Tag: Iran
The toughest nut in the Middle East
The Middle East Institute held their 7th annual conference on Turkey last week, gathering regional experts to discuss Turkey’s turbulent domestic politics and regional role. This post focuses on the regional issues discussed.
Haim Malka of the Center for Strategic and International Studies focused on Turkey-Israel relations. The reconciliation agreement following Israel’s 2010 raid on a Turkish flotilla headed to Gaza is being implemented. This is a mutually-beneficial, low-cost measure. Strategic cooperation is likely to remain limited.
Syria will test the renewed relationship as it is an arena where both Turkey and Israel’s interests intersect. Israel’s policy on Syria has to date been confused and vague, perhaps intentionally so, but ultimately the Israelis want to see a Syria with minimal Iranian influence. The fall of Iran’s ally Assad may be assumed beneficial to Israel, but the Israelis seem to have followed a ‘better the devil you know’ approach so far and do not appear to be supporting alternative political actors in Syria.
Bill Park of King’s College, London discussed Turkey’s relations with the Kurdish Regional Government (KRG) in Iraq, which saw marked improvement in 2009 and 2010 due to trade and energy connections, shared mistrust of Maliki’s Baghdad government, and President Barzani’s role as a potential partner in the peace process with Turkey’s own Kurds (the PKK). While these foundations for positive relations remain, Turkey’s refusal to support Syrian Kurds in the fight against IS, Turkey’s re-establishing a relationship with Baghdad following the replacement of Maliki by Abadi, and a change in perception of Barzani’s leadership record have undermined the rapprochement.
Senior Associate with the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace Karim Sadjadpour discussed Turkey-Iran relations. There are notable commonalities between the two states as they suffer both a superiority and inferiority complex – both do not see their current status in world affairs as reflecting their histories as great empires. There is also a strong shared cultural history. The Iran-Turkey border has proven stable in an otherwise turbulent region for centuries. Also important is their economic partnership, with shared gas projects and common concern with Kurdish independence.
Having suffered from terrorist attacks, Turkey is disappointed in Iran following Assad’s lead, especially in ignoring the radical Islamist threat in Syria. Upcoming events could exacerbate frictions between Turkey and Iran. These include the upcoming US presidential election, the May 2017 presidential elections in Iran, and whether the nuclear deal lasts ten years.
Presenting the complex relationship of Turkey, the US and Kurds was Amberin Zaman, Public Policy Fellow with the Wilson Center. She believes the US has an opportunity to use its leverage with the Syrian Kurds (the PYD) and Turkey to revive the Turkey-Kurdish peace process. This will require the US to abandon the fiction that the PYD and PKK are separate groups. The PYD is not seeking an independent state but rather a subnational federal unit within Syria, which the Kurds term “Rojava.”
While Turkey is unable to determine a military outcome, Ankara holds considerable soft power, especially in assisting the moderate opposition.
It was agreed among all the panelists that the US must articulate its policy for the region, and Syria in particular, as Turkey and its neighbors are looking for US leadership and unwilling to pursue their own policies without clarification from Washington. That is proving the toughest nut to crack in the Middle East.
Share this, I'll really appreciate it:
Liz Sly is wrong
She is also one of the very best journalists covering Syria, so I’d better explain why I think her “No sign of Obama’s predicted ‘quagmire’ as Russia’s engagement in Syria escalates” in the Washington Post this morning is wrong.
The Russians are stuck in a quagmire because the Assad regime can no longer survive without them. If the war continues, Moscow will have to continue or even escalate its engagement further, in order to compensate for the deterioration of the Syrian armed forces. If the regime some day wins, or at least comes to dominate “useful Syria,” Moscow and Tehran will be responsible for reconstruction, the costs for which amount to hundreds of billions. Sure, the $10-11 billion or so per year that the war is costing Moscow is sustainable this year and next, but at some point it becomes a serious burden. And that is nothing compared to what will be required once the war is over.
Moscow (and Tehran) are heading for strategic defeat in Syria. What they have done to a large portion of the civilian population will not be forgotten. It is now difficult to picture any successor regime to Assad that would be friendly to Russian and Iranian interests. Sustaining Assad or one of his coterie in place will mean continuation of the war with extremists, whose recruitment is directly related to his abusive rule.
In the meanwhile, Syrians suffer from the excesses of the regime, the Russians, the Iranians, and the extremists. Pro-regime forces are using anti-personnel and incendiary weapons in civilian areas, where they target in particular rescue workers, an aid convoy, and hospitals. Moscow denies all this, but those denials are no more believable than its denial that one of its missiles shot down Malaysia Air flight 17 over a rebel area of Ukraine.
Quagmire is apparent only in the rear-view mirror. The Americans denied they were in a quagmire in Vietnam, until they withdrew. The Soviets did likewise in Afghanistan. Assad, or a successor who will continue the regime, cannot be kept in place without massive assistance. That’s a quagmire, even if the effort is successful. Until the withdrawal, when things come apart sooner or later.
Share this, I'll really appreciate it:
Clinton won on the merits
How can anyone who watched last night’s presidential debate conclude that Trump did well? Clinton beat him on knowledge, amiability, respect, and record. Trump nervously sniffed, grunted, interrupted, and grimaced through the 90 minutes, scattering lies throughout. By the end, he was reduced to incoherence in responding to a question about America’s doctrine on first use of nuclear weapons and platitudes about how important they are.
But on NPR this morning, a self-described “alpha male” said Trump showed the kind of command authority required to be president. For him, that was the key: Trump attracts those who believe in male supremacy. His discourteous and dismissive behavior towards Clinton, not to mention his long record of derogatory remarks about women, is an asset, not a liability, with some voters.
He also attracts those who believe in white supremacy and maintenance of white privilege. His description of black neighborhoods as ridden with crime and violence is not calculated to attract black votes. It is the “dog whistle,” inaudible to many, intended to attract white racist votes by signaling that he understands their distaste for black people. Ditto his not denying that he discriminated against black people in renting apartments. Why deny something that your supporters like?
Trump, in short, represents the revenge of misogyny and racism. Can that win?
Unlikely, but not impossible. FiveThirtyEight has him at 45%, more or less, this morning. My guess is that his odds will go down over the next few days as his poor performance in the debate sinks in with the electorate. Hillary Clinton looked and behaved like a president last night: self-controlled, clear, and articulate. But even at 40/60, Trump would still have a shot a month our from the November 8 election.
On foreign policy issues, the debate was minimalist. Clinton ably defended the nuclear deal with Iran, which Trump attacked without promising to renege on it. Trump went after Clinton on trade agreements–not only the Trans-Pacific Partnership but also the North American Free Trade Agreement. Most commentators seemed to think that was his best moment. Syria did not come up, nor I think did Ukraine, Israel, or Afghanistan (except for Clinton’s mention of the NATO allies joining us there after 9/11). Clinton criticized the Russians for cyber attacks. Trump tried to parry by suggesting someone like the Chinese might have been responsible. He also criticized China for competitively weakening its currency, which hasn’t happened in years.
ISIS came up, but neither offered anything really new on how to counter it. Clinton got a point or two for mocking Trump’s “secret” plan. She also scored in emphasizing that the agreement for withdrawal from Iraq, which Trump criticized, was done during George W. Bush’s presidency, including the date by which the withdrawal had to be completed. Trump again denied supporting the Iraq invasion, which by now everyone should know is untrue. He also denied denying global warming and deleted an old tweet in which denied it.
In short, this was a clear win for Hillary Clinton on the merits even if she did not score any knockout blows. Those are more likely to come in the next debates, scheduled for October 9 and 19 (the vice presidential debate will be October 4).
Share this, I'll really appreciate it:
Iran’s aggrieved entitlement
Sousan Abadian, a scholar with advanced degrees from Harvard, contributed this post. She has served as a Fellow at MIT’s Dalai Lama Center for Ethics and Transformative Values as well as the Center for Public Leadership at Harvard’s Kennedy School. Her academic research on healing collective trauma has been described as “pioneering” and “highly original” by Nobel laureate in economics Amartya Sen. She now guides people and organizations to step free of restrictive narratives and go beyond known thresholds in order to create transformation. She has been awarded a Franklin Fellowship at the US Department of State.
I’m a student of post-conflict restoration, of how communities not only survive trauma but also learn to thrive by adapting and gaining resilience. I was born in Iran but naturalized in the US. Forays into Vietnam and Laos have given me perspective on my Iranian origins.
How did the Laotians and Vietnamese react when they found out I was American? Gracious and unimpressed. The war has been over now for over thirty years. The Vietnamese have succeeded in unifying their country and winning their independence. Laos welcomed President Obama just this month.
Both Vietnam and Laos are not only at peace but profoundly peaceful. As a researcher concerned with collective trauma, I wondered how that had been achieved. For example, there is a surprising absence of road rage given the horrendous crowds and unbelievable traffic in Hanoi. I witnessed the aftermath of an accident involving two motorcycles. A large crowd had gathered around the two riders, who were calmly discussing the incident. I had never seen anything like it.
At the crack of dawn in Hanoi, a large group of elderly do Tai Chi by Hoàn Kiếm Lake and play badminton, laughing and puffing with exertion. Just outside Luang Prabang in Laos, the ancient city of a thousand temples, children stand by the side of the road with buckets of water, splashing passersby and laughing hysterically. Life is about equilibrium and joy.
I could not help but contrast my experience of Iran with Laos and Vietnam. Iranian children, and adults for that matter, are full of mirth and fun. But there is also an intangible heaviness, as though joy must be kept under wraps — like its women, hidden away under black — and squashed under the weight of self-denial, austerity, and even perpetual mourning. Many Vietnamese and Laotians I encountered were by contrast engaged in play, contemplation, or busy moving ahead in life. They appear to ruminate little and refrain from stirring up muck from the past.
Why is it that after all these years, the Iranian government, or at least the Islamist hardliners, continue to express resentment and foment rage at America, their ‘Great Satan,’ while the Laotians and Vietnamese had seemingly let go of their bitter grievances, moving graciously on towards the future? Iran has arguably experienced a fraction of what Laotians experienced (and continue to experience) at the hands of the American government. Laos experienced the most bombings per capita in history. From 1964 to 1973, the US dropped the equivalent of a planeload of bombs every 8 minutes, 24-hours a day, for 9 years. American unexploded ordnance continues to maim and kill innocent Laotian children and adults to this day in an estimated one-third of the country.
What allows Vietnam and Laos to move forward with the US despite legitimate grievances? What prevents Iran from doing so? Read more
Share this, I'll really appreciate it:
In the box can be good too
I enjoyed 90 minutes today with SAIS’s Mike Lampton and CSIS’s Michael Green commenting on Amitai Etzioni’s Foreign Policy: Thinking Outside the Box, a recent Chatham House publication. Here are my speaking notes, though I should note much of the event focused on China, which was not within my remit:
- First let me say it has been a privilege to be required to read this book. It is a model of precision and intelligibility. Professor Ezioni says what he means clearly and concisely, marshaling the evidence with skill and erudition.
- My doubts have to do mainly with the title: it advertises thinking outside the box, but much of the book is devoted to ideas I would regard as well inside the box, even if some of them might be labeled “new normal.”
- Take, for example, the chapter on “defining down sovereignty.” A good deal of it is spent pooh-poohing the Westphalian notion of sovereignty and arguing in favor of a more contemporary alternative: sovereignty as entailing rights as well as responsibilities.
- This leads naturally to Responsibility to Protect, which is well within the box these days, and another, new to me notion, “responsibility to counter terrorism.” If states fail or refuse to do this, intervention might be justified, Professor Etzioni says.
- It’s an interesting idea that even explains some current behavior, in particular the anti-ISIL intervention in Syria, which the host government has not unauthorized.
- The downsides are all too clear: the slippery slope that leads to an unjustified excuse for invasion or other intervention, as in George W.
- The chapter on spheres of influence is not so much outside the box as it is outside the realm of academic discussion, as Professor Etzioni himself documents. Spheres of influence are a well-established practice in international affairs, even if the concept has not attracted much scholarly attention.
- Professor Etzioni sees spheres of influence, Russia’s “near-abroad” for example or Iran’s influence in Iraq, as providing space for rising regional powers and buffer zones that bolster a feeling of security.
- The trouble with that notion is that it discounts the will of those who live in these buffer states. The limits of his approach are all to evident in Ukraine, where Etzioni admits Russia used force to try to prevent the Ukrainians from choosing their alignment with Europe.
- People just aren’t always content to serve the purposes of other powers.
- When it comes to self-determination, I would quibble with Amitai’s characterization of Kurdistan as more democratic than the rest of Iraq, but more importantly he ignores the negative regional and internal political contexts for any independence move by the Iraqi Kurds. I doubt it will happen, or that it will be democratizing if it does.
- I would agree however with Amitai’s main conclusion: decentralization rather than secession is far more likely to produce positive outcomes in democratic societies like Spain, where unfortunately the central government has been unwilling to concede even that. That however is a conclusion well inside the box, not outside it.
- One concluding thought: Professor Etzioni repeatedly doubts the applicability of liberal democratic notions outside the family of liberal democratic states.
- As an American, I feel condemned to believe in universal rights, as our founding documents are all too clear on this subject.
- But I would also say that I’ve virtually never met someone outside the liberal democratic world who didn’t aspire to those rights.
- We don’t need to export the notion that all people are created equal. We only need to help people find ways of institutionalizing equal rights in ways that are appropriate to their particular contexts.
- All in all, a good and interesting read, even if the novelty is overblown.
I made two points in the discussion period worth recalling:
- Liberal democracy is not congruent with secularism, since we have liberal democratic states (where rights are in principle equal) like Italy and the UK with established churches (not to mention the penetration of religion into government in the US).
- Russia’s behavior in Ukraine cannot properly be attributed to NATO expansion. Putin has made it clear that he is trying to re-establish Moscow’s hegemony in what he considers Russia’s near-abroad. That is not a reaction to NATO expansion but rather an aggressive program vital to his view of Russia’s historic and cultural role, as well as to his domestic political standing.
Share this, I'll really appreciate it:
Iraqi Kurdistan’s independence prospects
Yesterday, the Woodrow Wilson Center convened three experts to discuss the viability of a Kurdish state in Northern Iraq and to critique and elaborate on a report on Iraqi Kurdistan by Amberin Zaman. The panel on “From Tribe To Nation: Iraqi Kurdistan On The Cusp Of Statehood” featured Amberin Zaman, a Public Policy Fellow at the Wilson Center, Abbas Kadhim, a Foreign Policy Fellow at the Foreign Policy Institute, and Aliza Marcus, author of Blood and Belief: The PKK and the Kurdish Fight for Independence.
Zaman views the Kurds in Iraq as closer to independence than ever before. Their warming relationship with Ankara means that Turkey can assist the Kurdistan Regional Government (KRG) in achieving independence. In exchange for access to Kurdistan’s oil reserves, Turkey would likely be willing to protect the Kurds from Iran’s ire and give them access to trade routes and ports. Though she believes that Iraqi Kurdistan is ready for independence, she noted that the KRG must resolve its internal disputes before any kind of sustainable independence can be achieved.
Kadhim listed four elements that Iraqi Kurdistan needs before independence can be realized. The KRG needs:
- a united front, which means its two main political parties, the KDP and PUK, must resolve their disputes;
- full cooperation from Baghdad, with which it must negotiate borders, financial matters, and future diplomatic relations;
- regional cooperation, since the new state will be short lived if one of their powerful and temperamental neighbors (namely Turkey or Iran) strongly opposes independence.
- reliable international alliances in order to have their statehood approved and recognized by international organizations such as the UN.
Without these four elements, Iraqi Kurdistan cannot achieve true and sustainable independence from Iraq.
More skeptical, Marcus explained that Iraqi Kurdistan’s trouble isn’t rooted in the chaos created by ISIS and the drop in oil prices. Rather, its problems are rooted in the lack of viable civil institutions within the KRG. Kurdistan is experiencing a brain drain, wherein many of the best and brightest are leaving because they see no room for advancement within the confines of the KRG.
She also disagreed with Zaman’s prediction that Turkey will assist the KRG in achieving independence. Ankara is actually quite suspicious of Iraqi Kurdistan due to the PKK’s positions there as well as the PKK’s alliance with the PUK. Given Erdogan’s militant opposition to Kurdish autonomy in Eastern Turkey and Northern Syria, it is unlikely that he would support Kurdish independence in Iraq.
During the Q&A session, Zaman explained that Iraqi Kurdistan has a small window of opportunity for independence, due to the KRG’s warm relationship with Turkish President Erdogan and the respectability of Iraqi Kurdistan’s President Barzani. Once Barzani is no longer in power, the KRG’s ability to achieve independence will be diminished.
Kadhim said that Iran is opposed to the formation of a Kurdish state in Northern Iraq, since Iran does not want to deal with ‘two Iraqs’. They would likely be more amenable to a division of Iraqi Kurdistan into a Shiite region and a Sunni region, wherein Iran would be allied with the Shiite region and focus on keeping the Sunni region and Iraq-proper weakened.
RSS - Posts
