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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

The Iran Drone Mystery

Posted on December 8, 2011 by Joshua Goldstein| 2 Comments

The U.S. stealth drone that crashed in Iran last weekend continues to generate mystery and speculation. This much seems clear. The drone was an unarmed RQ-170 “Sentinel” drone with a bat-wing stealth design that evades radar. The CIA has been flying it out of a base in western Afghanistan on high-altitude missions deep into Iran to help keep tabs on the nuclear program there. It crashed 140 miles inside Iran, and it’s not known whether it survived the crash intact or not (Iran has not shown photos yet).

The Iranians claimed to have shot it down, or even to have hacked into its control systems to take it over. The Americans say nonsense, it just crashed. The Sentinel is supposed to return to base on its own if contact is lost, but does not have a self-destruct mechanism in the event it falls into enemy hands. This is the first time, by the way, that a U.S. drone has fallen into enemy hands. We can be pretty sure the Russians and Chinese are showing up to have a look and spend some of the political capital they’ve earned by keeping the international community from imposing biting sanctions on Iran in recent years. Nobody seems to know, however, how much useful information may be gained by any of these interested parties.

Why the USA wants to keep an eye on Iran is obvious. Why with drones rather than satellites was explained with the help of my favorite aerospace analyst John Pike:

While an orbiting surveillance satellite can observe a location for only a few minutes at a time, a drone can loiter for hours, sending a video feed as people move about the site. Such a “pattern of life,” as it is called, can give crucial clues to the nature of the work being done, the equipment used and the size of the work force.

“It’s basically like staking out a Mafia social club,” said John Pike, who tracks military technology at the Web site GlobalSecurity.org. “If I’m just looking at brick-and-mortar targets, satellite’s fine. But if I want to see what people are doing all day, the drone is a whole lot better.”

The same type of drone was reportedly used multiple times to gather intelligence in advance of the raid in Pakistan that killed Osama bin Laden. During that raid a U.S. stealth helicopter crashed and its tail was left behind for Chinese visitors to have a look at later. Ten years ago a U.S. intelligence plane flying off the coast of China was bumped by a Chinese fighter jet and made an emergency landing in China, where authorities gave it a thorough inspection before returning it. In 2002, America also gave China a free lesson in surveillance methods by installing dozens of bugging devices in the Boeing-made Chinese presidential airplane. Now that China knows so much about U.S. spy technology, maybe America can save scarce defense dollars by having our high-tech spy gear made in China.

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Update: On Thursday Iran displayed the drone on TV and claimed again that Iranians had hacked into the controls and landed it. The intact drone they displayed suggested that this was the case, rather than the drone having lost control and crashed. Clearly the intact capture will also provide more intelligence to Iran and, presumably, Russia and China.

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Posted in Armed Conflicts

Egypt’s Election and Islamism

Posted on December 4, 2011 by Joshua Goldstein| Leave a comment

The results of the Egyptian election are in, though not complete, and two Islamist parties have scored big victories. The Muslim Brotherhood, a long-established and well-organized point of opposition to Mubarak over the years, leads the voting as expected with about 37 percent. What was not expected was the strong showing for the Salafists, a more conservative Islamist group, with about 25 percent, outpolling the liberal, secular parties. As the traditional center of the Arab world and a country of 80 million people, Egypt will set the direction of political Islam far beyond its borders.

This round of elections will choose only about 30 percent of the seats in parliament so it’s too soon to say how a new government will shake out. But I’m not convinced that “the Islamists” — representing the more moderate Brotherhood and the more radical Salafists (and a third party with about 5 percent) — is the right category for thinking about this. In 1962 the political scientist William Riker developed the theory of minimum winning coalitions. It predicts basically that if the Muslim Brotherhood is going to lead a government, it may turn to smaller parties, perhaps the liberal secularists, to get over 51 percent. The #2 winner, the Salafists, would exact a greater price (in cabinet positions, for example) for their participation, whereas the liberals would take what they could get.

In addition, the Salafists put the Brotherhood in an awkward position in defining the role of Islam in Egyptian society. The Salafists’ success, according to the NY Times, presents “a challenge to the Muslim Brotherhood, in part by plunging it into a polarizing Islamist-against-Islamist debate over the application of Islamic law in Egypt’s promised democracy, a debate the Brotherhood had worked hard to avoid.”

And indeed, today the Salafists came out with a statement that they would not water down their views to join a Brotherhood-led government. They oppose a secular state and insist on sharia law. Ed Husain writes in The Atlantic that they pose an extreme danger and terrify many Egyptians.

Israelis are worried that the Islamist turn in Egypt will spell trouble from its long-time stable ally. Israel has seen Islamism turn Iran from an ally to a bitter enemy after 1979, and more recently saw free elections in Palestine bring to power the Islamist movement Hamas, which has also been a bitter enemy. A former Israeli ambassador to Egypt called the changes in the region an “Islamic tsunami,” which actually does not seem too far from reality.

However, as the Egyptian elections clearly illustrate, there is not one Islamism in the region, but several. Three states have Islamist leaders but follow very different models. Saudi Arabia is most closely related to Egyptian Salafists, and follows a very conservative domestic politics in such matters as women’s rights and sharia law. Iran is an Islamic Republic but Saudi Arabia’s great enemy — reflecting the Shia-Sunni divide. Turkey is the model that resonates most in the region, with an Islamist leader but capitalist economy, connections with the West (Turkey is a NATO member), and a deepening respect for human rights. That is the model followed by Tunisia’s recently successful party that won elections there, and the model of the Brotherhood in Egypt.

With all these models competing, and others that do not have control of a state (the failed al Qaeda model still limping along in Yemen and Somalia), the label “Islamist” does not clarify Middle East politics very much. What divides Islamists is as important as what unites them.

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Posted in Domestic Politics / Revolutions, Gender politics

Clinton’s Burma Gambit

Posted on November 30, 2011 by Joshua Goldstein| 1 Comment

Secretary of State Hillary Clinton has arrived in Burma (Myanmar) on the first such visit by a high U.S. official in fifty years. As Burma embarks on reforms, the United States wants to encourage progress and perhaps pry Burma away from China a bit. But after decades of a repressive military regime there, the U.S. attitude is what one official called “deeply realistic.”

Several issues of concern are on the agenda. Most important is the beginning of democratic reforms in Burma, symbolized by the release of hundreds of political prisoners and of the longstanding opposition leader, Nobel Peace Prize winner Daw Aung San Suu Kyi, after years of house arrest. She is planning to participate in upcoming elections, and Clinton is to have a private dinner with her, which is kind of a big deal. (The fact that the two most important people in this story are women is also a sign of the times.) Burma’s new president seems to be genuinely reform-minded, though it’s hard to know how far or fast the process will proceed.

The United States is concerned about reports that Burma has been buying missiles from North Korea. And there is also still a little civil war going on in the north of the country, between the government and ethnic rebels who want more autonomy. The ethnic groups close to several of Burma’s borders have waged decades of low-level war, and there are tens of thousands of refugees as a result. But the government has recently negotiated on cease-fire deals with two of them. This video gives the feel of the fighting still going on in the north:

Another subtext of the trip is China. The United States has been openly stating that its focus is pivoting to the Asia-Pacific region, and its actions resemble a “containment” strategy aimed at China. The Chinese certainly see the U.S. opening to Burma in that light.

Strong U.S. economic sanctions on Burma remain in place, but historically they have followed the lead of Suu Kyi, who might call for their relaxation as a reward for the government’s thaw (she is astute in the uses of reciprocity). So I predict an easing of the U.S. sanctions fairly soon (not right away because this will require U.S. Congressional action), contrary to the statements of U.S. officials that nothing will change soon.

As Woody Allen once said, eighty percent of life is just showing up. If that’s so, then Hillary Clinton has already achieved most of what this trip can accomplish.

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Posted in Armed Conflicts, Domestic Politics / Revolutions

Congo’s Good-Enough Election

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

Monday is election day in the Democratic Republic of the Congo, with the presidency and parliament to be decided. These will be Congo’s second democratic elections after decades of dictatorship and war (the first was in 2006). There is plenty to criticize in the elections but they are an important step forward for the impoverished country of 70 million people.

President Joseph Kabila is expected to win re-election (with the opposition squawking that it’s unfair), while in the Parliamentary election 19,000 candidates are competing for 500 seats. The 2006 election was organized by the UN, but this one the Congolese government is running by itself, with just a smallish monitoring mission from the EU as outside help. Logistical problems are a challenge in the very large country with few decent roads — ballots were held up when bad weather delayed flights to remote locations.

Clashes between supporters and opponents of the president, and security forces, reportedly killed eight people in the capital. Yesterday the main opposition candidate Etienne Tshisekedi returned to Congo from South Africa, and his supporters flocked to the airport to greet him. But police would not let him proceed for eight hours. EU observers criticized the police action as a “serious breach of the right to campaign.” For his part, Tshisekedi a few weeks ago declared himself already president, which is not a helpful style of campaigning. The government responded by shutting down the radio station that aired the interview. Today the government cancelled all political rallies to head off violence (and maybe to keep the opposition from gaining ground).

One indicted war criminal being held in the Hague is running for president, and another, indicted for mass rapes in eastern Congo but at large, is running for a seat in parliament. So there’s plenty to criticize in the conduct of the elections.

But, as I always like to say, compared to what? In this case the answer is not compared to a perfect democracy, not even compared to the USA (ahem, Bush v. Gore), but compared to what came before — 70 years of colonialism, 30 years of dictatorship, and a decade of horrific war, all against a backdrop of absolutely wrenching poverty.

Many people criticize the United Nations peacekeeping mission in the Congo, because atrocities still occur in some eastern provinces, including the ever newsworthy mass rapes. Poverty and corruption are still rampant and yes, the elections are imperfect. But when the UN arrived a little over a decade ago, there were six foreign armies fighting “Africa’s first world war” in the Congo. The economy was in reverse, mortality was rising dramatically, sexual violence was widespread, and democracy was not even a remote possibility. Most of these problems have not been 100% solved in a decade — surprise — but most of them have been moving in the right direction. Considering the size and funding of the UN mission compared to the size and challenges of the country, the peacekeepers have made fabulous progress. Their work isn’t done, but maybe we should think about giving them more resources to do a better job, not just complain that they are a failure.

An official with the Carter Center says Congo’s electoral commission has “gotten through a relatively successful campaign period. Yes, there have been some major incidents and some deaths, but these I don’t think have resulted in a mass, public rejection of the electoral process. Far from it.”

So let’s give two cheers for a modestly successful election tomorrow in the Congo, and refocus on helping the troubled country move forward step by step.

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

Yemen’s President Resigns!

Posted on November 23, 2011 by Joshua Goldstein| Leave a comment

In a long-awaited and much-delayed milestone of the Arab Spring, Yemen’s president, Ali Abdullah Saleh, has signed the peace agreement that removes him from office. He signed on in Saudi Arabia today and has told the UN secretary-general that he plans to travel to New York for medical treatment.

Saleh’s resignation comes after nine months of street protests against him, violent repressed by his government. Parts of the military also defected from his side, creating a threat of civil war. And al-Qaeda-affiliated militants in the south of the country took advantage of the chaos to seize territory (although several of their key leaders have been killed by U.S. drone attacks this fall). Just today three Red Cross workers were kidnapped in southern Yemen.

Several times earlier this year Saleh promised to sign the deal, brokered by nearby Gulf states, only to back away. Saleh was almost killed by a bomb in June and went to Saudi Arabia for medical treatment, but recovered and returned to Yemen. He seemed to be the cat with nine lives, but today those lives finally expired.

Under the peace deal, power will be transferred to vice president Abed Rabbo Mansour Hadi and presidential elections will take place within 90 days. Saleh will get immunity from prosecution. For two years a national unity government will hold power and work on revisions to the constitution.

The street protesters are not content with Saleh’s departure, as they want broader political changes and an end to corruption. Nonetheless, the ouster of the fourth Arab leader by the Arab Spring protests this year — following those in Tunisia, Egypt, and Libya — stands as an important marker of the change that has swept the Middle East this year.

Yemen matters to the United States because it is the poorest Arab country and a hotbed of Islamic militancy, including plots directed against the United States (such as the “underwear bomber” and printer-cartridge plots). It also sits next to the Hormuz Straits through which Persian Gulf oil must pass en route to Western markets.

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Posted in Armed Conflicts, Domestic Politics / Revolutions

Roundup — Pace of Events Picks Up

Posted on November 20, 2011 by Joshua Goldstein| Leave a comment

Whether it’s a coincidence or a pre-holiday frenzy, the pace of activity in the world’s hotspots picked up this weekend going into what will be an important week.

Let’s start with the Arab Spring countries. In Egypt, protesters staged the largest demonstration in Tahrir Square since Mubarak’s ouster. Islamists and liberals are back together, and they want the military government to speed the transition to democracy. Until now, the military continues to hold power tightly and to arrest opponents at will. Government forces assaulted the protesters, killing at least 11 people, but protesters took back the square and the clash continues. Parliamentary elections are scheduled in a week (Nov. 28), the first step in a prolonged, slow process of building a democracy in Egypt.

In Libya, the government has captured Colonel Gaddafi’s son Saif and, the next day, Gaddafi’s intelligence chief. Both have been indicted for war crimes by the International Criminal Court, which wants them sent to the Hague for trial. The new government, however, plans to try them in Libya. Presumably they will get more of a due process than Gaddafi himself, who was shot in the head shortly after being captured.

In Syria, the Arab League’s deadline to end the violent crackdown on protesters passed this weekend, and the League rejected Syria’s efforts to modify a plan to send in League monitors. This week the League will consider economic sanctions and other measures against Syria, a sign of the striking isolation of the Assad regime internationally. Not only has armed resistance against the government begun to pick up recently, but so has sectarian violence among armed gangs of Sunnis, Alawites, and Christians who make up the ethnic mix of the country. Russia expressed concern the country was sliding into civil war.

Meanwhile in Europe the euro crisis continues. Although Italy installed its new technocrat prime minister and passed an economic austerity bill, new riots erupted in Greece in response to cutbacks there. In Spain, conservatives won a big election victory this weekend, taking power from the socialists and promising economic reforms. But markets had already spoken, pushing up Spain’s borrowing costs to the 7 percent level. Even France — let’s just say almost everyone but Germany — is facing high borrowing costs and a crisis of confidence. The solution of having the European Central Bank inject money into the troubled eurozone economies is opposed by Germany. And while Germany wants to respond by deepening European economic integration, Britain wants to go the other direction. The mess will play out this week at an ever more knuckle-biting pace.

Two important UN reports came out this month. The International Atomic Energy Agency reported that Iran appears to be making substantial progress toward building a nuclear weapon. Now the United States, Britain, and Canada are preparing new sanctions on Iran in response. Meanwhile the scientific body, Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change reported that climate change is likely tied to destructive weather events that seem to be on the rise. Look for more heat waves, droughts, and heavy rains in the coming years, though it’s not clear whether hurricanes will be affected. Negotiations to reduce carbon emissions are at a virtual standstill.

In Asia, the new reform-minded president of Burma (Myanmar) has loosened the military’s grip a bit and opened up elections to the party of Aung San Suu Kyi, the longstanding leader of the nonviolent opposition. ASEAN has rewarded Burmese reforms by scheduling the country to host the next summit of the regional group, and President Obama recognized the changes by sending Hillary Clinton for a visit that could lead eventually to a normalization of relations after many years of sanctions.

Obama himself returned home this weekend after his Asia trip, where China was the ever-present subtext. (Harvard professor Stephen Walt makes the case for containing a rising China, which I recently argued against. I share the NY Times editorial assessment that pivoting to Asia must not stand in the way of defense spending cuts.) The big challenge, writes Fareed Zakaria, is China’s:

People keep saying that America needs a new China strategy. But I think if you see how many countries are wondering about Beijing, the truth is that China needs a new China strategy. Beijing needs to recognize that it has become a world power, that its every move is now deeply analyzed, and that it is expected to play by the rules – indeed, it is expected to help maintain the rules. Will it? That’s one of the big questions of this new century.

Obama may wish he stayed in Asia when he gets back to dealing with Congress. In a striking example of the importance of domestic politics to foreign policy, the Congressional “super committee” must decide by Monday how to cut $1.2 trillion from the budget deficit, or face automatic across-the-board cuts. Republicans (who oppose increasing taxes as part of the deal) have claimed the automatic cuts would destroy our defense establishment, but I’m not convinced. (The levels of cuts are perfectly manageable, though it would be better to plan them rationally.)

By Sunday night, everyone seemed to agree the talks would fail, but I would caution that this is clearly a Chicken game, and in Chicken there is never any deal until the last possible moment. Indeed, it is only the prospect of imminent disaster that induces a deal. Unfortunately that means a minor miscalculation or unexpected event can lead to a disaster for everyone. Failure to reach a deficit deal could, furthermore, put a downgrade of the U.S. credit rating back in play.

The combination of a possible eurozone meltdown and a possible deadlock on the U.S. deficit could make this an international economic week to remember. Fasten your selt belts, everyone. We might hit a few bumps.

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