January 19, 2006
La Paz Effect in Pakistan
The ripple effect of Evo Morales’s stunning presidential win in Bolivia is being felt – and closely watched – as far away as Pakistan, as shown by a recent op-ed in The News, one of Pakistan’s leading English dailies.
The recent sweep of left leaning presidents in Latin America (referring to the election of anti-neo liberal candidates in Brazil, Argentina, Ecuador, Uruguay, Venezuela and Chile, as well as Bolivia, over the past year) is instructive for Pakistan, writes Farooq Sulehria: “Latin America was the first continent turned into a laboratory for neo-liberal experiments. Ironically, it also is the first to stand up in rebellion.” While Pakistani President Musharraf is “busy implementing…come what will” the free trade and privatization directives of the World Bank and IMF, Sulehria argues that there are lessons to be learned for Pakistan about the rising of Latin resistance to this model:
“By opening up economies to ‘market forces’, Latin American countries were promised significant poverty reduction. In fact, what happened was a significant increase in the hold exercised over Latin American economies by multinationals, especially US corporations. Between 1990, and 2002, multinational corporations acquired 4,000 banking, telecommunications, transport, petrol and mining interests in Latin America.”
Sulehria closes with this warning:
“For the last two decades, Washington has forced neoliberalism (read poverty) down third world throats in order to make the world better for US business. To many the US economic empire, spreading at gunpoint, seemed unassailable. But now, unable to defeat rag-tag Iraqi militias and rapidly losing allies in Latin America, the empire stands exposed to others on the globe. Others, including Pakistan, are watching and learning.”
DAVID MONTERO reports from Islamabad, Pakistan for the Christian Science Monitor.
Posted 10:55 PM | Comments (0)
January 16, 2006
MLK's legacy undone?
The Guardian marks the 20th celebration of Martin Luther King Day with an examination of what many consider to be one of his most lasting legacies, the racial integration of American schools. Despite the widely-held belief among Americans (78% of whites and 66% of Blacks) that progress is being made towards greater integration, the article references a new Harvard study that indicates there has been a steady increase in school segregation over the last 15 years.
[T]he percentage of black students attending schools where most students are non-white increased across the US from 66% in 1991 to 73% in the 2003-2004 school year, according to the report by Harvard's Civil Rights Project and released at the weekend. In the south, where the desegregation effort was concentrated, the number of black students in schools where most students are non-white rose from 61% to 71% over a 12-year period. More than three-quarters of intensely segregated schools serve children from poor families, the report said.
School desegregation is one of the signal achievements of the 1960's Civil Rights movement, both within the US and throughout the world. That there could be increasing segregation, even a return to late-60's levels, strikes at one of the great symbols of America's commitment to racial equality and domestic reform.
Posted 10:17 PM | Comments (0)
A strategic view from Peshawar
It is generally difficult for those without Arabic, Urdu or Pashtoo language skills to guage public opinion the swath of the greater Middle East that represents the heartland of political Islam. But for those English-speakers curious about the Islamist worldview, and especially that of Al Qaeda and its Afghan and Pakistani sympathizers, there is hope in the form of Pakistan's Peshawar-based Frontier Post. Like any newspaper, it reflects the attitudes and values of its readers, who happen to also represent the regional constituency most sympathetic to Al Qaeda and the former Taliban rulers of Afghanistan.
The Frontier Post has recently run an editorial about US involvement in the region, titled "How the US views India and Pakistan?" The question mark seems to be a pure formality, since the author, Mohammad Jamil, prefers the declarative mode, and hammers in his points with authority. He sees the US manipulating India against Pakistan, in effect betraying Pakistan, loyal ally in the Cold War struggle in Afghanistan and in the War on Terror. Indeed, far from commited enmity, the piece strikes a tone of hurt betrayal.
Jamil writes about the indignities and double-dealings Pakistan has suffered at the hands of the US:
Anyhow, the way the US has treated a friend that stood by its allies for about half-a-century, got dismembered as a result of its involvement in military pacts, and even risked its very existence by becoming the frontline state against another super power during the Afghan crisis is deplorable. By entering into strategic partnership with India, the US leadership has not only disappointed Pakistan but also spawned despondency in Kashmir, as the Kashmiris always considered the US a country that stood for the right of self-determination of the suppressed nations.
It is surprising to note the double speak of the US administration. On the one hand it acknowledges Pakistan’s prodigious role in the war on terror but on the other it shows lack of trust when US-led forces enter Pakistan in hot pursuit of Al Qaeda operatives or Taliban remnants. Recently, when Washington was lauding President Pervez Musharraf’s determination against terrorism, and Pakistan forces’ action against terrorists in a briefing, eighteen people were killed and many injured in powerful explosions destroying one house and damaging other hutments in Bajaur Tribal Agency near Peshawar reportedly by the US-led allied forces.
It appears that even in Al Qaeda's backyard, it is specific policy positions and behavior - like Friday's missile strike - that motivate hostility, moreso than ideological or religious hatred.
Posted 04:25 PM | Comments (0)
American rocket strike in Pakistan draws fire
On Friday, January 13th an unmanned Predator drone fired a number of Hellfire rockets into a house in Damadola village, in the Bajaur region near the Afghan border. The target was Ayman al-Zawahiri, the second-in-command of Al Qaeda and, since Osama bin Laden ceased issuing statements last year, the public face of the extremist movement. The CIA was working off of intelligence indicating that Zawahiri would be having dinner at the house. This information proved inaccurate, and no major Al Qaeda figure has been identified among the 18 dead, which include women and children, although some reports suggest that up to 11 may have been lower-ranking Islamic militants.
Pakistan has reacted with shock and anger. In the border provinces, protests sprung up the day after the attack, spreading to major Pakistani cities - Karachi, Islamabad, Lahore and Peshawar - by Monday. In the Western press, the Guardian has published a fairly comprehensive overview of the attacks and the reaction. The largest crowds assembled in Karachi, where 10,000 people marched shouting slogans against the US and Pakistani leader Pervez Musharraf. DAWN, a Pakistani newspaper, gives approximate turnout at protests across the country.
While the largest crowds were in Karachi, the most strident were in Peshawar, the main city of the fiercely Islamic and anti-American North-West Frontier Province. The local Frontier Post reports that those rallies were organized by an Islamic party, the Jamaat-e-Islami. Party leaders pledged themselves to Jihad against the US, advocated the partition of the US into 52 successor states (on the model of the former Soviet Union), and bemoaned the fact that Pakistan's development of nuclear weapons has failed to deter American strikes inside the country.
Posted 03:58 PM | Comments (0)
January 14, 2006
La Paz Effect: Latin Tremors
The ripple effects of Evo Morales’ election as President of Bolivia are continuing to be felt throughout Latin America—most poignantly in the ongoing dissection of the economic reform model known as the ‘Washington consensus’ that was one of Morales’ favorite targets.
Bolivia was supposed to be a laboratory for the ‘consensus’ economic reform model of tight social spending and export-oriented growth. But it was those who perceived themselves as 'disenfranchised' from those policies--millions of small farmers, urban poor and the country’s large indigenous population--who put Morales into the presidential palace in La Paz, and toppled whatever remaining legitimacy for the ‘consensus’ remained within the continent. Shortly after Morales’ election, Argentine president Nestor Kirchner announced that he would pay off the country’s outstanding $9.8 billion debt to the International Monetary Fund, thus unhinging the country from IMF/World Bank constraints; a left candidate for the Peruvian presidency, Ollanta Humalla, surged into second place in the polls; and the Zapatistas, in Mexico over new years, launched “the other campaign” in parallel to that country’s presidential race to highlight issues of indigenous rights--an effort widely perceived as having received a considerable boost from the election results in Bolivia. By January 14, the Colombian newspaper El Tiempo featured a debate between John Williamson, the U.S. economist, affiliated with the Institute for International Economics in Washington, DC, considered to be one of the primary architects of what’s become known as the Washington Consensus; and José Luis Machinea, Secretary General of the Economic Commission for Latin America and the Caribbean at the United Nations, over what, if anything, remains of the “Consensus’.
The changes in Latin America—long in the works, but also intensified by Morales’ election—are not merely ones of rhetoric. Even John Williamson admitted that the World Bank made mistakes in not paying enough attention to the ‘social factors” involved in economic reform. The “Washington consensus,” a complex set of policies so tied to the United States that they bear the name of our nation’s capital, is unraveling just as quickly as a new term is being introduced to suggest a somewhat more welcome economic power in Latin Power: “Chindia,” the combined economic might of India and China. The turn of many Latin countries east—toward Asia as well as toward the European Union—has gone largely un-reported in the United States. But, El Tiempo suggests, such new trading partners offer not only growing and increasingly affluent markets, but none of the political baggage associated with the long history of U.S. intervention in the region:
“Since the end of the communist system in the USSR, the United States has been dreaming of a world dominated by one superpower: the U.S. That is not coming to pass.
The rapid transformation of China into an economic power, with India following in its footprints, signifies that the U.S. better prepare for a different future, one in which it will have to understand how to share power among others like never before. It’s a change that will not be easy.”
Posted 06:32 PM | Comments (0)
December 08, 2005
US-Poland Security Meeting
Gazeta Wyborcza reports on a meeting between US Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsefeld and his Polish counterpart, Radek Sikorski. Poland has a substantial contingent in Iraq - 1,700 men - and has apparently agreed to say on for the medium term, albeit with some reductions and a shift from security operations to training. Sikorski insisted that this was a measure to enhance Poland's security, and not a dig for increases in US aid. Having said that, he then noted that he and Rumsfeld also discussed Poland's expecations of the US, which apparently include help in procuring advanced weapon's technology, communications equipment and smart bombs. Also a Polish priority is American cooperation in the development of the joint Polish-Ukrainian batallion, with the goal of upgrading it to a Polish-Ukrainian-American brigade. This may seem like a distant triviality to American observers, but the Polish goal is actually quite audacious - such a unit would help anchor Ukraine in the Western alliance, and bring US influence right up to the western borders of Russia.
Posted 02:46 AM | Comments (0)
December 04, 2005
Rice to address CIA on Europe trip
Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice will try to turn the tables on critics of U.S. terrorism policy in Europe this week, arguing that the United States acts legally and does not ship suspected terrorists around the globe to be tortured.
One of leading newspaper in Japan, Asahi, is paying attention to the travel across Europe by Secretary Rice as well, since awaiting Rice on her stops in Germany, Belgium, Romania and other destinations will be questions about alleged human rights violations supposedly engineered by Washington.
Citing human rights abuses in its handling of detainees at Guantanamo Naval Base in Cuba and Abu Ghraib Prison in Iraq by the US and also the prison camps during the civil war of the former Yugoslavia , Asahi's Sunday editrial says "If these same countries fail to take a stern and critical look at their own actions, the so-called humanitarianism of the United States and Europe will be condemned as two-faced hypocrisy."
Secretary Rice owes the EU a clear explanation of what has taken place, followed by immediate action by Washington to rectify any wrongdoing.At the same time, the EU should conduct its own independent survey. Until the whole truth about the secret jail claims is told and the citizens of Europe are satisfied with what has been done to rectify the matter, it will be difficult to declare the Continent has truly taken to heart the sad legacy of the Holocaust.
The time has likewise come for the United States and Europe to mend the rift that has widened over the Iraq war and promote greater cross-Atlantic cooperation in rebuilding that shattered nation and on other fronts.
Vague and evasive responses to the current secret jail claims won't serve to move things in that direction.
Posted 11:39 PM | Comments (1)
December 01, 2005
Yellowcake, again
A new episode in the Yellowcake case. Today La Repubblica runs an interview with Alain Chouet, French 007 till 2002. The interview controverts the Italian government reconstruction in four essential points:
1. Rocco Martino, the fake Italian 007, did not work for the DGSE (Direction Générale de la Sécurité extérieure), as the Italian government stated.
2. CIA gets the fake documents about the Niger Yellocake in June 2002. That is, when the Italian magazine Panorama gives the fake documents to the American Embassy in Rome in August 2002, CIA already has the documents.
3. As opposed to what stated by the Italian government, the DGSE did not pass the documents to Washington. On the contrary, Washington passed the documents to the DGSE asking to verify them. The DGSE informs Washington that the documents are false since July 2002.
4. Rocco Martino gets in touch with the DGSE only in the summer of 2002, not before.
If what stated by Alain Chouet is true, as it seems to be so far, La Repubblica gets another scoop about the Yellowcake.
Posted 04:15 PM | Comments (0)
November 29, 2005
Prisonners in the sky?
The EU Council has hired Dick Marty, an ex Swiss prosecutor famous for his fight against the Mafia to investigate the issue. Marty immediately requested photos of some prison sites during the past three years from the European Union's satellite center in Torrejón, Spain.
According to Der Spiegel (Germany): “He also contacted the European aviation authority, Eurocontrol, asking for data on the flight movements of 31 aircraft suspected of having served as CIA shuttles for the transport of prisoners or abducted terrorism suspects.” Articles about flights of planes suspected to belong or to be rented by the CIA have begun to appear at least in the German, the Portuguese and the Spanish press.
The subject is obviously attracting more attention in Europe where sanctions could be applied to member countries if it is proven that they have hosted “Black sites” (see this note).
In the European Parliament, the socialist group (second in importance) criticized European leaders for their complacency. It declared that “the existence of such prisons would be a clear violation of Human Rights and EU criteria.”
One of the touchy issues is that European sanctions against “prisons” would not apply to planes in transit according to Franco Frattini the EU commissioner for Human Rights quoted by Le Monde.
But El País (Spain) quotes Marty as saying that a Guantanamo in Europe was not likely: “Everything indicates rather a methodology and logistics which consists in ferrying prisoners from one point to another and keeps them for a couple of days.”
Der Spiegel goes further: “the highest-ranking al-Qaeda members are apparently kept moving with a small group of CIA interrogation experts, like an invisible caravan, from one of the so-called black sites to another.”
[Map taken from Der Spiegel. See full size here]
Posted 11:30 AM | Comments (0)
Perils In Pakistani Earthquake Relief, Parallels to Katrina
Pakistan is more than just a U.S. ally in the war on terror – it’s also an eerie doppelganger of hard core Republican economic strategies, according to Afiya Shehrbano, a sociologist in Pakistan who points out ‘scary affinities’ between the how the Bush and Musharraf administrations handle disaster relief.
“In fact, [the Musharraf administration’s attitude] is eerily reminiscent of the kind of hard-core Republican strategy that is shaping the reconstruction process in the aftermath of Hurricane Katrina's flooding of New Orleans. First of all, disasters are not indiscriminate, as the fatalists like to believe. Class, race and gender play integral roles in the nature and extent of damage, as do the flaws of rural housing and inadequate infrastructure,” she writes for The News of Pakistan.
The disaster clean-up after Katrina, she writes, is moreover a warning of both what to expect and what to avoid in Pakistan post quake.
She argues for example that, like FEMA, the ranks of Pakistan’s Relief and Reconstruction Authority have been stocked according to the calculus of patronage and profit, rather than skill and merit. Relief efforts should be conducted with a view toward ecological considerations and the needs of the affected people, not lining the pockets of the military, “who have become notoriously involved in real estate as side-businesses in every part of this country,” she advises.
“Note also the likeness in 'optimistic' conservative economic agendas that the Bush administration promised New Orleans victims and which our administration is pushing after the earthquake. Both have pledged to make the affected areas into capitalist utopias through free trade pacts,” Shehrbano observes, concluding, “It is really the right moment for civil society to step in and organise its efforts towards a meaningful, people-oriented rebuilding of the affected communities.”
David Montero, a freelance journalist in Dhaka, Bangladesh, covered the Pakistani earthquake for the Christian Science Monitor and other publications.
Posted 11:27 AM | Comments (0)
The Torture debate viewed from Poland
The Polish daily Gazeta Wyborcza runs an article summarizing the recent torture debates in America. It reprises for Polish audiences debates that by now are familiar to most people following US news - the introduction of the McCain ammendment, the question of drawing a line for interrogation techniques, the new vulnerability of the Bush White House on this issue. A few interesting remarks are made that haven't cropped up elsewhere, however. The article notes that this is far from a new issue - the New Yorker and other higher-end news magazines have been sustaining this discussion for over a year, but it took Congress taking up the issue for it to break into the mainstream imagination.
More interesting, however, is a detail that emerges when the piece examines the effectiveness of torture in intelligence gathering. Apparently in 2002, Ibn Sheikh al-Libi, a senior Al-Qaeda operative caputured in Afghanistan, revealed under torture that Al-Qaeda had sent agents into Iraq, although he later reversed these statements. This information became part of the case for the Iraq invasion and was used to brief Colin Powell before his now infamous session at the UN.
Posted 01:25 AM | Comments (0)
November 21, 2005
US Senate criticizes Siberian exile
Poland's Gazeta Wyborcza picks up a Russia news story concerning a US Senate resolution about the imprisonment of the two former oligarchs of now-defunct Yukos, Mikhail Khodorkovsky and Platon Lebedev. Having been charged and convicted of tax evasion, they are serving out their sentences in Siberia and on the Yamal Peninsula, above the Arctic Circle. This is in violation of Russian penal law, which indicates that convicts serve their sentence either in the area where they reside or where they were convicted - in the case of the Yukos chiefs, this would be Moscow. The prisons that house Khodorkovsky and Lebedev are among the most notorious in Russia. The US Senate has therefore passed a resolution calling on their transfer out of these remote penal colonies back to the Moscow area.
The Senate resolution, of course, has no authority over the Russia government, and it taken as a symbolic gesture. These resolutions are not altogether uncommon - they are seen by US senators as easy ways of placating domestic constituencies. US newspapers do not take such resolutions particularly seriously, and none have reported on this case. But this story in the flagship Polish paper is suggestive of a number of things. First, Poles care much more about the US Senate taking a hard line on Russia than Americans seem to. Second, Poland still grants the US a measure of moral authority, something unlikely in the rest of Europe. Third, it turns out that Khodorkovsky has a certain level of organization and political support in the US. And finally, perhaps this is a sign that US lawmakers are resigned to their own bad reputation concerning detainees, and rather then defending their own record prefer to point out abuses elsewhere.
Posted 11:23 PM | Comments (0)
Poland and missile defense - interview with a former ambassador
Gazeta Wyborcza publishes an interview with Przemysław Grudziński, security scholar and former Polish ambassador to Washington. There is no news to report - negotiations with the US are ongoing about basing interceptors in Poland - but Grudziński clearly spells out Poland's fairly high hopes for the initiative. He notes that previous Western and US oriented security moves - joining NATO, the purchase of US F-16 fighters, participation in the Iraq war - have yet to pay dividends, but he is optimistic that the logistical, manufacturing and infrastructure requirements of hosting bases will serve to spur economic development in Poland. He also notes that such a move would cement Poland's place among the staunchest US allies. It seems that previous disappointments with the US have only increased Poles' desire to demonstrate thier reliability and loyalty.
A final decision on base locations is expected within a few weeks. Originally, Poland, the Czech Republic and Hungary were considered as possible host countries, but worsening relations between Prague and Washington have ruled out the Czechs. While Hungary still remains a possibility, the odds-on favorite is Poland.
Posted 11:05 PM | Comments (0)
November 18, 2005
Terminator IV: Massive Political Impact (as pitched by Matt Ogdie and Keli Dailey)
"If I would do another 'Terminator' movie, I would
have 'Terminator' travel back in time to tell Arnold not to have a
special election," Schwarzenegger told reporters.
http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?file=/c/a/2005/11/11/MNGFMFMNV21.DTL
--
Let's make another Terminator movie, send the Terminator back in time and tell Ghandi and Neru that the Great Migration was going to cost ~30 million lives. The Terminator strongly advises them to take the necessary precautions!
Or
Let's make another Terminator movie, send the Terminator back in time and inform Lloyd George and the political aristocracies of Europe that the Treaty of Versailles would lead to the rise of Nazi Germany and so predominate the historical landscape of the 20th century that it is impossible to separate the Cold War from it's ill-effects.
Or
Let's make another Terminator movie, send the Terminator T-1000 back in time and tell that stupid jerk Reagan that he could engage the Soviets in a catastrophic financial contest without actually spending trillions of dollars on nuclear warheads that we are currently spending trillions of dollars dismantling and tracking as they inevitably bleed into the black market.
Or ...and this could already be in production…
Let's make another Terminator movie, send the Terminator back in time and send him to Iraq, where he would kick some serious Al-Qaeda ass, befriend a little Kurdish boy who brings out the human spirit in his Terminator source code, which emerges in time for him to sacrifice his cyborg life in order to kill Osama bin Laden in some FANTASTIC way that has lots of explosions..more explosions than anybody's ever seen on film!!!!
Why not just have the Terminator arrest Osama before 9/11? Or inform the authorities? It's a Jerry Bruckheimer film, for chrissake.
Posted 10:22 PM | Comments (0)
November 13, 2005
Missile Defense Base in Poland
Gazeta Wyborcza reports that today the new right-wing government of Poland has formally announced its willingness to participate in the American ballistic missile defense program, even to the point of housing anti-missile rockets in Poland. According to the article, secret negotiations have been taking place between Washington and Warsaw for the last six months, suggesting that the former leftist government also supported this policy. It goes on to cite that Pentagon officials will make a decision in the next six months whether to take up Poland's offer of basing interceptor missiles.
Posted 11:38 PM | Comments (0)
"Black Sites" in Eastern Europe
It has been two weeks since the revelation in the Washington Post that the US holds terror-related subjects in secret prisons in Eastern Europe and elsewhere, presumably to keep them out of the jurisdiction of US law. In Poland, one of the Eastern European countries widely suspected to house one such prison, the reaction has been slow and muted. I only found one piece that dealt with the issue, and only in passing in an article on Guantanamo Bay. The article reported the existence of secret prisons in the Middle East and Asia, but questioned whether any were located in Eastern Europe. The piece cites a Polish intelligence officer denying reports of CIA prisons in Poland, but goes on to note that the Czech government has acknowledged receiving a request to set such a prison up. Czech sources insist that that request was denied.
Posted 11:28 PM | Comments (0)
No APEC, No Bush
Member economies of the Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation (APEC) began the annual APEC forum Saturday , with the start of the Concluding Senior Officials' Meeting (CSOM).
This week Asia Pacific summit will be attended by US President George W. Bush. Exactly like the one in Mar del Plata and Buenos Aires during this year's Summit of the Americas, President Bush has thousands of protesters here in Busan, South Korea's second largest city, again.
Farmers' union leaders said 50,000 of their members would rally in Busan next Friday along with a similar turnout of workers in an anti-Bush, anti-trade liberalization protest."No Bush! No War! No Globalization! No APEC!," read a leaflet calling on workers to take part in an anti-APEC rally.
*snip*
In a statement, the group said APEC had become a tool for US multinationals seeking to expand their dominance in the world market "under the pretext of trade liberalization."The group leaders also criticised Bush at a rally here for leading a "war of aggression" against Iraq. One protester, wearing a face mask and carrying a mock M-16 rifle, was bound by ropes with a sign attached reading "war criminal."
Photo is also from AFP.
Posted 09:37 PM | Comments (0)
November 10, 2005
Bill Clinton and George Bush: same strategy
From the war in Iraq to the Kyoto protocol, to the International Criminal Court, Bush’s international strategy is regularly accused of unilateralism in Europe. "But if George W. Bush’s positions exacerbated the discussion, it is not exclusively an issue of the present administration: Bill Clinton prepared the way", says Mariano Aguirre, expert in international politics, in an article in Enjeux internationaux.
He explains that even the liberal point of view is full of contradictions: “they want to be ‘multilateralists,’ but at the same time continue to act as a superpower.” Aguirre gives the example of the presidential campaign when John Kerry said that the war in Iraq was a mistake but at the same time asked the participation of France and Germany.
Bill Clinton simply was a “transition between the status of superpower during the Cold War and the aggressive leadership of the neo-conservatism of George Bush Jr.” “Bill Clinton already weakened the United Nations,” he says. That’s the consequence of a vision which sees the United States as the unique power in the world. But ironically, this strategy is absolutely not in line with the US’s interest, following Aguirre’s analysis. Over the long term, their interest lies not in a “benevolent domination,” nor in a “new empire.” To the contrary, it is in line with the “reinforcement of the multilateral system and its security, environmental and human rights accords,” he says, pointing out that the Bush and Clinton strategies led their country to “lose their credit, spend enormous resources in military research, and weaken their own economic system.”
In any case, he concludes, the complexity of the international system requires new responses. “A unique State can no more dominate the global system. And even if it could, it would probably not be the United States.”
Enjeux internationaux. N°9. 3eme trimestre 2005
Posted 10:44 AM | Comments (0)
November 08, 2005
Cool Guantanamo
Poland's Gazeta Wybrocza sends Marcin Gadziński on a tour of Camp Delta, the American detainment center at Guantanamo Bay. Setting out, he admits a certain ambivalence:
What is Guantanamo? I considered this on the flight into Cuba. A sybol of American's contempt for the rule of law? Their use of force against individuals who haven't even been formally accused of anything? Or, as Amnesty International alleges, the "gulag of our time?"
But quite quickly into his trip, he reaches the exact opposite conclusion. Under a headline asking "Guantanamo: Gulag or vacation resort?" he describes seeing prisoners, well hydrated with gatorade, playing soccer (and not evening pausing their game at the call to prayer), snacking on California strawberries and Milky Way bars, and making jokes with their guards. Every effort is made to make their incarceration comfortable - prison cooks look up Afghan and Arab recipes on the internet, guards are prohbited from even touching prisoners' Korans, and during Ramadan meals are served before sunrise or after sunset - even the force-feeding of prisoners on hunger strikes only takes place at night.
Gadziński tries to explain the cause for the camps dismal and widespread reputation. The first pictures that came out - of hooded prisoners kneeling in low cages, surrounded by barbed wire - were of Camp X-Ray, a hastily-constructed temporary facility that has since been replaced with the more spacious and adequate Camp Delta. In talking with camp officials, he brings up prisoner allegations about torture. American soldiers explain that, in the early stages of the camp, with 9/11 still fresh in everyone's mind and a very living fear of fresh attacks, the now-notorious interrogation tactics of stress positions, canine intimidation and sexual humiliation were used against inmates. But these were necessary measures, camp officers insist - a lot of good information came out of those interrogations that ended up saving American lives. Since then, and after the outcry over prisoner abuse at Abu Ghreib, those techniques have been suspended and replaced with less invasive, more effective ones.
Bringing up prisoner protestations of innocence, Gadziński is referred to the "Manchester document," a section of an Al-Quaeda manual that gives advice for those caputred. It's first rule is to provide as little information as possible, it's second to always allege torture, and it's third to always protest your innocence. Spreading stories about prisoners innocence, one general tells him, just plays into the hands of Al-Quaeda.
Gadziński sees little at the camp to upset him about this "vital bastion in the war on terror." He describes a friendly staff, respect for prisoners (all of whom, we are reminded, are dangerous terrorists) and clean, spacious conditions (the article is illustrated with slides of the spartan by spic-and-span cells). It's clear that on the gulag vs. vacation resort question, he's been decisively persuaded to the resort side.
Posted 03:42 PM | Comments (0)
Yellowcake timeline
Joshua Marshall posted a detailed timeline of the "yellocake case" on his website.
You can also send additions and corrections to the timeline by sending an email to talk@talkingpointsmemo.com
October 15, 2001:US intelligence agencies receive reports from the Italian intelligence service SISMI of a supposed agreement between Iraq and Niger for the sale of yellowcake uranium. The State Department’s Bureau of Intelligence and Research considers the report “highly suspect” because the French control Niger ’s uranium industry. The CIA, the Defense Intelligence Agency, and the Department of Energy consider a uranium deal “possible.”
October 18, 2001:
The State Department’s Bureau of Intelligence and Research issues a report stating that there is no corroborative evidence that there was any agreement on uranium transfer between Iraq and Niger, or that any uranium was actually transferred.
February 5, 2002:
The CIA’s Directorate of Operations–the clandestine branch that employed Valerie Wilson–issues a second report including “verbatim text” of an agreement for the sale of 500 tons of uranium yellowcake per year that was supposedly signed July 5-6, 2000.
[...]
Posted 02:22 PM | Comments (0)
November 07, 2005
Two Perspectives on America in the West
Two high-brow American boutique publications - Harper's magazine and the New York Times magazine - have recently published two radically different takes on the ambivalent place of the United States in the Western community of nations.
The New York Times' James Traub starts with the recent awarding of the Nobel Prize in literature to Harold Pinter, a British playwright who "views the United States as a moral monster bent on world domination." The Swedish Academy's decision, Traub argues, is emblematic of the mood in Europe, where "the anti-American left is far more intellectually respectable" even in "the highest reaches of European culture." He names names - John Le Carée, Tariq Ali, Arundhati Roy - and cites the harsh criticism of these "implacable ideologues" to US intervention in Serbia, Iraq and elsewhere as proof of "a virulent strain of anti-Americanism."
He suggests the route cause is the resentment of the European left when confronted by the "socialist debacle" at home and American power and prosperity abroad. His solution? Broadening the war of ideas being waged in the Middle East to now-hostile European territory.
William Pfaff, writing in Harper's, takes an almost opposite approach. Rather then beginning with the fact of European hostility towards the US (prevalent, at least, among the intelligentsia), he starts instead with specific parts of US policy, most significantly the use of torture in the war on terror.
Pfaff notes that there are few significant value differences between America and the other Western nations. One concerns international law - most Western nations view international organizations as legitimate and beneficial, and multilateral agreements, especially on human rights questions, as sacrosanct, while the US tends to view these things instrumentally and suspiciously, preferring to safeguard its sovereignty. Conversely, there seems to be a consensus on the human rights protected - on both sides of the Atlantic, these rights are considered to represent the highest ideals of the West. Under normal circumstances, these differences would not cause severe friction - there is more keeping the West together than pulling it apart. But, Pfaff argues, after Sept. 11 normal circumstances came to an end in the United States.
Instead, he describes a Manichean worldview held by American political leaders, pitting their country against an objectively "evil" terrorist threat. The depravity and seriousness of this threat justified anything in the effort to counter it - disregard for international law, undermining traditional institutions and alliances and, most seriously, the widespread use of torture. Pfaff's accusations are not new - he cites the existence of secret prisons abroad, the practice of extraordinary rendition and, of course, the indefinite detainment of prisoners in Guantanamo and Iraq - but his conclusions, in light of the brazenness of US authorities - are startling.
International illegality, the deliberate repudiation of international law, and torture, gratuitously employed in defiance of the moral intuitions of ordinary people, all show that the Bush Administration has chosen to place itself outside the moral community of modern Western democratic civilization.
If this is being published in Harper's, maybe Traub's war of ideas needs to be taken to the home front as well.
Posted 01:11 AM | Comments (0)
November 06, 2005
Italian Yellowcake
On the Italian newspapers much has been made about the “yellowcake case”.
On the 24th of October the national daily newspaper La Repubblica, a strong Berlusconi opponent, published an investigation revealing that the SISMI (the Italian intelligence agency) made a strong contribution to the hunt for weapons of mass destruction in Iraq. The article accuses the Italian spymaster, General Nicolo Pollari, of knowingly passing forged documents to the United States suggesting that Saddam Hussein had been seeking uranium in Niger, claims that helped justify the case for the 2003 invasion of Iraq. La Repubblica also reported that General Pollari had acted at the behest of Mr. Berlusconi, who was said to be eager to help President Bush in the search for weapons in Iraq.
On the 27th of October the Italian Government categorically denied any involvement in the Niger Fraud, denying any "direct or indirect involvement in the packaging and delivery of the false dossier on Niger's uranium". But nobody seems to really believe that and the debate is still heated in Italy, even after Pollari’s hearing in Rome on the 3rd of November.
While La Repubblica is keeping investigating on the SISMI contribution to the Iraqi war, other right-wing newspapers and blogs are trying to emphasize the errors and the contradictions of its investigation.
In order to have a complete and objective overview of the case, you can look at the Italian blog Paferrobyday.
Posted 05:23 PM | Comments (0)
November 05, 2005
US-Japan Alliance: Cold War again?
In response to the report entitled "US-Japan alliance: For future reforms and regrouping" published at the end of last month, People's Daily, the most influential and authoritative Chinese newspaper, Saturday put the review "US-Japan military alliance reflects Cold War mentality" written by Jiang Xinfeng who is a research fellow with the Chinese Academy of Military Sciences and World Military Research Institute.
Jiang elevated sense of vigilance against accelerating Japan-US military integration and called it "full of Cold War mentality".
On October 29, Japan-US "2+2" Security Consultation Committee held a meeting in Washington, which reached an agreement on the adjustment of US troops stationed in Japan and the share of duties between Japan's Self-Defense Forces and US troops, and published the report entitled "US-Japan alliance: For future reforms and regrouping". Intensified Japan-US military alliance is manifested mainly in the following aspects:
First, accelerating Japan-US military integration, enhancing joint combat capability. The report points out that the headquarters of US troops stationed in Japan will set up a Japan-US joint combat command post at the Yokota Airport, move the US ground force first headquarters on the land of America to the Camp Zama and set up there a central quick reaction group headquarters of Japan's land Self-Defense Forces, move the aviation Self-Defense Forces headquarters located in Foochow to the Yokota Airport where the Fifth Air Force headquarters of the US army is located. This is aimed to establish a Japan-US emergency mechanism, strengthen coordinated command between Japanese and US headquarters, realize share of information and enhance ballistic missile defense capability, thereby speeding up the process of Japan-US military integration and improving Japan-US commanding and combating abilities. Military integration is also manifested in the shared use of US troops' facilities in Japan by the two countries. US troops in Japan and Japanese Self-Defense Forces can use civil airports and docks and harbors under emergency situations.Second, ensuring the containing power of US troops in Japan when they tend to become more capable and flexible. The agreement focuses on adjusting US troops stationed in Okinawa. The Futenma Airport of US forces in Japan will be moved to Camp Schwab, at the same time, US 7,000-member marine corps in Okinawa will be reduced, the majority of which will be shifted to Guam. On the one hand, this can help lighten the burden on the Okinawa Base; on the other hand, it can make US Marine Corps cope with various situations more flexibly. In addition, although US Land Force First Headquarters to be shifted to Camp Zama does not have subordinated army units, once warfare breaks out in the area from the Pacific to the Indian Ocean under its jurisdiction, the headquarters can instantly dispatch crack troops from the US proper and other places to plunge into battles. Despite reduction in the number of US troops in Japan, due to strengthened commanding and controlling functions of US forces in Japan, the containing power of US troops has become stronger.
Third, the substantial upgrading of Japanese military role has made Japan the frontline of US Asian strategy. The report points out that Japan and the United States will strengthen cooperation in a dozen or so fields such as antiaircraft, ballistic missile defense, anti-proliferation and counter-terrorism, the two sides confirm the need to formulate a joint combat plan for dealing with contingencies and stress that Japan will give US troops "unceasing support". The United States regards Japan as a strong point for realizing its Asian strategy, and Japan, on its part, takes advantage of the opportunity to upgrade its military position and role, so as to take more and deeper participation in regional and global security affairs and raise its status in the international community, and thus accumulate capital for realizing its goal of becoming a political power.
Fourth, its intention to contain China and some other countries has become conspicuous. Japan and the United States have clearly regarded the Taiwan Straits and the Korean Peninsula as their common strategic goals in the Asian region. The present adjustment to US troops in Japan and various military cooperation measures of the two countries mainly aim to cope with armed conflicts possibly occur in the Taiwan Straits and the Korean Peninsula in the future, their intention to contain China is obvious.
Amidst the theme of the UN initiation for the establishment of a harmonious world, the act of the United States and Japan in presenting the new military cooperation agreement which is full of Cold War mentality entirely goes against the trend of the times featuring peace and development. It has not only met with severe criticisms from farsighted personages of Japan, but also has aroused the high vigilance of the surrounding countries. That Japan ties itself to the war chariot of the United States will not make itself more secure, but instead will harm its long-term national interests.
The author Jiang Xinfeng is research fellow with the Chinese Academy of Military Sciences and World Military Research Institute; Translated by People's Daily Online
Posted 12:32 PM | Comments (0)
Tokyo Governor Ishihara Bashes US
Some of Japanese media reported at a Washington press conference on Thursday, Tokyo's right-wing governor, Shintaro Ishihara said that if the US and China get into a war, then "there is no chance of the United States defeating China in a war. Washington should take measures to contain China economically."
"A war is an attrition of lives," the anti-US novelist-turned politician said, "the US is making a fuss over 2,000 victims of the Iraq war. But since the Chinese do not value life, they would not care if they lose millions of soldiers, unlike the US."
He said that China has successfully tested ICBM missiles and brought nuclear submarines into Japanese territorial waters, therefore "the world situation is more dangerous than it ever was during the U.S.-Soviet Cold War".
Posted 10:16 AM | Comments (0)
October 31, 2005
US-Japan, Evolving Alliance, Deepening Isolation?
Former Deputy Secretary of State, Richard Armitage called US-Japan Alliance "the most important one" in the world.
There is no doubt that Japan is one of America's staunchest allies and is a key strategic partner in Northeast Asia.
Japanese and U.S. government officials last Saturday put together an interim report on the realignment of U.S. forces in Japan. The report not only details the relocation of U.S. military bases, but its content is aimed at expanding and strengthening the security alliance between Japan and the United States.
The news was greeted by majority of Japanese politicians and Yomiuri Shimbun welcomed this with Monday's editorial "Major turning point in deepening of alliance".
In February, both nations confirmed their common strategic targets. In the Asia-Pacific region, both countries will work to maintain peace and stability in Japan and the whole region, in light of China's buildup of its military capabilities and North Korea's development of nuclear arms. Both countries will also team up in such areas as international peace cooperation activities and the prevention of terrorism in the pursuit of world peace.While called an alliance by both sides, much remains to be done in working out concrete action programs for cooperation between the SDF and U.S. forces.
In line with the realignment of U.S. forces in Japan as part of the United States' global reorganization, the two nations agreed on their respective roles and missions as part of efforts to fill the vacuum in the Japan-U.S. security arrangements.
However, Asahi Shimbun warned "the interim report is a source of concern " in Tuesday's editorial.
The United States attacked Iraq in the name of "the fight against terror." It proved, however, that the supposed threat of weapons of mass destruction, the casus belli, was in fact nonexistent. If a similar situation arises, Japan must avoid being automatically dragged into U.S military action.In its grand strategy, the United States views China as a country that could pose a threat to America's hegemony. But shouldn't Japan ease the possible tension that could build up between Washington and Beijing? Even if Japan takes action in accordance with a U.S. strategy, there should be limits and constraints. Japan should think of its own national interests.
Indeed, there are some concerns within small opposition parties that evolving US-Japan Alliance would be increasing US and Japan's isolation in the world.
Recent online poll conducted by Real time public opinion survey@internet showed almost 60 percenr of Japanese thought the alliance is "essential not only for Japanese security but also for economy, trade, industry and everything".
However, 21.4 percent of Japanese thought "US is untrustworthy as an alliance partner ", and 8.5 percent of Japanese answered "Japan should break up Japan-US alliance and strengthen the alliance between Asian coutries."
Posted 09:53 PM | Comments (0)
October 23, 2005
Non-Diplomatic Diplomacy
An astonishing photo appears in the weekend edition of Le Soir, Belgium’s leading French-language daily newspaper: President Bush is looking, bewildered, up at the rain from under his black umbrella—with a headline reading: ‘Absent Man in the White House’ ('L'Homme absent de la Maison Blanche')
Inside, the paper reports on the accumulating number of top Republicans and former Bush administration officials who have launched scathing criticisms of President Bush’s governing style and reliance on compliant advisers. Foremost among the new critics, it cites a talk and discussion given last week in New York City by retired U.S. colonel, Larry Wilkerson, who was chief of staff to former Secretary of State Colin Powell from 2002-2005. Wilkerson accused Rumsfeld and Cheney of “subverting the Department of State and American diplomacy with policies that have contributed to the isolation of the United States.” The newspaper cites in in particular his criticism of the conduct of the war in Iraq; alienation of our allies in South Korea and failed U.S. diplomacy with North Korea; and the administration’s long delay—to disastrous effect—in joining forces with the European Union to pressure Iran to shut down its nuclear capabilities. In his presentation at the New America Foundation in New York City, Wilkerson criticized the administration’s lack of “grace” in its conduct of foreign affairs:
"If you're unilaterally declaring Kyoto dead, if you're declaring the Geneva Conventions not operative, if you're doing a host of things that the world doesn't agree with you on and you're doing it blatantly and in their face, without grace, then you've got to pay the consequences."
Le Soir includes a comment from political analyst Jurek Kuczkiewicz, who writes that Wilkerson’s revelations suggest how deeply the Bush “cabal”—Rumsfeld, Cheney and Rice—have “severed reality from their decision-making.” Referring to the powerful effect that Wilkerson’s revelations will likely have on American’s and the world’s understanding of Bush’s diplomatic failings, he writes: “His [Wilkerson’s] discourse is like a bomb…It’s the cry of a citizen, of the United States, but also of the world, who are looking for the truth from a country of such grandeur. His speech was like a bomb. But it was also, many hope, a dream.”
Posted 02:34 PM | Comments (0)
October 22, 2005
A controversial definition of security
The Bush administration's attempt to overhaul the CFIUS (Committee of foreign investments in the US) gives us the possibility to think about the definition of "national security".
The Financial Times reports on Senator James Inholfe's call for an overhaul that would give Congress greater oversight of CFIUS. His report highlights "a weakness in CFIUS as the panel did non explicitly define 'national security' to include 'economic' security". Mr Kimmitt, deputy Treasury secretary, notes that lawmakers should not force CFIUS to adopt a strict definition of security, since the concept of security is always in motion: "The day you try to define it, it will be out of date".
Posted 10:23 AM | Comments (0)
October 19, 2005
Yasukuni's impact on the US
Japanese Prime Minister Junichiro Koizumi's visit to Yasukuni Shrine became an explosive issue at home and abroad.
Tuesday'd New York Times editorial "Pointless Provocation in Tokyo" sharply criticized Koizumi's visit to Yasukuni.
No one realistically worries about today's Japan re-embarking on the road of imperial conquest. But Japan, Asia's richest, most economically powerful and technologically advanced nation, is shedding some of the military and foreign policy restraints it has observed for the past 60 years.This is exactly the wrong time to be stirring up nightmare memories among the neighbors. Such provocations seem particularly gratuitous in an era that has seen an economically booming China become Japan's most critical economic partner and its biggest geopolitical challenge.
Japanese leading newspaper Asahi Shimbun analyzed that NY Times editorial represented the US national interests in the East Asia.
No approval was shown by Bush administration or even by pro-Japanese group in the US.
Asahi said deterioration of Japan-China and Japan-Korea relations will destabilize the current six-nation framework including North Korea and the US, and will spoil the regional security in East Asia and US national interests there.
Posted 10:35 AM | Comments (0)
October 18, 2005
Evolving security issues
“Most forms of political violence have declined significantly since the end of the Cold War,” states a recent report published by the Human Security Center under the title Human Security Report: War and Peace in the 21st Century.
The situation has improved significantly since 1990 and the end of the Cold War. The report finds a reduction of 80% in genocides, 40% in the number of conflicts, 30% in the number of refugees. The number of deaths in each conflict is declining significantly but the proportion of civilians in relation to combatants is much higher today than it was 20 years ago. (See graphics here).
Human security is a relatively new concept. “Unlike traditional concepts of security, which focus on defending borders from external military threats, human security is concerned with the security of individuals,” explains the Center. It is linked to the Canadian Consortium on Human Security which is funded by the Human Security Program of the Foreign Affairs Canada (FAC).
The French daily Le Monde asked Gareth Evans, chief executive of the International Crisis Group, to comment on the report.
The International Crisis Group is an independent, non-profit, non-governmental organization working to prevent and resolve deadly conflict. It is chaired by the former European Commissioner for External Relations Lord Patten of Barnes.
An ex Australian Foreign Minister, Evans sees three major threats for today’s world:
- The proliferation of weapons of mass destruction;
- Terrorism;
- “The loss of influence of the notion of international order due to the American administration discourse according to which the world does not need the U.N.”
It is obviously linked to the fact that the Human Security Center Report summarizes its finding by saying that, among other elements, “the best explanation for this decline is the huge upsurge of conflict prevention, resolution and peacebuilding activities that were spearheaded by the United Nations in the aftermath of the Cold War.”
Interestingly enough the title of Le Monde’s interview only says “Two dangers: Nuclear proliferation, and terrorism.”
Posted 12:43 PM | Comments (0)
Hot Water over Water
Canadians are always sensitive to encroachment by the US (whether real or percieved), and that sentiment is manifesting itself in a new phenomenon - aqua-nationalism, an ideological commitment to preserving as much autonomy over Canadian water supplies as possible. In the context of global warming and population growth, as the North American climate shifts while demand continues to grow, there will be growing pressure on Canada to sell its water to thirsty American cities, a number of which, due to poor planning, have been constructed in the middle of deserts. The Walrus, a serious Canadian intellectual magazine, devotes its October issue to examining aqua-nationalism and the thorny issue of managing and sharing water supplies, supplies that have the pesky habit of criss-crossing borders with no regard to national sovereignty. The article manages to capture Canadian axiety on the issue, anxiety that's not entirely unfounded (there was pressure to include fresh water as a tradeable good under NAFTA), but it goes on to argue that some kind of cross-border managemant will be inevitable, as larger and larger scale projects become necessary to supply North American communities and ecosystems with enough water to survive, while diverting water from areas newly-flood prone. Can Canadians overcome their aqua-nationalism? Do Americans know how to simultaneously cajole and reassure thier neighbors? Much may be riding on the answers to these questions.
Posted 12:45 AM | Comments (0)
The Red Scare, Yellow Peril Style
China's meteoric economic growth figures, combined with it's similarly metereoic ascent into space and sky-high defense budget, has provoked considerable anxiety in the United States. Donald Rumsfeld has called China a threat to Asain peace and stability, citing it's increased military expenditures and claims over Taiwan and assorted island chains. The sabre-rattling has begun to infiltrate the elite media as well - in what must count as one of the most provocative instances of alarmisms since the end of the Cold War, the Atlantic ran the following cover to an article on China's rise by Robert Kaplan:
The article itself, "The Next Cold War - How We Would Fight China," was no less inflamatory. Taking conflict almost as a given, Kaplan discusses Chinese tactics in loaded terms:
China has committed itself to significant military spending, but its navy and air force will not be able to match ours for some decades. The Chinese are therefore not going to do us the favor of engaging in conventional air and naval battles, like those fought in the Pacific during World War II. The Battle of the Philippine Sea, in late June of 1944, and the Battle of Leyte Gulf and the Surigao Strait, in October of 1944, were the last great sea battles in American history, and are very likely to remain so. Instead the Chinese will approach us asymmetrically, as terrorists do. In Iraq the insurgents have shown us the low end of asymmetry, with car bombs. But the Chinese are poised to show us the high end of the art. That is the threat.
His suggestions? Rebuild the NATO alliance to counter China, and build a similar coalition in Asia to encirlce and contain the rising power. And it has found some willing partners - both Japan and India have recently deepened security cooperation with the US.
The response from Chinese sources has been predictable - official media outlets argue the harmlessness of China's growth and try to counter American claims. What is more suprising is that this has been picked up by other media, including in Canada, traditionally one of America's closest allies. In an extensive piece in the Walrus (Canada's most seriously intellecual newsmagazine), Gwynne Dyer argues that is the American strategy of containment, and not China's rise, that threatens regional peace and stability. In his piece, there is no ambiguity about what is at stake, and who is to blame:
If there's anyone left to write the history of how the Third World War happened, they might well focus on June 28, 2005, as the date when the slide into global disaster became irreversible. That was the day when India's defense minister, Pranab Mukherjee, and US Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld signed a ten-year agreement in Washington on military co-operation, joint weapons production, and missile defense - not quite a formal US-Indian alliance, but close enough to one that China finally realized it was the target of a deliberate American strategy to encircle and 'contain' it.'
It's not clear yet what China plans to do about it, but since June the rhetoric out of Beijing has been unprecedentedly harsh. In mid-July, for example, Major General Zhu Chenghu warned in an official briefing that China is under pressure to drop its policy of 'no first strike' of nuclear weapons in the event of a military conflict with the US over Taiwan. 'We have no capability to fight a conventional war against the United States,' he said. 'We can't win this kind of war.' And so China would deliberately escalate to nuclear weapons: 'We Chinese will prepare ourselves for the destruction of all the cities east of Xian. Of course the Americans will have to be prepared that hundreds of [their] cities will be destroyed by the Chinese.
Posted 12:08 AM | Comments (0)
October 11, 2005
Disasters far and near
The Asian Age has a story about how the recent earthquake in Pakistan and Kashmir will change the American geopolitical scene. It cites an American intelligence clearinghouse.
The Stratfor Intelligence has labeled the disaster Pakistan President Pervez Musharraf’s "Hurricane Katrina." The pressures to balance the Al Qaeda threat, deal with the Kashmiri border, and maintain a burgeoning economy are obviously compounded by the quake.
And while discontent with Musharraf should increase as the relief effort stultifies, the lack of political dissent in a country that is already seen as being too close to the U.S. probably gives him "breathing space."
The focus here is predominantly on the border issues of the Asian subcontinent, but the American element seems to be consistently present as a result of involvement in Afghanistan.
Posted 12:27 PM | Comments (0)
October 10, 2005
Public opposed to extending Japan's mission in Iraq: poll
From Mainichi Shimbun
A whopping 77 percent of pollees were opposed to an extension of Japan's noncombatant mission in Iraq while 18 percent were in favor, a Mainichi weekend poll has found.
In December last year when Japan decided to extend the dispatch of the Self-Defense Force (SDF) to Iraq by one year, 62 percent of pollees opposed the move while 31 percent were in favor. The SDF mission expires on Dec. 14 this year.
Several Japanese politicians even from the ruling coalition say the dispatch of the SDF should be reconsidered if British and Australian forces withdraw from the country in May 2006.
The Mainichi polled 1,068 people on Saturday and Sunday and found that 66 percent of pollees who support the ruling Liberal Democratic Party were in opposition to extending the SDF dispatch.
More than 80 percent of those who support the Democratic Party of Japan, Japanese Communist Party or Social Democratic Party were opposed to the extension.
Posted 06:35 PM | Comments (0)
October 07, 2005
Rumsfeld will bypass Japan amid relocation stalemate
Asahi Shimbun reported on Thursday U.S. Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld has canceled a visit to Japan planned for later this month because of a stalemate in talks on where to relocate a U.S. military base in Japan.
Bloomberg said Rumsfeld's decision not to visit Japan reflects U.S. frustration over the pace of negotiations on relocating a military heliport in Okinawa quating Koji Murata, a professor of diplomacy at Doshisha University in Kyoto, ``Washington expects Tokyo to take prompt action to promote better U.S.-Japan relations. There's likely to be some disappointment.''
Professor Murata analyzed ``Bush's domestic political situation is quite tough, while Koizumi's domestic situation is quite favorable. The U.S. waited and put off pressing Koizumi until the postal issue was resolved. Now, ashington expects action.''
Sankei Shimbun, a Japanese conservative paper, worried it might cloud the future of U.S.-Japan alliance.
The two allies had planned to draft an interim report on the realignment by the end of October so it could be approved at a summit between Koizumi and U.S. President George W. Bush expected in mid-November. But Sankei said this summit might be cancelled because of realignment issue.
Koizumi, who has been busy with domestic issue such as nation's postal system, has made very few statement on this military realignment issue. Sankei quoted a former Cabinet official as saying that "Koizumi sits on a good personal relationship with Bush," and concluded that it might be difficult to resolve this issue with Koizumi's time.
The current discussions on base realignment are also aimed at improving U.S-Japan military cooperation and giving Japan a bigger role as a strategic hub from which U.S. forces can respond to regional and global threats.
Posted 12:42 PM | Comments (0)
Living in 2001
From The Spiegel online:
Bush’s speech of yesterday gives the Spiegel an opportunity to talk about his political inability. With the threat of bombing in New York subway, it seemed to be a perfect moment to talk about terrorism, "but his talk was not about the nation's current challenges. He delivered a reprise of his Sept. 11 rhetoric that suggested an avoidance of today's reality that seemed downright frightening […] Yesterday, it seemed like the President was still trying to live in 2001”. It was an ideal moment for Bush to demonstrate that he was really in control of his administration: “For instance, he could have addressed the crisis facing the overstretched military due to the endless demands made by Iraq on both the Army and the beleaguered National Guard”, but he didn’t. He just used again the same rhetoric of 9/11: “The president's inability to grow beyond his big moment in 2001 is unnerving. But the fact that his handlers continue to encourage him to milk 9/11 is infuriating”.
Posted 11:50 AM | Comments (0)
October 06, 2005
Time for amending Japan's pacifist Constitution??
The Yomiuri Shimbun reported Thursday that lawmakers began deliberations at the Diet on a bill stipulating procedures to conduct a national referendum to amend the top law in a significant step toward revising the Constitution in Japan.
According to the Yomirui, representatives of most parties--including the ruling coalition of the Liberal Democratic Party and New Komeito as well as the opposition Democratic Party of Japan and New Party Nippon--said they were in favor of such a law. Only the Japanese Communist Party and the Social Democratic Party expressed opposition to creating such a law, which paves the way to amending the Constitution.
Both of the ruling and opposition parties has been apprehensive about revising the Constitution, especially war-renouncing Article 9, which also bans the threat or use of force to settle international disputes.
However, Japanese people in general appear much more aware of the value of Article 9 than government ministers and lawmakers.
Wednesday's Mainichi Shimbun reported over 60 percent of those surveyed by the Mainichi had said they are opposed to revising Article 9 of the Constitution, even though a majority of the pollees expressed support for constitutional amendment in general. Only 30 percent responded that the clause should be revised.
The article said "The results clearly demonstrate that the majority of people think the pacifist clause should be retained even though the public is increasingly in favor of constitutional amendment amid ongoing discussions in the Diet on such changes."
Asahi Shimbun's poll conducted last April showed the similar result. According to that poll, 51 percent of the respondents said Article 9 should not be changed, in contrast with 36 percent who said it should be revised.
However, the article headlined "Playing the Constitution as a diplomatic card" continued that "the overwhelming majority of those polled also say they support Japan's alliance with the United States."
In fact, 76 percent of respondents to that poll said they approve of the Japan-U.S. Security Treaty, with only 12 percent disapproving.
Given many influential U.S. politicians including former Deputy Secretary of State Richard Armitage, have argued for a revision to Article 9 to allow the Self-Defense Forces to engage in collective self-defense, the article concluded " we can expect the forces urging the amendment to gather momentum by emphasizing the importance of Japan's alliance with the United States."
Posted 10:52 PM | Comments (0)
October 04, 2005
Supreme deception?
Normally the personnel changes of courts warrant little international attention, but the choice of Harriet Miers seems to have struck a chord in much of the Latin American press.
In spite of the fact that President Bush has stated that he thinks Miers "extremely qualified" for the position of Supreme Court justice, Mexican daily El Universal cites complaints relating to her lack of experience, especially in light of the prominent Hispanic candidates in the American judiciary who could have been chosen.
Citing representatives from two prominent Latino advocacy groups, the paper characterizes a sense of disbelief in the community. "This is like a slap in the face of the Hispanic judges who have served in high distinction on the courts," says Raul Yzaguirre of the the National Council of La Raza.
Mexican-American news site La Opinión, meanwhile, situates this discussion as "deception" on the part of an administration that had once considered raising Florida Senator Mel Martinez (Cuban-American) or Attorney General Alberto Gonzalez (Mexican-American) to the high court. This line of reasoning appears to be that it little matters about the ideological suasion of a judicial candidate, important because most American Latinos do not identify themselves as political conservatives.
This story ends on a foreboding note for an administration that is currently in the firing line between ceaseless calls for border tightening and a rising class of malleable Latino voters: It quotes a LULAC lawyer as saying with this move "[the president] risks angering one of the fastest growing electorates in the country."
Posted 06:12 PM | Comments (0)
October 03, 2005
Karen Hughes Mid-East Tour: A Failure of Public Diplomacy
A number of papers are carrying stories related to Karen Hughes’, the Undersecretary of State for Public Diplomacy, recently concluded tour of the Middle East. She stopped in Turkey, Egypt and Saudi Arabia where she met with groups screened to be as receptive as possible to her pro-America, pro-Bush message. Even under these carefully massaged conditions, the trip has caused more harm than good for the image of the US in the Middle East. While the Egyptian leg of the trip, by all accounts, went over passably well, even the Bush-loyalist Weekly Standard acknowledged that her attempt to stand up for women’s rights in Saudi Arabia backfired:
Student after student stepped to the microphones in the hall. Peering out from behind their abayas, they denounced the portrayal in the American news media of Saudi women as powerless and abused.
"We are not oppressed. We are not prisoners in our own homes," said one student. "We are all pretty happy." She demanded to know why Americans have such a negative view of the way Saudi women are treated.
The Washington Post reports that her stop in Turkey likewise failed to impress – there she was met with condemnation for the Iraq occupation:
"This war is really, really bringing your positive efforts to the level of zero," said Hidayet Sefkatli Tuksal, an activist with the Capital City Women's Forum. She said it was difficult to talk about cooperation between women in the United States and Turkey as long as Iraq was under occupation.
Slate’s Fred Kaplan suggests that the whole trip may have been as badly conceived as it was badly executed, beginning with the selection of Hughes as an envoy. Illustrating his point, he comes up with a Muslim version of her:
Put the shoe on the other foot. Let's say some Muslim leader wanted to improve Americans' image of Islam. It's doubtful that he would send as his emissary a woman in a black chador who had spent no time in the United States, possessed no knowledge of our history or movies or pop music, and spoke no English beyond a heavily accented "Good morning."
He goes on to point out that while Middle Eastern audiences raise substantive issues relating to American policy (the war in Iraq, for instance), Hughes is reduced to mouthing sugary slogans, emphasizing her motherhood and love of children. This whole approach of public diplomacy embraces the idea that what is necessary to repair the image of America in the Muslim world is not a revision of policy, but a better marketing campaign. If that’s the case, as dubious as it seems, the US should start looking for a better PR hack.
Posted 11:49 PM | Comments (0)
October 02, 2005
Muslim views of the US: Anger or merely disapproval?
A web-only article at the New Republic challenges the widely-perceived notion that the Muslim world is fiercely hostile towards, rather than just displeased with, the United States. It traces that perception back to the hardest data available, the Pew Global Attitudes Survey, observing:
Evidently few reporters took the time to read the fine print in the [March 2004 survey, "A Year After Iraq War: Mistrust of America in Europe Ever Higher; Muslim Anger Persists."] If they did, they would have found that the poll provided absolutely no evidence to support the charge that "Muslim anger persists." In fact, the word "anger" did not appear in a single poll question. Muslims did give high "unfavorable" ratings to the United States, but there is considerable difference between viewing something unfavorably and being angry at it. (Think of broccoli or Britney Spears.) Pew evidently recognized how problematic this was; in the 2005 version of the Global Attitudes Survey, released in June, references to such sensationalist (and unsubstantiated) terms as "anger" were nowhere to be found. But the damage was already done.
The report further notes that Muslim publics are more accepting of US global leadership than European ones, and that in all Muslim countries but Turkey approval of the US occupation of Iraq had upticked slightly since the previous year. It concludes by noting that there have been few sizeable anti-American protests in 2005, and, tellingly, McDonalds' is reporting sizeable profits throughout the region. But perhaps just as disapproval may not mean anger, so love of the Big Mac may not equal love of Uncle Sam.
Posted 03:59 PM | Comments (0)
October 01, 2005
Conservatives in turmoil
In European press, much is being made of the Conservative scandal after the indictment of Tom DeLay, majority leader of the House of Representatives.
According to The Economist, “A conservative crack-up may be going too far; but a conservative realignment is definitely in the works.” Mr DeLay’s indictment is not the only ethical problem hampering the Republicans. Bill Frist, the Senate majority leader, is being investigated about a stock sale and Karl Rove, President George Bush’s chief strategist, is fighting accusations that he leaked the name of Valerie Plame, an undercover CIA agent. The Conservative movement is in turmoil and long-standing tensions are coming out.
The Spanish El Pais points out how the indictment of Tom DeLay is only the last crack of an already assailed White House: the hurricane Katrina, the war in Iraq, the increasing price of oil barrels, the public deficit. Will be able the Democrats to win 2006 elections?
Posted 11:32 AM | Comments (0)
September 27, 2005
A New York Times views of French sentiments
In today’s New York Times Television Review of the fall season, Alessandra Stanley writes:
"ABC is stretching credibility to the outer limits with its new White House drama. The vice president of the United States is on an official visit to France, and Parisian school children actually sing "America the Beautiful"?
We think not."
In her opinion, it results far more farfetched than a feminist independent woman on a Republican ticket!
Alessandra should have more confidence in the good work of her diplomats in Paris to have school kids behaving properly (or ask them what they did when Condy Rice visited France at the beginning of the year).
The interesting question here is how mutual perceptions feed each other.
Can we seriously study how people in the rest of the world see the U.S. if we don’t pay attention to how Americans see, paint or describe others?
I think not.
And you?
[Photo found on the Paris US Embassy website]
Posted 12:55 PM | Comments (0)
Interview with Al Jazeera Host YUSUF AL-QARADAWI
Yusuf Al-Qaradawi, one of the most influential contemporary Muslim scholars, reaches millions each week with his show televized on Al-Jazeera. Der Spiegel talks with him about terrorism, USA and West modernity.
"SPIEGEL: Your eminence, you are considered one of the most influential contemporary Muslim scholars, but even your word is not unconditional. Does Islam need an uncontested spiritual leader -- a Muslim pope?
Qaradawi: Most Muslims would like such a central authority, to avoid constant debate over contradictory and extremist scholarly opinions. But we don't have a pope; we have the Ulama, the association of scholars. To protect the unity of Islam, we urgently need to reach a consensus on the great questions of our time: terror, occupation, and resistance. We took a first step in July 2004, with the foundation of a world union of Muslim legal scholars. I was elected chairman, and my deputies are a Sunni, a Shiite, and an Ibadit (a branch of Islam found mainly in Oman). We thank God for this success.
SPIEGEL: Yet no one in the Islamic world hinders men like Osama bin Laden or Abu Musab al-Zarqawi -- bin Laden's lieutenant in Iraq -- from setting themselves up as imams and preaching hate.
Qaradawi: A person can't just call himself an imam or a mufti and hand out fatwas according to whim. For this position there are clear prerequisites regarding professional experience, academic background and character.
SPIEGEL: People like bin Laden or Al-Zarqawi don't tend to worry about that. Nevertheless they have a huge influence on Islam's image.
Qaradawi: The vast majority of Muslim scholars have condemned Bin Laden's deeds; only a small minority stand behind him. What helps his reputation even more than scholarly opinion is the injustice that befalls Muslims every day -- above all in Palestine. You underestimate this in the West: The one-sidedness of American support for Israel has devastating consequences."
Continue reading the interview.
See also Islam on line, Al-Qaradawi's web site.
Posted 10:45 AM | Comments (0)
Foreigners care
Sri Lanka ravaged a few months ago by a tsunami sent $25,000. Cuba offered 1,100 medical doctors. Qatar, Kuwait, and the United Arab Emirates promised $100 million each.
Foreign Policy publishes a table of aid offered by foreign countries after Katrina.
FP’s comment:
America’s friends abroad, and even some of its foes, have responded to the horrific destruction to the Gulf Coast in the wake of Hurricane Katrina by pledging money and sending supplies to assist the recovery effort.
All of these gestures do not share a unique meaning, but they certainly give us some indications about perceptions of the U.S. in the world.
They raise some questions too. What does it mean for Mexicans to send soldiers up north? Why did Hungary offer only $5,000, and why the pro-American Poland does not show up in this table. How could Bangladesh find $ 1 million? What happened with the Cuban doctors?
What do you think?
Update – This post in a blog by a staff writer for the Arkansas Leader mentions aid offered or delivered from 94 countries (Poland appears in the list).
Posted 10:22 AM | Comments (0)
September 26, 2005
Face-saving solutions
From Gulfnews:
"Allied troops will stay in Iraq as long as the Iraqi government needs them, chant George W. Bush and Tony Blair, stubbornly singing from the same tired old hymn sheet.
And despite all evidence to the contrary, they are still trying to hammer home to their respective publics the myth of Iraq's sovereignty along with the good works their helmeted legions are supposedly accomplishing there.
In their fantastical universe, Iraq's cobbled together constitution viewed by most as a recipe for civil war could be a face-saver that will clear the way for an exit-plan."
Continue reading the article.
Posted 10:12 PM | Comments (0)
Sino-US ties to progress well if handled with care
From People's daily online (official newspaper of the Communist party of China):
"China's attitude towards the United States is an important part of its foreign policy. The basic tenets of this policy are: On the basis of the three joint communiques, China will strengthen co-operation, reduce differences, avoid confrontation, develop a constructive co-operative partnership between the two countries, and ensure long-term stability and development in bilateral relations.This policy is founded on a very deep understanding of the Sino-US relationship.
First, the United States is the only superpower with the greatest national strength in the world. This state of affairs is not going to change for a long time. China, in its effort to strive for an environment that is conducive to its peaceful development, regards the cultivation of a positive co-operative relationship with the United States as most important.
Second, there are a vast number of common interests and a high level of effective co-operation in the areas of commerce, trade and security - including regional security, and non-traditional security areas such as prevention of the proliferation of weapons of mass destruction and counter-terrorism.
However, the two countries have different social systems and ideologies, and both must handle the relationship with each other well if they want to develop their mutual interests and resolve such matters as human rights.
Third, in recent years, the Sino-American relationship has evolved to one between a superpower and a major rising power. Improvement or deterioration of this relationship is increasingly influencing regional and international arenas. China is worried that the United States, in order to sustain its dominant position, is bent on obstructing China's development. This has helped heighten the importance, complexity and sensitivity of the relationship between the two countries. "
Continue reading the article.
Posted 09:35 PM | Comments (0)
September 25, 2005
Changing definitions of security
While the Bush Administration has consistently attempted to frame security issues within the parameters of defense and terrorism, natural disasters have added a nuance to the word. The military has been the most overt face of relief in the days following Katrina, and Rita (as well as other unnamed events) will likely be no different if the president proceeds with his current plan of action.
According to the Guardian, "Bush said he would ask Congress to consider putting the Pentagon in charge of disaster rescues after military leaders indicated the need for such a national plan - a politically sensitive proposal for lawmakers trying to avoid trampling on states' rights."
Meanwhile, The Centre for Research on Globalisation (CRG), a Canadian think tank, has pointed specifically to his speech in San Antonio as an indication of the militarization of disaster relief. Highlighting his statement that the armed forces will be in a position of coordination of such efforts in the future, CRG implies that there will be a further "militarisation of disaster relief and the subordination of federal, state and mincipal (civlian) institutions by the Military."
Posted 06:52 PM | Comments (0)
September 22, 2005
Global warming: a British perspective
“Global warming is the most severe threat we face…more serious than terrorism” declared Sir David King a year or so ago. Sir David is the Chief Scientific Adviser to the UK Government and his declaration caused some sensation in Downing Street, in London, and in other parts of the world as one can easily imagine.
“I am happy to repeat that statement” said Sir David in Berkeley where he was invited by the Journalism School, on September 16th, to give a talk on the subject.
Katrina was the subject of some of the first questions asked by Michael Pollan and Sandy Tolan who hosted the event.
For Sir David, “Katrina is a potential tipping point of our attitudes towards natural disasters.” One has to be careful though: “It is not directly related to global warming but it is an example of disasters that might come. We do know that the intensity of hurricanes depends on ocean temperature. There is a little bit of a warning here.”
Asked about American media tendency to say that human impact on global warming is not clear, Sir David answered: “I’m amazed at the power of paid lobbyists in this country.”
Some mistakes are made, he admitted, and scientists ought to challenge each other, but “The science of climate change is mature. We know there is global warming. We know what causes it. What we don’t know is the impact it is going to have country by country.”
“There is room to say we need more science,” added Sir David. But we must anticipate that coastal cities will come under increasing risks. They will be higher in the developing world.” World wide more than a 100 million people are threatened.
The British government is taking the issue seriously. Five years ago it allocated 200 millions pounds to protect its coastal population. The budget has already risen to half a billion.
Richer countries have to give the proper example, act as leaders. “I would very much like to see the US take this leadership role,” he added.
Some people in the U.S. argue that controlling carbon dioxide emissions would slow growth. The British case seems to prove the opposite: “The UK could decrease its emissions in 12% while seeing its GDP grow 38%. It can be done,” said Sir King.
One of the issues addressed by Sir David during his talk is the difficulty to grab the attention of politicians on such issues as global warming. It’s much easier with terrorism of course. And still, Prime Ministers and heads of industries have families “they have genetic worries about their children.” Is the specie at risk? “Our DNA will survive, maybe in a different form,” said Sir David with a strange kind of a smile.
[Picture found on Greenpeace.org.uk]
Posted 09:51 AM | Comments (0)
September 21, 2005
New Poll Tracks Latin American Perceptions of the US
FLASCO, a Chilean social-science institute, has released new telephone survey data tracking public perceptions of the US in four Latin American capitals – Santiago, Montevideo, Buenos Aires and Brasilia. Although this is billed as a Latin American survey, the fact that research was limited to capitals and to those four countries weakens its conclusions – adding the provinces of these states, or other Latin American countries (Venezuela for anti-Bush, Columbia for pro) would likely significantly alter these results.
That said, it is useful to consider some of their conclusions.
Some of the findings confirm conventional wisdom – George Bush is extremely unpopular in Latin America, gathering his highest ratings in Santiago with a mere 19% of favorable responses. Unfavorable responses ranged from 40% (in Santiago), to 64% in Buenos Aires. Much and varied blame is laid at his feet, with 69% of respondents complaining about his neglect for their country, while 82% argue that the US interferes excessively in other countries affairs.
Although there are complaints about neglect, there also seems to be a perception that US involvement may be neither neccessary nor desirable - 60% of respondents don’t believe that US aid is necessary to tackle their country’s problems. There is also a significant divergence about what those problems are – terrorism is not considered to be a threat by a majority of respondents anywhere, while narco-trafficking, corruption, unemployment and poverty score very high levels of concern.
The survey also shows significant negative attitudes towards the US as a country. 70% of respondents consider it “an imperialist country,” and an equal amount do not believe America contributes to world peace. Neither US military power or democracy gather any accolades but, on the bright side, most of those called spoke favorable of US culture and economic dynamism.
There seems to be a consensus that the US does promote development abroad, though opinion is torn on whether free trade is a good idea – a majority of Chileans are pleased with their free trade agreement, a majority of Argentines and Brazilians are hostile to one, while Uruguayans are ambivalent.
Posted 10:05 PM | Comments (0)
September 20, 2005
“No society is immune”
Most of the stories published about Katrina and its aftermath in the foreign media are very critical of the U.S., and in particular of President Bush and his Administration.
Some notable stories, though take a much more careful approach.
Early on, The Irish Examiner told its readers:
“The first thing worth remembering is that, in the chaos and the looting, we are seeing not just America in crisis, but the drama of humanity everywhere.
A special case can be made that New Orleans, at the best of times, is a sad and lawless place. [...]
No society is immune. Once disaster strikes, two things happen. The survival instinct gets the better of some people and they do all sorts of things to make it through alive.”
Conservative essayist Guy Sorman ran a more analytical piece in the French Le Figaro.
“Bad news for the anti-Americans: the United States are not the Atlantis and they will not be more engulfed by hurricane Katrina that they have been wiped out by the 9/11 attacks.”
The reason, he says can be found in its history and in today’s vibrant civil society and market forces.
According to Sorman, local and State authorities are as responsible as the Federal Government for the failures in Katrina’s aftermath.
Republicans, he writes, have already chosen a “minimal State”. But, with Francis Fukuyama they think that “a free society requires a strong state.”
Is this the whiff of a contradiction?
Not at all. Sorman calls for a “Security State” that leaves social, cultural and educational issues to charitable foundations, local institutions and the market. He then concludes:
“The hurricane strengthens this neoconservative vision of the State: at the center heightened security, while everything else goes to civil society and to market.”
This is one example of how perceptions of what goes on and what is said in the U.S. can be part of the political and ideological debate in Europe… and elsewhere.
Posted 12:02 AM | Comments (0)
September 19, 2005
Murdoch on Blair on the BBC on Katrina
Invited to participate in Bill Clinton’s Global Initiative Forum, Rupert Murdoch has said in a speech that Tony Blair had told him in a private conversation BBC’s coverage of Hurricane Katrina was "full of hate of America and gloating about our troubles".
Mr Blair’s office has not commented on the issue. The BBC says it has received no complain. According to a story on the BBC’s website Bill Clinton:
“said he had seen the report Mr Blair was referring to, and there was "nothing factually inaccurate" in it.
But he said it was designed "almost exclusively" to criticise the Bush administration's response to the crisis.”
The Guardian comments:
“Certainly the BBC highlighted the federal government's tardy response to the hurricane. But a claim of institutionalised loathing from the chairman and chief executive of News Corporation, which owns countless newspapers and broadcasters around the world, among them the BBC's direct rival Sky News - how on earth do you prove that?”
Posted 10:09 PM | Comments (0)
Californian Democracy
“Who runs your world?” is a BBC's season examining the nature of power in the world today. The first of a series of five articles by Robin Lustig analyses democracy in California.
It focuses on Orange County, one of the richest place on the planet, and takes as example the city of Santa Ana. A third of its residents entered the US illegally, most of them across the border of Mexico. So they have no papers, no official identity and no right to vote. They are politically invisible. Yet their presence is crucial for Santa Ana. Because they are the gardeners, the nannies, the cleaners, the cooks, the waiters.
So the question asked is: “When President Bush talks of spreading democracy and freedom across the world, is Californian-style democracy what he has in mind?”.
Posted 06:54 PM | Comments (0)
September 17, 2005
US-Canada: A key relationship under strain
While foreign perceptions of the US manifest themselves most through speeches and writing, they can also be detected in what people choose to do, or where they choose to go. The Economist tracks Canadian-American relations through the volume day trips made across their common border. For the last twenty years, the number of day-long visits has varied regularly according to affordability:
When the Canadian dollar went up, shoppers would flood south and a few budget-conscious American tourists would forgo their vacation among the moose, mountains and Mounties. There was even a rough rule of thumb: for every 10% appreciation of the loonie (as Canadians call their currency) against the greenback, there would be a 13% increase in the number of Canadians going south and a 3% decrease in the number of Americans heading north.
Lately, this trend has broken down – despite a significant appreciation of the Canadian dollar, visits by Canadians are flat, and more Americans are staying away then expected. The article puts forward two explanations – that people are deterred by the length and hassle of the post-Sept. 11th border controls, and that diverging cultural and political values make visits less appealing. It sites a survey of Americans conducted by the Ontario provincial government, in which Canadian anti-Americanism was the number 2 reason given for opting against vacationing in Canada, as well as fear of terrorism and Canadian recognition of gay marriage. Canadians have similarly reservations about the US – the article quotes one tourism official noting that it’s “Both sides [that] feel less welcome in the other country.”
Another article chronicles a ten-year trade dispute over softwood lumber. A marginal and unknown issue in the US, in Canada it's front-page material. The dispute hinges on tarrifs placed on Canadian softwood exports, which have been determined to violate the NAFTA agreement by tribunals organized under the treaty - seven times. After losing its final appeal, the US announced it would maintain tarrifs in open violation of the NAFTA agreement. The Canadians responded by abandoning negotiations, and both sides have resorted to threats and name-calling. The article notes that, while the Canadians have little direct leverage, they don't intend to keep silent - "Canada also plans an information campaign telling other countries seeking trade deals with the United States what it has learned about the value of its signature on a treaty."
Posted 08:07 PM | Comments (0)
The New Republic: Dutch Lessons
The New Republic (requires subscription) contrasts New Orleans with the Netherlands, a country similarly vulnerable to catastrophic flooding, with much it set on “saucer-like flood plains just like… New Orleans.” But while the US approach to flood prevention was mainly to build higher levees, the Dutch have come up with more innovative strategies:
[T]hey developed an unprecedented multi-billion-dollar concrete-and-steel dam and seawall project, which was praised in scientific journals as an engineering miracle when it was completed. In 1995, after abnormally severe river flooding necessitated a massive, unwieldy evacuation, Dutch officials didn't just reinforce existing dikes; they again set out to rethink their whole approach to flood protection. Hydraulic engineers hatched a scheme to breach levees on purpose during critical flood conditions, releasing pressure from high waters into areas where flooding would be less disastrous, like fields lying fallow. This required a major psychological switch for the Dutch, who'd had 700 years to get used to the idea that building up, not intentionally opening, levees is how to protect yourself from water.
CBS and CNN likewise praise the Netherlands’ efforts, especially the willingness of the Dutch to undertake such a spectacular financial commitment ($8 billion in an economy a fraction the size) and noting that their preparations resulted in a flood risk 40 times smaller than that of New Orleans. The New York Times (requires subscription) elaborates on the cost of upkeep and the commitment to maintenance:
The Netherlands maintains large teams of inspectors and maintenance crews that safeguard the sprawling complex, which is known as Delta Works. The annual maintenance bill is about $500 million. ''It's not cheap,'' Mr. de Haan [a senior engineer with the Dutch ministry responsible for flood control] said. ''But it's not so much in relation to the gross national product. So it's a kind of insurance.''
But differences were not limited to preparation – the New York Times noted that, during the catastrophic 1953 flood that the Dutch refer to simply as “the Disaster,” a ship captain sunk his vessel to seal a breach in a levy, a reaction far different than firing on helicopters trying to do the same thing.
Trying to explain the difference between Dutch planning and New Orleans anarchy, the New Republic’s Eve Fairbanks suggests that culture may play a role. Capturing the New Orleans mentality, she quotes New Orleans’ Times-Picayune columnist Betty Guillard: “If they know they'll be drowning soon," she said, "they'll just have a party.”
Posted 07:30 PM | Comments (0)
Why Bush is unfit to rule the planet
John Berger, in The Guardian, attacks the Bush administration giving a particular definition of political madness: “an ignorance about most of what exists, and an abdication of the very minimum of what can be expected of government".
The Bush government is not able to negotiate between its fear and its confidence, it says. Hence, its ineptness in facing the complexity of the reality. “Their operation in Afghanistan failed, their war in Iraq has been won (as the saying goes) by Iran, Katrina was allowed to produce the worst natural disaster in US history, and terrorist activities are increasing”. How can this administration believe they can rule the planet?
Posted 02:22 PM | Comments (0)
September 15, 2005
A Vietnamese perspective...
From VietBao Online.
Posted 11:53 AM | Comments (0)
September 13, 2005
The K factor
El Pais, the most important Spanish newspaper, is continuing covering the tragedy of Katrina in an extensive manner, with several editorials and comments everyday. In the last week, it has especially focused on three big issues: economic consequences for the EU, the perception of the US as a model and comparisons on preparedness strategies.
On Friday September 9th , an editorial stressed the potential economical outcomes of Katrina in the EU pointing out oil issues. Katrina effects, it said, will exacerbate the oil race and project European economy onto a period of great uncertainty.
On Sunday September 11th, Luisa Etxenike published an article under the title “Los ojos abiertos". It emphasized the big social fracture disclosed by the hurricane. There is nothing to be surprised about, it said, poor people died like this because they always have been living like this. American system is unfair, even though mostly perceived as a model. We should develop a much more analytical perspective.
On the same day, Isabel Ferrer published an article under the title “The water lesson in Holland” taking Dutch strategies for preventing water diseases as a model. The Dutch struggle against water diseases totally amounts to 3.500 kilometres of canals and levees. Dutch people have been struggling against water since 500 a.C, when they used to build their houses upon piles of sand. Today the “Proyecto Delta” is one of the most innovative system against the force of the water.
Posted 09:25 AM | Comments (0)
Sun-Sentinel: Look at Cuba
Cuba, one of the most hurricane-striken Caribbean islands prepares seriously for hurricanes. Abundant and precise information is given before hand. The forecast is somehow “excellent”. The pyramidal structure organizes evacuation to shelters staffed with doctors, nurses, and psychiatrists. People obey the evacuation orders. So much so that South Florida’s Sun-Sentinel writes:
Now, as analysts and politicians examine how the U.S. government responded to Hurricane Katrina -- and perhaps avoid a similar catastrophe in the future -- some say this communist island may have a few lessons to offer.
The Sun-Sentinel quotes Dan Erikson, Caribbean specialist at the Inter-American Dialogue, a Washington think tank, for whom:
"It's still a police state. You could say one advantage they may have is the ability to move large numbers of people in a short amount of time. But of course the political environment in Cuba makes it difficult to resist those kinds of orders."
Nevertheless the daily points out that:
Cubans have weathered some of the most violent storms the tropics can churn up, with surprisingly low death tolls and almost perfect compliance with evacuation orders.Last year, United Nations emergency relief coordinator Jan Egeland singled out Cuba for praise among Caribbean nations for hurricane-evacuation planning. When Hurricane Ivan swiped the island last September, for example, Cuba didn't record a single death, while 115 people died in other parts of the region. The same month, Hurricane Jeanne killed more than 1,500 in Haiti, with many drowning in floodwaters.
Posted 12:01 AM | Comments (0)
September 12, 2005
A comparison with Japan
According to the French Le Monde's correspondent in Japan, the comparison between “Typhoon Number 14” and Katrina is striking. He draws part of his observation from two titles which appeared on the first page of some Japanese dailies on September 7th. “Katrina: likely 10,000 dead” said one while the other read “Typhoon in Japan: 9 dead.” Although the winds were slightly less frightening in Japan, both hurricanes were of comparable strength.
If 1995 Kobe earthquake was a disaster that overwhelmed the government, the French newspaper points to the orderly response.
“Communities self organized the distribution of food and sanitary tasks, while supermarkets asked their clients to respect a voluntary rationing. No looting, robbery or violence was to be deplored in the ruined city. Even the underworld, with the greatest Japanese crime syndicate, Yamaguchi Gumi, officially an “association”, whose headquarters is in Kobe, organized help to prove its civic sense."
Posted 11:42 PM | Comments (0)
9/11 anniversary brings about criticism for Bush
The fourth commemoration of the Sept. 11th, 2001 attacks was covered in the European media much as it was in the U.S. – inevitably linked to the recent tragedy in New Orleans.
Next to the straight coverage, many newspapers ran editorials comparing and contrasting Katrina and 9/11, not in a flattering way for Bush. Others skirted the Katrina angle and ran stories assessing what progress has been made over four years in the fight against terrorism.
In French newspaper Libération, an opinion piece titled “The Anti-9/11” argues that while Sept. 11th gave Bush the opportunity to display his leadership and gave him the political muscle to wage preventive wars, Katrina has had the exact opposite effect, discrediting him and making the pursuit of “foreign interventions” more difficult. “The political debate has suddenly been re-centered on interior problems, perhaps durably,” concludes the piece.
British historian Simon Schama ran a scathing piece in The Guardian, simply titling it “Sorry Mr President, Katrina is not 9/11”.
After comparing at length the very different responses to the two disasters, he makes a prediction. “Historians ought not to be in the prophecy business but I'll venture this one: Katrina will be seen as a watershed in the public and political life of the US, because it has put back into play the profound question of American government,” says Schama. He then criticizes the Bush administration for cutting the budgets needed to maintain flood defenses and turning FEMA into “a hiring opportunity for political hacks and cronies” which “disappeared into the lumbering behemoth of Homeland Security.”
Back in France, Le Monde ran a story titled “Since 9/11, the terrorism menace has become permanent” while Le Figaro ran the title “Despite the war against terrorism led by Washington, Al-Quaida’s power of mobilization remains intact”.
Both pieces hint that four years after having declared a war against terrorism, the Bush administration may not have much to show for it, with the Le Monde piece’s opening sentence reading: “Osama Bin Laden is still free.”
Posted 05:12 PM | Comments (0)
September 11, 2005
Latina Katrina
In Latin American press, much is being made of the collapse in aid to the Gulf region of Hurricane Katrina. Particular attention is being paid to the ouster of FEMA jefe Mike Brown and the Bush Administration’s general inability to hem in a protean bureaucracy after September 11th. Nicaragua’s El Nuevo Diario (centrist) discusses Brown’s perceived incompetence while the online Argentinian magazine Clarín (independent) calls FEMA an organization “responsible (supposedly) for helping out in disasters” and claims that it has a mentality of political wrangling summed up as “today me, tomorrow you.” Editorials from a variety of political spectrums in Mexico have been similarly condemnatory of the problems with the federal chain of command and its disaster relief (El Universal (centrist), La Jornada (left-wing)).
Posted 04:27 PM | Comments (0)
September 09, 2005
What’s at stake
Katrina, and the way it has been handled is having a profound impact on perceptions of the U.S. in the world. George Bush critics and extreme leftists are certainly having a good time (in political terms). What an opportunity this represents to say “I told you so.” But it goes much beyond that. People are genuinely flabbergasted.
Let’s take an example. El País, the most important Spanish newspaper, has covered the tragedy in an extensive manner with several pages everyday.
On Sunday September 4th, its reporters could interview two Spanish families who had escaped, and tell their story. One of them, Clara Diez said “I could never imagine that in the richest country in the world there could be so much disorganization. Nothing worked.”
An editorial published on the same day under the title "Political hurricane" went further, and addressed elements that can be found in articles of very different countries. It represents a sort of very condensed summary of some of the most common reactions.
U.S. power – After reminding that not long ago the Pentagon prepared itself to handle two simultaneous wars, El País states that “With this catastrophe serious doubts surface about its capacity to handle two important crisis--Iraq and the Mississippi delta--that require the mobilization of military personnel, and all the attention of the federal administration.”
The U.S. as a model – The U.S. has promoted its economic and social model for years, but one of the central functions of the state is to provide security to its citizens. It is written in the American Constitution. In New Orleans “the Federal State did not fulfill a primary constitutional obligation. But, on top of this, the human tragedy of the days after highlighted an intolerable social fracture in which race and class were key.”
The question - The editorial ends on a question that, again, many people are—genuinely or not—asking around the world: “at stake is the authority and prestige of the world hyperpower. It can’t warrant its own citizens’ security and it wants to organize the security of the world?”
Posted 11:34 AM | Comments (0)
"What really matters"
[On the left "In Iraq" - On the right "In New Orleans"]
Published in the Mexican La Jornada with the caption "What really matters."
Posted 10:44 AM | Comments (0)
September 08, 2005
History and Katrina: “A rupture comparable to Sept. 11”?
Over a week after hurricane Katrina devastated New Orleans, the French are still reeling from the shock of seeing the United States in the throes of such a catastrophe. The initial reactions have been much akin to that which was being heard in the U.S. and around the world, calling the disaster revelatory of America’s weaknesses (namely, racial/economic divides and President Bush’s apparent lack of leadership). Now the French media are starting to look at the potential long-term, political effects of Katrina.
One aspect of the disaster that has been of interest to the French, and which has been brought up in a number of articles – including a full article devoted to the subject in Liberation titled “At war against America” – is how America’s own media is responding to the disaster.
The article describes how, though “usually conformist and respectful of power, American TV stations became war machines against Bush and his administration,” with star reporters venting their anger over the situation, live to the American viewers.
American TV news is usually widely criticized in the French media for being out of touch with reality, so it is significant to hear a French journalist, and from a left-wing newspaper, for once praise it: “Substituting itself to the absent authorities, the American television stations have performed a work of public service. Of information and of contestation. Back to playing the role of fourth power in the face of the President and of the political class.”
Others in France are pointing out the rousing effect of Katrina, beyond the media, on its public. In a chat session analyzing the disaster for the online edition of Le Monde, Denis Lacorne, director of the CERI (Centre d’études et de recherches internationales), said: “The real change in the United States is that finally all Americans, including numerous republicans, have gotten out of the soft patriotism brought on by Sept. 11 and have recovered – a bit late – a critical mind in the face of a president who was favored by fate but who, today, will have to face a misfortune that was unpredictable but which revealed the failings of the experts.”
Lacorne also brought up the question of whether or not Katrina might spur a move away from neo-liberalism and a return to “big government” of the FDR-era, in which large-scale projects that might prevent such disasters could be undertaken.
The French, living in what they call a “providence state,” indeed are often vocal critics of privatization such as has been pushed by the Bush administration, and which is on the agenda (if much more tentatively) of some in the French right wing.
Though the French newspapers are too cautious to come outright and call Katrina the downfall of Bush and his brand of leadership, they nevertheless are raising the issue. Some point out his record-low popularity ratings, others the growing disagreement over his handling of the war in Iraq.
An editorial in Le Monde asks if spending in Iraq is not going to seem ludicrous to Americans in the face of such problems on their home soil. In the coming months, American politics will be marked by the answer given to this question, according to this newspaper. It concludes that “Katrina could mark in history a rupture comparable to Sept. 11.”
Posted 08:31 PM | Comments (0)
September 07, 2005
Intervention?
“But, what country is this? Is it far? We must intervene.”
Published in the French Le Monde on Thursday, September 8th.
Posted 05:16 PM | Comments (1)
Katrina is unfortunately opening America's eyes
After Katrina's disaster, all the major French medias, like their US colleagues, insist on the mistakes of Bush's administration, and, even more, on the blindness of America regarding poverty and inequalities.
The first daily to attack is, as usual, the left wing newspaper L'Humanité, in two long articles called "Behind Katrina lies racism" and "The neo-conservatism in the hurricane's eye". In the first one, Jean Chatain chooses a terrifying quote from Dallas police Chief David Kunkle about the black refugees coming from Louisiana:
"We are preparing for the worst, but we will take care of Dallas inhabitants security at once". And Mr Chatain to add: "this point of view can be compared to those of racists cops from deep south in Erskine Caldwell's old books".
In the second article, Jacques Coubard condemned the inefficiency of the FEMA (Federal Emergency Management Agency - Agency of the US government tasked with Disaster Mitigation, Preparedness, Response & Recovery planning) and especially the Under secretary and head of the FEMA, Michael Brown:
"Before being chosed as the head of the federal organization responsible for the emergency helps, this lawyer was judges supervisor in horse races in Colorado. He did not have any qualification to be elected to such an important role, but he is a close relation of George Bush, and he was one of his advisers during the last campaign. He replaced Tom Connelly, a specialist that Louisiana has just called for help to manage the "ultra disaster". This choice of a “neocon” turns now as a fatal consequence of a personal choice of George Bush [...] The nomination of Brown illustrates the contempt of the government for this agency [the FEMA]. News-Orleans victims were "killed by the contempt" of these political choices, which turned the public services and the social security into a private system."The daily Libération is also very critical towards George W. Bush when Gerard Dupuy writes in an op-ed piece called "Collateral damages":
"American prestige is already one of the major victims [of Katrina]. And there is not a doubt that the first person in charge is George Bush, which did everything to confirm its more severe caricatures: Empty head and dry heart."But all US society is guilty for Gerard Dupuy:
"The victims were twice "wrong" to be at the same time poor and black. The American society however promotes the altruistic behaviours: to care is a cardinal virtue of the American spirit and charity actions are flourishing there. But they have been shorted-circuit by the extent of the disaster and the public institutions were not able to face it, partly because they were not prepared for it. Their deplorable service in New-Orleans is already presented like the implicit consequence of an ideology often praised by Bush: the privatization of solidarity itself. Bush and his close advisors did not realize the disaster and its consequences because a blind spot blocked their eyes."
"These images will remain in the collective memory, like those of the repression of the black demonstrations for the civic rights in 1963. They will remain like a symbol of the Bush presidency. They will force America to look at the poverty in another manner"adds Mark Naison, a New York university teacher in an interview called "Poverty doesn't exist for George Bush".
Posted 05:29 AM | Comments (0)
September 06, 2005
We still can’t believe it
Astonishment is probably the best definition of what most Spaniards felt watching the images of chaos, despair and disaster after the hurricane "Katrina" hit the US' southeast coast last week.
As probably most Europeans and also many, many US citizens, the Spaniards were astounded by the devastation provoked by Katrina, the chaos, disorganization and pillaging of the first days and, after the shock, they just couldn't understand the long, long time it took the Federal Government to react, as some Spaniards who were in New Orleans denounced (see this story, or that one) once they finally got back home.
The numbers -of many thousands- of dead people due to the hurricane remind Europe of figures only used before in natural disasters in Third World or developing countries, like the December 26th tsunami or the devastating earthquake in Bam, Iran, last year, but not in a country that praises itself as the most powerful on Earth.
Although the Spanish and U.S. governments have obviously grown apart since the Socialist Party took power and retired its troops from Iraq a year ago, Madrid offered immediately its condolences to the Bush administration, as well as its aid, which was finally accepted this week by Washington.
US ambassador in Madrid, Eduardo Aguirre, presented on Monday the Spanish Foreign Minister Miguel Angel Moratinos a "long list" of what is needed and that has immediately been attended by the Spanish authorities.
Aguirre, who told the media that he and his family grew up in New Orleans, also thanked the quick condolences Spain's President José Luis Rodríguez Zapatero sent after de disaster, which could mark the start of a series of gestures towards a normalization of the US-Spanish relationship after the "coldness" of the past months.
All in all, the Spanish Interior Minister, José Antonio Alonso, couldn't resist the temptation and declared that his country would have had a better response towards such a catastrophe, in a way voicing the opinion of many who still cannot believe what has happened in "the" First World country "par excellence".
On the other hand, others think that the moment has not come to compare or to make strong accusations. There will be enough time for that. The most important thing now is sending help and showing solidarity. Which most Spaniards have done.
Posted 06:34 PM | Comments (0)
September 05, 2005
Who is responsible for Katrina?
One week after the so called American tsunami, left Italian media are still “riding” this catastrophe in order not only to attack President Bush, but also to express their usual, worse, awkward anti-Americanism.
On Sunday, September 4th, “L’Unità” , organ of the Left coalition leaded by Romano Prodi has a comment by Maria Novella Oppo titled “Iceberg President” in which the way President Bush has visited New Orleans is highly criticized “as if he were on the set of a catastrophist TV series”. The human approach of this President, writes the commentator, is very similar to an iceberg.
On the same first page L’Unità, while reporting an article appeared on The New York Times, underlines that even the Republicans are strongly criticizing President Bush’s behavior.
Il Manifesto, organ of the radical left, while interviewing Jeremy Rifkin on September 3rd, points out that the catastrophe was foreseen and Bush has hidden the truth.
“La Repubblica”, which is supposed to be a liberal newspaper but actually supports the Italian Left, with its today’s article signed by its founder Eugenio Scalfari notes that America was able liberate Berlin from the Soviets in 48 hours. The same America was also able to transport a huge army for the first Gulf war and it was able to do the same for the war in Iraq. But this same America is not able to bury the dead in New Orleans six days after the catastrophe. Imperialism is not compatible with Democracy, concludes the commentator.
In the past days “La Repubblica”, with its articles signed by the correspondent from the States, Vittorio Zucconi, has considered Bush’s denial to sign the Kyoto Agreement for the Environment as well as American people’s consumerism both highly responsible for New Orleans disaster.
To give an idea of the present strong political exploitation of the catastrophe, is worth remembering today’s provocative article of “Libero”, a center-right newspaper: “Would you like to be governed by those who are fans of the hurricane?” Actually some extreme left wings seem to welcome the hurricane Katrina as the most appropriate weapon against American and its president.
Posted 09:13 PM | Comments (1)
July 31, 2005
It's Occupation, not Islamic Fundamentalism
Italian newspapers are reporting today that the suspect held on suspicion of planting one of the failed July 21 London bombs said he and fellow bombers were motivated by the war in Iraq to carry out the attacks.
Thus coming from the words of one of the alleged bombers himself, suspicions that these attacks were spawned from the UK's involvement in the Iraq occupation are justified.
One man knows more about suicide bombings than any other Americans. Robert Pape, Asosciate Professor at the University on Chicago and author of a book on suicide attacks "Dying to Win," has the world's largest database of suicide bombers and their demographics. His findings indicate that the the most prevalant American perception about suicide attackers and their motivations are way off.
His conclusions, as expressed in an interview by Scott McConnell of the American Conservative on July 18 (below), clear up many of these misperceptions. Here are some, summarized or paraphrased:
(from an interview with Robert Pape, used without permission of the author/interviewer)
- Suicide attacks are largely associated with Islamic fundamentalism, when in fact the leader in the world's suicide bombings are the Tamil Tigers in their conflict with the Buddhists in Sri Lanka. Palestinians learned of the suicide vest from the Tamil Tigers.
- The main objective, in more than 95 percent of all incidents, has had as its central objective to compel a democratic state to withdraw its occupation or military forces from the region considered by the attackers to be their homeland. Not Islamic fundamentalism.
- Because suicide attacks are mainly a response to foreign occupation and not Islamic fundamentalism, the use of heavy military force can only be expected to increase the number of suicide attackers.
- The evidence shows that the presence of American troops clearly trumps the idea of a cultural hatred of the West or the idea of democracy when it comes to the reasons for suicide attackers to act.
- Iraq never had a suicide attack before American troops invaded.
- "If Islamic fundamentalism were the pivotal factor, then we should see some of the largest Islamic fundamentalist countries in the world, like Iran, which has 70 million people-three times the population of Iraq and three times the population of Saudi Arabia-with some of the most active groups in suicide terrorism against the United States. However, there has never been an al-Qaeda suicide terrorist from Iran, and we have no evidence that there are any suicide terrorists in Iraq from Iran." Sudan, too, has an extremely Islamic fundamentalist government but there has never been an al-Quaeda suicide attacker from Sudan.
- Two thirds of the suicide attacks from 1995 to 2004 are from countries where the United States has stationed heavy combat troops since 1990, and not from Islamic fundamentalist countries.
- History shows that once occupying forces withdraw from the homeland territory of attackers, they often stop, and often on a dime.
The Logic of Suicide Terrorism: It's the Occupation, Not the Fundamentalism
By Scott McConnell
American Conservative
July 18, 2005
Last month, Scott McConnell caught up with Associate Professor Robert Pape of the University of Chicago, whose book on suicide terrorism, Dying to Win, is beginning to receive wide notice. Pape has found that the most common American perceptions about who the terrorists are and what motivates them are off by a wide margin. In his office is the world's largest database of information about suicide terrorists, rows and rows of manila folders containing articles and biographical snippets in dozens of languages compiled by Pape and teams of graduate students, a trove of data that has been sorted and analyzed and which underscores the great need for reappraising the Bush administration's current strategy. Below are excerpts from a conversation with the man who knows more about suicide terrorists than any other American.
The American Conservative: Your new book, Dying to Win, has a subtitle: The Logic of Suicide Terrorism. Can you just tell us generally on what the book is based, what kind of research went into it, and what your findings were?
Robert Pape: Over the past two years, I have collected the first complete database of every suicide-terrorist attack around the world from 1980 to early 2004. This research is conducted not only in English but also in native-language sources-Arabic, Hebrew, Russian, and Tamil, and others-so that we can gather information not only from newspapers but also from products from the terrorist community. The terrorists are often quite proud of what they do in their local communities, and they produce albums and all kinds of other information that can be very helpful to understand suicide-terrorist attacks.
This wealth of information creates a new picture about what is motivating suicide terrorism. Islamic fundamentalism is not as closely associated with suicide terrorism as many people think. The world leader in suicide terrorism is a group that you may not be familiar with: the Tamil Tigers in Sri Lanka.
This is a Marxist group, a completely secular group that draws from the Hindu families of the Tamil regions of the country. They invented the famous suicide vest for their suicide assassination of Rajiv Ghandi in May 1991. The Palestinians got the idea of the suicide vest from the Tamil Tigers.
TAC: So if Islamic fundamentalism is not necessarily a key variable behind these groups, what is?
RP: The central fact is that overwhelmingly suicide-terrorist attacks are not driven by religion as much as they are by a clear strategic objective: to compel modern democracies to withdraw military forces from the territory that the terrorists view as their homeland. From Lebanon to Sri Lanka to Chechnya to Kashmir to the West Bank, every major suicide-terrorist campaign-over 95 percent of all the incidents-has had as its central objective to compel a democratic state to withdraw.
TAC: That would seem to run contrary to a view that one heard during the American election campaign, put forth by people who favor Bush's policy. That is, we need to fight the terrorists over there, so we don't have to fight them here.
RP: Since suicide terrorism is mainly a response to foreign occupation and not Islamic fundamentalism, the use of heavy military force to transform Muslim societies over there, if you would, is only likely to increase the number of suicide terrorists coming at us.
Since 1990, the United States has stationed tens of thousands of ground troops on the Arabian Peninsula, and that is the main mobilization appeal of Osama bin Laden and al-Qaeda. People who make the argument that it is a good thing to have them attacking us over there are missing that suicide terrorism is not a supply-limited phenomenon where there are just a few hundred around the world willing to do it because they are religious fanatics. It is a demand-driven phenomenon. That is, it is driven by the presence of foreign forces on the territory that the terrorists view as their homeland. The operation in Iraq has stimulated suicide terrorism and has given suicide terrorism a new lease on life.
TAC: If we were to back up a little bit before the invasion of Iraq to what happened before 9/11, what was the nature of the agitprop that Osama bin Laden and al-Qaeda were putting out to attract people?
RP: Osama bin Laden's speeches and sermons run 40 and 50 pages long. They begin by calling tremendous attention to the presence of tens of thousands of American combat forces on the Arabian Peninsula.
In 1996, he went on to say that there was a grand plan by the United
States-that the Americans were going to use combat forces to conquer Iraq, break it into three pieces, give a piece of it to Israel so that Israel could enlarge its country, and then do the same thing to Saudi Arabia. As you can see, we are fulfilling his prediction, which is of tremendous help in his mobilization appeals.
TAC: The fact that we had troops stationed on the Arabian Peninsula was not a very live issue in American debate at all. How many Saudis and other people in the Gulf were conscious of it?
RP: We would like to think that if we could keep a low profile with our troops that it would be okay to station them in foreign countries. The truth is, we did keep a fairly low profile. We did try to keep them away from Saudi society in general, but the key issue with American troops is their actual combat power. Tens of thousands of American combat troops, married with air power, is a tremendously powerful tool.
Now, of course, today we have 150,000 troops on the Arabian Peninsula, and we are more in control of the Arabian Peninsula than ever before.
TAC: If you were to break down causal factors, how much weight would you put on a cultural rejection of the West and how much weight on the presence of American troops on Muslim territory?
RP: The evidence shows that the presence of American troops is clearly the pivotal factor driving suicide terrorism.
If Islamic fundamentalism were the pivotal factor, then we should see some of the largest Islamic fundamentalist countries in the world, like Iran, which has 70 million people-three times the population of Iraq and three times the population of Saudi Arabia-with some of the most active groups in suicide terrorism against the United States. However, there has never been an al-Qaeda suicide terrorist from Iran, and we have no evidence that there are any suicide terrorists in Iraq from Iran.
Sudan is a country of 21 million people. Its government is extremely Islamic fundamentalist. The ideology of Sudan was so congenial to Osama bin Laden that he spent three years in Sudan in the 1990s. Yet there has never been an al-Qaeda suicide terrorist from Sudan.
I have the first complete set of data on every al-Qaeda suicide terrorist from 1995 to early 2004, and they are not from some of the largest Islamic fundamentalist countries in the world. Two thirds are from the countries where the United States has stationed heavy combat troops since 1990.
Another point in this regard is Iraq itself. Before our invasion, Iraq never had a suicide-terrorist attack in its history. Never. Since our invasion, suicide terrorism has been escalating rapidly with 20 attacks in 2003, 48 in 2004, and over 50 in just the first five months of 2005. Every year that the United States has stationed 150,000 combat troops in Iraq, suicide terrorism has doubled.
TAC: So your assessment is that there are more suicide terrorists or
potential suicide terrorists today than there were in March 2003?
RP: I have collected demographic data from around the world on the 462
suicide terrorists since 1980 who completed the mission, actually killed themselves. This information tells us that most are walk-in volunteers. Very few are criminals. Few are actually longtime members of a terrorist group. For most suicide terrorists, their first experience with violence is their very own suicide-terrorist attack.
There is no evidence there were any suicide-terrorist organizations lying in wait in Iraq before our invasion. What is happening is that the suicide terrorists have been produced by the invasion.
TAC: Do we know who is committing suicide terrorism in Iraq? Are they
primarily Iraqis or walk-ins from other countries in the region?
RP: Our best information at the moment is that the Iraqi suicide terrorists are coming from two groups-Iraqi Sunnis and Saudis-the two populations most vulnerable to transformation by the presence of large American combat troops on the Arabian Peninsula. This is perfectly consistent with the strategic logic of suicide terrorism.
TAC: Does al-Qaeda have the capacity to launch attacks on the United States, or are they too tied down in Iraq? Or have they made a strategic decision not to attack the United States, and if so, why?
RP: Al-Qaeda appears to have made a deliberate decision not to attack the United States in the short term. We know this not only from the pattern of their attacks but because we have an actual al-Qaeda planning document found by Norwegian intelligence. The document says that al-Qaeda should not try to attack the continent of the United States in the short term but instead should focus its energies on hitting America's allies in order to try to split the coalition.
What the document then goes on to do is analyze whether they should hit Britain, Poland, or Spain. It concludes that they should hit Spain just before the March 2004 elections because, and I am quoting almost verbatim: Spain could not withstand two, maximum three, blows before withdrawing from the coalition, and then others would fall like dominoes.
That is exactly what happened. Six months after the document was produced, al-Qaeda attacked Spain in Madrid. That caused Spain to withdraw from the coalition. Others have followed. So al-Qaeda certainly has demonstrated the capacity to attack and in fact they have done over 15 suicide-terrorist attacks since 2002, more than all the years before 9/11 combined. Al-Qaeda is not weaker now. Al-Qaeda is stronger.
TAC: What would constitute a victory in the War on Terror or at least an improvement in the American situation?
RP: For us, victory means not sacrificing any of our vital interests while also not having Americans vulnerable to suicide-terrorist attacks. In the case of the Persian Gulf, that means we should pursue a strategy that secures our interest in oil but does not encourage the rise of a new generation of suicide terrorists.
In the 1970s and the 1980s, the United States secured its interest in oil without stationing a single combat soldier on the Arabian Peninsula. Instead, we formed an alliance with Iraq and Saudi Arabia, which we can now do again. We relied on numerous aircraft carriers off the coast of the Arabian Peninsula, and naval air power now is more effective not less. We also built numerous military bases so that we could move large numbers of ground forces to the region quickly if a crisis emerged.
That strategy, called "offshore balancing," worked splendidly against Saddam Hussein in 1990 and is again our best strategy to secure our interest in oil while preventing the rise of more suicide terrorists.
TAC: Osama bin Laden and other al-Qaeda leaders also talked about the
"Crusaders-Zionist alliance," and I wonder if that, even if we weren't in Iraq, would not foster suicide terrorism. Even if the policy had helped bring about a Palestinian state, I don't think that would appease the more hardcore opponents of Israel.
RP: I not only study the patterns of where suicide terrorism has occurred but also where it hasn't occurred. Not every foreign occupation has produced suicide terrorism. Why do some and not others? Here is where religion matters, but not quite in the way most people think. In virtually every instance where an occupation has produced a suicide-terrorist campaign, there has been a religious difference between the occupier and the occupied community. That is true not only in places such as Lebanon and in Iraq today but also in Sri Lanka, where it is the Sinhala Buddhists who are having a dispute with the Hindu Tamils.
When there is a religious difference between the occupier and the occupied, that enables terrorist leaders to demonize the occupier in especially vicious ways. Now, that still requires the occupier to be there. Absent the presence of foreign troops, Osama bin Laden could make his arguments but there wouldn't be much reality behind them. The reason that it is so difficult for us to dispute those arguments is because we really do have tens of thousands of combat soldiers sitting on the Arabian Peninsula.
TAC: Has the next generation of anti-American suicide terrorists already been created? Is it too late to wind this down, even assuming your analysis is correct and we could de-occupy Iraq?
RP: Many people worry that once a large number of suicide terrorists have acted that it is impossible to wind it down. The history of the last 20 years, however, shows the opposite. Once the occupying forces withdraw from the homeland territory of the terrorists, they often stop-and often on a dime.
In Lebanon, for instance, there were 41 suicide-terrorist attacks from 1982 to 1986, and after the U.S. withdrew its forces, France withdrew its forces, and then Israel withdrew to just that six-mile buffer zone of Lebanon, they virtually ceased. They didn't completely stop, but there was no campaign of suicide terrorism. Once Israel withdrew from the vast bulk of Lebanese territory, the suicide terrorists did not follow Israel to Tel Aviv.
This is also the pattern of the second Intifada with the Palestinians. As Israel is at least promising to withdraw from Palestinian-controlled territory (in addition to some other factors), there has been a decline of that ferocious suicide-terrorist campaign. This is just more evidence that withdrawal of military forces really does diminish the ability of the terrorist leaders to recruit more suicide terrorists.
That doesn't mean that the existing suicide terrorists will not want to keep going. I am not saying that Osama bin Laden would turn over a new leaf and suddenly vote for George Bush. There will be a tiny number of people who are still committed to the cause, but the real issue is not whether Osama bin Laden exists. It is whether anybody listens to him. That is what needs to come to an end for Americans to be safe from suicide terrorism.
TAC: There have been many kinds of non-Islamic suicide terrorists, but have there been Christian suicide terrorists?
RP: Not from Christian groups per se, but in Lebanon in the 1980s, of those suicide attackers, only eight were Islamic fundamentalists. Twenty-seven were Communists and Socialists. Three were Christians.
TAC: Has the IRA used suicide terrorism?
RP: The IRA did not. There were IRA members willing to commit suicide-the famous hunger strike was in 1981. What is missing in the IRA case is not the willingness to commit suicide, to kill themselves, but the lack of a suicide-terrorist attack where they try to kill others.
If you look at the pattern of violence in the IRA, almost all of the killing is front-loaded to the 1970s and then trails off rather dramatically as you get through the mid-1980s through the 1990s. There is a good reason for that, which is that the British government, starting in the mid-1980s, began to make numerous concessions to the IRA on the basis of its ordinary violence. In fact, there were secret negotiations in the 1980s, which then led to public negotiations, which then led to the Good Friday Accords. If you look at the pattern of the IRA, this is a case where they actually got virtually everything that they wanted through ordinary violence.
The purpose of a suicide-terrorist attack is not to die. It is the kill, to inflict the maximum number of casualties on the target society in order to compel that target society to put pressure on its government to change policy. If the government is already changing policy, then the whole point of suicide terrorism, at least the way it has been used for the last 25 years, doesn't come up.
TAC: Are you aware of any different strategic decision made by al-Qaeda to change from attacking American troops or ships stationed at or near the Gulf to attacking American civilians in the United States?
RP: I wish I could say yes because that would then make the people reading this a lot more comfortable.
The fact is not only in the case of al-Qaeda, but in suicide-terrorist
campaigns in general, we don't see much evidence that suicide-terrorist groups adhere to a norm of attacking military targets in some circumstances and civilians in others.
In fact, we often see that suicide-terrorist groups routinely attack both civilian and military targets, and often the military targets are off-duty policemen who are unsuspecting. They are not really prepared for battle.
The reasons for the target selection of suicide terrorists appear to be much more based on operational rather than normative criteria. They appear to be looking for the targets where they can maximize the number of casualties.
In the case of the West Bank, for instance, there is a pattern where Hamas and Islamic Jihad use ordinary guerrilla attacks, not suicide attacks, mainly to attack settlers. They use suicide attacks to penetrate into Israel proper. Over 75 percent of all the suicide attacks in the second Intifada were against Israel proper and only 25 percent on the West Bank itself.
TAC: What do you think the chances are of a weapon of mass destruction being used in an American city?
RP: I think it depends not exclusively, but heavily, on how long our combat forces remain in the Persian Gulf. The central motive for anti-American terrorism, suicide terrorism, and catastrophic terrorism is response to foreign occupation, the presence of our troops. The longer our forces stay on the ground in the Arabian Peninsula, the greater the risk of the next 9/11, whether that is a suicide attack, a nuclear attack, or a biological attack.
Posted 03:55 PM | Comments (0)
July 06, 2005
U.S. versus “G8” : No Change for Climate Change ?
The Group of 8 summit is set to highlight differences
of opinion between the United States and the
remaining 7 nations represented. A highly contentious
issue is on the agenda: climate
change. Britain’s prime minister Tony Blair, who will
preside over the summit, hopes to stimulate efforts by
forming a joint call to action between the nations, of
which the U.S. is the only one left to not have signed
the Kyoto Protocol.
Opinions in the European press have been vastly
pessimistic as to the outcome of the summit,
predicting little hope of seeing the U.S. budge from
its current position. Instead, it seems that a
watered-down version of the text, revised by U.S.
negotiators, will be the only option offered up at the
G8 summit. A version that French president Jacques
Chirac, who had previously threatened to veto any
weakened version, seems nevertheless poised to sign :
“We’ve had difficult negotiations, and it seems that
we are orienting towards an agreement,” he stated on
July 4 to Liberation.
The draft of the G8 joint statement, first divulged to the New York Times on June 18 shows the signs of U.S. pressure
by deleting the introductory
statement “Our world is warming.” Newer versions show
that while President Bush would be ready to state that
“climate change is a reality” and that the problem
must be dealt with through new technologies, U.S.
negotiators have also taken out any mention of the
role of humans in climate change. Bush, in a broadcast
for British TV station ITV, stated that he would
indeed refuse to sign anything that resembles the
Kyoto Protocol.
Will the remaining nations feel that what is left of
the original statement, however weakened, is better
than nothing? will nothing be signed? or will they
instead choose to issue a “G7” statement excluding the
U.S., thereby strengthening the gap between the U.S.
and the rest?
For Denis Delbecq, environmental writer for the French
newspaper Liberation’s online blog, there is no
possibility of a “G7” document excluding the U.S. on
the subject. While Blair, under pressure from French
and German officils, has made threats to that effect,
these, according to analysts in Europe, are empty.
While the outcome is as of yet unclear, what emerges in many
analyses by the European press is that the issue is
yet another one that sets the U.S. at odds with
Europe.
Posted 07:42 AM | Comments (0)
June 16, 2005
Jackson’s trial as an American microcosm?
News of Michael Jackson acquital were everywhere in European and Latin American media, but surprsingly few comentaries were made. French and Spanish media, in particular, ran stories on U.S. public opinion for which he remains guilty. They picked up the fact that the boy whose accusations were the grounds of the trial does not understand the verdict and is now depressed. Many published stories on declarations according to which the actor would not sleep with boys any more. A way for skeptical Europeans to underline the fact that he actually did exactly that.
The Guardian (U.K.) published an interesting comment by writer John Harris under the title: Drowned in a pervasive moral murk.
“Even if you wanted to affect an interest in the case as some crystallisation of wider social currents, there wasn't much to hang on to. According to Joan Smith in the New Statesman, Jackson is now "a symbol of the way in which a nation founded on a dream is retreating into the realm of fantasy" - which is elegantly put, but not exactly enlightening. "American society has been sliced open, not just to the bone but to entrails swollen with half-digested, rotting waste," wrote Barbara Amiel in the Sunday Telegraph (considering Jackson's possible guilt, she went on: "Child molestation of any sort is to be deplored, but ... in the absence of penetration, what actual harm has he done?" - that should get Lord Black's dinner guests in an entertaining lather).The theory of the Jackson trial as an American microcosm, however, seems like a non-starter. Whether the freakish world into which it peered says anything about Main Street USA seems doubtful. Certainly, there are no potent racial narratives à la OJ Simpson; at most, events have simply underlined the truism that dysfunction gets passed down the generations, and that money serves to inflate it.”
Posted 05:42 PM | Comments (0)
June 14, 2005
Self-Reflection
Donald Rumsfeld talks about what he thinks the world thinks about the United States as well as some other foreign policy issues.
"I think the US is notably unskilful in our communications and our public diplomacy," he said in Washington.
He said that there are always entities trying to bring down the world's most powerful states and referred to Arab media such as Al-Jazeera.
"You just can't hear day after day after day after day things like that that often aren't true, with a lack of balance, and not come away thinking, gee, that must not be a very good country," he said.
Rumsfeld points to image problem
US Defence Secretary Donald Rumsfeld has told the BBC his country needs to do a "better job" at communicating its policies to the rest of the world.
"I think the US is notably unskilful in our communications and our public diplomacy," he said in Washington.
He made a robust defence of the US role in Iraq, saying it was now up to the Iraqi people to restore order.
On Guantanamo Bay, he said the prison's reputation was "unfortunate" but its existence was necessary for security.
"No one wishes to have a facility like that, no one wishes to have to detain people," he told Sir David Frost in a special interview for BBC Newsnight's Tuesday edition.
However, conditions there were humane, he said, and any guards who had "misbehaved" had been punished.
"The people in Gitmo... 99% have the best food probably, the best medical treatment, they've ever received in their lives," the defence secretary added.
Image problems
People always set out to "bring down or tweak" the world's most powerful states, he continued, citing coverage of the US on foreign media such as Arab TV channel al-Jazeera.
"You just can't hear day after day after day after day things like that that often aren't true, with a lack of balance, and not come away thinking, gee, that must not be a very good country," said Mr Rumsfeld.
Despite its image problems abroad, the US was still the country that "people want to come to, to live and to work".
Asked about relations with other world powers, Mr Rumsfeld predicted China would loosen up its political system within 15 years to match its economic reforms.
On Russia, he suggested Moscow's arms deals with countries like Venezuela and its ties with Syria were damaging its business reputation.
"Right now, Russia is making, in my view, some decisions which are... statistically... leading to a reduction in foreign direct investment," he remarked.
You can watch the interview on Newsnight on BBC2 at 2230 BST
Story from BBC NEWS:
http://news.bbc.co.uk/go/pr/fr/-/2/hi/americas/4092572.stm
Posted 01:00 PM | Comments (0)
June 05, 2005
From Giacomo Chiozza on Anti-Americanism
Giacomo Chiozza is a post-doctoral fellow at Olin Institute for Strategic Studies, Harvard University. He will join the faculty in the Department of Political Science at UC-Berkeley in the Fall of 2005. In this letter, Chiozza answers three questions posed by Worldandus.
WorldAndUS: Why is it interesting to study perceptions of the US in the world (or anti-Americanism)?
GC -- Anti-Americanism appears to be a pervasive phenomenon of our times. But despite all the attention that it receives in the media, in the statements of political leaders, and among policy pundits, it still remains a poorly understood phenomenon. We should first acknowledge that anti-Americanism subsumes patterns of behavior and attitudinal stances that span the entire spectrum from the murderous hatred of the 9/11 hijackers to the fleeting and superficial opinions of ordinary people captured in opinion polls. And we should also acknowledge that when we say America, we evoke a large array of images, sentiments, aspirations, and ideals. This combination of competing and contradicting feelings makes the study of anti-Americanism particularly interesting.
A second set of reasons should also be considered. When we study international politics, we focus on the distribution of power and the patterns of interests. These two variables indeed help us understand a great deal of what happens in the international arena. But, as we try to understand the features and characteristics of the American world order, we very well observe that such an international order entails more than power and interests. It entails a normative and ideational dimension. The study of foreign attitudes towards the United States allows us to grasp such an ideational and normative dimension insofar as it tells us what is accepted and what is rejected, under what political conditions, by ordinary people.
-- WorldAndUs: Which effects might be expected from rising anti-Americanism?
GC -- We don't really know much about the political consequences of anti-Americanism. Conjectures abound about how popular opposition to the United States would affect the ability of the United States to pursue major policy initiatives and how such an opposition would create an international political context detrimental to American security. Several scholars have pointed out how the exceptional position of the United States in the current international system is buttressed by a special feature of America's, its soft power, to use Joseph Nye's catchy expression. If popular anti-Americanism is mounting, it might very well undermine American soft power, one of the pillars of the American world order. But, I think, we should avoid the temptation to draw immediate and linear connections between mass level negative attitudes towards the United States and the state choices in the international arena.
-- WorldAndUs: How is it possible to study the evolving nature of this phenomenon in a way so that it can be used as a policy tool?
GC -- When we think of the policy-implications of the scientific and academic research on anti-Americanism, we have to keep two aspects into consideration.
On the one hand, we have the aspiration to a "Decent Respect for the Opinions of Mankind," which is enshrined in the Declaration of Independence.
On the other hand, we have the statements of policy makers in the realpolitik tradition, such as Dean Acheson, who argued about 40 years ago that American political leaders should disregard any infatuation with the image of America abroad and, instead, place the course of America's foreign policy on the firm ground of the pursuit of American national interest. In more recent times, the neoconservative intellectuals who have framed American foreign policy under the reign of George W. Bush have made a similar argument and claimed that America should be "unapologetic" and not concerned about the views of foreign publics.
In other words, the policy implications of the study of anti-Americanism are indeed a politically contested battleground. But, regardless of the view we adopt, the knowledge produced by systematic analyses of anti-Americanism would have much more relevance if it followed from well-crafted research design. All too often the treatises on anti-Americanism simply "sample on the dependent variable," that is, select only instances of opposition to America for their analysis. In so doing, they do not show how mass attitudes vary over space and time and over the infinite features of the United States.
Once we start to analyze the rich variation in how America is perceived and appreciated abroad, we can start having a more realistic understanding of the phenomenon. We can start understand what exactly riles opponents and detractors of America, and what about America appeals to so many people. No sound policy advice can follow from analyses that only focus on the "hate" part, and miss out that America is also much loved as well.
Posted 10:27 PM | Comments (0)
May 19, 2005
A British MP who does not bow before the US Senate
George Galloway’s declarations to the U.S. Senate committee on Foreign Affairs are everywhere in the U.S. media (see here and here).
Comments in the foreign media abound like this one found in the Deccan Herald (“An institution that has completed 50 glorious years of chronicling the joys and sorrows of the people of Karnataka, India and the world.”):
The US Senate hearings are dignified affairs and those called, appear before it with great reverence. It can affect the careers of politicians and administration officials. Even a foreign head of state such as Afghanistan’s Hameed Karzai, sat below the level of his US interrogators and answered questions politely.Mr Galloway is made of sterner stuff, having survived the rough and tumble of British politics. At the end of the hearing, his accusers didn’t know what hit them. The piece of political theatre witnessed in a dignified chamber of Capitol Hill proved that there is one thing that the British still do well.
Posted 10:41 PM | Comments (0)
May 05, 2005
US Double-Standards on Nuclear Issue
With discussions going on at the United Nations in New York about how to reform the Nuclear Non-Proliferation treaty (NPT), the very treaty itself seems to be under severe challenge. A number of countries, including Iran, are actively seeking to develop nuclear weapons, while those who already possess ‘the bomb’ are making efforts to modernize and improve their arsenals.
Commenting on the matter on May 3, Dagens Nyheter, Sweden’s biggest daily newspaper, argues that, although the loophole design of the NPT must be remedied, the treaty itself is not the main problem:
“The real problem is the injustice inherent in today's disarmament policy, which gives to some what is denied to others.”
The division between nuclear haves and nuclear have-nots was established by the NPT at its inception, recognizing five states (United States, United Kingdom, France, Russia, and China) as legitimate holders of nuclear weapons. But the treaty’s article VI also states that the five nuclear powers must pursue to reduce and liquidate their arsenals, a provision without which such apparent inequality would have been politically impossible.
However, Dagens Nyheter argues that the willingness of the nuclear powers to abide by article VI and functionally disarm has been low:
“We have not seen any real disarmament and the reduction that has taken place has been too modest.”
Contrary to disarming, the United States and other nuclear weapons states are seeking to develop a new range of nuclear weapons, tailored after today’s needs and therefore considered more “usable”.
“This is a policy that makes it hard for the United States to argue with credibility that other states must relinquish nuclear weapons,” writes Dagens Nyheter. “If the United States argues in this way, it is hard to see why others will not argue likewise, and as long as they do, the spiral downwards will continue.”
Another Swedish daily, Östgötacorrespondenten, reports that Laila Freivalds, minister of foreign affairs of Sweden, when interviewed in New York on May 3, said that it was troubling that the United States demands a nuclear ban for other nations, such as Iran, while not setting a good example itself.
“One wishes that the United States would realize that showing a genuine interest in disarmament would be their best argument,” Freivalds said, referring to the discussions going on in New York.
The debate about nuclear weapons is a complicated one, but it seems clear that there are great risks in current developments, and that the nuclear states are partly to blame. The inequality inherent in the NPT was perhaps unavoidable, but it was thought of as a temporary measure, a compromise on the road to disarmament. By not reducing their arsenals in accordance with the treaty, the nuclear powers have upheld a double-standard and undermined the credility of the NPT, and by so doing, made effective disarmament even more difficult.
Moreover, the continued US commitment to nuclear weapons is likely to be viewed critically in many other nations, thereby contributing to negative perceptions of US foreign and security policy, especially in those countries that today are under heavy pressure to stop their nuclear programs.
Posted 04:43 AM | Comments (0)
April 19, 2005
Wanted: an opposition party
Something to keep in mind about America and the world is the absence of a U.S. opposition party. The Democratic Party has effectively ceased to exist. Why does this matter? Because the “America” that is arousing most of the globe’s anti-Americanism is, basically, not the country itself; it’s the Republican Party.
In other words, the old notion that the United States’ two big parties don’t really differ from each other is wrong. The no-real-difference thesis is an old Left idea which in the theoretical sense is true – both parties are pro-capitalist – but in the real world of people and legislation and practical ideas is false. Putting the matter simply, the Democratic Party invented the New Deal, and now the Republicans are destroying it. We can call that a distinction with a difference.
Granted, in foreign policy the differences between Republicans and Democrats were a little blurrier – until George W. Bush came on the scene. His combination of belligerence and ignorance is a new formula. It could only have come from his party, whose culture provided the key ingredients of militarism and a contempt for the rest of the world.
So, where are the Democrats? They’ve disappeared into their various factions. Don’t look to them for any ideas that reach across the various Democratic constituencies, much less that appeal to the nation as a whole.
Mickey Kaus, Slate Magazine’s own blogger, states the case brutally but effectively. Yes, he’s hostile to immigrants and to unions, but he sees the big picture clearly. The devolution of the Democratic Party explains why the only Democrat since Franklin D. Roosevelt (who died 60 years ago, remember) to win more than one term in office was Bill Clinton, whose political talents put him in a category all his own.
Kaus is not the only one to notice the Democratic collapse. The so-called “national security Democrats” who have formed the Truman Project have drawn more or less the same conclusion, though they don’t phrase it that way.
I suspect that their solution, which is a Marshall Plan-style combination of force and benevolence, won’t appeal to many of those who blog here. They should consider the alternative, which is what we’re experiencing.
Peter Beinart, editor of The New Republic, who’s in the Truman Project circle, wrote a piece a couple of months ago that served as a rallying cry for Democratic internationalists. It was, of course attacked in The Nation magazine, a journal that specializes in reinforcing the political self-esteem of its readers rather than challenging them (The Weekly Standard, the neocon weekly, is even worse in this regard, not that that’s an excuse).
Personally, the Truman Project/New Republic notion of muscular liberalism doesn’t get my motor running. But that’s not the point. Yes, political parties need to excite some enthusiasm, but ideas come first. American voters found the Democrats lacking when it came to ideas about national security. And so, with Bush having dragged the country into a counterinsurgency war with no end in sight, and whose original rationale had collapsed, Americans voted for him anyway. If a coherent opposition party had existed, he might have lost and the perception of the U.S. in the world would have been much different.
Posted 05:32 PM | Comments (0)
March 30, 2005
A powerless beginnig for Bush II ?
By Pierre Langlais
The major threat for George W. Bush’s popularity could come from inside the USA. That’s what the French daily Le Monde is advancing in an article about Bush’s failure on the Social Security reform.
This reform, announced as the most important one of the second mandat, is about to be postponed to next year, said Bill Frist, leader of the Republicans at the Senat.
After his (quite) successfull visit to Europe, things seemed to work well for the re-elected president, at least within the US boundaries.
« It has been a long time since Republicans have been that powerful. Since the re-election of the President in November 2004, they control the White House and enjoy a comfortable majority in both of the houses. »
Writes Eric Leser, underlining this paradox : « It is inside of his own party that George Bush is unable to convince [about this reform] »
There is two major reasons for this almost certain defeat in domestic policy: First, a large part of the Republican senators are already thinking about the next elections, next year, and even about the presidential election in 2008. Those don’t want to take any risky positions. Then, the opposition to this reform received support from unions like the AFL-CIO and from the very powerful American Association of Retired Persons (AARP), which has 35 millions members. The retired people have such an important place in the Republican electorate that the point of view of the AARP changed everything for most of the senators.
This defeat could be, for Le Monde, the end of
« the great ambitions, declared at the end of last year in the euphoria of the re-election, to take down the welfare state and the legacy of Franklin Roosevelt and the New Deal. »
This « snub » comes in the middle of bad circumstances for Bush. Indeed, a CBS News poll revealed last week that 82 % of the Americans disagree with the position of the Congress and the White House on the Terri Schiavo case. A major part of the country is in favor of the « euthanasia » for this 41 year old woman, who has been in coma for more than 15 years while Bush helped pass a special law to hold Mrs. Schiavo in a stable situation.
At the same time, the opening of a nature reserve in Alaska to oil drilling, and the rise of the price of gas has brought the President to his lowest rate of popularity ever, with only 45% of favorable opinion, according to a Gallup poll for USA Today and CNN.
And Eric Leser concludes with the question:
“Many American presidents knew difficult second mandates: Will George Bush be able to avoid a similar destiny?”
Posted 11:59 AM | Comments (0)
March 29, 2005
South African Trade Detours United States
The news from South Africa last week painted a picture of a vacuum—a great empty space where coverage of the United States might once have been. South Africa’s newspapers suggest not the presence or influence of the United States, but its absence. The sole reporting from the U.S. among the country’s major newspapers revolved around the Michael Jackson trial, of which there was abundant wire coverage.
The Cape Times (subscription required) Cape Town’s leading morning daily, reported on a visit to South Africa by the Foreign Ministers of India, Natwar Singh, and of Brazil, Celso Amerin—focusing on their creation of a ‘Business Council’ with South Africa’s Foreign Minister Nkosazma Dlamini-Zuma to facilitate trade between the three countries. [Cape Times, 10 March, 2005] Specifically, South Africa is in the process of establishing closer relations with the member countries of the Mercosur trading bloc—Brazil, Argentina and Uruguay—and to bring South Africa into the web of trade accords between that bloc, of which Brazil is a leading member, and India.
The meetings between these powerhouses of the developing world take on new meaning in light of the dramatic slowdown in negotiations between Brazil and other Latin American nations and the Bush Administration in negotiating a Free Trade of the Americas agreement.
That effort to establish a NAFTA style, hemisphere-wide trade accord have floundered—while efforts to create an alliance among the tri-continental powerhouses of the southern hemisphere are taking on steam. The three countries have established an alliance, known as IBSA (India, Brazil, South Africa) “to strengthen south-south cooperation,” reports Angela Quintal, Political Editor for the Cape Times. Trade between the three countries amounted to $4 billion last year, the Cape Times reports; SA Foreign Minister Dlamini-Zuma said that the three nations hope that will grow to some $10 billion by 2007.
In the same week, several other developments suggested the growing ties between the three economic powerhouses of the developing world. According to The Sun Times (subscription required) a South African national daily, Brazil has endorsed the call of the African Union (in which South Africa is a major player) for two African seats on the U.N. Security Council—as well as a permanent seat for a representative from the Arab world. [The Times, 12 March, 2005] The paper suggests that if approved, Africa’s two seats would go to South Africa and Nigeria.
The Cape Argus, a Cape Town afternoon paper (subscription required), reports that India has also thrown its support behind this effort to expand membership in the Security Council. “The foreign ministers of India, Brazil and South Africa said the UN Security Council no longer represented the reality of today’s world,” writes Argus correspondent Thokozani Mtshali. “They reiterated their call for urgent and extensive UN reform and for it to be ‘responsive to the priorities of its member states’ especially the developing world.” [Cape Argus, 13 March, 2005]
Not one of the articles made reference to the U.S. position on this matter. While Michael Jackson’s squirming in Santa Barbara was by far the dominant news about America for South Africans, the main international reporting that week was on the gathering force of political and economic alliances that are detouring Washington altogether.
Posted 06:50 PM | Comments (0)
March 24, 2005
Kyrgyzstan: Chinese, and Russian perceptions
Kyrgyz President Askar Akayev, has been expelled by protesters who overtook the presidential palace in Bishkek early March 24. What happens next is anybody’s guess at this point, but perceptions of the US and its intentions will play a siginficant role.
These are some extracts taken from George Friedman’s Intelligence brief published today by Stratfor.com:
What makes all of this particularly interesting is that both Russia and China have a tendency to view any upheaval in regions where they take interest as part of a conspiracy orchestrated by the United States in order to challenge their hegemony.[...]This might be paranoid thinking. It might be prudent "worst-case scenario" planning. Or it might be a rational appreciation of Washington's intentions. Whichever it is, the simple fact is that both regional powers regard any instability in any country in the area as being generated by the United States and intended to harm them.[...]
The Russians […] see the United States turning its attention from al Qaeda to other issues, and they don't buy the Bush administration's line that its political involvement in the region -- specifically in Ukraine, where Washington helped secure a win by pro-Western President Viktor Yushchenko late last year -- is simply about the American love for free elections. They believe the United States sought to install a pro-U.S. government in Kiev in order to bring Ukraine into NATO and undermine Russian national security.[...]
The Chinese don't believe the United States is obsessed with al Qaeda any longer. They believe the Americans are obsessed with China, and they see events in Kyrgyzstan as a security threat.
Posted 05:58 PM | Comments (0)
March 23, 2005
Conference on "Islamophobia and Anti-Americanism"
The Council on American-Islamic Relations, organizes a conference on "Islamophobia and Anti-Americanism: Causes and Remedies," to be held May 13-15, 2005, in Washington, D.C.
CAIR writes:
This conference will explore the root causes behind the twin phenomena of Islamophobia and anti-Americanism. To tackle these important issues, we have assembled a group of leading experts, including university professors, authors, researchers, community activists, and faith-based leaders. The conference is expected to initiate serious dialogue on both issues and will also seek positive and practical solutions.
Posted 04:37 PM | Comments (0)
March 17, 2005
Will Wolfowitz follow McNamara’s example?
Paul Wolfowitz nomination by President Bush to head the World Bank, after the designation of conservative John Bolton as US Ambassador to the United Nation is not a good sign for multilateralism according to the French Le Monde.
The Elysee Palace (where the president works and lives) said it would study the nomination “in the light of the Bank’s critical mission in favor of development.” Some observers fear Wolfowitz might be tempted to use his new position more as a tool in his quest for democracy in the Middle East.
Le Monde's correspondent in New York highlights opposition to the nomination coming from the United States but ends its story with a positive note: “some executives at the World Bank hope he [Wolfowitz] will follow Robert McNamara’s example.” After organizing the war in Vietnam McNamara became one of the staunchest promoters of development.
Posted 12:15 PM | Comments (0)
March 14, 2005
Improving the image of the U.S. abroad
Karen Hughes’s nomination as Under Secretary of State for Public Diplomacy shows President Bush’s interest for improving perceptions of the U.S. in the world, and the difficulties he is facing.
In an article published… by the Christian Science Monitor Linda Feldman writes:
The White House sought in its Monday announcement to highlight Hughes's foreign experience, such as accompanying Bush on foreign trips and working to promote women's rights in Afghanistan, but no one is pretending that foreign affairs is her forte. And two years after a US- dominated coalition invaded Iraq, hurting America's image throughout much of the world, Hughes will face a tougher audience than any in Texas or the bluest of blue Democratic states.
Her two predecessors in the post - advertising executive Charlotte Beers and Margaret Tutwiler, a onetime aide to former Secretary of State James Baker - both left with limited records of accomplishment.
But, analysts say, don't count out Hughes before she begins, particularly as recent elections in Iraq and the Palestinian territories have given Bush's vision for Middle Eastern democracy a boost.
Skepticism exists on the conservative side too. For the Heritage Foundation, for example:
Instead of crafting campaign messages—for which she has a knack—Karen Hughes will have to leverage her influence with the President to clean up a botched merger at a time when challenges in foreign communication are the greatest since the beginning of the Cold War. Moreover, she will have to buck those in the Administration who think effective public diplomacy is repeating a slogan slowly and loudly enough until the audience “gets it.”
In fact the Heritage Foundation demands not less than a complete overhaul of Public Diplomacy. Among other advices it suggests that:
[...]she should urge the White House to establish a public diplomacy coordinator position at the National Security Council to put other agencies with missions like information warfare, media development, and foreign broadcasting in sync.
It would be interesting if that meant that conservatives open themselves to the very liberal notion of “Soft Power” promoted by Joseph Nye.
Reactions abroad (where Hughes is not really famous yet)are still slow to come, and came in a trickle.
“Propaganda War Gets a New General” is the title of a dispatch from Inter Press Service. IPS presents itself as “civil society's leading news agency, […] an independent voice from the South and for development, delving into globalization for the stories underneath. It’s headquarter is in Rome, Italy.
The story quotes an American Middle East specialist:
”You need someone who knows something serious about the Middle East publics and is willing to engage them on their terms,” Juan Cole, a history professor at the University of Michigan and an authority on the Middle East, told IPS.
”Ms. Hughes could be effective, but she needs to get good advice from non-toady Arabs and others. There is also the question of how much you can dress up the U.S. support for Israeli occupation and annexation of Muslim lands or the U.S. heavy-handedness in Iraq. PR without policy changes is most often not very effective.”
Posted 05:06 PM | Comments (0)
March 05, 2005
A serious incident
Upon her arrival in Italy Giuliana Sgrena declared that the US soldiers shot at her car “without motives” (see this note). Her statement was confirmed by an Italian secret agent who survived besides her. They said that the shooting came from a patrol and not from a check-point.
This screen shots of the home page of La Repubblica taken just before 6pm local time on Saturday March 5th, gives a sense of the tension.
According to La Repubblica Sgrena declared:
“The most difficult moment was en I saw the man who saved my life die in my arms.”
The Corriere della Sera gives importance to a declaration from Pier Scolari, Sgrena’s companion according to whom Giuliana’s had been told that “they” would try to kill her. Italian Secret Service answers that such is not the case and that it would have been a very silly way to go. More covert actions could have been implemented, and what happened could endanger the “collaboration of an allied service.”
An article in Today’s New York Times ends with this paragraph:
"This incident will increase popular anti-Americanism," said James Walston, a political scientist at the American University of Rome. “But it won't seriously prejudice the official Italian position of keeping troops in Iraq."
Posted 09:24 AM | Comments (0)
March 04, 2005
Elation and bafflement in Italy
The liberation of Italian Journalist Giuliana Sgrena by her Iraqi kidnappers and the accidental killing of secret service agent Nicola Calipari triggered emotions that might influence the perception of the US in that country.
The titles of two of the most important Italian newspapers are revealing.
The middle of the road Corriere della Sera highlights the fact that the US have declared it was “a mistake”.
The more liberal La Repubblica writes that Calipari was killed by “friendly fire from the USA.” (The screenshots were taken slightly before 8 AM local time on Saturday March 5th).
In the following hours, a significant place has been given to Bush’s phone call to Berlusconi, and to the accidental nature of Calipari’s death.
Nevertheless, the whole sequence might have an impact on perceptions of the US in this European country whose government is a close ally of George Bush while the population does not favor the war in Iraq.
Posted 11:53 PM | Comments (0)
Europe – New realities that the U.S. cannot ignore
One of the most delicate issues when trying to track “perceptions of the United States in the World” might be to gauge the impact of facts on feelings. In particular of changing realities.
The war in Iraq or the growing trend towards democracy in the Middle East is obvious elements about which much has been written.
There are deeper shift though that deeply affect perceptions… on both sides. This excellent article by Mark Schapiro titled “New Power for ‘Old Europe’” is a case in point.
It shows that decisions taken at the EU level may have a serious impact on major US companies that can’t do as much as they would like about it. Schapiro studies in particular the case of REACH (Registration, Evaluation and Authorization of Chemicals), a directive that:
[...]represents an upheaval in the basic philosophy of chemical regulation, flipping the American presumption of "innocent until proven guilty" on its head by placing the burden of proof on manufacturers to prove chemicals are safe--what is known as the "precautionary principle."
The chemicals industry and the State Department have done what they could to derail it, but it’s difficult to influence a democratic body of 25 countries and a market of 450 million consumers.
Schapiro writes:
When Henry Kissinger was Secretary of State for President Ford in 1977, he famously asked in frustration, "What telephone number do you dial to reach Europe?" Today, the area code for that number is clear: 32-2, for Brussels […].
And he adds:
Every European diplomat I spoke with was careful to insist that Europe's new generation of environmental directives is not intended to "impose" Europe's will upon the United States. Camilo Barcia Garcia-Villamil, the Spanish consul in San Francisco, who spent fifteen years working with the EU in Brussels, comments: "The European Union now has increased decision-making capacity. And if American companies want to be active in the European market, they must take account of European rules. We are not imposing our standards. We are making foreign companies respect our standards when they are in Europe."
Such an evolution might influence perceptions of the US abroad, and of the American perception of the problem.
That is less complicated than it sounds.
On one hand, the US might appear as less relevant to some, less all-powerful. On the other, Americans resenting the loss of importance might be tempted to conclude that anti-Americanism is growing.
That’s not necessarily the case, and still this is an essential shift that can’t be ignored.
What do you think?
Posted 12:52 PM | Comments (1)
March 03, 2005
Domestic Conversations on Anti-Americanism
The website Red State.org has a multi-participant conversation on Americanism and Anti-Americanism. Poster DonPMitchell explores the prevalance and history of anti-Americanism throughout Europe, and he and the participants offer up their theories of why anti-Americanism is present. These include the idea that a small group of self-appointed spokespeople represent America and are outspoken in their criticism, the idea that "intellectuals ridicule Americanism and Capitalism because it is a game they cannot win," a suggestion in a comment that the French don't like America because of a history of feeling incited by elitist, etc.
Americanism and Anti-Americanism
By: DonPMitchell · Section: Diaries
Anti-Americanism is not a grass-roots movement in the world, it is not the result of our nation being less generous or less moral than other nations. It is the result of a small class of elitists who hold the power to incite the masses in many nations.
America is a democracy of the common man, a civilization that provides for its own cultural and political needs without the significant involvement of an intellectual class or a ruling clerical class. And that is why the spread of our ideals so threatens such men in Europe, in the Third World or even here at home.
Feb 28th, 2005: 19:01:02, Not Rated
Following Bush's latest visit, a poll showed that more Europeans trusted Russia than America. As remarkable as this seems, it is nothing new. For the last fifty years, anti-Americanism has been widespread in Europe and much of the Third World.
In 1976, the American philosopher Eric Hoffer discussed this puzzling fact in his book Ordeal of Change. In the midst of the Cold War, Hoffer asked why so many people in the world turned to Communism. America was generous, helpful, successful and its citizens enjoyed unprecedented personal freedom. Communism had a long record of purges, censorship, propaganda and had failed to provide economic success. Why would anyone chose the far left?
Hoffer's claim is that most common people do (or could) view America as admirable and desirable. Many people would live here if they could, to give their families a better life and greater opportunity. The source of discontent and anti-Americanism is a small class of self-appointed spokesmen, the intellectuals who dominate the media and endlessly criticize America. In much of the world, men of words hold the power to steer their nations direction.
To understand why these spokesmen hate America, you must first understand what Americanism means. And I am amazed by how few people today have a clear sense of that. Principles that were familiar to every schoolchild in the 1950s are rarely articulated by modern teachers or the media. Speaking them out loud in many forums will elicit laughter.
America was established as a democracy of practical common men. We govern ourselves, we manage our vast economy, and we satisfy our cultural needs, without a hereditary nobility, without holy edicts of all-powerful clerics, without the guidance of an elite intellectual class. Today the whole world watches our movies, listens to our music, uses our software, and benefits from our inventions: atomic power, the internet, communication satellites, etc. For people with talent, bravery and a willingness to be productive, our system offers the opportunity to rise from any circumstances, to be successful, even to shape history.
Now look to European (or even American) intellectuals, or look to the radical Islamic clerics, and imagine the threat they feel in the spreading influence of Americanism. No society has ever been as successful as America, but in no society has the intellectual or the cleric ever been less powerful. We as a people admire men of action, the brave soldier, the hardworking laborer, the practical inventor, the common family man. We instinctively distrust men who eschew hard work, or who step back from a fight when our society is threatened.
Intellectuals ridicule Americanism and Capitalism because it is a game they cannot win, a system that fails to grant them the status and power some of them crave. Just as radical clerics in the Middle East have denounced Democracy. For those men, radical mass movements offer a tempting path to fame and status. If you cannot engineer new food crops that feed billions, then become a spokesman for the radical environmental movement and try to ban those crops. If you cannot be a Bill Gates and make computers accessible to 500 million people, then become an industry pundit who denounces it as just a greedy trick. If you cannot develop a drug to cure disease, then incite people to burn down a medical research lab in the name of animal rights. And those are small movements, compared to the scope and suffering caused by Marxism and Jihadism.
< The Lunacy that we are dealing with! (0 comments) | Another chat with Bill Bennett (0 comments) >
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Americanism and Anti-Americanism | 5 comments (5 topical, 0 editorial, 0 hidden)
Take it from someone who knows... By: ArrogantConservative
anti-Americanism in Europe has been there for years! Although WW2 was a great victory for americans liberating europe, many were resentful. Some people had no food and blamed Americans. If people were bombed they blamed Americans. Currently we are being blamed for the death of Van Gough's nephew or whatever!
In the 70s Communism and Socialism prevailed in many European nations and these had anti-American sentiment. The Cold War had actually divided many European nations who saw America as the land of capitalists and oppressors. Many governments that sympathised with the US were plagued by internal terrorist bent on toppling it. The French didn't just suddenly start hating us!
Comment Rated: (none / 0) (User Info) (#1)
The French By: DonPMitchell
So are you saying the French (for example) hate us because it is a grass-roots sentiment among its people? I'm suggesting there is a long history of this feeling being incited by elitists.
Comment Rated: (none / 0) [ Parent ] (User Info) (#4)
Not so sure about the status of intellectuals By: modo
no society has the intellectual or the cleric ever been less powerful.
Clerics in America command a great deal of respect and in the case of Pat Robertson, a dose of political power at times. Intellectuals in the Cato Institute and especially the Heritage Foundation have more direct access to power and influence on policy than JS Mill or John Dewey ever did.
Intellectuals ridicule Americanism and Capitalism because it is a game they cannot win
Be careful assigning unconscious motives to whole groups of people. Or even nefarious conscious motives. This statement sounds like the flip side of "conservatives just promote capitalism because it's a game they themselves are winning". It is just as possible to believe capitalism has limitations as a system, as to support capitalism because you think it does the most good to the most people. That said, I know plenty of 'intellectuals' who simultaneously are doing quite well in the capitalist arena.
It is true that there are differences between the way academics make a living compared to most of working people; tenure, publish or perish, and I'm sure a host of other things i'm not privy to, are conditions particular to academia. Every job has such unique characteristics. True they are not motivated to work by profit incentives, but by the chance to advance in their universities and achieve professional recognition. I can understand that would be hard for some people to accept as an honest motivator. But they still have to produce ideas to achieve tenure, they have to teach, they have to maintain professional ethical standards, and I'm not sure why they garner such disdain as a group. Do you feel the same way about the intellectuals at Heritage Foundation? If not, what allowed them to escape the fate of anti-Americanism, since you seem to believe that the position of intellectuals in society destines them to it?
"America will never be destroyed from the outside. If we falter and lose our freedoms, it will be because we destroyed ourselves." --A. Lincoln
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Hoffer and Intellectualism By: DonPMitchell
When Hoffer talks about Intellectuals, he is talking about a particular flavor and a particular activity, and I have probably not made the distinction clearly.
He's not talking about a great teacher, or an academic who made a discovery, or a professor who started a company. He's talking about intellectual elistist, pseudo-intellectuals, and journalists who are anti-american because they fear that americanism will diminish the status they enjoy.
I think Hoffer is correct in identifying this as a driving force in foreign anti-americanism.
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Thankfully ... By: coemachine
I am glad my ancestors took the initiative and fled.
Take heed, Europe! The fat and happy welfare state years sheltered by the US backed NATO defense umbrella are coming to a close. Cozy up to China and Russia at your own riisk.
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Posted 11:19 AM | Comments (0)
February 22, 2005
The Economist (Part II): The Old Slur
A second article in this week's Economist, "Anti-Americanism, the American left and the American right" (a sort of companion piece to the special report previously discussed here), examines the meaning of "anti-American" inside the United States.
(Once again, this is premium content; for the full text, you'll have to wait for a sponsored free-access moment or purchase it outright.)
There is no thunderbolt that the American right likes hurling at its foes more than the accusation of "anti-Americanism". Most of its targets are foreigners. But, from the right's point of view, there are plenty of unAmerican leftists at home too. Conservative congressmen labour over laws to prevent leftists from burning the American flag. Conservative talk-show hosts are for ever uncovering anti-Americanism at Harvard or on National Public Radio. And conservative activists are forever shouting at liberals: "Why don't you move to France?"
"How widespread is domestic anti-Americanism?" the columnist wonders. "Is it really a doctrine that pervades the American left, as many conservatives charge? Or is it an eccentric phenomenon blown out of proportion by a vicious conservative attack-machine?"
(More inside.)
The writer considers several recent cases of lefties who've been labeled anti-American: University of Colorado professsor Ward Churchill, who described victims of the Sept. 11, 2001 attacks as "little Eichmanns"; CNN news exec Eason Jordan, who was accused of saying that the U.S. military had deliberately tried to kill journalists in Iraq; as well as two notably vocal critics of the United States, filmmaker Michael Moore and the late writer and intellectual Susan Sontag.
The piece is typical of the Economist in that it combines sophisticated leaning-conservative-but-balanced analysis with a cutting British wit:
Comrades Sontag and Moore would insist that they were opposed to American foreign policy, not America; but, to put it mildly, they were pushing it. They also represent a private tradition on the American left of rubbishing their countrymen as vulgar morons, especially when set alongside sophisticated Europeans. (If you doubt this, don a tweed jacket, assume a British accent, invite yourself to a dinner party in an American university town and wait until the Pinot Grigio takes hold.)
The columnist then makes an interesting point: that "loud-mouth critics of American policy on the right" are hardly ever labeled "anti-American":
The American Conservative is as rude about American imperialism and the Iraq war as the Nation -- but nobody really accuses Pat Buchanan of anti-Americanism. As for dismissing American culture, Mr Moore is less acerbic than one of the right's patron saints, H.L. Mencken. The Public Interest and the New Criterion worry about popular culture. Robert Bork thinks America is slouching towards Gomorrah. Pat Robertson and Jerry Falwell agreed that September 11th was a punishment for America's liberalism on abortion and homosexuality. Was that less anti-American than Ms Sontag?
The article draws one central conclusion, that the American left is every bit as patriotic as the right (witness Democrats' draping themselves in the flag at every opportunity). Rather, the thesis here is that the left loves the United States every bit as much as the right; it simply has different reasons for its patriotism:
Liberals think that America has been defined by its commitment to equality of opportunity (hence their worries about cutting inheritance tax); by its commitment to the separation of church and state (hence their worries about faith-based social policy); and by its enthusiasm for human rights (hence their worries about torture). When liberals created People for the American Way, they did not see it as a covert People for the French Way. The real battle-line in the culture wars is not between pro-Americans and anti-Americans; it is between two groups of patriots who have very different ideas about what makes America America (with the regional battle-lines, incidentally, bearing some similarity to those in the civil war).
This carries a warning for two very different sorts of people. The first is anti-American foreigners: they should not take clowns like Mr Moore or Mr Churchill as typical. Americans are a patriotic bunch -- and, for the most part, this patriotism stretches from one end of the political spectrum to the other. The second is the American right. So far, conservatives have played the unAmerican card extremely well; but when it comes to unAmerican purges there is always a danger of overreach.
Posted 11:57 PM | Comments (0)