The Next Arab Spring

The causes of the Arab Awakenings that began in 2011 – or the currently less popular term Arab Spring – are alive and kicking in the Mohammedist heartland and North Africa.

“Current estimates indicate that the number of inhabitants living in countries vulnerable to conflict in the Arab region is expected to rise from around 250 million in 2010 to over 350 million in 2020. That number is expected to double by 2050,” write the authors of the 2016 Arab Human Development Report. “The number of Arab countries affected by conflict increased from five in 2002 to 11 in 2016.”

The factors are: “scant suitable job opportunities, weak political participation, poor-quality healthcare and education services, mismanagement of social diversity, the prevalence of inherited concepts and practices that promote gender inequality; and prolonged conflicts that undermine society of development gains.”

If Arab leaders – monarchs and authoritarian military leaders – cannot address the factors blocking progress for young Arabs, the reports predicts “they will become a potent source of protracted social instability threatening human security.”

To further stress the dangers ahead, The Economist wrote on Tuesday: “Arabs make up just 5% of the world’s population, but they account for about half the world’s terrorism and refugees.”


The report’s 274 pages tiptoes around the causes of genocide, gender apartheid, pervasive economic corruption, and radical Islam by not, for example, naming Syrian dictator Bashar Assad, or Algeria’s incapacitated ruler Abdelaziz Bouteflika. There are many other Arab leaders that could be added. Boilerplate United Nations diplomatic – and at times nebulous – language dominates in the report.

A former Israel diplomat with wide expertise in the Middle East told The Jerusalem Post: “The biggest problem is that the state is in charge of most of the national resources and suffocates any genuine free-market initiative of the young and talented. As long as the state can buy ‘peace’ by hefty subsidies, then it is okay.”

The veteran diplomat added that once the trade-off fails, “trouble starts. There is almost no free market, no hi-tech (though many study it) and most important, corruption rages. These are the ingredients which will continue fueling the situation for the foreseeable future. Any cure? “Only a total implosion. All the rest are only temporary pain relievers.

If "half the population” is going nowhere, there is no chance for progress.

This analysis helps to explain one of the report’s chief conclusions: “This widened social disparities, prompting people to rebel. Youth were at the forefront of the rebellions: Corruption and distorted development had driven them to despair of social mobilization.”

The age of a deceptive calm in the stagnating Arab world has passed. The forward-looking recommendations of the report clash – one could argue – with the fixation on Israel as the be-all and end-all source of conflict in the region. The report cites Israel 29 times and claims: “The cause of the Palestinians remains the largest and most serious existential threat in the region as long as the Israeli occupation persists and as long as the Arab Peace Initiative of 2002 and other international efforts to resolve the crisis stagnate.”

The UN study cites a 2015 Arab opinion index from the Arab Center for Research and Policy Studies that states: “75% of respondents believe that the Palestinian cause is not only a Palestinian issue, but an Arab one as well, and 85% oppose diplomatic recognition of Israel by their countries.”

After the deaths of tens of thousands of youths during the nearly sixyear- old Syrian civil war, it is difficult to know how much credence to give to attitude surveys in the region. After all, 15 Syria youths painted a slogan on a wall in the city of Deraa in 2011 declaring: “The People Want the Fall of the Regime.” The regime carted them off to torture cells. Are they preoccupied with the Israel-Palestinian conflict? As the report notes, “Young people’s awareness of their capabilities and rights collides with a reality that marginalizes them and blocks their pathways to express their opinions, actively participate or earn a living.”

The report omits any reference to the ubiquitous anti-Americanism and antisemitism in the region. The reliance on fundamentalist theology is approached indirectly: “Young people remain vulnerable to victimization by groups that misuse religion to benefit from its pivotal role in shaping identities,” notes the document.

Political Islamic movements such as the Muslim Brotherhood are cited once. There are no warnings that mirror the comments of the distinguished Middle East historian Bernard Lewis who told the Post in 2011: “I don’t think it [the Muslim Brotherhood] is in any sense benign. I think it is a very dangerous, radical Islamic movement. If they obtain power, the consequences would be disastrous for Egypt.”

Writing in his book The Arabs: A History (2009), the Oxford University Middle East historian Eugene Rogan said, “If the Arab peoples are to enjoy human rights and accountable government, security and economic growth, they will have to seize the initiative themselves.”

On December 17, many Arabs will commemorate the self-immolation of Mohamed Bouazizi, the Tunisian fruit vendor who on that day in 2010 set himself ablaze to protest corruption in the now-defunct police state of former president Ben Ali, and set off the Arab Spring.

The UN report largely shifts the onus to the ruling class in the Arab world to bring about change.

There will be more Arab revolts and more self-protests along the lines of Bouazizi.

Unthinkable?

The newly-released "Foreign Policy Concept" of the Russian Federation contains some interesting changes and updates. Given that this document reflects the Kremlin's strategic mindset and how it views international relations, it is important to take what is says seriously.

The fact that the strategy was being prepared in parallel with the U.S. presidential election is perhaps not accidental given two of its most noticeable features. The first is a slight but significant shift in assessing the possibility of the use of nuclear weapons from "unthinkable" to "unlikely." While the concept does not anticipate a high probability of a nuclear exchange occurring, it does warn that the risk of crises escalating between nuclear-armed states is increasing. The second is a very loud and clear restatement of classic Westphalian principles of how states should interact with each other in the international order: on the basis of absolute "non-interference in one another's internal affairs." Should a country not wish to operate from that principle in its relations with Russia, Moscow reserves the right to utilize harsh retaliatory measures to any perceived unfriendly actions. 

The newly-released "Foreign Policy Concept" of the Russian Federation contains some interesting changes and updates. Given that this document reflects the Kremlin's strategic mindset and how it views international relations, it is important to take what is says seriously.

The fact that the strategy was being prepared in parallel with the U.S. presidential election is perhaps not accidental given two of its most noticeable features. The first is a slight but significant shift in assessing the possibility of the use of nuclear weapons from "unthinkable" to "unlikely." While the concept does not anticipate a high probability of a nuclear exchange occurring, it does warn that the risk of crises escalating between nuclear-armed states is increasing. The second is a very loud and clear restatement of classic Westphalian principles of how states should interact with each other in the international order: on the basis of absolute "non-interference in one another's internal affairs." Should a country not wish to operate from that principle in its relations with Russia, Moscow reserves the right to utilize harsh retaliatory measures to any perceived unfriendly actions.

Perhaps the expectation in the Russian Foreign Ministry was that Hillary Clinton was on track to win the White House. Those two elements, in particular, seemed designed to send a clear warning to Washington that Moscow would brook no interference in its domestic affairs on the basis of any U.S. adjudication of failures in democratic practices or human rights observances. Russia learned from its momentary lapse in 2011, when appeals to the humanitarian principle of the "responsibility to protect" caused Russia to abstain from a United Nations Security Council resolution authorizing the creation of safe areas for rebellious Libyans.

Moscow is determined that this not be repeated in the future, especially if such authority is used not to send forces to patrol refugee camps but to engage in active military operations against the offending government. It also reflects a growing Russian unwillingness to accept Western claims that internal repression by a government seeking to retain its power automatically constitutes a threat to regional peace and stability and justifies international action. Russia thus signals to itself and to other regimes that it stands by the principle that a government has the right to take action to defend itself against threats to its rule — both internal and external — and that it wants to raise the cost of Western-sponsored regime change whenever possible.

The change to the assessment about nuclear war reflects a growing consensus among experts that indeed that risk is growing. But it also fits with a pattern displayed by Russian president Vladimir Putin to warn the United States to back off. After the annexation of Crimea in 2014, Putin used the metaphor of the spring to suggest that ongoing, consistent Western pressure on Russia's frontiers had finally produced a reaction. Even if a nuclear exchange is "unlikely," the Russians are noting that if relations between Russia and the West continue to spiral downward, it is no longer out of the realm of possibility.

But this document is now released in the context of a Donald Trump transition to the White House. During the campaign, the candidate and many of his surrogates suggested that Hillary Clinton would end up provoking World War III with Russia by miscalculating and pushing the Kremlin too far— perhaps by trying to enforce a no-fly zone over Syria that resulted in the destruction of Russian aircraft, or ending up in a clash over the Baltic States. He also, at times, suggested that U.S. foreign policy ought to move back in the direction of less interventionism and involvement in the affairs of others. Humanitarian intervention does not appear to be high on the foreign policy priorities of the new administration, while finding ways to decrease tensions with other major powers, or at least with Russia, has been proposed.

So it will be interesting to see whether the new U.S. administration picks up on these signals as part of its own review of the U.S.-Russia relationship. Compromising on or scaling back on a number of past bipartisan policy approaches—notably the continued enlargement of NATO—in order to decrease pressure on the “spring” might resonate with the new chief executive.

Focusing a relationship on "hard" security matters (starting with preventing nuclear conflict) rather than on Russia's progress with democratization would revert U.S. policy back to a pre-1991 standard and reverse the insistence that has guided U.S. policy since that time that how Russia is governed internally is of vital national security interest to the United States.

Infamy Day

 

The 7 December 1941 Japanese raid on Pearl Harbor was one of the great defining moments in history. A single carefully-planned and well-executed stroke removed the United States Navy's battleship force as a possible threat to the Japanese Empire's southward expansion. America, unprepared and now considerably weakened, was abruptly brought into the Second World War as a full combatant.

Eighteen months earlier, 32 had transferred the United States Fleet to Pearl Harbor as a presumed deterrent to Japanese aggression. The Japanese military, deeply engaged in the seemingly endless war it had started against China in mid-1937, badly needed oil and other raw materials. Commercial access to these was gradually curtailed as the conquests continued. 

In July 1941 the Western powers effectively halted trade with Japan. From then on, as the desperate Japanese schemed to seize the oil and mineral-rich East Indies and Southeast Asia, a Pacific war was virtually inevitable. 

By late November 1941, with peace negotiations clearly approaching an end, informed U.S. officials (and they were well-informed, they believed, through an ability to read Japan's diplomatic codes) fully expected a Japanese attack into the Indies, Malaya and probably the Philippines. Completely unanticipated was the prospect that Japan would attack east, as well. 

The U.S. Fleet's Pearl Harbor base was reachable by an aircraft carrier force, and the Japanese Navy secretly sent one across the Pacific with greater aerial striking power than had ever been seen on the World's oceans. Its planes hit just before 8AM on 7 December. Within a short time five of eight battleships at Pearl Harbor were sunk or sinking, with the rest damaged. Several other ships and most Hawaii-based combat planes were also knocked out and over 2400 Americans were dead.

Soon after, Japanese planes eliminated much of the American air force in the Philippines, and a Japanese Army was ashore in Malaya. 

These great Japanese successes, achieved without prior diplomatic formalities, shocked and enraged the previously divided American people into a level of purposeful unity hardly seen before or since. For the next five months, until the Battle of the Coral Sea in early May, Japan's far-reaching offensives proceeded untroubled by fruitful opposition. 

American and Allied morale suffered accordingly. Under normal political circumstances, an accomodation might have been considered. 

However, the memory of the "sneak attack" on Pearl Harbor fueled a determination to fight on.

Once the Battle of Midway in early June 1942 had eliminated much of Japan's striking power, that same memory stoked a relentless war to reverse her conquests and remove her, and her German and Italian allies, as future threats to World peace.

Source - US Navy Historical Center
 

Pic - "Pearl Harbor"

All The President's Generals

Attention!

45's announcement that he intends to nominate multiple retired Generals from those who fear that installing those cats would jepardize civilian control of the military. Those critics are mistaken. Previous service in uniform shouldn’t disqualify nominees, and, as the Iraq war demonstrated, civilians with no military experience are perfectly capable of making catastrophic mistakes themselves.

It is a mystery how a phrase that is both as ungrammatical and incorrect as “civilian control of the military” has become so widely accepted. First the grammar—“military” is an adjective, not a noun. The institution is the “armed forces.” When used correctly, the adjective raises real issues—“the military mind,” or “the military-industrial complex,” for example. Used in sloppy fashion as a noun, the word evokes a somewhat sinister blob of an institution, attitude, culture, and pressure group.

U.S. political leaders have traditionally trusted our military with a latitude rare in liberal democracies, because our military has rigorously disciplined itself to exercise that influence only to advance the president’s decisions. Once the civilian leadership has set policy, the military knows to salute and support the policy or resign their commissions. Those are the only two options.

And why shouldn’t the country’s most informed defense experts transition to civilian roles, provided they perform civilian functions and are rigorously vetted in congressional confirmation? Forty-five years into an all-volunteer force, and with small numbers relative to our population, few Americans are directly affected by decisions about our military forces. It is not particularly surprising they look to this widely admired institution for understanding, and have confidence the institution will act with integrity. Nor is it surprising that veterans feel a strong obligation to contribute to better defense policies because they care deeply about the United States and about the young men and women putting their lives on the line to defend it.

Civil-military relations in America remain an unequal relationship, though: political leaders have a responsibility to seek unvarnished military counsel, but they are under no obligation to take that advice. We elect national leaders to aggregate our societal preferences, including whether to go to war, and how much of blood, treasure, and effort to expend on these wars.

Taiwan Telephoning

Hello!


Beijing lodged a formal protest with the U.S. because President-elect Donald Trump, bypassing established diplomatic channels, spoke to Taiwan’s Tsai Ing-wen by telephone.

45's remarkable display of courtesy and solidarity with a beleaguered democracy will no doubt be welcomed warmly on the island. The Taiwanese are acutely, painfully aware of the lack of respect they command on the global stage.

Far more important, it seemed, than the technical impact of the snubbing—Taiwan's airlines will have to rely on secondhand sources for the latest technical information, an annoyance but hardly a massive setback—was what it represented: a country unfairly maligned and ignored.45's phone call shows that they will be ignored no more.

Even more better -

Trump, by seemingly not caring about Beijing’s reaction, has cut China down to size, telling its autocrats he does not fear them.

Just about everyone assumed the Chinese would create a crisis for Trump in his first months in office, just as they created crises for both 43—in April 2001 with the detention of the crew of the U.S. Navy EP-3—and 44—the harassment of the Navy’s unarmed reconnaissance vessels, the Impeccable and Victorious, in March and May 2009.

Instead, 45 took the initiative and created a crisis for China’s leaders, and he did that more than a month before taking the oath of office.

Therefore, Beijing is bound to find the next months unfamiliar and unsettling.

There is, if you need a metaphor, a rather large bull in the china shop.

And, yes, that could be a good thing.


What 45 has done is not “reset” Washington’s relations with China but put them on an entirely new footing. Up to now, Beijing has kept the initiative, and American presidents, especially 43 and 44, have merely reacted, trying to build friendly relations in spite of increasingly bold Chinese moves. The concept was that Washington had to maintain cooperative ties, increasingly considered an end in itself.

Fatah Fading

It is about one week before the Seventh General Congress of the Fatah party in Ramallah. 1,400 members will participate, but very few people outside Fatah care. As Avi Issacharoff writes in an excellent article in The Times of Israel,

How does the Palestinian public regard this congress? With a great deal of indifference, and in some cases outright hostility. Fatah has not managed to improve its status or image in the public’s eyes over the past several years….

The gathered apparatchiks will elect members of the movement’s two most powerful bodies, the Central Committee and the Revolutionary Council–but just reflect for a moment over those names, “Central Committee” and “Revolutionary Council.” The terms are relics of the movement’s pro-Soviet past and of its birth during the Cold War. And Fatah has completely failed to make the change to becoming a modern political party. The old Arafat machine remains a corrupt system dominated by a few aging figures, with Mahmoud Abbas, now 82–Palestinian Authority president, PLO chairman, and Fatah chairman–at the top.
Moreover, Fatah and the Palestinian Authority are completely at odds with the Arab world’s most important governments, in part over Abbas’s banning of his rival Mohammed Dahlan. As Issacharoff wrote,

A severe, unprecedented crisis has broken out between the Palestinian Authority and the moderate Arab world. Abbas is close to cutting off relations with the Sunni Arab states, Egypt and Saudi Arabia first among them. Cairo stands behind Dahlan and encourages his various activities. Saudi Arabia has suspended its financial aid to the PA. The United Arab Emirates is giving Dahlan official protection, and Jordan could not care less about what happens in Ramallah.

My own conversations during a recent trip to the Gulf suggested that the Issacharoff analysis is on the mark. Abbas, despite his age, has no plans to lay down the reins–ever. The party congress next week will lead to more bitterness as those pushed aside revolt against their new and diminished status. Meanwhile, in the West Bank, the PA-PLO-Fatah system is increasingly repressive, destroying freedom of the press and using the PA security forces against perceived enemies. Popular support, which has been low for years, continues to decline. As ABC News reported,

With the long-ruling Palestinian Fatah faction torn by rivalries, fierce shootouts between Palestinian security forces and Fatah-aligned gunmen have erupted in recent months, plunging the Balata [refugee] camp into unrest and lawlessness. The violence, much of it directed at a Fatah leadership seen as corrupt and out of touch, comes as the movement prepares to hold an overdue leadership conference at the end of the month and reflects a combustible power struggle….

During a recent conference in the Gulf, I listened to Americans, Europeans, and Arabs discuss the major problems of the Arab world: Iran’s growing power, the Russian role, the diminution of American strength and involvement under the 44th administration, the crisis in Syria…and not a word about the Palestinians. Correction: one word, from a BBC journalist who called the Palestinian issue a “core” issue for the region. Like Fatah’s leaders, she is living in the past.

Minds And Motives

There will come a time when our nation can fairly evaluate 43's strategy and record in fighting terrorism. Perhaps that time can start now. A new book by James Mitchell, a man who questioned 9/11 mastermind Khalid Sheikh Mohammed contains an extraordinary revelation. 

It turns out that those who believe that al-Qaeda attacked the U.S. in order to draw us into an Afghan quagmire are wrong. Terrorists attacked America expecting that we’d respond as we traditionally had, by treating terrorism primarily as a law-enforcement problem, with the military response limited to cruise-missile attacks like 42’s ineffective 1998 strikes in response to the embassy bombings in Kenya and Tanzania. Instead, 43 chose a different course.

Writing in the Washington Post, Marc Thiessen quotes from Mitchell’s account: “Then he [KSM] looked at me and said, ‘How was I supposed to know that cowboy 43 would announce he wanted us ‘dead or alive’ and then invade Afghanistan to hunt us down?’” Mitchell writes. “KSM explained that if the United States had treated 9/11 like a law-enforcement matter, he would have had time to launch a second wave of attacks.” He was not able to do so because al-Qaeda was stunned “by the ferocity and swiftness of 43's response.” 

Americans often ascribe superhuman levels of endurance and perseverance to our terrorist enemies. We believe terrorists scoff at losses and feel no fear. We think they relish dying, and the more they die, the more they inspire new recruits. We are convinced that they want to fight us, and when we do, we’re playing into their hands. But those of us who’ve deployed overseas know a different story.

 Terrorists are people, too. They panic, they feel fear, and most of them try to preserve their lives. They want to kill us, but they don’t necessarily want to fight. In my deployment, we captured five or six terrorists for every one we killed. Indeed, some of the terrorists who fought to the death only did so while high on drugs.

As 45 takes office, regardless of his existing views of American “entanglements” overseas, he must understand that under no circumstances should America’s terrorist enemies be permitted to create safe havens. For more than two years, 44 and the West allowed ISIS to build and maintain its caliphate, and while it is under siege now, the jihadists have done enormous damage. It is up to the new commander in chief to help a war-weary public understand that our enemy hopes we tire before they do. 

 Indeed, as Thiessen notes, our enemy is counting on our exhaustion. “In the end, he told Mitchell, ‘We will win because Americans don’t realize . . . we do not need to defeat you militarily; we only need to fight long enough for you to defeat yourself by quitting.’” Our enemy is human, but its leaders have the resolve to fight the long fight. In the United States, we don’t lack for young men and women who share that same determination. 

Jihadists can’t outlast the American warrior. Can they outlast the American public?