Terrorists are Super-Human Cyborgs

Yglesias has a quick post pointing out some ridiculous comments made by James Inhofe about all the terrible things that will happen if we move GITMO detainees to facilities in the United States. Putting aside the dumb (if quite pernicious) semantic debate about trying to define torture up (down?) so that we can torture people without "torturing" people, the money quote from Inhofe is really in the second block:

"By definition, terrorists are in the business of training people to be terrorists, that’s what they do for a living. And of course you put them with a bunch of people who steal hubcaps or whatever they’re in there for, they could come out as terrorists."

I'm not sure which layer of absurdity to start with here. First off, if all you've done is steal hubcaps, why the hell are you in a supermax prison? Why the hell are you in prison at all? That strikes me as one of those offenses that even the "tough on crime" crowd can admit isn't worth incarcerating someone for. Whatever. Also, it's kind of funny that he's describing terrorism as something people do "for a living," like it was picked out of a career catalogue because the seminars on pipe fitting and dishwasher repair were full.

Second, and somewhat more seriously, I think there's a connection one can make here with the gradual expansion and manipulation of the word "terrorism" in our lexicon such that it now refers to all kinds of ill-defined (but always very scary) malevolence without really describing very much. You label someone a "Terrorist" and all of a sudden he goes from being just a guy with a chip on his shoulder and a couple of months' training with a Kalashnikov to being a super villain that needs to be kept in an underground vault like Sean Connery's character in The Rock.

From the way you hear some conservatives talk about the prospect of incarcerating convicted (or suspected, or formerly suspected, or demonstrably-innocent-but-too-embarrassing-to-release) terrorists on U.S. soil, you'd think we were talking about people infected with some virus that will spread to anyone that looks them in the eye. I seriously doubt there are legions of incarcerated hubcap thieves who are just teetering on the precipice of a life of violent jihad, needing only some prison time with a Terrorist to push them over the edge. Frankly, if there are, they can just have my damn hubcaps. I won't even call the cops.

Oh, and amusing as these comments are, just remember, the man's a United States Senator.

Pax Americana.

Playing With Fire

Al Jazeera is not taking kindly to the recent storming of its office by Yemeni government forces.

On Thursday, accusing the network of bias and inaccurate reporting, Yemen's government authorized the forcible seizure of broadcast equipment from Al Jazeera's office. The impolite arrival of Yemeni forces was caught on camera (heck, it's Al Jazeera; of course they have cameras around) and, what do you know, it's now being broadcast hourly on Al Jazeera's news bulletin. The outrage of Al Jazeera is evident in their coverage and they've made the story one of their top news items. The full report on the subject that is being broadcast is damning towards the Yemeni government and the network even went as far recently as to devote its nightly news program, Ma Wara Al Khabr ("What's Behind the News"), to the subject of Yemen's attack on Al Jazeera. Predictably, most of the guests on the program were overtly hostile towards the move, critical of the Sanaa government, and sympathetic towards Al Jazeera's position.

I suspect that Sanaa is in over its head and will come to regret this poorly-considered decision. The negative press that the Yemeni government is now being regularly subjected to from the region's most popular Arabic news network is extremely damaging to its reputation. Moreover, Al Jazeera's intensive coverage of the issue has had various political consequences. There have been protests and even critical moves by opposition MPs in the Yemeni parliament. We'll see how this play out, but it certainly fits into the narrative that Noah Bonsey and I sketched out in the Columbia Journalism Review recently about Al Jazeera's profound influence in affecting political events in the region.

Quick Hit: EU Foreign Policy

Judah Grunstein has a great piece over at WPR outlining some recent developments in the post-Lisbon struggle to define a coherent EU foreign-policy-making apparatus. As Grunstein notes, these debates might seem a bit silly to outside observers - just rearranging the political furniture - but the role the EU plays as an international actor in the twenty-first century will have a lot to do with the coherence and effectiveness of its institutional framework, so it's worth paying attention.

Generational Thinking

I was going to avoid writing about the latest dust up on the Israeli-Palestinian front, wherein the Israeli government decided to publicly embarrass the United States by approving new settlement construction on the eve of Vice President Biden's attempt to engineer a reboot of Israeli talks with the Palestinian Authority. I was dismayed though not particularly surprised by the move, given the ideological predispositions and historical record of the current Israeli administration. That said, I'm a bit puzzled at the willingness of some in Tel Aviv to deliberately undermine their country's most important bilateral relationship for little discernible gain.

Assuming the timing of the settlements' approval was deliberate (and I have to assume it was - if not I imagine there are a number of former Israeli government workers who are currently in the market for a job), it served two possible ends: 1) scuttling peace talks and/or 2) pissing off the United States. The former goal, self-immolatingly short sighted though it may be, I can at least understand, but there are ways of torpedoing peace talks without quite so publicly humiliating Washington. The last two decades provide numerous instructive examples. The latter goal just doesn't make sense. Rightly or wrongly, the United States provides Israel with massive amounts of aid, protection, international legitimacy and political cover, and does so at some diplomatic cost. I think it's fair to say that a large measure of that orientation stems from a widely-shared belief among the current generation of American elites that supporting Israel in this way is both a strategic good and a moral imperative.

That predisposition won't be sustainable in the long term if up-and-coming generations of America's political class develop a more jaundiced view of Israel, seeing it as an unreasonable, recalcitrant strategic lodestone. For what it's worth, that's not a view to which I subscribe, but when the Israeli government goes out of its way to embarrass American leaders and make a mockery of American strategic priorities, it doesn't endear itself to those Americans that actually pay attention to the region's politics. Not a great way to sustain a healthy relationship.
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Update: Judah Grunstein over at WPR notes that Israel has just made some remarks about its nuclear intentions that are just as diplomatically tone-deaf.

The View from Sukhumi

The Crisis Group has another excellent report out [PDF] - this one about Abkhazia's increasing reliance on Russia. This small breakaway region of Georgia, once home to the beachside villas of Soviet officials, has long maintained that it has no business being under the thumb of Tblisi. Independence, Abkhazian nationalists declare, and a strong alliance with Russia, is what the country needs.

Well things are looking good from Sukhumi, the region's capital. The 2008 war between Russia and Georgia has put Abkhazia further on the way towards independence from Tblisi. Georgian troops can't enter the region anymore; even Georgian citizens are having a hard time moving back and forth across the border. Independence from Tblisi doesn't mean independence from Moscow, however. Russia, which has dominated the peacekeeping force deployed in the region since the mid-1990s, has long had its eye on the region. And, as many analysts have written, the 2008 war with Georgia was all about bringing Abkhazia -- and the other Georgian breakway region, South Ossetia -- back under Moscow's thumb.

Looks like it's worked. Relations between Moscow and Sukhumi are cruising along. There are several thousand Russian troops stationed comfortably in Abkhazia and there are plans for Russian military bases. Meanwhile, Moscow has pledged massive aid to "reinforce" Abkhazia's borders and is busy flexing its military muscles at Georgia in other ways as well. In September of last year, for example, Russia boldly declared that it would "intercept and detain Georgian coast guard boats in the Black Sea if they attempted to interfere with ships trading with Abkhazia" or if they decided to trespass in "Abkhazian waters." (ICG) Russians also informally staff some of the key positions in the Abkhazian defense ministry; Aleksandr Pavliushko, one of the key figures in Russia's former peacekeeping contingent (says something about their impartiality, no?), is now a kind of "de facto deputy defence minister."

None of this seems to bother the Abkhazian government so much, however. As the report notes:

If Abkhazian officials harbour any reservations about the Russian presence, they do not show it. A high-ranking official told Crisis Group that Russian troops would not leave Abkhazia “even if Georgia recognised Abkhazia as an independent state. Russia is our guarantee of security”.

There are also deep economic economic ties between Russia and Abkhazia that have become even more pronounced in recent years. In 2009, Russian aid made up roughly 60% of Abkhazia's state budget, and in 2008 Moscow provided the breakaway region with approximately 99% of its foreign investment. Russia also receives the vast majority of Abkhazia's exports.

All this talk of increasing dependency does make you wonder: is Abkhazia truly prepared to become a Russian satellite state? Because it sure looks like de facto independence from Tblisi has only led to dominance from a new master.

Pigs Fly

Never thought I'd read this.

Journalist Nir Rosen, long the pessimist on Iraq, writes that the security situation there is looking pretty damn stable (all things considered.)

There are still militias active in Iraq, and the level of deadly violence would be unacceptable almost any place else on Earth. But the fears frequently voiced by foreign analysts and reporters – that the civil war is merely in abeyance, and that sectarian fury could break out again at any moment after a series of deadly attacks, or an unfavourable election result – are overblown. The threat of a civil war no longer looms, and the country is decidedly not “unravelling”, as many continue to suggest. Armed militias have not been eliminated, but they have been emasculated: they carry out assassinations with silenced pistols and magnetic car bombs, but they are no match for the Iraqi Security Forces, which have shed their reputation as sectarian death-squads and now appear to have earned the support of much of the public. Apart from the occasional suicide bombing, Iraqi civilians are no longer targeted at random – and even these more spectacular attacks have little to no strategic impact. (The National)

Clinton on the Falklands

Alex Massie over at Andrew Sullivan's blog has a couple of posts highlighting some recent remarks made by Secretary Clinton on her visit to Argentina. Asked about the possibility of the U.S. playing a mediation role between Britain and Argentina over the status of the Falkland Islands, Clinton made the following remark:

...we want very much to encourage both countries to sit down. Now, we cannot make either one do so, but we think it is the right way to proceed. So we will be saying this publicly, as I have been, and we will continue to encourage exactly the kind of discussion across the table that needs to take place.

That might seem like boilerplate language and nothing to get exorcised about, but as Massie notes, the British position on the Falklands is that there's really nothing to discuss. Britain wants and has the islands. The people who are living on the islands have no desire to be under Argentine rule. End of discussion. By encouraging the two countries to "sit down," Clinton was arguably legitimating the Argentine claim.

Now, I'm sure Secretary Clinton wasn't trying to indicate some change in American policy. If I had to guess, she was just trying to say a few platitudes about the importance of constructive diplomacy and move on. That said (and readers know that I don't make this argument very often), this really is an issue that has nothing whatsoever to do with the United States. Back in the 1980s when there was an actual war over the islands, the Reagan Administration thought there was some strategic relevance to brokering a deal that wouldn't damage the Argentine junta too much so as not to destabilize anti-leftist efforts in Latin America. Even that notion was a pretty serious stretch, relating to a larger policy that itself rested on shaky logical foundations. Nowadays, I have a hard time thinking of an international dispute that's less relevant to U.S. interests. The only way for the U.S. to create problems for itself here is by getting involved, which will end up annoying somebody no matter what.

Next time Secretary Clinton, or any other U.S. official is asked about the dispute, they ought to just tell the truth: the U.S. takes no position. We really don't care.

Nuclear Weapons in the Twenty-First Century

One of the elements of Obama's presidential campaign that I found really attractive - indeed one of the things that distinguished him from some of his opponents in the primary races - was his renewed focus on downgrading the role of nuclear weapons, both in terms of America's defense posture and in the international arena more generally. I was impressed that he saw the connection between the failure of the great powers to abide by their NPT commitments and the slow breakdown of the global nonproliferation regime. I was also impressed that he spoke with some force about the need to reduce America's nuclear stocks and embrace the "logic of zero."

With that context in mind, I'm not quite sure how I feel about yesterday's piece in the Times about internal debates over the forthcoming Nuclear Posture Review. Assuming the piece is reasonably accurate - and considering the weight given to anonymous sources, I have no way of testing that assumption - several issues remain seriously contested. First, there is a question of whether the U.S. should unequivocally declare that it would only use nuclear weapons in response to a nuclear attack. This is one of those things that the man on the street generally just assumes to be the case, but America's actual posture is more ambiguous, leaving open the possibility of a nuclear response to chemical or biological strikes, potentially against non-nuclear states.

Second, there is a question as to how much the U.S. ought to shrink its arsenal. The article seems to imply that there aren't major cuts being contemplated in weapons that America has actually deployed, only in its reserve stockpiles. It seems to me that this would render any reduction largely cosmetic but, somewhat paradoxically, nuclear strategy is an area in which appearances are extraordinarily important, so it's a relevant concern.

Third, there is a debate about whether or not to remove American tactical nuclear weapons from Europe, which, according to the Times, "provide more political reassurance than actual defense."

Finally, there's debate over whether and/or how much to invest in updating and modernizing existing nuclear stocks in the context of reducing their number, the idea being that a smaller nuclear force needs to be more reliable if it isn't to be augmented by significant redundancy.

All these questions get to a much larger question that, oddly enough after more than sixty years, remains debated: what precisely are nuclear weapons good for? One obvious answer is to prevent the use of others' nuclear weapons. Given the speed with which advanced states can deliver large numbers of warheads, and given that it remains almost impossible to reliably stop the delivery vehicles, a strategic nuclear exchange would deliver all the destruction and devastation of a years-long cataclysmic war to both sides in a matter of hours. There aren't many circumstances under which state leaders would contemplate bringing that kind of destruction down on their own heads.

This brings us to the second reasonably credible use: regime protection. Though American leaders try not to say it out loud too often, one of the reasons Iran's nuclear program is unsettling to Washington is that it constrains the ability of the United States to topple the Iranian regime by force, should push come to shove. As a global hegemon, having the ability to wave our conventional military around and implicitly threaten recalcitrant middle powers with conquest is something America likes to be able to do. It's much harder if the recalcitrant middle power in question can credibly threaten to take out a couple of allied capital cities. Israel's nuclear program was originally founded on this logic, as was that of France (consider De Gaulle's famous statement that "...we shall have the means to kill 80 million Russians. I truly believe that one does not light-heartedly attack people who are able to kill 80 million Russians, even if one can kill 800 million French, that is if there were 800 million French").

Finally, it's reasonably credible for a great power like the United States to use its nuclear forces to draw red lines around certain major interests. Extending the American nuclear umbrella to NATO and Japan during the Cold War was a move that the Soviets could take reasonably seriously because of the strategic importance of both of those places, though even then I'm not sure what the U.S. actually would have done if the chips were ever down. If the America had tried to place, say, the Philippines under the same umbrella, the deterrent would have been far less credible.

Other uses, such as nuclear blackmail or "compellence" are generally thought to be far-fetched. It's not credible to threaten another state with nuclear attack in order to compel it to grant basing rights or sign a trade agreement or even, in most cases, stop fighting a conventional war. If the threat won't be taken seriously, then being able to make it is not useful. Likewise, nuclear weapons probably aren't very useful in the context of war fighting, unless one is fighting a World War II style no-holds-barred battle for the future of civilization, which gets back to the deterrence/regime protection point.

Moving to the specific case of the United States, then, we can consider how and how much nuclear weapons aid American power and security. To the question of when the U.S. would use a nuclear weapon, during the early days of the Cold War it made sense to leave the answer somewhat ambiguous, as there was a genuine fear of Soviet armies overrunning Europe. To the extent a war remained entirely conventional, the U.S. would probably have lost.

It hardly needs to be stated that this is no longer the case. Neither Europe nor Japan face a serious threat of invasion by anyone's conventional forces. Even if they did, both have robust defense establishments, and in the case of Europe there are two nuclear weapons states that are more than capable of offering their own asymmetric deterrent. As to the question of nuclear retaliation for a chemical or biological attack, it bears remembering that the U.S. has a conventional military that is orders of magnitude more powerful than those of potential adversaries, one that is more than capable of inflicting punishing, crippling, catastrophic damage to any state that attacked it with weapons of mass destruction. Declaring that it will use nuclear weapons to respond to non-nuclear attacks is unnecessarily destabilizing when it can kill plenty of people by other means. The U.S. should make nuclear deterrence the sole stated purpose of its arsenal.

To the question of tactical nuclear weapons in Europe, their presence strikes me as anachronistic. Surely it ought to be possible to provide offsetting reassurances of America's commitment to Europe's security without splitting atoms, particularly since it isn't clear under what plausible scenarios such weapons would be used. Again, Russia's recent saber rattling aside, the possibility of the kind of large scale conventional European war that could plausibly require tactical nukes hasn't been more remote since Caesar Augustus sat in Rome. The message sent by reducing the significance of nuclear weapons would be considerably more powerful than the message sent by keeping them.

As to the twin questions of how much to reduce and how much to modernize, I'm admittedly not familiar enough with the technical details to offer a comprehensive opinion. Needless to say, in a world where 2-300 simultaneous strategic nuclear strikes could end civilization, for the U.S. and Russia to have 20,000 stockpiled warheads is insane. That said, I don't know the details of how "reliable" our currently-deployed warheads are. If there's a legitimate concern that, were the U.S. to launch ten weapons, five of them wouldn't go off, then I'm fine with efforts to refurbish them. If, as I suspect is more likely, there's concern that one in a thousand warheads might not go off, then the overall credibility of America's deterrent isn't meaningfully affected, and I don't see a need to further weaken the nonproliferation regime by initiating a massive overhaul and update of the American arsenal.

In any case, I'll probably have better-formed thoughts when the actual NPR is released.

ElBaradei: A Loudspeaker for the Opposition?

Former IAEA Chief Mohammed ElBaradei hosted a meeting of opposition leaders in Cairo earlier this week to talk about strategies for the upcoming 2011 Egyptian presidential elections. Of primary focus were ways in which to promote the ability of independent candidates to run for the presidency. George Ishaq, previously the spokesman of Kifaya, was allegedly scheduled to attend; other opposition figures, including a Muslim Brotherhood MP, planned to show up as well. There were also rumors of Ayman Nour's attendance, the former presidential candidate of the Al Ghad party who was jailed in 2005 on trumped up political charges before he was released in February of last year.

Thought to be on the agenda were efforts to combat some of the more restrictive 2007 constitutional amendments. Under these amendments, independent candidates for the presidency are required to get 250 signatures from various elected officials (most of whom are members of Mubarak's NDP.) The Muslim Brotherhood, for its part, is also denied the right to run a candidate because of Article 76, which forbids parties that are not legally registered from running candidates. (The Brotherhood was banned in 1954.)

So what came of all the chatter? Well, the outcome of the meeting was the formation of a "Coalition for Change," as several of the participants have told press outlets. As the Jordan Times explains, "the coalition will collect signatures to lobby the government to change the constitution and make it easier for independents to run and to revoke emergency law, which has been in place since 1981 and allows detention without charges." Note that there was no move to unite around an ElBaradei run for the presidency. Indeed, as George Ishaq said, the meeting was not about anointing ElBaradei as the opposition's candidate. Rather, "it was to discuss...working in the street for political reform."

But what are ElBaradei's own intentions? Perhaps not a presidential run, as many have been hoping. Indeed, as the former IAEA Chief said himself, he won't even consider such a move unless there are constitutional safeguards in place to ensure that such an election would be free and fair. And that day is a long ways off. As AlMasry AlYoum notes:

...ElBaradei is adamant about conveying the message that he is not interested in becoming president per se, but rather in the change that such a position may allow him to carry-out. “I want to change the country,” he said on Adeeb’s interview, “and if the way to change it is to become president, then first I want that opportunity, then I will decide whether I will run.”

Ambitions aside, ElBaradei seems to get it that a presidential run would be futile without fundamental changes. As the AlMasry AlYoum article quotes him as saying: “We are in a strange place in Egypt. I can’t form a party, and if I did, I’d have to go to the ruling one to get permission […] and even if they agreed, I wouldn’t be able to run for president for another five years. So this door is closed.” For now, at least, ElBaradei's focus will probably be on leading up this coalition to press for changes in the Egyptian political system - not on seeking higher office. Issandr El Amrani's commentary on this subject seems quite accurate:

The sense that I get is that most of his prominent supporters are focusing on the potential for ElBaradei to be a symbol, a loudspeaker for the Egyptian opposition's near-universal agreement on what needs to be changed in the country: an end to emergency laws and the police state, constitutional reform to make politics competitive, and an end to the Mubarak family's role in politics. It's not much more complicated than that, and the question of whether ElBaradei will, or even can, run for president really seems secondary to them. The same can be said for ElBaradei himself from the interviews he's given so far: he systematically downplays the prospect of his candidacy in favor of talking about systemic problems, going just short of criticizing Mubarak directly....The point for ElBaradei and his supporters is widening the debate about the current political environment, and in essence destabilizing Egyptian politics by spreading a coherent attack on the system.

Quick Hit: EU Parliamentary Tirades

I'm often jealous of other countries that have parliamentary debates that are, you know, actual debates, complete with vitriol and personal attacks and all the other parts of politics that in the U.S. take place on cable news instead. Well here's a doozy from British MEP Nigel Farage. If nothing else, the drama might lead people to pay more attention to the European Parliament.

Identity Matters: Greek Citizenship

Douglas Muir has an interesting post over at A Fistful of Euros on the Greek government's attempt to liberalize its immigration policy to allow for the children of some immigrants to apply for Greek citizenship. Muir notes that this is a bigger deal than it initially sounds, citing data indicating that roughly 10% of people currently living in Greece - and a full 20% of the country's workforce - are immigrants. Many have been in Greece for years, but the Greek system of naturalization, based as it is on the increasingly anachronistic principle of jus sanguinis, makes it almost impossible for them to become citizens.

There has been an entirely predictable backlash from the nationalist right, but Muir notes that there's more than just tribalist chauvinism going on:

...while most of the nationalist rhetoric is irrational (and much of it is outright hateful), there is a real point here. If this law is passed, or one like it, then within a generation between 5% and 10% of Greece’s population may not be ethnic Greeks. They’ll be hyphenated: Albanian-Greeks, Bulgarian-Greeks, Pakistani-Greeks. In a country that is over 90% self-identified ethnic Greeks, this is going to be an incredibly fast and dramatic change.

There's no doubt something to this. Anyone who has followed the immigration debate in the United States knows that redefining national boundaries can be a wrenching, painful experience, and I'm willing to grant that not all discomfort with it - especially in a country like Greece that has been ethnically self-defined for some time - stems from radical xenophobia. Still, it's worth asking what would actually change were Greece to open up its naturalization process. It's not as though Greece is now a homogeneous society that would all of a sudden be flooded with foreigners. Immigrants already make up a large portion of the Greek population. Greek immigration policy has either tacitly or explicitly encouraged people from other countries to come to Greece, work in Greece, live in Greece, and start families and raise children in Greece. It stands to reason that, after enough time doing that, they ought to be able to vote in Greece too.

If a country wants to have restrictive immigration policies for whatever reason, it ought to try to regulate the actual level of immigration. Allowing a massive influx of foreigners to settle somewhere and become integrated into the fabric of society while perpetually denying them the rights and protections of citizenship is undemocratic and cruel, not to mention unsustainable.

"Venecuba"

Since Raul Castro took over as president of Cuba, ties between Havana and Caracas have been significantly strengthened. Whereas some analysts had predicted that Raul might limit these ties in order to strengthen his relationship with the new administration in Washington, the opposite appears to be the case. Cuba and Venezuela maintain an oil-for-doctors program whereby Caracas exports some 92,000 barrels of oil per day to Cuba in exchange for doctors and technical assistance; meanwhile, there are also some 300 other cooperative projects including Venezuelan investment in Cuban manufacturing and agriculture, and Cuban assistance in running Venezuelan "ports, telecommunications, police training, the issuing of identity documents and the business registry." (The Economist)

The reasons for this cooperation are many. Cuba, drained by US sanctions and its own economic inefficiency, is more than happy to receive a boost from Venezuelan investment. Particularly now with the global economic crisis, and the drop in tourism revenue, Venezuelan support has helped Cuba re-build its infrastructure and invest in its economy. For Venezuela, Cuba remains Caracas' closest ideological ally and supporting Havana has its perks. Venezuela's massive investment in Cuba makes Raul heavily dependent on Chavez and reliant on his continued rule. Moreover, Cuban technical assistance to Venezuela has helped to transform the country's army and push forward its socialist revolution. More broadly, the relationship serves to combat American influence in the region and build an alliance against perceived US dominance.

What is interesting is how close this relationship has actually become. So close, according to a recent article in the Economist (see my caveat below), that Cuban officials are apparently working -- or even calling the shots -- in specific Venezuelan agencies. Cuban officials, for example, since being given a contract to update Venezuela's identity-card system, have been seen working in the immigration and passport control departments. In other ministries, like health and agriculture, "Cuban advisers appear to wield more power than Venezuelan officials. The health ministry is often unable to provide statistics - on primary health-care or epidemiology for instance - because the information is sent back to Havana instead. Mr Chavez seemed to acknowledge this last year when, by his own account, he learned that thousands of primary health-care posts had been shut down only when Mr Castro had told him so." Other accounts suggest that a former Cuban trade minister is making the decisions in Caracas' relations with the country's coffee-growers, and that "Cuban agents occupy key posts in Venezuela's military intelligence agency."

With a large grain of salt because the aforementioned report was filed by the Economist (which has a less than stellar record on Latin America), reports of increasing dependence between Cuba and Venezuela are worth keeping on the radar. In 2005, Chavez told Fidel that their two countries were "a single nation." Castro apparently responded: "We are Venecubans."

So is it all just talk?

The Demographic Fight

Noam Sheizaf on the Israeli government's attempt to grant voting rights to Jewish expatriates.

Europe, Navies, and Power Projection

James Rogers over at European Geostrategy has an interesting post up about naval supremacy and power projection. Rogers covers a lot of ground - quoting from a BBC documentary about the Royal Navy, he expounds on the differences between naval and maritime powers, the kinds of dominion the exercise and their tendencies toward democratic or authoritarian rule - and then suggests that the E.U., having reached the limits of its geographically contiguous expansion, ought to focus on rebuilding a blue water navy capable of protecting European interests and nimbly projecting power around the globe. Rogers muses on some interesting political relationships, but I take some issue with several parts of the piece. First off, his analysis of early modern states ignores quite a few potential counter-arguments:

...maritime powers tend towards commerce and industry, and adopt a very light and versatile – but aggressive and expansionist – military footprint. They can draw off their financial resources during times of conflict and harness them for their geopolitical purposes, enabling them to overwhelm any opponent (who is often stronger) and bring his designs to nought. And this maritime predilection also tends towards constitutional government and democracy, in turn fostering a high degree of technological innovation and dynamism. Land powers, on the other hand, tend towards centralised government and authoritarian control. To defend their territorial holdings, they must maintain a large army rather than a navy, and use it defensively to hold on to what they have got. The sheer cost of this endeavour means that it has been – historically – an enormous burden on the economy and on the State. It also tends to hold back innovation and economic productivity.

Lots to unpack there. First off, though Continental powers went through an absolutist phase during the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries that never really caught on in Britain, scholars of democratization would probably call Rogers' (the BBC's?) story oversimplified. For example, following Charles Tilly's narrative of state building, one could easily argue that the greater resources required by continental states would increase demand for democratization in order to get people to acquiesce to a more extractive regime. Or it may be that the "maritime/land" distinction has very little to do with political freedom either way, and that the British experience was the result of path dependence or historical contingency. Certainly the early United States, which until the late nineteenth century had more of the characteristics of a land power than of a maritime one, managed to sustain comparatively democratic institutions.

As for large armies "[holding] back innovation and economic productivity," while I'm sure a case could be made for that conclusion, it's worth remembering how many innovations have come about because of state-led investment in military technology.

Moving off such historically-interesting tangents, we come to the meat of Rogers' post, where he argues for the creation of a strong E.U. navy:

Europeans must now invoke their maritime geography once again and look beyond Europe to concentrate on the wider world. The European Union needs to form an immensely powerful navy, which can be used to circulate maritime power around the Mediterranean Sea, the Red Sea, the Black Sea, Africa’s Atlantic seaboard, and particularly the Indian Ocean. It is in these regions where future European Union military operations will take place, and it is these regions from where the greatest threats to European security are already beginning to come. This naval force would need a chain of naval stations to link together a durable maritime order, enabling European power to be projected rapidly into potential trouble spots, and to exert a calming influence over potential belligerents. This maritime posture should accelerate European commercial activity, enabling the continent to retain democratic government, while stimulating an outward-looking approach to world affairs, an outlook Europeans must sustain if they are to remain a major economic power.

There are two serious problems with this argument. First, Rogers puts the cart way before the horse. He treats the E.U. like a state with a unified population, clear international interests, and the institutional capacity to represent the former and pursue the latter. Europe may someday reach that point, but it hasn't yet. It remains a muddled, fuzzy, at times self-contradictory organization with overlapping, multi-tiered spheres of authority and attenuated democratic legitimacy. To expect "Europe" to behave like a nineteenth century nation state capable of executing the kind of coherent strategy of gunboat diplomacy that Rogers advocates gives too much credit to Brussels, at least for the moment.

Second, to the extent that one can consider the E.U. to be an empire in a meaningful sense (I hear the phrase "neo-medieval" thrown around a lot), Rogers fundamentally misreads the means by which the E.U. has historically projected power. While it is true that E.U. institutional expansion has generally followed the slow, geographically-delimited pattern of traditional land empires, the means by which it has achieved this expansion are different. Military prowess played almost no role. Over the past few decades, the core states of the E.U. have enticed their neighbors to abandon key elements of their sovereignty in exchange for economic security and access to capital and markets. No doubt in the case of Eastern Europe, where memories of Soviet domination run deep, the prospect of "locking in" an alliance with the West made the move easier, but for the most part, E.U. expansion - both in terms of formal institutional reach and informal geopolitical influence - has been the result of a masterful leveraging of soft power.

The question for Rogers is this: what would the E.U. really gain from a major navy? The Royal Navy of the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, and the U.S. Navy that replaced it in its hegemonic role, used gunboat diplomacy to keep the world on board with contemporary geoeconomic regimes. The U.S. Navy still does that, and unless European planners envision the global economy reverting to neo-colonial mercantilism any time soon, for Europe to rebuild a massive blue water navy would be redundant and wasteful, all the more so since Europe doesn't have the political institutions to effectively use it as an instrument of power.

I doubt we'll be seeing meaningful movement in this direction any time soon.

Update: James Rogers has a great response in the comments section where he defends and fleshes out some of his arguments. Definitely worth checking out.

Opposition From Unusual Places

Here's something you might not have read about: the campaign to get Mohammed ElBaradei to run for president of Egypt. In the fall of last year, the former IAEA chief sparked some furious commentary in the Egyptian press when he suggested that he might consider a presidential campaign if the proper safeguards were in place to ensure a free and fair election. (A big if.) The verdict is still out on whether he will run, but enthusiasm for his candidacy is apparently growing. Issandr Al-Amrani writes about the activities of the campaign's founders and he notes that their efforts are starting to catch on: "So far, most of their work has been online: they are the people behind the [']ElBaradei for President['] website and the Facebook group that has, to date, 65,775 members and is growing at up to 2,000 members a day."

Frankly, the whole notion of an ElBaradei campaign for the presidency has me baffled. He’s no great orator, he is without a clear popular base of support, and his leadership of the IAEA has been heavily criticized. So why him? And why now?

Implications and Limits of Change

Husam Tammam on the implications of the transition to new leadership for Egypt's Muslim Brotherhood.

Does the Path to Middle East Peace Stop in Doha?

Noah Bonsey and I have an article up at the Columbia Journalism Review on the subject of Al Jazeera and its status as an opinion-maker in the Middle East. Its influence, we argue, is extremely significant. Al Jazeera has shown itself able to fundamentally affect politics in the region, particularly in places where it heavily dominates the news market - like in Palestine. And this has some pretty big implications.

Here are the first few paragraphs:

It is no secret that the Israeli-Palestinian conflict is more deadlocked than at any time since President Obama took office. But as if an intractable Israeli prime minister, a divided Palestinian leadership, and an overburdened American administration were not enough, there remains an additional obstacle whose influence on the conflict has not previously been fully acknowledged or understood: Al Jazeera.

Founded in 1996, the Qatar-based channel has become the most widely watched station in the Middle East and a subject of fascination to many Western analysts. The news network has made its mark in the Arab world through hard-hitting journalism, heated debate programs, and a willingness to examine both sides of an issue—all with a touch of sensationalism. For a region long blanketed in overt state censorship, Al Jazeera’s more freewheeling coverage has been welcomed by many viewers.

The channel’s tremendous popularity has also, for better or worse, made it a shaper of public opinion. Its coverage often determines what becomes a story and what does not, as well as how Arab viewers think about issues. Whether in Saudi Arabia, Egypt, Jordan, or Syria, the stories highlighted and the criticisms aired by guests on Al Jazeera’s news programs have often significantly affected the course of events in the region.

In Palestine, the station’s influence is particularly strong. Recent polling indicates that in the West Bank and Gaza, Al Jazeera is the primary news source for an astounding 53.4 percent of Palestinian viewers. The second and third most watched channels, Palestine TV and Al Arabiya, poll a distant 12.8 percent and 10 percent, respectively. The result of Al Jazeera’s market dominance is that it has itself become a mover and shaker in Palestinian politics, helping to craft public perceptions and influence the debate. This has obvious implications for the peace process: how Al Jazeera covers the deliberations and the outcome of any negotiated agreement with Israel will fundamentally shape how it is viewed—and, more importantly, whether it is accepted—by the Palestinian public.

The full article can be read here. I hope you'll check it out.

Which is Worse, Ignorance or Inaction?

Eric Martin highlights a great piece from Daniel Levy on the odd disconnect between many Israeli leaders' public recognition of the unsustainability of the occupation - in this case it was a speech by Ehud Barak - and their utter unwillingness to actually take the wrenching steps necessary to end it. Martin notes that it's not just Israelis who are guilty of this, comparing the Israeli and American treatments of the conflict to "two medical teams prescribing treatment vary[ing] between ignoring and covering up the disease on the one hand, to offering a mild painkiller that offers no real relief."

As I've said before, this has been one of the most frustrating aspects of watching the Obama Administration over the past year, especially on issues of foreign policy. Time and again the President or a member of his administration will deliver cogent, eloquent, logically consistent public statements that seem alive to the magnitude and complexity of a given problem, only to attack it with half measures.

This has been especially frustrating to watch after the Bush years. I was one of those naïve people who blamed most of the political failures of the 'Oughts (Naughties? Is there a consensus on what we're calling the last decade?) on the particular ideological preferences of the Bush team. President Bush barely seemed to accept the premise that the occupation of the West Bank and Gaza is even a problem. Maddening as it was, his administration's actions at least followed logically from its rhetoric. One could find comfort in the notion that someday, when the reins of government were again in the hands of competent people, there would be a sea change in policy.

That sea change hasn't happened, at least not where it really counts. I'm not sure if it's more frustrating to have leaders that simply don't understand, or to have leaders that understand but won't or can't act. Either way, it's not pleasant.

Torture, Accountability and International Law

In the (very caricatured) theoretical divides among IR scholars, realists tend to view international organizations, laws and treaty regimes as legitimating instruments for those states that currently hold power in the international system. Thus, to a realist, international conventions against torture could be explained primarily as a means by which Western great powers could gain ideological leverage against totalitarian competitor states at little cost. After all, the (immediately post-war) logic goes, Western states have legal regimes that prevent torture anyway, and nobody around the world is going to be for torture, so we might as well codify that principle in order to use it as a weapon against our international competitors, many of whom are brutal totalitarian regimes. The fact that many of these treaties were signed during the decades when colonialism was being phased out - reducing the chance that European powers were going to be called to account for the brutality of the regimes they ran in much of the developing world - probably helped.

The question, though, is whether countries like the United States signed international conventions against torture because their respective leaders abhorred the practice and couldn't imagine that their successors might find themselves implicated in it, or because they simply assumed that their successors would be running states powerful enough to flout the conventions if and when it came to that.

Well, as Andrew Sullivan points out, it's come to that. Over the weekend Dick Cheney admitted to having been a "big supporter" of waterboarding, which is defined as torture by pretty much any extant legal standard, domestic or otherwise. The question (entirely rhetorical of course), is whether he will now be prosecuted. The answer, barring a seismic political upheaval, is no. The fact that political realities need to be invoked to explain that fact should tell anyone all they need to know about the elasticity of the 'rule of law,' even in a state that's supposed to embody that principle. Laws, generally speaking, are rendered subordinate to the power by which they are enforced. If there were a significant faction in the U.S. government, supported by a significant faction of the U.S. public, that was truly, really opposed to the policies of torture, rendition, and denial of legal rights instituted under the Bush Administration (many of which, by the way, remain in place), there might be some chance of honoring the 'rule of law.'

There aren't either of those things.

Instead, there is a Congress that, whatever the personal beliefs of its constituent members, is populated by one party that is too implicated in the sins of the Bush years to press the issue without committing political suicide, and another that is implicated enough to want to avoid responsibility, rather than taking it. There is a public that has bought enough into fear-mongering and ideological tribalism that it won't apply sustained pressure for accountability. As for the executive, well, to expect the executive branch to curtail its own power, regardless of who sits in the White House, is a fool's errand. If a liberal professor of constitutional law won't do it, nobody will. So, we are left with an odd situation where former high-level officials openly admit to violating both domestic and international law, confident that some combination of public support, the high domestic political costs of confrontation, and America's power in the international system will render them immune to legal consequences.

Whatever that situation represents, it isn't the rule of law. It's the rule of power. Perhaps we should stop pretending it's ever been otherwise.

Quick Hit: The Last Thing Europe Needs is a Tea Party Movement

I'll be charitable and grant that David Ignatius might have a point about the long-term necessity of bringing global public accounts into something like balance. My international political economy is a bit rusty, but the idea that a global economy can run indefinitely on Western countries and Japan financing consumption through debt while China builds skyscraper-sized piles of foreign exchange seems pretty dumb.

That said, the idea that the Tea Party movement in the U.S. represents "passion about fiscal responsibility" is pretty dumb. The movement represents, to be sure, an anger at the failure of this country's institutions, it's culture, its public sphere, to meaningfully address problems. That anger is being channeled by Republican and Conservative elites here, so "fiscal responsibility" is the meme, but it's not what's driving the Tea Party movement. People don't get "angry" about deficit numbers. They might get worried, but they don't get angry.

That kind of anger and sense of disaffection exists in Europe too, though its institutions have different problems. The last thing the Europeans need, though, is emotional, badly directed populism without context or constructive purpose. It won't help the Europeans solve their fiscal woes any more than it's helping the Americans solve theirs (Obama's cosmetic "spending freeze" aside). It might, though, push politics in a very ugly direction.