The Hardest Job in the World

Last week came the announcement that Richard Holbrooke would be President Obama’s special envoy on Pakistan and Afghanistan. I’m not sure there’s a person in the new administration that has a a more difficult job (with the possible exceptions of Peter Orzsag or Timothy Geithner). Unlike George Mitchell, who at the same press conference was handed the Israel-Palestine portfolio, Holbrooke has, at least conceptually, a much more complicated undertaking. Sure, Mitchell inherits one of the world’s most intractable conflicts in perhaps the world’s most thankless job (the standard line being that an American envoy to Israel-Palestine is what a diplomat becomes when they want to commit career suicide). But at the very least, Mitchell has a decent idea of what a solution will look like: two-states for two peoples, the end of the Israeli occupation in the West Bank (and Gaza–which, to the seeming obliviousness of the Western media, is still very much occupied in any meaningful sense), the removal of settlements and/or concurrent land swaps that would counteract any settlements that Israel will inevitably keep, mutual demands of deliverable security guarantees (which, unfortunately for Palestinians, will have to mean a right of return only to a Palestinian state), and a process whereby some kind of international force will monitor such an agreement. The overriding problem in this case is not where to go, but how to get there–not by any means easy considering every U.S. administration has failed to navigate the path. For Holbrooke, however, he must not only figure out how to get there, but where exactly that there is.

Got that? Well, I suppose one could offer this hopeful destination:

The U.S. reverses its 30-year old diplomatic freeze with the Iranians and reaches a grand bargain of cooperation; a long-term peace is mediated between India and Pakistan; Pakistan’s civilian government gets a rein on its ISI (military security services) and ends its covert support of regional terrorism and the Taliban; the U.S., India, and Pakistan initiate a regional security apparatus that is firmly unanimous on the need to prevent Afghanistan from becoming a perpetual failed state; and finally, an international effort is undertaken for a quick, efficient, and legitimate attempt at rigorous Afghan nation-building– a country which has seen virtually no peace or democratic, indigenous political formation in the last century–alongside a military operation to rid one of the most ferocious and recalcitrant resistance movements in the world, with a stranglehold on 90% of the world’s supply of opium–all of this, in a timely and efficient manner that would end corruption and reverse the quickly metastasizing influence of the Taliban (which now controls some 50 % of the country).

Err…Shit.

And to think, just 8 years ago, it could all have gone quite differently. The Afghan economy had been crippled from decades of war and the fanaticism of the Taliban. Here was a case when we were actually welcomed with relatively open arms. But as Ahmed Rashid’s powerful new book painstakingly describes, the U.S. (read: the CIA) was never interested in nation-building in Afghanistan, only using established drug lords, sadists and thugs as our security contractors and ‘allies’ in the fight against al-Qaeda. This was a case of unbearable historical amnesia: do policymakers forget what happened in the aftermath of the failed Soviet occupation of Afghanistan? When a country lacks basic institutions and political space for fairness and representation, it takes little time for power vacuums to be filled by strongmen; once our attention in the 80s was deflected away from the strategic Soviet threat, no one seemed to notice or care about the implications for the new threat that was developing: the Taliban.

If we would have understood this history, we could have aided a country that was so desperate for outside intervention. Instead, we’ve been handing it back to the forces of reaction on a silver platter.

Holbrooke has the unenviable job of trying to clean up after the Bush administration in an attempt to rectify this historic, and ongoing, ill. He was by all accounts brilliant during the Dayton Accords in the 1990s, and if he duplicates even half of his past successes, he will have achieved nothing less than a miracle.

Inauguration Reflections

Needless to say, the day was absolutely incredible. We headed down probably a bit earlier than we needed to in retrospect, but there were still TONS of people on the Mall even by 7 when we got there. I wasn’t one of the lucky few to have a ticket up close to the Capitol, so we headed to the Washington Monument (I’m right below the circle of the monument, Capitol side: http://www.popsci.com/content/inauguration-day). It’s far away, but we thought we’d be way more comfortable, with a great position for seeing the amazing crowds in front of us (and we could hear fine and see it all with the jumbotrons).

The atmosphere alone was a spectacle to behold. Everyone was so excited, and the relief that he was going to officially be President was palpable. The speech was well-conceived, restrained, and mindful of the state of our country. But after so many great speeches of his, I think what touched me the most was just the historical weight of witnessing something so special and so American in its meaning. It really is something to let it sink in that for most of human history having a voluntary and peaceful transition of power is a completely alien idea. It’s a beautiful thing, and he, I think, reminded people of that oft-forgotten fact. And though it was a cold and windy day, it was an amazing thing to be 30 yards from the Washington Monument, hearing only the sound of our new President’s eloquence and the soothing flapping of the seemingly endless American flags on our flank.

It is tempting to roll out the perfunctory “it’s cliche to say this is history, but it WAS history” stamp as the debate-ending exclamation point on such a celebratory occasion. Certainly, it’s true in a symbolic and literal sense; but it nonetheless seems to obscure the fact that this day will ultimately hinge on taking the long view. What will matter more to posterity is the degree to which a President Obama rose to meet the burdens of his time, and no moment which consists entirely of the culmination of symbolism and mere history will be a sufficient yardstick for that. That yesterday’s ‘historicity’ may well portend to the eventual kind judgment of time is certainly a reasonable possibility, but on its own it remains fleeting without results to back up the flourishes of rhetoric and feeling.

Whatever direction an Obama administration will ultimately take remains to be seen. What is clear is that the nearly unanimous praise won’t last–nor can it. Governing has a tendency to explode how nebulous concepts like hope and change are received, as people have different interpretations of what they should mean in practice. The recent murmurings of disquiet from the self-styled progressive wing of American politics will only become louder as Obama invariably makes decisions with constraint and consensus in mind. Nonetheless, whatever the eventual arc taken and irrespective of the disappointments that will surely await his decisions, it is no small thing to say that at this moment in history we again have a grown-up at the helm.

No One Should Doubt the Power of Symbolism

It’s worth remembering what others see in this American election. Here’s a view from a pro-government newspaper in Saudi Arabia:

For the millionth time, America disappointed its critics and mocked those who expressed doubts about the truth of its democracy. For the millionth time, America proved that it is a republic of man no matter his ethnicity, religion or cultural background. For the millionth time, American proved, by action and not merely words, that it is the country of equal opportunity, social justice, real freedom, and creative democracy. We, who live outside America, do not love this giant empire because of its cruel hegemony over the world. Yet we cannot deceive ourselves by hiding our admiration for this reinvigorated American spirit that is not blinded by might or corrupted by supremacy for the United States, whether we liked it or not, is always capable of reinventing itself and mocking all other countries of the world that cannot show the same degree of ded ication and loyalty to their professed principles.

…Thus Bush almost singlehandedly destroyed the American empire because of his rashness. Maybe this threat of collapse is still alive today but America armed itself yesterday against this threat with its real armour, which enabled it to ascend to the leadership of the world. This armour is much stronger than all of its ballistic missiles: it is the armour of equality, democracy and the endless ability to change. This is the real America that cannot be denied even by its enemies. This America doesn’t care about who you are or where you come from, as it only cares about what you can present to the American nation. I am almost certain that Al-Qa’idah, as an example, would never dare to appoint a man of African origins as its head despite its all its religious values about equality between humans.

Let us not forget that when Osama Bin Laden was talking about those who carried out the September 11 attacks, he was focused on identifying their famous Arab tribes and their lineages. Obama might come to disappoint people inside America and outside it and he might even commit more mistakes that his predecessor but the fact remains that the United States proved yesterday that it is the most loyal country in the world to its professed principles and values and that the accusations levelled at it of racism and oppressing people of colour are illogical, especially when we compare its record in this regard to that of the rest of the countries of the world. Lastly, we say that every country in the world can take pride in its traditions and customs, but is there any tradition in the world better than the American tradition, when the defeated admits his defeat and congratulates the victor in the elections?

Regardless of the estimation one might have of Obama’s character and ability to govern, we ignore the symbolic power of his election at our peril. This is an unbelievable opening, and whether it was deserved or not, it should nonetheless be utilized for the enormous global challenges that our country will confront.

A ‘Millimetric Event’

From Christopher Hitchens:

…Soft-centered thoughts for a fall day, perhaps, but there still is nothing quite like seeing a large democracy doing its stuff, and sensing that by these millions of small and modest decisions a historic and dramatic shift may be under way.  Such millimetric events are more impressive than many more ostensibly “revolutionary” ones.

Election Day in America

One of our country’s greatest poets on the character of this nation:

Although she feeds me bread of bitterness,
And sinks into my throat her tiger’s tooth,
Stealing my breath of life, I will confess
I love this cultured hell that tests my youth!
Her vigor flows like tides into my blood,
Giving me strength erect against her hate.
Her bigness sweeps my being like a flood.
Yet as a rebel fronts a king in state,
I stand within her walls with not a shred
Of terror, malice, not a word of jeer.
Darkly I gaze into the days ahead,
And see her might and granite wonders there,
Beneath the touch of Time’s unerring hand,
Like priceless treasures sinking in the sand.

Much has obviously changed since the Harlem Renaissance, but what remains—what has been a constant throughout this nation’s brief history—is the tortured soul of a country perpetually stuck between the contradictions of its promise and its peril. Today’s results, despite any assertions to the contrary, won’t change this fundamental nature (as they couldn’t in any political system), but here’s hoping that what transpires today might at least nudge the pendulum back to the vicinity of promise.

That Other Thing…

Even before the news cycle was dominated by the country’s financial meltdown, one would have been hard pressed to find significant television coverage on the war in Iraq–the one where over 4,000 Americans, and somewhere between 300,000 and 800,000 Iraqis, have perished. The arguments for and against the war aside, that a media would devote such little attention to one of the most important wars in our country’s history does a profound disservice to any semblance of democratic inquiry and transparency.

Much of this has to do with the now well-established meme that says the surge of U.S. troops in 2007 has been an unqualified and undeniable success. In his interview with Obama, Bill O’Reilly admitted that while he [Obama] might have had good judgment in opposing the war initially, he was completely unjustified in holding onto the position that the surge was anything but an astonishing victory. In their first debate, John McCain hammered home this point home, urging Americans that as Obama had been absolutely wrong in his opposition to the surge, he was in effect unfit for the role of commander-in-chief.

Now, I would be the first to acknowledge and welcome the fact that bloodshed in Iraq has dipped significantly in the last year. There is no one who should find this development as anything but a positive step for the Iraqi people. But when we get to the question of causation, the matter is far less unequivocal.

Peter Galbraith’s article in the most recent New York Review of Books does a masterful job describing how the short-term and tactical success of the surge are part of a much larger and more complicated picture.

Few grasped the most obvious explanation: Nouri al-Maliki wants US troops out of Iraq. He leads a Shiite coalition comprised of religious parties, including his own Dawa party, which is committed to making Iraq into a Shiite Islamic state. Like his coalition partners, al-Maliki views Iraq’s Sunnis with deep—and justifiable—suspicion. For four years after Saddam’s fall, Iraqi Sunnis supported an insurgency that branded Shiites as apostates deserving death. Now the Sunnis have thrown their support behind the Awakening, which is portrayed by American politicians, including Senator McCain, as a group of patriotic Iraqis engaged in the fight against al-Qaeda. Iraq’s Shiite leaders see the Awakening as a Baathist-led organization that rejects Iraq’s new Shiite-led order—an accurate description.

The surge was only part of this picture. And as General Petraeus has noted many times, the point of the surge was to buy, in effect, security time to hold out hope for a political breakthrough. Well, that hasn’t happened, and the only way we’re getting out of that country is when that does happen. But it all becomes a vicious circle, because the effect of our ad hoc approach in creating the now relative security improvement has been achieved on the back of a policy which necessitates the separation of Iraq among ethnic and sectarian lines…you know, the kind of thing that makes political breakthroughs unlikely.

It’s ironic that Joe Biden’s plan to create a tri-partite Iraq–with Sunni, Shi’a, and Kurdish zones– instead of trying to find the panacea of an elusive federal Iraq, was almost unanimously pilloried by political experts, yet it is the almost unanimously praised surge that has expedited the process whereby that scenario becomes the most likely outcome. Iraq can in no functional way be thought of as a nation, but should rather be seen as an amalgamation of three disparate ethnic/sectarian groups, each of which has its own internal divisions and rivalries.

I’m afraid that the next time we start hearing about Iraq on the news, it’s going to be because of increasing cracks in a policy that has no measurable end point. Achieving “victory” in this kind of conflict and at this stage will invariably result in the least bad option at the least inopportune moment. But as long as incoherence masquerading as policy continues to be the standard of victory and praised as a feasible long term strategy, there are going to be many dark days in front of us.

The Death of Conservatism….Yet Again

The son of the patron saint of American conservatism, William F. Buckley, has endorsed Obama. As the elder Buckley once said: “You know, I’ve spent my entire life separating the Right from the kooks.” Say what you will about William F. Buckley, but at least he was a conservative one could have a respectable disagreement with. The great liberal economist John Kenneth Galbraith counted Buckley among his best friends, and his [Buckley’s] show ‘Firing Line‘ still stands up as what an in-depth political program should look like (compared to an age where sound bites and pundits have replaced serious, hard-hitting debate). I disagree with many things Buckley said over the years, but there’s no question that recent scenes at McCain rallies would have horrified him.

Of course, many (George F. Will and Andrew Sullivan included) have realized that Buckley’s kind of conservatism has been dead for a long time. The irony is apparently lost on the magazine he founded, which continues to acquiesce in denial, disingenousness, and fear-mongering. That today’s National Review and McCain do not share some of the reactionary sentiments emanating from ‘the base’ doesn’t amount to shit if their silence continues to be deafening. It’s far past time that this movement engages in some serious self-reflection, and once again purge its members of the deluded and dangerous.

A ‘Grand Bargain’ With Iran?

This article thinks it can be done. Key quote:

The next U.S. president, whether it is John McCain or Barack Obama, should reorient American policy toward the Islamic Republic of Iran as fundamentally as President Nixon reoriented American policy toward the People’s Republic of China in the early 1970s. Nearly three decades of U.S. policy toward Iran emphasizing diplomatic isolation, escalating economic pressure, and thinly veiled support for regime change have damaged the interests of the United States and its allies in the Middle East. U.S.-Iranian tensions have been a constant source of regional instability and are an increasingly dangerous risk factor for global energy security. As a result of a dysfunctional Iran policy, among other foreign policy blunders, the American position in the region is currently under greater strain than at any point since the end of the Cold War.

Iran’s regime certainly poses a significant problem for the world’s stability, but I’m not sure that our policies since the revolution in 1979 have done anything to change this (in fact, they have most likely exacerbated Iranian belligerence in recent years). I think the above article shows several promising tracks on which we could pursue a new formula of dialogue with our erstwhile foe. One of the most obvious ways of strategic common ground with Iran (and something we actually tried in the aftermath of 9/11 with significant success) is our shared interest in preventing the Taliban from re-emerging in Afghanistan. Iran may be an Islamic theocracy, but as a predominantly Shi’a country with a historically bitter rivalry with Sunni extremism (i.e. the Taliban and al-Qaeda), it seems highly misguided that we wouldn’t desire to exploit this useful connection (especially in light of the fact that our current ally against the Taliban and al-Qaeda in the region, Pakistan, has for 7 years been funneling our billions in anti-terror aid money to the very same people we’re supposed to be fighting!).

The idea from Flynt Leverett of a ‘grand bargain’ with Iran may well be unworkable, but I’m not sure we lose anything by trying. If anything, we demonstrate to the Iranian people a willingness to find a reasonable solution to our current impasse. Symbolism on this front is no unimportant thing. An Iranian populace that sees a friendly America will be a thorn in the side of the Mullahs, whose populist agenda is only sustainable with a ‘Great Satan’ to mobilize against. Take out the pretext, and I think the Iranian regime’s raison d’etre loses significant traction amongst the people.

If, on the other hand, they don’t go for our olive branch or otherwise renege on commitments made in a ‘grand bargain’, then we achieve a resurgent credibilty amongst our Allies and even in the region; that we actually tried a good-faith approach to finding a kind of rapproachment should not be dismissed as foreign policy naivete. In reality, switching toward a more overt peace track is a far more shrewd strategic option. It either works and we find ourselves in diplomatic concert with Iran, or it fails and we find ourselves in a position of hitherto dominant leverage vis a vis Iran. It’s worth a shot.

Justice vs. Bush

As the New York Times reports, a Federal Judge has just ruled that 17 Chinese Muslims being held at Guantanamo should be immediately released in America because of their innocence. Guantanamo of course has been the symbol of the illegal, immoral, and otherwise counterproductive policies that have been utilized by the Bush Administration in the ‘War on Terror’. But the following excerpt from the article really does shock the conscience:

The Uighurs, who were detained in Afghanistan in 2002, say they have never been enemies of the United States. They were cleared of suspicion in 2004, but they have remained in detention because of controversy over where they could go. They say they would be persecuted or killed if they were returned to China, but efforts to find a home for them have been complicated by fears in many countries of diplomatic reprisals from China.

My emphasis added. That an Administration would knowingly hold innocent people against their will, unconstitutionally, because its own policies had rendered them a potential risk if released, is unconscionable. That italicized sentence alone far surpasses any crimes committed by William Jefferson Clinton. Some day people will come after Bush, Rumsfeld, Gonzales, etc., for violating international and domestic laws. They will be called war criminals. On what grounds, I wonder, could they possibly be defended against such a charge?

A Truly Catastrophic Financial Crisis

It’s hard to find much about the current economic picture to be optimistic about, but it’s always worth remembering a little perspective. Here’s a view into the reality in Zimbabwe:

Today I went from one meeting to another using the main streets in Harare – it was pure chaos. The City had no electricity, the traffic lights at all intersections were not working and the traffic was gridlocked. The Police were nowhere to be seen and even as we sat in the traffic a police car drove past – ramped the pavement and drove though the intersection paying no attention to what was going on around them…Desperate people are queuing for days at the banks and other financial houses to try and get their money out of the system so that they can spend it before it literally melts to nothing. In Gweru last week the main street was almost closed by crowds at ATM’s and banks. In Harare literally thousands of people jam every cash outlet. The maximum withdrawal by an individual is $20 000 a day worth US$ 0,001 cents.

Though the institutions of Zimbabwe have now virtually failed in every public sector, all of this mess is almost entirely attributable to the reckless and sadistic policies of Robert Mugabe. There is no worse man in all of Africa, and few in the world could compete with his record of turning a country, with a once enviable record of indigenous institution-building in the aftermath of colonialism, into a bankrupt and broken state so quickly. While he is busy blaming his country’s woes on America and the British, the country he rules (despite the recent agreement to share power with Morgan Tsvangirai, his Zanu-PF party still controls the vital financial ministry) continues to burn.

If anyone was going to be protested at the recent UN gathering, it should have been this sham of a world leader. He, far more than the idiotic President of Iran, is responsible for the ongoing misery of millions.