Tag: Arab League

Israel’s “center”

On Monday, the Brookings Institution hosted M.K. Yair Lapid, founder of the centrist Yesh Atid party, the largest opposition party in the Knesset. Lapid shared his views about current Israeli domestic and foreign policy, including its relationship with the US, as well as his vision for the country’s future. John R. Allen, president of the Brookings Institution, gave introductory remarks, and Tamara Coffman Wittes, senior foreign policy fellow at Brookings Center for Middle East Policy, moderated the discussion. Below, I discuss key takeaways from Lapid‘s remarks.

Foreign Policy Flashpoints

At a time when regional conflict threatens Israel’s relative stability, Lapid described how his country and the international community should approach Israel’s main foreign policy challenges to ensure future Israeli security. On the Palestinian front, Lapid stressed the importance of breaking the silence that has stalled negotiations on a two state solution since the Trump embassy move. A return to dialogue represents the only road to peace. A Palestinian Jerusalem, however, is off the table. Lapid stated that “Jerusalem is a capital; if someone came to DC and asked [the US] to share it with Mexico, they would refuse.” Lapid also criticized UNRWA, arguing that having a refugee agency solely for Palestinians allows Arab countries to maintain a false moral high ground in the conflict.

Lapid blamed Hamas for the recent killing of hundreds of protestors in Gaza by Israeli snipers, saying that the violent protests threatened national security. Although it is not at fault for the violence, Israel must work quickly to solve the humanitarian crisis; after all, Gazan sewage contaminates Israeli water. However, any Israeli efforts to solve the crisis must be predicated by Hamas’ fall from power, clearing the way for humanitarian aid to reach Gazan hands without funding terrorist activities.

Lapid also used national security to defend his country’s controversial position in the Golan Heights. In addition to their strategic importance in fending off the rising Iranian and Hizbollah threat, giving the Golan Heights back to Assad is simply not an option, as it would put 22,000 Jewish lives at risk. Similarly, opening the northeastern border to Syrian Arab refugees also represents an unacceptable security risk. Instead, Lapid called on the US to recognize Israeli sovereignty over the Heights, arguing that this move would allow the US to send the message that it does not tolerate Assad’s human rights abuses.

Israeli-US Relations: Troubling Times Ahead?

While Lapid lauded the Trump administration’s goodwill towards Israel, he expressed concern that positive relations on the executive level are papering over fissures that will emerge after Trump leaves office. Chief among these is American Jewry’s increasing disinterest in Israel. Orthodox Jews in Israel have criticized American Reform Jews too much, causing them to feel alienated. Increasing  anti-Israel discourse on US college campuses has prevailed over American Jews’ ties to their ancestral homeland. Lapid also linked heightened partisanship under Trump to the erosion of the bipartisan support Israel has enjoyed in the past. As a consequence, bilateral relations could deteriorate during the next democratic administration, leaving Israel more exposed than ever to national security threats from within the Arab world.

Careful Optimism: A Winning Call?

As he discussed his chances for beating Netanyahu in the next parliamentary elections, Lapid emphasized that Israelis are more hesitant about large political shifts than US voters. For that reason, Lapid argued that emphasizing satisfaction with the status quo while calling for gradual crackdowns on corruption and moving towards a solution to the Israeli-Palestinian Conflict will be a winning call in 2019. In addition, Lapid advocated for a move away from using empty rhetoric to avoid confronting issues head-on, saying that “we need a government that actually does stuff, not [one] that just eloquently describes the problem.” While his strategy of emphasizing continuation and subtle changes might mean that Yesh Atid does not differentiate itself enough from Likud enough to win in 2019, Lapid hopes that centrist success in Germany and France might bode well for Israel.

 

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It’s the region, stupid

The Middle East suffers from a whole range of problems. War and conflict are besetting wide parts of the region and have caused massive destruction as well as displacement in several countries, including Syria and Yemen. Climate change has brought about enormous environmental degradation such as desertification and water scarcity. At the same time, stressed domestic economies are increasingly unable to provide job opportunities for the region’s disenchanted youth. The Middle East faces enormous challenges that transcend borders and hence require answers that narrow-minded national policy making is no longer able to provide. Indeed, the region is today in dire need of regional responses.

On March 7, the Middle East Institute presented a roadmap of how future cooperation should look like in the Middle East. Resulting from Track 1.5 initiative involving current and former officials and senior experts from across the Middle East as well as from China, Europe, Russia, and the United States, the so-called Baghdad Declaration outlines 12 good neighborhood principles for the region. The discussion featured three major participants in the Middle East Dialogue. Naufel al-Hassan, deputy chief of staff to Prime Minister Haider al Abadi of Iraq, Abdullah al-Dardari, who serves as a senior advisor on reconstruction at The World Bank, and MEI’s senior vice president for policy research and programs Paul Salem provided their perspective on the Baghdad Declaration and the Middle East’s future. A full recording of the event is here:

Regional integration is already prevalent in the Middle East. Abdullah al-Dardari stresses that, excluding oil and gas, intraregional trade accounts for some 40% of total trade in the Middle East; taking the informal economy into consideration, this figure might even reach 60%. Moreover, the Middle East has the world’s highest level of intraregional level of remittances. Paul Salem underlines this observation and adds that only because of the high level of existing regional interdependence and interaction conflicts were able to spread that easily across the Middle East. However, the integration of today is neither well-structured nor reflected in the political relationships between Middle Eastern states.

The core Middle East. Source: CIA World Factbook, Wikimedia Commons

The region is still in dire need of better cooperation among its members. Al-Dardari argues that the model of country-based economic growth has reached its apex in the Middle East. Self-sustained economic development is no longer possible as national labor markets, productive bases, and consumption levels have become too narrow. Instead, only regional economic integration and the resulting creation of an open regional market can attract extensive investment and the money needed to rebuild war-ravaged countries: an estimated one trillion dollar of assets has been destroyed since 2011. Naufel al-Hassan also points out that political and environmental challenges such as transnational terrorist networks and water scarcity go beyond the problem-solving capacities of single states and require common answers. In the same vein, the region’s governments can only bring back hope to the Middle East’s youth when they collaborate on providing decent job opportunities. A new regional framework is hence not an option, but a necessity.

Although the contemporary conflicts in the Middle East seem to make increased regional cooperation almost impossible to achieve, change is possible. Salem stresses that other regions of the world were able to transition from a conflict system to a stable order. Not even a century ago, Europe suffered from two wars which much exceeded the level violence that has beset the contemporary Middle East. Yet Europe has been able to overcome its international divisions and conflicts and has established a strong system of cooperation, the European Union. At the same time, the Middle East has proven to be able to move beyond regional standoffs, as the surmounting of rivalry between Egypt and Saudi Arabia of the 1950s has demonstrated. We can thus be hopeful whereby al-Hassan emphasizes that a new stage of integration has already begun. To defeat ISIS, the region has displayed a new level of cooperation, which can serve as a blueprint for future efforts to unite in face of political, economic, and environmental challenges.

A better future is hence possible for the Middle East. The Baghdad Declaration offers a distinct vision that can show the path towards deeper integration in the region. When this transition will materialize will however depend on the readiness of the region’s current leadership to cease hostilities and acknowledge that small-minded national agendas cannot act as a remedy. For the sake of the Middle East and its people, this change of mentality and political outlook should occur soon.

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Peace picks September 18-22

  1. A Conversation With UN High Commissioner for Human Rights Zeid Ra’ad Al Hussein | Monday, September 18 | 10:00 – 11:00 am | Carnegie Endowment for International Peace | Register Here | Join the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace for the launch of the Morton and Sheppie Abramowitz Lecture featuring UN High Commissioner for Human Rights Zeid Ra’ad Al Hussein. Carnegie President William J. Burns will join the high commissioner for a conversation on the global state of human rights.
  2. Weighing Bad Options: Past Diplomacy With North Korea and Alliance Options Today | Monday, September 18 | 2:00 – 3:30 pm | Carnegie Endowment for International Peace | Register Here | The Trump administration and its allies are trying to apply maximum pressure on North Korea so that it will accept diplomatic talks predicated on its eventual denuclearization. It has been over a decade since such active hard and soft diplomatic measures have been applied to this policy challenge, even as regional circumstances have changed dramatically. Two veteran diplomats deeply involved with the last set of intense negotiations with North Korea will discuss their experiences and consider options in light of today’s dynamics and will be joined by both U.S. and Japanese experts. Carnegie’s Jim Schoff will moderate. Panelists include Christopher Hill of the Josef Korbel School of International Studies at The University of Denver, Mitoji Yabunaka of Ritsumeikan University and Osaka University, Keiji Nakatsuji of Ritsumeikan University, and Douglas H. Paal and James L. Schoff of the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace. This event is co-sponsored by the U.S.-Japan Research Institute.
  3. The Roller Coaster of Turkey-Russia Relations | Tuesday, September 19 | 3:00 – 4:30 pm | Brookings Institution | Register Here | The history of Turkish-Russian relations is replete with sudden outbursts of anger and unexpected rapprochements. Even in just the past couple of years, Moscow and Ankara swung from conflict to reconciliation with startling speed. Fewer than six months after Turkey’s downing of a Russian jet near Syria in November 2015, the two countries concluded deals on a gas pipeline and a nuclear plant. Following the assassination of the Russian ambassador in Ankara in December 2016, they collaborated on a framework to stop the fighting in Syria. Moving forward, fluctuations will likely continue to characterize this ever-uncertain relationship. In the latest Turkey Project Policy Paper, “An ambiguous partnership: The serpentine trajectory of Turkish-Russian relations in the era of Erdoğan and Putin,” Pavel K. Baev and Kemal Kirişci explore the main areas of interaction between Ankara and Moscow. They discuss the implications of these shifting dynamics on Turkey’s relations with its trans-Atlantic allies, particularly the United States and the European Union. On September 19, 2017, the Center on the United States and Europe (CUSE) will host a panel discussion on the conclusions from this latest Turkey Project Policy Paper. The authors Baev and Kirişci will be joined by Evren Balta, Fulbright visiting scholar at New York University, and Naz Durakoğlu, senior policy advisor to Senator Jeanne Shaheen at the U.S. Senate. The discussion will be moderated by Torrey Taussig, post-doctoral research fellow at Brookings.
  4. Saudi Arabia Looks Forward: Vision 2030 and Mohammed Bin Salman | Wednesday, September 20 | 2:00 pm – 3:30 pm | Brookings Institution | Register Here | In a new paper titled “Saudi Arabia in Transition,” Karen Elliott House, a former Wall Street Journal reporter who has visited Saudi Arabia for nearly 40 years and a current senior fellow at the Belfer Center for Science and International Affairs, analyzes the progress the Saudis have made and the challenges they face in implementing Vision 2030 amidst the recent changes in leadership. On September 20, the Brookings Intelligence project will host Elliott House for a discussion on her findings, the Trump administration’s Saudi Arabia policy, and Iran’s activities in the region. Bruce Riedel, director of the Intelligence Project and a senior fellow, will moderate the discussion. Following their remarks, Elliott House and Riedel will take questions from the audience.
  5. Restoring Stability in a Turbulent Middle East: A Perspective from the League of Arab States | Friday, September 22 | 3:30 pm | Center on Foreign Relations | Register Here | Secretary General Ahmed Aboul Gheit discusses the state of affairs in the Middle East, including the conflicts in Syria, Libya, and Yemen, the Israeli-Palestinian peace process, countering the threat of terrorism in the region, the impact of the recent intra-gulf crisis, and how the Arab League operates within this complex climate.
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The end is nigh, once again

Two years ago I published a post with this title. Remarkably little has changed since then in many conflicts:

  • South Sudan is suffering even more bloodletting.
  • The Central African Republic is still imploding.
  • North Korea is no longer risking internal strife but continues its belligerence on the international stage.
  • China is still challenging its neighbors in the East and South China Seas.
  • Syria is even more chaotic, with catastrophic consequences for its population and strains for its neighbors.
  • Egypt continues its repression of the Muslim Brotherhood and secular human rights advocates.
  • Israel and Palestine are no closer to agreement on a two-state solution.
  • Afghanistan has a new president but the Taliban are stronger in the countryside and the Islamic State is gaining adherents; money and people are still expatriating.
  • Al Qaeda is less potent in many places, but that is little comfort since the Islamic State has risen to take the leading role in Salafist jihadism.
  • Ukraine has lost control of Crimea, which has been annexed by Russia, and risks losing control of much of the southeastern Donbas region.

The only issue I listed then that is palpably improved is the Iranian nuclear question, which is now the subject of a deal that should postpone Tehran’s access to the nuclear materials required to build a bomb for 10 to 15 years.

Danielle Pletka of AEI topped off the gloom this year with a piece suggesting there are reasons to fear Putin’s recklessness could trigger World War III.

Without going that far, it is easy to add to the doom and gloom list:

  • Europe is suffering a bout of right-wing xenophobia (the US has a milder case), triggered by migrants from the Middle East and North Africa.
  • Mali and Nigeria are suffering serious extremist challenges.
  • The Houthi takeover in Yemen, and intervention there by a Saudi-led coalition, is causing vast suffering in one of the world’s poorest countries and allowing Al Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula to expand its operations.
  • Civil war in Libya is far from resolution, despite some signatures on a UN-sponsored agreement to end it.
  • Turkey has re-initiated a war against Kurdish forces that had been in abeyance.
  • Even Brazil, once a rising power, is suffering scandals that may bring down its president, even as its economy tanks.

I’m still not ready to throw in the towel. Some successes of two years ago continue and others have begun: Colombia‘s civil war is nearing its end, Burma/Myanmar continues its transition in a more open direction (even though it has failed to settle conflicts with several important minorities), Kenya is still improving, ditto Liberia, which along with Sierra Leone and maybe Guinea seems to have beaten the Ebola epidemic, and much of the Balkans, even if Kosovo and Bosnia are going through rough patches.

I still think, as I said two years ago:

If there is a continuous thread running through the challenges we face it is this:  getting other people to govern themselves in ways that meet the needs of their own populations (including minorities) and don’t threaten others.  That was what we did in Europe with the Marshall Plan.  It is also what we contributed to in East Asia, as democracy established itself in Japan, South Korea, Taiwan, Indonesia and elsewhere.  We have also had considerable success in recent decades in Latin America and Africa, where democracy and economic development have grown roots in Brazil, Argentina, Ghana, South Africa, and other important countries.  I may not like the people South Africans have elected, but I find it hard to complain about the way they have organized themselves to do it.

This is what we have failed to do in the Middle East:  American military support for autocracies there has stunted democratic evolution, even as our emphasis on economic reform has encouraged crony capitalism that generates resentment and support for Islamist alternatives.  Mubarak, Asad, Saleh, Qaddafi, and Ben Ali were not the most oppressive dictators the world has ever known, even though they murdered and imprisoned thousands, then raised those numbers by an order of magnitude as they tried to meet the challenge of revolution with brute force.  But their departures have left the countries they led with little means of governing themselves.  The states they claim to have built have proven a mirage in the desert.

If there is reason for doom and gloom, it is our failure to meet this governance challenge cleverly and effectively.  We continue to favor our military instruments, even though they are inappropriate to dealing with most of the problems we face (the important exceptions being Iran and China).  We have allowed our civilian instruments of foreign policy to atrophy, even as we ask them to meet enormous challenges.  What I wish for the new year is recognition–in the Congress, in the Administration and in the country–that we need still to help enable others to govern themselves.  Investment in the capacity to do it will return dividends for many decades into the future.

 

 

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The UN leans forward

The UN last week leaned forward on two important conflicts. The Secretariat went ahead with a Libyan peace deal, despite the refusal of the chairs of the country’s two competing parliaments and some armed groups to sign. A couple of days later, the UN Security Council passed a Syria resolution endorsing the so-called Vienna 2 road map for a ceasefire, negotiations, a new constitution, transition and elections. Neither move ends either war. Optimists hope they are first steps in the right direction.

The roads ahead will be difficult. In Libya, many armed groups seem unready to end their struggle, which is more about control of oil, the country’s substantial sovereign wealth funds and patronage than it is about religion or identity. But that is little comfort. It is not clear whether the Tobruk-based parliament, recognized under the agreement as a powerful lower house, will be able to move to Tripoli. Nor is it clear that the Tripoli-based parliament, which is to become a kind of advisory upper house, accepts its reduced role. Without a substantial deployment of peacekeepers, there is little the international community can do beyond the threat of sanctions against individuals to change their minds. In the meanwhile, the Islamic State is expanding its presence and aiming to control Libya’s vital oil facilities. Maybe that will get the attention of the warring factions.

Syria is no less difficult. The United States and Russia may nominally agree that it should remain united and become a state in which its citizens decide how it is governed, but they differ on whether and when Bashar al Assad should go, who is a terrorist and what should be done to fight the Islamic State. Washington thinks Assad has to leave in order to enable a serious fight against terrorists. Russia thinks he is fighting terrorists but might eventually leave, if and when the Syrian people decide. Russia is mostly bombing people the Americans thinks are moderates vital to Syria’s future, not the Islamic State. Washington is beefing up moderate forces, but refuses to give them the means to end barrel bombing and Russian strikes. Even a ceasefire in Syria will be difficult. The Islamic State and Jabhat al Nusra (an Al Qaeda affiliate) won’t participate. Who will monitor the ceasefire, reporting on violations and who commits them?

None of this means the UN is wrong to try. What it means is that our expectations should be tempered.

A serious ceasefire in all of Syria isn’t likely. Some parts of the country may calm, but the international community will need to settle for “fight and talk,” a time-honored tradition. Agreement on transition isn’t likely either. The day Bashar al Assad agrees that at some future date he will be leaving power will be the day he leaves power. The notion that he will preside over a credible democratic transition is bozotic. He intends to remain in power and will likely be able to do so as long as the Russians and Iranians back him.

In Libya, it is unlikely that the UN-sponsored accord will be implemented without some sort of international peacekeeping presence, to secure at least Tripoli so that the united government the agreement foresees can safely meet and deliberate. That may be neccessary, but not sufficient, since the Islamic State threat is not in Tripoli (yet), but rather in Qaddafi’s hometown of Sirte, and civilians in Benghazi need protection even more than those in Tripoli. Washington isn’t going to bother with Libya, except when it targets an Islamic State militant or two (or two dozen). If Libya is to be stabilized, the Europeans will need to step up to the task, or convince Arab countries to do it. Italy is attached by umbilical pipelines to Libyan gas production. France also enjoys Libyan oil and gas. Europeans with interests need to stop talking and start acting if they want their investments and energy supplies saved.

The UN is also leaning forward in Yemen, where the more or less Shia Houthis allied with forces loyal to former President Saleh are fighting the Saudi- and Emirati-backed effort to restore President Hadi to power in Sanaa. The effort to get a ceasefire and political settlement there is just beginning, without much initial success. Meanwhile, Al Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula is expanding and enjoying relative immunity in Yemen’s vast hinterlands. The Islamic State can’t be far behind.

The seemingly shy and hesitant Secretary General Ban Ki-moon is proving to be a bold risktaker. The UN is doing the right things. If it didn’t exist, we would have to invent it. American politicians should be more appreciative.

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Transition matters

The Carnegie Endowment for International Peace hosted a panel on Thursday entitled “Searching for Answers to Troubled Democratic Transitions,” co-sponsored by the National Endowment for Democracy, the Inter-American Dialogue, and the International Institute for Democracy and Electoral Assistance (International IDEA). The panel gave Abraham Lowenthal, professor emeritus of International Relations at USC, and Sergio Bitar, non-resident senior fellow and project director at Inter-American Dialogue, the opportunity to present their new book, Democratic Transitions: Conversations with World Leaders, an edited volume of lengthy interviews the two editors conducted with leaders who oversaw the gradual and successful transition of their countries from autocracy to democracy, as well as with some opposition figures from those countries.

The aim of conducting the interviews was to determine whether lessons can be drawn from earlier transitions in ‘Third Wave’ countries such as Indonesia, Chile, and Ghana and applied during what some have termed a democratic recession. After their overview, the president of the National Endowment for Democracy, Carl Gershman, contributed comments, while the audience also heard from two experts on countries currently on the cusp of transitions: Priscilla Clapp, senior advisor at the US Institute of Peace and the Asia Society, discussed Myanmar, while Moisés Naím, distinguished fellow at Carnegie, discussed Venezuela.

Carnegie’s vice president for Studies, Thomas Carothers, introduced the panel, remarking that the world has not seen a single new democracy emerge in the past decade. The Arab Spring was a period of hope, but with transitions thwarted in many of those countries, we have also been observing worrying global trends that would seem to suggest the push for democracy has slowed or even begun to reverse. Carothers still believes that the arc of history bends toward democracy, however, and the panelists would appear to agree.

Lowenthal underlined that the aim of the book was not to produce a work of theoretical comparative politics, but to try to distil best practices and recurrent issues for democratic transitions from the experiences of leaders who had lived and struggled through them. The narrative of prior experience can provide general principles that politicians in developing democracies can apply to local problems. Through their interviews, Lowenthal and Bitar observed that a set of issues cropped up in each case, apparently inherent to the process of transitioning. These included the problems of unifying oppositions while marginalizing destabilizing elements within them, preventing violence while separating a legitimate police force from the armed forces, and fighting corruption and impunity, among others.

Lowenthal and Bitar came up with ten imperatives for transition:

  • Move gradually and take every opportunity, not waiting for a ‘better’ choice
  • Maintain a hopeful vision about the process
  • Build coalitions between political parties and social movements
  • Protect the spaces of open dialogue
  • Build a constitution that represents all members of society and institutes a system for problem-solving
  • Enhance and reinforce political parties, or create them if necessary
  • Separate the police from the armed forces and ensure the latter is subject to the government
  • Ensure transitional justice
  • Manage the political economy of transition, to provide the basic conditions for governance
  • and manage external support, so that it converges with domestic forces

Gershman found the book instructive. Despite apparent autocratic resurgence and a crisis of confidence or political dysfunction in many advanced democracies, he thought what is currently occurring should not be understood as a democratic recession, but rather a ‘third reverse wave’ following on the Third Wave of the late 20th century. He offered steps that ought to be taken by advanced democracies to shepherd democratic transitions elsewhere, including a call to regain the will to fight the political and intellectual battle for liberal democratic values.

Gershman was uncompromising; he diverged from Lowenthal and Bitar in rejecting gradualism, saying that we cannot accept hybrid regimes as better than dictatorships. The editors, however, confirmed that all the interviewees had come out strongly in favor of gradual transitions. That is often how transitions transpired successfully.

Clapp found much similarity between the cases described in the book and the situation in Myanmar today, although the transition there is still in early stages and needs to be further developed. The international community entertains very high expectations given Myanmar’s specific history and context: it has been for so long a repressed society and still faces significant challenges in its transition, in military-civilian relations, an economy thoroughly controlled by an oligarchy, and exclusion of ethnic minorities.

Naím presented a dissent. By interviewing leaders only, the book presents one perspective on the transition process. Valuable as this work is, there are significant differences with many of the countries today on the cusp of transitioning, as opposed to the Third Wave countries covered in the book. These ignored factors include the phenomenon of states incorporating crime into their behaviour, as ‘mafia states’ (like Russia or Venezuela); the crucial role oil plays in oil-producing autocracies, shoring up regimes; the outsized influence of foreign actors; the role of social media; and expanding middle classes. Naím also thought it a simplification that militaries are treated as unified institutions, when really within militaries there are numerous factions competing for power.

A key issue remained unresolved: whether the experiences of Third Wave democracies could be applied to countries in North Africa, the Middle East, and elsewhere in the future.

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