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The Sunni-Shi’ite Divide

Posted on January 25, 2012 by Joshua Goldstein| Leave a comment

The big fault line between Shi’ite and Sunni branches of Islam in the Middle East, centered on the rivalry of Iran and Saudi Arabia, is influencing conflicts in countries throughout the region, including Syria.

Today the Arab League monitors from the Persian Gulf states (Saudi Arabia and allies) left Syria, saying that their presence was not effectively changing the violent behavior of the Syrian regime of Bashar al Assad (backed by Iran). The rest of the Arab League monitoring mission remains, and the League as a whole extended the mission and is expected to send replacement monitors, but the League’s head also called on the UN Security Council to help out. (In my opinion the pullout is not a bad thing, as both the Gulf states and Iran are too close to Syria to play as useful a monitoring role as other Arab states or the UN might.)

The Sunni-Shi’ite conflict was simple back in the 1980s. Iran, the world’s only Islamic Republic and a Shi’ite country, was locked in a war with Iraq. The war would kill close to a million people through trench warfare, the use of chemical weapons, and rocket attacks on each other’s cities. Backing Iraq and its Sunni leader Saddam Hussein were Saudi Arabia, the other Arab countries, and tacitly the United States.

Things are actually more complicated than that. No countries are purely Sunni or Shi’ite. Most have an interwoven patchwork of these sectarian communities — a village here, a city there — as this map shows (high res here):

Two countries next to Iran — Iraq and Bahrain — had Shi’ite majorities ruled over and repressed by Sunni minority regimes. In the past decade, of course, Iraq is no longer Sunni-led but, thanks to George W. Bush, led by Shi’ite parties. (One U.S. official claimed that Bush didn’t know the distinction between Sunni and Shi’ite before deciding to invade Iraq.)

A step further from Iran is Syria, with a Sunni majority ruled over by a Shi’ite-based (Alawite) minority. That is the regime we are all focused on currently, the one the Arab League is monitoring to no avail. Moving along westward, Lebanon is almost half Shi’ite and that community is the base of the armed militia Hezbollah. After decades representing the disempowered and fighting Israel, and after being implicated in the 2005 assassination of Lebanon’s liberal prime minister, Hezbollah last year became the dominant party in Lebanon’s government.

To the south, meanwhile, in Bahrain last year the Shi’ite community rallied for democracy and was violently repressed with help from Saudi armed forces. The United States, whose Fifth Fleet is based in Bahrain, stayed pretty quiet. A quarter of the Saudi population is Shi’ite but they are in no position to cause trouble and the Saudi royal family has the money to buy out any discontent in the Kingdom. In Yemen, where Shi’ites make up more than 40 percent of the population, the Shi’ite Houthi tribe in the north has been in armed conflict with the central government for decades, even as Sunni al-Qaeda radicals wage war in the south.

Thus, in recent years the Arab side of the Persian Gulf (or is it the Arabian Gulf?) has remained firmly in Sunni control, while across the Gulf four countries in a line now have Shi’ite-affiliated regimes — Iran, Iraq, Syria, and Lebanon. Of these, Iraq and Lebanon have been relatively neutral on Syria (mixed interests and their own problems at home), but Iran has been the Assad regime’s most important external backer (along with more powerful but less enthusiastic Russia).

The emergence of a more solid Shi’ite bloc stretching from Iran to Lebanon is not a positive development in my view. It tends to polarize the region and to extend the ambitions of Iran, which acts in defiance of international norms on important issues. It also raises a legitimate concern that Iran’s creation of a nuclear weapon in the coming years would spark a rush by Saudi Arabia to follow suit. The danger of a terrible war between Iran and Saudi Arabia, with their respective allies, is worth worrying about.

In the middle of it all, of course, is oil. Saudi Arabia, Iran, and Russia all share one interest — they are the world’s three top oil exporters. They benefit from reliably high prices for oil on world markets (high price spikes that lead to crashes are less useful). On the other hand, both the western powers and China share an interest in a low, stable oil price. And there was China’s prime minister recently visiting Saudi Arabia, not Iran, for a friendly chat. Turns out that although China is Iran’s largest oil customer, China actually buys twice as much from Saudi Arabia, whose total oil exports are almost triple the level of Iran’s. China wants assurance, which it no doubt received, that Saudi Arabia would fill any gap in China’s supply created by new sanctions on Iran.

The United States supports the Saudi side, and Russia the Iranian side, but China really just wants oil and doesn’t care where it comes from. The main interest of China and other consuming nations is political stability in the Middle East, to keep oil prices stable and the spigot turned permanently on. In the past, although oil is the world’s most traded commodity in terms of value, its price has seen wild swings triggered by political events like wars and revolutions. A little stability would be a really good thing for the world economy. Saudi Arabia alone has the vast reserves to keep world supplies steady even if another OPEC member stops exporting. And hence the Chinese prime minister’s visit.

As for the UN Security Council, its ability to play any meaningful role in Syria will depend entirely on Russia. As some Kremlin officials suggest their patience with Assad is wearing thin, the western powers are pressing Russia to back the Arab League’s recent call for Assad to step down. When that question comes to the Security Council, soon, Russia will have to decide exactly where it stands.

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Posted in Armed Conflicts, Domestic Politics / Revolutions, International Organizations

Burma Reforms Gaining Speed

Posted on January 18, 2012 by Joshua Goldstein| Leave a comment

Today the longstanding leader of the opposition in Burma (Myanmar), Aung San Suu Kyi, officially filed papers to run for parliament in by-elections on April 1. It is another step forward in a reform process that last week saw the United States restore diplomatic relations with Burma after the government there released 651 more political prisoners including many prominent dissidents.

In most places in the world, inertia is a strong force in international relations. If a country is at war, it stays at war; if at peace it stays at peace; if repressive it stays repressive. So real and permanent changes in a country — for example, the Arab Spring successes in Tunisia and Libya — are always of note.

Is Burma experiencing real, permanent change? It sure looks like it. U.S. Senate minority leader Mitch McConnell recently visited Burma and met the new civilian president, former general Thein Sein, and other top leaders. He said afterwards, “I’m convinced he is a genuine reformer, and more importantly, so does Aung San Suu Kyi.” U.S. politicians closely follow the advice of Suu Kyi, winner of the Nobel Peace Prize, regarding policies such as whether to lift sanctions on Burma (not yet but moving that way). Last month Hillary Clinton met with her on a historic visit to Burma that signaled U.S. and international responsiveness to Burma’s reforms.

Last week the Burmese government signed a ceasefire deal with one of the most important of many ethnic militias that have been battling the government for decades near the borders with Thailand and China. The Karen ethnic group has battled the Burmese government for 63 years since Burma’s independence from Britain in 1948. The government also has ordered a ceasefire in its long conflict with the Kachin ethnic group, but some fighting continues. Since 1989 the government has signed ceasefires with 17 armed ethnic groups. The government now says it hopes to end all these armed conflicts within three or four years.

Just ten months ago the military rulers of Burma gave way to a civilian government, albeit one hand-picked and largely led by themselves, after three decades of military rule. The government over those decades was one of the worst in the world. In 1988, student protests were met by lethal force in a massacre that previewed the following year’s Tian An Men protest in China. In 2007 Buddhist monks led large-scale demonstrations against the regime, which were also broken up with lethal force and repression.

An election in 1990 — the last until the flawed elections in 2010 — was swept by Suu Kyi’s party. Instead of allowing them to rule, the military took over, jailed opponents, and put Suu Kyi herself under house arrest for years at a time. Over the decades, the military leadership and its friends have enriched themselves greatly by exploiting Burma’s great natural resources such as timber and minerals, often sending these to its main supporter, China — which also gets electricity from Burmese hydroelectric dams. (But in September Burma cancelled an extremely unpopular $3 billion dam project backed by China. Burma had also found common ground with North Korea in recent years, reportedly buying missiles and possibly nuclear assistance from the North Koreans. Mitch McConnell said yesterday that Burma’s leaders “understand that a big part of normalizing the relationship with the United States is to discontinue its relationship with North Korea.”

The Wall Street Journal cautions that about a thousand political prisoners remain behind bars, including many associated with the country’s armed ethnic groups, and repressive laws remain in force. As for the April vote, with only about 10 percent of the parliament seats up for election, Suu Kyi’s party cannot take power even if it sweeps the vote. That would have to wait for constitutional reforms or the next regular elections in five years. The military rulers passed a new constitution in 2008 ensuring their continuing stay in power, and 2010 elections were not credible and were boycotted by the opposition.

Notwithstanding the long road still ahead, Burma’s political change in recent months has been breathtaking. Why does a country lurch toward freedom after decades of authoritarianism? Often the answer seems to be personal. In Burma, Aung San Suu Kyi has remained steadfast, totally committed to nonviolence, and has reached out on a personal level to the military rulers. She is Burma’s Nelson Mandela (or, you might say, Burma’s Aung San Suu Kyi). For his part, president Thein Sein has personally pushed the country in a new direction.

The world’s “rogue” regimes cause turbulence disproportional to their apparent size and power in the international system. But their numbers are decreasing, with Libya now off the list and Burma seeming to be moving with determination to end its isolation. Iran (75 million people) is becoming more isolated with new sanctions hitting its economy hard and its currency losing half its value in recent weeks. , North Korea (25 million) is in an uncertain leadership transition. Syria (20 million) has a government fighting for survival against its own people. Saddam’s Iraq is a distant memory. All these countries tried, or at least started, to develop nuclear weapons.

Truly these are tough times for rogue states and their isolated elites. Add in the various dead or deposed dictators and terrorists over the past year, and the picture looks grim indeed for today’s embattled authoritarians. Burma’s president shows both wisdom and pragmatism to get off the sinking ship and start the country of 50 million people in a new direction.

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Posted in Armed Conflicts, Domestic Politics / Revolutions

The U.S.-Iran Dance

Posted on January 10, 2012 by Joshua Goldstein| 1 Comment

Relations between the United States and Iran have been much in the news of late. In the latest hostile confrontation… oh wait, a U.S. Coast Guard ship today rescued six Iranian sailors in the northern Persian Gulf when their small ship took on water. The U.S. military quoted the owner of the Iranian vessels as saying, “Without your help, we were dead. Thank you for all that you did for us.”

In last week’s hostilities, a U.S. destroyer rescued 13 Iranian sailors from 15 Somali pirates who had seized their small ship to use as a mother ship to hijack larger cargo ships. “It is like you were sent by God,” said one of the Iranian sailors. The U.S. destroyer was part of an aircraft carrier group that had recently left the Persian Gulf and been told in no uncertain terms by Iran not to come back. (Iran’s threat to use force or close the Hormuz Straits if the carrier returns is pure bluster.)

During most of last year, the United States encouraged revolutionary movements in Arab countries unfriendly to Iran’s government, including the unseating of longstanding Egyptian dictator Hosni Mubarak who had been a key counterweight to Iranian power in the region.

And U.S. forces spent much of the last decade removing from power Iran’s #1 enemy, Saddam Hussein in next-door Iraq, and installing an Iraqi democracy that empowers Iranian allies in the country (Iraq’s Shi’ite majority that shares religious ties with Iran and had been suppressed by Saddam).

It’s an odd way to treat enemies. Iran’s leaders might indeed quote the rescued sailor: “Thank you for all that you did for us.”

Instead it’s the same old “death to America” out of Tehran. Enter the Persian Gulf and we will attack you. Iran also just handed down a death sentence against an Iranian-American accused of being a spy. It is unclear whether the authorities there intend to carry it out.

Now President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad is taking a break from his domestic woes (hint: don’t pick fights with someone who has “Supreme” in his title) to visit supportive countries in Latin America. That would be, um, Cuba, Venezuela, Nicaragua, and Ecuador. Nice little countries, with leftist and anti-American regimes. They are not the countries that matter most — Brazil, Mexico, Argentina. But there was Ahmadinejad yesterday having a laugh as Venezuela’s Hugo Chavez joked that a big atomic bomb was hidden right in front of the presidential palace. Take that, Yankee!

Iran’s building of a nuclear weapon has been described as a “red line” by the U.S. government. And thanks to more effective U.S. multilateral diplomacy, biting sanctions against Iranian oil exports are now being considered by some of Iran’s biggest customers, European countries. This is what set off the latest round of anti-American bombast from Iran. Iran is yelling because it’s hurting.

Fareed Zakaria wrote recently that “the real story on the ground is that Iran is weak and getting weaker. Sanctions have pushed the economy into a nose-dive. The political system is fractured and fragmenting. Abroad, its closest ally and the regime of which it is almost the sole supporter — Syria — is itself crumbling. The Persian Gulf monarchies have banded together against Iran and shored up their relations with Washington. Last week, Saudi Arabia closed its largest-ever purchase of U.S. weaponry.”

In an international survey of public opinion last year, the country viewed most negatively by people in 27 countries was Iran (59% negative), followed by North Korea and Pakistan. These three countries all either possess nuclear weapons or have made substantial progress toward building one. Why Iran wants to be in this club is not exactly clear. (By the way, Canada was viewed most positively among the 27 countries.)

Now that Iran’s position is slipping and worse is soon to come (if the new European sanctions do take effect), will the Supreme Leader have a change of heart about nuclear weapons? Will he calculate that the cost to Iran on multiple dimension is too high for a weapon that could never be used?

President Obama famously made a diplomatic opening to Iran early in his term, which did not succeed. Iran expert Trita Parsi argues in his forthcoming book (A Single Roll of the Dice: Obama’s Diplomacy with Iran) that neither side showed adequate perseverance after initial setbacks. In the recent moves against Iran’s nuclear program, the West has focused on a change of Iran’s policy, not an effort to change the Iranian regime. Given that is the case, further diplomacy at this stage would be a good idea. But with Republican presidential candidates falling over each other to be toughest on Iran, President Obama has little room for conciliatory moves toward Iran.

It’s worth remembering that of the dozens of countries worldwide with the capability to make nuclear weapons, most have chosen to not do so. Nuclear weapons are super-dangerous, super-expensive, draw the world’s opposition, and have little to no usefulness in any real war. Why go there?

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Posted in Armed Conflicts, International Organizations, Trade, Aid, Business, Finance

Three Situations to Watch

Posted on January 4, 2012 by Joshua Goldstein| Leave a comment

So let’s start out the new year with a look around at three issues that matter in international relations currently. My short list is: Interest rates in Italy; invective in Iran; and stalemate in Syria.

1. The euro debt crisis grinds on but is looking up a bit this week. Last week the Italian government successfully sold bonds at lower interest rates. When investors are willing to loan money to Italy at a lower rate, this is a signal that the market sees less risk of an Italian collapse. Italy, like Greece, has a new technocrat-led government. But unlike Greece, Ireland, or Portugal, which all recently received large bailouts to keep them from defaulting on debts, Italy is too big to bail out. So the edging away from a financial meltdown is important.

Italy’s success was followed by successful bond issues in the Netherlands and, today, Portugal and Germany. (Germany borrowed $5 billion at below 2 percent interest.) Europe’s financial situation remains tenuous, however. One big worry is that the austerity measures governments are taking to deal with debt will choke off economic growth and drive Europe’s economies into another recession.

2. Iran has been in the news a lot lately. The government keeps creeping closer to the ability to build a nuclear weapon, and Western governments keep tightening up the various sanctions that are supposed to pressure Iran to change course. The Iranian leadership has been turning up the rhetoric in response, most recently by threatening to close down the straits of Hormuz – an international waterway next to Iran that carries a truly huge amount of oil from the Persian Gulf to the rest of the world. Iran has the capability to carry out the threat, but would be completely crazy to do so. It would be an act of war that would bring in a coalition of Iran’s enemies from Saudi Arabia to the United States, to turn the oil spigot back on.

Iran’s leaders must feel pressured, to be sure. The Stuxnet computer worm (apparently a U.S.-Israeli project) set back their uranium enrichment program, perhaps by a couple of years. Top Iranian scientists in the nuclear program have been attacked, one killed, on the streets of Tehran. A huge explosion, still unexplained, devastated a major missile testing facility and killed the head of the missile program. The United States has been flying drones deep into Iran to spy on activities there, as we all learned a month ago when one either crashed or was shot down by Iran (another case of “still unexplained”). The UN’s atomic energy agency has put out reports accusing Iran of pursuing nukes, and the UN Security Council has imposed sanctions, with much more serious sanctions imposed by the United States and European countries. The domestic opposition to Iran’s leaders was crushed after massive protests two years ago, but smolders still.

Will the pressure induce Iran to change course and give up its quest for nuclear weapons? This seems pretty unlikely, barring a change of regime in Iran (which itself falls in the “pretty unlikely” category). Military action (e.g. by the USA or Israel) might slow the process, but as of right now the single most likely outcome of this situation is that Iran will have nuclear weapons in a few years, and perhaps successfully deploy them on capable missiles in a few more years.

A less likely possibility, but an interesting one, is that regional negotiations could produce a nuclear-free zone in which Israel gives up its nuclear weapons and others such as Iran give up the idea of obtaining them. Before you dismiss this idea as utopian, have a look at the poll last month showing 64 percent of Israeli Jews actually favor it.

3. Syria continues to be extremely important but completely stuck in a rut. The latest hope was that an Arab League monitoring mission would induce the government to stop slaughtering protesters and opponents. But the killings continued. The Assad regime has enough support, including the solid support of the top ranks of the military, to hold onto power. But the opposition has enough support to continue its protests.

It is unclear at this point whether the Syrian situation will morph into a civil war as the opposition gives up on peaceful protest and puts its faith in armed insurrection under the Free Syrian Army. So far the armed attacks on the government have not constituted a serious threat – they are more symbolic and sporadic, albeit deadly – and the rebels do not control territory. There is no chance the international community will intervene Libya-style.

These three issues – European debt, Iran’s arguments with other countries, and Syria’s protests – are in different issue areas of international relations: political economy, security affairs, and domestic politics, respectively. There are also important developments currently in environmental politics, North-South relations, and information technologies, which I will blog about in the future. So the action in IR currently is spread across many parts of the field. That should make for an extremely interesting year. Admittedly, 2011 was a hard act to follow, but let’s see if 2012 can give it a run for the money.

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Posted in Armed Conflicts, Domestic Politics / Revolutions, International Organizations, Trade, Aid, Business, Finance

My Predictions for 2012

Posted on January 1, 2012 by Joshua Goldstein| 2 Comments

The start of a new year gives me a chance to make some International Relations predictions for 2012. The great thing about blogging is that if the predictions are on target I can point to the blog as evidence of my genius, but if the predictions prove wrong I can say, oh, that was just a blog post.

This year, I will predict things that are NOT going to happen. In IR there’s always a lot to worry about, but in my opinion most of it is truly unlikely to happen.

1. My first prediction is, there will not be a war between two regular national armies, head-to-head. These happened throughout history with great frequency but have not occurred anywhere in the world for eight years now. In a recent New York Times op ed, Steven Pinker and I describe why another one soon is unlikely.

2. The euro zone will not collapse, and the European Union will not fall apart. It’s been a rough stretch, alright, but the EU will always do the minimum to hold itself together. If anything, the current euro crisis will lead to a deepening of integration in Europe, at least among the euro members, as the common currency forces fiscal congruency among the member states. I would bet on the EU to succeed. Europe’s collective unconscious remembers what came for centuries before the EU, and nobody wants to return there.

3. Terrorists will not use a nuclear weapon. A terrorist nuke is actually a very good thing to be concerned about and really work to prevent. But it’s also not so easy to make or get a nuclear weapon and use it. Plenty of people would like to try, but it’s really unlikely they would succeed. Keep worrying, but I’m betting this is not the year it will happen.

4. No nuclear explosion will take place anywhere in the world. Nuclear tests have all but ceased, with only two in the past 13 years — both by North Korea. Now that North Korea knows its bomb works (the first fizzled, hence the second), it is unlikely to squander its small stockpile on more tests. Iran will not be ready to test one in 2012. Given the more than 2,000 nuclear explosions in the 20th century, the 21st is off to a good start.

5. No major progress will be made in global warming despite the expiration of the Kyoto Protocol at the end of 2012. It is the international community’s biggest failure at present, because the world has not been able to bring about global action to effectively halt a disaster in progress. Instead, the world’s nations each charge ahead in their individual economic interest and create a collective catastrophe that will cost far more to fix the longer we wait.

I hope I’m wrong on one of these predictions, as long as it’s #5.

Happy New Year!

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Posted in Armed Conflicts, General

Peace on Earth: More than a Wish

Posted on December 27, 2011 by Joshua Goldstein| Leave a comment

“Could war — like slavery, cannibalism, and crucifixion — become extinct?” That’s the subject of my Christmas Op Ed column syndicated by the Fredericksburg, VA Free Lance-Star:

“Peace on Earth.” It is each year’s Christmas wish and indeed the great wish of the world’s religions across history.

Of course, any realist or cynic can tell you that this wish is an empty hope that will never come true. And oddly, the idealists who march in the streets for peace seem to agree–the world is awash in war, from atrocities in remote provinces of the Congo to drone attacks in Yemen to suicide bombings in Afghanistan. Whether you blame the military-industrial complex, the clash of civilizations, competition for natural resources, or human nature itself, peace on Earth seems further away than ever.

Except, actually, it isn’t. While TV images will always show us the most horrible parts of the human experience, the big picture has changed dramatically in our lifetimes. Peace on Earth as a complete cessation of violence may never arrive, but the distance between the dream and the reality has been shrinking for decades. Worldwide, wars today are fewer, smaller, and more localized than at any time in living memory.

Start with the bloodiest form of violence in history–wars between the world’s regular national armies, head-to-head with their tanks, artillery, airplanes, missiles, and currently 20 million soldiers worldwide. For centuries, these armies fought regularly, several times a year on average, and the worst of these wars killed millions at a time.

Today, nowhere in the world are these armies fighting each other–a historic development that has received almost no notice. It’s as though we had all grown wings but were walking around complaining about the extra weight. Countries are still armed to the teeth and still have conflicts, but they don’t go to war to solve them, mostly because it’s insanely expensive and doesn’t work very well. Exhibit A is the recently ended U.S. war in Iraq.

In Europe, where major interstate wars followed one after another for centuries, a continent has become a Union where (despite monetary troubles) fighting is unthinkable. China, wracked by wars and revolutions throughout history, has not fought a battle in 25 years. Its leadership derives legitimacy from trade-based prosperity, and follows a “peaceful rise” strategy in the world system. The U.S.-Soviet rivalry no longer exists, and the world’s arsenals of nuclear weapons have shrunk by three-quarters in the past 30 years, with no hoopla.

But has the violence of interstate wars merely been displaced onto civil wars that are more widespread and brutal than ever? The answer is “no.” Civil wars have also abated of late. Careful counts of battle deaths worldwide in the 21st century reveal levels half those of the 1990s and a third the Cold War average. (These numbers do not include indirect war deaths, as from epidemics and starvation, but those deaths generally move in parallel with direct deaths from violence.)

Whole regions consumed by war a couple of decades ago–Central America, West Africa, the Balkans–are now at peace. East Asia, where the most lethal conflicts of the Cold War years occurred in China, Korea, Vietnam, and Cambodia, enjoys a stable peace. Today’s skirmishes in Burma, guerrilla raids in the Philippines, and bombings in Indonesia are insignificant compared with Asia’s violent past.

Brutality toward civilians is also diminishing. Yes, atrocities do still occur, but today they provoke outrage, whereas in the past they were considered a normal part of war if the world even heard about them. During World War II, the Allies firebombed dozens of German and Japanese cities, each time burning to death tens of thousands of civilians in a night. The other side did far worse.

And what about the statistic showing that 90 percent of war deaths supposedly are now civilian, whereas a century ago 90 percent were military? It resulted from a clerical error in a 1994 U.N. report, which mixed up deaths (a century ago) with the much larger number of killed, wounded, and refugees (recently). A better estimate is 50-50, and not changing through time.

Another longstanding peace dream is coming true–an effective international community. Two centuries ago, the German philosopher Immanuel Kant had the vision of a world federation of states to keep the peace without imposing a world government. Almost 100 years ago the world gave it a try in the League of Nations, but it failed miserably.

Then after World War II we tried again with the United Nations. During the Cold War, its Security Council was deadlocked. When the Cold War ended, it ventured into peacekeeping but ran into a buzz saw of troubles in places like Somalia, Rwanda, and Bosnia. In the 21st century, however, after a period of regrouping and learning lessons, peacekeeping has become far more effective. As U.S. forces withdraw from Afghanistan in 2014, the world’s largest deployed army will be the U.N.’s 100,000 peacekeepers. And peacekeeping is cheap–it costs $2 per U.S. household per month compared with $700 for our military forces and veterans’ benefits.

Peacekeeping missions stabilize cease-fires in societies trying to emerge from war by assuring armed groups that their disarmament will not result in being massacred by their enemies. As recently as the 1990s, half of all cease-fires broke down and war resumed, but in the 21st century fewer than 15 percent did so. In Sierra Leone, after an especially brutal war, a 1996 peace agreement failed when an under-funded U.N. force did not arrive quickly enough.

When the U.N. showed up in force several years later to support a new agreement, with British military backing, the peace lasted. In 2005, the peacekeepers left, their mission accomplished. The key to the U.N.’s success in Sierra Leone was giving the effort adequate personnel, funding, and outside military support. We could spread the blessings of peace elsewhere by following this model and beefing up our support of U.N. peacekeeping.

Much as I hate to infringe on holiday gloom with a ray of sunshine, hard evidence shows that the media drumbeat of war and violence does not represent the direction of history. To be sure, one war anywhere is one too many. Our work is not done. But to greet progress toward peace on earth with “Bah, humbug!” is to deny humanity’s ability to grow. Generation by generation, people have left behind cannibalism, human sacrifice, legal slavery, and public spectacles of sadistic torture and execution such as crucifixion–all of which were once widespread around the world. War could be next.

If we open our eyes to the new realities and stop living in the past, we can give our children the greatest gift of all, a more peaceful world.

Joshua S. Goldstein is professor emeritus of international relations at American University and author of “Winning the War on War: The Decline of Armed Conflict Worldwide.”

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Posted in Armed Conflicts, General, International Organizations

Thailand-Cambodia Border Cools Off

Posted on December 23, 2011 by Joshua Goldstein| 1 Comment

Usually I, like other bloggers and journalists, focus on the world’s “hot spots” where conflicts are raging or getting worse. But this unbalanced view of the world ignores the places where conflicts are coming under control or getting less violent. Today I want to consider one such place.

There is a small disputed parcel of land along the Thai-Cambodian border that has seen fighting in recent years between the Thai and Cambodian armies. This is very unusual in the world, because regular national armies are not fighting each other anywhere on the scale of all-out war. (The last such was the U.S. invasion of Iraq in 2003, and a mini-war lasted 5 days in 2008 between Russia and Georgia.) Little clashes that do occur between these armies, such as last year’s shelling of a South Korean community by North Korea, tend to de-escalate rather than ramp up to war.

In the past, a border dispute such as that between Thailand and Cambodia could have easily led to an all-out war — and indeed extensive changes in borders as a result. But today the international community has developed a fairly strong taboo on changing borders by force. The very small-scale disputed territories around the world, many of them now being tiny islands, are not worth an all-out war, and the international community has invented better ways to resolve such conflicts. In the Thailand-Cambodia case, the World Court was central to the resolution.

By way of background, the territory is next to an ancient temple once claimed by both countries but easily accessible only on the Thai side (cliffs face the Cambodian side). In 1962 the World Court awarded the temple to Cambodia, a decision grudgingly accepted by Thailand. However, in 2008 Cambodia got UNESCO to declare the temple a World Heritage Site, and tensions flared over the surrounding area, less than two square miles, where the border has never been agreed.

In October 2008 and April 2009 the two armies exchanged fire, with several soldiers killed. I remember noticing at the time that Cambodia’s response was not, “we will fight to the last drop of blood for our honor and territorial integrity.” It was “we’re taking you to the UN Security Council.”

This past February, more clashes killed 8 people and forced tens of thousands from their homes. The fighting spread to a couple of other disputed territories before dying down. The UN Security Council asked ASEAN to manage the conflict, and ASEAN turned to Indonesia to provide cease-fire monitors. But in April, 17 more people were killed in renewed fighting. Leaders of ASEAN at their summit earlier this month expressed concern about the border dispute and the possibility of war.

In May, Cambodia went back to the World Court to demand that Thailand remove its troops from the disputed land around the temple. Instead, in July the Court issued an unusual ruling telling both sides to withdraw forces from the area and set up a demilitarized zone. It was unusual because the Court did not just rule on the ownership of territory — which it has done with great success in a number of cases around the world — but laid out a plan for troop movements and conflict de-escalation. How is that going to work? The World Court ordering national armies to redeploy to new positions in conflict zones? (The World Court and what army?)

Well, this week Thailand’s defense minister traveled to Cambodia for the 8th meeting of the General Border Committee, and the two sides agreed to implement the Court’s ruling, with the help of Indonesian supervision. The conflict is de-escalating.

The international community has succeeded in preventing war in this case. Norms and taboos about borders limited the dispute to small territories. Key roles were played by the UN Security Council, ASEAN, and especially the World Court. Another big factor in the successful outcome is the fact that both Thailand and Cambodia are developing economies where leaders get their legitimacy from delivering prosperity through trade and engagement with the global economy. War does not fit into that picture.

If the Thailand-Cambodia border dispute had escalated to all-out fighting between the two national armies, it would have been front-page news. Instead, because the international community succeeded in preventing that war, the conflict is hardly “news” at all. That is why so many people think that war is increasing when in fact the opposite is true. So let’s take a day and notice a “dog that didn’t bark” — the war that might have happened in an earlier age, but didn’t today.

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Posted in Armed Conflicts, International Organizations

Is War on the Way Out?

Posted on December 19, 2011 by Joshua Goldstein| 3 Comments

Yesterday the last U.S. troops left Iraq, ending a painful 9-year deployment. In yesterday’s New York Times, my Op Ed coauthored with Steven Pinker puts the event in long-term perspective. Major head-on clashes of national armies have become rare, with the 2003 U.S. invasion of Iraq the most recent case and, conceivably, the last. Smaller forms of war such as civil wars are also on the decline in recent years.

Contrary to popular opinion, data on war deaths show a dramatic decline in recent years and decades, notwithstanding America’s decade of war now drawing to a close:

The biggest continuing war, in Afghanistan, last year killed about 500 Americans, 100 other coalition troops and 5,000 Afghans including civilians. That toll, while deplorable, is a fraction of those in past wars like Vietnam, which killed 5,000 Americans and nearly 150,000 Vietnamese per year. Over all, the annual rate of battle deaths worldwide has fallen from almost 300 per 100,000 of world population during World War II, to almost 30 during Korea, to the low teens during Vietnam, to single digits in the late 1970s and 1980s, to fewer than 1 in the 21st century.

We suggest three reasons for the decline in armed conflict:

The futility of conquest is part of the emergence of an international community regulated by norms and taboos and wielding more effective tools for managing conflicts. Among those tools, the United Nations’ 100,000 deployed peacekeepers have measurably improved the success of peace agreements in civil wars.

War also declines as prosperity and trade rise. Historically, wealth came from land and conquest was profitable. Today, wealth comes from trade, and war only hurts. When leaders’ power depends on delivering economic growth, and when a country’s government becomes richer and stronger than its warlords, war loses its appeal.

Perhaps the deepest cause of the waning of war is a growing repugnance toward institutionalized violence. Brutal customs that were commonplace for millennia have been largely abolished: cannibalism, human sacrifice, heretic-burning, chattel slavery, punitive mutilation, sadistic executions. Could war really be going the way of slave auctions?

International relations scholars generally (though not uniformly) support the claim that armed conflicts are declining in size and scope. In a widely printed AP story two months ago, leading realist John Mearsheimer of the University of Chicago is quoted as saying,”The facts are not in dispute here; the question is what is going on.” (Whereas I give the UN a lot of credit, he thinks a dominant U.S. military has been acting as a pacifying force in world politics.)

But the general public does not buy the “facts” at all and, judging by the comments we received on the NY Times website, finds the concept of a more peaceful world ridiculous. Just look around at all the horrible armed conflicts going on! Our point is that looking just at the horrible armed conflicts does not tell you whether they are spreading or shrinking. You have to look at the big picture, both the wars and the non-wars around the whole world. Then you see the world is moving in the right direction. It might reverse in the future, but the present trend is that war is on the way out.

What do you think? Could war continue to decrease, or is the present lull doomed inevitably to end in a new explosion of violence?

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Posted in Armed Conflicts, International Organizations

Iraq — The End of a “Dumb” War

Posted on December 15, 2011 by Joshua Goldstein| 2 Comments

Today the United States officially declared the end of the war in Iraq, after nine years, 4,487 U.S. deaths, 32,336 U.S. wounded, about a million U.S. military personnel deployed (many on multiple tours, many still coping with the psychological aftermath), and something like a trillion dollars of U.S. spending. Actually 4,000 U.S. military personnel are still left, to turn out the lights on their way out by the end of the month, but I’m not going to quibble.

Looking back, the decision to invade Iraq stands as a monumental foreign policy mistake, arguably the worst in American history. Sadly, we will never know if it could have been only half as bad, or — who knows? — even a success, had it been implemented competently. The Army chief of staff in 2003, General Eric Shinseki, told Congress just before the invasion that something like several hundred thousand troops would be needed to keep order in Iraq. The decision to ignore and marginalize him allowed a “successful” regime change to morph into anarchy, then insurgency, and ultimately sectarian warfare between Iraq’s Sunnis and Shi’ites. By the time the “surge” of U.S. forces stabilized the situation in 2007, the damage was done.

Iraqis paid a much higher price than Americans, of course. The most conservative, documented deaths total more than 50,000, or by a more inclusive count more than 100,000, with credible estimates reaching somewhat higher still (and somewhat less credibly, much higher). The United States leaves a country that has gained a measure of democracy and freedom after decades of dictatorship, but one significantly traumatized by the recent years of war, where the electricity still does not work as well as a decade ago. Today Iraq still has armed conflicts to sort out, as Linda Robinson blogs today. Then again, as Fareed Zakaria notes, Iraq does have very significant oil resources to draw on as a source of income.

Before the war started, in 2002, the young senator Barack Obama called it a “dumb war” and made these predictions: “I know that even a successful war against Iraq will require a U.S. occupation of undetermined length, at undetermined cost, with undetermined consequences. I know that an invasion of Iraq without a clear rationale and without strong international support will only fan the flames of the Middle East … and strengthen the recruitment arm of al-Qaeda.” That guy was smart.

Looking forward, I’m very hopeful. First, America is not likely to repeat the mistake of invading a big country unnecessarily. Second, the rest of the world has gotten more peaceful over the past decade even as America has spent the decade at war (the subject of my new book). Third, unnoticed in the commotion of this decade’s wars, America has reduced its military footprint in several world regions, pulling out tens of thousands of troops permanently based in Europe, East Asia, and Latin America. The war in Iraq was not a harbinger of a new century doomed to ever-increasing war and violence. It was an anomaly, a throwback to the 20th century, and possibly the last major war of its kind — two regular national armies clashing head-on over control of a country. I elaborate these thoughts in an Op Ed coauthored with Steven Pinker that will appear in the Sunday Review section of this Sunday’s New York Times.

So let’s wrap up Iraq, draw lessons, celebrate homecomings, and look forward to a future foreign policy process that does not make so many dumb mistakes. Welcome home, troops — this time you’re not going back.

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Posted in Armed Conflicts

Is Syria at War?

Posted on December 11, 2011 by Joshua Goldstein| Leave a comment

Violence continues to escalate in Syria. The opposition Free Syria Army, consisting of defectors from the army, has engaged in several lethal clashes with government forces recently. Until now I have not included Syria on my list of wars in progress, but I am edging closer to adding it.

To be considered a war, an armed conflict must pit two armed groups against each other, contesting territory or control of government, with the repeated use of lethal force. Peace researchers who count wars do not include “one-sided violence” and most of Syria’s lethal violence this year has been just that. Now, with the emergence of the Free Syria Army, Syria is moving toward a civil war. Yemen had a somewhat similar profile (unarmed protesters plus armed tribesmen and a defecting portion of the army), but Yemen was already on the war list because of two other longstanding armed conflicts there.

In the Syrian case, I have been waiting to see if this move toward civil war is sustained. Right now the actual lethal armed clashes between two fighting forces are at a very low level and sporadic. Today’s armed clashes involving the Free Syria Army reportedly killed between 8 and 18 people. And this week ugly sectarian killings in the city of Homs, heart of the opposition, took dozens of lives. Government violence against unarmed protesters continues as well, with protesters today holding a general strike and the government using force against them. The UN estimates that 4,000 people have died in the 9-month-long Syrian uprising, the vast majority clearly being unarmed demonstrators killed by government security forces.

The Syrian unrest is beginning to destabilize the neighborhood. On Friday a bomb in southern Lebanon wounded five French peacekeepers, and the French foreign minister has now accused Syria of being behind the attack. The Lebanese armed group, and leading political party, Hezbollah, has reaffirmed its strong support for its longtime patron, Syrian president Assad. In Jordan this weekend, anti-Assad demonstrators stormed the Syrian embassy and injured two diplomats. Meanwhile Syria’s strongest regional ally, Iran, is going through a turbulent period with new international sanctions against its nuclear weapons program. Syria’s vice president thanked Iran today for its steadfast support of the Assad regime.

If Syria keeps moving in the current direction, there is much to worry about and I will be adding the country to my list of wars in progress. I do not want to do so before it is really clear that Syria is in a civil war. The UN’s top human rights official said just that earlier this month. But at the moment Syria is just hovering at the brink of a real civil war and I do not want to assume the worst.

The question may be decided in the next few days though. On Saturday the government gave an ultimatum to the opposition in its stronghold of Homs — stop holding demonstrations, turn in weapons, and hand over defecting members of Syria’s army. Obviously those things are not going to happen. The “or else” is a bombardment of the city by government forces. When Assad’s father faced a serious armed uprising by Islamist militants in the city of Hama in 1982, he flattened it with artillery, killing tens of thousands of people.

The bizarre topping on the week’s Syria news was an interview that Assad gave with ABC News’s Barbara Walters — his first with an American journalist since the protests began nine months ago. Denying everything, Assad said he did not give orders for a crackdown and that most of the people killed were his government’s forces. His response to the UN’s estimate of 4,000 deaths was “Who said that the United Nations is a credible institution?” At times he seemed out of touch with reality — realities like the Arab League has taken unprecedented steps to sanction him; his former ally Turkey has turned against him; the European Union and United States oppose him; and Syrians continue to march in the streets against him after nine months of violent repression including murder, torture, and imprisonment.

Assad declared, “We don’t kill our people… no government in the world kills its people, unless it’s led by a crazy person.” I’m not saying Assad is crazy, but without a doubt he’s killing his own people. And now they’re starting to shoot back. This is probably going to get worse before it gets better.

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Posted in Armed Conflicts, Domestic Politics / Revolutions