Document Text Content
29 March, 2011
Article 1. Foreign Policy
The Syrian Time Bomb
Patrick Seale
Article 2. Politico
Obama failing as commander in chief
Robert D. Blackwill
Article 3. The Financial Times
Libya, a last hurrah for the west
Gideon Rachman
Article 4. NYT
President Obama on Libya
Editorial
Article 5. The Daily Star
Egypt's new Constitution: an update
Nathan Brown
Article 6. NYT
Arabs Will Be Free
Roger Cohen
Article 7. The Daily Star
The West still beats the rest, but it may no longer be best
Robert Skidelsky
Article 8. Wall Street Journal
Norway to Jews: You're Not Welcome Here
Alan M. Dershowitz
Article 1.
Foreign Policy
The Syrian Time Bomb
Patrick Seale
March 28, 2011 -- While one war rages in Libya, another rages in Washington as to the necessity of U.S. action there. Indeed, Defense Secretary Robert Gates said as much this weekend, noting that Libya was not a "vital national interest." But if Washington is looking for an Arab state in the throes of unrest, one that is key to its regional and national interests, planners might want to pay more attention to Syria, which is currently undergoing upheaval not seen since the early 1980s. Syria lies at the center of a dense network of Middle East relationships, and the crisis in that country -- which has now resulted in the deaths of well over 100 civilians, and possibly close to double that number -- is likely to have a major impact on the regional structure of power. The need to contain pressure from the United States and Israel, for decades the all-consuming concern of Syria's leadership, has suddenly been displaced by an explosion of popular protest highlighting urgent and long-neglected domestic issues.
If the regime fails to tame this domestic unrest, Syria's external influence will inevitably be enfeebled, with dramatic repercussions across the Middle East. As the crisis deepens, Syria's allies tremble. Meanwhile, its enemies rejoice, as a weakened Syria would remove an obstacle to their ambitions. But nature abhors a vacuum, and what will come will be unpredictable, at best.
The protests started in mid-March in Daraa, in southern Syria, a city that has suffered from drought and neglect by the government in Damascus. The heavy hand of the ruling Baath party was particularly resented. Because it lies on the border with Jordan, and therefore in a security zone, all land sales required the security services' approval, a slow and often costly business. This is one of the particular grievances that have powered the protest movement, though certainly the ripples of the successful Egyptian and Tunisian uprisings played a hand. The government, to put it bluntly, responded poorly. Troops in Daraa fired live rounds against youthful demonstrators and virtually all communications -- Internet and telephone -- were shuttered to prevent the seepage of unrest.
To make matters worse, Damascus blamed Israeli provocateurs, rebel forces, and shady foreign agents for the bloodshed -- anyone but its own forces. Civilian deaths at the hands of security forces there, and more recently in the coastal city of Latakia, have outraged opinion across the country, setting alight long pent-up anger at the denial of basic freedoms, the monopolistic rule of the Baath party, and the abuses of a privileged elite. To these ills should be added severe youth unemployment, devastation of the countryside by a grave shortage of rainfall over the past four years, and the impoverishment of the middle and lower classes by low wages and high inflation.
In response to the public unrest, the regime has released some political prisoners and pledged to end the state of emergency in force since 1963. A government spokeswoman has hinted that coming reforms will include greater freedom for the press and the right to form political parties. President Bashar al-Assad is due to address the country in the next 48 hours. His speech is eagerly awaited, but it remains to be seen whether it will be enough to defuse the crisis and win time for the regime. If not, demonstrations could gather pace, triggering still more violent repression by the security services -- an escalation with unpredictable consequences.
The protesters have in fact challenged the fundamentals of Syria's security state, a harsh system of controls over every aspect of society, put in place by the late Hafez al-Assad, Bashar's father, who ruled for 30 years from 1970 to his death in 2000. By all accounts, the debate about how to deal with the growing protests has led to increasingly violent confrontations inside the regime between would-be reformers and hard-liners. The outcome of this internal contest remains uncertain.
What is certain, however, is that what happens in Syria is of great concern to the whole region. Together with its two principal allies, the Islamic Republic of Iran and the Lebanese Shiite resistance movement Hezbollah, Syria is viewed with great hostility by Israel and with wary suspicion by the United States. The Tehran-Damascus-Hezbollah axis -- of which Syria is the linchpin -- has long been seen by many leaders in the region as the lone bulwark against Israeli and American hegemony. With backing from Washington, Israel has sought to smash Hezbollah (notably through its 2006 invasion of Lebanon) and detach Syria from Iran, a country Israel views as its most dangerous regional rival. Neither objective has so far been realized. But now that Syria has been weakened by internal problems, the viability of the entire axis is in danger -- which could encourage dangerous risk-taking behavior by its allies as they seek to counter perceived gains by the United States and Israel.
If the Syrian regime were to be severely weakened by popular dissent, if only for a short while, Iran's influence in Arab affairs would almost certainly be reduced -- in both Lebanon and the Palestinian territories. In Lebanon, it would appear that Hezbollah has already been thrown on the defensive. Although it remains the most powerful single movement, both politically and on account of its armed militia, its local enemies sense a turning of the tide in their favor. This might explain a violent speech delivered earlier this month by the Sunni Muslim leader and former prime minister Saad Hariri, in which he blatantly played the sectarian card.
Cheered by his jubilant supporters, he charged that Hezbollah's weapons were not so much a threat to Israel as to Lebanon's own freedom, independence, and sovereignty -- at the hand of a foreign power, namely Iran. The Syrian uprisings may have already deepened the sectarian divide in Lebanon, raising once more the specter of civil war and making more difficult the task of forming a new government, a job President Michel Suleiman has entrusted to the Tripoli notable, Najib Mikati. If Syria were overrun with internal strife, Hezbollah would be deprived of a valuable ally -- no doubt to Israel's great satisfaction.
Meanwhile, Turkey is deeply concerned by the Syrian disturbances: Damascus has been the cornerstone of Ankara's ambitious Arab policy. Turkey-Syria relations have flourished in recent years as Turkey-Israel relations have grown cold. Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan and his foreign minister, Ahmet Davutoglu, have actively sought to mediate local conflicts and bring much-needed stability to the region by forging close economic links. One of their bold projects is the creation of an economic bloc comprising Turkey, Syria, Lebanon, and Jordan -- already something of a reality by the removal of visa requirements as well as by an injection of Turkish investment and technological know-how. A power struggle in Syria could set back this project; and regime change in Damascus would likely put a serious dent in further Turkish initiatives.
Turkey's loss, however, may turn out to be Egypt's gain. Freed from the stagnant rule of former President Hosni Mubarak, Cairo is now expected to play a more active role in Arab affairs. Instead of continuing Mubarak's policy, conducted in complicity with Israel, of punishing Gaza and isolating its Hamas government, Egypt is reported to be pushing for a reconciliation of the rival Palestinian factions, Hamas and Fatah. If successful, this could help defuse the current dangerous escalation of violence between Israel on the one side and Hamas and still more extreme Gaza-based Palestinian groups on the other. But Syria's internal troubles might just as easily have a negative effect.
Undoubtedly, the failed peace process has bred extreme frustration among Palestinian militants, some of whom may think that a sharp shock is needed to wrench international attention away from the Arab democratic wave and back to the Palestine problem. They are anxious to alert the United States and Europe to the danger of allowing the peace process to sink into a prolonged coma. Israeli hard-liners, too, may calculate that a short war could serve their purpose: Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu's far-right government may sense weakness and quietly dream of finishing off Hamas once and for all. Syria has been a strong supporter of Hamas and has given a base in Damascus to the head of its political bureau, Khaled Mashal. Turmoil in Damascus could deal Hamas a severe blow.
On all these fronts -- Iran, Iraq, Turkey, Lebanon, Palestine, Israel -- Syria is a key player. But its internal problems now threaten to reshuffle the cards, adding to the general sense of insecurity and latent violence in the region. And of all the threats facing the Middle East, perhaps the greatest -- greater even than of another Arab-Israeli clash -- is that of rampant sectarianism, poisoning relationships between and within states, and breeding hate, intolerance, and mistrust.
Several of the modern states of the Middle East -- and Syria is no exception -- were built on a mosaic of ancient religions, sects, and ethnic groups held uneasily and sometimes uncomfortably together by central government. But governments have themselves been far from neutral, favoring one community over another in cynical power plays. Many Sunni Muslims in Syria and throughout the region feel that Assad's Syria has unduly favored the Alawites, a sect of Shiite Islam, who constitute some 12 percent of the population but control a vastly greater percentage of the country's wealth. Open conflict between Sunnis and Alawites in Syria would profoundly disturb the whole region, creating a nightmare scenario for Washington and other Western capitals.
Meanwhile, Washington seems at a loss as to how to respond to the growing unrest in Syria. In tempered language, the administration has condemned the use of violence against civilians and encouraged political reform. But the undertones are evident: Stability in Syria may still preferable to yet another experiment in Arab governance. Assad will need to act quickly and decisively -- and one hopes not harshly -- to quell the rising current of dissent. Indeed, Secretary of State Hillary Clinton seemed to offer the regime some modest support this weekend, noting that she believed Bashar to be a "reformer." But reform has never been a primary goal of the Assad clan, which has long favored stability over change.
This edifice may now be crumbling, and the United States would be wise to spend a little less time thinking about Libya and a little more time thinking about a state that truly has implications on U.S. national interests. If things go south in Syria, blood-thirsty sectarian demons risk being unleashed, and the entire region could be consumed in an orgy of violence.
Patrick Seale is a British writer who specializes in Middle East affairs. His latest book is The Struggle for Arab Independence: Riad el-Solh and the Makers of the Modern Middle East.
Article 2.
Politico
Obama failing as commander in chief
Robert D. Blackwill
March 28, 2011 -- The Obama administration deserves credit for its foreign policy achievements.
There has been no successful terrorist attack on U.S. soil. President Barack Obama and his colleagues have, thus far, skillfully handled the popular eruptions in Tunisia and Egypt — though those crises are far from over. They strengthened sanctions against Iran regarding its nuclear weapons program; reset U.S.-Russia relations and completed the New START Treaty. They have begun to deal effectively with the rise of Chinese power; continued, after a slow start, the transformation of U.S.-India relations, and signed a bilateral trade accord with South Korea. They also modernized the North Atlantic Treaty Organization with summit agreements on a new strategic concept and ballistic missile defense.
But the administration’s record of failure is equally as long. It has not seriously tackled our deficit and debt problem, the single greatest threat to long-term U.S. power and influence. It is now mishandling relations with the Gulf Arab monarchs and made a mess of the Middle East peace process. It has allowed the U.S.-Turkey relationship to reach historic lows, just as Turkey is becoming a formidable actor in the Greater Middle East.
By concentrating on health care for its first two years, the administration, and the large majorities in Congress, missed a crucial opportunity to pass climate change legislation. With the Democratic party’s internal constituencies, there also has been almost no movement on international trade.
Right now, nobody has a successful formula for helping Pakistan — with its 100-plus nuclear weapons — arrest its systemic decline; or for coercing North Korea to slow its growing nuclear weapons and missile capabilities. So the administration gets the benefit of the doubt on those two perplexing problems.
Obama has, however, failed in the most important presidential power: to act as a wise commander in chief. He is seriously mismanaging all three wars the U.S. is now engaged in.
In Iraq, over the past decade, the United States has lost 4,500 American lives, has had 33,000 wounded and has spent a trillion dollars to promote vital U.S. national interests. But we are in danger of losing that enormous sacrifice in blood and treasure to meet the president’s deadline of withdrawing all U.S. troops by the end of this year.
That is a huge strategic mistake. It could, over time, plunge that pivotal nation back into civil war. We should keep roughly 40,000 combat troops in Iraq for the foreseeable future, to make an indispensable contribution to Iraq’s stability and prevent Iranian dominance. We should now be lobbying the Iraqi government hard to accept this.
In Afghanistan, Obama has dramatically escalated U.S. troop commitment — now more than 100,000 — in a war that Bob Woodward says in his book, “Obama’s Wars,” that the president does not believe in. U.S. policy toward Afghanistan involves spending $100 billion and suffering several hundred allied deaths annually — 500 Americans dead last year, thousands more injured. All this to deal with 100 or so Al Qaeda fighters now in Afghanistan; and prevent the Afghan Taliban from controlling the Pashtun Afghan homeland — which was not the reason we went there after Sept. 11. Our mission was to eradicate Al Qaeda — now largely accomplished — not fight the Taliban.
In policy terms, this has been enormous mission creep far beyond our national interests. The current U.S. counterinsurgency strategy appears likely to fail. Washington and its allies will not defeat the Taliban militarily. President Hamid Karzai’s corrupt government is unlikely to improve significantly. The Afghan National Army cannot take over combat missions from the U.S. in southern and eastern Afghanistan in any realistic time frame. And the Pakistan army will not move against Afghan Taliban sanctuaries in Pakistan.
De facto Afghan partition offers the Obama administration the best alternative to strategic defeat. The administration should stop setting withdrawal deadlines and instead commit the United States to a long-term combat role in Afghanistan, with roughly 35,000 to 50,000 troops, for the next seven to 10 years.
Washington should also accept that the Taliban are likely to control most of the Pashtun south and east. The price of forestalling that is far too high for Americans to continue paying. Washington and its partners should let the local correlation of forces take its course in the Pashtun homeland — while deploying U.S. air power and Special Forces to ensure that the north and west of Afghanistan do not succumb to the Taliban.
In Libya, the president has gotten us militarily into the middle of a civil war in a country of little importance to the United States. And he offers no clear strategy to reach his ambitious objectives. The administration’s inconsistent, even incoherent, statements on the Libya war wrestle each other for dominance in the daily news cycle, while NATO predictably founders without robust U.S. leadership.
The U.S. should quickly end its military role in the Libyan civil war. We should leave that to the European allies — if they want to take it up — and return to issues of far greater importance to our country, like our fiscal problems.
We can only speculate why Obama has such difficulty in effectively using the U.S. military as an instrument of national purpose.
Winston Churchill said, “In critical and baffling situations, it is always best to return to first principle and simple action.”
What is Obama’s first principle regarding the application of the use of force in the international arena? He seems to possess no abiding strategic framework about that preeminent presidential responsibility. He makes no clear connection between the use of force and vital U.S. national interests.
Thus, he recklessly withdraws from Iraq, imprudently escalates in Afghanistan and unwisely intervenes in Libya. One can only wonder and worry what he will do if and when he confronts the next crisis which could involve committing American men and women to combat.
Robert D. Blackwill is Henry A. Kissinger senior fellow for U.S. foreign policy at the Council on Foreign Relations. He served as deputy national security adviser for strategic planning, ambassador to India and presidential envoy to Iraq in the George W. Bush administration.
Article 3.
The Financial Times
Libya, a last hurrah for the west
Gideon Rachman
March 28 2011 -- The war in Libya is about a lot more than Muammer Gaddafi. Its outcome will reverberate around the Middle East and will affect international politics for decades. A vital principle is at stake.
The supporters of outside intervention believe that they are battling not just to stop atrocities in Libya itself, but to lay down a marker for the future. They want to show that the age when a dictator could massacre his own citizens is coming to a close. Bernard Henri-Lévy, a French philosopher who played an improbable role as a link between the Libyan rebels and President Nicolas Sarkozy, has said: “What is important in this affair is that the ‘duty to intervene’ has been recognised.”
Nicholas Kristof, writing in The New York Times, makes a similar point – “World powers have the right and obligation to intervene when a dictator devours his people.” This idea was approved by the UN in 2005 and, according to Mr Kristof, the Libyan intervention is “putting teeth into that fledgling concept.”
It would be nice to believe that the doctrine of a “responsibility to protect”, known colloquially as R2P, now has real bite. With rebel troops advancing swiftly along the Libyan coast, the supporters of the intervention will be feeling cheerful.
But the reality is that the Libyan war is more likely to mark a last hurrah for liberal interventionism than a new dawn. For the brutal truth is that the western powers that are the keenest promoters of the idea will not have the economic strength or the public backing to sustain many more overseas interventions. And the rising economic powers – China, India, Brazil and others – are deeply sceptical about the whole concept. Britain, France and the US all voted in favour of the UN resolution authorising force in Libya. But the fashionable grouping known as the Brics – Brazil, Russia, India and China – all abstained. None of them have much time for Colonel Gaddafi. But countries like China, India and Brazil see little to gain, and much to lose, by risking money, men and influence in foreign interventions. Their instinct is to mind their own business and to concentrate on the long-term goal of building up their own economic strength. A massacre in Libya might be unfortunate, no doubt – but Benghazi is a long way from Beijing or Brasília.
There are some complications. Germany abstained but, in doing so, placed itself outside the western mainstream. South Africa, which has been invited to the next Brics summit, voted for the Libyan resolution, but then criticised the bombing campaign vociferously.
So the broad picture holds. The established western powers still have a missionary zeal to put the world to rights. The rising powers are much more cautious and egocentric.
But the western allies are fighting against a background of shrinking resources. The British have just announced big defence cuts and the French are also battling to contain their budget deficit and maintain their welfare state.
The reluctance of the American military establishment to take on this new commitment has also been palpable. President Barack Obama and his generals know that the age when a US president could simply say that America would do “whatever it takes” is over. Admiral Mike Mullen, the chairman of the joint chiefs of staff, has said that the biggest threat to US national security is the budget deficit. In the post-Iraq, post-Afghanistan era, public support for military operations overseas is also limited.
Of course, if there is a swift and successful conclusion to the Libyan intervention – Col Gaddafi deposed, cheering crowds in Tripoli – then liberal interventionism will get a boost. But success could be just as much of a snare as failure. Each successful intervention will prompt demand for the next one – and there will be no shortage of possible candidates. Indeed that question is already being raised by the sight of the Syrian government shooting its own citizens. Yet, the more demands that are placed on the western powers, the more it will be evident that there is a growing mismatch between ambition and resources. That gap could, one day, be filled if the Brics and other rising powers change their attitudes to liberal interventionism. But there is very little sign of that happening. The Chinese government, with memories of Tiananmen Square in 1989, is deeply wary of the idea that foreigners have the right to intervene to prevent human rights abuses in a sovereign nation. The same goes for the Russians, with their record in Chechnya. India, Brazil and South Africa are democratic countries with no need for a contingency plan to shoot their own citizens. But their colonial histories incline them to take a sceptical view of the motives of western powers that seek to use military power around the world. They are also all emerging powers that are not yet used to thinking globally. By contrast, Britain and France have maintained the instinct to think globally, without the resources to back it up. Even the US, by far the world’s pre-eminent military power, is signalling strongly that it is losing the will to be the world’s policeman. In the Victorian age, the British once sang – “We don’t want to fight, but by Jingo if we do/ We’ve got the ships, we’ve got the men, we’ve got the money too.” The Libyan intervention feels like a last reprise of that old tune, rather than a bold statement for a new age.
Article 4.
NYT
President Obama on Libya
Editorial
March 28, 2011 -- President Obama made the right, albeit belated, decision to join with allies and try to stop Col. Muammar el-Qaddafi from slaughtering thousands of Libyans. But he has been far too slow to explain that decision, or his long-term strategy, to Congress and the American people. On Monday night, the president spoke to the nation and made a strong case for why America needed to intervene in this fight — and why that did not always mean it should intervene in others. Mr. Obama said that the United States had a moral responsibility to stop “violence on a horrific scale,” as well as a unique international mandate and a broad coalition to act with. He said that failure to intervene could also have threatened the peaceful transitions in Egypt and Tunisia, as thousands of Libyan refugees poured across their borders, while other dictators would conclude that “violence is the best strategy to cling to power.” Mr. Obama could report encouraging early progress on the military and diplomatic fronts. Washington and its allies have crippled or destroyed Colonel Qaddafi’s anti-aircraft defenses, peeled his troops back from the city of Benghazi — saving potentially thousands of lives — and allowed rebel forces to retake the offensive. Just as encouragingly, this military effort that was galvanized internationally — the United Nations Security Council authorized “all necessary measures” to protect civilians in Libya — will soon be run internationally. Last weekend, the United States handed over responsibility for enforcing the no-flight zone to NATO. And the alliance is now preparing to take command of the entire mission, with the support of (still too few) Arab nations. To his credit, Mr. Obama did not sugarcoat the difficulties ahead. While he suggested that his goal, ultimately, is to see Colonel Qaddafi gone, he also said that the air war was unlikely to accomplish that by itself. Most important, he vowed that there would be no American ground troops in this fight. “If we tried to overthrow Qaddafi by force,” he said, “our coalition would splinter.” He said “regime change” in Iraq took eight years and cost thousands of American and Iraqi lives. “That is not something we can afford to repeat in Libya.” Instead, he said the United States and its allies would work to increase the diplomatic and military pressure on Colonel Qaddafi and his cronies. A meeting on Tuesday with allies and members of the Libyan opposition is supposed to develop that strategy along with ways to help the rebels build alternate, and we hope humane and competent, governing structures. That needs to start quickly. To hold their ground and protect endangered civilians, let alone advance, the rebels will likely need air support for quite some time. Mr. Obama was right not to promise a swift end to the air campaign. At the same time, he should not overestimate the patience of the American people or the weariness of the overstretched military. And as Washington reduces its military role, others, inside and outside NATO, will need to increase theirs. Within NATO, unenthusiastic partners like Germany and Turkey need to at least stay out of the way even if they continue to stand aside from the fighting.
The president made the right choice to act, but this is a war of choice, not necessity. Presidents should not commit the military to battle without consulting Congress and explaining their reasons to the American people. Fortunately, initial coalition military operations have gone well. Unfortunately, it is the nature of war that they will not always go well. Mr. Obama needs to work with Congress and keep the public fully informed. On Monday, he made an overdue start on that.
Article 5.
The Daily Star
Egypt's new Constitution: an update
Nathan Brown
March 29, 2011 -- The March 19 vote in favor of constitutional amendments in Egypt provides a boost to the military-led transition process and its vigorous electoral schedule.
The voter turnout was impressive by Egyptian standards – 41 percent of eligible voters, at least double the turnout in any previous national election or referendum – and the victory was overwhelming at 77 percent of voters. But opponents attracted enough votes to make the outcome seem less like the predictable landslides of the authoritarian order. Those who objected to the content of the amendments and, more forcefully, to the process by which they were written and the political sequence they implied marshaled forceful arguments, campaigned hard, and then lost.
As a consequence, Egypt’s transition process will likely rush forward. What are the next steps? The basic sequence of events is clear, but the ruling Supreme Council of the Armed Forces (SCAF) has not revealed many of the details. Nor has it shared decision-making power over the sequence and rules in any serious way.
The amended articles – most of them governing presidential and parliamentary elections – are now clearly in effect. But the rest of Egypt’s Constitution remains suspended. Egypt’s military rulers have suggested that they will very shortly issue a declaration indicating how authority will be exercised while Egypt’s Parliament and president are elected, which parts of the 1971 Constitution will be brought back into effect, and what their own role will be.
The committee that drafted the amendments also prepared amendments to various laws in order to bring them into conformance with the new provisions. However, announcement of the changes was postponed until after the referendum. The SCAF is expected to issue those laws, which will likely be designed to make elections freer and fairer, by decree. The SCAF has suggested that it will change the law on political parties, making it much easier for new parties to register. The Muslim Brotherhood is one of the many groups that would likely take advantage of such a change. The SCAF might also move from the current electoral system of individual parliamentary districts to a proportional representation system in which at least some of the seats would be allocated by a party’s share of the national vote instead of giving all of them to the winning candidates in each district. But if the SCAF is planning on such a move, it has not tipped its hand.
The SCAF has also suggested that parliamentary elections will be held before presidential elections. Last week, one of its members argued forcefully that attempts to reverse the sequence and have the president elected first (as some have suggested would be preferable because parliamentary elections will be much more complicated than presidential elections) might simply deliver another dictator. But the generals have also suggested that they may push parliamentary elections back from May or June (when they originally suggested they might be held) until September. This is likely a response to those who claim that Egypt’s party system is simply not sufficiently organized for elections in two or three months.
The SCAF initially suggested that it might hold the presidential election in the late summer or early fall; if parliamentary elections are postponed until September, then the presidential election might be pushed back until the end of the year.
Under new nomination procedures contained in the constitutional amendments, a party that gains at least a single seat in the upcoming parliamentary elections will be able to nominate a candidate. (If the Muslim Brotherhood is able to form a party and does gain seats, it has said it will not run its own candidate this time but it might still throw its weight behind one of the candidates who is running.) Independent candidates can get on the ballot either by getting a certain number of endorsements by parliamentary deputies or gathering signatures (30,000) from eligible voters.
Already some candidates have announced they will run. Most prominent include the following: Amr Moussa, the former foreign minister and current secretary-general of the Arab League. While popular for his Arab nationalist stances, he will have to overcome his association with the past regime, which has already emerged as a major issue in his campaign.
There is also Mohamed ElBaradei, the former director of the International Atomic Energy Agency and Nobel Prize winner. While respected for his clear articulation of liberal political stances and courage in openly criticizing the Mubarak regime, he will have to overcome a reputation for having an aloof and overly cerebral style. In addition, many Egyptians complain that he has spent (and continues to spend) too much time outside the country to be an appropriate candidate.
Another candidate is Hisham al-Bastawisi, the leader of a group of judges who confronted the Mubarak regime over the last decade. Al-Bastawisi is, like ElBaradei, widely respected but does not appear to be a natural politician.
There is also Ayman Nour, founder of Al-Ghad Party. Nour came in a distant second to former President Hosni Mubarak in 2005 and spent the subsequent four years in prison on politically motivated charges. Known as a born politician and an effective campaigner, and admired for his uncompromising opposition to Mubarak, Nour nonetheless enjoys less of a national reputation than Moussa and ElBaradei.
And there is Hamdeen Sabahi, the founder of the Karama Party, a breakaway from the Nasserist Party that has long sought official licensing. Sabahi, like Nour, has been a key organizer within the opposition and is a gifted politician, but enjoys less widespread popularity than other candidates.
After the new Parliament and president are elected, the provisional Constitution allows (and, according to a reading endorsed by a SCAF member, actually requires) a constituent assembly to be selected to draft an entirely new Constitution. While the opponents to the amendments wished to have this done as the first rather than the last step, they will ultimately get their wish for an entirely new document.
Nathan Brown is a professor of political science and international affairs at George Washington University and a nonresident senior scholar at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace.
Article 6.
NYT
Arabs Will Be Free
Roger Cohen
March 28, 2011 -- Three Middle Eastern countries have been conspicuous for their stability in the storm. They are Turkey, Lebanon and Israel. An odd mix, you might say, but they have in common that they are places where people vote.
Democracy is a messy all-or-nothing business. That’s why I love it. You can no more be a little bit democratic than a little bit pregnant.
Yes, citizens go to the polls in Turkey, Lebanon and Israel and no dictator gets 99.3 percent of the vote. They are lands of opportunity where money is being made and where facile generalizations, for all their popularity, miss the point. Turkey has not turned Islamist, Lebanon is not in the hands of Hezbollah, and Israel is still an open society.
All three countries, of course, are also wracked by division and imperfection; but then two great merits of democracy are that it finesses division and does not aspire to perfection.
Speaking of Hezbollah, remember all that alarm a couple of months back when a Hezbollah-backed businessman, Najib Mikati, emerged as prime minister? After that, Lebanon introduced the Libyan no-fly-zone resolution at the United Nations — a rare, if little noted, example of the United States and a Hezbollah-supported government in sync.
Talk to Hezbollah: That’s obvious. It’s no terrorizing monolith. Mikati is struggling with the give-and-take of Lebanese politics. Life goes on in the freewheeling way that has long drawn repressed, frustrated Arabs to Beirut.
Hezbollah is a political party with a militia. That’s a big problem. Israel’s ultra-Orthodox Shas party has an outsized influence over Israel because of coalition politics. That’s a problem. The Muslim Brotherhood will loom large in a free Egypt because it has an organizational head start. That may be a problem. Turkey’s ruling Justice and Development Party is a brilliant political machine with a ruthless bent. That’s a problem, too.
These are problems of different sizes. But give me all these problems so long as they present themselves within open (or opening) systems. They are far preferable to the cowed conformity common to the terrorized societies of the now doomed Arab Jurassic Park, where despots do their worst.
It’s over: Enough of the nameless graves that whisper of horror, enough of the 20th-century police states in the 21st-century. Yes, it’s over for Ben Ali and for Mubarak. It’s over for Qaddafi, yes it is. How far it’s over for the other Arab despots and autocrats, whether of the oxymoronic “republics” or the royals, will depend on how far they can get out in front of their citizens’ demand to be heard.
You see, you can’t do Hama any more. You can’t do the Iraqi marshes. Perhaps you can kill dozens, but not tens of thousands. These despots relied on the limitlessness of their terror. It had to be as absolute as their contempt for the law.
But now people know. They communicate through the clampdowns. They are Facebook-nimble. The despots gaze into their gilded mirrors and, to their horror, see not themselves but the people who will be silenced no longer. They wonder then if their own myriad agents can be trusted. They are caught in their own web. They flail; they have gone too far to turn back but cannot go forward.
Bashar al-Assad, the embattled Syrian president, was about to say something Sunday, before deciding not to. He was trained in west London as an eye doctor. He’d better stop thinking Hama — where his father murdered at least 10,000 — and start thinking Hammersmith.
Questions swirl. Who are the Libyan rebels? Who are the angry of Latakia? The Arab transitions will be long and bumpy — like those that brought representative government to Latin America and Central Europe and wide swathes of Asia — but now that fear has been overcome, they are irreversible.
Here’s who the protesters are: people like Asmaa Mahfouz, 26, the Egyptian woman who on Jan. 18 made a video urging citizens to go to Tahrir Square on Jan. 25 — the demonstration that would start the revolution. She said then: “We’ll go down and demand our rights, our fundamental human rights. I won’t even talk about any political rights. We just want our human rights and nothing else.” And she said people “don’t have to come to Tahrir Square, just go down anywhere and say it, that we are free human beings.” And: “This is enough!”
People are being born throughout the Middle East. They are discovering their capacity to change things, their inner “Basta!” That’s how the Arab spring began on Dec. 17 in the little town of Sidi Bouzid in Tunisia — with a fruit peddler’s “enough” to humiliation. In my end is my beginning.
Three months later the genie is not only out of the bottle, it’s shattered the bottle. I said of Libya in an earlier column: Be ruthless or stay out. So now the West is in, be ruthless. Arm the resurgent rebels. Incapacitate Qaddafi. Do everything short of putting troops on the ground. Qaddafi, as President Obama has said, “must leave.” So that Libya can be an Arab country that is imperfect but open.
Article 7.
The Daily Star
The West still beats the rest, but it may no longer be best
Robert Skidelsky
March 29, 2011 -- History has no final verdicts. Major shifts in events and power bring about new subjects for discussion and new interpretations.
Fifty years ago, as decolonization accelerated, no one had a good word to say for imperialism. It was regarded as unambiguously bad, both by ex-imperialists and by their liberated subjects. Schoolchildren were taught about the horrors of colonialism, how it exploited conquered peoples. There was little mention, if any, of imperialism’s benefits.
Then, in the 1980s, a revisionist history came along. It wasn’t just that distance lends a certain enchantment to any view. The West – mainly the Anglo-American part of it – had recovered some of its pride and nerve under U.S. President Ronald Reagan and British Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher. And there was the growing evidence of post-colonial regimes’ failure, violence and corruption, especially in Africa.
But the decisive event for the revisionists was the collapse of the Soviet empire, which not only left the United States top dog globally, but also seemed, to the more philosophically minded, to vindicate Western civilization and values against all other civilizations and values. With the European Union extending its frontiers to embrace many ex-communist states, the West became again, if briefly, the embodiment of universal reason, obliged and equipped to spread its values to the still-benighted parts of the world. Francis Fukuyama’s “The End of History and the Last Man” testified to this sense of triumph and historical duty.
Such a conjuncture set the stage for a new wave of imperialism (though the reluctance to use the word remained). In doing so, it was bound to affect interpretations of the old imperialism, which was now extolled for spreading economic progress, the rule of law, and science and technology to countries that would never have benefited from them otherwise.
Foremost among the new generation of revisionist historians was Niall Ferguson of Harvard University, whose television series, based on his new book “Civilization: The West and the Rest,” has just started showing in Britain. In its first episode, Ferguson appears amid the splendid monuments of China’s Ming Dynasty, which, in the 15th century, was undoubtedly the greatest civilization of the day, with its naval expeditions reaching the coasts of Africa. After that, it was all downhill for China (and “the rest”) and all uphill for the West.
Ferguson snazzily summarizes the reasons for this reversal in six “killer apps:” competition, science, property rights, medicine, the consumer society and the work ethic. Against such tools – unique products of Western civilization – the rest had no chance. From such a perspective, imperialism, old and new, has been a beneficent influence, because it has been the means of spreading these “apps” to the rest of the world, thereby enabling them to enjoy the fruits of progress hitherto confined to a few Western countries.
Understandably, this thesis has not met with universal approbation. The historian Alex von Tunzelmann accused Ferguson of leaving out all of imperialism’s nasty bits: the Black War in Australia, the German genocide in Namibia, the Belgian exterminations in the Congo, the Amritsar Massacre, the Bengal Famine, the Irish potato famine, and much else.
But that is the weakest line of attack. Edward Gibbon once described history as being little better than a record of the “crimes, follies and misfortunes of mankind.” Imperialism certainly added its quota to these. But the question is whether it also provided, through Hegel’s “cunning of reason,” the means to escape from them. Even Marx justified British rule in India on these grounds. Ferguson, too, can make a sound argument for such a proposition.
The most serious weakness in Ferguson’s presentation is his lack of sympathy for the civilizations dismissed as “the rest,” which also points to the most serious limitation of the revisionist case. The “triumph of the West” that followed the collapse of communism in Europe was clearly not the “end of history.” As Ferguson must know, the main topic of discussion in international affairs nowadays concerns the “rise” of China, and more generally Asia, as well as the stirring of Islam.
Of course, the Chinese may prefer to talk about “restoration” rather than “rise,” and point to a “harmonious” pluralism of the future. But “rise” is how most people think of China’s recent history, and in history the rise of some is usually associated with the decline of others. In other words, we may be reverting to that cyclical pattern that historians assumed to be axiomatic before the seemingly irreversible rise of the West implanted in them a view of linear progress toward greater reason and freedom.
Europe is plainly in decline, politically and culturally, though most Europeans, blinded by their high living standards and the pretensions of their impotent statesmen, are happy to dress this up as progress. Chinese savings are underwriting much of the American civilizing mission that Ferguson applauds. The pattern seems clear: the West is losing dynamism, and the rest are gaining it.
The remainder of this century will show how this shift plays out. For the moment, most of us have lost the historical plot. It is possible, for example, to imagine a “Western world” (one that applies Ferguson’s “killer apps”) in which the actual West is no longer the dominant factor: America will simply pass the torch to China, as Britain once did to America.
But it seems to me extremely unlikely that China, India and “the rest” will simply take over Western values wholesale, for this would amount to renouncing any value in their own civilizations. Some syntheses and accommodations between the West and the rest will inevitably accompany the shift in power and wealth from the former to the latter. The only question is whether the process will be peaceful.
Robert Skidelsky, a member of the British House of Lords, is a professor emeritus of political economy at Warwick University.
Article 8.
Wall Street Journal
Norway to Jews: You're Not Welcome Here
Alan M. Dershowitz
MARCH 29, 2011 -- I recently completed a tour of Norwegian universities, where I spoke about international law as applied to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. But the tour nearly never happened.
Its sponsor, a Norwegian pro-Israel group, offered to have me lecture without any charge to the three major universities. Norwegian universities generally jump at any opportunity to invite lecturers from elsewhere. When my Harvard colleague Stephen Walt, co-author of "The Israel Lobby," came to Norway, he was immediately invited to present a lecture at the Norwegian University of Science and Technology in Trondheim. Likewise with Ilan Pappe, a demonizer of Israel who teaches at Oxford.
My hosts expected, therefore, that their offer to have me present a different academic perspective on the Israeli-Palestinian conflict would be eagerly accepted. I have written half a dozen books on the subject presenting a centrist view in support of the two-state solution. But the universities refused.
The dean of the law faculty at Bergen University said he would be "honored" to have me present a lecture "on the O.J. Simpson case," as long as I was willing to promise not to mention Israel. An administrator at the Trondheim school said that Israel was too "controversial."
The University of Oslo simply said "no" without offering an excuse. That led one journalist to wonder whether the Norwegian universities believe that I am "not entirely house-trained."
Only once before have I been prevented from lecturing at universities in a country. The other country was Apartheid South Africa.
Despite the faculties' refusals to invite me, I delivered three lectures to packed auditoriums at the invitation of student groups. I received sustained applause both before and after the talks.
It was then that I realized why all this happened. At all of the Norwegian universities, there have been efforts to enact academic and cultural boycotts of Jewish Israeli academics. This boycott is directed against Israel's "occupation" of Palestinian land—but the occupation that the boycott supporters have in mind is not of the West Bank but rather of Israel itself. Here is the first line of their petition: "Since 1948 the state of Israel has occupied Palestinian land . . ."
The administrations of the universities have refused to go along with this form of collective punishment of all Israeli academics, so the formal demand for a boycott failed. But in practice it exists. Jewish pro-Israel speakers are subject to a de facto boycott.
The first boycott signatory was Trond Adresen, a professor at Trondheim. About Jews, he has written: "There is something immensely self-satisfied and self-centered at the tribal mentality that is so prevalent among Jews. . . . [They] as a whole, are characterized by this mentality. . . . It is no less legitimate to say such a thing about Jews in 2008-2009 than it was to make the same point about the Germans around 1938."
This line of talk—directed at Jews, not Israel—is apparently acceptable among many in Norway's elite. Consider former Prime Minister Kare Willock's reaction to President Obama's selection of Rahm Emanuel as his first chief of staff: "It does not look too promising, he has chosen a chief of staff who is Jewish." Mr. Willock didn't know anything about Mr. Emanuel's views—he based his criticism on the sole fact that Mr. Emanuel is a Jew. Perhaps unsurprisingly, fewer than 1,000 Jews live in Norway today.
The country's foreign minister recently wrote an article justifying his contacts with Hamas. He said that the essential philosophy of Norway is "dialogue." That dialogue, it turns out, is one-sided. Hamas and its supporters are invited into the dialogue, but supporters of Israel are excluded by an implicit, yet very real, boycott against pro-Israel views.
Mr. Dershowitz is a law professor at Harvard. His latest novel is "The Trials of Zion" (Grand Central Publishing, 2010).
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