Link Banana

Combining the theme of the last two posts: a lot of pundits are saying it’s a good idea to invade Burma to provide humanitarian relief. (If you don’t believe me, sample the sources cited in this UN Dispatch post.) I think Mr. Yglesias offers an interesting explanation of the trend:

The thing you have to understand about the surge of pundits wanting to invade Burma is that it’s the very absurdity of the idea that makes it such an appealing op-ed thesis. It’s self-righteousness without responsibility. Advocate an invasion of a country you don’t know anything about and have it happen and, well, all kinds of things might go awry in a way that’s embarasing. But since everyone knows there’s not going to be an invasion of Burma, you can say there ought to be one and then make up a nice story about how well it hypothetically went. You can even show your thoughtful seriousness about matters of war and peace by chalking up the tragic failure to invade as yet another disastrous consequence of the war in Iraq.

Joshua Keating makes an interesting point about Francis Fukuyama’s “the end of history” and a few other clichés:

Why does it seem as thought every big-think piece on the last two decades of foreign policy must include at least one instance where the author trots out Fukuyama just to kick him in the teeth? Is there really no other way to describe early-90s, capitalist triumphalism than using this one phrase?

But “The End of History” is hardly alone. There are a number of convenient phrases and quotes that seem to pop up again and again as convenient shorthand for writers discussing big, complex foreign policy ideas. It’s for this very reason that FP has a blanket ban on article submissions begining “Since the end of the cold war…” or “In the wake of Sept. 11…”

Andrew Sullivan recently pointed out this approachable article in The National Interest that compares the three major strains of contemporary American foreign policy theory — liberal institutionalism, neoconservatism, and realism — to characters in The Godfather. A sample:

Rather than ignoring this phenomenon like Tom or launching a frontal assault against it like Sonny, Michael sees it as a hidden opportunity. For Michael knows that if the family acts decisively, before the Tataglias and Barzinis have acquired a commanding margin of power, it can rearrange the existing institutional setup in ways that satisfy the new power centers but still serve vital Corleone interests. This he does through a combination of accommodation (dropping the family’s resistance to narcotics and granting the other families access to the Coreleones’ coveted New York political machinery) and institutional retrenchment (shifting the family business to Nevada and giving the other families a stake in the Corleones’ new moneymaker, Las Vegas gambling). In this way, Michael is able to give would-be rivals renewed incentives to bandwagon with, rather than balance against, the Corleone empire, while forcing them to deal with him on his own terms.

Matt Bai has an artful examination of John McCain’s evolving view of American foreign policy in the forthcoming New York Times Magazine. His basic conclusion:

Undaunted, McCain soldiers on toward November and what could be his final campaign. When he ran in 2000, his philosophy of national greatness — the importance, as he always puts it, of “serving a cause greater than one’s self” — found its expression in ideas like national service and campaign reform, proposals that independents and even many liberals could embrace. For a time then, McCain, adrift within his own party, was almost certainly the most popular politician in America. This time, his theme of selflessness is bound up, irrevocably, with Bush’s unpopular war. Democrats, alarmed over their own disunity, can hardly wait to start pummeling McCain with Iraq. While I was working on this article, the Center for American Progress, the left’s leading policy center in Washington, took the liberty of sending over a 10-page litany of McCain’s selected comments on Iraq since 2002, delineated by helpful subheadings like “The War Begins — Rosy Outlook” and “The Critical Time Is Always Right Around the Corner.”

Also of note (and from the Times Magazine, tangentially related to Vietnam): an interesting/troubling examination of the charges of conspiracy the US is bringing against Hmong leader — and former US ally — Vang Pao.

The Economist is sounding the alarm about the troubling ease with which the extremely wealthy are stifling free speech worldwide by pressing cases in the most friendly countries. A few cases that have taken of Britian’s libel laws:

That followed a similar judgment last year against Rachel Ehrenfeld, a New York-based American author who has written about the support of some Saudis for Islamist terrorism. She was successfully sued in London by a Saudi for a book she had published in America that had sold only a handful of copies in Britain.

Obozrevatel (Observer), an internet news site that does not even publish in English. Like Ms Ehrenfeld, the defendants did not appear in court and judgment was entered against them in default. Damages will be set in a compensation hearing later this year. Schillings declined to comment, but a statement on its website reads: “By seeking redress in the courts of England, Mr Akhmetov will ensure that there will be a fair legal process.”

In addition to getting a new president today, more than a few people are beginning to fear that Russia planning to go to war with Georgia. Passport quotes a Russian journalist saying:

Nobody wants war, but both sides are doing everything to spark a military conflict. This is not the first time this situation has arisen. Recall how World War I began. States wanted only to protect their national pride and frighten their opponents. But at some point, the tensions escalated sharply and, coupled with mass mobilizations of their armies, the conflict in the Balkans spun out of control with tragic consequences for the entire world. This scenario could be repeated in the Caucasus.

For Slate, Anne Applebaum said roughly the same thing.

A surprisingly apt follow-on to the last post… In a discussion of his new book, Fareed Zakaria makes an interesting point:

We have done a great job of scaring the hell out of people, telling them that they are living in frightening times. You know the list: terrorism, rogue states, Iran, North Korea, a revanchist Russian, an expansionist China. Throw into this mix suspicions of Indian outsourcing and Mexican immigration and it seems as if the world is ganging up on the United States. In fact, the data overwhelmingly shows that we’re living in more peaceful times than at any point since the early 1950s, and perhaps in several centuries. (Harvard’s Steven Pinker says, “the most peaceful times in the species’ existence.”) Wars, civil wars, deaths are all down, down, down over the last twenty years. And economic growth is up across the globe.

(via Matt Yglesias)

EDIT (5/05/2008): Mr. Zakaria also got the cover of this weeks Newsweek. Had I seen it a few hours earlier, this story would be the title link.

I like to see TERRORISM!! reconsidered from time to time. Today (yesterday actually), Josef Joffe does the honors:

Fear, in other words, is a tax, and al-Qaeda and its ilk have done better at extracting it from Americans than the Internal Revenue Service. Think about the extra half-hour millions of airline passengers waste standing in security lines; the annual cost in lost work hours runs into the billions. Add to that the freight delays at borders, ports and airports, the cost of checking money transfers as well as goods in transit, the wages for beefed-up security forces around the world. And that doesn’t even attempt to put a price tag on the compression of civil liberties or the loss of human dignity from being groped in full public view by Transportation Security Administration personnel at the airport or from having to walk barefoot through the metal detector, holding up your beltless pants. This global transaction tax represents the most significant victory of Terror International to date.

A note: “TERRORISM!!” is a single-word expression for the monolithic baddy that haunts our dreams and causes us to act irrationally. “Terrorism” is “the unlawful use or threatened use of force or violence by a person or an organized group against people or property with the intention of intimidating or coercing societies or governments, often for ideological or political reasons.”

Sounding nearly as pessimistic as everyone else, The Economist assess which rivers around the world are most likely to lead to conflicts in the coming decades.

Already, the annual death toll from battles over water and grazing in the badlands of south Somalia, southern Ethiopia and northern Kenya is in the hundreds. Aid-workers say growing numbers of people and livestock, escalation from rifles to machineguns, erratic rainfall and especially the increased rates of evaporation expected in the future will put the toll into the tens of thousands. That still doesn’t add up to a real war between proper armies—but a thirsty planet is unlikely to be a stable and peaceful one.

Shmuel Rosner’s argument against Jimmy Carter’s recent plea for engagement is rather inelegant. I did, however, find this contention interesting.

There’s no moral virtue in talking to one’s enemies. Engagement is a tool, but so are disengagement and isolation. Both are effective, if used wisely; both can be damaging if used in haste. Talking to one’s enemies is a tool—as is complaining about one’s reluctance to talk to one’s enemies. This is the tool now being used by Hamas and Syria—assisted by Carter—as they try to escape and counter the isolation being applied to them. Making the case for engagement helps them achieve their strategic goal.

As you may have heard, a new Israel-focused lobbying group opened in Washington recently. Gary Kimiya’s thoughts on the subject are worth considering:

Nothing is more urgently needed in our political discourse than for the taboo against speaking forthrightly about Israel to be overthrown. After all, notwithstanding its profound connection to some American Jews and its (partly justified) status as a beloved icon with whom we have a “special relationship,” Israel is not the 51st state — it is a foreign country, and one smack-dab in the center of the Middle East, a region in which we have some considerable national interest. The enforced silence about Israel has prevented us from thinking clearly about the Middle East, and helped enable both the disastrous war we are now fighting in Iraq and a possible future one against Iran.

But because of the highly sensitive nature of the subject, American Jews must lead the way.

Which is why the birth of J Street, whose goal Ben-Ami says is “to redefine what it means to be pro-Israel,” is cause for unalloyed celebration. “Over the course of a quarter century of doing American politics, I’ve seen the way in which the Israel issue plays out,” Ben-Ami said in a phone interview from J Street’s Washington, D.C., office. “And it greatly disturbs me and it greatly disturbs a very large number of progressive American Jews, who believe very strongly in Israel but feel that the way in which the American Jewish community’s voice has been expressed on these issues doesn’t reflect our values or opinions. Only the voices of the far right have been heard. They’ve really hijacked the debate when it comes to Israel.”

Though I’m not sure this is a “breakthrough,” it’s certainly better than nothing.

BEIJING — China appeared to bend to international pressure on Friday as the government announced it would meet with envoys of the Dalai Lama, an unexpected shift that comes as violent Tibetan demonstrations in western China have threatened to cast a pall over the Beijing Olympics in August.

China’s announcement, made through the country’s official news agency, provided few details about the shape or substance of the talks but said the new discussions would commence “in the coming days.” The breakthrough comes as Chinese officials have pivoted this week and moved to tamp down the domestic nationalist anger unleashed by the Tibetan crisis and by the protests at the international Olympic torch relay.

It’s possible I went from sharing to much international news to too little… In any case, Foreign Policy’s Passport has most of the details on this intriguing/troubling story:

A shipment of ammunition, rockets, and mortar bombs en route from China to Zimbabwe has been denied passage from the South African port of Durban to the shipment’s landlocked destination. […]

Although the An Yue Jiang is expected to return to China, a South African paper, News24, reports that a second arms shipment from China is scheduled to arrive by air in order to “expedite the delivery and to circumvent the controversy around last week’s shipment by sea.” The story also claims that both orders, placed by the Zimbabwean government, were finalized just days after Zimbabwe’s elections.

Also of note: The Economist has some broader coverage of what’s been happening on the ground in Zimbabwe.

From the large stack of reading I should have done earlier, I found this fascinating review by Ian Buruma of the growing body of work seeking to define and cope with America’s decreasing importance. He’s rather even-handed, but broadly skeptical of the whole thesis:

However fast the economies of new powers are growing, then, forecasts of their world domination leave out a great deal. China has a demographic problem—too many boys—compounding its potentially catastrophic ecological problems. Russia’s wealth is dependent on the price of oil. India, with its messy democratic system, might well have staying power, but no one sees it as a threat to the United States. And, besides, the “Harmonious Society” of Asia could still be violently disrupted by conflicts over Taiwan, North Korea, Tibet, Kashmir, and various islands, some of them sitting on oil reserves claimed by Vietnam, India, China, South Korea, Taiwan, and Japan. China is frightened that Japan might become a nuclear power, and makes every effort to keep it down, or at least out of the United Nations Security Council. Russia and China watch each other tensely across the Siberian border. North Korea periodically lobs missiles in the direction of Japan. And the South Koreans and the Southeast Asians are stuck between a democratic Japan they don’t trust and an autocratic China they must warily accommodate.

Morgan Tsvangirai, the leader of Zimbabwe’s opposition and, depending on who you ask, it’s president elect penned a Op-Ed in The Guardian today. The most bruising line:

How can global leaders espouse the values of democracy, yet when they are being challenged fail to open their mouths? Why is it that a supposed “war on terror” ignores the very real terror of broken minds and mangled bodies that lie along the trail left by Mugabe?

(via Passport)

James Fallows, who’s living in China, reposted these words from a recent story in The Atlantic. It’s probably as much cute as insightful, but I enjoyed it.

I think if more Americans came to China right now and saw how hard so many of its people are struggling just to survive, they too might ask: What are we thinking, in considering China an overall threat? Yes, its factories are formidable, and its weight in the world is huge. But this is still a big, poor, developing nation trying to solve the emergency of the moment. Susan Shirk, of the University of California at San Diego, recently published a very insightful book that calls China a “fragile superpower.” “When I discuss it in America,” she told me, “people always ask, ‘What do you mean, fragile?’” When she discusses it here in China, “they always ask, ‘What do you mean, superpower?’”

When I saw this story this morning, I just hoped it wasn’t an April Fool’s Joke. 

Advisers to President Robert G. Mugabe of Zimbabwe are in talks with the opposition leader, Morgan Tsvangirai, amid signs that Mr. Mugabe may be preparing to resign, a Western diplomatic source and a prominent Zimbabwe political analyst said Tuesday. The negotiations about a possible transfer of power away from Mr. Mugabe come after he apparently concluded that a runoff election would be demeaning, a diplomat said.

Also of note, an interesting (and hopefully outdated) Op-Ed by Heather Holland, author of Dinner with Mugabe (Economist review), about how the world shouldn’t isolate Mugabe if he claims victory.

The whole world seems to be expect massive and sweeping change when a new president takes office in 2009. The Economist, which has a large special report elaborating the point, doubts that’s what will happen.

There are several ways in which the next president can indeed act fast to restore America’s world standing. But the list is short. The mere fact of not being Bush will bring a dividend of goodwill. On top of this, he or she should send out an early message that on some issues the change of guard will mean a change of heart. An America that closed Guantánamo, imposed a clear ban on any sort of torture (by the CIA as well as the army) and shut the CIA’s secret prisons could once again claim to lead the free world by example and not just by military power. A new president should also say more forthrightly than Mr Bush ever dared that America means to co-operate in the fight against global warming, and will consider joining the International Criminal Court. Mr Bush’s cavalier rejection of the Kyoto protocol, and his hostility to the ICC, did much to antagonise the world even before the war in Iraq.

All these would be welcome changes of substance and symbolism. But even this short list will throw up difficulties. Closing Guantánamo may require America to try the suspected terrorists it can build a case against but let the others go free—free, if nobody else takes them, on American soil. And although it is easy for a president to promise international co-operation on climate change, it is hard to make Congress enact laws that trample on vested interests, threaten to hamper growth or price Americans out of their huge cars. The Senate would not have ratified Kyoto even if Mr Bush had asked it to.

Breifings by the Economist Intelligence Unit are rarely compelling reading, but this one I actually read. And I found it thoroughly disheartening for sounding so… accurate.

In theory, the Chinese government stands ready to negotiate with the Dalai Lama on two conditions: that he renounces violence, and that he accepts Chinese sovereignty over Tibet. In the West’s view these conditions have already been met, as the Dalai Lama has repeatedly argued that his goal for Tibet is real autonomy, not independence. On March 25th, moreover, the Dalai Lama repeated his threat to resign as head of Tibet’s government-in-exile if anti-Chinese violence continues. Both the Dalai Lama and the leader of the parliament of the Tibetan government-in-exile in India have also recently said that they support China’s hosting of the Olympics and would oppose a boycott of the games. China, which has traditionally accused the Dalai Lama of insincerity, argues that these statements are belied by his alleged role in masterminding the violence in Tibet.

As a result, the prospects for meaningful negotiations are exceedingly dim. Even if it were possible to envision a scenario in which China, concerned about the damage to its pre-Olympic international credibility, agreed to negotiations in principle, it would be very difficult to imagine the government approaching such negotiations with a view to making significant compromises. Since China sees the problems in Tibet as primarily rooted in separatist elements based outside the country, it is unlikely to consider granting Tibetans more autonomy or easing religious restrictions.

Intent on following the pessimism of the horror story the paper told about rice prices, The Economist’s Asia.view columnist makes clear that a few recent elections do not mean that historical conflicts will quiet down.

IN NORTH-EAST Asia run the world’s most potentially lethal geopolitical faultlines, along which historical animosities and devastating weaponry are arrayed. Yet for Panglossians, particularly American ones, the regional picture looks suddenly better, thanks to the promise of three new national leaders in little more than six months: Yasuo Fukuda, who became prime minister of Japan last September; Lee Myung-bak, who assumed South Korea’s presidency in February; and Ma Ying-jeou, who won Taiwan’s presidential election by a landslide and will take office on May 20th.