Seriously, there's really no reason for all of this

At present, I don't have anything to say about this topic. Only I'm really really not looking forward to it.

My prayers are with the Israeli people in the hope that they won't get dragged into another unnecessary war and with the Iranian people that they won't be made to suffer for their governments.


I'm not trying to downplay any real grievances that are spurring this on, but come on. Shooting missiles at each other offers short term gains and long term disadvantages.

Love of bombs makes people do crazy things.

Srsly, we gotta start talking development

Its Spring Break and what am I doing with my down time? Working on my personal pet projects. I'm from THE spring break destination, Miami, so I don't have a whole lot of motivation to go back for my vacation. Plus, I'm a college student, and I'm too broke to go anywhere for spring break even if I wanted to. On to the blogging it is then!

Last semester, I did a project on poverty and violence, does one cause the other? I answered no, poverty does not cause violence (including terrorism). However, impoverished places provide a feeding ground for the violent. If you are poor, you are not more likely to be a terrorist, but your community is more likely to be plagued by violence because it does not have the structures available to protect it.

This article from Brookings about Weak States does well to note that the strenghtening of states such as Afghanistan and Iraq requires a lot more attention to development than is currently being given or even talked about. Here's my favorite bit highlighting the specific goals that should be kept in mind for strengthening these weak states:

" In its last year, the Bush administration can lay the foundation for a comprehensive strategy to shore up weak states and prevent them from sliding into failure. Important components of such a strategy include:

• Prioritizing poverty alleviation. There is a strong relationship between poverty and state weakness. Poorer countries tend to be weaker ones, in part because they are more vulnerable to conflict. The United States must complement the Millennium Challenge Account's focus on "good performers" with parallel strategies to reduce poverty in the world's most challenging states.

• Targeting performance gaps. The United States should tailor assistance to the specific vulnerabilities of individual states. In failing states, the immediate requirement is to couple increased security with swift economic, political and social progress. In less acutely vulnerable countries, we should target each nation's particular performance gaps.

• Expanding U.S. assistance and leveraging non-aid instruments. The United States should increase overall assistance levels to support a wider cohort of weak states and combine development assistance with democracy support, market access, peacekeeping and security sector reform.

• Strengthening our civilian agencies. As Defense Secretary Robert Gates observed last November, our nation cannot rely on the U.S. military alone to revive fragile and war-torn states. Beyond boots on the ground, we need the wingtips and Birkenstocks of diplomatic and development professionals. Congress should support the administration's request to increase the professional staff at the State Department and the U.S. Agency for International Development.

• Establishing partnerships. The United States cannot by itself build weak states' capacities. We must join with our allies, international institutions and developing countries to craft and implement effective strategies to address one of this century's most pressing security challenges."

The bit about expanding US assistance and leveraging non-aid instruments I feel is a bit ambiguous. Tying aid to good political behavior can get dangerous, because often times, "good" behavior really means the behavior that best suits the stronger state(s) and not necessarily the people. We can all come up with great examples across the world over the past 50 or 60 years where the US has supported oppressive regimes because they were in our best interest for strategic purposes and economic as well. Pakistan and Iran are my personal favorites.

No hearting of the Huckabees

So what to do today? Hmm...How about tear apart a presidential candidate's article for Foreign Affairs magazine? Yes. That sounds like a good idea. Spotlight on: Mike Huckabee.

I have issues with Huckabee outside of his article, America's Priorities In The War on Terror. Like sticking to a very silly promise made to an American comedian that he would be your vice presidential running mate. Stephen Colbert is awesome, and it might have been a little funny early on in the race, but keeping it up so far into it already isn't funny. Its like the guy doesn't take his candidacy very seriously. Anyway...Mr. Huckabee's opinions appear to be all too common in American politics and regular American discourse.

"The United States' biggest challenge in the Arab and Muslim worlds is the lack of a viable moderate alternative to radicalism."

No, the challenge is actually supporting the very present viable moderates who we have chosen not to listen or even report very much on.

"The potential for such moderation to emerge is visible in the way that Sunni tribal leaders in Iraq have turned against al Qaeda to work with us; they could not stand the thought of living under such fundamentalism and brutality."

First of all, working with the Americans doesn't mean you're progressive. Second, there may be some peaceful Sunnis working with us, but there are just many who are working with us because they don't want the historically oppressed majority Shia to gain ground in the new Iraq. Sectarian violence is going both ways, we shouldn't judge which side is better based on who's more willing to work for us. That is a very very common mistake in American foreign policy.

"We must first destroy existing terrorist groups and then attack the underlying conditions that breed them: the lack of basic sanitation, health care, education, jobs, a free press, fair courts -- which all translates into a lack of opportunity and hope."

Right about lack of freedom being a breeding ground for terrorism, but not poverty.

"If I ever have to undertake a large invasion, I will follow the Powell Doctrine and use overwhelming force. The notion of an occupation with a "light footprint," which was our model for Iraq, is a contradiction in terms."

Now that's just scary. We shouldn't even be thinking about the next invasion we undertake, because there should not be another invasion period.

"I support providing the Turks with actionable intelligence to go after the PKK with limited air strikes and commando raids but would prefer to train and equip Iraqi Kurds to fight the PKK and rid themselves of this menace. I regret that it took the deployment of 100,000 Turkish troops to the border with Iraq, and the PKK problem becoming a crisis, for the Bush administration to give the issue the attention it deserves. We should have put more pressure on the Iraqi government, including the Kurdish authorities, to deal with the PKK earlier. Our special envoy on the issue, retired General Joseph Ralston, quit his post last October out of frustration over the passivity of both the U.S. and the Iraqi governments. Some crises cannot be averted; this one could and should have been."

Does this guy know anything about the Kurds?

Huckabee also goes on to describe how he agrees with Bush's plan to contain Iran and how he wants to continue with it while keeping the military option on the table yet bringing in other options as well so we're not stuck with only the military. I don't agree with this idea of "containing" Iran. Mostly because that's trying to fit a round peg into a Cold War square hole. The best article I've read on this issue is here, I've also blogged about that one before, here.

Then fun of all fun, he goes on to Pakistan, criticizing the government for not fighting Al-Qaeda hard enough. Well, if the US would've had a better strategy in Afghanistan, then Pakistan might not have had to concentrate its limited efforts on the spill-over and influence of the Taliban in Waziristan. He's right to criticize Musharraf where he does, but his chief criticsm seems to be that Musharraf bending over far enough for the US. Its just indicative of an overall view that the world's allegiance should be to America because America and global security and interest are one and the same and that is just ridonkulously arrogant.

In short, Mr. Huckabee has jerkface politics, and unfortunately, his views aren't all that unique.

Oh noes! Its a paradox!

Much of the president's speeches during his tour of the Middle East have involved rallying the Arab states to guard against the threat of Iran. However, according to Shibley Telhami at the Brookings Institution, Iran is indeed a threat to many Arab regimes, but not in the way you think. Although the article looks more at how Arab-Israeli peace making is the key to security rather than countering Iran, I'm going to focus on the disparity between the publics and their governments.

Its safe to say that there are more dictatorships disguised as democracies in the Middle East than there are actual democracies. Each of these regimes sees a common threat in Iran, Islamic fundamentalism. But they are not threatened by in the same way we here in the West are. The Iranian Revolution has been a scary thing for many nation states in the Middle East. Perhaps the only thing scarier than free elections for these governments is the idea of another Islamic revolution happening within their own borders.

The more the autocrats try to hold on to power by supressing the more radical Islamist movements, the stronger those movements become. And in many cases, as with Hamas and Hezbollah, those movements begin to provide the populations with what the government does not: hospitals, education, etc.

A US military presence is required to provide security for the governments, but as Telhami points out, those forces are not there with the mission to protect anything other than American interests. And then we come to a paradox. Military bases in the Middle East protect countries from militants (in theory at least) but the American presence creates a lot of resentment amongst the public and provides fuel for the militants who can say, "Look, Americans are everywhere, they're evil overlords who control everything." So the threat, or perceived threat amongst the people, isn't Iran, it us.

I don't have the answer to that puzzle yet. But I'll let you guys know when I do. In the meantime, add your own thoughts.

Ssshhh!

Bush is in Saudi Arabia as part of his tour of the Middle East, spreading democratic good will and the like.

Because I don't think its the American president's job to spread democracy, I can't fault Bush for not talking about politics with his Saudi buddies. However, it still remains a highly hypocritical situation. With so much money at stake, it just makes good business sense to be hypocritical. So whose job is it to spread democracy? First and foremost, it is the job of the population in question. Second, it is the job of the international community, including NGO's, to help these populations achieve their goals if they do not have the resources to meet it themselves.

And so I come to my next point, foreign aid. After taking a class entitled Global Poverty and Peace, I decided that governments giving aid for "democratic" movements in foreign states is a bad idea. The American government has historically proven that democracy isn't as important as strategic interests, and so the aid given in many countries is usually seen with immense skepticism and resent. Best example, Operation Ajax in Iran. The spectre of American involvement in that operation is still very fresh in the minds of the Iranians, and similar events have happened all over the Middle East.

The new movie Charlie Wilson's War touches on the subject of American involvement in the creation of the Taliban. I'm not going to see the movie, but its also another good example.

My conclusion is, the American government should just shut up. Not the American people, but the government.

I don't think I'm likely to get a job at the state department anytime soon. What do you think?

Bush's Wild on the Middle East Tour...some issues

I just read a great article in Time about Bush's Middle East tour and why many Arabs are skeptical of his urges for peace. The article describes the exact sorts of concerns I have with Bush's visit.

1. Helping the Palestinians....
Arabs cynically see Bush's endorsement of Palestinian statehood as part of the White House's effort to win Arab support at the time for the 2003 invasion of Iraq. Arabs note that until 2007, Bush shunned active Arab-Israeli mediation; he had refused to deal with Arafat, even though he was the elected president of the Palestinian people (as well as the symbolic leader of the Palestinian revolution), and still refuses to deal with the Islamist Hamas group, which won the 2006 Palestinian parliamentary elections. Even though Bush calls the November Annapolis peace conference a "major breakthrough" and says he's an "optimistic guy" about the chances of an Israeli-Palestinian peace agreement by 2009, he refuses to lay out his administration's vision of a fair final settlement — something many experts see as an essential diplomatic step in breaking the long impasse between the parties. As Arabs see it, Bush's failure over the last seven years to exercise decisive U.S. influence over Israel, a close American ally, has simply enabled the Jewish state to expand its settlements throughout the occupied West Bank and made a viable Palestinian state much harder to achieve.

I too am pessimistic about what an independent Palestinian state would look like given the current occupation, as yesterday's post can attest to.

2. Promoting democracy. There are certainly people in Iraq, Lebanon and a few pockets here and there who are grateful for Bush's call for liberty in the Middle East. The problem is that it is widely seen as being insincere at best and hypocritical at worst. Few doubt that toppling Saddam Hussein's dictatorship was more about breaking Arab military strength and projecting American strategic power than fighting terrorism, much less creating Iraqi democracy. While Iraq is no longer a one-man show, it will be a very long time before anyone considers the country, now dominated by Shi'ite Muslim gangs, Kurdish warlords and Sunni terrorists, emblematic of an emerging democracy.
If the Iraq war was about Bush's freedom agenda, Arabs wonder, why has the White House stood by so quietly as pro-American authoritarian Arab regimes have jailed democracy activists, as happened to former presidential candidate Ayman Nour in Egypt? The White House stresses Bush's admiration for Saudi King Abdullah bin Abdulaziz and the country's baby-step municipal elections in 2005, yet Washington is silent about the systematic repression of women and minorities permitted in the name of religion in the Kingdom.

Yes! And don't forget the American support for Musharraf, though not Arab, is Muslim, and embodies the tendency of the US to support dictators in exchange for loyalty to the "war on terror".

3. Confronting Iran. The Arabs are afraid of Iran, especially the Saudis and the emirs who rule the small oil-rich states situated just across the Gulf from the Persian giant. They are inclined to agree with Bush's worries about Iran's nuclear intentions. But they are even more concerned about another U.S. war in the Gulf-this time against Iran, to wipe out its nuclear program. That could bring a swift backlash, either through direct Iranian military retaliation against Washington's regional allies, or in the form of fomenting long-term political unrest and terrorism among Shi'ite minorities in those countries.
Arabs were relieved when the recent National Intelligence Estimate on Iran said that the Islamic regime had shelved its nuclear weapons program in 2003. But a major aim of Bush's tour is to rally Gulf Arabs into an anti-Iran bloc bent on further isolating Tehran diplomatically and economically, without giving up the option of a military attack on Iran, on the grounds that Iran remains a dire threat to regional security. To such logic, Gulf leaders are tempted to reply, "Duh, it was your ousting of Saddam Hussein's regime that enabled Iran to expand its influence in the first place." Arabs would never want Washington to get too cozy with Tehran. But they've had enough Texas gun slinging.

Like duh,gag me with nuclear warhead, Iran totally benefitted from the Iraq war.

Sorry, that was uncalled for.

Yay Time!

Risky Business

“Dear Christa,

How do we deal with Iran without using military force?

Sincerely,

Gus”

Fantastic question.

First, let me start off by saying that I think this whole notion of “dealing” with Iran is a little inflated. The government of the Islamic Republic of Iran operates in a way that is a direct challenge to our interests in the Middle East, but I don’t think they’re as a big a threat as some officials are making them out to be. Just because someone is bad doesn’t make them a raving lunatic, and Ahmadinejad is definitely bad. But he’s a very intelligent and calculating guy and a populist leader, not quite a dictator just yet.

Here’s a quote from a recent Foreign Affairs article:

“Containing Iran is not a novel idea, of course, but the benefits Washington expects from it are new. Since the inception of the Islamic Republic, successive Republican and Democratic administrations have devised various policies, doctrines, and schemes to temper the rash theocracy. For the Bush administration, however, containing Iran is the solution to the Middle East's various problems. In its narrative, Sunni Arab states will rally to assist in the reconstruction of a viable government in Iraq for fear that state collapse in Baghdad would only consolidate Iran's influence there. The specter of Shiite primacy in the region will persuade Saudi Arabia and Egypt to actively help declaw Hezbollah. And, the theory goes, now that Israel and its longtime Arab nemeses suddenly have a common interest in deflating Tehran's power and stopping the ascendance of its protégé, Hamas, they will come to terms on an Israeli-Palestinian accord. This, in turn, will (rightly) shift the Middle East's focus away from the corrosive Palestinian issue to the more pressing Persian menace. Far from worrying that the Middle East is now in flames, Bush administration officials seem to feel that in the midst of disorder and chaos lies an unprecedented opportunity for reshaping the region so that it is finally at ease with U.S. dominance and Israeli prowess.”

Come on, this isn’t one big giant game of Risk. Here’s another fantastic quote from the article:

“Another one of Washington's errors is to assume that Iran can be handled like the Soviet Union and that the Cold War model applies to the Middle East. Both Israel and Arab governments have pressed Washington to contend with Iran's nuclear ambitions and since the Lebanon war of 2006 have worried about the strengthening connections between Tehran and Hezbollah. They have responded by throwing their support behind the government of Fouad Siniora in Beirut and trying to break the collusion between the Iranian and Syrian governments. Washington has been supportive, building up its military presence in the Persian Gulf and using last year's surge in the number of U.S. forces in Iraq to roll back Iran's gains there. But the same Arab governments that complain about Tehran's influence also oppose the Shiite government in Iraq, which is pro- Iranian and pro-American, and favor its Sunni opponents -- leaving Washington having to figure out how to work with the Iraqi government while also building a regional alliance with Sunni Arab states. Washington's containment wall will therefore have to run right through Iraq and so inevitably destabilize the country as it becomes the frontline in the U.S.-Iranian confrontation.”

So what does these guys propose instead:

“Instead of focusing on restoring a former balance of power, the United States would be wise to aim for regional integration and foster a new framework in which all the relevant powers would have a stake in a stable status quo. The Bush administration is correct to sense that a truculent Iran poses serious challenges to U.S. concerns, but containing Iran through military deployment and antagonistic alliances simply is not a tenable strategy. Iran is not, despite common depictions, a messianic power determined to overturn the regional order in the name of Islamic militancy; it is an unexceptionally opportunistic state seeking to assert predominance in its immediate neighborhood. Thus, the task at hand for Washington is to create a situation in which Iran will find benefit in limiting its ambitions and in abiding by international norms.



Dialogue, compromise, and commerce, as difficult as they may be, are convincing means. An acknowledgment by the U.S. government that Tehran does indeed have legitimate interests and concerns in Iraq could get the two governments finally to realize that they have similar objectives: both want to preserve the territorial integrity of Iraq and prevent the civil war there from engulfing the Middle East. Resuming diplomatic and economic relations between Iran and the United States, as well as collaborating on Iraq, could also be the precursor of an eventual arrangement subjecting Iran's nuclear program to its obligations under the Nuclear Nonproliferation Treaty. If Iran enjoyed favorable security and commercial ties with the United States and was at ease in its region, it might restrain its nuclear ambitions.”

This article has made the most sense of anything I’ve read or heard on Iran thus far. If anyone wants to recommend me some more, I am ready and waiting.

An article in the Washington Post has quoted defense secretary Gates as saying:

"Everywhere you turn, it is the policy of Iran to foment instability and chaos, no matter the strategic value or cost in the blood of innocents."

Them's fightin words!