What if the USA was run by Realists…

I have previously mentioned Realism (see here and here), the international relations framing theory that purports to describe the- world-as-it-really-is. Of course, all international relations theorists purport to say how things really are, but by describing themselves as "Realists", the followers of this school are claiming to be far closer to the truth than their rivals. The Realists say that they describe the world as it is, not as how they would like it to be. They agree that a world without war and conflict would be a nice one, but they argue that we will always face threats to our security and that we should act accordingly.

Generally speaking, Realists always come across as the bad guys when you study international relations theory. Partly this is because their "it was ever thus" outlook comes across as a bit smug and self-satisfied, and partly it is because they can come across as a cynical bunch who are only too happy to justify any nefarious activity as necessary to advance state security; Realists do sometimes claim Machiavelli as one of their own, after all. In practice, though, the Realists can often be less like the crazed warmongers that their theoretical position makes them appear. They have a sense of the limitations of state power that makes them wary of any attempt to do more than can realistically be accomplished.

And so I bring you to a recent article on the Foreign Policy website by the prominent Realist academic Stephen M. Walt. He argues that since the end of the Cold War, American foreign policy has largely been under the control of liberal internationalists and neoconservatives. The former have pushed America into the business of promoting democracy and human rights everywhere in the world, while the latter have tried to seize the moment by establishing a permanent US hegemony over the world. Their interests have merged because the neoconservatives reckon that democracy and human rights would probably favour the interests of the USA, while advancing them gives an opportunity to interfere everywhere; the liberal internationalists see US hegemony as allowing for the advancing of their goals.

Walt is hostile the programme these people have adopted, not because he hates human rights or wants the USA to be weak, but because he reckons that the promotion of human rights and democracy is a waste of time and effort, while the neocons' attempt to secure global hegemony seriously overestimates the capabilities of the USA and is actually undermining the security of the USA by encouraging other powers to unite against it. In the article, Walt puts forward ten ways in which US foreign policy would have been radically different over the last twenty years if it had been run by Realists. In doing so he is not just looking back with the benefit of hindsight and advocating different policies to ones which failed, but rather he is restating policies that he and his fellow Realists had actually advocated.

What is striking about Walt's counterfactual is how much it leads to the USA doing less than it has been doing since the end of the Cold War. Walt's Realist USA would not have invaded Iraq, would not have launched a global "War on Terror", would not have encouraged NATO expansion into Eastern Europe, and would not have provided Israel with the blank cheque support it has enjoyed. The Realist USA would also have stayed out of the former Yugoslavia (good news for alternative Earth Slobodan Milosevic and Ratko Mladic) and Libya. The only thing on Walt's list that amounts to some new thing a Realist USA would have done is increase its focus on China. Realists have a bit of a thing about China. Walt is not saying that the USA should have invaded China or pursued an aggressive policy towards it, but he feels that a Realist approach would focus on trying to build Asian alliances that would stop China becoming too powerful or dangerous to US interests.

In some respects, then Walt's Realist USA would have been a lot more isolationist than the one of Clinton, Bush and Obama with which we are familiar, though it would still be taking some interest in affairs beyond its borders and trying to broker alliances where its interests appeared to need them. But it would definitely be far less interventionist than the actual USA. Many people see the USA's interventionism as the source of all the world's problems, so maybe they would prefer to live in the world of Realist USA. Or maybe not.

Still, I am not convinced that the Realists are fundamentally different from the neoconservatives. US Realists and neoconservatives are united in thinking that the USA should maximise its security by any means necessary – they just calculate differently the ability of the USA to reorder the world to its advantage. At root they are basically the same – for all Walt's apparent non-interventionism, if something were to happen tomorrow morning that greatly increased the power of the USA he probably would be quite happy for his government to continue with its policies of global intervention.

From Hunting Monsters

Non People

US Presidential election candidate Newt Gingrich has made the astonishing claim that the Palestinians are an "invented" people. His claim is not a particularly new one; back in 1969, Israel's then prime minister Golda Meir commented that there was no such thing as the Palestinian people. In fairness to people who make these outlandish claims, they are not asserting that the various people who are described by themselves or others as Palestinians do not exist, but rather that any Palestinian identity is an artificial construct and so that Palestinians do not have any national rights as Palestinians, but only as members of a wider Arab nation. Meir and Gingrich assert that Palestinians did not exist as a distinct self-conscious national group in the past, and so they argue that it is wrong to consider them as a distinct nationality now. Gingrich now is using the same line of argument as Meir to argue for an uncompromisingly hard line position with regard to the self-described Palestinians.

As an argument, the Gingrich position is not without its problems. For one thing, it seems to assume that there is such a thing as permanent and fixed national identities – that if your ancestors think of themselves as members of a particular national group then you too are part of that group whether you like it or not. It ignores the somewhat made-up nature of all national identities and blithely ignores the extent to which any kind of national identity is a feature of the modern world. And of course, there is another side to it that makes it problematic as an argument to bolster a hard-line Israeli position – if Palestinian identity is largely a product of history and politics since the start of the Zionist project, then the same is true of any kind of Israeli identity. The 19th century ancestors of today's Palestinians may not have thought of themselves as making up a Palestinian nation, but the 19th century ancestors of today's Jewish citizens of Israel would not have thought of themselves as Israelis either. If the Palestinians are fictional then so are their Israelis.

Gingrich is of course not interested in the finer points of where national identity comes from and how it develops. He is just a slimy politician trying to win an election by adopting a position of uncompromising support for Israel that will play well with some sections of the US public. If the Palestinians are a non-people then there is no need for Israel to reach any kind of compromise with them. This kind of argument plays well with the right wing supporters of Israel in the USA, or so Gingrich hopes.

As is often the case, this is another instance of Israel's US supporters taking a more extreme position than the mainstream of Israeli opinion. The Israeli centre of political gravity is skewed towards a nationalist right that would be off the scale in most Western countries, but by virtue of having to actually live in the Middle East the positions of the Israeli public tends to be a bit more nuanced than their more shrill supporters in the United States. Israelis who have actually spent time in their armed forces occupying Palestinian territory would find laughable the contention of Mr Gingrich that there is no Palestinian people, regardless of whether they want them to exist or not.

Some links:

Palestinians are an invented people, says Newt Gingrich (Guardian)

Arab League condemns Gingrich's remarks on Palestinians (Guardian)

Newt Gingrich may be able to occupy Palestine, but Israel can't (Bradley Burston writing in Ha'aretz)

Palestine's bid for UN membership

In the near future the United Nations will receive an application for membership from a new country – the country of Palestine. The bid for UN membership is being made by the group surrounding Mahmoud Abbas, the president of the Palestinian Authority and the Chairman of the Palestine Liberation Organisation. Their proposal is to create a Palestinian state on those parts of historic Palestine that were not occupied by Israel until 1967 – that is, the territories we know as the Gaza Strip and the West Bank, which includes all of East Jerusalem.

Abbas is pursuing this strategy despite opposition from the United States and Israel, who are both exercising considerable pressure on him to not go down this road. They are offering him negotiations, without preconditions, but Abbas and his circle feel that negotiations have failed and that talks brokered by the USA will continue to go nowhere. In this they are probably correct. The Israeli government likes negotiations because it can spin them out indefinitely, grabbing ever more Palestinian land in the meantime. And the USA, far from being some kind of honest broker, has used negotiations in the past to try and cajole the Palestinians into some kind of grossly inequitable settlement. Abbas hopes that by taking the Palestinian case to the UN he can internationalise the conflict and change the dynamic. In advance of formally applying for UN membership, Abbas' government has tried to build up its administration of the West Bank areas it runs so that it looks like a credible government in waiting.

Not all Palestinians and friends of Palestinians are in favour of the bid for UN membership. For some, the Abbas government has so little credibility left that any initiative it undertakes is intrinsically suspect. Many Palestinians suspect that the bid, successful or not, will make no difference to their lives. And many think that attempting to create a Palestinian state in Gaza and the West Bank risks abandoning the interests of Palestinians elsewhere – those in exile across the world and those living as second class citizens within pre-1967 Israel.

Still, Israel's vehement hostility to the bid has somewhat rallied pro-Palestinian support behind it. The Israeli state has a number of reasons for opposing the bid. One of these is that the status quo suits it very well, as the Israeli state and its settlers can continue gobbling up Palestinian land. There is also some fear that recognition of a Palestinian state would make it easier for Israeli army officers and politicians to be referred to the International Criminal Court. And a further fear is that if the UN recognises a Palestinian state in all of Gaza and the West Bank, it will not be possible to bully the Palestinian leadership into accepting the far more runty faux state that the Israeli government have in mind for them.

The Israelis have put considerable diplomatic efforts into trying to block Palestinian membership at the UN, but they know that there is overwhelming support in the chancelleries of the world for the proposal. The only way the Palestinian bid can realistically be blocked is by a Security Council veto by the USA. This of course puts the USA in an awkward position. The USA always blocks Security Council motions that are unacceptable to Israel, but in this case there is such overwhelming support for the motion that it will look completely out of step with world opinion if it backs its little friend. Worse, a US veto will destroy any latent credibility the superpower has in the now democratising Arab world. Barack Obama spoke earlier this year of his wish to see a Palestinian state emerging in Gaza and the West Bank – he would look like a complete flubblehead if the USA were to veto a proposal to create just such a state.

The USA is therefore very keen not to have to use its veto, and has been pressurising the Palestinians to not go ahead with their UN membership bid. But Abbas seems to be determined to go ahead, as the Americans are not offering him anything credible. The likelihood is then that the USA will veto Palestinian membership of the UN in the Security Council, taking the ghastly negative consequences that this would involve.

The expectation is that the Palestinians will then take their case to the General Assembly. The General Assembly cannot vote to allow a country to join the United Nations, but it can give enhanced observer status to the Palestinians. This is what is expected to happen. The Palestinians will then be able to engage more fully with UN agencies and may achieve easier access to the International Criminal Court that so worries Israeli war criminals.

After that, anything could happen. US parliamentarians have threatened to cut funds to the Palestinian Authority if the bid goes ahead. There is the strong possibility that the Israelis (who collect tax revenues for the PA, as a result of a bizarre feature of the Oslo Accords that set up the Authority) will also withhold funds from the Palestinian Authority. The Palestinians could therefore find themselves with a degree of diplomatic recognition but with a civil administration that is collapsing through lack of funds.

more:

Curb Your Enthusiasm: Israel and Palestine after the UN (International Crisis Group report on the Palestinian bid for UN membership; they wish people would just get along)

Ireland's call to support UN membership for Palestine [PDF] (an advertisement in today's Irish Times supporting the bid from Sadaka - the Ireland Palestine Alliance)

IPSC statement on the Palestinian “UN statehood initiative (a more ambivalent position adopted by the Ireland Palestine Solidarity Campaign)

Libya's Tantalising Archives

When the unrest gripping the Arab world spread to Libya and the regime there started looking shaky I must admit to having experienced a certain excitement. It is always great to see a brutal dictator like Colonel Gaddafi being overthrown by his people, even if he is a rather colourful character who brings a certain excitement to the normally bland world of international relations. More than that, though, were the treats that could become available to researchers if the regime fell and its archives became accessible. Some quantification of the level of support given by Gaddafi to the IRA in the 1980s would be fascinating. Particularly interesting would be the possibility of getting some answers to some questions that have divided opinion for the last number of years.

Older readers will recall how in 1986 the Americans bombed Libya, killing one of Gaddafi's adopted children in a botched attempt to decapitate his regime by taking him out*. This was ostensibly a response to the bombing of a discotheque in Berlin frequented by US servicemen. Now, at the time there was some discussion over whether Libya really had any hand or part in the Berlin bombing, with some suggestion that it had been perpetrated by figures linked to other unsavoury Middle Eastern regimes but seized on by the USA as a handy stick with which to beat the then-troublesome Gaddafi. It would be interesting to see what Libyan archives had to say about the Berlin bombing.

A controversy of more recent vintage is the dispute over the release from prison in Scotland of Abdelbaset Ali al-Megrahi, the Libyan man convicted for planting the bomb that brought down an American airliner over the Scottish town of Lockerbie in 1988. Doubts had been raised as to the safety of al-Megrahi's conviction and he had been appealing against the original verdict before he was released (his dropping of that appeal was a condition of his release, which meant conveniently that the arguments against his original conviction were never stated in open court). Libyan secret service archives might shed some light on the Lockerbie bombing, perhaps revealing whether he had been involved in the bomb plot, whether he had not but other Libyans had, or whether Libya had nothing whatsoever to do with the Lockerbie bombing (as has been suggested by some writers, who point the figure at certain other shady regimes).

Now, it might be naïve to expect Libyan archives to shed light on these fascinating questions. In the event of regime collapse, incriminating documents might well end up being destroyed before they can be accessed, or any newly emergent Libyan regime might itself be loth to let random academics and researchers trawl around in what would still be very sensitive files. And the people who may have been involved in organising shady events may well have taken care to keep their efforts out of potentially troublesome files. In any case, after initial successes, it does rather look like the Libyan rebels have rather run out of steam. Gaddafi looks like his thuggish rule will be continuing for some time, at least in part of Libya, so the opening up of the country's archives will probably not be happening any time soon.

EDIT: I forgot to mention the curious case of Musa Sadr. Sadr is not exactly a household name in Ireland, but in Lebanon you will still see posters of this Shia Muslim cleric in parts of the country where his co-religionists live. Musa Sadr founded the political movement that subsequently acquired the name Amal as a secular political movement for the then impoverished Shia Muslims of Lebanon. In 1978 he disappeared while visiting Libya, widely believed to have been murdered by Gaddafi's secret service. Again, Libya's archives have the potential to confirm Musa Sadr's fate, and to cast light on the reasons for his murder.

From Hunting Monsters

*though I see on Wikipedia that it has been argued that this adopted daughter of Gaddafi was essentially made up for propaganda purposes, not that anyone is denying that actual Libyan people were killed in the bombing raid.

After Mubarak: Part 3 - International Effects of the Fall of Mubarak

Final Episode

In the short term, the successful ouster of Mubarak is likely to lead to more protests in other Arab countries. There has already been unrest in Yemen and Libya, two countries with long-serving leaders who have, like Mubarak, considerably outstayed their welcome; it will be interesting to see whether this intensifies. There are also reports of emerging unrest in Algeria, where a thuggish military clique has been in power since not long after independence, and also in Sudan.

Whether the reformist wave spreads to the monarchies will be interesting. I suspect that the Gulf oil plutocracies may well prove immune to serious pressures for democratisation, but the likes of Jordan and Morocco may find their regimes under serious threat if a wind of change blows through the rest of the Arab world. Whether unrest spreads to Syria will also be interesting to see. Syria has been ruled by the same family since the early 1970s and has the usual underperforming economy of Arab countries, but it is a bit of an outlier in other respects, being perhaps the most rigidly authoritarian country in the region but also the one Arab country that is still an enemy of the West* and Israel. The latter maybe gives the Syrian regime a credibility that the various US-backed kings and dictators elsewhere lack.

The really interesting possible contagion effect of the Egyptian protests could be in Iran. The Iranian regime announced a while ago that it supported the Egyptian protests because they were akin to the 1978-1979 protests that brought down the Shah and brought the Islamic Republic into being. However, opposition figures in Iran have drawn similarities between the Egyptian protests and Iran's own protests against last year's rigged presidential election. There is talk of Iranians taking to the streets to support Egypt's revolution and then implicitly or explicitly demand democratic change at home, something the country's power elite do not want to happen.

In the longer term, the country with most to lose from the transition in Egypt is Israel. Even if a new government in Egypt does not go to war with Israel or start arming Palestinian militants, any government in a more democratic Egypt is going to be less accommodating of Israeli interests than Mubarak was. Israeli leaders will therefore be watching developments in Egypt with some nervousness. In particular, it will be interesting to see whether Egypt continues to assist Egypt in maintaining the siege of Gaza (up to now Mubarak had been keeping the Gazan-Egyptian frontier largely closed). I find it hard to see how any democratically based Egyptian government can continue doing Israel's work for it, so some opening of Gaza's southern border is to be expected. I am not sure what the Israeli government would do in response, though I note their tendency to respond with extreme violence whenever a problem presents itself.

At the moment, Egypt receives an enormous amount of aid from the United States of America. If Egypt moves to a more confrontational relationship with Israel then this aid is likely to dry up. I am not sure how much of a loss this would actually be to Egypt, as much of it comes in the form of tanks, airplanes, and other toys for the Egyptian armed forces – does anyone know if a significant proportion of it comes in more socially useful forms? Either way the loss of this aid would hurt Egypt, so a less confrontational line towards Israel may be pursued in the hope of hanging onto at least some of it.


*The extent to which Syria is actually an enemy of the West is a bit arguable; it is more that successive American regimes are hostile to it, for all that they are happy to subcontract torture and intelligence gathering to the Syrian security services. American hostility stems from Syria's support of Hezbollah in Lebanon and its reluctance to accept a one-sided peace deal with Israel. Syria's attempts to run Lebanon as a client state, meanwhile, cause problems in its relations with other western countries, notably France.

From Hunting Monsters

Help an old soldier?

Got a few quid to spare? Then why not stump up some cash for the Lebanese Army. Lebanon's armed forces were until recently being part-funded by the United States of America, possibly in the hope that they could be used against Hezbollah. However, a recent armed clash between Israeli and Lebanese troops along their shared border raised fears in the USA that their money could be going to an army that would end up fighting Israel. So the money tap has been turned off. Now the country's army is a little bit short of cash. Defence Minister Elias Murr has responded by opening up a bank account into which people can donate money for the country's army. He is leading the charge by jointly chipping in some $670,000 with his dad.

More

Who bombed Lockerbie?

I have previously mentioned the release from a Scottish jail of Abdelbaset Ali al-Megrahi. Mr al-Megrahi was convicted for causing the Lockerbie bombing. In my previous post I mentioned how the relatives of the British victims are much more open to the idea that Mr al-Megrahi was framed, while relatives of the American victims seem to be uniformly outraged at his release. I suggested this might be because of a series of high-profile miscarriages of justice, in which convictions for terrorist and other crimes were quashed, often after those falsely convicted had served many years in jail.

The solicitor Gareth Peirce played a major role in overturning those Britiish miscarriages of justice. Now she has written on the al-Megrahi case in the London Review of Books. She asserts that his conviction is a stitch-up and a travesty of due process. Forensic and eye-witness evidence were used to convict al-Megrahi. Peirce suggests these are both deeply flawed. The forensic evidence was largely prepared by the same dodgy scientists who produced the flawed evidence used in earlier miscarriages of justice. The eye-witness, meanwhile, initially failed to pick out al-Megrahi in an identity parade, but subsequently was miraculously able to do so and now is living in suddenly acquired affluence.

Peirce also points out that in the early stages of the Lockerbie investigation, the finger of suspicion was pointing at Iran. The Iranian regime had a motive – a US warship had just shot down an Iranian airliner, and then, grotesquely, the crew of that ship had been honoured by President Reagan. As the US regime started to engage with the Iranians to buy out its hostages in Lebanon, it became inconvenient to blame Iran for Lockerbie. Someone had to pick up the tab, with Peirce arguing that that someone ended up being Libya and Abdelbaset Ali al-Megrahi.

It is unfortunate that al-Megrahi was required to drop his appeal when he was released on compassionate grounds, as it would surely be better for everyone if these allegations could be addressed in an open court.


See also: 'Flaws' in key Lockerbie evidence (BBC)

There's No Other Way

I was saying recently that a precondition for any real advance in the Israeli-Palestinian peace process is the USA being clearly willing to put real pressure on Israel. I do not think that is the only condition – some kind of resolution of the Palestinians' internal political issues is probably also required. By that I mean that some kind of unified Palestinian government (or negotiating team) is required, or that somehow a Palestinian negotiating team with the legitimacy* to make deals on behalf of the Palestinians is required (PA President Mahmoud Abbas does not have that legitimacy). But, even with the emergence of a credible Palestinian interlocutor, I still believe that no progress can be made if the USA is unwilling to play hard-ball Israel.

This is a fairly depressing view. Virtually unconditional support for Israel is effectively a core value of the United States, one that has persisted across any number of administrations. For all his big talk about reaching out to the Arab world, Barack Obama is now falling into the old patterns of putting minimal (if any) pressure on Israel. I do not think there is likely to be any change in the US position at any foreseeable point in the future.

So, does that mean that the Middle East peace process is doomed? If I am correct, then yes it does. But am I correct? Is there another way to advance the quest for a just and lasting settlement to the Israel-Palestine conflict? I throw this question to you and await your responses.



*I mean legitimacy to Palestinians. I do not think anyone else should be able to specify who talks on their behalf.

A flawed and one-sided post about Israel's Gaza campaign

Do you remember last January, when the Israeli army was once more blowing up everything they could in the Gaza Strip? At the time, there was a lot of discussion about whether war crimes had been committed. Partly this arose from the Israeli army's indiscriminate shelling and the targeting of Gaza's infrastructure as a way of punishing everyone there for the actions of militants who fired rockets over the border. There were also reports of instances where Gazan civilians were herded into buildings by Israeli soldiers, only for these buildings to then be shelled. It was also suggested that actions by Hamas and other militant groups (firing un-aimed rockets at Israeli towns) were also contrary to the laws of war.

A United Nations fact finding mission, headed by Richard Goldstone, looked into the accusations of war crimes. Goldstone's team found that there had been extensive war crimes committed by Israeli forces, and recommended that the perpetrators be indicted for trial by an international court. The report also mentioned human rights abuses by Hamas and the other militant groups operating in Gaza, but the main thrust dealt with crimes by the Israelis.

Normally, when a UN report identifies people as having committed these kind of crimes, the wheels of international justice start turning, and people who have been accused of doing bad things find themselves on their way to trial in the Hague or before some other international tribunal. That is what happened with previous investigations with which Goldstone was involved. In this case, however, something different happened. The United States of America, and other allies of Israel (notably Germany and the United Kingdom), dismissed the report as flawed and one-sided, and procedural rules were used to prevent the report coming before the UN Security Council.

For many years now it has been the case that whenever some respected body issues a report on human rights abuses have been committed by Israel, the USA leaps in to condemn the report as "flawed" and "one-sided". Only Israel seems to receive this kind of protection, and when the same bodies issue reports on human rights abuses by other actors, the USA is happy to see them trigger an international response. That the new administration of Barack Obama is continuing in this tradition is depressing. It suggests that behind his shiny rhetoric, his government is continuing the same morally bankrupt policies of Bush and Clinton.

One argument that has been expressed for burying the Goldstone report is that it would set back the peace process if Israeli officers (and politicians?) find themselves in danger of arrest for war crimes. The idea here is that it is better to choose peace over justice, and to forget past crimes so that Israelis and Palestinians can move forward to a peaceful and happy future. This kind of argument might have some purchase in other conflict situations. In the Israel-Palestine situation, it is nonsense. There is no credible peace process at the moment. Furthermore, there is unlikely to be one until the USA demonstrates a willingness to rein in Israel. If the USA remains intent on sheltering Israeli criminals then it cannot hope to broker any kind of settlement.


Some more links:

Prospect of war crimes trials in Middle East alarms US diplomats (Irish Times, 30/9/2009)

Goldstone defends UN Gaza report (BBC, 30/9/2009)

Abbas seeks vote on Gaza report (BBC, 12/10/2009) The USA had leaned on Mahmoud Abbas, head of the Palestinian Authority, getting him to support the shelving of the Goldstone Report. As can be imagined, this played very badly within Palestine. In an effort to not look like a complete pawn of the West, he has now called for the UN Human Rights Council to vote on the report.

Imminent solution of Middle Eastern conflict

The Guardian reported yesterday that the Middle East peace process is on the brink of a breakthrough. This seems to be taking the form of Barack Obama caving in to the demands of Binyamin Netanyahu, the unsavoury prime minister of Israel. Obama had been looking for Israel to announce a freeze of settlement activity on the West Bank, including in East Jerusalem. From what the Guardian is saying, however, it looks like Obama will agree to Netanyahu continuing to evict Palestinians from East Jerusalem; in the rest of the West Bank, Israeli settlement expansion will freeze, except that settlement expansion currently underway will be able to proceed to completion. To sugar the pill of these non-concessions, Obama will cheer Netanyahu up by adopting a new tougher line against Iran and its alleged nuclear ambitions.

It is astonishing that anyone could consider this a breakthrough in the Middle East peace process, or that anyone could take Israel's commitments seriously as confidence building measures. Obama seems to be adopting the usual Clinton-Bush mode of reaching agreements with the Israelis and then presenting these on a take-it-or-leave-it basis to the Palestinians. Obama is currently facing domestic problems, and may have decided to park the Middle East process until the health care issue has reached some kind of resolution. If so then maybe he could spare us the pretence that this is something that is going to effect a just and lasting resolution of the Israel-Palestine conflict.

Even if Obama's "breakthrough" leads to the resumption of negotiations, they are unlikely to lead anywhere. One problem has always been the tendency of US presidents to blow hard about their credentials as an honest broker, but then to simply take an Israeli line during the negotiations. Jonathan Freedland in the Guardian also suggests a more fundamental problem. Recent negotiations have invariably focussed on the post-1967 situation, with talk being about Israel generously giving to a Palestinian state some of the territory it seized that year. Freedland feels that the conflict is more fundamental, and needs to go back to the issues of 1948, when the Israeli was formed. He may be right, though this does sound a bit like one-stater talk.

One other problem making any kind of credible outcome from negotiations unlikely is the question of who speaks for the Palestinians. At the moment, there are two entities purporting to be the government of the Palestinian Authority. One of these was appointed by the PA's president under emergency powers he was not constitutionally entitled to wield; that president's term of office has in any case expired, yet he clings on to office. The other government came into being through the PA's own constitutional features, and is based on the party that won a majority of seats in the last parliamentary election. As is the way of things, it is the more mickey mouse of these two governments that is going to be taking part in any negotiations, making it unlikely that it will be able to make any agreement stick. In any case, neither of these governments can credibly claim to speak for the wider Palestinian refugee community.

I would not, therefore, advise anyone to expect a resolution of the Israel-Palestine conflict any time soon.

Links:

Barack Obama on brink of deal for Middle East peace talks
Peace plans come and go. Obama may have to try a wholly new approach
US peace plan gives Israel too much

Lockerbie relatives and their faith in legal systems

As you know, Abdelbaset Ali al-Megrahi was released from prison in Scotland and allowed to return home to Libya. Al-Megrahi had been convicted of causing the Lockerbie bombing, but was released by the Scottish government on compassionate grounds as he is terminally ill and due to die in the near future.

There are any number of interesting things that could be said about this case – the separate roles of the Scottish and UK governments, differing conceptions of what constitutes justice, and so on. One thing I was particularly struck by, though, was the differing attitudes of British and American relatives of those killed at Lockerbie. It was reported that while the US relatives were very angry about al-Megrahi's release, many of those in the UK were more sympathetic. This seemed to be related to doubts that have been raised about the safety of al-Megrahi's conviction (he had been appealing his conviction prior to his release, and still maintains his innocence), with many of the UK victims sharing doubts as to his guilt, doubts not shared by the Americans.

What interests me is why the UK relatives are more open to the idea of al-Megrahi's innocence. There might be deep-rooted cultural factors at play here, but something that must be significant here is the UK's experience over the last few decades with miscarriage of justice cases, where those convicted of high profile crimes (often of a terrorist nature) saw their convictions quashed years after their initial trials. These people were freed because it was shown that they had been convicted on the basis of such things as ludicrous forensic evidence or confessions extracted under torture. These cases must have planted the seeds of doubt in people's minds, establishing the idea that the authorities can get it wrong and can pin the blame for terrible crimes on the wrong people.

My understanding is the US justice system is not so rock solid that people are not sometimes convicted of crimes they did not commit. I have read of some analysis where innocent people were executed for crimes committed by others. However, I do not think that any of these miscarriage cases have become massive causes célèbres in the way that the cases of the Guildford 4, Maguire 7, Birmingham 6, Bridgewater 4, etc. did. This makes it easier for Americans to maintain a naïve confidence in the correctness of the judicial process. Britons, on the other hand, must find it far easier to believe that high-profile cases can produce miscarriages of justice.

This is not, by the way, to say that I believe in al-Megrahi's innocence or guilt, as I have not followed the case that closely. It is more the general idea of how much confidence people have in justice systems that I am interested in.

US Health Care Reform

The British media have noted that, in the current debate on Barack Obama's proposed health care reforms, the political right in the US have taken to characterising Britain's National Health Service as being some kind horrific amalgam of Stalin's gulag and the worst excesses of the Third Reich. Setting up anything even remotely similar to the NHS in the United States is being portrayed as an assault on fundamental freedoms, something that will lead to jack-booted Nazi doctors cackling as they deny treatment to your loved ones.

What is amusing about all this is that by any measure, the UK's health care system is better than that of the United States. The NHS costs less per capita than the USA's privatised health care "system", and it provides health care to the entire British population, whereas very large proportions of the US population are without health insurance and so without adequate health care.

So, who are the people in the USA who want to prevent any kind of move towards universal health care provision? I think they can be split into three groups:

1. Libertarians and market fundamentalists – this lot are people who oppose any state involvement in anything as a point of principle, not because they think it will lead to otherwise bad outcomes. I have every respect for the sincerity with which these people hold their beliefs, but their preconceptions are so strange that it is impossible to have any kind of rational discussion with them.

2. The US health insurance companies, and people in their pocket – the health insurers make a lot of money out of the current system, and they have a lot of money to throw around to buy lobbyists, journalists, and politicians. These people have a strong interest in keeping things as they are now, and most likely have no shame in spewing out lies to advance their interests.

3. Nutters who somehow hate universal health care because it would take away their freedom to die young because they can't afford health insurance.

At this stage it is not clear whether Obama's health care reforms will go through. It does seem like the opponents of functioning health care are succeeding in raising doubts in the minds of enough Americans to make the programme's passage far from certain. On the other hand, the people who oppose the health reform plans are adopting the increasingly strident tones that characterised Sarah Palin's supporters in the later stages of the recent presidential election campaign; this could mean that people increasingly see them for the crazies they are.

The USA's Israel Lobby (slight return)

You have probably heard about this "Israel Lobby" controversy. What happened was that Stephen Walt and John J. Mearsheimer, two American International Relations academics, wrote an article about the USA's tendency to support the most hawkish elements in the Israeli body politic. They saw this as being thanks to the influence of a powerful pro-Israel lobby in the USA. They furthermore asserted that this support for the Israeli right was detrimental to US interests (and, ultimately, to those of Israel). The authors of this article were not the usual leftist types, but theorists from the Realist school of International Relations. Their article let to predictable outrage.

Recently, President Obama proposed to appoint some guy called Charles Freeman to chair the US National Intelligence Council. Last week, however, Freeman withdrew his candidacy, citing a campaign of vilification against him by this Israel Lobby.

There is an interesting article in the Guardian by Jonathan Freedland on this incident: "Discard the mythology of 'the Israel Lobby', the reality is bad enough". Freedland is asserting that the Israel Lobby is not responsible for the near unconditional support that the USA gives to Israel. He is, however, doing it from a leftist perspective, and like Mearsheimer and Walt he sees the American support for Israel as ultimately malign. He does not deny the existence of a US lobby in favour of Israel (it would be hard to claim that the likes of AIPAC do not exist), but sees US support for Israel as being driven not by it but by self-interest – the self-interest of the USA's power-elite.

Freedland's article is interesting, and is a useful summary of the kind of argument he and others have advanced. It does have its problems, however. He creates something of a straw man out of Mearsheimer and Walt's argument, claiming that they see this Israel Lobby as omnipotent, when clearly they do not. Ironically, like many pro-Israeli opponents of Mearsheimer and Walt, Freedland seems also to casually conflate their idea of a powerful pro-Israel lobby with anti-semitic ideas of a sinister cabal of Zion's elders ruling the world. I am also unconvinced by his assertion that Israeli leaders were against the invasion of Iraq; I recall numerous Israeli commentators writing in the pages of Ha'aretz before the invasion, more or less asserting that anyone opposing the invasion was clearly an enemy of Israel.

At some stage of the game I will probably write more on different explanations offered for the obvious closeness between the USA and Israel, before going on to offer my own synthesis of them.

Hamas secrets of Barack Obama

The Guardian reports that Barack Obama is going to establish secret backdoor channels of communication with Hamas, in a startling break with previous US leaders' policy of total ostracism of the popular Palestinian Islamist party: Obama camp 'prepared to talk to Hamas'. Obviously, these secret backdoor channels are a bit less secret now that Obama "sources" are reputedly telling the Guardian all about them, but I imagine that any links will be tentative and covert for some time yet - don't expect to see Ismail Haniyeh (the Palestinian Authority's de jure prime minister) or Hamas' exiled leader Khaled Meshal invited to the White House any time soon.

I'm curious as to whether this means that all the right-wingers in the USA and Israel were right to fear the election of Barack Obama. From their perspective, having any kind of non-violent interaction with Hamas represents a terrifying concession to the most sinister of forces. Aside from being an obviously sensible course of action, even tentative US engagement with Hamas may also prove an annoyance to those who predicted that no change whatsoever would ever result from a change in US leadership.

Meta Gaza

Chris Gilmour links to some blogs written from within Gaza: Gazablog Roundup

Peter Preston, writing in the Guardian, talks about the US print media's coverage of Israel's Gaza offensive: Israel barks, the US media wags its tail

Marc Lynch, writing as Abu Aardvark*, talks about how the Arabic language media is covering the crisis (and other stuff): 'Gaza' or 'Hamas' and Israel, Gaza, and Arab regional divisions


*a Cerebus reference, obv.

"We try to draw the line at outrageous things, and this is sort of one of them."

In 2007, Conrad Black was convicted of defrauding the company he headed of US$ 6,100,000 (STR£4,000,000) and of obstructing the course of justice. He is serving a six year sentence in a US jail.

Mr Black is in the news again because he is asking George W. Bush to pardon him before he leaves the White House. Pardoning shady characters is a traditional act of outgoing presidents keen to piss on their legacy; in Bush's case, he does not even have a legacy to piss on, so there must be a great many shifty crims hoping for a pardon by the end of January.

One astonishing feature of Mr Black's appeal for clemency is that his lawyers have submitted legal bills relating to it to his former company - the victim of his crimes. An unnamed spokesperson from the company supplied the above quote.

More

Democracy in action

'However, there have been attempts in Texas, Missouri, Mississippi, Alabama and Arkansas, to confuse voters, who received text messages allegedly from the Democratic Party telling them to vote on Wednesday.'

'"You can't walk through a black neighborhood here in Miami without seeing our 'Don't Forget Big Wednesday!' message up on a billboard, tacked to a phone booth, or taped to a bus shelter," Monreal added. "The Republican Party has spared no expense in this endeavor."'

Nazis – I hate those guys

I sometimes look at stuff written by Eric Martin, one of those "bloggers". He talks about international affairs and US politics in an interesting manner, and I am not just saying that because he uses Belle & Sebastian lyrics as post titles. Anyways, in this post he talks about the crazy world of the American Right, where people seem to think that if Barack Obama becomes president then he will force socialism down the throat of the freedom loving American people. The persecution complexes of these people are fascinating, and I particularly enjoyed one linked-to rightwing blog, where the chain of reasoning went like this:

FACT 1: An FBI informant in the Weather Underground declared that, back in the 1970s, people in that organisation* talked about the need to exterminate the 25 million Americans who would never accept socialism.

FACT 2: One member of the Weather Underground was Mr Bill Ayers.

FACT 3: Bill Ayers subsequently served on the board of an organisation with Mr Barack Obama.

FACT 3 (b): Bill Ayers may have corrected essays that Barack Obama wrote while in college.

CONCLUSION: Barack Obama may well exterminate 25 million Americans if he is elected president.

Meanwhile, the liberal controlled media have been talking about how two American Nazis have been arrested on charges of conspiring to murder Obama and a load of students in a school mainly frequented by African Americans. Obviously, nothing has yet been proved and it is easy to stereotype skinhead with swastika tattoos, but one thing about the case leaped out at me – the two skinheads are alleged to have planned to wear top hats and tuxedos while carrying out their murderous crimes. Does anyone know what this is all about? Do top hats have some kind of cultural significance that is lost on people from outside the USA?

Image source

*the Weather Underground, not the FBI.

October Surprise?

US helicopters have entered Syria from Iraq to launch an attack on the village of Sukariya, killing eight people. US authorities claim the helicopters were attacking dangerous al-Qaida targets, but Syrian authorities have stated that the dead were a local man and his three children, together with a farm guard and his wife, and a fisherman. Syrian analyst Joshua Landis speculates that the attack might have been on smugglers spotted by a satellite and mistaken for al-Qaida agents. As can be imagined, Syrian authorities and people in the area attacked are a bit annoyed by the Americans' actions.

It is being assumed that this attack, the first into Syria by US forces, must have been approved at the highest level in the US administration. The timing is puzzling to some. President Bush's administration is in its last days, and his likely successor favours engagement with Syria, as do the Democrats in Congress and the leaders of most western countries. The raid on Sukariya may be just a parting shot to an unfriendly country by a failed president keen to be remembered for all the wrong reasons. However, you would not have to be totally paranoid to wonder if this escalation is intended to create a bit of international tension that might distract attention from the economic crisis. If voters buy into the idea that John McCain is the man to deal with international issues then a period of tense confrontation with Syria could be just what his campaign needs in the few weeks before the election.

More:
Syrian witness reacts to US raid
Syria hits out at 'terrorist' US
What could lie behind Syria raid?

A job well done!

The BBC reports that Condoleeza Rice is very pleased with the successes of the Bush administration in the Middle East. She is especially proud of the situation in Palestine.

"The Middle East is a different place and a better place," Ms Rice is quoted as saying.

More. Even More