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(11/04/15 7:40pm)
The Syrian civil war has been going on for four years. It has dominated newspaper headlines and global consciences but shows little sign of devolving from horror. Up until 2014, the U.S. had only taken just over 200 Syrian refugees from the conflict. As the seemingly interminable streams of asylum seekers climb out of rafts in the Mediterranean and walk through multiple countries in search of hospitality, it is natural to wonder, what can the rest of the world do? Indeed, the title of the panel held on Thursday, Oct. 29 in the Robert A. Jones ’59 House (RAJ) conference room was “The Refugee Crisis in Europe: Global Responses.” Sadly, those pressing questions weren’t fully answered. What was made clear, though, is how desperate the situation is, and how as it stands there seems to be little in the way of meaningful progress.
The Rohatyn Center for Global Affairs, the Geography department and Atwater Commons all co-sponsored the panel of talks hosting a series of distinguished guests and a few members of the Middlebury community who did their best to present the situation. Each of the four panelists had a rigorous 18-minute speaking limit, and the pace of their presentations was frenetic yet illuminating.
A resounding opening speech by the Rohatyn Center’s Director, Professor of Geography Tamar Meyer, ascertained how Europe’s “landscape had become militarized” in response to the “worst refugee crisis since World War Two.” She criticized the responses for being mainly “ad hoc” but highlighted how some European states, particularly smaller ones with weaker economies, were worried about the erosion of Europe’s “Christian character.” She lambasted the conditions that many refugees were being sheltered in, calling them “terrible” and bringing attention to instances of rape arising from housing the large amount of male asylum seekers alongside the women.
The failure of coordination in the Europe-wide response was emphasized by Judith Kumin, former United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR) Director for Europe. She described how the refugees were being treated like “hot potatoes” being passed from one country to the next as quickly as possible, with some countries at the edge of the European space (Hungary and Bulgaria) even building fences to keep them out.
Though the EU has not dealt with the refugee crisis well in itself, Harvard visiting professor Allison Mountz argued that its coordination of off-shore border control was more effective. Not that this was a good thing by any means. Indeed, she observed how the conversion of islands from traditionally hospitable “places of transit” into “incarcerous detention centers” ended up “reducing the space for asylum.” In her view, the use of deterrent border policies was an obvious failure.
Amidst the disappointment and critique, there was room for a little optimism, and Jennifer Hyndman, professor and Director at the Centre for Refugee Studies at York University in Toronto pointed out how “crisis has a function to open up political space” and thus for all the pain and suffering that is observed, there was potential for progressive solutions that wouldn’t arise in less pressing situations. However, she acknowledged that whilst there was room for a progressive opening there was indeed also the possibility of mass “securitization” as people become more driven by fear.
Professor of German Roman Graf spoke about the situation in Germany and how while there were strong shows of humanitarian support, Chancellor Merkel’s popularity was at an all time low. Merkel had been instrumental in dragging the center-right of German politics towards pro-refugee territory. Professor Graf emphasized the importance of German history in the response and referred to the first paragraph of their constitution which states that “the dignity of people is untouchable.” Such an attitude has led to the German authorities stating that they expect around a million asylum applications, despite rising right-wing sentiments and acts of violence against refugees and their supporters.
To make the situation more confusing, Kumin pointed to how the current refugee crisis from Syria and other countries has coincided with massive migration from countries like Macedonia and Pakistan, leading to a convergence of streams, both migratory and asylum seeking. She bemoaned the collapse of an EU-wide asylum policy and pointed out how for the first time, refugees were showing “agency” and “voting with their feet” by not stopping in the first safe country but instead moving towards where it was they thought they would have the best standard of hospitality (in these cases, this would be Germany and Sweden).
Natalie Figueroa ’18, who attended the talks and is taking a class on labor migration, enjoyed hearing the panel and seeing how they related to her coursework.
“It was interesting to learn how there was such a mix between refugees who wanted to remain in Europe and others who were set on returning home,” she said.
Jennifer Hyndman had quoted the figure that of 889 Syrians interviewed in Germany, 92 percent said that they were hoping to return. Indeed, according to research she quoted, most Syrians had expected to be home by now, and that their savings were being depleted.
Most of the refugees in Europe are young men — there are many more, eight million internally displaced people within Syria that have not been able to get out. Indeed, of these only the most able (financially or otherwise) were able to make the passage to Europe, as the rest live in camps in neighboring countries. The question of who it is that most needs help remained unanswerable.
Allison Mountz’s presentation of her research on the policing of migratory space and the conversion of islands into detention centers concluded with Judith Butler’s ever-relevant question of “whose lives count as human?” But Professor of Anthropology David Stoll spoke to the Campus after the talk, disagreeing.
“Everything I heard was about the dehumanization of border deterrents,” he said. “What about the dehumanization of allowing a large number of people into the job market at the lowest level, the lowest rung of civil society?”
(10/14/15 6:50pm)
The first debate between democratic candidates for the 2016 presidential election took place on Tuesday night. Before we went to press the College Democrats were expecting around 100 people to show up.
Bernard ‘Bernie’ Sanders is the candidate who seems to have the most support with college-age students, especially here in Vermont. The Middlebury Students for Bernie group has over 300 likes on Facebook and was one of the first chapters of his national student support campaign.
Of course, Bernie Sanders is the Junior Senator for Vermont and was previously Vermont’s sole congressman and before that was mayor of Burlington for eight years. It is of little surprise that he is something of a local favorite. But there is far more than a sentiment of pride that makes him so popular here.
His campaign for the democratic nomination has been characterized by huge audiences attending his rallies (11,000 in Tucson, AZ 26,000 in Boston, MA) and a commitment that his funding comes from “not the billionaires”. A self-described socialist, who has held all offices as an Independent. He has long been at the fore-front of socially progressive issues, having been a civil rights activist during his college days in Chicago. He also voted against the Defense of Marriage Act, the second war in Iraq and was a keen supporter of the Affordable Care Act.
In this week’s spread we will track his connection to the college as well as consider his resonance with our student body.
In October 1986, Dwight Garner ’88, then writing for the Campus (now a literary critic for the New York Times) sat down with Bernie in the Crest room at the College. Sanders had made the unplanned stop at Middlebury in between interviews. When offered a coffee by a college employee he refused it unless it was “on the college.”
Garner wrote: “He was drinking cranberry juice, after passing on the coffee. He wanted to discuss young people in Vermont. So did I.“Students have to realize that they’re going to have to fight to defend their rights,” he said. “When the people in charge realize that you’re not going to fight they’ll start eating away at you. They’ll do things like take away your right to consume alcohol.” … Many of these same young people, who generally agree with Sanders’ views, have trouble with the act that he is a socialist — indeed, the only socialist mayor in America. Where, he was asked, is the line drawn between a liberal democrat and a socialist? He cut his answer with blunt scissors: “There is a general ignorance of what the term ‘socialism’ means,” he said. “What we’re trying to do is create a society in which all people have the opportunity to lead self-sufficient lives…”
“The democrats don’t touch issues like wealth and power,” he says. “Nobody does. But we’re not going to be afraid to touch these issues. For example, how many people know that 50% of this country’s wealth is owned by 1% of its population?… We’re the wealthiest nation in the world, and all of our people should have a decent standard of living. We deserve that.” Sanders concluded his interview with Garner by saying “I think we have a real shot. I think that people want to be proud again of the moral choices their government is making.”
Almost all of what Sanders said that day is still directly relevant to his campaign today and his contemporary speeches echo this. During the announcement of his running for the presidential candidacy back in May of this year he stated:
“Today, we live in the wealthiest nation in the history of the world but that reality means very little for most of us because almost all of that wealth is owned and controlled by a tiny handful of individuals. In America we now have more income and wealth inequality than any other major country on earth.”
The similarity is obvious. It is this consistency, a trait that earns him respect from all sides of the political spectrum, which is an attribute that especially endears him to young voters. Speaking to The Campus, the College Democrats’ Communications Director Julian Gerson ’18 said “Bernie is exciting because for a lot of students it is the first time they’re going to vote. The great thing about Bernie is that he says what he’s going to do so clearly. Whereas other politicians make sweeping statements, Sanders has that substance. He does tangible things and that’s important for a lot of kids.”
Similarly, the co-president of the College Republicans Hayden DuBlois ’17 also highlighted how important this aura of honesty was; “there is a perspective that he is consistent, someone who has repeatedly throughout his career held the same progressive liberal positions, which has generated him a lot of respect and enthusiasm.”
While such consistency and openness is attractive it is does not answer the question of whether he is popular enough amongst the wider set of Democratic voters, let alone in the nation at large. “It’s easy to target the 1% in Vermont,” said Gerson. Andrew Plotch ’18.5, also of the College Democrats pointed out that whether Sanders “would win that 4% of independent voters is what every top-ranking Democrat is asking.”
Gerson continued “he represents a subset of democratic values, but I don’t think he reflects the entire party base. He appeals to a younger voter who is disenchanted with conventional government and he’s doing a good job of playing up that perspective.”
This sentiment that Bernie is grabbing a lot of attention but ultimately may be unelectable at the general election is good news to Republicans: “I love it,” said DuBlois. “The more he stays in the race, the more damage he does to Hillary. If he gets the nomination then I don’t think Republicans have to worry very much.”
Hazel Millard ’18, the co-president of the College Democrats thought that the strength of Bernie’s campaign lay in his “focus on socio-economic issues”. Indeed even DuBlois recognized this: “Republicans need to be talking income inequality more. I do give Bernie credit for bringing this up on a national level.”
Though clearly a successful activist who has garnered a lot of attention, he is not free from criticism. On the left, there are worries that he is not too progressive on the issue of gun control, a topic which Millard suggested reflected the nature of Vermont more than anything else. In another point, DuBlois reminded us how, in 1990, Sanders tried to avoid paying the employer’s share of Social Security Tax and was made to do so by the state Department of Employment and Training.
So perhaps he isn’t perfect and maybe he will have a hard time convincing the democratic electorate that he could win a presidential election, but it is certainly an exciting time for politics on our campus. Our local senator and one of the most progressive politicians in the country is in contention to be on the presidential ballot.
(09/30/15 8:49pm)
Last week, students publicly demonstrated their displeasure with the recent John Doe v. Middlebury College ruling from the State of Vermont.
On Thursday night, the words “Doe must go, I stand w/ Jane” were chalked on the pavement leading up to Mead Chapel and the go/doe link was established.
The link — which leads to a simple and clear WordPress blog — allows easy public access to the court documents of Doe’s suit against the College. It also encourages students to send “a note to the Trustees, and take a stand on social media.” The call to students from the page is best summarized by the tag-line: “it’s time for us to determine what our standards are when it comes to sexual violence.”
In the John Doe case, a student was accused of sexual assault while on an SIT study abroad program in the fall of 2014. He was found not responsible by the program’s own internal investigation. Once he had returned to the College, the alleged victim reached out to the College, who then ran a second investigation that found John Doe responsible and he was to be expelled.
However, on September 16 when sued by John Doe, the College was ordered through federal injunction by a United States District judge to re-enroll the student, while the legal proceedings continued.
Whilst the campaign perhaps risks appearing as a witch-hunt against the alleged perpetrator — especially through the chalking of a public space — its organizer, who wishes to remain anonymous, states that it was intended more as a way of instigating important conversations.
“The John Doe case does a really interesting thing because it allows us to consider campus sexual assault without necessarily having to worry about the impact [on] the survivor because the survivor isn’t on this campus.”
Crucially, the John Doe v. Middlebury case did not actually explore Doe’s potential culpability. The student behind go/doe pointed out how possibly the most obvious victim, Jane Doe, was “symbolically annihilated” from the conversation.
“Go/doe is a moment that was spawned through some conversations through very few individuals just feeling that its really disrespectful that this campus is not feeling outraged by this and that there isn’t more attention,” said the anonymous student.
Criticism of the College’s handling of the John Doe case has also come from other sources.
The Campus critiqued the College’s responses to the initial investigations in in last week’s editorial.
The Student Government Association has also previously pressed for changes to the College’s sexual assault policies. Last year, an SGA resolution on sexual respect recommended that investigators record their work so that they can be held accountable through the process. No such changes have been made thus far.
Vice-President for Communications and Marketing Bill Burger says that there are currently no plans to update the Policy against Sexual Misconduct, Domestic Violence, Dating Violence and Stalking in light of the John Doe case.
Nonetheless, he emphasized that the College has not finished with the controversy: “Middlebury College will comply with order of the federal court in all respects even as we appeal the decision to the Second Circuit Court of Appeals.”
(09/17/15 10:47pm)
Ari Fleischer ‘82 is one of The College’s most prominent graduates in the world of politics. He was ever-present in the media as the White House Press Secretary during the crucial first years of George W. Bush’s presidency (2001 - 2003). He was with the President when the tragic events of 9/11 unfolded. For the last three years on September 11, he has tweeted what went on behind the scenes. Posting the event that had happened at the corresponding time of day, he produced a harrowing and revealing account of perhaps the defining event of this century so far. Though the medium used for expression could be seen as trivializing such a vital moment, the posts make for chilling reading. They will long remain one of the most precise historical accounts of the first reactions of those whose duty it was to face the nation in the wake of such a disaster and respond.
The Campus spoke to Mr. Fleischer on the phone and he pointed out how challenging the process had been, noting that after tweeting all day about such an emotional time, it was his most draining experience working in the White House. He started tweeting his memories almost by accident. In 2012, feeling he should share some of the notes and photographs he had from the day, he started posting them. They elicited such a response that he could not stop. Now, he is gratified by the fact that young people are learning about 9/11 directly from his tweets and that school teachers have said they will use his tweets as classroom material. Reflecting on the changing nature of communications he remarks how “powerful a medium twitter can be. [It] has the power to make you live moment by moment. And for a day like September 11, capturing it moment by moment and sharing it was my goal.”
Though the tweets are all recommended reading and all appear @AriFleischer, some of the more revealing comments are well worth highlighting. When the first plane struck, Fleischer was accompanying the President on a visit to a school in Sarasota, Fla. They all still assumed it to be an accident. But when the second plane hit, the President had already begun reading to the schoolchildren. As such, the President was ‘one of the few people in the world not watching TV’.
Another remarkable fact exposed by Fleischer’s memory is that when aboard Air Force One (the aircraft designed to transport the President) Bush gave the chilling orders that commercial airlines may be shot down if necessary and that the military be put on the highest alert status in 28 years. As the normal filters were scrapped in such a time of emergency, unreliable rumors were able to seep into the Presidential circle, including the possibilities that Air Force One was under attack, that there was a car bomb at the State Department and that a high speed object was moving towards the Bush family ranch. Amid such an aura of panic and confusion there was even a guard posted outside the cockpit. With so little information to go on, an inside job from those at the very top could not have been ruled out.
Intrigued by Fleischer’s views on contemporary foreign policy issues, The Campus wondered whether he felt that the country was safer now than it was just before 9/11 or whether threats and security had increased in equal measure. He was unwaveringly clear: “I think we are absolutely safer.” Despite his partisan views, he was surprisingly supportive of the Obama administration, at least in terms of homeland security. Mentioning how Obama had continued Bush’s work he pointed out that there was now a “bipartisan template” to fighting terrorism. Controversially, he said that the crucial elements of that strategy included “keeping Guantanamo open, warrantless wire-tappings, indefinite detentions and drone strikes.”
Speaking at an Alumni Achievement Award ceremony here at the college in 2002, he faced a lot of backlash from students regarding the Iraq War. The Campus asked him if he thought that those who were against the war were vindicated by the emergence of the self-proclaimed Islamic State in the region, a force arguably more chaotic and dangerous than either Al-Qaeda or Saddam Hussein’s regime. He disagreed, believing instead that the Iraq that George W. Bush left for Obama to inherit was “a fledgling democracy” and that the harm arose out of Obama’s reluctance to engage with it – that he “walked away from it.”
Ari Fleischer now runs a sports communications business.
(03/11/15 11:12pm)
Mesopotamia was the birthplace of civilization. Its fertile lands allowed for the first instances of agriculture and organized society. From between the rivers Euphrates and Tigris emerged the first empires. From within that crescent of land came the first accounts of writing and the rest, as they say, is history.
The Islamic State’s indisputably effective media arm wielded yet another masterstroke by announcing that it had bulldozed the ancient Assyrian archeological site at Nimrud, Iraq. Though burning people in cages, selling women and children as sex slaves, throwing gays off buildings and countless beheadings had rightly outraged many the world over, these recent attacks on the very foundations of human civilization struck a whole new nerve.
But the question is whether it is any worse. Does reconfiguring stone, when imbued with cultural connotations trump exterminating a living person? The tangible human abuses carried out by the group have become so commonplace that each new beheading loses relative shock-value. They tried doing several (21) at once in Libya, but this only furthered the impression that banality had attached itself to barbarity. The blatant destruction of cultural artifacts is just the latest way of them grabbing our attention, and it worked.
UNESCO declared it a war crime and public figures declared their outrage but the IS has been committing war crimes on a daily basis. Further, the great stone edifices at Nimrud and other places, as beautiful and important as they are were, were doubtlessly constructed under slave-labor and a monstrously oppressive regime, the likes of which the IS would love to emulate.
The Islamic State’s espoused ideology would suggest that they were merely eradicating false idols, cleansing their newly appropriated lands of any pre-Mohammedan religion. But it would take a special sort of fool to sincerely believe that the militants think that Iraqis were still going around worshipping winged bulls with human faces. The Islamic State may be driven by heinous Wahhabi fundamentalism but their modus operandi is terrorist, and terror is employed in order to provoke. It is unlikely that anything they do will force President Obama’s hand into declaring total war but actions like these can nonetheless provoke serious questions for us in the West, the crimes’ intended audience.
We live in a world where horror is commonplace if not immediate. Our interconnected global space hosts countless abuses each day. Our media and our choice of media select which atrocities we perceive as being especially awful. The destruction of artifacts, culture and history strikes us as particularly bad, not necessarily because it is worse, but simply because it is rarer. We have been over-saturated with violence to the point where the sight of broken stones hurts more than that of broken bones.
I heard a story once from a man, an actor, who had run away from the Ayatollah’s regime in Iran. He said how he had a come across a man cleaning a bathroom once who seemed especially jovial. The actor was having a rough day and asked the man to what he owed his happiness. The man explained how he had a successful business that left him feeling unsatisfied. So one day, he quit his job and swore to never listen or watch the news ever again. And thus, he found joy.
Absolute denial might not be the best way forward but rather one should be aware that when dealing with a group like the IS, outrage begets horror. Reaction only fuels their fire further. Their media output is astonishingly sophisticated and ruthlessly exploits our own and the media’s complicity in the spread of their barbarity.
Increasingly, western powers seem unable to articulate what it is that we believe in. We know what it is that we dislike, yet we fail to defeat it. Progress cannot solely be negative. We need to believe in something. Perhaps that something would be the defense of some conception of civilization, or perhaps it would simply be the integrity of individual persons. The question asked in the title is one for each of us to ponder. Its answer might indeed frame the intellectual standpoint of our age.
(11/21/13 1:55am)
Double-tap. Explosion. Dust. Blood. Celebrations. It reads like a resume of a more traditional military confrontation but in these modern instances no one has to touch a gun or even look their enemy in the face. Welcome to the world of Unmanned Aerial Vehicles.
Many governments, private firms and individuals operate these every day. They are not necessarily armed — but they can be, and often are, when in the hands of regimes such as that of the United States. They have been quite rightly subject to much controversy — especially surrounding the issue of whether or not it would be legal for them to shoot down U.S. citizens living and operating in militant groups abroad, etc.
A few weeks back, Hakimullah Mehsud, the leader of the Taliban, was killed by a drone attack in the north of Pakistan. One of the West’s ideological nemeses was taken out without any loss of life on “our side.” A success by the standards of short-term reale politique perhaps but the consequences could prove to be severe. Many fear that act of aggression will compromise the efforts in Pakistani politics to enter into dialogue with the Taliban as they attempt to establish some degree of stability in the tribal north of the country. Revenge attacks that will inevitably affect civilians (supposedly our side) have been threatened. Furthermore, the newly nominated leader of the Taliban, Mullah Fazrullah, is infamous for being behind the group that shot the brave Malala Yousafzai in the head for trying to get an education. There are hopes that, due to his less explicit links to the majority of the Taliban associated tribes, Fazrullah will have less direct control over the Taliban’s total operations. Does this mean that they will wither away and disappear? Of course not. Drone attacks on specific individuals, especially if they are being targeted for their political positions, can only ever replace one evil with another. All that they ensure is further delaying the peace process and disillusioning allied states.
How would the U.S. feel if one of their allies were to kill a U.S. citizen on U.S. soil because they posed a possible threat to that allied state? This is a U.S. regime with plummeting prestige on the international scene and one of the few things it should be glad to have on its side in its “war on terror” is a government committed to fighting the same cause — it is of course in Pakistan’s interest to disable violent militant groups within its borders. But to overstep national sovereignty in such a regular and foolish manner can have very little benefit in the long run.
Furthermore, the precision of drone strikes is also questionable, in large part through the regular use of the double-tap, which ensures a second bombing of the same location only a few moments after the initial blast, inevitably harming those who first respond to the scene of the attack.
The ethical use of drones in “normal” warfare is an altogether different question, and one can, with some optimism, imagine a future in which drones fight themselves with no human lives are lost or at stake. But in the world that we live in, the careless abuse of an allied sovereignty for attacks that have highly questionable outcomes, should not be supported. The U.S. would not allow it on its own territory and if it cannot uphold that most basic of reciprocities then how can it expect to be taken as a serious mediator of international affairs, let alone “the world’s policeman.”
(10/30/13 6:01pm)
I spy with my little eye, something that begins with the letter “S.” That’s right, scandal. As Edward Snowden nestles up in Moscow using his own father as a media battering ram, and Julian Assange is holed up in the Ecuadorian embassy launching vain campaigns to run as an Australian senator whilst fighting extradition to Sweden on charges of sexual assault (what a model defender of progressive transparency), a more traditional source of government scandal flexed its dusty muscles: the press.
It was France’s “Le Monde” who revealed that the NSA has indeed been spying on French nationals without the consent of the French government. There were also accusations that they tapped the phones of leading French diplomats which would go against every known notion of immunity and international respect. It was then followed by the “Spiegel” saying that Chancellor Angela Merkel’s phone was bugged since 2002. There has of course been loads of recent outrage over the extent of the NSA’s activities within the USA, but now that it has been snooping and stealing information across borders and, more excruciatingly, across the borders of its allies, the scandal has reached a whole new level.
In all honesty, however, it comes as no great surprise that millions of French, Mexican, Argentinian and German phone calls may be being recorded by the defender of the Land of the Free without any authorization. As the NSA says itself, they do nothing which others countries don’t already do. There is a double-edged sword dangling in the midst of all this: either what the NSA says is true and they are just the worst at being intelligently secretive or they are lying and the NSA is miles deep in what the French call merde. Either way it paints are rather disappointing picture of one of the world’s supposedly more effective intelligence services and of the U.S. defense project in general.
I think few people would have a problem with an effective government that compromises individual privacy in the interest of some ulterior good — say preventing the creation of a violent terrorist cell. But when that so-called effective government is better equipped to steal your keystrokes during your next browsing session than to provide you with comprehensive medical care were you to suffer an actual stroke, then I think you have a problem. And when you extrapolate the problem onto the international scene — that is the nature of this column after all — then you see a super-power better prepared to spy on the citizens of fellow democratic states than to defend the interests of those still oppressed by non-democratic ones.
If the allegations are true and the NSA has indeed been spying on both civilians, diplomatic officials, and politicians, then the U.S. will lose further credibility on the international stage. One cannot pretend to be a bastion of freedom whilst undertaking such practices, especially when they are done so stupidly.
If it really is in the U.S. national interest to risk a huge amount of its international prestige, then it should really be stealthier with its operations. There is no doubt that other powerful countries have similar operations; I just believe that the difference is that they don’t get caught whilst at it. In short, I don’t mind if the NSA knows everything that some random French guy, your sister or I do or talk about. I just wish they were better at keeping their own operations secure and secret.
(10/03/13 12:32am)
Somehow, without any U.S. troops being deployed or thousands of civilians dying as collateral damage, both Iran and Syria seem to have given in to international diplomatic pressure. Iran’s new regime, after being democratically elected to succeed that of the highly questionable Ahmadinejad, has lived up to its more moderate rhetoric by entering into high-level talks over its place in the international community as well as the state of its nuclear program. Meanwhile Syria has succumbed to the Russian plan of placing its chemical weapons stockpile under international control – a far cleaner option than the vague, limited strikes suggested by the Obama administration.
What is notable about both these developments is that the U.S. has not been the key actor. The world can sort itself out without America. This is not a blemish on our only super-power; it can be a good thing for Kerry and co.: reduced dependency could bring about more reasoned and less gung-ho approaches. Instead of being the world’s policemen they can be great mediators.
The Syrian crisis has just proven to be a propaganda disaster compared to what Putin achieved. He has managed to make Russia seem like the most rational and obedient members of the international community – especially with his crude but cool piece in the New York Times only days before the new plan came about. Thus it seems as if other nations are not inherently antagonistic to Western intentions.
The danger lies in those groups that have no ties to their populous: despotic governments and nefarious terrorist groups. To focus on these new belligerents we cannot use means of traditional warfare. The war on terror should have been a war against non-state actors, but that never came about because the great and glorious President Bush decided that there was an “axis” of evil states and not a collection of malicious ideas. When these states are in danger of committing great horrors then state-on-state war may be acceptable (such as would have occurred had Assad not opened talks last week). But in order to fight other antagonistic groups different methods are needed.
Al-Shabbab, for example, the latest Al-Qaeda off-shoot to commit a major atrocity, killed dozens at the Westgate mall in Nairobi during a horrific three-day siege. Scarily, several of the militants are said to have had U.S. citizenship and one of them, known colloquially as the “white widow” (her husband blew himself up during the 7/7 attacks in London), is thought to be the orchestrator and is British. The ideas of these toxic groups are not contained by borders and nor are there actions or their goals. They are embracing the ever hyped ‘social media’ and although that could very well be a ploy to distract analysts and intelligence officers, the very sight of a tweet from Al-Shabbab with “#westgate” is chilling in a whole new way.
It reminds me especially of the Woolwich attack this summer when two men ambushed a soldier in broad daylight on a street in South London and chopped him up with a meat cleaver. One of them then walked confidently up to the then-arriving news cameras (who got there quicker than police) and proceeded to explain their rationale to the shocked public. Michael Adebolajo, who was raised in a Christian Nigerian home in England, killed a British soldier on a London street under the pretext that “Muslims are dying daily by British soldiers” and he would thusly “never stop fighting you until you leave us alone.” It is the toxic appropriation of another culture - if it deserves that name - against his own and then the harrowing defense of his actions that makes this modern version of terrorism so horrifying. This highlights another issue that is being hinted at through the Kenyan tragedy: seemingly perfectly rational human beings (Adebolajo was supposedly radicalized at a London university) are subscribing to militant Islamic rhetoric without any real ties, blood or otherwise to the original cause. It is terrifying to think that an ideology that makes murder intelligibly acceptable is being preferred over all of our ever-so-great bastions of peace, democracy and whatever. The recent use of modern technologies only further proves that these ideas are not limited to the backwards and ill connected.
On one level we must make our own culture appealing again, and fighting fire with fire as we have done in the last decade is probably not the best way to do so. Then again, the dangers of transnational, transcultural terrorism are not solely going to be eradicated by ideological warfare. Just last week 80 people died in a church in Pakistan after bombings by the Pakistani Taliban, independent of the aforementioned infractions. However, that should surely be the first step, to keep people on “our side” from slipping over to “theirs.” We inhabit a world where our enemies may not take the form of entire states, just as we do not represent in ourselves the UK or the US. Instead we are fighting against ideas and, far more dangerously, people who will die for those ideals, no matter how flawed or vicious they may be.
(09/12/13 1:03am)
He didn’t want to tell us the story, but he did. The man at the dinner table this summer had dug up the bodies of murdered Kurds in the early nineties. He had recovered samples in order to help prove that Saddam’s regime had been responsible for using Sarin against defenseless citizens. He was then infected by the Sarin in their corpses and lived in agony for years.
An atrocious chemical weapons attack — believed to have been perpetrated using the very same nerve agent, Sarin — took place near Damascus this August. It happened in the midst of the ugly civil war in the Middle Eastern state of Syria that has been ongoing since 2011. Many other states of the region underwent great socio-political upheaval, but in Syria the popular protests only provoked further tyranny. Yet it is now, two and a half years later, with hundreds of thousands dead and millions displaced that the West is seriously contemplating intervention.
There was indeed vague talk of it before, however, the frightfully underwhelming prospect of a “limited narrow attack,” coupled with the Obama administration’s arbitrary creation of conveniently flexible red lines make the current plans both pedantic and inefficient.
It is one thing to say that chemical weapons are an abhorrent and inhumane method — an undeniable truth — but quite another to assert that they are so much worse than conventional means of war, so much worse that they justify more war. That line of thought is justified by the 1925 Geneva Protocol, which outlawed the use of chemical weapons following their disastrous introduction to the battlefield during the First World War. But laws of war read like the rules of a sport which makes sense because in times past war was an often respectful and honorable adventure (think Sparta, Napoleon). I am pretty sure, however, that had drones been buzzing around the fields of Verdun, murdering indirectly through the grace of a military geek in an office somewhere in the land of stars and stripes, they too would have been outlawed in 1925. Can one honestly rank the humaneness of different tools of death?
But that philosophical line of thought is far too ideal. Yes, a world without any murderous tools would be perfect — but we have to deal with what is. Chemical weapons, regardless of the side that used them, cannot and must not be tolerated. To deny their future propagation, a firm hand should be shown on Syria. If someone gets away with it, everyone will think it possible. A lid must be kept on the use of chemical weapons. This is a notion void of direct humanism; further pain and suffering would be inflicted upon the Syrian people as a result. Though this idea may be Machiavellian, in the end, more chaos is prevented. I never want anyone I know, let alone love, to have his or her life cut short by an odorless and invisible substance released by conscious evil.
There is talk of a UN mandate being altogether bypassed by Obama and Kerry because the intervention would be on humanitarian grounds. But if the West were seriously doing all this warmongering on humanitarian grounds, we would have intervened years ago, when the killing started. So it is on pure realist political grounds that we go to war. It’s hypocritical but necessary logic.
Any hope for a legal intervention — in terms of international law — backed by the UN could be sabotaged by Syria’s allies (notably, the ever-so-sardonic Russians and now by a US that, at the G20 conference, said that the security council was no longer a “viable path” with which to deal with Syria).
Despite all of the aforementioned obstacles, the main question over Syria remains: who do we actually want to win? The idealists would argue that it doesn’t matter and that the right course of action would always be that which minimizes the total number of lost human lives. But then again, any intervention would always invoke our own interests, and if demonization is extrapolated to its furthest, we will have to make a rather grueling choice between a Dictator and Islamists. If all were dandy, I would advocate an intervention on the side of the Syrian people against those who released the chemical attack without supporting the other side. That would fulfill both a humanitarian mission as well as serving our absolute interests.
For all those not directly concerned, the story of the war thus far has been a succession of finding reasons not to intervene. It is a complex and depressing affair but also extremely easy (and often helpful) to fly peace signs and criticize the foreign policy decisions of one’s own state. Despite the obvious hypocrisies and numerous issues in play, I feel the best — although perhaps not the right — thing is being done. The use of chemical weapons should force our hand in intervening against the side that perpetrated the attack. Showing intolerance is a must.
(05/08/13 11:18pm)
I’ve been writing this column for the whole of this school year. During that entire time there has been one conflict of major international importance which somehow has never been quite topical enough for me to discuss in depth. I refer, of course, to the civil conflict in the Syrian Arab Republic. Since the height of the Arab Spring (or awakening if you must) in 2011, President Bashar al-Assad – who used to work as an optician in London not too far from where I live – has been resisting a popular uprising that seeks to overturn his regime and replace it with a more democratic alternative. His resistance has been brutal: air strikes and mass bombardments are often used against his own citizens. Scary recent accounts even mention his deployment of chemical weapons. The dynamic behind the power struggle is far more complex than in many of the other countries in that region. The majority of Syria’s population is Sunni whereas the leading family and the rest of the elite are Shi’ite. The Shi’ite are backed by Iran. The Sunni are backed by the Saudis and, by proxy, the United States.
Calls for intervention are not new, but the haunting rumor of chemical warfare – the usage of a certain Sarin element – make them extremely audible right now. Going to war in other lands and fighting for the causes of others has been the bane of U.S. and other western forces in recent military history (Think Vietnam and Iraq). Therefore, it is understandable why the Obama administration has been reluctant to engage thus far. They keep hinting at ultimatums but each and every time Assad & Co. go too far — for example by using weapons of mass destruction against his own people, innocent human beings — the U.S. announces that it needs to reconsider further. The embarrassing double standards that have been displayed by NATO by defeating Gaddafi but perversely standing idly by Assad’s massacres demonstrate not only moral hypocrisy but genuine cowardice. Why lie to ourselves that we intervene on humanitarian grounds? We intervene only when power can be displayed, military muscles flexed; “guns out” in all respects.
It will be very curious, but unsurprising, if Syria is attacked, but a recent air-strike suggests Israel may already have started. Iran, it is presumed, will hover with possibly semi-developed nuclear weapons defending their only true ally’s interest. Russia, although it has pretty adamantly defended Syria’s sovereignty up to this point, would most probably stand aside in the event of any real conflict. Although the standard moral assumption that the “little people” are being slaughtered by the crazy, all-powerful despot paints a pretty clear picture of right or wrong, it is unclear as to who exactly the West would be helping. It is widely known that al-Qaeda has allied to the cause of the rebels. Another strange phenomenon has been the flight of many Europeans to join the cause and fight for the rebels. This supra-national cause has echoes of the Spanish Civil War, although the underlying tension here seems to be religious not political. We would be supporting Sunnis, some radical, versus Shi’ites.
If the United States and its allies don’t want to risk another failed intervention and avoid another potential radical Islamic state, then they must support a tyrant. If as a democracy the U.S. want to be moral and righteous, then should support the rebels at great military cost as well as potentially supporting even greater enemies. It’s the definition of a lose-lose situation. To justify the first they need only recall the disastrous venture into Iraq although the pressure for this one is far greater. And as a reminder to the dangers of supporting militants who share a common enemy but no common goals, cue Afghanistan circa 1985 when the U.S. funded Al-Qaeda predecessors in war against the Soviets.
As a solution to this gruesome dilemma I suggest the West risk it. We know for sure that Assad massacres and will continue to massacre his citizens. We do not know how costly intervention will be, either in terms of short-term cost or long-term outcome. Let us focus on what we do know, not on hypotheticals; let us do what we know to be right and save lives. At least 70,000 have died thus far, and many, many more have been displaced. This won’t be another Afghanistan or Libya; Syria is a capable military power. And in the long-run this would only be a first step towards the inevitable showdown with Iran that has been brewing ever since the revolution of 1979.
(04/24/13 4:43pm)
There is a lot to be said about respecting the dead. There is also a lot to be said about how much so many people hated the late Baroness Thatcher. Following the UK’s first and thus far only female prime minister’s death, columnists and intellectuals across England raged war over whether or not one had to be nice about Margaret Thatcher when they reported her death. Some, like the Guardian’s Glenn Greenwald likened forcefully positive obituaries to a great infringement of free speech and a thought-police style warping of history, whilst many others stuck to the traditional laud-loaded great woman of our times spiel. No one wants to speak ill of the dead but no one wants to manipulate the truth either.
She has had what is a state funeral in all but name (one has to settle for a ceremonial procession with military honors these days) despite a clear majority of members of the public being completely and utterly adverse to the idea that the government would spend their money on organizing, providing and policing the event. Many have called, ironically but somewhat logically, for her funeral to be privatized. The last Prime Minister to receive a funeral this grand was the last to receive an official state funeral – the nigh-on-mythical Sir Winston Churchill. His funeral in 1965 took place against the backdrop of a wondrous celestial curtsey of the cranes on the waterfront. Thatcher was an altogether different beast. Her legacy was not one of uniting a country against the most lethal of common enemies and thus going a long way towards saving a free Europe and perhaps a free world. Instead, hers was of disaffecting an entire nation from itself. The argument that she was a great leader because she had such a profound effect on the then present and future of her nation seems desperately flawed, for the same could be said of the most atrocious of dictators. Not that Thatcher was one. It’s just very important to remember that the level of political impact is not inherently linked to the amount of public good. She had strong beliefs, overcame huge prejudice to reach office and inspired many people. But then again, she was also without doubt the most aggressively despised of all my country’s recent leaders.
Her values were founded on a strong and just belief in the affirmation of oneself, in personal freedom. This belief was epitomized in her policies, notably giving people living in social housing the ability to buy their homes. She was a promoter of private power and privatized many of the UK’s public services. Her determination was to remove government from the people, and her adoration for liberty went a long way towards explaining her tendency to often disregard public opinion: after years of manic liberalism, she herself became the most free person in the country. She refused to denounce South African apartheid, took exiled Chilean dictator Pinochet under her wing and instigated a Poll Tax known officially and oh-so-diplomatically as the community charge.
The anger displayed and felt towards her by huge waves of the British population was able to come out with her death. This somewhat sickly opportunism, demonstrated by insidious parties and the morbid but admittedly funny campaign to get an excerpt from the Wizard of Oz, the track “Ding Dong the Witch is Dead,” to number one in the music charts (it got to second), probably pushed democratic criticism a little too far.
In a way her death provides us with an opportunity to evaluate her legacy. Without doubt she increased the UK’s stature as a world power, becoming very close to Reagan and being at the forefront of the right side at the end of the Cold War. She also bravely regained the Falkland Islands from the Argentines as well as defeating the often-mafiosa trade unions. Then again, she also caused many diplomatic scandals and great social pain and discord. Divisive on almost all fronts, she was without doubt the most controversially influential peace time leader a parliamentary monarchy has ever seen. Not to say, of course, that that is by any means a good thing.
(04/10/13 1:46pm)
The press, the democratic world’s fourth estate, has never been more effective. In this, the age of information, news can reach us as quickly as it develops. We can now tweet and blog and IM the revolution, not to mention broadcast it. Freedom of the press has long been seen as essential in any free country, but in recent weeks, one nation, my very own, the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland, has scarily begun to repeal some of that freedom.
Following the enormous phone-hacking scandals of recent years, during which many of the UK’s leading publications infringed on the freedoms of private individuals — often in a truly disgraceful fashion, from sleazily-obtained celebrity stories to the bribing of high-ranking police officers — a ministerial investigation led by Lord Lelveson was instigated. Subsequently, the 200-year-old newspaper News of the World was shut down in a vain attempt to ward off further accusations. Many of the most perverse and unsavory stories — such as the hacking of the cellphone of a kidnapped then murdered girl, Milly Dowler, that gave her parents false hope of her survival, all in search of a cheap scoop — were linked to Rupert Murdoch’s behemoth News International. That multinational corporation alone controlled close to a third of the British media and was trying to expand. The Murdochs were quizzed on live TV, much to the great amusement of most of the populace, myself included. But there always seemed to be something standing in the way of the real story. Murdoch senior’s close ties to the ruling caste of British politicians, from all parties, was undeniable. He even had one of his paper’s ex-editors, Andy Coulson, working in the government cabinet. Furthermore, the senior executive of the company, Rebecca Brooks, was a regular guest at Prime Minister David Cameron’s house. Both of those former News International employees have been arrested and charged.
It’s no surprise that the press needed a shake-up, but after months of deliberation, the legislature has agreed upon restrictions that have come to be seen by many as rather unwholesome. By resorting to a Royal Charter — sounds dodgy, I know — Parliament can now impose fines of several million dollars on media sources (even online) that do not follow their rules. It can also stop certain things from being published. It seems like a clear step towards state censorship. The new restrictions were criticized and mocked across the world from countries that behold free press, such as the U.S., to authoritative regimes, such as Iran and Ukraine. One must not forget that it was in fact the free press that was able to uncover the scandal in the first place. Thus, as it had already applied a check on itself, extra legislation seemed like nothing other than a post-collateral guilt trip. Nevertheless, although the Royal Charter has the potential to set a scary trend, legislation does nothing more than what is necessary in order to protect the people. The recent scandal would not be able to reoccur. If we did not have laws that do that then what use is any form of effective government?
Freedom of expression is one thing; using and exploiting other innocent people for the purpose of tabloid excitement is another thing altogether. The headline may be startling, but the fine print is somewhat reassuring. The sort of things that would provoke this new supervisory body to instigate such fines would not likely be published anyways. It could have gone even further — Hugh Grant and other members of the powerful new lobby group Hacked Off were pushing for actual legislation, but the prime minister rightly veered away from the idea. But the main wider-ranging issue, has not been addressed.
One cannot forget that one of the main reasons behind what happened was that the press, especially that run by megalomaniacal moguls such as Murdoch, had and still have too much power, and, what’s more, they really know it, thus gaining the confidence to pull off stunts such as these. Tougher regulations are required in order to safeguard individuals who, for a long time, have been greatly detached from the workings of the higher realms of British public life. However, these laws alone will not bridge that gap. The lingering suspicion that it was the political elite’s fault for allowing characters such as Murdoch to play king-maker has not disappeared. Thus, while the regulations themselves are probably enough to protect private individuals, they do not address the real problem. The press was only guilty when it was allowed to wield too much power, and that power had nothing to do with the detritus it printed. The real culprits are those who are still in charge and still representing once great institutions like the press and a non-corrupt government.
(03/13/13 5:12pm)
The president of Venezuela, Hugo Chávez, has died. One of the last bastions of old-school socialism has passed away. He was undisputedly among the most important and frantically adored national leaders during the early years of the 21st century, and hundreds of thousands of his followers have since passionately mourned his death. In the capital city of Caracas, Chávez’s body remained on display, draped in red-yellow-blue flags, which made for a sensational tropical picture.
After several days of national mourning, an enormous state funeral was held on Friday. Without such a charismatic and impassioned leader, who will voice the concerns of Venezuela and many other developing nations in combating what they view as U.S. imperialism? Who will spearhead the discourse against the capitalist normalization and Western dominance of world trade and politics?
The unfortunate passing of Chávez happens only 16 months after another of the world’s most eccentric political characters, North Korea’s former supreme leader, Kim Jong-Il, passed away. Succeeding him is his son Kim Jong-Un. Many hoped that the new, younger supreme leader would set the rogue Asian state back on course to peaceful and fruitful interactions with other nations.
That was not to be the case. The North Korean military repeatedly carried out nuclear tests and last week threatened its enemies with preemptive nuclear attacks before receiving some of the UN’s heaviest sanctions.
In consequence, North Korea severed all ties with South Korea, including scrapping all prior peace talks. Kim Jong-Un thus seems to be even more volatile than his predecessors. While on the face of it, this situation is extremely worrying, it demonstrates an increased insecurity and will only augment North Korea’s political isolation.
There are very few states that stand up to Western powers, but those that do have always tended to do so along one of two paths. One way is to combat imperialism ideologically and politically through more integrating economic policies that focus on welfare and the public good rather than simple and senile quests for profits and nothing else.
These socialist principles are noble but are suffocated by the global market and can rarely lift off effectively. Venezuela, along with its close partner in Cuba, were some of the few states who could function with a true socialist model without sacrificing too much. It has to be noted that much of Venezuela’s ability to instigate such policies was due to the country’s notable oil wealth.
An alternative route to fighting the West is through an extremist ideology coupled with quasi-totalitarian state control and the dissuasive weight of military aggression. North Korea and Iran are probably the best contemporary examples of this path. That said, Iran has done nothing terrible of late; in fact, it has seemingly followed some UN regulations, converting all recorded uranium production into innocent domestic energy. Meanwhile, North Korea’s recent outburst of ridicule-worthy rhetoric follows no logic. The UN sanctions mean that North Korea is effectively driving itself to economic suicide, and any real physical attack would have consequences just as self-destructive.
With Latin America’s great post-Bolivarian leader dead and North Korea’s violent rhetoric verging on the suicidal, it seems that there is a void in coherent anti-U.S. political discourse. While it is undoubtedly a good thing that violent states have become isolated, it is a danger to have the whole world on the same route of absolute capitalist truth.
Even if the free market is what gets you off, counter-rhetoric and the exposure to alternatives is both healthy and vital for the West’s own progress.
To be lulled into a one-dimensional political universe is medieval. Although hegemonic tendencies are inevitable, it is important to be exposed to alternatives, especially those as well-meaning and potentially brilliant as democratic socialism.
(02/20/13 5:08pm)
Romania joined the European Union on Jan. 1, 2007. Despite adhering three years after the majority of Eastern European countries, the country is still considered to be part of the fifth wave of expansion. The delay was due to widespread concern surrounding Romania’s high-level of organized crime and corruption. That pre-existing conception was the first example from a long-list of instances of state hate.
The European Union’s big shots did not trust that Romania was ready in 2004, yet now, six years after it joined them as an equal member state, Romania is nevertheless still picked upon and is the subject of extreme mistrust. Three years ago a lot of noise was made over Nicolas Sarkozy’s plan to remove the “social burden” represented by the Roma (an ethnic minority from Romania, commonly known as travelers or gypsies). The Roma had arrived in France from Romania by taking full advantage of the European freedom of circulation. Sarkozy, then President of France, went about their extradition by offering the unwanted settlers a cash payment in order to persuade them to get on “specially chartered” flights back to Romania. Some members of the European hierarchy identified the move as part of a frightening “resurgence of xenophobia,” comparing it to events “not seen since the second World War.” Despite that crude but just attack, nothing concrete happened. The French police were unashamedly allowed to target and deport Roma settlers.
“Why don’t you come over?”
Earlier this year some scare-mongering appeared in the British press over the fact that the British government’s ban on job-seeking migrants from Romania will expire next year. In retaliation a Romanian news-site released an advertisement taunting the British with a “Why don’t you come over?” slogan, bragging that half of their women looked like Princess Kate, Duchess of Cambridge, whilst the other half looked like her much adored, and nigh on sex symbol sister Pippa. Despite the crude means, the argument was valid. The European Union allows the free movement of persons across its borders. Any move by governments to counteract such essential principles can only ever be short-term and thus wholly ineffective. All it can do is raise tensions and give legal grounding for future xenophobia.
So hungry I could eat a horse.
Another European story recently brought Romania into the media spotlight — that of the horse-meat scandal. Over the last few weeks dozens of products have been taken off supermarket shelves across Europe after it was discovered that many foods supposedly containing beef actually had traces of horse-meat in them. In some cases, it was much more than traces, with 100 percent horse-meat found in some Findus products and 60 percent in the extremely popular tesco beef lasagne. All kinds of frozen beef burgers were found to contain elements of equine DNA and were also removed from supermarkets. Distributors in both France and England promptly pointed the blame at Romanian distributors. Unfortunately and foolishly, this accusation was made without clear proof or contacting those distributors. Romanian politicians were rightly offended and expressed deep outrage.
Is this all scape-goating, with the most developed and well-establish members of the European club finding easy pickings in the form of the Union’s newest member? Or does it represent a much deeper fear of others, with especially the Romanians and their gypsies taking the full brunt of the blame? It is possible that since the previous 2004 wave of migrant workers many countries have realized that some aspects of the European plan do not actually benefit them. Although the European ideal of free movement across borders sought to equalize the power dynamic across Europe, in recent years it has in fact accentuated the divide between the richer and poorer states. The most ambitious workmen leave their native countries to pick up menial but better playing jobs in western Europe. Any mass influx of foreign workers would in theory cause massive pressure on local employment and wage levels. Native populations have grown increasingly hostile towards those who come and “take their jobs” per se, and this has led to a notable rise in far-right votes. Thus, Romania has unfortunately become a political punching-bag. Instead of the actual migrants being subjected to localized discrimination, it is the entire population, the entire state.
(01/24/13 12:55am)
On the 10th of January 2013, after Islamist forces from the north of Mali started advancing south towards the capital Bamako, the Malian government demanded help from the French military. Through either post-colonial guilt or neo-colonial greed, the French committed to ensuring political stability in the region, as they have previously (see their joint intervention with the UN in the Ivory Coast in 2011). Subsequently, since Jan. 12 the French military have provided their assistance by bombing Islamist-held towns along with their important infrastructure, as well as recently deploying troops on the ground. So far, the operation has been a relative success with the retaking of several key towns and an overall retreat of the jihadists.
The UN backed France’s intervention, but only a few days after it had started. It is strange to think that nations can so freely send troops, bomb and kill citizens of other nations prior to any international accord. There is no doubt that on the face of it, this operation took place in good faith. But if good faith was really enough to send young men and women into war-zones, then President Assad would no longer be killing his citizens in Syria, and human rights abuses would not be part of daily life in so many countries around the world.
One possible partial motive is a sort of military advertisement for the French. We saw them do it in Libya with their shiny new “Rafale” jet fighters. Shortly after that operation they sold 18 fighter jets to India in a $10.4 billion deal. In terms of domestic politics, recently elected socialist president François Hollande is desperate not only to divert attention from his nigh on embarrassing domestic record (superstar actor Gerard Depardieu shamelessly accepted Russian citizenship a fortnight ago in light of Hollande’s new tax policy), but also to present himself as a tough and resolute leader. More importantly, however, is the very real possibility that the Islamist forces, consisting in quite large numbers of former Gaddafi mercenaries, would have prevailed in any kind of civil war, thus giving radical Muslims an entire state — a terrorist safe haven — dangerously close to the underbelly of Western Europe. As a move in the great conflict of the West against radical Islam, this operation makes perfect sense. But as one of the western countries with the most significant Muslim populations, especially coming from Northern and Western Africa, this represents a high risk of radicalization. There is also a high probability that similar groups will plot revenge attacks against the French.
Aside from political ploys, the decision to send ground troops to Mali reminds us of countless other risky “wars” from the last 50 years (Vietnam, Afghanistan, Iraq). I put “wars” in quotation marks because I believe that in circumstances such as these, in which an external army intervenes in an internal conflict, it is not war in the usual sense. There is only territory at stake for the militants. There is only a willingness to die from the militants. There is also no direct threat to the French people or their territory, thus the French soldiers have so much less to lose. The risk of failure that arises when one tries to fight on other lands is much greater due to the simple fact that the enemy wants to win more than western soldiers ever possibly could.
The soldiers on the ground, advancing through the unknown foreign desert, are solely fighting for a cause. It may be a noble one, but nevertheless it is an ideological one: West vs. radical Islam. Is that cause enough to die for? When you are in another country fighting someone else’s war, you do not have the same motivation as the other side, which really wants to win. The militant jihadists would willingly risk their lives for the conflict. That death is what they live for, it exemplifies their idea of a holy war and it is one of the reasons that wars in Afghanistan and Iraq have been so long-winded. Militant Islam is the only force in the modern world with a true belief in what it fights for. For western intervening forces, these fights will only ever be half-hearted. They will only act as passionately as the most well-meaning of mercenaries.
Although the French operation makes sense and is probably the right thing to do, the risks incurred and the potential aftermath which has already kicked off a mass al-Quaeda-backed hostage-taking in Algeria, make it extremely difficult to pull off.
(12/05/12 4:20pm)
Self-immolation may have become a somewhat grisly global phenomenon through the Arab spring, notably during the struggles in Tunisia, but recently it has tragically returned to where it has the most traditional associations: Tibet. Four Buddhists have set themselves alight in recent weeks in protest against the Chinese government, which they feel is suffocating the culture and impeding on the lives of the Tibetan people. In Catalonia, Spain, there is talk of an independence referendum following the re-election of Artur Mas as president of the region’s parliament. In Scotland, even, where the SNP (Scottish Nationalist Party) holds a majority, there is an independence referendum set for 2014. And here in the United States, following Obama’s election, secessionists have started petitioning the White House from pro-Republican states. Although on completely different scales, these are all current examples of independence movements.
It is interesting to contemplate how far this can go. It is the founding principle of the UN that there exists “the right of nations to self-determination,” but what exactly constitutes a nation? When each and every region and faction has its own interests, its own culture, it naturally expects political powers. This logic can be followed down to the smallest of levels — regional, local, even tribal or familial. But if one reaches the point when each and every community wants nationhood, then a fair system of international relations would become impossible. In a world where each group becomes its own government, true anarchy would ensue. The obvious solution to this huge puzzle of tiny independent, culturally homogenous states would be larger infrastructures uniting them. They would be like unique individuals; to keep them in order one would need a higher political surrounding. You would, thus, end up requiring a government. This vicious circle points clearly towards the fact that independence movements ultimately shoot themselves in the foot. I am not for a moment defending China in the Tibetan struggle, but merely using current events as an example from which this argument can stem.
More relevantly, Scotland could leave the United Kingdom and lose a lot of its economic power. In order to consolidate this anticipated loss it plans to join the European Union; thus, being absorbed by another large supra-national organization, would Catalonia in turn do the same? Most probably. We live in an increasingly inter-connected and inter-reliant world; it is suicidal to detach oneself from the powers-that-be. No one wants to be an unheard minority, but the argument that splitting off in order to become one’s own majority goes against all modern social ethics. It negates all dreams of a multicultural, melting-pot society, all notions of international consolidation, as well as potential dreams of world peace. Siding with differences, splitting countries along every possible line, does not solve problems — it represents giving up on them.
The choice between breaking down nations to the smallest common denominator of shared culture and specific identity vis-à-vis uniting various groups in order to provide all with theoretically better lives is the same as the age old dilemma between the desire for power and the desire for freedom. It is also a vicious circle that many small and weak nations will need higher organization for power, but then in turn any supra-national power would impede on its constituents’ freedom, leading them to crave independence, and so on. In the long term, the pinnacle of each cycle is neither the struggle for nor the establishment of the new country, but the state of the old and larger one before it started to fall apart. That is where we should aim, towards fair, strong and powerful nation-states that do not effortlessly disintegrate over time.
It may seem like neo-imperialism when I’m preaching for larger political entities rather than smaller ones, but in the situation of a fair democracy this assures the best for all. The current dreams of independence may be a genuine reaction to true unfairness (Tibet), but in other less desperate circumstances it goes against all logic to make your people belong to a weaker, and not necessarily fairer country. And although I’m sure no one is really taking them seriously, the sore right-wing losers petitioning for secession in Texas and elsewhere fall perfectly into this category. Some smart nations are thankfully, however, picking up on the opposite trend — the U.S. must soon debate a potential new state: Puerto Rico.
(11/07/12 11:20pm)
The potential for an Israeli-Iranian conflict has been boiling for some time, notably escalating in recent days. A military factory in Sudan (one of Iran’s allies) was “mysteriously” bombed this month, and Israel was immediately blamed. Israel, in turn, suspiciously made no comment — this would not be the country’s first time infringing on Sudan’s airspace — and Israel has also taken out “threatening” targets in the past; in 2007, they destroyed a potential nuclear site in Syria. As a result of the Sudanese airstrike, Iranian naval ships have been moved into the Red Sea in order to provide a “message of peace and security to neighboring countries.”
There is so much wrong with all of this. Firstly and most outrageously is Israel’s inability to play along with any of the rules set out by the international community. They seem to have a problem with borders. This may be due in part to the nation’s inherent insecurities stemming from its historical victimization, but ever since its conception, Israel has been involved in innumerable conflicts. In the constant redefinition of its territory throughout the previous century, Israel has taken the lands of other nations to expand its own borders. More recently, it has stuck to infringing upon other nations from afar, crippling Lebanon in 2006 and now Sudan. And, one cannot forget the sinister settlements that keep springing up within the Palestinian territories, as well as the ongoing agro-economic violation of its symbiotic sibling state. What remains consistent, however, is the country’s disregard for international law. This tendency may be perhaps due to the fact that Israel is a relatively new nation-state, but it is clear that the Israeli government does not understand the concept of borders.
Iran is playing a strange game too; it is openly confrontational and makes clear that it wants Israel wiped off the map, but it does not have the military capabilities (as far as we know) to stand a chance if push comes to shove. Despite being disabled by UN-enforced economic sanctions, it continues to pursue its nuclear program, which, as recent revelations show, may prove to be a lot more innocent than many suspected. Israel’s own defense minister admitted to the Telegraph that Iran had used a third of its uranium for civilian purposes thus far, thereby slowing down whatever military program it was said to have. Iran shows open support for countries that share little in common other than their racial hatred of Israel. Iran, therefore, seems to be one of the last bastions of ideological politics. It obeys absolutely no logical rules and behaves violently without any possible gain except for the maintenance of its own faulty indoctrination.
Finally, just a word of caution for Governor Mitt Romney if he were to be elected: one should not criticize President Barack Obama for not having supported Iran’s “Green Revolution” as his was obviously a conscious attempt to show that the United States was not behind the protests, thus giving them a sense of authenticity. The U.S. should continue along those lines and try to stay as far away from this prospective mess as possible. Nevertheless, both the incumbent and the challenger agreed somewhat reluctantly during the foreign policy debate that they would support Israel in any retaliation against Iran.
The recent escalation in tensions is testimony to the fact that these are the two most active rogue nations in the international community. One is blinded by brutish self-interest, the other by extreme ideology. If the U.S. and North American Treaty Organization (NATO) are to be the ‘world’s policemen,’ then they should not support either of these two war prone, radical states.
(10/24/12 11:05pm)
Of the many animals in the presidential debates, the elephant in the room — Europe — has yet to really come up. Foreign policy arguments have centered on the Middle East and the economic disputes have mainly been on a national scale. So whatever happened to the eurozone crisis?
It has not disappeared; recently we have witnessed mass protests in Portugal against the new austerity budget and ongoing chaos in Greece and Spain. In Greece, again, many politicians have been shamefully exposed for exploiting their taxes. Yet somehow, almost inexplicably, bail-out after bail-out, threats and false agreements have all delayed the inevitable. There will come a point when the European Central Bank — and by default Germany — will cease to cough up extra funds and countries will either have to leave the eurozone or alternately be absorbed into a supreme inorganic mass. That decision, however, is not going to be made today. Perhaps this delaying is down to the fact that no one knows which one is really better, but here’s what I think and why.
As one Nobel Peace Prize winner fights for re-election, a new one is announced: the European Union (EU). It has always been an obvious choice. It was founded upon the concept of ruling out any European hegemony by uniting the historical enemies, France and Germany, and has so far been incredibly successful. Though the Cold War certainly helped by uniting all the members on the same side, the achievement is nonetheless remarkable.
The timing of the award, however, is somewhat strange. In the year 2012, the Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN) and the North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA) were just as worthy supranational organizations — having done nothing of note — and the Arab League a lot more so. So it leaves one to wonder why exactly the EU was chosen now. One reason could simply be that they’ve had it in store for a while now, and seeing no other stand-out contender this year, they pulled the EU award out from the stock. I don’t buy that.
2012 is the year of the presidential election in the U.S., the world’s primary superpower and also the year of the communist party leadership reshuffle in China, the only other realistic geopolitical heavyweight. A united Europe would hopefully be able to rival these two as the third force on the world scale. In that situation it would cancel out any possible Cold War-style dichotomy between China and America. The EU also still has a role to play within its borders, with ethnic tensions and far-right groups appearing in many places. Perhaps the Nobel committee was trying to say, “You’ve been great at keeping peace in the past — remember to keep doing it.” A united Europe, and that means a Europe whose states have dissolved all legislative and economic power to an elected body in Brussels, would ensure a dynamic non-antagonistic power-play in world politics.
European leaders are currently participating in major talks about the future of the eurozone. If Europe were to disintegrate, which is a likely consequence of any serious financial changes, then not only would the entire world slip into fiscal chaos, but the new “emancipated” countries themselves, feeling cheated or picked upon, would automatically become more aggressive. War would not be impossible; there are few better boosters for any economy, just look at what happened in the thirties, and people have repeatedly compared this crisis to that of 1929.
The Nobel prize is recognizing both the EU’s past and its ideological brilliance, but also warning that if current issues are not resolved, then it risks doing great damage to world peace.
(10/03/12 10:31pm)
Reactionary. Obscene. Stupid. These terms apply to both the YouTube video that has sparked protests across the Arab world and the mindless retaliations themselves. On Sept. 11, 2012, exactly 11 years after the infamous attacks that defined our century, in Benghazi — a town that in recent months has been a symbol of democracy and positive people power — the United States consulate was stormed and the U.S. ambassador to Libya was among those who died.
Enraged crowds of Muslim protestors have been seen all over the world, all because of “The Innocence of the Muslims,” an edited movie trailer uploaded onto YouTube by an unknown source. The United States government is clearly not personally responsible for every video that appears online, and Americans have done more riot-worthy blasphemes in recent years — mostly revolving around the desecration of holy texts. So why this extreme reaction now?
Easily accessible and in Arabic, the video is a more direct and outrageous insult. It also ties in nicely with the Arab spring. Violence often takes place in those countries where young men have successfully conducted revolutions — countries where organized, pseudo-democratic institutions are still only embryonic. At first glance, this violence seems to suggest that it was a mistake to openly support violent youths and religious fanatics who wanted to overthrow faulty but stable governments.
The truth, however, is that this violence is a tragic but timeless side-effect of revolution. One does not give thousands of young men who happen to own guns and enjoy killing people the aspirations of an entire nation and then expect to be able to take this power away overnight. We cannot say “your fight is over, the revolution is finished — now go back to what you did before.” The patriotic flame that flickered in these young men’s hearts can easily be reignited as a religious one, so long as there is something to fight against.
Right now there is something to fight against. However, a moderate mass of Libyan revolutionaries in turn took to the streets to dismantle the terrorist groups. These pro-West protests were truly remarkable and proved that supporting democratic regimes was the right thing to do.
In desperate contrast is what we saw in Pakistan, where a member of the government called out for the filmmaker’s death and a national holiday was declared for people to protest. The ensuing chaos and violence that resulted in several deaths was not surprising. In fact, it seemed as though higher powers had it planned. Families were destroyed and lives were cut short because some people either can’t or don’t want to distinguish between reality and fiction.
Many of the protestors don’t want to realize that the reaction to this disgusting satire only serves to justify one of the film’s issues with Islam: its so-called inherent violence. If the Arab world wants to really criticize the film then it should ignore it. It’s a minute percentage of the overall Muslim population that took to the streets, but it is this population that makes the headlines and influences international perception.
All the extremists will gain from this violent protest is deepening isolation from the rest of the world as well as a reversal of much progress that was made by the Arab Spring.
Recent developments have shown that a Californian Egyptian Coptic Christian may have been linked to the publication of the video. This is a fitting reminder that religious-based hatred and violence is not restricted to a single faith.
Religion should act as a moral guide or a matter of faith, but not as a vile excuse for murder and war.