The Avoidable War

It's not that the US lacks competent experts. It's the fact that nobody in Washington heeds their advice.

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The war in Ukraine is still raging 16 months after its start. Sadly, a totally neglected aspect of the conflict is being deliberately brushed aside by mainstream American politicians and military brass alike.

I am referring to the fact that for the United States this was very clearly an avoidable war. It took Russia 8 years and two abortive Minsk agreements to decide to put a military stop to NATO's designs in Ukraine, which were perceived by Moscow as an imminent threat to its security. During all this time no major American diplomatic initiative took place to lessen the tensions in the region and to avoid the outbreak of a war. This, to be sure, is a first in the diplomatic relations between the US and Russia.

Connected to all this is the fact that for almost a decade the bureaucrats in charge of framing American foreign policy have ignored their own experts' warnings about the high probability of an outbreak of hostilities with Moscow. 

Thus, James W Carden, former adviser to the US-Russia Bilateral Presidential Commission at the State Department during the Obama administration, explains in a recent article how the current impasse was reached:

 "For years, the U.S. national security establishment was warned by voices from the right, left, and center that America needed to change its policy toward Russia. It was warned that Russia could not be defeated in their near abroad. It was warned that Kiev—by launching an “anti-terrorist” campaign against its Russian speaking citizens—was recklessly antagonizing Russia. It was warned that making a semi-deity out of a corrupt tool of Ukrainian oligarchs was an obvious mistake. It was warned against conflating the interests of ethno-nationalist far-right factions in Kiev and Lviv (and their allies in Warsaw, Riga, Tallinn, and Vilnius) with U.S. national interests. It was warned to take President Putin’s numerous protestations against NATO expansion seriously. Yet America’s bipartisan ruling elite decided to ignore these warnings, and the results speak for themselves."

This geopolitical entanglement in Europe is not only unnecessary for the US, but it has the potential, if unchecked in a timely fashion, to lead to an all-out nuclear war between America and Russia. 

The wisdom of reversing course in Ukraine and starting peace negotiations with Russia is clear for all to see. Alas, to date no one can claim that the current US administration has the required statecraft skills and political wisdom to come up with a negotiated solution.

The US are Acting on the Wrong Philosophical Assumptions about History

 When foreigners or Americans themselves are complaining about the US, they usually take aim at its political and economic elite, institutions, its foreign policy, the military or America's cultural or global ambitions.

Few, however, are aware of the fact that powerful nations are run according to an agenda that incorporates a specific interpretation of history:  a historical algorithm, so to speak. By and large, this philosophical interpretation of world history goes a long way towards explaining why nations like the United States behave the way they do.

From the Age of Enlightenment we have inherited a conception about the historical evolution of humanity which in most cases is depicted as both irreversible and unidirectional, or as some specialists call it, linear. In the 19th century Hegel, a German philosopher of history, refined this approach by adding a final destination to this linear historical evolution, which he called "the end of history" (in his view, German history ended with the formation of the Prussian state). Karl Marx was one of his students and he devised his own end-of-history , which was supposed to happen when the proletariat would get on top of the capitalist class for good. The type of society he imagined was called communism, in which exploitation of any kind would completely disappear and  perfect equality would reign among all members of society.

One of the legacies that Marxist philosophy of history left behind was a partition of history according to different types of societies, defined by their specific modes of production. Thus, humanity advanced from prehistorical hunter/gatherers to the classical, slave-owning ancient societies, on to feudal societies, which gave birth to what Marx called capitalist societies, in their turn the harbinger of future communist societies. And herein lies one of his biggest errors. According to a number of social scientists like Eugene Buret, or renowned economists such as J.A. Schumpeter,  capitalist society is not a new and entirely different type of society if compared to the feudal one, but just the decaying phase of medieval Western society. 

In other words, what we were conditioned by Marx to believe about the existence of capitalist and communist societies is basically wrong. If, on the other hand, we look at capitalism (in the west) and communism (in the east) as simply the decomposing phases of feudal societies, many aspects about the organisation and functioning of capitalist or communist societies become more comprehensible from a sociological point of view. What is important to note at this point is that whereas decaying medieval Western societies turned capitalist, decaying feudal Eurasian or Asian societies turned communist. 

It is useful to remember that both capitalism and communism have facilitated the transition of entire nations from agricultural countries to industrialised and urbanised ones in a relatively short period of time, albeit using vastly different methods in achieving these goals. Both types of transition, however, have been marred by extremely painful dislocation, misery and in some cases millions of casualties.

The most problematic part of the historical algorithm used to elaborate political, geostrategic and military agendas is that which refers to the evolution of humanity as a whole. Thus, if Hegel and Marx were right, then under certain conditions historical evolution will stop after reaching a peak, after which the history pages in the book of life will remain blank. A version of this misguided interpretation of historical evolution was given to the American public by Francis Fukuyama, who in 1992 published his essay "The End of History and the Last Man".

Like Hegel before him, Fukuyama believed that after the 1991 implosion of the USSR the end of history was in sight. In his view this consists of the universal adoption of market economics principles and of liberal democracy as a political system. His interpretation of world history and especially his end-of-history thesis has informed  the political action of the US and that of American neoconservatives since 2000. To this day, neocons wrongly believe that because the US is the only superpower left, it should retain the status of world hegemon for at least another century.

What actually happened after the implosion of the bipolar world was - after a brief unipolar moment - the advent of the multipolar world, which the US alone adamantly opposes.

In fact, a much more fruitful approach to understanding the historical evolution of humanity could be found in the writings of Italian philosopher of history Giambattista Vico. In his "Scienza Nuova", he postulated that human societies have a cyclical - instead of linear - evolution. Vico's definition of progress differs from that of Kant or Hegel, for example, who were firm believers in the infallibility of human reason. For Vico too, reason was the catalyst for human progress. However, Vico believed in the possible collapse of reason at some point, which in turn could cause civilisational collapse. In other words, he was convinced that a breakdown in reason can cause man to revert to an earlier, barbarous state.( His approach could for example better explain how the excesses of nazism and even communism were ever possible.)

In this cyclical paradigm of evolution, a fallen empire like Rome, for example, partially re-emerged in a different form in 800 under the name of The Holy Roman Empire (considered by Popes as the secular arm of the Church), and it was arguably the most powerful European feudal state during the Middle Ages. The Holy Roman Empire lasted for a thousand years until 1806, when it was replaced by the Confederation of the Rhine by Francis II, the Austrian emperor. After the reunification of German states around Prussia in the 19th century, the rise and the fall of the German empire in the 20th century, the partition of Germany after 1945 and its reunification in 1991, the German federal state is still the most powerful country in the EU.

Yet another example is the recent re-emergence of China as an economic powerhouse, after what the Chinese call "the century of humiliation", with the Chinese share of global GDP  approaching again 25 percent, as it did around the year 1800. 

Russia, too, has put the trials and tribulations of empire collapse and 70 years of communism behind her and is fast re-emerging as the leading Eurasian military power, a status that it used to hold undisputed from the middle of the 18th century. 

Such examples conclusively prove that today's American policymakers would be well-advised to discard theories of history, like Fukuyama's, that can only lead to huge errors, especially in foreign policy. Adopting a cyclical approach to assessing historical developments could indeed yield much more positive outcomes for American experts and politicians alike.

Accordingly, German reunification and de facto leadership of the EU, the re-emergence of Russia as a major military power in Eurasia, or China's rise as a global economic actor should be considered normal historical developments . Moreover, even these countries' quest to have their spheres of influence recognised has deep historical roots and should be considered by Washington as legitimate, instead of being treated as offensive, as it is now the case.

Ukraine and the Crisis of Diplomacy

  I propose to look at the current crisis from another angle, that of the crisis of the diplomatic profession.

200 years ago, in a turbulent European context marked by the Napoleonic Wars, a neutral state appeared on the map of the continent, a republic in the middle of the kingdoms of the time: Switzerland.

This was made possible by the support of Tsarist Russia and the diplomatic genius of its Foreign Minister Ioannis Kapodistria . Thanks to his talent and sustained efforts, Switzerland's independence and neutrality have been recognized and guaranteed by all the great European powers.

Fast forward to the 21st century, when the tradition of competent diplomats has almost completely disappeared. The main cause for this situation is without a doubt the usurpation of the competencies specific to the diplomatic profession by the heads of Western states, eager to appear as great international crisis solvers (they are not!) in the spotlight of the TV cameras. This has delegitimized the field of diplomacy and marginalized career diplomats, who would now have been the only ones able to negotiate a neutral status for Ukraine and help resolve the political-military stalemate the tensions have reached.

What's worse is the fact that seasoned diplomats like Kennan or Kissinger have been replaced by militant women, either feminists like Hillary Clinton or neoconservatives like Victoria Nuland, who have greatly aggravated the geostrategic situation throughout Eastern Europe. Such "diplomats" not only did not help ease geostrategic tensions, but even catalyzed them (see Victoria Nuland's actions in Maidan Square in 2014). It is well known that in diplomacy the persons for whom ideological options prevail cannot function effectively, regardless of the nature of their ideology.

It is interesting to note that the role of diplomats in international negotiations, which has been severely eroded over the last hundred years, has never before been so completely affected, not even by interwar dictators, such as Hitler or Stalin. The latter did not take any interest in Soviet foreign policy until 1936, leaving the field almost exclusively in the care of Litvinov, the USSR's foreign policy commissioner. Litvinov's replacement in 1939 was followed by one of the great failures of Soviet diplomacy: the signing of the Ribbentrop-Molotov Pact. However, the treaty in question was negotiated and signed on behalf of the two states by Ribbentrop and Molotov, respectively, on behalf of the USSR.

The trend for summits between the leaders of the world's most important states started during World War II, with Churchill, Rosevelt and Stalin meeting in Tehran and Yalta. It was resumed in 1989 when Presidents GH Bush and M. Gorbachev met in Malta, and summits have remained in fashion to this day.

The most important successes during the Cold War, however, such as the policy of detente or the signing of strategic arms reduction treaties, are attributed to diplomacy corps led by Foreign Minister Andrei Gromyko, not Leonid Brezhnev. The signing of the peace treaty that ended the Vietnam War was negotiated by Henry Kissinger, not by Richard Nixon, etc.

Let's be serious, the United States (and for some time Russia, France or the United Kingdom) no longer have well-trained diplomats who will play a key role in reducing tensions between states or blocs of states. In crisis situations, such as now on the Ukrainian border, it is not Blinken or Lavrov who are called to resolve the stalemate, but President Biden or Vladimir Putin directly.

The conclusion to the above is clear. In the absence of competent senior diplomats, fully in charge of the foreign policy of their states, crises between blocs can degenerate into military conflicts, which jeopardize peace in Europe or elsewhere in the world. The absence of the diplomatic buffer is therefore very ominous for all parties involved in economic or military conflicts. However, until the role of diplomats in international relations is restored, situations of this kind can only degenerate.

EU Diplomacy's Munich 2.0 Moment

 

May 9, 2020

European diplomatic traditions, which are some of the most illustrious in the world, have not prevented the External Action Service from writing one of the most inept letters I have ever read. After months of China’s diplomatic bullying, aimed at changing the pandemic narrative in its favour, is this ill-conceived message addressed to the Chinese leadership all that the best diplomatic experts within the EU have been able to come up with ? To add insult to injury, the EU officials have even accepted the letter to be censored by Beijing before its publication, deleting any reference to the fact that the pandemic started in China.

Diplomatic intimidation was not invented by the Chinese. The Nazis used it before them. Just before the start of the second world war, this type of bullying made Neville Chamberlain bow to Hitler’s demands in order to achieve – in his view – “peace with honour”.

Pushing back against Chinese bullying, however, is the only reasonable course of action of any country and self-respecting diplomatic establishment. From my personal experience working for Chinese bosses, I also happen to know that taking a firm stand against their bullying is the only way to deal with the representatives of a nation that has recently achieved economic success, but is still haunted by a huge inferiority complex. Trying to appease Chinese bullying or to ignore it will not make it go away, but will only lead to more serious bullying in the future.

To give but one example, Australia’s Prime Minister Scott Morrison has called for an international inquiry into the origins and handling of the coronavirus pandemic. His initiative has prompted a furious attack by the Chinese ambassador to Canberra, who by now is used to treating Australia like a de-facto Chinese colony. He used the media to threaten that Chinese consumers could stop importing Australian beef and wine. This type of threat echoes the Davos speech of a Chinese official this year, who claimed that the United States will not do anything to counter China’s recent belligerence because his country is the biggest market for American hamburgers outside the USA.

“If you give China an inch, they will take a mile. And if you succumb to bullying and intimidation, you can expect only one more thing: more bullying and intimidation. It’s going to be a question not simply of what is Australia saying about what’s happening in China: it’s about China trying to dictate what’s happening in Australia.” (Dr Samantha Power, former US Ambassador to the UN Security Council, in Financial Review, November 2019)

The Chinese amhassador’s assertion that his country’s consumers might decide not to buy Australian beef in the future is also directed against the Chinese middle class. These are the biggest consumers of beef in the country, and if the communist party decides for some reason to stop importing it, they will have to revert to a more traditional, pork-based diet. In other words, the communist party seems as displeased with Australia as they are with the restless Chinese middle class, who have nevertheless made the fatal error of putting their future prosperity into the hands of the communist officials.

The EU , on the other hand, is China’s biggest export market and this fact alone gives it a lot of clout, a temporary disruption in supply chains notwithstanding.

This is why appeasing China’s offensive diplomatic behaviour makes so little sense.

Instead, EU diplomats should intensify calls for an independent inquiry into the handling of the pandemic and declare at least a few Chinese diplomats in Europe persona non grata after their unwarranted offensive behaviour in Paris or Stockholm. Anything else will be construed by the communst regime in Beijing as proof of Western democracies’ inherent weakness. Indeed, like the Nazis before them, their entire propaganda machinery rests on proving to the population how strong China’s communist government is and how weak Western democratic governments are by comparison.

Naturally, no European country wishes to confront China, which is fair enough. However, by appeasing its diplomats’ bullying and ignoring its shameless propaganda, the EU is making a huge error, one which is already being put to good use by the continent’s “ideological competitor”.

Western Diplomacy and the North Korean Nuclear Menace

 September 10, 2017

The current North Korean threat highlights one of the most troubling shortcomings facing today’s Western governments : the almost total inability of diplomacy to help solve such crises.

For thousands of years, various states in different periods of history have nurtured the development of a special class of bureaucrats, employed exclusively in the diplomatic service. In time, these people acquired the know-how necessary to deal with countries’ foreign friends and foes alike. Diplomats were always at hand when war was declared, peace terms negotiated or when tensions between states needed mediation.

Closer to the modern era, career diplomats became leading members of government. Their advice was highly respected and their status was second in importance only to the prime minister of the day.

Alas, after thirty years of neoliberal budget cuts and political leaders’ insistence on small government, the diplomatic services of Western countries have been severely degraded and the number of competent career diplomats has been drastically diminished. The global international relations system, as a result, is experiencing the effects of a dangerous loss of shock absorbers.

Everywhere in the world, Russia and China excepted, diplomats are being marginalised and face near extinction as a professional foreign affairs elite. This unheard-of development in history is due to the fact that Western leaders these days prefer to deal directly with one another, “to get things done”, even though they don’t possess the specialised knowledge and skills to do so.

To put it more bluntly, we can compare the performance of a political leader in the field of international relations to that of a quack next to a doctor. By relying on executive briefs instead of drawing on a solid knowledge of history, culture and international events, career politicians usually delude themselves as to their abilities in the field of foreign relations.

Unfortunately, we are talking here about political leaders who have, in the words of Henry Kissinger, oversized egos and think they could match the skills of career diplomats when negotiating treaties, appeasing important allies or dealing with enemies. Elected Western leaders, however, owe their jobs to their ability to convince their constituencies to vote for them on domestic issues, and not to their skills in dealing with other heads of state.

The above can easily be illustrated with the classic example of the negotiations between Presidents George H. Bush and Mikhail Gorbachev, which took place prior to the reunification of Germany in 1991. On that occasion, Gorbachev agreed to peacefully remove the Red Army units from East Germany in exchange of a verbal promise from his American counterpart that NATO would not expand to the east. The deal was concluded among the two presidents directly, without the involvement of their top diplomats or the signing of a formal treaty to that effect. Needless to mention, the handshake deal between the two leaders did not stop NATO from expanding eastwards a decade later and generating the military tensions witnessed today at Russia’s western borders.

There is no doubt that – as the leader of the Western world – the United States is chiefly responsible for these negative developments. The US has never consistently nurtured the development of a professional diplomatic corps and, bare a few exceptions, American foreign ministers have never carried significant weight within the US government. The performance of Henry Kissinger as State Secretary remains exceptional simply because it confirms the rule.

The US State Department has consistently been denied adequate funding, especially over the last thirty years, with the bulk of the budget allocations going into the Pentagon’s coffers. In the first decade of the 21st century, George W Bush even named a general as Secretary of State (Colin Powell) and the invasion of Iraq soon followed, despite stark warnings and protests on the part of career diplomats and UN officials. Moreover, as events in Ukraine have recently shown, US ambassadors are repeatedly being used, in a subordinate capacity, to assist the CIA in organising coups d’etat or to influence election results in a variety of countries around the globe. More often than not, American diplomats are continuously undermined in the performance of their duty by the CIA or other representatives of the military-industrial complex.

The Obama Administration has tried and partially succeeded in diminishing the influence of the military-industrial complex in the framing of US foreign policy. It provided more adequate funding for the US State Department by constantly insisting that the use of military force should only occur as a last resort and that diplomacy and negotiation should be given priority. This has resulted in one of the few successes of the Obama administration: the Iran deal. Barack Obama’s error, however, was that of naming Hilary Clinton as Secretary of State. She lacked the intellectual standing necessary in the field of international relations and, like her husband, was mired in controversy.

The influence and respectability of diplomats is even more problematic within the European Union, where various heads of the EAS (European Action Service), from Catherine Ashton to Federica Mogherini, have failed in getting the respect and trust of the EU’s external partners. As a result, the EAS is perceived as an annex to the American State Department and as a nuisance by the foreign policy establishments of EU member states. At the national level as well, very few EU states have succeeded in preserving diplomats’ former status and in protecting their departments from budget cuts.

In countries like Romania, for instance, we are also witnessing an exceedingly worrisome development, namely the replacement of career diplomats with former industrial engineers without language skills and/or with covert operatives of the country’s spy agencies. This bizarre development has been made possible by the fact that over the past ten years Romania’s foreign affairs ministers have been – either prior to or after their mandates – directors of the state’s spy services (SIE). Moreover, ex- foreign intelligence directors like Catalin Harnagea or those of the country’s internal secret service SRI, have been awarded ambassadorial positions despite the lack of prior experience or solid training in international relations.

Taking the above developments into account, it comes as no surprise that there is no negotiated settlement possible between the West and the North Korean regime.

Even at the height of the Cold War -as Britain’s late Sir Michael Alexander duly noted in one of his books – career diplomats from both sides of the fence were able to keep communication channels open and thus avoid major nuclear catastrophes in the process. De-nuclearisation treaties were negotiated and signed and the fall of communism, as a result, happened in a peaceful manner.

Today, when the military call the shots in the White House and there are no more top American or European career diplomats to speak of, the world edges closer to nuclear holocaust than ever before. We should also be frank in admitting that President Trump’s “Twitter diplomacy” is a poor substitute to the real thing. His tête-à-tête meetings with Vladimir Putin, for example, have not succeeded in improving the US’s relationship with Russia, on the contrary.

Let us all hope that it is not too late to reverse this dangerous trend. Diplomats need to be put back in charge of framing foreign policy and in conducting difficult negotiations, without the overriding interference of their political leaders, intelligence or military establishments.

Should the EU Agree to the Partition of Libya ?

 April 13, 2017

News has it that White House foreign policy aides are toying with the idea of partitioning Libya in three, roughly copying the Ottoman Empire’s former administrative entities in the region. As the “America First” political philosophy seems to have lost its appeal for the Trump team’s policymakers, there is now a flurry of initiatives on the foreign policy front. Needless to say, most such initiatives are misguided and, according to French and American experts, the grand strategy is not even decided upon in Washington, but in Israel.

The idea of partitioning Libya is yet another example of an amateurish approach to international relations which does not bode well, either for Libya or for its neighbour across the Mediterranean, the EU.

It would be useful at this point to remind readers that for at least 50 years before the September 11 attack, North Africa’s Maghreb had been the special responsibility of European powers, especially France, whereas the problems of the Middle East had for obvious reasons, for better or for worse, been handled by the United States. Since the start of GW. Bush’s “war on terror” however, the Americans have decided to enlarge their footprint in the Arab world. Consequently, a new strategic region was created to that end, commonly known as MENA (Middle East + North Africa). The Pentagon’s Africa command started to interfere in the way Maghreb countries were being run, the plan to partition Libya being only the culmination of such meddling.

European foreign policy experts and political representatives should, however, insist on adopting statecraft solutions for Tunisia, Libya and Algeria that are consistent with the region’s past and options for the future without any interference from America’s foreign policy operatives or from the Pentagon. Failing that, this region of the Arab world which has been reasonably peaceful until recently risks being engulfed in the same intractable conflicts that have characterised American leadership in the Middle East.

EU Foreign Policy Assessed

 February 7, 2012

Amid international media acclaim, the European Council on Foreign Relations has recently released the results of its innovative EU foreign policy research project, the 2012 European Foreign Policy Scorecard.

The ECFR’s researchers have assessed the EU’s foreign policy performance in 2011 in six major areas: the relationship with China, Russia, the US, Wider Europe (Western Balkans, the Eastern Neighbourhood and Turkey), crisis management handling and the EU’s support for multilateralism. The Scorecard proves that the EU’s influence as a global player has diminished significantly as a result of the mishandling of the sovereign debt crisis. With an average unemployment rate of some 10,5 percent, the EU’s soft power model has lost its lustre, the continent being currently viewed as the main source of economic instability in the world, instead of as an active participant in providing solutions to the current crisis.

Whilst in some areas the EU’s foreign policy initiatives have earned decent marks (relationship with the US, crisis management or participation within multilateral institutions), in some others (diplomatic relationship with China, Russia, Turkey or the Western Balkans) its performance was below average.

The authors have also highlighted in the report the EU’s slow and inadequate response to the 2011 Arab Awakening, as well as the fact that to this day the EU has failed to frame a functional and comprehensive Southern neighbourhood policy.

The EU’s foreign policy leaders have traditionally been France and the UK. Recently, however, Germany, Poland and Sweden have also positioned themselves in the lead, with the rest of the member-countries falling into the «slackers» category. A common, coordinated EU-wide foreign policy is yet to emerge, as a consequence of the continent’s obsession with its internal woes and the inability of its leading countries to adopt adequate pro-growth, pro-employment economic policies. More often than not, as Justin Vaisse, co-lead author of the Scorecard has noted, EU countries prefer to conduct foreign policies which reflect their national interest at the expense of the general interest of the Union. Not surprisingly, the EU’s influence as a multilateral, multi-national model has lost most of its appeal in Asia and Latin America alike. (sources: ECFR, Le Monde, Der Spiegel, NYT)

Turkey, the Indispensable Negotiation Partner

 September 30, 2011

Over the last two weeks, Turkish diplomacy went all out to capitalise on the country’s increasing international clout. President Abdullah Gul has made a 4-day visit to Germany, Turkey’s main European partner, whereas premier Erdogan has made a highly publicised visit to Egypt and has recently met with President Obama in New York to discuss the situation in Syria.

Turkey’s sustained economic growth and the pro-Islamic geopolitical agenda it adopted a few years ago have transformed the country into an indispensable partner for the West. Turkish diplomacy and influence could become instrumental in helping the EU, for instance, deal with the upheavals in the Maghreb and help stabilise the region. The US, too, needs Turkish assistance in dealing with the crisis in Syria and in resolving the Palestinian question. Finally, Russia might find it opportune in future to use Turkey’s help in dealing with the political upheavals in countries like Turkmenistan, Kyrgyzstan or others in Central Asia.

Even if Turkey’s increased international standing, as well as its status as a major regional power in Asia and within the Islamic world, are by now indisputable, a cooler approach to the Palestinian issue might make its efforts more effective than it has been the case so far. Pushing Israel too hard on the Palestinian question is – as the latest events prove – counterproductive. The Turkish diplomacy has to find a way to help Palestinians by working closely with EU diplomats and the US administration in order to persuade the Israelis to soften their resistance to international efforts of helping Palestinians achieve statehood. As cooperation on the issue brings more rewards than confrontation, threats to accompany Gaza-bound humanitarian convoys with Turkish warships could only aggravate matters and increase tensions in the Middle East. Such a display of hard power could only play in the hands of Israel’s military and undo the successes achieved by the Turkish diplomacy’s soft means over the last decade.

Most analysts, especially from Europe, believe that Turkey is in fact a responsible stakeholder in the Middle East and contributes to increasing the political stability of the region. By spreading the message of democracy and human rights around the Islamic world now in turmoil, Turkey is also viewed by many inside and outside the Arab world as a positive force for democratic change. These are but a few reasons why the Turkish diplomacy will have to tread much more carefully in future on the Palestinian question and avoid antagonising unnecessarily Israel and its main backer, the US. (sources: Today’s Zaman, Project Syndicate, Reuters, Al Arabiya)

America's Arab Policy Quagmire

 January 31, 2011

At the start of his presidency, Barack Obama spoke about his administration’s intentions to mend fences with the Islamic world. In hindsight, we might be forgiven to think that he meant Kenya’s Islamic community and not the Arab one. The plight of Arabs living in US-backed authoritarian states does not seem to get the same kind of attention at the White House as Indonesian Muslims, for example. It is, unfortunately, in the Arab world that the United States has made its biggest foreign policy errors and blunders outside of Latin America.

The desperate protesters taking to the streets of Cairo or Sana hope to force out of office two presidents viewed as pivotal to US securitary concerns in the Middle East. They have nothing to lose : their leaders are corrupt and inefficient, their freedoms do not really exist except on paper and their countries have failed a long time ago to care for their interests, instead of those of the US and its Israeli allies.

The US foreign policy in the Middle East has revolved around two objectives. The first is ensuring America’s oil supplies, hence the US military presence and support for the kingdom of Saudi Arabia. The second one is supporting the state of Israel and guaranteeing its existence against incredible geopolitical odds, hence the close relationship established between the US and Egypt. Since September 11, 2001, a third US objective has been that of fighting Islamic extremism, which has become a convenient excuse for propping up Arab political dinosaurs in Egypt, Yemen or elsewhere in the Middle East. The way these objectives have been put into practice, however, has come at the expense of ordinary Arabs, which these days see themselves deprived of jobs, basic foodstuffs, human rights or a future for their children. It was, therefore, only a matter of time until the militarised and securitised regimes friendly to the United States or Israel came to an end.

The European Union countries, on the other hand, have been trying to alleviate the hardships of the Arabs. Millions of young Arabs have established their second home in France, Italy, Spain or even Germany. Their hard currency remittances, the European investments in Maghreb or Palestine or outright European financial assistance have mitigated the hardships inflicted on the Arabs by insensitive US foreign policies. Not anymore. Since the outbreak of the financial crisis, EU nations have been forced to adopt unpopular austerity measures, fight illegal immigration and cut back on foreign aid packages. Accordingly, the worsening global economic situation has laid bare the incapacity of most US-backed Arab governments to provide for their citizens or to treat them in a humane and lawful fashion.

The authoritarian leaders currently being contested by protesters in the streets have been given all the US military assistance required to keep them in power for decades. In Mubarak’s case, such assistance amounts to no less than 1.5 billion dollars per annum. Ali Saleh of Yemen gets 250 million dollars for his army and security apparatus. Meanwhile, poverty-stricken Egyptians or Yemenites find it hard to feed themselves or their families, and in some cases they do not have a decent supply of water.

This Jeffersonian US foreign policy has lately been sugar-coated with some misleading Wilsonian trappings, but its essence has remained the same for a long time. Even among the US foreign policy elite, Arabs are thought to be uninterested in democratic values, which explains its support for authoritarian Arab rulers.

Fortunately, as the example of Turkey proves, Islamic societies are not incompatible with democracy. Slowly but surely, Arab intellectuals have come to realise that electing their political leaders freely and removing them when they fail to provide adequate leadership for their countries is a better alternative to the current political arrangements.

American political leaders are quick to criticise the autocratic regimes of Russia or China, but they are slow in conceding that the US’s Arab foreign policy is now in shambles. Nor does their protégé Mubarak get his countrymen’s message straight: his solution to the protesters’ call to resign was to appoint his chief spymaster, Omar Suleyman, as vice-president and change the government. These window-dressing measures continue to be contested in the streets by ordinary Egyptians and leading intellectuals alike. To be sure, the appointment of Suleyman, who is the Mubarak regimes’ interface with the US and Israel, is an indication of how strong the ties between Washington and the octogenarian president really are.

As much as he would like to, President Obama cannot invoke enlightened Wilsonian ideals and support hugely unpopular Arab regimes simultaneously. If anything, he could turn to another fellow Nobel prize winner, Mohamed El Baradei, for inspiration, who is living proof that not all the prize’s recipients are undeserving.

India's New "Look East" Drive

 October 28, 2010

In a surprising turn of events, Indian prime minister Manmohan Singh has this week launched his new “Look East” trade and foreign policy, during a week-long state visit to Japan, Malaysia and Vietnam.

India’s main concern these days is that of increasing the country’s foreign trade volume at least to pre-crisis levels. In Japan, premier Naoto Kan and Singh have announced the conclusion of the CEPA (Comprehensive Economic Partnership Agreement) and together they have explored ways of increasing bilateral trade, which currently represents only 0.8 percent of Japan’s external trade.

Singh believes that significant increases in trade could be achieved because of the “complementary nature of the Japanese-Indian trade relationship”, meaning that the Japanese have the capital and technology whilst the Indians have the labour force and the market. China’s rare earth minerals embargo and ways to go around it were also on the agenda, as well as a bilateral nuclear energy cooperation deal. India would like to solve some of its energy problems by building nuclear plants with Japanese help, which, however, might not be as simple as it sounds. India’s nuclear weapons program has alienated the Japanese public and there are concerns that India has so far refused to sign the nuclear non-proliferation treaty – a major sticking point in the negotiations.

Discussions between the two premiers also touched on regional security issues, with Japan asking for Indian advice regarding China. Whilst agreeing to cooperate closely with Japan in avoiding security threats for the two countries as a result of Chinese assertiveness on border issues, Singh has advised his Japanese counterpart to engage China through dialogue and to use patience as a weapon.

The underlying philosophy of the latest Japan-India security partnership in Asia is spelled out by a member of India’s National Security Advisory Board in no uncertain terms. According to him, “when there is a bully in the classroom, it is important for the other students to show unity. That is the meaning of a strategic partnership”. In European parlance, the Indian official is referring to the establishment of a balance of power mechanism aimed at containing China’s Asian ambitions. Such a strategic agenda mirrors that of the US State Department’s and looks to have been heavily inspired by it.

On his Malaysian leg of the tour, premier Singh has announced the signing of yet another Comprehensive Economic Cooperation Agreement (CECA), aimed at doubling trade volumes with Malaysia by 2015, from the current $7.3 billion a year. As in Japan, security and counter-terrorism were high on Singh’s agenda. Again echoing the State Department’s latest policy initiatives, he has told his Malaysian hosts that

“in today’s unsettled world, it is all the more important for societies that are democratic, multi-religious and multicultural to work together”.

To be sure, this is exactly what Mrs Clinton has been advocating at the start of her “new American moment” crusade of democratic versus “authoritarian” states…

Aware of Indian obsessions with China’s higher growth rates, Malaysian premier Najib Razak has stated that he largely agrees with The Economist’s recent cover story on India which predicted that soon India’s economic growth might surpass all expectations. ( I have read the main article myself, which in truth is not one of The Economist’s best).

The Indian premier’s new “Look East” policy, whilst it might lead to increased trade in East Asia, is sure to lead to an increase in diplomatic tensions with China, at a time when India needs more, not less, access to Chinese markets. When trade with China will deteriorate as a result, the Indian premier and his foreign policy pundits will realise that following into Washington’s footsteps is largely a thankless task. (sources: Deutsche Welle, Asahi Shimbun, The Himalayan, The Hindu)

India's Energy Diplomacy

 October 15, 2010

If compared to China, India’s energy strategy is far less successful to date. Although it closely matches China’s (investing in oil assets worldwide, developing oil & gas fields in Iran, joining transnational pipeline projects, signing bilateral supply contracts or developing special relationships with countries such as Saudi Arabia), India’s efforts to diversify its energy supplies away from coal run into strong opposition from the United States and major logistical problems.

India’s energy needs

According to the researchers of the Council on Foreign Relations and India’s Planning Commission, the country faces formidable hurdles in meeting its current and future energy needs, if it wants to maintain its current 8 percent per year economic growth rate.

Over the next 25 years, the Indian government’s priority is the eradication of poverty. To get there, however, India will need to keep growing by 8 percent a year for the full quarter-century. Indian officials, however, fear that this noble goal is going to generate huge energy shortages, as Indiahas been less suceessful in securing energy supplies from its neighbours or from Central Asia than China has been.

The troubles of the energy sector in India are compounded by state control over the import, production and distribution of oil and gas products, which are coordinated by 4 different ministries. More than half of India’s electricity is generated by burning poor-quality domestic coal, which is expected to run out in about 40 years. Furthermore, a third of India’s oil is imported from countries the US is at odds with, such as Sudan, Syria or Iran, whilst the gas is imported mainly from Iran, Bangladesh or Burma. India’s dependence on imported oil, which currently stands at 60 percent, is expected to grow to 90 percent by 2030. That lifts energy diplomacy to the top of India’s agenda, when it comes to dealing with countries from Central Asia, Middle East, Africa or Latin America.

India’s pipeline projects

To date, India has tried to emulate China and build gas pipelines that are needed by its electricity generation sector in order to diversify away from coal. Its two projects are the IPI (Iran-Pakistan-India) pipeline, also dubbed “the peace pipeline”, and the TAPI (Turkmenistan-Afghanistan-Pakistan-India) pipeline.

First discussions concerning the IPI project started during the Clinton administration in 1993, when the so-called moderates where apparently coming to power in Iran. It involved the construction of a 2,700-km pipeline from the South Pars field in Iran, through Pakistan to India’s border, at an estimated cost of some 8 billion dollars. Beside international sanctions and US opposition which affected the project, the Iranian and Indian officials could not lock in the price for the gas to be transported, and could not agree at which border the gas supplies were going to be paid for.

Whilst the Indians insisted they were only going to pay for the gas when it reached the India-Pakistan border, the Iranians asked to be paid when the gas reached the Iran-Pakistan border. As the projected pipeline was due to pass through Beluchistan (Pakistan), home to some of the most radical Islamic tribes, India wanted to make the Pakistani government responsible for the gas’s transit through its territory, in exchange for the $1.2 per mmBtu in transit fees. Thus, practical difficulties and US opposition to the project determined India to recently abandon IPI, of which only the Iran-Pakistan stretch, or about 1,100 km, is going ahead with construction.

The failure of the IPI project has recently determined India to enter fresh negotiations with the Teheran regime for the construction of an undersea gas pipeline, which could cost 9 billion dollars. This would have the advantage of bypassing Pakistan and doing away with transit fees. Again, the project’s chances of success are slight, given the US’ opposition to investments in developing Iran’s energy sector.

In 2008, India initiated the TAPI project to bring gas from Dauletabad (Turkmenistan) to the India-Pakistan border, with a construction price tag of 3.5 billion dollars. This project is favoured by the US, but is quietly opposed by Russia, which needs the Turkmen gas for its European customers.

India, the 5th largest consumer of energy in the world, desperately needs to exponentially increase its imports of oil and gas. Consequently, it has taken an option to develop, at an estimated cost of 8 billion dollars, the Farzad-B area of the Pars gas field at the Persian Gulf, again running into some opposition from the US. Already, the Iran Sanctions Act (ISA) which slaps fines on foreign companies that invest in Iran’s energy sector, has been invoked by American officials against Indian companies. As Indian companies are the biggest foreign subcontractors of IT services to US corporations, India stands to lose vital data processing business, as well as foreign currency earnings. Meanwhile, much better capitalised Chinese state oil and gas companies are aggressively investing some 20 billion dollars in the development of the South Pars gas block.

For the time being, India is being encouraged by the US to convert its gas in LNG form and transport it by tanker. It is also currently being advised by the US to develop oil and gas fields recently found on its own territory and to invest in shale deposits in the US. With so many logistical restrictions and the threat of US sanctions looming, India’s energy diplomacy agenda is becoming ever more complex. (sources: Times of India, FNA, Iran Daily, Heritage Foundation Brief, Council on Foreign Relations Backgrounder, Hindustan Times, Financial Express, Asia Sentinel)