed a more visual reminder of the fact that there's a new sheriff in town, Sarkozy was even spotted taking his regular jog in an NYPD T-shirt. That's good news for the US, which wants another strong arm to shore up the good cop-bad cop EU-US tag-team routine on Iran. But some say that so far Sarkozy's been more willing to talk tough than act tough - and that even if he begins to walk the walk, it might not be enough to arrest Iran's bad behavior.

But there's no doubt things have changed.

"The election of Sarkozy and the new French government represents a sea change in French foreign policy, in that you really have in Sarkozy and to some extent in [Foreign Minister Bernard] Kouchner a new crop of leaders who appear ready to break the mold," said Charles Kupchan, a senior fellow at the Council on Foreign Relations, who described the former French administration as defining its foreign policy in opposition to the US, hardly the tack Sarkozy is taking.

[…] Still Philip Gordon, a senior fellow at the Brookings Institution, sees Sarkozy at least "waking up" Europe to the need to take action and a greater potential for European solidarity now that the French will be bolstering the British, who have been "feeling lonely" in their support of the US position.

At the very least, Gordon said, if America again resorts to military action as it did in Iraq, this time France won't be the leading anti-cheerleaders.

"I don't think France would mount a global and determined effort to stop the use of force," he said. "It would no doubt oppose the use of force by the United States, but it would no doubt blame Iran for failing to comply with the Security Council."

Bush might still be maintaining his much maligned with-us-or-against-us bluster, but US officials have acknowledged it's nice to have someone with you.

"It means the US is not alone in trying to organize a much tighter regime of sanctions," Kupchan said of the new French posture. "The broader issue is an ideological one - do we contain or do we engage, and I think Sarkozy is a container. That puts Sarkozy in pretty good alignment with Washington, but you can't close this deal with just two countries."

Kouchner and the world

I know that I said it too much but I have so much respect for Kouchner that I even like his faults. It is for this reason that I'm intrigued by the changes that I have seen in recently. Well, there aren't as much changes as I guess his realization that idealism without might is just naiveté. My dream debate would be one between Norman Podhoretz and Bernard Kouchner to see where they would disagree (I am sure that there would be many points of disagreement) and they agree. I wonder if Podhoretz would call Kouchner "an enlightened leftie" and if Kouchner would call him "a well-intentioned manly man." The point that I’m trying to make is that when I see a man as great as Kouchner agrees even slightly with Podhoretz, I have to question the potency of a firm and principled resistance against the attractiveness of oversimplification in international affairs because it brings clarity by drawing a clear line between good and evil thus making it possible to strike.

The trouble with Hitlerization

Seymour Hersh has some interesting things to say on the United States, Iran, the Middle East and foreign policy in an interview with Spiegel. What caught my attention was he said the following:

We have this wonderful capacity in America to Hitlerize people. We had Hitler, and since Hitler we've had about 20 of them. Khrushchev and Mao and of course Stalin, and for a little while Gadhafi was our Hitler. And now we have this guy Ahmadinejad. The reality is, he's not nearly as powerful inside the country as we like to think he is. The Revolutionary Guards have direct control over the missile program and if there is a weapons program, they would be the ones running it. Not Ahmadinejad.

The trouble with Hitlerization is that it is based on historical determinism that is on the idea that history always repeats itself, that the future can only resemble the past and therefore we are not merely the heirs of our past, but its prisoners. With Hitlerization, the only solution outcome becomes war, confrontation for after all, how does one negotiate with Hitler without becoming Neville Chamberlain and having dirty hands. The point is that Ahmadinejad doesn’t have to be Hitler to be dangerous or a menace to the world that needs to be confronted and that making the comparison cheapens history in order to avoid making tough decisions or simply to avoid deciding by arguing that there are no choices to make. After all, it was not the past that made Hitler Hitler, but his present, the actions that he undertook by choosing to exterminate innocent groups of people and to dominate the world.

A meaningless day at the UN

Gideon Rachman writes about the day of the big three, Sarkozy, Bush, and Ahmadinejad at the UN. He analyzes their “performances,” which is I believe the appropriate term to call a reading of a speech in front of an audience just for the purpose of being applauded and receiving brownie points from the press. In other words, the contents of these speeches almost never matter unless they are bellicose, provocative, and vitriolic as was the speech Hugo Chávez gave last year. It is ironic, but the UN is never as mundane as when heads of state and of governments make their annual trip to New York to take the opportunity to grandstand and to reassure themselves and their home political base of their own importance. Sugary excerpt:

It was fascinating to sit through an entire Ahmadinejad speech and press conference for the first time. I thought he pulled off the difficult trick of being simultaneously boring and sinister. Boring because he goes on and on about religion. I don't know why this surprised me - it is the Islamic Republic of Iran, after all. But the religious rhetoric is usually wisely edited out of the compressed version of his remarks. Having to listen to it all in full, is a bit like being trapped on the doorstep by a Jehovah's Witness. On the other hand, I also found his performance sinister because it is clear that he is genuinely obsessed by Israel. These are not stray remarks, forced out of him. He can't keep off the subject.

[…] Sarko maintained his current tough line on Iran. But - for the rest - his speech was a bit of a disappointment. In fact, I thought it was in the worst tradition of windy, high-falutin' French rhetoric. Sample quote: The UN is "a dream of the human conscience against all who threaten to destroy humanity." It's a shame - I thought he was better than that. Maybe a diplomat wrote the speech.

Bush's performance was also a little odd. The speech was terse and well-delivered, apart from the usual problems pronouncing foreign names (Aung San Suu Kyi was a bit of a tonguetwister.) But he all but avoided the big international questions that clearly will dominate the rest of his term - Iraq, Iran and the Middle East peace process. Instead he talked a lot about development and malarial bed-nets. He has left it rather late to show the UN his softer side.

The New York Sun writes that there was a role reversal between Bush and Sarkozy for it was Sarkozy who took on the difficult task of adopting a serious and harsh tone on Iran. I thought that Sarkozy’s speech was fine, but that he was careful and that he was fighting his nature, which is too be direct and confrontational. He reminded me of the voluntary self-restrained Sarkozy of the debate with Ségolène Royal. Sarko didn’t want to seem too abrupt and too eager to battle, but rather as a president capable of providing steady, fair, and also tough leadership. The trouble is that when Sarko isn’t himself, he is boring, and painful to watch but again it is always safe to be boring on the international scene.

Tough talk and strength

The Hindu has an editorial on France’s new tough talk on Iran, It states the following, which shows that tough talk on the international scene doesn’t mean much without real or perceived power to back it:

France’s strategic shift makes little sense when Iran has just entered into an agreement with the International Atomic Energy Agency that sets a timetable for resolving all the outstanding issues by November 2007. Teheran has actually begun to implement this agreement by responding to the IAEA’s queries on plutonium reprocessing. The Iranians have also agreed to clear any doubt about other aspects of the nuclear programme relating to its peaceful nature. In a report made public on August 30, the IAEA observed that it would be in a position to reconstruct the entire history of the programme if these outstanding issues were addressed. Logically, the sanctions in place can be lifted if this agreement is honoured in all respects and the international watchdog body is able to certify that the Iranian programme does not have a weapons orientation. Such a summation will not of course suit a U.S. that is going all out to deny Iran its due role as a significant player in West Asia. In advocating additional sanctions without waiting for the deal to work, Paris is acting as Washington’s weak-kneed surrogate.

Western divergences on Iran and Shame

In this morning’s Wall Street Journal, Yossi Halevi accuses Germany not only of enabling Iran, but also of betraying the lessons of their own history. Halevi’s accusations are based on Germany’s refusal to back tough economic sanctions on Iran that would forbid European companies to do business with Teheran:

In Berlin, it seemed to me that afternoon, the decision had already been made to learn to live with the Iranian bomb.

Inevitably, Germans and Israelis approach the use of force with very different sensibilities. World War II taught us opposite lessons: for Germans, to suspect power as immoral; for Jews, to regard powerlessness as untenable. Still, I expected greater understanding among Germans of their responsibility in helping to resist the Iranian threat, especially toward Israel. Germany, after all, is Israel's most reliable friend in Western Europe. Since the early 1990s, for example, Germany has on several occasions upgraded Israel's submarine fleet, offering it second-strike nuclear capability to counterbalance threats from Iraq and Iran. When the Iranian government sponsored its notorious conference on Holocaust denial last December, the German government sponsored a simultaneous conference on Holocaust remembrance.

Why, then, the German obstructionism on efforts to contain a nuclear Iran? Business interests, of course, offer one explanation. […] Still, however substantial, business interests alone can't explain Germany's refusal to seriously confront the Iranian threat. The men and women I met in Berlin are obviously concerned about the stability of the Middle East and the safety of the Jewish state, and recognize that a nuclear-armed and expansionist Shiite regime is a danger, ultimately, to Europe as well.

Perhaps another reason for German blindness on Iran is a misplaced sense of contrition. In insisting on engagement rather than confrontation with Tehran, Germans seem to believe they are keeping faith with the lessons of their history. All problems should be peacefully resolved; no aggressor is irredeemable. […] The message Germany is inadvertently sending the Ahmadinejad regime is: Continue to hold out because the West is divided and ultimately will abandon not only the military option but the economic one, too.

Germany’s foreign minister Frank-Walter Steinmeier is arguing that the United States and France are just grandstanding for American and French companies are doing business with Iran:

Several French companies in the automobile, energy and financial sectors -- including Peugeot, Renault, Total, BNP Paribas and Societé Générale -- have hardly reduced the level of business they do with Iran, according to the Foreign Ministry data. German exports to Iran, in contrast, have dramatically declined.

Even more explosive is the data that reveals US hypocrisy over sanctions. The German Foreign Ministry accuses American firms of bypassing the boycott against Iran, which has been in place since 1979, by creating front companies in Dubai to carry out their business. German politicians have long internally accused the United States of knowingly tolerating the practice.

The differences in how strictly sanctions are applied by different countries has led to "German firms being pushed out of the Iranian market," a high-ranking source in the Foreign Ministry told SPIEGEL.

I find this heated rhetoric on Iran not only unnecessarily divisive, but also more importantly worrisome and counterproductive because it divides the West unnecessarily when it needs to be united on an issue as important as the one of Iran and its nuclear ambition. I think that Halevi goes too far by using Germany’s past to shame it for taking a position that it believes sincerely, but perhaps erroneously, is in its interests. The challenge for the United States, France and Germany is to agree to disagree on the means without these disagreements become a distraction to the goal of not letting Iran become a nuclear power and to present a common front by not putting these disagreements to the forefront unless they are deal breaker. I don’t believe that in this instance divergences are so great that they have to fracture the united front for the issue is not whether to have sanctions on Iran, but rather on how to sanction Iran and the choice is not between applying sanctions and doing nothing.

Manliness is back

Tom Richmond gives the following interpretation of France’s new tough talk on Iran:

We could be seeing the first shoots of a new attitude towards American military dominance from France, which would be in stark contrast to their view on the invasion of Iraq. The desire to show unity against Iran, which was distinctly lacking across the Atlantic in the United Nations leading up to the conflict, could provide powerful leverage in negotiations. Alternatively, we may be witnessing the French president Nicolas Sarkozy attempting to stamp his authority on an international crisis, having been little more than a bystander in most issues until now.
Has France really set a new course in an effort to secure a peaceful solution to the disagreements about Iran's nuclear policy, or is Sarkozy just pandering to the Americans to start repairing old and very deep wounds - or could it be a combination of the two?

It is a combination of the two. If Sarkozy’s past shows anything is that he believes in strength, in toughness and that means that in my opinion that if given the choice between putting the money where his mouth is and looking weak, he will choose the former, but I could be wrong.

Then Surrender Monkey, now girlie Cowboys

David Chandler apparently has something against France and Bernard Kouchner. In his most recent article, he argues that France has become more gun-ho than the United States. However that in this case, Kouchner’s and France’s readiness to whack Iran is nothing more than bravado for they know full well that they won’t be the ones doing the whacking. Sugary excerpt:

In fact, the foreign policy pronouncements of the new French government of Kouchner and Sarkozy have striking parallels to that of Blair and his foreign minister Robin Cook’s incoming Labour government in 1997. Kouchner, like Blair before him, is able to make grand statements of foreign policy mission in the knowledge that responsibility will have to be taken by someone else – the United States.

For Kouchner and the new French Sarkozy government, it appears that US problems in Iraq and divisions over Iran are an opportunity to stake a claim of French leadership. Like Blair’s approach to the Kosovo crisis in 1999, this activist foreign policy depends on the fact that the US has already talked up the threat and is the only country with the capacity to carry out the threats that are made by others.

[…] Kouchner’s confidence in taking a warlike stance over Iran stems from irresponsibility rather than responsibility. Free from any final decision-making - or any substantial military role if there is a conflict - Kouchner’s warmongering rhetoric can only increase the tensions in the region, further destabilising the relationship between the US and Tehran. Rather than a moral or ethical stand, Kouchner’s position seems both craven and parasitical, both exploiting the US position and willing to risk thousands more lives in a region already torn apart by Western grandstanding.

Chandler is partly right to argue that France believes that they can take advantage of the Iraq war to become a bigger force on the international scene. However, something deeper is going on here that has everything to do with the ways mighty powers use force for the argument that Kouchner made by talking about using force wasn’t a Idealist argument, but a Realist one. He implied that there might not be any other way to solve the Iranian crisis than war and this fact makes diplomacy unnecessary for any compromise would be unacceptable. Charles Bremner tries to explain to France’s new tough approach and has an interesting answer:

Unlike President Chirac, with his sanguine view of a multipolar world, Mr Sarkozy believes that the biggest international danger at the moment is the threat of a confrontation between Islam and the West. In his first big foreign policy speech he said: "We would be wrong to underestimate the possibility of this happening: the affair of the (Danish) cartoons of the Prophet was a warning sign of this."

If Bremner is right, then the rest of Sarkozy’s term will be anything, but annoying for he seems to believe into tough talk, but the question is whether he is ever going to be willing to do something that looks bad on camera and that makes him unpopular such as taking the initiative in the name of his vision of the world to take action alone or rather alone with the United States.

Kouchner, Iran, War, and interventionism

About a week ago, David Chandler wrote a tough article in Sp!ked response to Bernard Kouchner (the French foreign minister) and David Miliband (the British Foreign Secretary) common article in the Guardian in which they argue for Europe to act together and resolutely to settle the Kosovo Issue. Chandler argued that Kouchner and Miliband were trying to use Kosovo to rehabilitate the idea of “liberal interventionism” that had been discredited by the Iraq war. Sugary excerpt:

[…] the problem that Kouchner and Miliband face is not in Kosovo but much closer to home. They want to ensure that the ideals of liberal interventionism can survive the disaster of Iraq because the governments they represent want to use their clout on the world stage to enhance their reputation domestically. Both governments are keen to bathe in the moral glow from the Kosovo intervention, seen as a success (at least from the point of view of the intervening states): ‘No European can forget the atrocities that took place in the Balkans during the 1990s. No European can forget the scenes of brutality, murder and mass deportation… no European should forget the tragic events that motivated the international community to intervene.’

Despite Kouchner and Miliband’s desire to build their careers on global moral grandstanding, they demonstrate the weakness of the British and French governments, rather than their strength. It is difficult to recapture the confidence of liberal interventionism of the last decade. In 1999, Médecins Sans Frontières, the activist humanitarian NGO which Kouchner founded in 1971, won the Nobel Peace Prize and Kouchner was appointed as the first head of the UN Mission to Kosovo after a lifetime’s advocacy for international meddling in other countries (4). But the Kosovo war marked the high point for the overt ‘right of intervention’ and the extension of international protectorates claimed by Kouchner.

Even before the debacles of Iraq and Afghanistan, international attempts to directly run statelets like Bosnia, Kosovo and East Timor were creating as many problems as they were solving. Today’s moral grandstanders have few causes they are willing to commit to. The British and French governments may have made much of their support for the UN resolution on Darfur in August, but they were committing other countries’ troops to Sudan rather than their own. Similarly, going to war over Kosovo, eight years after the event, and urging their readers not to forget the ‘good wars’ of the 1990s, is no substitute for finding a genuine cause of their own.

While reading the article, I thought that Chandler’s obvious disdain for liberal interventionism was making him paranoid and unable to accept moral grandstanding does not make a point of view necessarily wrong.

Last weekend, Bernard Kouchner warned that France and the world to prepare to face the worst that is war, in the case of Iran. I was reminded of Ian Burama’s excellent review of Norman Podhoretz’s new book in which he wrote the following:

Podhoretz and the American neoleft have several things in common, apart for their shared enthusiasm for the Iraq war. Both Podhoretz and Paul Berman, for example, see Abraham Lincoln as the father of their revolutionary idealism. In Podhoretz's view, "it was Abraham Lincoln—the greatest Republican of them all, and the greatest of all American presidents—whose spirit hovered most brightly over the face of the Bush Doctrine's universalist assumptions." In a similar vein Berman, in his book Terror and Liberalism, claims Lincoln as the proponent of a worldwide democratic revolution. This tradition, in his view, distinguishes Americans from the "Europeans," who "cannot accept the notion of liberal democracy as a revolutionary project for universal liberation."

[…] There is no reason to doubt the sincerity of the neoleftists when they talk about spreading democracy with American force. The idea of using US power to expand democracy is certainly more attractive than the kind of realism that promotes supping with despots in the name of stability—provided that democracy includes more civil liberties than the right to vote alone. And I share the belief that armed intervention by the US is justified if, as in Bosnia and Kosovo, it can prevent mass murder. It is the revolutionary zeal that I distrust, the trust in military solutions for political problems, and the reheated idea of Manifest Destiny. For zeal leads to the crude and schematic notion of a world absolutely divided into friends and enemies, where compromise is seen as weakness and politics are redundance. [Emphasis added]

I have a lot of respect for Kouchner; he is undergoing a metamorphosis that I don’t want to disparage precisely because of my respect for him. However, I was listening to Dominique de Villepin, the former French prime minister who gave that famous speech in the UN Security Council explaining why France was saying no to war with Iraq. Villepin talked on French TV yesterday about Iran. He stated affirmatively that although no option with Iran can be taken out of the table, but that war should never be the first option because it is also the worst option, which thus means that everything must be done to avoid it. I wondered what could explain the wide gap that exists between Sarkozysm, for after all Kouchner is Sarkozy’s foreign minister, and Gaullism, for Villepin is expressing a traditional Gaullist point of view. Sarkozysm not only believes in power and its expression, but also thinks that inaction is a dangerous sign of weakness. Gaullism has always believed that France is a great nation, which should always march to the beat of a different drummer and remind America that diplomacy is an instrument for the wise and the powerful and that negotiations are not a form of surrender.

At the heart of this issue are the conception of power and the morality of war. Kouchner seems to be coming to the belief that just wars are about just and noble goals, which not only make them justifiable, but which excuse pre-emption or their occurrence without doing everything  to avoid them. In order words, the use of force is only justified by a just cause and not also by the efforts deployed to avoid it. That would explain the fact that if Kouchner likes to insist on the fact that he wasn’t for the Iraq War, but never denies that he was not against it in his view because of Saddam Hussein and his crimes. Because I think that Kouchner’s ideas on interventionism are still in flux, I think that it is still too early to dismiss him solely as a moral grandstander in love with liberal interventionism as Chandler asserts. However, I have to admit that I am disturbed by the idea that a just cause is necessary to make a war just and to justify pre-emptive or preventive wars. Kouchner is too smart not to know that talk of war with Iran doesn’t help the situation, but only complicates it by raising the stakes by making it impossible for either party to make concessions without appearing weak and thus being humiliated by a compromise. The fact that Kouchner talked about war in spite of the misgivings that he should have had about doing so, shows that something has changed and that Sarkozysm believes in manly chest thumping.

Like a wink and a smile?

The cries of Zimbabwe

Philip Gourevitch has an excellent article in the New Yorker about Zimbabwe and its sad, sick, old, and pathetic dictator Robert Mugabe. He writes about the atrocities of the Mugabe regime and about the effects that his divisive and ferocious identity politics have had on Zimbabwe by forcing it into poverty. Sugary excerpt:

Since 2002, Mugabe has faced censure and sanctions from the United States and Europe, but he treats these rebukes as badges of honor. (One consequence of America’s diminished authority since the invasion of Iraq has been that bullies around the world feel emboldened to scorn the West; Mugabe likes to tell his critics to “go hang.”) He has also been able to take comfort in the fact that African leaders have supported him, even as he insults them by insisting that his thuggery and his many failings are the expression of his African authenticity. South Africa, the regional power, has for years touted a policy of “quiet diplomacy” toward Zimbabwe—a euphemism for silently indulging Mugabe’s crimes and giving him a stamp of legitimacy when he has stolen elections. Why South Africa should provide this service is a matter of speculation. No doubt, President Thabo Mbeki and, to a degree, his predecessor, Nelson Mandela, don’t want to dishonor a fellow liberation leader. Yet they have dishonored themselves by failing to stand up to an oppressor who is as contemptuous of his people as Ian Smith was.

What saddens me the most about Zimbabwe is the certitude that I have that its neighbors particularly South Africa wouldn’t stand behind its regime is Mugabe was right and if he was considered a hero of the independence movement and of the fight for the redistribution of land from the White Zimbabweans to the Black Zimbabweans. Identity politics is dangerous and never tolerable no matter the history and the color of the oppressed.

Outrage and impotence

Brendan O’Neil argues that the current hostage crisis in Britain just shows how impotent the war in Iraq has made Britain since all that the British can do is to watch their 14 captured seamen paraded on Iranian television and to be outraged at the evilness of Iran:

The Iranian captive crisis has provided some striking snapshots of Britain’s standing: its isolation post-Iraq; the emptiness of its foreign policy; a view of the military as victimised, vulnerable. The affair shows Britain is the loudmouth of international affairs - it talks big, but it lacks the strength or coherence to back the talk up.

What I wonder is whether Blair’s weakness isn’t having a negative impact on the situation in the sense that the Iranians knows that he doesn’t have the support of his people and that he is his way out and cannot therefore afford to make the mistake of confronting him. One of the biggest drawbacks of having an impotent leader at the top of an important such as Britain is precisely that they can’t deal with any crisis or with any international issue precisely because their interlocutors have no faith in their ability to keep their word and to act.

Détente over Regime change in Iran ?

Ray Takeyh argues in an essay in Foreign Affairs that the real good option for the United States is neither war nor containment when it comes to Iran but détente by engaging Iran and offering it a way out of isolation and strong sanctions. Sugary excerpt:

Guided by the notion of containment, U.S. policymakers have long seen the normalization of relations as the end result of a long process of negotiations. But with a new policy of engagement, normalization would have to be the starting point of talks; it would then facilitate discussions on issues such as nuclear weapons and terrorism. A strategy that seeks to create a web of mutually reinforcing security and economic arrangements has the best chance of tying Iran to the status quo in the region. In essence, a new situation would be created in which Tehran's relationship with Washington would be more valuable to the regime than either its ties to Hezbollah or its pursuit of nuclear arms. To provoke such a change, Washington must strengthen the hands of the pragmatists in Tehran by offering Iran relief from sanctions and diplomatic relations. Washington's recognition of Iran's regional status and deepened economic ties with the West might finally enable the pragmatists to push Khamenei to marginalize the radicals who insist that only confrontation with the United States can allow Iran to achieve its national objectives.

The only question that I have with what Takeyh is proposing is whether is possible for the Bush administration after escalating its rhetoric on Iran to them purse a policy of détente, which will be construed by most as an admission of its own weaknesses and surrender. In order words, I wonder it isn't better for the Bush administration to be perceived as tough on Iran even if this toughness doesn't achieve anything and leads to a confrontation, which too many seem to want and even to want to provoke.

The escapism of Bush bashing

Gerald Baker wonders whom his critics will blame for the sorry of the world when Bush is gone. Baker writes that Bush bashing is just a convenient way for Europeans and Americans politicians to escape the fact that he isn't responsible for everything, to take on some ownership of the current reality by coming up with real ideas to deal with the mess in Iraq, Iran and in Afghanistan. Sugary excerpt:

When one group of Muslims explodes bombs underneath the school buses of another group of Muslims in Baghdad or cuts the heads off humanitarian workers in Anbar, blame George Bush. When Vladimir Putin, the President of Russia, denounces an imbalanced world and growls about the unpleasantness of democracy in eastern Europe, blame George Bush. When the Earth’s atmosphere gets a little more clogged with the output of power plants in China, India and elsewhere, blame George Bush.

Some day soon, though, this escapism will run into the dead end of reality. In fact, the most compelling case for the American people to elect a Democrat as president next year is that, in the US, leadership in a time of war requires the inclusion of both political parties, and in the rest of the world, people will have to start thinking about what is really the cause of all our woes.

Preventing a war with Iran

The former German Foreign Minister Joschkar Fischer writes in an article that the world can't wait and that must act now to prevent an American attack on Iran due to its nuclear ambitions. He argues that although Americahas the power to start a war with Iran, it doesn't have the strength to win it, and that Europe must act to prevent war because it will be the most affected by it and by the failure of the United States:

The Europeans - led by Merkel, Blair, and Chirac - should agree to assure the US that Europeis ready to pay a high, perhaps very high, economic price by taking decisive action to intensify the sanctions against Iran. But they should offer this only on two strict preconditions: that the military option be taken off the table, and that all parties involved - including the US- enter into direct negotiations with Iran. [...] It is up to Europe to prevent the two worst developments in Iran- war and nuclear armament - by acting jointly and with determination. Vital European and transatlantic interests are at stake. It is thus Europe's responsibility - and especially Germany's, as the current EU president - to act now.

A tale of two Irans?

The Independent has an article on the way Iran's bazaar ,that is its business class, is seeing the conflict between itself and the West. It's a great read.

Getting to Know Muqtada al-Sadr

Patrick Cockburn has a fascinating portrait of Muqtadar al-Sadr in the Independent. It's an essential reading to understand his rise to power and why he has become a threat to the United States. Long sugary excerpt:

Yet the source of his power has remained a mystery to the US and many Iraqi politicians. Few men have been so consistently underestimated. He is not a great orator, nor does he have huge charisma. His movement has limited resources. Until recently, his militiamen were unpaid and provided their own weapons. He does not have a powerful foreign backer. In spite of US efforts to link him to Iran and claim that he has fled there, he and his movement have traditionally been suspicious of the Iranians, and they of him.

The real source of his vast influence among the Shia of Iraq - the Sunni see him as orchestrating the death squads that have killed so many of them - is that he promulgates a blend of religion and nationalism that they find deeply attractive. He comes from the deeply revered Sadr clerical family that provided so many martyrs under Saddam Hussein. Some American commanders may wonder if it is wise for the US to pick a fight with a religious leader regarded with cult-like devotion by millions of Shias. They may also reflect that he is not just popular with the poor masses of Shia Iraq - his picture also hangs on the wall in many Iraqi police stations and army barracks. Some of these will be the very people on whom US and Iraqi commanders will rely in order to regain control of Baghdad.

It is impossible to explain Iraq today without understanding the reasons behind the astonishing rise of Muqtada al-Sadr and his movement in less than four years. Muqtada appears to have come from nowhere. In reality, he is heir to a social and political movement with a history that stretches back almost half a century. In addition, he could not have become so powerful so fast had he not come from a family that provided some of the most revered leaders of the Shiah clergy in their long and bitter struggle with Saddam Hussein.

War with Iran and Europe

Anne Applebaum writes in the Telegraph that not only is war in with Iran in no one's interests, but that Europe is going to have a major role to play on how the Iran Nuclear crisis ends. Sugary excerpt:

But it is also true that at least one of Iran's tactics is also working. For some time now, the Iranians have been trying to play America off against Europe, so as to relieve the pressure on themselves. After all, if there aren't joint American-European sanctions, then the Iranians will find it that much easier to ignore them. Thus do the "war in Iran" headlines - guaranteed to stir up fear and loathing of the American government - feed right into Iranian interests.

Which matters: for we are at an unusual juncture in history. If Britain, France and Germany go along with America's "coercive diplomacy", that diplomacy might stand a slim chance of success. If they do not, then yes, the distant, but not completely unthinkable military option might begin to loom larger in the minds of politicians in both Washington and Tel Aviv.

Having started an unpopular war already, having no prospect of being re-elected to anything, President Bush might decide that, in the absence of allies, there is no other way. For the first time in a long time, it really is up to Europeans to influence what comes next.

Shi'a, Sunnis, geopolitics, and history

Fred Halliday argues that the current sectarian strife between Shi'a and Sunnis is more geopolitical than religious and historical. Sugary excerpt:

[…] there are many analysts or propagandists who resort to the notion that this sectarianism is a "deep structure", reflecting a latent atavism that has long underlain the politics of the region. The implication is that the overt violence of 2006-07 involves the emergence to the surface of deep and ever-present, hatreds. (Similar arguments about "ancient ethnic hatreds" were heard repeatedly in the context of the wars in Yugoslavia, Sri Lanka, and Northern Ireland).

However, another analysis is more persuasive. This sees the Sunni-Shi'a conflict as essentially a recent development, a product of the middle-east political crisis in recent decades and, in the case of Iraq, of the spiral of violence released by the United States invasion of 2003. In this perspective, the origins of the conflict - and more generally of the Arab-Persian conflict - lie not in ancient hostility and grievance, but in the modern history of the region; in particular, the ways in which the twin revolutions of Iraq (1958) and Iran (1979) set in motion rivalry and insecurity between states and peoples that exploded first in the Iran-Iraq war of 1980-88, and again, inside Iraq, from 2003.

Getting inside Iran

The Globe and Mail has a terrific insider account of what life is like in Iran. It shows the picture of a proud country filled with contradictions. It's a great read.

Hope spring eternal

“The big disappointment to me, well, it’s not the only one, but of the Iraq expedition was I hoped, I still do, that getting rid of a totalitarian slum next door, mainly with a Shia population, would have a positive effect by producing democratic ferment on Iran. And by the way, I think in the long run, that’s not a totally futile law or a romantic belief.” Christopher Hitchens.

Bush and Iran

Timothy Garton Ash argues that the world must stop Bush from bombing Iran and Iran from getting the bomb. I'm wondering if two goals aren't mutually exclusive.

Chirac should never relax again

Jacques Chirac had some stupid, unwise things to say yesterday about Iran and its nuclear ambitions. Today, he is taking what he said back (Il est trop tard Jacques!) by arguing that he believed that he was off the record and that he just let himself go forgetting the importance of words in Foreign Policy (that's off course my interpretation). The only thing that this incident shows is the double standard of international politics, if my favorite politician of the moment Ségolène Royal, the candidate of the French left to take Chirac's job, the press would have crucified her and the members of Chirac's own party would have argued that she wasn't fit to lead France.

Iran would use nukes

“What is the likelihood that the ruling Mullahs will actually use the bomb? If they remain in power long enough to have it, they are very likely to use it, in one form or another. At the very least, they use the bomb for blackmail and intimidation in the region. Not even the all-out nuclear exchange can be ruled out. Islam is a religion centered on death with the faithful eyes fixed on the afterlife and its promised eternal pleasures. If the faithful kills, he goes to Allah’s paradise; if he gets killed, he goes to Allah’s paradise.” Amil Imani, “Would Iran’s Mullahs Use the Bomb?”

Attacking Iran

Yossi Melman explores, in Haarezt, the possibility and the feasibility of military strike on Iraq either by the United States or by Israel. Richard Perle is quoted in the article as saying, “I have no doubt that if it becomes apparent to President Bush that during his term Iran will achieve nuclear weapons, he will not hesitate to order a strike.” Scary, very scary.