International Think Tank Resources Issue 30

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International Think Tanks Resources

Issue 30(21-03-2011)

Table of Content

America’s Role: • Managing a Changing World………………………………………………………………………..…………………….3

Syria: • The Revolution Reaches Damascus………………………………………………………………………..…………16

• Policy Alert: Syria's Turn…………………………………………………………………………………………..………18

Libya: • Does the World Belong in Libya's War?..............................................................................19

• Libya Is Too Big to Fail…………………………………………………………………………………………….………..26

• Libya and the Dilemma of Intervention………………………………………………………………….………..30

Bahrain: • Bahrain's Crisis: Saudi Forces Intervene……………………………………………………………………….…..32

• Bahrain's Kleptocracy in the Crosshairs…………………………………………………………………………….34

Saudi Arabia: • Saudi Arabia Strikes Back…………………………………………………………………………………………………36

• Saudis bring Iran, US closer together………………………………………………………………………………..38

Egypt: • Revolution's End………………………………………………………………………………………………………………41

• The Other Turkish Model………………………………………………………………………………………………….43

• Egypt’s Revolution Struggles to Take Shape……………………………………………………………………..45

Yemen: • Bloody Days in Sanaa…………………………………………………………………………………………………….…53

Iran: • Iran Widens Crackdown on Religious Minorities……………………………………………………………….55

• Iranian Christians Sentenced for ‘Crimes against the Islamic Order’…………………………….…..56


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Israel: • The Arab Revolutions: An Israeli Perspective……………………………………………………….…………..57

Peace Talks: • Peace Now for Palestine…………………………………………………………………………………………………..60

Lebanon: Lebanon's new patriarch pledges unity………………………………………………………………………………..……….61 Hezbollah unruffled by show of force………………………………………………………………………………….……….63


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Managing a Changing World By: Bruce Jones

Source: Foreign Policy

Date: March 14, 2011

Bruce Jones is director of the Center on International Cooperation at New York University and senior fellow and director of

the managing global order project at The Brookings Institution

How the United States has become the largest minority stakeholder in the new global order.

EXECUTIVE SUMMARY

The trajectory of the rising powers is uncertain, but their current influence is a central fact of geopolitics.

Already the financial crisis, the Copenhagen climate negotiations, and the Iran sanctions dust-up have

illustrated the potential, the pitfalls, and, above all, the centrality of the relationship between American

power and the influence of rising actors. The emerging powers cannot dictate the shape of the coming

era, but they can block and complicate U.S. initiative. From its new position, the United States confronts

not a rigid bloc of emerging powers, but complex and shifting coalitions of interest. The greatest risk lies,

not in a single peer competitor, but in the erosion of cooperation on issues vital to U.S. interests and a

stable order. U.S. power is indispensible for that purpose, but not sufficient. No longer the CEO of Free

World Inc., the United States is now the largest minority shareholder in Global Order LLC.

Can the United States use its changed position to shape the emerging order? Bruce D. Jones explores the

prospects for cooperation on global finance and transnational threats, the need for new investments in

global economic and energy diplomacy, and the case for new crisis management tools to help de-escalate

inevitable tensions with the emerging powers.

INTRODUCTION

When historians assess America's role in the world after the terrorist attacks of 9/11, they will judge the

early failures in Afghanistan, and weigh the costs of the Iraq war against its eventual outcomes (still

uncertain). They will balance the deepening of the strategic relationship with India against the

deterioration, and eventual reset, of relations with Russia. Climate change will loom large, for good or ill.

Twenty years from now, we will know more about the consequences of U.S. counterterrorism policies

from Pakistan to Yemen to Lebanon.

They will surely debate this question: did American overstretch amplify the impact of the rise of the

"emerging powers?" While America's resources were bled by two wars, new potential rivals were growing

and husbanding their energies. A mere four years after Charles Krauthammer's manifesto for "American

Foreign Policy for a Unipolar World" caught the mood of American ambition, Fareed Zakaria's The Post-

American World reflected the consequences of miscalculation. All of this before the global financial crisis

drained the U.S. treasury further and highlighted China, India, Brazil and the Asian financial centers' new

weight.

While the trajectory of the rising powers is uncertain, their present influence is now a fact of geopolitics.

That raises questions about the relationship between U.S. power and the changing international order.


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Already the financial crisis, the Copenhagen climate negotiations and the Iran sanctions dust-up have

illustrated the potential, the pitfalls, and above all the centrality of the relationship between American

power and the influence of the rising actors. The emerging powers cannot dictate the shape of the

coming era, but they can block and complicate U.S. initiative.

Nearly a decade ago, Joseph Nye identified "the paradox of American power." While the United States

has unique military strength, it is constrained by the dynamics of the global economy and the need for

international institutions to manage an interdependent world. Today, after two wars and an economic

crisis have tested the limits of American power, we are confronted with a new paradox. For all of its

continued heft, the U.S. looks weaker than it once did, and must navigate a world of rising powers. Yet

international stability and prosperity still rest heavily on America's continuing strengths and leadership.

American leadership is far from overturned, but it is constrained. The question is thus posed: can the

United States still lead the international system? Will the rising actors acquiesce to U.S. leadership and

cooperate with it? Or are they contending to challenge if not the system itself-from which they profit-

then U.S. leadership of it?

This paper reviews the nature of the emerging powers' rise and the strategies they are pursuing. An

overarching picture emerges: America's dominance is dulled but its influence is sustained. From its new

position, the United States confronts not a rigid bloc of emerging powers, but complex and shifting

coalitions of interest. The greatest risk lies not in a single peer competitor but in the erosion of systems

and institutions vital to U.S. interests and a stable order. U.S. power is indispensible for international

order, but not sufficient. No longer the CEO of Free World Inc., the United States now holds a position

akin to that of the largest minority shareholder in Global Order LLC. Can the United States use its changed

position to shape the emerging order?

PART 1: A CHANGING INTERNATIONAL ORDER

Much of the recent commentary on international order has focused on the issues of America's "relative

decline" or the "rise of the rest." The change in the balance of economic weight is critical, but elides the

context of the change. The context matters to interests and influence, and to intent.

Globalization and the Emerging Powers' Interests

The essential point of context is that China, India, Brazil and others' phenomenal growth in the past two

decades was a function of their integration into a U.S.-backed system of global economics, finance and

trade. As foreign policy analysts as diverse as Condoleeza Rice and G. John Ikenberry have argued, this

means that these rising actors are fundamentally status quo powers: that is, they seek to profit and gain

influence within the existing order, not to overturn it. This is not the first time in modern history that the

established and rising powers have been financially and economically linked, and integration is no

guarantee against crises between the powers. It is a firewall, though, against direct conflict.

The fact that the emerging powers' growth is dependent on globalization has security as well as economic

implications. Globalization itself is dependent on a series of global networks for trade, transport, finance

and information. Both trade-led growth and financial services depend on a constant flow of goods, people

and data. The bad news is that these networks are vulnerable to disruption, both from terrorist and

criminal organizations, and challenger states. The upside for international order is that that threat is


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shared. Not only do the United States, China, India, Brazil and Russia share security concerns about

terrorism, they also have deeply shared economic interests in preventing a disruption to the basic

operations of the global economy. This even gives the rising powers a continuing interest in the exercise

of U.S. power, for example, in the use of U.S. naval assets to maintain the free flow of commercial goods

and energy supplies through vital but vulnerable trade routes, like the Straits of Hormuz and the Malacca

Straits. China has muttered about burden-sharing in the Malacca Straits, but no one seriously contests the

shared international interest in U.S.-backed trade security.

Still, even within this system, a redistribution of influence carries risks. First, rapid growth is generating

exponential increases in the demand for scarce supplies of energy and consumable resources. China's

economy has trebled in the last two decades, but its energy and food consumption have risen even faster,

as has India's. Vast new middle classes are driving exponential growth in demands as their consumption

patterns start to reflect those of the west-with energy-hungry cars, luxury goods and high caloric diets.

Tough, competitive dynamics are taking hold in the Middle East, Central Asia, Latin America and Africa in

the search for energy, minerals and food- and the land and water it takes to produce them. This will make

some supplier countries rich and destabilize others, but also has the potential to destabilize major power

relations themselves.

Second, the emerging powers have every interest to maneuver for greater influence over the rules of the

global economic game. Because it operates (by definition) across national spheres, the global economy is

regulated through international negotiations-in the World Trade Organization, the World Intellectual

Property Organization, the International Telecommunications Union (which sets global standards for

cellular and wireless technology), and similar bodies. These regulations are the subject of newly intense

diplomacy. The good news is that countries are battling for influence in Geneva boardrooms and not on

the battlefield. The bad news is that complex negotiations over the regulations that undergird global

transactions can bog down cooperation; the WTO has been stalled for years, for example, because the

emerging powers now have the capacity to block U.S. and European positions they view (with some

justification) as injurious to their interests.

Third, the simple fact is that with rising capacity comes rising ambition. It is a tenet of realism that power

redistribution is inherently destabilizing. Of course, realism got the collapse of the Soviet Union wrong,

and some power shifts result in peaceable transitions rather than war. But, well short of war, the rising

powers are already altering the global terrain and starting to act like every other new power-throwing

their new political weight around within their regions and seeking global status to match.

There is an evident irony of it being a global financial and trade system underwritten and secured by U.S.

power that has created the most important contemporary challenge to that power. The rising powers

know that the United States is critical in undergirding the very system on which their power is dependent-

but that will not stop them from testing U.S. leadership where it suits their interests to do so, and where

they can get away with it.

Influence of the emerging powers

How much influence do the emerging "powers" actually have? The new economic weight and

commensurate financial influence of China, India, Brazil and other recently developed economies are

easily measured and, by now, universally acknowledged. If their role in response to the global financial


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crisis were not sufficient indication of their new clout, China overtaking Japan as the world's second

largest economy was a potent symbol.

Economic weight is one thing; military power is another. For all of the media hype surrounding China's

new weapons systems, the fact remains that not only is the United States still vastly the dominant military

power, it will retain both a technological and capability lead in global terms for at least a decade, and

probably two. Yes, at present, much of that capacity is bogged down. But that is a temporary reality. The

U.S. nuclear guarantee remains a central part of a stable security order in North Asia, Europe and the

Gulf.

The difference between the rising powers' economic weight and their still modest military power mirrors

the debate between those who argue that the United States is in relative decline and those who posit

continued American leadership in the international system. This is partially a debate about semantics.

Few in the "America still leads" camp would deny that there has been a relative shift in the balance of

economic influence; and few in the "relative decline" camp would deny American military dominance. But

that semantic debate obscures a deeper question about the nature of the U.S. position in the world today

and the extent to which it still commands a leadership role in the international system.

Part of the confusion arises from the term "balance of power," which lends itself to a sense of metrics and

hard power. In the real world of international economics and politics, influence is a more accurate term,

though harder to measure. In the space between finance and war, three realities shape emerging powers'

influence.

First, the emerging powers' relative political and military weight within regions is far greater than global

rankings suggest. This enables them to block or constrain U.S. initiatives on major geopolitical questions.

Our military capacity dwarfs India's, but their influence in Myanmar and Iran rivals or exceeds ours, as

does China's on North Korea. Brazil's deployable military capacity is miniscule, but it carries substantial

clout in Argentina and Venezuela. This new influence is not uncomplicated though. One of the most

interesting dynamics in contemporary international politics is the extent to which some actors,

traditionally resistant to U.S. presence in their regions, now see it as balancing that of the regional power.

In South East Asia, Vietnam has called for sustained U.S. engagement in the South China seas. India's

neighbors look at its rise with trepidation. A Brazilian diplomat acknowledged, in his terms, that trading

"the imperial yoke of America for that of sub-imperial Brazil" was not exactly a step up for Brazil's

neighbors. Still, that some neighbors are smarting under the new weight of the regional powers is

illustration of the fact of it. This would matter less to U.S. interests and international order if their home

regions were less significant in commercial and security terms.

Emerging power influence is amplified, second, by multilateral institutions. China already has a veto in the

UN Security Council, and it, along with India, has long wielded substantial influence in global bodies like

the General Assembly, given each country's ability to muster support from the G-77 group of developing

countries. As these powers assert themselves at the global level, and in such power clubs as the G-20,

they are bumping into resistance in their continued efforts to lead the G-77; the erosion of G-77 unity in

UN debates since the start of the G-20 has been striking. But for now, China, India and Brazil get to have it

both ways. The United States has paid less attention to the diplomacy of global bodies. In an era when

traditional geopolitical issues were all that mattered to U.S. foreign policy, this would matter little. But

not only are key aspects of globalization managed in substantial part through inclusive multilateral fora-

including trade and aviation, intellectual property-so too are climate, infectious disease and fragile states.


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Third, the emerging powers profit from the phenomenon of the "shadow of the future." States calculating

the costs of various strategies assess not only the present, but also the future influence of the United

States and putative rivals. Accurate or not, the dominant international perception is of an America past its

prime, and of emerging powers whose time is coming. The scramble is on to get into their good books and

investment strategies. This is not only true of regional actors, but even of core U.S. allies, like Germany

and the United Kingdom. Prime Minister Cameron's early post-election trip to Delhi was illustrative of a

new focus for UK policy, and several of his European colleagues are following suit.

All this is amplified by the fact that priority security threats for the United States, like terrorism, operate

in transnational spaces that diminish the influence of traditional modes of hard power. U.S. drone

capacity has been an important (if probably counterproductive in the long run) tool of the U.S. war

against al Qaeda in Pakistan, but is of little use in combating al Qaeda-inspired movements based in

Toronto, Djakarta or Cairo. Hard power can contain fragile states, but not rebuild them. In short, U.S.

foreign policy priorities play against our comparative advantages.

Intent: Strategies of the emerging powers

Influence is one thing; intent is another. To navigate the shifting international landscape, the emerging

powers, Russia and Europe are using a combination of strategies: building alliances and regional

structures, blocking regional moves that are injurious to their interests, bargaining for leverage on global

issues, occasionally banding together to stymie the United States, and, critically, balancing each other's

rise. U.S. grand strategy must account for each of these approaches.

Building and blocking. Building alliances and institutions is a traditional tool for bolstering relative power.

The emerging powers' strategy has focused on regional rather than global arrangements. It is China's role

in upgrading the Shanghai Cooperation Organization that has garnered the most attention and hand-

wringing in Washington. But the other powers are active in their regions as well. Brazil has moved beyond

simply trying to assert its influence within the Organization of American States, to leading the creation of

the Union of South American States, which it dominates. India has begun throwing its weight around in

Nepal, Bangladesh and increasingly Afghanistan-where it is now the third largest individual donor. It has

also sought to move beyond the confines of the moldy South Asian Association for Regional Cooperation

through new initiatives with the Bay of Bengal countries and Indian Ocean rim partners. Russia has

proposed a new regional security architecture for the European space-one for which it has suggested few

details but that would, presumably, amplify Russia's rights and roles.

None of this is entirely comfortable for the United States. Strong regional roles by the emerging powers

could be viewed as a form of burden-sharing; in practice, it comes with assertiveness and increased

blocking power on regional issues, and rising leverage on global ones. India and China have blocked U.S.

moves on Myanmar; Russia and China have resisted U.S. strategy on Iran; and even South Africa was able

to resist Western pressure on Zimbabwe.

Bargaining and Balancing. Blocking is an expensive strategy, however. Much more prevalent are

bargaining moves. In the financial, climate, energy and regional security fields, the past several years have

seen a steady rise in the assertiveness and effectiveness of the emerging powers at the various

international bargaining tables.


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Prior to the financial crisis, the emerging powers were showing more signs of wanting status rather than

influence in global decision making. Senior policymakers in Delhi, Brasilia and even Beijing were acutely

aware that with greater influence would come responsibility and cost-sharing, and saw no reason to rush

for that. Noisy nationalists were in evidence as well. But in the executive offices of those capitals, policy

was dominated by a mature recognition that the U.S. role in securing globalization was in their own

interest, that the United States could be trusted to protect the global economy from severe contraction,

and that, although they would push for greater status, they would do so carefully, not wanting to upset

the apple cart of American leadership. As a ranking Brazilian diplomat put it: "We want a long, soft

landing in America's relative decline, not a short, violent crash."

The financial crisis changed this. Shock at the extent of U.S. mismanagement of credit markets and

regulatory failure at the onset of the crisis has led the emerging powers-as well as Europe-to re-evaluate

the merits of America's financial leadership. There is not much they can do about this, of course. None of

them have the economic scale or financial systems to displace America's global financial roles. But China's

central bank governor gave voice to a widely shared frustration when he spoke bluntly about China's

interest in exploring alternatives to the dollar serving as a reserve currency. France's President Sarkozy

has echoed this theme. China, India and Brazil have all been more assertive in bargaining for more seats

and votes in key international financial institutions. World Bank board reforms in 2009 gave China and

other developing world economies a larger share of the vote, and IMF reforms were agreed in the G-20

shortly thereafter.

In some areas, such as climate change and some aspects of trade, the emerging powers have gone so far

as to band together to deter U.S. initiatives. The BASIC grouping that composed itself in Copenhagen has

widely divergent interests and strategies for coping with climate change, but all of them resist a strong

U.S. role in setting the rules of the game. China and India were also substantially more nimble than the

United States in turning the multilateral setting to their own advantage-until the very last minute, when

Secretary Clinton's large financing proposal turned the tables.

But outside the climate arena, such banding together has been rare. If the anti-U.S. frustrations expressed

by China's central bank governor were widely shared in Singapore, Brasilia and Paris, these capitals

nevertheless have not banded together with China to take up their currency proposals. This is because

there is one strategy that is even more important for the emerging powers than bargaining-balancing.

In India, China's currency proposal is to be met with skepticism; a continued reliance on the dollar and the

U.S. Treasury is a comfortable position for India, and strengthening China's hand is hardly a central

objective of Indian strategic policy. China and India look at each other across the Himalayas as both huge

trading partners and historic rivals. Russia has also sought to balance China's rise. Joint statements from

BRICs Summits on potential currency cooperation have gone entirely unimplemented. Russia has played

its role as potential swing vote in the UNSC negotiations on Iran to bolster its relationship to the United

States vis-à-vis China. The leaked statement that articulated Moscow's new foreign policy approach was,

in essence, a document about how to solidify the "reset" with Washington as a hedge against Chinese

assertiveness. Balancing is not just against China. Russia and China cooperated to keep Brazil and Turkey

out of the negotiating process on Iran, defending their position as veto-wielding members of the UN

Security Council and the clout that comes with it.


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Thus while the trade, financial, elite and diplomatic ties between the emerging powers continue to grow

and deepen, for each, relations with Washington are still more central to foreign policy than relations

with each other, at least for now. And in this lies the key to U.S. influence.

Implications for the U.S. role in the world

On major questions of global economy and security, interests, not ideology or an anti-U.S. leadership

strategy, are driving emerging powers' shifting alliances. Despite efforts to find a West/Rest or

democratic/autocratic divide in international order, such divisions are not dominant thus far. Cooperation

on global finance and counterterrorism in no way guarantees cooperation on energy and climate, or

regional security. The United States has been as likely to find support from China as from Europe on many

of the major challenges it confronts. At the Toronto meeting of the G-20, the United States, China, India

and Brazil banded against the United Kingdom, Germany and Australia on questions of stimulus versus

fiscal restraint. The U.S. perspective on terrorism has been closer to the Indian or Russian standpoint than

to the European approach. The United States and Europe worked closely with Russia to persuade a

reluctant China to join hands on Iran. On climate change, the United States is no more closely aligned to

Japan or Europe than it is to India or China. The Western alliance (but not a democratic alliance) lives on

in issues dominated by values debates-human rights, democracy promotion, and to a lesser degree,

development.

The result is a partial shift in the U.S. position. True, the United States no longer enjoys the status of

unrivaled hyper-power that it maintained after the end of the Cold War, or the status of "leader of the

free world" that characterized its position in the western alliance during the Cold War. U.S. dominance is

dulled, but its influence remains substantial. With the change in the structure of international order, the

U.S. position has morphed into something equivalent to the position of the largest minority shareholder

in a modern corporation-a position not of control, but of substantial influence. Its influence, however, has

to be wielded in a new mode.

With today's power distribution, no one actor, and no one set of actors, commands an automatic majority

of "votes." Setting the rules of the game, solving crises and taking advantage of opportunities requires

coalitions among "shareholders." On any given vote among shareholders, the largest minority

shareholder can be outvoted if the rest band together-as the United States found in Copenhagen. But by

the same token, the largest shareholder, even if a minority shareholder, has more options available to

them than any other actor to forge temporary alliances to produce enough of a majority-sometimes a

decisive majority-to win a specific vote. The United States can work with India and African states to win a

vote on peacekeeping issues, with China and Brazil to win a decision on financial regulation, and with

Russia and Europe on the management of Iran.

No other state has anything like this range of tactical alliances available to them. This extends to

convening power. The largest minority shareholder cannot demand a shareholder meeting; but if they call

for one, most other shareholders are likely to agree to attend. For all of the fact of the prominence of the

emerging powers in the G-20 response to the financial crisis, efforts by other states to generate a

coordinated response floundered; only the United State had the authority to convene the G-20 summit.

Theoretically, India or China could have convened the Nuclear Security Summit-but it was the United

States that did so.


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This is a complex game, where the United States can no longer get its way just by force of its own

position, or lead a stable alliance against a common threat. Crafting decisions requires complex "voting

alliances" that will need to be forged vote by vote, or issue by issue. This requires courting relationships

with a wide range of shareholders and a willingness to return favors of a variety of types. Still, it is a

position of substantial influence. The comparative ease with which the largest minority shareholder can

pull together a coalition to reach a blocking majority confers a role that can best be described as

"gravitational pull." No other shareholder can afford to band permanently against you, lest it risk seeing

its interests in the "board" vitally damaged. Some shareholders may occasionally be tempted to play

spoiler roles on individual votes, but if they push this too far they will provoke banding behavior by other

shareholders protecting their interests-as China learned on currency issues and Russia learned in its

efforts to annex South Ossetia, roundly condemned by the emerging powers as well as the West. When

this occurs, the others will look first to the largest minority shareholder to lead the way.

But this comparative advantage cannot be overplayed. If the United States attempts to portray its

position as that of global hub, or if its strategy were perceived to be one of a resurrection of dominance,

it would likely backfire, triggering a deeper banding together of the other powers and middle powers

against the U.S. position. To succeed in wielding influence from its new, influential but less dominant

position, the United States needs a new mindset about strategy.

PART 2: IMPLICATIONS FOR U.S. STRATEGY AND INTERNATIONAL ORDER

That all of this matters can be illustrated by imagining the negative scenarios if the United States

withdraws from leadership functions, no one else steps in, or the powers fail to find ways to cooperate on

global challenges-what David Gordon calls the "G-Zero" scenario. In global finance, the results would be

swift and disastrous; cooperation this time around prevented something akin to the Great Depression on

a global scale. Similarly, consequences would arise if no lead actor or constellation of actors was providing

naval assets to secure trade. If global economic negotiations grind to a halt, global trade and finance will

begin to erode.

Of course, the primary purpose of international order-to prevent major power war-is even more

fundamental. But well short of active conflict between the major powers, mismanagement of the

changing international system can pose tremendous costs for the United States and virtually everyone

else.

Avoiding a G-Zero scenario, a major power conflict, and continued high U.S. expenditure against

leadership functions that produce stability should be key U.S. goals. And that requires three elements of

strategy: fostering cooperation and burden-sharing on global finance, transnational threats and

development; renegotiating rules of the road for economic, energy and climate competition; and

investing in tools for crisis de-escalation and management. This should be complemented by frank

debate, but not firm divides, on human rights.

Fostering cooperation on global finance and transnational threats

In the realm of global finance, the United States has adapted to the new realities swiftly and gracefully.

The creation of the G-20 Summit, the decision to accept new International Monetary Fund (IMF)

monitoring on U.S. financial decisions, and a new agreement to give China, India and other rising

economies a greater percentage of shares at the IMF have been remarkable. The creation of the new


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Financial Stability Board and the shift in global economic order have also been significant. This outcome

was indicative of changed realities and a changing American mindset in favor of new voting rights for the

rising powers at the IMF, at the expense of European seats.

Extending cooperation to other issues is easy to wish for, harder to do. But as noted above, U.S. and

emerging powers' interests align in several areas, including on some security issues. The Bush

administration, its rhetoric notwithstanding, pursued an agenda of cooperation on security issues,

through formal and informal arrangements-pushing for an enormous expansion in UN peacekeeping,

fostering informal arrangements to tackle nuclear smuggling (the Proliferation Security Initiative), and

building strong bilateral cooperation with China, India and Russia on terrorism issues. The Obama

administration has taken a similar two-track approach: fostering informal arrangements like the Nuclear

Security Summit, which has translated into ongoing cooperation to protect nuclear materials; and using

the UN Security Council to coordinate major power approaches to Iran and North Korea, with some

important success.

A similar combination of formal and informal approaches could help to solidify cooperation on terrorism

and other transnational threats. For example, navel cooperation against piracy is being pursued and could

be extended. The U.S. Navy patrolling alongside the Chinese, Indian, Russian, Japanese and European

navies off the coast of Somalia provides a compelling case study of shared interests. The fact of a UN

Security Council resolution completes the picture, and provides an interesting model that squares the

circle between the U.S. instinct for informal arrangements, and the European and emerging powers'

desire to reinforce the formal arrangements of the UN. Over time, aspects of this model could be

extended to burden-sharing on trade security in more sensitive locations.

It is debatable whether such cooperation could be extended to active crises, for example on

Afghanistan/Pakistan. Certainly Russia, China and India do not have an interest in the return of the

Taliban or the ascendancy of al Qaeda, or in the further destabilization of Pakistan. But there are two

basic problems. First, is a classic of cooperation problems. The threat is shared, but unequally. Relative

costs matter. Both China and Russia lose from insecurity in western Pakistan-but India and the United

States lose more. A challenge for strategy is to find arrangements that create incentives for cooperation

or regulated competition, even in the non-collapse scenarios. This is a key role for institutional

arrangements, as opposed to ad hoc cooperation. In ad hoc cooperation, the relative losses question will

loom large, whereas institutional approaches can create bureaucratic and elite interests that trump

relative losses. A second set of problems are habit, capacity and trust. Few of the emerging powers have

the habit, or even the tools, for strategy cooperation on security problems. The United States has tried to

engage China on scenario planning on North Korea, for example, and has been rebuffed. India's

diplomatic capacity is thin and already over-stretched. These constraints will change rapidly, though, and

it might be wise not to start on North Korea or Pakistan, but rather to build trust in significant, second

order problems such as Somalia or Yemen.

A further area where cooperation can grow is development. Sustaining global economic recovery will

require a serious effort to support growth for middle income and less-developed states. After resisting

the agenda, the G-20 has created a development group that, so far, has found far more common ground

than differences. Before that, the new monies and new ideas emanating from the emerging powers had

been treated as a threat rather than a source of new energy. The West's and the emerging powers'

interests in development do not entirely align, especially on issues like corruption, but there is a base of


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shared interest in new and stable growth. Given the continuing failure of western development

strategies, an open mind and genuine dialogue seem warranted.

Cooperative efforts serve two purposes. They are important for functional reasons; the issues need to be

managed, and their distributed nature means that collective efforts are a necessity, not a luxury.

However, fostering deeper collaboration has a second, ordering effect-forging a sense of what the Obama

administration has called "shared security." This matters both for government-to-government relations

and the broader public narrative. The domestic resonance of competitive and conflictual dynamics tends

to outweigh cooperation. Every Chinese and Japanese citizen knows their two countries clashed over

maritime issues in September 2010; hardly any know that they are patrolling jointly in the Gulf of Aden.

Counterterrorism cooperation is one area that can compete in domestic salience. For U.S. audiences,

against the charge that China is cheating on currency rules, "they're helping us on trade security" sounds

abstract; "they're helping us on al Qaeda" carries more punch. Counterterrorism cooperation should have

greater visibility in both countries.

Shared interests in tackling transnational threats will only be a part of an overall sense of security. Other

security issues-regional security and energy security-will drive divergence. But deeper collaboration on

shared threats can contextualize the inevitable confrontations ahead.

Regulating economic and energy competition

In other areas, the nature of U.S., European and emerging power interests will push towards competitive

rather than cooperative dynamics. The G-20 has already shifted-perhaps too quickly-from a mode of crisis

response to negotiating new modes of regulation to prevent future crises. That takes it into the terrain of

negotiating the rules of competition (on currency, regulation of financial products, etc.). Here again,

issues of relative loss loom large. Everyone loses if the bottom drops out from global financial systems,

but states profit or lose differently from different regulations; hence fierce competition.

Similar competitive dynamics over the rules have blocked deeper trade cooperation in recent years. In the

WTO, divergences between the United States, Europe and the emerging powers have stymied new

openings in the Doha round, as every actor plays for optimal outcomes, resulting in no outcome at all.

Such dynamics will likely be increasingly common in international negotiations on global economic

regulation. In some settings, the emerging powers are divided. On the issue of regulating intellectual

property rights, for example, China has avoided siding with other developing countries that challenge the

existing rules. Still, in this realm of the "software"of globalization, the United States may have no choice

but to pay more attention to the interests and ideas of new powers, and to give some ground. U.S.

dominance has enabled a somewhat less than level playing field, tilted to our advantage. Trying too hard

to retain that advantage runs the risk of triggering the G-Zero scenario. One way or another, global

economic diplomacy will matter more in the years ahead, and that must be reflected in the allocation of

diplomatic resources-as indeed is acknowledged in the QDDR's proposals for "elevating economic

diplomacy."

Issues of relative loss and relative gain may be particularly hard to manage on questions of energy, carbon

and scarce resources. The issues will shape the question of whether contemporary relationships between

the United States and the other major powers tilt towards the collaborative, the competitive or the

conflictual. This is not the place to spell out in detail the kinds of area or resource specific agreements

that may help ameliorate the worst of "race to the bottom" behavior that might otherwise characterize

the sphere of energy security and climate change. Suffice it to say, a component of U.S. order strategy


13

should be to balance U.S. economic and energy needs with the long-term risks of failure to forge an

agreement on climate and the short-term conflict risks of unregulated competition over energy.

This does not mean abandoning any sense that some of these areas can serve as zones of cooperation.

There is a great deal of loose talk about scarce water and the likelihood of an uptick in conflict over water

resources. History suggests otherwise. Countries that have competing needs for access to a water source

have more frequently forged agreements to cooperate on preserving and sharing that source than fought

over it. U.S.-China joint initiatives on carbon-sequestering technology also illustrate the potential for win-

win approaches. Still, competitive mindsets prevail. Genuine shortages of strategic minerals, food

supplies and arable land, combined with mercantile policy, do seem set to cause rough competition,

veering into conflict.

Investing in tools for crisis de-escalation and management

Because competition is inevitable, and because regional security dilemmas will almost certainly prove

more complicated over time, a third and critical component of strategy will be to invest up front in tools

for crisis de-escalation and management.

Much of this will be region specific. But across the board, a key element for the United States is to be

imaginative in using flexible coalitions of other countries (or "shareholders") to bolster its own diplomacy.

When the United States sought to isolate Russia over its effort to annex South Ossetia and Abkhazia,

western unity was not the death-blow to Russia's effort-it was China's firm condemnation of Russia's

position. When the United States sought to respond to China's growing assertiveness in the South China

Seas, the most helpful request for U.S. engagement was not the predictable one from Japan, but the

surprising one from Vietnam. So long as the United States is viewed as a critical part of managing the

global balance of power, its presence will help defuse clashes with the emerging powers.

We can also be creative about the role of middle powers. Against a backdrop of mounting competition

and tense exchanges between the Arctic powers, it was Norway and Denmark, that drafted agreements

with Russia and the United States which led to a lowering of tensions and agreement to use International

Maritime Organization conventions to manage boundary disputes in the Arctic. Could similar middle

power roles be used to defuse boundary tensions or create third-party de-escalation mechanisms in other

regions? At the most creative, one could imagine a third-party mechanism being on call for China, Japan,

Russia and the United States to help resolve boundary disputes and/or naval incidents in the South China

Seas. One such multi-nation mechanism was used by South Korea to investigate the Cheonan sinking, but

because that mechanism was not pre-agreed by China, it had modest impact on crisis diplomacy. Could a

more robust, if still informal, third-party mechanism provide more concrete crisis prevention and

management tools? These issues warrant quiet exploration.

The United States can and should also invest in reinforcing the UN Security Council (UNSC). During the

Cold War, the UNSC gave the United States and the Soviet Union a joint tool for crisis de-escalation. In the

Middle East, for example, faced with crises between their respective Israeli and Arab allies, the United

States and the Soviet Union agreed on several occasions to Security Council ceasefire resolutions and

peacekeeping deployments. These halted crises before they could escalate into direct superpower

confrontations.

Growing use of the UNSC has been a point of surprising commonality between the Bush, Clinton, Bush

and Obama administrations. This, however, was during a period of U.S. dominance. With new influence


14

for new actors, the issue of membership reform hangs over the Security Council's future utility. The issue

is probably less complicated than generally believed, and it is worth noting that if India and Japan were

full members, the UNSC would have all the Asian powers-creating a crisis management platform for that

region where the shift in the balance of power will be most volatile.

Still, even if there were a positive vote in the General Assembly (GA) today for membership change, it

would be years before the required two-thirds of the GA's membership had undertaken the necessary

domestic ratification procedures for Charter reform. So, pursuing UNSC expansion does not negate the

need for interim measures. Functional cooperation with the emerging powers on nuclear security,

counterterrorism and piracy helps, but does not provide either a crisis response mechanism per se, or the

underlying relationships between senior national security officials that can be called upon in times of an

acute crisis. (The fact of a pre-existing G-20 mechanism among finance ministers was vital for allowing

swift alignment between G-20 leaders during the financial crisis.)

Crisis management capacity could be developed in several ways: creating an informal mechanism that

links national security advisors or foreign ministry officials of the P5 plus the emerging powers around

common threats; involving foreign ministries in G-20 sherpa mechanisms (as was often done for the G7);

or having a separate process through which G-20 (or G8 plus 5) foreign ministers meet. A more radical,

but perhaps interesting, idea is to take the UNSC's Military Staff Committee out of retirement and bring

the emerging powers (and others) into its deliberations as relevant to the specific topic or crisis. This

could provide a "trial run" of UNSC reform that neither threatens the legitimacy of the UN, nor risks

diluting the focus of the G-20, nor locks the United States into untested membership change.

And there are interesting models of both informal and semi-formal major power cooperation in crisis

containment under UNSC mandates. In Afghanistan, NATO operates under a UNSC mandate that enables

not only NATO allies but also others, like Australia, the UAE and Singapore, to deploy. In Southern

Lebanon, at America's behest, France, Germany, Italy, India and China are all deployed under a UNSC

mandate, and with a bespoke management arrangement (the Strategic Military Cell) that operates

outside the normal command structures of the UN Secretariat. And again, there is the example of

counter-piracy cooperation in the Horn of Africa.

Frank debate, not firm divides, on human rights

Finally, it is important to touch on what may be the most contentious of issues between the United States

and the emerging powers, namely human rights.

On basic human rights issues, the key dynamic will be between the West and China. Neither domestic

reality, nor good strategy, will allow the United States to ignore the human rights issues with China. But

U.S. diplomacy on the issue should be cognizant of the relatively limited impact that outside pressure will

have on China's evolution and the broader context to the relationship-a balance admirably struck by

President Obama during President Hu Jintao's January 2011 visit to Washington. President Hu's

acknowledgment that China had "issues" with human rights was a mild opening, but certainly one worth

pursuing.

More broadly, using human rights standards or issues of democracy promotion as a yardstick for

cooperation will backfire. On both issues, emerging power behavior combines a defense of sovereignty

(fundamental to their security) with a tradition of resisting western interventionism. Democratic India,


15

Brazil and South Africa routinely vote with their NAM friends and against the West in the Human Rights

Council. Moreover, while issues like "the responsibility to protect" are presumed to divide the "West from

the rest," and do so in rhetoric, reality is more complex. India and South Africa spoke out strongly against

NATO's action in Kosovo, which was supported by the Organization of Islamic Countries; France, Russia

and Germany banded together to block U.S. action in Iraq.

So, contentious, yes; neatly dividing the west from the rest, no. There is complexity not cleavage here.

And an effort to use human rights or democratic criteria to drive hard cleavages in the international

system would likely provoke more serious banding together by the emerging powers-against, not in favor

of, our strategy.

CONCLUSION

America has rebounded from dips in its influence before. An oil price rise before economic downturn, a

brewing crisis in Iran, a rising competitor, domestic divides and a Democratic president facing a resurgent

right-welcome to 1978. Still, absent dramatic change, an economic shift to "the rest" will continue, and

political influence will follow.

If we foster cooperation where interests allow, and devote serious resources to global economic and

energy diplomacy, we can balance the contentious dynamics of regional security and human rights.

Preparing for crises by investing in management tools can help de-escalate them when they arrive.

This may fail, as the domestic resonance of competition drives out awareness of shared interests. And it

will certainly face substantial obstacles. Europe reluctantly gave up seats at the IMF to accommodate the

rising powers, and will resist further reforms. Chinese nationalists may overplay their hand, triggering

Western antibodies. Brazil and India can overreach. And an inward looking Congress can undermine the

credibility of U.S. strategy, on issues both foreign and so-called domestic (climate, energy, currency). The

alternatives, though, are unpalatable: an effort to re-assert American dominance that will almost certainly

backfire, or the manifestation of the G-Zero scenario, with risks of direct conflict between the powers.

The odds of success rise if accompanied by serious efforts to maintain U.S. strength, economically and

militarily, and to cultivate a bipartisan foreign policy. Michael O'Hanlon addressed the first point in a

paper on defense budget cuts that can sustain national strength. Robert Kagan captured the latter in

writing that conservatives who voted for New START recognized that the United States has only one

president at a time and U.S. national security is strongest when his foreign interlocutors believe he speaks

with broad domestic support.

This mattered somewhat less when the U.S. position was more dominant. But as the "largest minority

shareholder" in the complex holding company that is Global Order LLC, the unity of U.S. positions impacts

the gravitational pull of our strategy-a gravitational pull in ever greater tension with the otherwise

centrifugal forces of a shifting international order.

********************


16

The Revolution Reaches Damascus Source: The writer is a journalist in Damascus, Syria. Foreign Policy has withheld the author's name due

to security concerns.


DAMASCUS, Syria — Until this week, it appeared that Syria might be immune from the turmoil that has

gripped the Middle East. But trouble may now be starting to brew.

On March 18, popular demonstrations escalated into the most serious anti-government action during

Syrian President Bashar al-Assad's decade-long rule. Security forces opened fire on a demonstration in the

southern city of Deraa, killing at least two protesters. The unrest also does not appear to be contained to

any one geographical region: Protests were also reported in the northwestern city of Banias, the western

city of Homs, the eastern city of Deir al-Zur, and the capital of Damascus.

The demonstrations began on March 15, when a small group of people gathered in Souq al-Hamidiyeh,

Damascus's historic covered market, to turn the ruling Baath Party's slogans against it. "God, Syria,

freedom -- that's enough," they chanted. The phrase is a play on words on the Baathist mantra: "God,

Syria, Bashar -- that's enough." The next day, around 100 activists and relatives of political prisoners

gathered in front of the Interior Ministry in Damascus's Marjeh Square to demand the release of Syria's

jailed dissidents.

The protests may be small fry by regional standards, but in Syria -- repressively ruled under a state of

emergency since the Baath Party came to power in 1963 -- they are unprecedented. An atmosphere of

fear and secrecy makes the extent of discontent hard to ascertain. Sources outside the country said

demonstrations took place in six of Syria's 14 provinces on Tuesday. Those claims were hard to verify, but

the government is clearly rattled: It has beefed up the presence of its security forces, a ragtag-looking

bunch in leather jackets, across the country and especially in the northeast, home to a large and often

restless Kurdish population, and Aleppo.

The next day's protests were met with a brutal response by Syrian security agents, who far outnumbered

protesters. Plainclothes officers wielding wooden batons beat the silent demonstrators -- old and young,

male and female.

"They were goons, thugs who reacted disproportionately," one witness said. Thirty-eight people were

detained, including the 10-year-old son of a political prisoner. Also arrested were a number of activists --

including Mazen Darwish, the former head of the Syrian Center for Media and Freedom of Expression,

which was officially shut down by authorities in 2009, and Suhair Atassi, an outspoken figure who has

become a thorn in the government's side.

The protests this week are not the first faint rumblings of discontent in Syria. Two failed "days of rage" on

Feb. 4 and 5 fizzled -- a fact that some blamed on the weather, but was more likely because they were

organized on Facebook mainly by Syrians outside the country -- but other indirect displays of anger have

taken place. On Feb. 16, a group of businessmen in Damascus's al-Hariqa district, a market area in the old

city, took to the streets to protest a police beating. On Feb. 22 and 23, groups held vigils outside the

Libyan Embassy in solidarity with anti-Qaddafi rebels. They were dispersed violently.


17

The identities of those organizing this wave of demonstrations remain a mystery. Syria's community of

dissidents is a small, disparate, and disconnected bunch. But protest seem to be coming from varied

sources -- Tuesday's protest was not organized by the usual suspects of activists and former political

prisoners. This is a sign of disorganization, perhaps, but also that discontent is not confined to one group

and that there may be a growing unhappiness at the grassroots level.

"People are angry that they are not respected, that there are no jobs, education and health care are poor,

that corruption is draining their money, that they do not have real freedom, that the media does not

reflect our problems and that there is no system because everything happens by opaque presidential

decrees," said Abdel Ayman Nour, a Syrian dissident who runs the website All4Syria from abroad. "Syrians

simply want to be respected as citizens and are angry they are treated as sheep."

The Syrian regime, usually a savvy player, seems confused about how to respond to these signs of unrest.

It has veered between offers of reform to denial, arrests, intimidation, and beatings. In an interview with

the Wall Street Journal published on Jan. 31, Assad claimed that "Syria is stable," crediting his anti-U.S.

and anti-Israel foreign policy for being in line with his people's beliefs. The president also promised

political reforms would take place this year -- but simultaneously, media run by or with close ties to the

state have accused infiltrators and Israel of being behind protests.

March 16's beatings, which were more severe than those used to break up the vigil on Feb. 23, may signal

a new zero-tolerance approach by the government. And that would mark a dangerous course for the

regime.

"Such a reaction only makes us more angry," said one civil society activist who asked not to be named. "It

is further humiliation of an already humiliated population. How can you talk of reforms and at the same

time beat us and treat us as stupid?"

Reforms may be the wiser path to pursue, but the Assad regime faces a daunting task in assuaging its

citizens' economic grievances -- let alone their political gripes. The country suffers from double-digit

unemployment and GDP growth that appears too sluggish to improve the lot of its rapidly growing

population. To make matters worse, a years-long drought in the north has been disastrous for the

country's beleaguered farmers.

Nobody in Syria is sure what will happen next. And there are still sound reasons to believe the protests

are one-off events. The core reasons Syrians have stayed quiescent remain: tight control by the security

forces, worries of sectarian fallout in the absence of a strongman, and, in many quarters, a fondness for

Assad, whom many see as a reformer.

The bloody events in Libya have also scared the population. Remembering what happened to the city of

Hama in 1982, when Bashar's father brutally suppressed an uprising by the Muslim Brotherhood, Syrians

fear the response to any unrest here will be similar to that of Libyan leader Muammar al-Qaddafi: a

violent and sustained bid to cling to power.

"There is no doubt the regime will resort to anything to stay in power," said Nour. "When Hafez al-Assad

died there were tanks on the street, and there are rumors this is happening again. Any uprising will not be

dealt with gently."

But on the ground, there is a feeling that the fear barrier is being broken. Activists who dared not speak

their name have piped up. Others meet more openly with diplomats than they dared before. While many


18

Syrians are nervous, others in Damascus's smart cafes and streets discuss what the future holds more

boldly. On Tuesday evening, one cafe turned on Orient TV, an independent Dubai-based channel, to

watch coverage of the protests, before quickly switching back to Rotana TV music videos.

Further demonstrations -- and bigger, more diverse ones -- will be a key sign of the protests' staying

power. Thus far, Syria's minorities have been hesitant: Christians have traditionally feared upheaval, while

the Kurds have largely focused on their own dreams of independence. But on the Kurdish new year of

Nowruz, which arrives on March 21, a number of Syria's Kurdish parties have pledged to raise the national

flag rather than the Kurdish standard.

A "you first" mentality has taken hold in Damascus. If nobody moves, Syria may remain quiet. But if a few

brave souls are willing to risk the inevitable government crackdown, it will become clear just how deep

the desire for change runs in Syria.

********************

Policy Alert: Syria's Turn By: Andrew J. Tabler.

Source: The Washington Institute


Andrew J. Tabler is a Next Generation fellow in the Institute's Program on Arab Politics.

A rare public protest took place in Damascus on March 15, with demonstrators demanding that President

Bashar Assad end the country's state of emergency and release political prisoners. Protests in the Syrian

cities of Dera, Dair Ez Zour, and Aleppo were reported as well.

The protests, organized by the Facebook group "The Syrian Revolution 2011 against Bashar al-Assad" and

captured on cell phone video, showed demonstrators marching in the Harika and Hamiddya area of the

Old City of Damascus while chanting, "Freedom," and "The Syrian people will not fall." The number of

protesters was estimated to be between 200 and 350, although the exact figure is unknown. The crowds

were dispersed by plainclothes police and Baath party supporters. Another rally is scheduled for March 16

at noon in front of Syria's Interior Ministry.

The protests show that recent predictions of the Assad regime's immunity to the popular protests

sweeping the Arab world were premature. For decades Syria's Assad regime has ranked among the

region's most repressive: the state of emergency was imposed after the Baath party seized power in

1963.

The regime has become even more repressive in the last two years, even while the Obama administration

has attempted to engage diplomatically with Damascus, with particular emphasis on reviving stalled Syria-

Israel peace talks.

If there was ever a case where the United States was looking for political change, Syria, along with Iran,

fits the bill. The Obama administration recently dispatched Robert Ford as Washington's first ambassador

to Damascus since February 2005 to press on Syria's regional and domestic policies.


19

Thus far the Assad regime has refused to accept Washington's criticism of its record on human rights and

democracy. Today's protests provide Ford with an opportunity to reiterate Washington's calls for

universal freedoms -- whether Damascus likes it or not.

********************

Does the World Belong in Libya's War? Source: Foreign Policy


Foreign Policy's crack team of international experts debates whether Washington, London, and Paris were

right to step in.

Thursday's U.N. Security Council Resolution 1973, which authorizes international intervention into Libya

to protect civilians, is the first time the world has pursued humanitarian intervention in the 21st century.

The resolution calls for "all necessary measures to protect civilians under threat of attack in the country,"

and indeed, British and French diplomats said this morning that they are now fueling jets to enforce a no

fly zone. Speaking in a televised address this afternoon, U.S. President Barack Obama also explained his

position largely in humanitarian terms: If the world failed to intervene, he said, "The democratic values

that we stand for would be overrun. Moreover, the words of the international community would be

rendered hollow."

That's one reading of the events unfolding in Washington, London, and Paris. But there's also a more

cynical view: that the intervention, centered on the enforcement of a no fly zone, is too little too late. And

that's if you agree that the United States and its allies should be involved in the first place. Foreign

involvement could play into Libyan leader Muammar al-Qaddafi's hands, other analysts worry, giving him

an excuse to strike harder against the now Western-backed rebels.

With events moving quickly on the ground, only time will tell how effective international powers will be at

quelling the fighting. But one question will remain long after gunfire stops: Does the world belong inside

Libya's revolution?

Yes. Now Let's Hope It's Not Too Late.

By Roméo Dallaire with Jeffrey Bernstein (Dallaire was force commander of the U.N. peacekeeping mission

for Rwanda in 1994. Bernstein is project officer for genocide prevention to Lt. Gen Dallaire)

By employing genocidal threats to "cleanse Libya house by house," Col. Muammar al-Qaddafi forced the

world community's hand in taking strong action to protect the human rights of all Libyans. The

Responsibility to Protect (R2P) doctrine -- which requires the U.N. Security Council to take action when a

country fails to protect its citizens and was unanimously adopted by all countries of the U.N. General

Assembly in 2005 -- has clearly and unequivocally laid the problem of Libya at our feet. That Qaddafi

committed crimes against humanity was never in question; indeed he was almost universally condemned

for his maniacal acts and statements. So the real question is, why wasn't R2P unanimously invoked by

world leaders?


20

The failure to invoke R2P early -- while Gaddafi was calling protesters "cockroaches" and threatening

mass, door-to-door atrocities, such as those I witnessed in Rwanda -- represents a colossal missed

opportunity to project the potential power of this still-developing norm. The arms embargo and targeted

sanctions slapped on Qaddafi's regime and cronies in late February, as well as the referral of the situation

to the International Criminal Court, demonstrated the Security Council's attention and resolve --

timeliness that was absent during Rwanda and Darfur. But once it became clear these measures were

insufficient to deter Qaddafi's advance on the regime's opponents and guarantee civilian protection, the

implementation of the now-approved no-fly zone and other more coercive measures should have been

seriously expedited. Furthermore, invoking R2P would have sent a critical signal to Libyans and other

besieged populations the world community approves of their democratic efforts -- and is willing to

intervene, if necessary, when their human rights are so threatened.

There are, to be sure, some positive signs that Resolution 1973 is codifying a truly international norm. The

BRIC countries on the U.N. Security Council (plus Germany) all abstained from voting -- but given their

very real economic interests in the region, they could have voted against. The fact that they didn't is an

important victory for R2P's proponents. When the stakes are as high as they are in Libya, when there is

clear evidence that civilians are being preyed upon, the usual skeptics will back down for fear of being on

the wrong side of public opinion and history.

Still, as we have learned tragically from past failures to respond in a timely fashion, domestic groundswell

is instrumental to garnering international support to prevent mass atrocities. The world community's

response to Libya has been lightning-fast when compared with past, snail-paced efforts -- laudable, no

doubt, but inadequate, still. We must be quicker and more efficient in mobilizing if we are to deter

leaders from even considering the use of deadly violence to cling to power. As cheers rain upon the

streets of Benghazi from Libyans confident that their pleas for support have been answered, we from our

Western perch can only remain hopeful that our promises have not been too little, delivered too late.

Not Until We Know What We're Getting Into

Micah Zenko is fellow for conflict prevention at the Council on Foreign Relations

As the United States, France, and Britain take the plunge into Libya's internal conflict, we need to be very

careful about understanding what the objectives really are. Proponents of intervention offer a mix of

three distinct objectives being sought -- and they don't necessarily match.

First, yesterday's U.N. Security Council Resolution allows for the use of "all necessary means" to protect

civilians, which is great except that nobody who knows anything about military operations -- and no one

who I have talked to in the military -- believes that the no-fly zone will achieve that. If you look at the

tactics being used by the Muammar al-Qaddafi regime, it's ground forces that are executing the regime's

oppression. Where we have seen bombings, it is primarily of rebel arms depots or barracks.

A second objective being advanced by intervention proponents -- but not supported in the resolution -- is

the need to tilt the balance of power away from Qaddafi. The no fly zone stands little chance of achieving

this either; it's a more than 600-mile trip from the rebel stronghold of Benghazi to Tripoli, and even if the

rebels had air support on their journey, Qaddafi's forces could clean their clocks as they advanced. To

really tip the balance, you'd probably need sustained close air support and arms. Yet paragraph nine of

the earlier resolution (1970) expressly forbids arming the rebel forces. So if we really want to tip the


21

balance of power and arm the rebels, as the Egyptians seem to be doing, we need to recognize that we

will be in violation of a U.N. Security Council Resolution. And again, there's no guarantee it would work.

The final objective is the maximalist one: regime change. Nearly every Western leader has said it: Qaddafi

must go; he's not fit to lead. U.S. Secretary of State Hillary Clinton even called him a "creature." But if you

want to achieve regime change, you need to have broader debate, and frankly, you would probably need

foreign military boots on the ground. Yet everyone who supports this maximalist objective has approved

only minimalist tactics.

In short, while we believe we are ready to "do something" in Libya, we are having a debate over what

tactics we find acceptable, rather than what strategy will succeed.

This actually plays into Qaddafi's hands. Now he knows that the air option is out. But he also knows that

Western powers will be unwilling to send in troops -- the only thing that would assure he is removed from

power. The message he'll take away is to go hard on the ground war.

It's not clear we know who we are supporting, either. In any conflict between two parties, the weaker

party always wants third-party support. The rebels know exactly how to play the tune that we want to

hear. They have been waving banners -- both in Arabic and English -- asking for a no-fly zone. There are

reports of volunteers recruited to the rebel forces who are first required to shave, because they don't

want their men to appear Islamist. The rebels have silenced or hushed some of the Islamist leaders who

are involved on their side. And the spokesmen they put forward speak solid English and talk about

Jeffersonian democracy. They know exactly what key words to mention; they know how to play on the

moral language. The West will "let us down," without intervention, they argue.

The trouble is, although we are prepared to "do something" and pull out the most impressive kit in the

U.S. toolbox -- military power -- we aren't actually willing to get involved at the level required to win. This

minimal engagement does more harm than good. Not to mention that there are plenty of conflicts that

are far more -- or at least equally -- pressing. In October and again this spring, for example, the African

Union requested a no-fly zone from the U.N. Security Council to patrol Somalia. Guess how many French

and British planes are flying over Mogadishu today? None.

The U.S. Is Right Not to Own It

Robert D. Kaplan is a senior fellow at the Center for a New American Security

President Barack Obama's decision to militarily intervene in Libya is already off to a good start. I say this

as someone who has been deeply skeptical of intervention. I feared that the United States would wind up

leading the effort and thus -- no matter how successful it turned out militarily -- it would commit our top

policymakers to not only toppling Libyan dictator Muammar al-Qaddafi but to making Libya a semi-stable

polity afterwards. Once we intervened, we would own the problem, in other words, just like in Iraq and

Afghanistan.

But at least in its initial phases, the optics have been far better than I expected. The United States does

not seem to be out in front. The French and British are there with their air forces and navies full-bore with

us. Not only have the Arab League and the United Nations supported the operation, but the Egyptian

military is supplying the rebels in eastern Libya. The very slow and seemingly lackluster American


22

leadership that the Obama administration is being criticized for by both neoconservatives and liberal

internationalists may be precisely what will keep us from owning the mission -- and that lack of ownership

is an insurance policy against getting politically bogged down in Libya as the weeks drag on. I don't think

Obama has been timid; I think he has been sly. It has been precisely the deep skepticism of intervention in

Libya from some quarters of the administration that has forced the Arab League and the Europeans to

pony up and relieve us of the political burden.

Had we intervened decisively a week or two ago, we would have owned the mission, and then we would

possibly have had a small-scale Iraq or Afghanistan on our hands. But delay has brought us allies, not only

in name but in fact.

No one knows exactly how this will unfold from here. The United States might still emerge too far out in

front, given its far stronger military assets compared with those of our allies. Protracted civil war or chaos

could still ensue in Libya, a country that has been fairly described as a weak state. But it has started well,

with the drumbeats of war coming as much from London, Paris, and Cairo as well as from Washington.

American grand strategy at a time of ongoing military burdens abroad and fiscal tightening at home

requires that we leverage like-minded, democratic others to share the responsibilities and to take the

lead at times. I'm glad Obama has backed into this at the last moment rather than leading the charge

from the beginning. It will lesson American exposure going forward and thus allow the president and his

team to keep their focus on Afghanistan, Pakistan, and other U.S. commitments.

We should be clear: The goal is to prevent the kinds of atrocities that would constitute a moral

catastrophe. We aren't in it to help govern Libya.

This Could Be Obama's Defining Moment

Shadi Hamid is director of research at the Brookings Doha Center and a fellow at the Saban Center for

Middle East Policy at the Brookings Institution.

The U.N. resolution demonstrates that the United States can lead -- if it wants to. Up until Thursday, the

United States had appeared agnostic and, at times, dismissive about military action. The leadership

vacuum was striking, as Britain and France tried to push for a no-fly zone but only seemed to face

resistance. Even the Arab League, the Gulf Cooperation Council, and the Organization of the Islamic

Conference backed the no-fly zone. But they did not have the capability to implement it. The lesson was

clear: Even in an age of apparent American decline, the United States was indispensable. However,

America's failure to act decisively one or two weeks ago cannot be undone. The rebels remain in a

precarious situation with Benghazi as their last stronghold. What would have been an easier operation

weeks ago has now become considerably more difficult. There is a cost, then, to "careful deliberation."

Skeptics will argue that Libya is not vital to our national security interests. Even if that were the case, the

fact that the world chose to intervene for largely humanitarian reasons and to support rebels fighting for

democracy is something that should be applauded. And this is why Libya is not even remotely comparable

to Iraq, where the U.S. invaded for reasons of "national security," including WMDs and terrorism. Where,

in Iraq, we stood alone calling for war while most of the world opposed it, the dynamic, this time, was

reversed. The United States -- along with Russia, China, and Germany among the major powers -- stood

increasingly alone in opposing the emerging Arab and international consensus favoring intervention.


23

One hopes that military intervention in Libya (or merely the threat of it) will succeed in ending Muammar

Qaddafi's brutal regime. If it does, it may convince the United States that doing the right thing is

sometimes the right thing to do. After five decades of supporting repressive autocracies, Washington has

a chance to align itself with Arab democratic aspirations, something it has so far failed to do three months

into the uprisings. Libya, then, could prove a defining moment for the Obama administration, compelling

it to embrace, however reluctantly, a policy of aggressive support for democrats and democracy in the

new Middle East.

The Security Council Has At Last Lived Up To Its Duty

Kenneth Roth is executive director of Human Rights Watch.

Just when the "responsibility to protect" doctrine seemed to have become irretrievably tainted at the

United Nations, the Security Council at last lived up to its duty to prevent mass atrocities. For the second

time in three weeks, the council accomplished the politically impossible, first referring Libya to the

International Criminal Court, then, yesterday, authorizing military force to protect civilians from

Muammar al-Qaddafi's wrath.

What accounts for this remarkable turn of events? In part, it was the perfect villain: Qaddafi's over-the-

top threats to "show no mercy" to the people of Benghazi, along with his regional meddling and

megalomaniac ideas, left him few friends or defenders.

The Arab League also played an essential role by easing its usual opposition to Security Council action

against its members. The league had watched silently as Sudan's Omar al-Bashir committed crimes

against humanity in Darfur -- or, less recently, as Iraq's Saddam Hussein massacred Shia and Kurds, and

Syria's Hafez al-Asad destroyed the town of Hama. But the league apparently sensed the winds of change

wafting through the Middle East and North Africa, and felt compelled to respond. The Egyptian

presidential aspirations of the leagues' secretary-general, Amr Moussa, certainly helped as well.

And of course there were the people taking to the streets throughout the region, risking their freedom

and lives for the ideals of democracy and human rights that autocratic leaders had denied them for so

long. Those ideals were precisely the ones practiced at home by India, Brazil, and South Africa -- emerging

powers all currently on the Security Council that either supported or tacitly acquiesced in the council's

action. The power of these ideas prevailed over the anti-imperialism that, anachronistically but

persistently, has played a major role in these governments' foreign policies. Even Russia and China did not

want to be left behind.

The challenge now is not only to translate this remarkable Security Council consensus into effective

protection for Libyans. It is to extend the human rights principles embraced for Libya to other people in

need. The atrocities unfolding in the Ivory Coast demand just as much attention. Other people of the

Middle East and North Africa are seeing their hopes for democracy quashed by authoritarian leaders. The

people of Burma and Sri Lanka have endured massive war crimes with no justice. Can the Security Council

respond to their plight as well? Can it begin to recognize that a leader's atrocities against his own people

are a global concern, not an internal affair? No one believes these steps will be easy, but the task before

us is to translate the Security Council's principled reaction to Libya into a broader doctrine of genuine

protection for people facing mass atrocities.


24

How to Save Benghazi

Robert Pape is director of the University of Chicago Project on Security and Terrorism

The United States and much of the world are now moving to protect the large number of Libyan civilians

who have risked their lives to oppose Muammar al-Qaddafi's brutal regime -- and they are right to do so.

Indeed, Qaddafi's ability to repress the Libyan people stems largely from the vast amounts of money his

regime has earned through the sale of oil. As the world's largest consumer of oil, the United States has a

strong moral responsibility to act. Looking away from the humanitarian crisis unfolding in Libya would

contradict America's democratic values and only fuel the belief that the United States would not lift even

a finger to save Muslims, no matter how many were at risk -- handing al Qaeda a major propaganda coup.

The U.N. decision to use "all means necessary" to protect civilians in Libya is a crucial first step, but now is

the time to decide on the actual military strategy to achieve this humanitarian mission. The essential goal

over the next few weeks is to safeguard the vast numbers of Libyans who have risked their lives to oppose

Qaddafi in Benghazi and other major cities along the eastern coast. At the moment, they are highly

vulnerable to Qaddafi's ground forces: concentrations of tanks, heavy artillery, and troops that are

reportedly less than 100 miles from Benghazi and could attack the city directly over the next few days --

and indirectly over the coming weeks and months by cutting off food and other basic necessities.

Accordingly, the strategy to safeguard Libyans in the East should emphasize three core steps.

First: Declare "a line in the sand" protecting Benghazi -- destroying any large number of Qaddafi's military

vehicles and troops that concentrate and move to attack the city. This is a mission that America's

precision-guided air power can decisively achieve with B-2, B-52, and other aircraft flying from the United

States, Diego Garcia, and the airbase in Qatar. After suppressing any Libyan air defenses with cruise

missile strikes, U.S. forces could drop joint direct attack munitions and other anti-armor precision

weapons on Libyan government ground forces. Of course, if Qaddafi's forces do not attack the city,

military action need not occur.

Second: Immediately begin massive economic shipments to Benghazi to give the ordinary people in

eastern Libya the wherewithal to maintain themselves independently of any coercive pressure Qaddafi

can bring to bear. Libya's coastal cities import 90 percent of their food and other basic necessities, and

while they do have stockpiles, these will start running down in a matter of weeks. Economic shipments

will take time to arrive and should begin now.

Third: Organize a broad international coalition for sustained protection operations similar to "Provide

Comfort," the operation to protect the Kurds in northern Iraq in the 1990s. The purpose should be to

provide a "protection zone" that would effectively prevent Libyan military strikes against commercial

shipments from Europe into the ports of Benghazi and other cities along the eastern coast. This force

should involve the militaries of Arab countries as well as the West.

This plan will sustain the people of eastern Libya without imposing regime change on Tripoli, invading

Libya, or seizing its oil. It will also provide the core framework for a political transformation of Libya over

time, with the West and the Arab world on the right side of history.

A Day to Celebrate, But Hard Work Ahead


25

Anne-Marie Slaughter is the Bert G. Kerstetter '66 University Professor of Politics and International Affairs

at Princeton University and the former director of policy planning for the State Department.

I see five key take-aways from the U.N. resolution authorizing a no-fly zone and any additional measures

necessary to stop the abuse of civilians in Libya.

1) For once the U.S. is actually playing a supporting rather than a leading role in enforcing the NFZ itself.

Barack Obama said on Friday, "We will provide the unique capabilities that we can bring to bear to stop

the violence against civilians, including enabling our European allies and Arab partners to effectively

enforce a no-fly zone." Asking the countries from the region that is most directly affected by the crisis to

take the lead is financially and politically necessary and strategically important. U.S. security, economic,

and moral interests will be advanced in a world in which more states take responsibility for enforcing

international rules. If you believe that the U.S. should be able to break rules unilaterally, that position

does not hold. But if you believe that the U.S. will be increasingly disadvantaged in a world in which other

nations can break rules with impunity, then -- as the Pentagon is fond of pointing out -- the United States

has a vested national interest in strong, just, and sustainable international order.

2) Without this action, the U.S. position on the broader Middle East protests would be increasingly

untenable. Even though Hillary Clinton was rebuffed by the Egyptian youth movement for her early

statement concerning the stability of Mubarak's regime, the U.S. actually played an important role, mil to

mil, in convincing the Egyptian army not to use force. If the Egyptian army had used force, the revolution

that is inspiring others (following Tunisia) would have had a very different ending. The U.S. also pushed

the Bahraini government hard after its initial use of force in Pearl Square, and temporarily succeeded. Our

position on Friday was to condemn the violence by the Yemeni Security forces and to call on them to

exercise restraint and to allow Yemeni citizens freely and peacefully to express their views. It is hard to

imagine the U.S. (or the Arab League) taking any military action with regard to Bahrain, Yemen, or other

countries, but we are at least backing our words with deeds in what has thus far been the most brutal and

egregious case of a government attacking and killing its own people. And if Muammar al-Qaddafi is

pushed out, other governments will be more likely to start thinking about what deals they can cut.

3) What is missing from the U.N. resolution, as has already been widely noted, is a goal stated crisply

enough to be formulated as an if/then statement -- e.g. "if X happens, the NFZ and any other additional

measures taken will no longer be necessary." For many observers, that ambiguity is where the quagmire

begins. Stopping all abuses of civilians is too broad -- it is not a verifiable or even an objective goal. On the

other hand, the existence of a ceasefire is too narrow -- a ceasefire could be declared and even enforced

and yet still leave Qaddafi's forces imposing terror and privation on the many cities they have retaken

from the rebels. The best hint in the resolution itself is the affirmation that the Security Council "stresses

the need to intensify efforts to find a solution to the crisis which responds to the legitimate demands of

the Libyan people." That reference points to a negotiated political solution that includes the departure of

Qaddafi himself. The question will be which demands of the Libyan people are "legitimate" (and who

decides) and how strong different factions will be to make demands at all. Certainly Qaddafi is in a far

better negotiating position than two weeks ago, when he reportedly offered to leave if guaranteed

impunity and the family riches but was quickly rebuffed by over-confident rebels.

4) A very clever section of the resolution that has received no attention in the media thus far is entitled

"Ban on Flights." This provision "Decides that all States shall deny permission to any aircraft registered in

the Libyan Arab Jamahiriya or owned or operated by Libyan nationals or companies to take off from, land


26

in or overfly their territory" with various enumerated exceptions like emergency landings and flights

specifically approved by a U.N. appointed committee. This provision effectively prevents Qaddafi's sons or

other relatives and high-level supporters from bailing out, leaving him to fight to the death. They cannot

flee, and thus must live or die with him. As the military noose tightens, they are less and less likely to

want to share his professed desire for martyrdom on Libyan soil, increasing the pressure on him to go.

5) A separate article could be written about the voting pattern for the resolution. What do Brazil,

Germany, and India -- each of which abstained alongside Russia and China -- have in common? Their

protestations of concern for the general principal of non-intervention ring hollow alongside requests for a

NFZ from the Arab League and the Organization of the Islamic Union and look downright shabby next to

the votes of Gabon, Nigeria, South Africa, Lebanon, and Colombia, each of whom has had plenty of

experience with colonialism. But inviolable sovereignty and non-intervention are still articles of faith for

the Group of 77, which is a U.N. bloc of developing nations that now includes now over 130 countries and

is an essential constituency to be won for any chance of permanent membership on the U.N. Security

Council. Abstention was first-class pandering. That might not seem so bad -- after all, the resolution

passed. But this resolution is one of the first to authorize the use of force with an explicit reference to the

responsibility to protect. In 2006 the Security Council passed a resolution, which was also endorsed by the

U.N. General Assembly, accepting that all governments have a responsibility to protect their populations

from genocide, ethnic cleansing, crimes against humanity, and grave and systematic war crimes and that

if they fail in that responsibility the international community has the right to intervene. This was an

enormous normative step forward, akin to an international Magna Carta, even if it will take decades to

elaborate and implement. It is the state corollary to the recognition of individual human rights with the

Universal Declaration of Human Rights in 1949 and subsequent more specific treaties. For would-be

members of the Security Council, a willingness to stand up for this principle is a true test of leadership,

the kind of leadership that a great power must be willing to exercise. By that metric, Germany, Brazil, and

India just failed.

We face heavy, hard days ahead. But the international community actually acted. No vetoes were cast.

Many nations from many different parts of the world, North and South, former colonies and former

imperial powers, came together to stop the slaughter of Libyan civilians. That is something to celebrate.

********************

Libya Is Too Big to Fail By: Jason Pack .



Jason Pack is a researcher of Libya at Oxford University's St. Antony's College. He has worked in both Tripoli and

Washington, D.C., on strengthening U.S.-Libya relations.

Despite what you may be hearing from critics of March 17's U.N. Security Council resolution calling for a

no-fly zone and "all necessary measures" to protect civilians from harm, Libya is not peripheral to the

world system. It is at its very core. Libya possesses 1,800 kilometers of Mediterranean coastline. The

country produces 2 percent of the world's oil, with 85 percent of exports going to Europe. Libyan


27

nationals have been prominent jihadists in Iraq. Since the beginning of the Great Recession and the slump

in global demand in 2008, Libya has allocated $200 billion toward new infrastructure spending.

And yet Richard Haass, president of the Council on Foreign Relations, curiously described U.S. interests in

Libya as "less than vital" in a Wall Street Journal op-ed last week. He cautioned that even the modest step

of participating in a multilateral no-fly zone would be incommensurate with America's limited strategic

interests. Harvard University professor Stephen Walt made a similar point. "For starters," Walt argued,

"let's acknowledge that the United States has no vital strategic interests at stake in the outcome of the

Libyan struggle."

But a brief review of Libya's history demonstrates that Britain, France, Italy, Russia, the United Nations,

and the United States have long had a great deal at stake in Libya, even before oil was discovered in 1959.

Today, it is a paramount American interest that Libya not return to being a rogue state or descend into

civil war. If Libyan leader Muammar al-Qaddafi reasserts control over the east or even if he fails and the

country is cleaved in two, U.S. interests in the region would suffer a major setback.

What makes Libya so important? Any real estate agent could tell you: location, location, location. Control

of the country has always been a remarkably effective way to project power into Egypt, the

Mediterranean, and beyond. Similarly, denying a hostile power (be it the Soviet Union, Muammar al-

Qaddafi, or terrorists) the ability to destabilize surrounding countries from Libyan territory has been a

consistent thread in U.S. policy since the end of World War II.

Seventy years ago, the Axis powers used Libya to launch daring tank offensives aimed at the Suez Canal.

With the British victory at El Alamein in late 1942 and the ensuing conquest of northern Libya, British

strategic planners decided that Cyrenaica (eastern Libya) was the only part of conquered Italian colonial

territory that was essential for Britain's strategic position in the Middle East. In 1945, the Soviet Union's

foreign minister, Vyacheslav Molotov, pushed for a Soviet trusteeship over Tripolitania (northwest Libya).

The Soviet bid backfired. It forced American statesmen to put aside their distaste for extending the British

Empire as they realized that denying the Soviets a naval base on the Mediterranean was a core U.S.

interest. France and Italy, as pretenders to world-power status and interested parties in North Africa, also

wanted to have their spheres of influence in Libya. Because the "Libya question" was so rancorously

contested by all parties, it was deemed unsolvable by traditional great-power diplomacy. In 1948, it was

passed onto the nascent United Nations.

By the late 1940s, U.S. President Harry Truman and British Foreign Secretary Ernest Bevin concluded that

Libyan airfields were essential for Cold War defense. After Libyan independence in 1951, U.S. and British

payments for basing rights formed the single-largest element of Libyan GDP until oil exports began in

1961. Even with the decline in importance of the fighter-bomber as a nuclear delivery vehicle, and thus

the need for the bases, Libya's strategic importance did not wane. Accordingly, U.S. and British diplomats

attempted to court Colonel Qaddafi's favor when he came to power in 1969. They acquiesced to his

demand to abandon their air bases, supposing that eager compliance would encourage Libya's new

leadership from drifting into the anti-Western camp. They were wrong.

As Libya intensified its support for militant revolutionary causes -- ranging from the Irish Republican Army

to Ugandan dictator Idi Amin to various unsavory terrorist groups -- throughout the 1970s, Western

policymakers avoided reprisals against Libyan interests. Amazingly, from 1972 to 1977, U.S. imports of


28

Libyan oil increased tenfold, and U.S. exports to Libya trebled. Qaddafi gratefully used the influx of dollars

to undermine American interests in Africa and the Middle East.

The 1970s U.S. policy of bartering with a sworn enemy was abandoned under President Ronald Reagan.

Convinced that Libya's anti-Western orientation and geostrategic position made regime change a core

U.S. interest, Reagan famously declared Qaddafi to be the "mad dog of the Middle East." However,

unilateral U.S. sanctions in 1982 and then airstrikes in 1986 -- as a response to the Berlin disco bombing --

failed to produce the desired results. By the 1990s, it was clear that the United States could not unseat

Qaddafi by itself. Libya's threat to a stable post-Cold War world order was deemed significant enough that

U.S. policymakers devised a way to enlist Europe in shutting Libya out of the international system. On

flimsy evidence, Libya was found guilty of the devastating 1988 bombing of Pan Am Flight 103 over

Lockerbie, Scotland. Europe was finally on board for comprehensive U.N. sanctions of Libya, which

endured from 1992 to 1999.

In 1999, feeling the pinch caused by his decaying oil infrastructure and declining revenues, Qaddafi turned

over the two suspected Lockerbie bombers for trial in the Netherlands (only one, Abdelbasset Ali al-

Megrahi, was later convicted). This action caused U.N. sanctions to be suspended. As more countries

began trading with Libya, the U.S. policy dating back to Reagan of actively containing Qaddafi and hoping

for his ouster was no longer feasible.

In the new millennium, U.S. and British negotiators intensified their covert dealings with Libyan

diplomats, and in 2003, Qaddafi made his first payment of compensation to the Lockerbie victims'

families. At the same time, the colonel declared his desire to voluntarily give up his weapons of mass

destruction program. The rogue was seemingly rehabilitated and multilateral action vindicated. Libya was

tentatively permitted to rejoin the world community.

From 2004 to 2010, U.S. diplomats and businessman embarked on the long and hard road of

normalization. Erratic Libyan behavior and electorally motivated grandstanding by U.S. congressmen --

generally on third-tier issues like Qaddafi's desire to pitch a tent in Central Park or Megrahi's release from

a Scottish prison for health reasons -- frequently derailed progress.

In 2008, I changed my career as an academic of Syria to become instead a professional engaged in the

American and European efforts to bring Qaddafi in from the cold and forward the agenda of pro-market

economic reform and Western investment in Libya. My logic then was the same as it is now: Libya is too

important in the world system to have Western strategic priorities in Libya unfulfilled and U.S. businesses

shut out. This logic is grounded in history and is also best for the aspirations of the Libyan people. Over

the last six decades, successive U.S. and British administrations have consistently concluded that the

"Libya question" merited great economic and diplomatic sacrifices. It still does.

Today we face a familiar dilemma. Libya sits atop the strategic intersection of the Mediterranean, African,

and Arab worlds, and its ability and track record in destabilizing those three areas is well documented. It

is laudable that the international community has combined humanitarian and geostrategic rationales to

unite under a banner of multilateral airborne intervention. This intervention must balance two equally

important aims: to unseat Qaddafi and to ensure that the Libyan people have agency over their lives and

political system. Hopefully, the West will play a supportive, yet decisive role in the ongoing conflict. Were

Qaddafi to remain in power returning to his rogue-state glory days, it is unlikely that renewed U.N.

sanctions could ever weaken his grip on power. The world needs Libya, but Qaddafi has become an expert

at thumbing his nose at world opinion.


29

Much as we might pretend otherwise, oil is unquestionably part of the equation here. In the words of

Armand Hammer, the late founder of Occidental Petroleum, Libya's oil is "the world's only irreplaceable

oil." What makes Libyan oil irreplaceable is its proximity to Europe, the ease of its extraction, and the

sweetness of its crude. Because many refineries in Italy and elsewhere are built to deal with sweet Libyan

crude, they cannot easily process the heavier Saudi crude that would inevitably replace a Libyan

production shortfall.

Since détente with Libya began in 2003, Western companies in the form of Repsol, Wintershall, Total, Eni,

OMV, Shell, the Oasis Group, Chevron, Marathon, ExxonMobil, and BP have either rushed into Libya or

intensified their existing operations. Those with political connections to the Libyan regime that predate

sanctions have tended to fare better than others. All have an enormous stake in not losing their vast

investments and being replaced by the Chinese, Indians, and Russians, were Libya to become a pariah

state. Most crucially, though Europe would be hit hardest if Libyan production were to vastly diminish due

to ongoing unrest or stagnate due to a lack of future investment, low production totals would have

sustained negative effects on both the fragile world economy and the Libyan people.

For European countries, illegal immigration is another major concern. Starting in the 1990s, in an attempt

to combat his international isolation, Qaddafi allowed all Africans visa-free access to Libya. After the

Libyan populace rioted against the newcomers and no jobs were created for them, many attempted

illegal crossings to Europe. The 2008 Italian-Libyan "Friendship Treaty" largely closed the spigot of illegal

migration to a trickle. Any intensification of the human calamity, especially if combined with the closing of

the Tunisian border, could open it to a flood. In the past, Qaddafi has frequently increased the flow of

migrants when seeking to gain political concessions from Italy. Were Libya to become a failed/pariah

state, there is no doubt that Qaddafi or those who would come after him could use the same tactic to

pressure Europe.

Relative to the amount of oil wealth it possesses, Libya is a terribly underdeveloped country -- the

unhappy legacy of Qaddafi's economic experiments of the 1980s and the U.N. sanctions in the 1990s.

Despite having the highest per capita income in Africa, Libyan education levels and living conditions

outside its big cities are on par with those of some of its sub-Saharan African neighbors. Only in the last

10 years has the Qaddafi family finally committed itself to real infrastructure development. In the last two

years -- global recession notwithstanding -- the Libyan government spent $60 billion, with $160 billion

more promised over the next five years. With global aggregate demand (especially in the construction

sector) far below 2007 levels, Libya's increase in post-2007 demand promised much-needed relief for U.S.

and British firms, especially in the construction management and architectural-design sectors. If Libya

becomes a failed state, Western firms will likely be excluded from future infrastructure projects. In that

scenario, only countries like China and Turkey-- with their greater tolerance for corruption and human

rights abuses -- will benefit from Libya's billions.

Terrorism is a real concern. Although Qaddafi's rhetoric that the rebels consist of "jihadists on drugs" is

funny enough to be a big hit on YouTube, Cyrenaica has long been a productive recruiting ground for

global jihadi causes. If the West abandons the Cyrenaican rebels, it will not be a surprise to see more

Cyrenaican fighters returning to Iraq by 2012. In fact, Libyans formed the third-largest fighting contingent

in Iraq until U.S. counterterrorism cooperation with Qaddafi began to stem the flow in 2006. Similarly,

during his détente with the West from 2003 until 2010, Qaddafi proved himself a reliable ally against the

trans-Saharan networks of al Qaeda in the Islamic Maghreb. Were the retro-rogue Qaddafi to remain in

power post-2011 or should Libya become a failed state where nonstate actors could find easy cash and


30

safe havens, the grave consequences would resonate from North Africa to the African Sahel region and

the larger Islamic world.

The United States and especially Europe cannot afford a protracted Libyan civil war, a Libya ruled by a

spurned Qaddafi, or a return to the 1990s situation in which multilateral sanctions largely removed Libya

from the world economy, making it a breeding ground for dysfunctional governance and Islamic

extremism. Libya is simply too big to be allowed to fail.

********************

Libya and the Dilemma of Intervention By: The Editors

Source: The Nation


As the democratic awakening sweeps across the Arab world, the Obama administration is struggling to

find the right balance between short-term crisis management and the longer-term need for a new

approach that breaks with Washington’s dark history of military intervention and support for autocratic

regimes. After some initial missteps, the administration was able to strike, more or less, the right balance

in the case of Egypt, using its ties with the Egyptian military to help nudge Hosni Mubarak from power

without distracting from the historic display of people power in Tahrir Square.

The latest challenge comes from the deteriorating situation in Libya, where the rapid advance of forces

loyal to Col. Muammar el-Qaddafi threatened the defeat of rebel forces. Our natural tendency is to want

to help end Qaddafi’s despotic rule and to save the lives of those bravely resisting his onslaught. But it is a

difficult challenge to take action that has a reasonable chance of success but that does not arouse

popular—and well-founded—suspicions of neoimperial intervention. The catastrophic invasion of Iraq

hangs heavy in the Arab world, and Washington’s role in the Middle East is still deeply compromised, with

US military aid to repressive regimes like Bahrain and Saudi Arabia now being used to crush peaceful

protest and demands for democracy.

As the violence intensified in March, the White House faced a chorus of voices from respected liberals like

Senator John Kerry, as well as from perennial hawks like Senators John McCain and Joe Lieberman, calling

for a no-fly zone. The administration was right to resist those calls in favor of a series of UN Security

Council–mandated measures—freezing the regime’s assets, imposing sanctions on Qaddafi and his

associates and organizing humanitarian assistance—that fell short of military action. The administration

has also opened up contacts with the opposition but has not recognized it or provided arms.

Finally, as Qaddafi's forces closed in on Benghazi, and after the Arab League voted in favor of a no-fly

zone, the White House on March 17 joined Britain, France and other members of the UN Security Council

in passing a Chapter VII resolution authorizing member states "to take all necessary measures…to protect

civilians and civilian populated areas under threat of attack" by Qaddafi's forces "while excluding a foreign

occupation force of any form on any part of Libyan territory."

There are strong arguments in favor of the White House decision. First, there were legitimate worries that

Qaddafi's forces would carry out massacres after recapturing Benghazi and other rebel-held areas.

Second, the United States did not lead the charge but acted only after desperate pleas by Libyans under

siege and at the urging of Arab League and other multilateral institutions. And Washington has made

clear that implementation of the NFZ will have to be genuinely multilateral. So far, the White House has


31

acted with caution and respect for international law. And Qaddafi's declaration of a cease-fire

immediately after passage of the resolution gave hope that it might, through intimidation alone, change

the balance of forces and lead to the rapid erosion of his support.

But there are also many reasons for skepticism, and it is far from certain that the NFZ will not lead to

other disasters. First, it is not clear that UN forces will be able to avoid civilian casualties. No-fly zones

have, at best, a mixed record as a form of humanitarian intervention. Libya may not present the same

military challenge as Iraq or Serbia did in the past, but the United States or allies still might have to

undertake bombings and cruise missile attacks to suppress Libyan air defenses; no doubt many of these

are located in civilian areas. Some civilian casualties therefore seem inevitable. Even with Arab League

and other regional support, the prospect of civilian casualties from US military action risks turning this

into a story of American intervention. Up to now, the democratic awakening has opened up the Arab

world’s future because it has been undertaken by the Arab people, who now believe they have control

over their own destiny. We should avoid actions that change that narrative.

Second, even if a no-fly zone can be implemented with minimum civilian casualties, we don’t know if it

will save lives or tilt the playing field toward the rebels. Air power does give Qaddafi some advantages,

but a no-fly zone might do little to stop his forces from attacking and murdering the opposition using

other means if he chooses to ignore or abrogate the cease-fire. And beyond grounding Qaddafi’s air force,

the NFZ would not erode his other substantial military advantages; indeed, as the conflict progressed, his

tanks, artillery, sea power and better-armed infantry put rebel forces on the defensive.

Third, there is a danger that a no-fly zone will distract from other measures that could be just as effective.

Financially strangling the regime by cutting off all sources of money from abroad, sharing real-time

intelligence with the rebels, working with others to facilitate the flow of assistance to them while

stopping the flow of pro-Qaddafi mercenaries into the country, if done in cooperation with the Arab

League, all have as much or more promise with less risk than does the far more dramatic gesture of a no-

fly zone.

Finally, the language of the UN resolution, while it forbids "foreign occupation," is so broadly worded that

many argue it amounts to an open-ended declaration of war against Libya. As is usually the case with

military action, it's easy to make the argument for war with Libya and to begin hostilities; it's impossible

to know when or how the conflict will end.

Indeed, there is a worrying dimension to this intervention, in that it reflects a mindset that associates US

foreign policy, whether alone or as part of an allied force, with heroic crusades to bring down the bad

guys. But it is exactly that mindset that has done so much damage in the Middle East over the years and

that has saddled us with the costly burdens of two ongoing wars in Muslim lands. And Washington's

support for military action in Libya, on avowedly humanitarian grounds, should call into question ever

more sharply the cynical American acquiescence in brutal suppression of peaceful demonstrations in

Bahrain.

The democratic awakening in the Arab world presents the United States with an opportunity to put that

past behind us. It offers us a chance to align our interests with democratic change and economic progress.

It would be a tragedy if we allowed the intervention in Libya to distract us from these difficult and

important challenges. We need to deal with longstanding allies like Jordan, Bahrain and Saudi Arabia—

which continue to resist democratic reforms—and to help the Egyptian people consolidate democracy


32

and create jobs and economic opportunity. The most productive role for America in the Middle East today

is diplomatic and economic, not military.

********************

Bahrain's Crisis: Saudi Forces Intervene By: Simon Henderson .

Source: The Washington Institute.


Simon Henderson is the Baker fellow and director of the Gulf and Energy Policy Program at The Washington Institute.

On March 14, the Saudis dispatched military forces to Bahrain, marking a major step in the troubles that

have wracked the Gulf state for the last month. Although clearly intended to help the government in

Manama reduce unrest, the move also increases the risk that Iran will come to the aid of its fellow Shiite

Muslims in Bahrain, who have been protesting about discrimination. From the perspective of the Obama

administration, the Saudi action is at odds with U.S. policy, which has encouraged political dialogue. The

Saudi gesture also comes three weeks after Washington pressured Manama to withdraw Bahraini military

units from the streets.

The Saudi forces arriving on the island are said to number 1,000, along with about 150 vehicles, including

wheeled, light-armored vehicles with roof-mounted heavy machine guns. The soldiers themselves appear

to hail from the Saudi Arabian National Guard (SANG), possibly constituting a military police unit rather

than paramilitary forces of the Saudi Ministry of Interior. A son of King Abdullah, Prince Miteb, took over

command of SANG forces from his father last year. News reports indicate that forces from other member

states of the Gulf Cooperation Council (GCC), including 500 police from the United Arab Emirates, will

soon be joining the Saudis in Bahrain.

Observers have long anticipated that the Saudis would reinforce Bahraini forces if the security situation

looked to be running out of control. After Bahraini government and Shiite political groups tried for days to

develop a political dialogue, tensions swelled on March 11 when thousands of Shiites attempted to march

on Rifaa, a Sunni township at the center of the island where several palaces of the al-Khalifa ruling family

happen to be located. The protesters were stopped at roadblocks, and some clashed with security forces.

On March 13, further protests flared in Manama when Shiites tried to block off the financial district,

disrupting the operations of Bahrain's substantial banking sector.

Bahrain's Shiites, who make up more than half the island's estimated 600,000 citizens, have been

frustrated by the al-Khalifas' reluctance to concede any political power. At present, King Hamad bin Isa al-

Khalifa is effectively in full control, supported by his son, the crown prince, Sheikh Salman. Much

authority, though, rests with the long-serving prime minister, the king's uncle, Sheikh Khalifa, who is

widely regarded as corrupt. Eight other members of the al-Khalifa family hold the portfolios in the

cabinet, including responsibility for foreign affairs, defense, and finance. The bicameral parliament has an

upper house appointed by the king and an elected lower house that nonetheless has a Sunni majority,

achieved by districting that discriminates against Shiites.

Key Actors


33

Developments over the next few days and weeks will likely be crucial for Bahrain and may indicate how

other Gulf Arab states will respond to the challenge posed by the political winds of change sweeping the

Arab world:

• The al-Khalifa royal family: Bahrain's politics over the years -- and crisis management, in

particular, in the last year -- are often framed according to the tension between the king and his

uncle, the prime minister, whom he is unable or unwilling to sack. The king and the crown prince

are seen as moderates; the prime minister is viewed as conservative, though politically more

canny than his two perceived counterparts.

• Bahrain's minority Sunnis: Saudi forces intervened after several Sunni members of parliament had

called for martial law to be imposed. Although cooperation between some Sunni and Shiite groups

in Bahrain ensued earlier this year following the political upheavals in Tunisia and Egypt, this

cooperation has now stopped. Bahrain's Sunnis now appear solidly behind the government.

• Bahrain's majority Shiites: Shiites in Bahrain have described the Saudi intervention as a

declaration of war and an occupation. A senior member of the Shiite Wafaq Party, formerly the

main opposition bloc in parliament, said: "It will deepen the crisis. The conclusion to this could be

very dramatic. I think [the al-Khalifas] are playing their last card." The Shiites themselves have

been split on political tactics for several years. The Wafaq has been prepared, until this year's

crisis, to work within the system to reduce institutional and social discrimination against Shiites.

Other Shiites, including the al-Haq movement in particular, have regarded such efforts as a waste

of time. Differences continue to divide the Shiites, and politics are now so fluid that no single

group can be identified as holding majority support within the community.

• Iran: Until the 1970s, Iran staked a territorial claim to Bahrain and occasionally Iranian politicians

still refer to Bahrain as an Iranian province. But, for the most part, Tehran has avoided taking steps

to inflame the developing crisis in Bahrain, although it is often blamed by the al-Khalifas for

plotting insurrection. With the intervention of Saudi forces, Iran might feel freer to comment.

Despite their own vicious suppression of political opposition figures, Iranian officials have now said

that violence should not be used against peaceful demonstrators.

• Saudi Arabia: Riyadh has two fears: that unrest among Bahraini Shiites will spread to Saudi

Arabia's own two million Shiites, and that any political concessions won by Bahraini Shiites will be

demanded also by their Saudi brethren. Indeed, Saudi intervention came a day after Bahrain's

crown prince announced the acceptance of the idea of a parliament with full authority and fair

voting districts. On March 14, King Abdullah chaired a rare top-level meeting of the Saudi national

security council, and Bahrain was probably top of the agenda.

• The United States: Bahrain is a longtime U.S. ally, providing headquarters for the U.S. Fifth Fleet

and allowing U.S. military aircraft to operate from Bahrain's main air base in the island's sparsely

populated south. Losing access to these facilities would represent a major setback for U.S.

operations protecting shipping in the Persian Gulf and in support of troops in Afghanistan.

Bahrain, along with other conservative Arab states in the region, has viewed implicit Obama

administration support of political uprisings with disquiet -- as inherently out of tune with the

compact shared by long-term allies. The Saudi intervention in Bahrain came two days after visiting

U.S. defense secretary Robert Gates criticized the island's government for taking only "baby steps"

toward implementing democracy.


34

U.S. Policy

The White House appears to be frustrated that Bahrain, along with Gulf Arab states such as Saudi Arabia,

the United Arab Emirates, and Oman, is reluctant to move toward recognizing universal political rights.

For their part, these states are angry that Washington has let staunch allies such as President Hosni

Mubarak of Egypt be forced from power while doing little to push Col. Muammar Qadhafi of Libya from

his position. The "Gulf way" clearly entails an arrangement in which the region's richer members give

financial support to poorer states such as Bahrain and Oman, as was announced last week, and tag

dissent as sedition. To prevent the possibility that Iran will take advantage of the developing crisis, the

United States and the GCC need to "reset" their relations -- and quickly. Assistant secretary of state for

the region Jeffrey Feltman has been dispatched to Manama, and it is not clear if he will be in listening

mode. But he should be.

*********************

Bahrain's Kleptocracy in the Crosshairs By: Simon Henderson .

Source: The Washington Institute.


Simon Henderson is the Baker fellow and director of the Gulf and Energy Policy Program at The Washington Institute.

It is easy to see where Bahrain went wrong. It is much more difficult to figure out how to make it go right.

An indigenous Shiite Muslim population outnumbers Sunni citizens by two-to-one, but Shiites are socially

and economically discriminated against by the Sunni ruling family. Despite little oil wealth, the al-Khalifa

family has evolved over the past 10 years from a benign dictatorship into what often seems like an

institutionalized kleptocracy.

The small island in the Persian Gulf, sandwiched between the mainland of Saudi Arabia and the peninsula

of Qatar, is the latest Arab state to be swept by this winter's political winds of change. But it is no Egypt or

Tunisia, where sweeping away the elderly dictator and his immediate family allows for a fresh start.

Demographically, Bahrain can be likened to Saddam Hussein's Iraq. Saddam's Iraq also had a majority

Shiite Muslim population; his notionally secular Baath Party was a fig leaf for Sunni Muslim control.

King Hamad bin Isa al-Khalifa is no Saddam, and his son, Crown Prince Salman, is no Uday, but there is the

same distrust of Shiites among the ruling family as there was in the Iraqi dictator's Revolutionary

Command Council. An American visitor, once hosted at a diplomatic dinner, was shocked to hear a

member of the al-Khalifa family declare: "Shiites are like carpets. They are better when they are beaten."

Historians might judge the beginning of Saddam's decline from the time when his extended family

stopped being the foundation of his regime and became a liability. Rivalries among cousins meant that

whole branches had to be ruthlessly cut off. Marriages meant in-laws challenged the pecking order.


35

The al-Khalifa haven't had schisms of Babylonian proportions. Instead, the family has grown laterally

while the reins of political power have remained firmly in the hands of the king, a variety of cousins, and

the king's uncle, Sheikh Khalifa, who has been prime minister for more than 40 years. They, and other

members of the tribe, have profited from the huge commercial expansion of Bahrain. Ordinary citizens --

probably around 600,000 in total -- have benefited from the trickle down, though the Shiite community

less so.

No longer an oil producer of any consequence, Bahrain has still benefited from the high oil prices of

recent years. Its banks have a reputation for efficiency. Its hotels, bars and restaurants have attracted

many visitors, including Saudis who can drive across a 16-mile causeway completed in the 1980s.

A particular scheme for the al-Khalifa family has been gaining a slice of the action in resorts and luxury

housing projects built on artificial islands constructed in the shallow coastal waters. When some of this

activity stopped Shiite villagers from harvesting their traditional fishing grounds, there were protests. This

week, protesters were further enraged by alleged documentary evidence that the prime minister had

bought reclaimed land in the prestigious harbor area for the equivalent of $3 and then resold it for huge

profit.

One assumes that when Assistant Secretary of State for the Near East Jeffrey Feltman caught the first

plane to Manama this week after Saudi forces rolled across the causeway, democracy was his main talking

point. From the Bahraini side, it was almost certainly Iran. The al-Khalifa, who remember the pre-1970s

when Tehran claimed the island, tend to see a bearded mullah under every bed.

This week's violence -- especially yesterday's crackdown on protesters camped out in the iconic Pearl

Roundabout, in which at least six were killed -- does not auger well for a return to civil political dialogue.

Although the U.S.-educated crown prince had offered concessions, like fair voting districts and combating

corruption, on March 13, just before Saudi troops arrived, his harder-line kin almost certainly advocate

taking them off the table. Indeed, they probably demand the removal of the table itself.

The U.S. has cards to play but is keen to do so discreetly. It needs to press the ruling family for reform

while telling the divided opposition not to reject all compromise. Washington is anxious not to be

perceived, by either side, as being part of the problem. The headquarters of the U.S. Fifth Fleet, situated

adjacent to a suburb of Manama, is a crucial part of the efforts to block Iran's nuclear ambitions and

counter any interference with the flow of oil.

Almost worse than the mess in Manama, this crisis reveals that the U.S. and Saudi Arabia are no longer on

the same page. Riyadh perceives the White House as demanding universal freedoms from its friends, but

not from its adversaries like Iran. The Shiites of Bahrain see themselves as "Baharna," indigenous

Bahrainis, rather than putative Iranians. But events are pushing them ever closer to Tehran, where they

will surely be greeted with open arms.

********************


36

Saudi Arabia Strikes Back By: Jean-François Seznec .



Jean-François Seznec is a visiting associate professor at Georgetown University's Center for Contemporary Arab Studies.

The House of Saud's intervention in Bahrain is a slap in the face of the United States, and a setback for

peace on the island.

One thousand "lightly armed" Saudi troops and an unspecified number of troops from the United Arab

Emirates entered Bahrain on the morning of March 14, in a bid to end the country's monthlong political

crisis. They are reportedly heading for the town of Riffa, the stronghold of the ruling Khalifa family. The

troops' task, apparently, is to protect the oil installations and basic infrastructure from the

demonstrators.

The Arab intervention marks a dramatic escalation of Bahrain's political crisis, which has pitted the

country's disgruntled Shiite majority against the Sunni ruling family -- and has also been exacerbated by

quarrels between hard-liners and liberals within the Khalifa clan. The clashes between protesters and

government forces worsened over the weekend, when the security services beat back demonstrators

trying to block the highway to the capital of Manama's Financial Harbor. The protesters' disruption of the

harbor, which was reportedly purchased by the conservative Prime Minister Khalifa bin Salman al-Khalifa

for one dinar, was an important symbolic gesture by the opposition.

For the United States, the intervention is a slap in the face. On Saturday, March 12, U.S. Defense

Secretary Robert Gates visited Bahrain, where he called for real reforms to the country's political system

and criticized "baby steps," which he said would be insufficient to defuse the crisis. The Saudis were called

in within a few hours of Gates's departure, however, showing their disdain for his efforts to reach a

negotiated solution. By acting so soon after Gates's visit, Saudi Arabia has made the United States look at

best irrelevant to events in Bahrain, and from the Shiite opposition's point of view, even complicit in the

Saudi military intervention.

The number of foreign troop is so far very small and should not make one iota of difference in Bahrain's

balance of power. The Bahraini military already total 30,000 troops, all of whom are Sunnis. They are

under control of Crown Prince Salman bin Hamad al-Khalifa and supposedly fully faithful to King Hamad

bin Isa al-Khalifa. Bahrain also has a similar number of police and general security forces, mainly

mercenaries from Baluchistan, Yemen, and Syria, reputed to be controlled by the prime minister and his

followers in the family.

At this time, therefore, the Saudi intervention is largely a symbolic maneuver. It is so far not an effort to

quell the unrest, but intended to scare the more extreme Shiite groups into allowing negotiations to go

forward. The crown prince recently laid out six main issues to be discussed in talks, including the

establishment of an elected parliament empowered to affect government policy, fairly demarcated

electoral constituencies, steps to combat financial and administrative corruption, and moves to limit

sectarian polarization. He notably failed to mention one of the opposition's primary demands -- the prime

minister's resignation.

The Saudi move, however, risks backfiring. It is extremely unlikely that the Saudi troops' presence will

entice moderate Shiite and Sunni opposition figures to come to the table -- the intervention will force


37

them to harden their position for fear of being seen as Saudi stooges. The demands of the more extreme

groups, such as the Shiite al-Haq party, are also likely to increase prior to negotiations. These elements,

having seen job opportunities go to foreign workers and political power dominated by the ruling family

for decades, have grown steadily disenchanted with prospects of talks.

The crown prince is well aware that the Saudi intervention only makes a negotiated solution to this crisis

more challenging, so it is difficult to imagine that he invited the Saudis into Bahrain. The more liberal

Khalifas, such as the crown prince, know very well that the only way out of the crisis is to obtain the

resignation of the prime minister and some of the more extreme Sunni ministers.

However, the prime minister -- with whom Gates did not meet with during his weekend visit -- does not

appear to have any intention of resigning and is the most likely figure behind the invitation to the Saudis

to intervene. Although details are still sketchy, he is likely joining with the Saudi king to pass the message

to the United States that he is in charge and no one can tell him what to do. Furthermore, it signals that

the Saudis agree with Bahrain's conservatives that the Shiite must be reined in rather than negotiated

with, even at the cost of telling the United States to kiss off.

The Saudi intervention may also have been precipitated by the deepening rift between the extreme Sunni

elements and the liberal Khalifas. If the Saudis are indeed heading to Riffa, it is possible they are tasked

with defending the Khalifa stronghold not so much against the Shiite rabble but against the Bahraini

military, which is under the command of the crown prince. The Saudi intervention would therefore be an

effort by the prime minister and the Saudis to pressure the crown prince into not giving in to the

protesters' demands and to fall in line with their plans to secure Bahrain as the personal fiefdom of the

Khalifas and their tribal allies.

Whatever the case, the future appears bleak. The Saudi intervention will no doubt provoke a reaction

from Iran, which will argue that their Shiite brothers are being systematically oppressed. Any troubles

caused by Bahraini Shiites will only provoke further Saudi intervention. Ultimately, the island risks falling

under de facto, if not de jure, Saudi control.

The Saudi intervention, however small, is therefore a major step backward for the region. It represents a

major slap in the face to the United States, a defeat for the liberal Shiite and Sunni elements in Bahrain,

and ultimately a catastrophe for the entire Khalifa family, both the liberal and conservative wings, who

may have just surrendered their power to the giant next door.

Ultimately, this may also be a defeat for Saudi Arabia as well. The Saudis have long tried to avoid overt

interventions in their neighbors' affairs. They intervened once during the 1994 upheavals in Bahrain and

in the past two years have been active on the Yemeni border -- but under King Abdullah they have tried to

arbitrate, rather than dominate, events on the Arabian Peninsula. Their decision to intervene directly in

Bahrain's affairs suggests a weakness in the Saudi leadership and Riyadh's surrender to the more

conservative elements in the country.

********************


38

Saudis bring Iran, US closer together By: Ambassador M K Bhadrakumar .

Source: Asia Times

Date: Mar 18, 2011

Ambassador M K Bhadrakumar was a career diplomat in the Indian Foreign Service. His assignments included the Soviet

Union, South Korea, Sri Lanka, Germany, Afghanistan, Pakistan, Uzbekistan, Kuwait and Turkey.

The tussle between the brain and the brawn is a constant feature of international politics. The "Turkic"

and "Persian" streams of consciousness on the Central Asian landscape provide a fine example. The tussle

between Israel and Iran has been no less acute - or between the late Saddam Hussein in Iraq and the

Iranian leadership.

Bahrain developments bring to light all over again the Iranian trust in "brain" - how to optimally deploy

intellectual resources in situations where fools rush in with might and armor, full of passionate intensity.

If someone in Washington cares to watch, Tehran's moves since March 15 offer a case study for reaching

some major conclusions about how Iran lives and works.

But that is going too fast, too far. At the moment, what matters is Iran's stakes in Bahrain. Bahrain's

population comprises a majority of Shi'ites - as much as 70% - and although they are drawn more toward

Najaf in Iraq than to Qom in Iran for spiritual guidance, almost one-third of them are Arabs of Persian

origin whose welfare is a matter of legitimate concern to Tehran.

Second, the United States Fifth Fleet is berthed in Bahrain and among its vital tasks, it "spies" on Iran.

Indeed, a key vector of US-Bahrain strategic ties is also their intelligence tie-up over Iran. Naturally, the

"liberation" of Bahrain from the clutches of US domination is a matter of national security priority for

Tehran.

Overlapping this comes the broader question of US regional influence in the region. Moving on further

are Iran's aspirations to be a regional power and Saudi Arabia's dogged refusal to accommodate Iran in

the Persian Gulf region, of which the Gulf Cooperation Council (GCC) is a living embodiment.

Iran keeps pressing for habitation within a common Persian Gulf "home". In the Iranian perspective, a

"regime change" in Saudi Arabia would make that country more "authentic" and far more amenable to

accommodation with Iran. Indeed, any gravitation toward republicanism - away from archaic monarchies

- on the part of regional states would make them more receptive to the Iranian ideologies of resistance,

justice and freedom and Iran's regional role would thereby get a fillip.

But a break-up of Saudi Arabia - or any of Iran's neighbors - is not in Tehran's interest. No doubt, Tehran

would be horrified if the forces of religious militancy or terrorism exploited the regional turmoil to gain

ascendance.

These are traditional parameters of the Iranian approach to the Persian Gulf region. Thus, there is no

question of an Iranian intervention in Bahrain strategically or tactically. (Bahrain used to belong to Iran.)

Tehran has no problem anticipating that if it steps forward and does something on the ground by way of

opposing the Saudi military presence in Bahrain, it would be walking into a trap. Riyadh and Washington


39

are combing the Bahrain scene to spot even a trace of Iranian involvement.

The morning after the Saudi military intervention in Bahrain on Monday, Tehran already had its script

ready. It was almost as if a long-expected event happened, finally. Iran seems to have had no doubts that

Saudi response to the Bahrain developments would be in terms of muscle power and Tehran's response

needs to be "brainy" and political.

The following directions of the Iranian strategy emerged. One, the Bahrain crisis cannot be caricatured as

sectarian Sunni-Shi'ite strife. Any such characterization would make Iran a partisan and isolate it from the

Sunni Arab street, which would suit Iran's detractors very well. Iran's aspiration to identify (and even

claim a degree of leadership) with the "Arab awakening" would be frustrated. Even more, the political

thrust of the Middle East uprisings - "regime change" - might get obfuscated.

Two, following from the above, Iran's religious establishment refrained from commenting on the Bahrain

developments. This is a smart thing for yet another reason that it is the Custodian of the Holy Places who

has opted for muscle play and Iran would prefer to let time take its toll and allow the Bahrain

developments to evolve into an acute "Muslim issue". The Custodian shot his own foot and can only bring

ridicule upon himself over time when his troopers are seen on TV screens slaughtering Muslims in a

foreign country - no matter his weak plea that he has a GCC mandate to do so.

Three, Iran's main focus is on "internationalizing" the issue. This is not to be branded as an Iran-Saudi

bilateral issue. Thus, Iran's Foreign Ministry is in charge. Foreign Minister Ali Salehi is constantly on the

phone. Iran has formally approached the United Nations (UN) and Organization of Islamic Conference

(OIC) - and, interestingly, the Arab League (AL) where Iran is not a member country. AL secretary general

Amr Moussa finds himself in a fix after having taken a strident stance over Muammar Gaddafi's use of

violence in Libya. Tehran knows Moussa won't have the courage to lift his little finger against Riyadh, but

it is nonetheless keen to introduce the Bahrain issue into the pan-Arab agenda.

In communications to the UN, the OIC and the AL, Salehi asked rhetorically: "How can one accept [this]

that a government has proceeded to invite foreign military forces for the crackdown of its own citizens?"

He pointed out that the "military invasion" of Bahrain was not in accord with international law - no matter

which country undertakes it and on what specious plea. He said the UN was obliged to take immediate

decisions to end the incursion to defend its charter and the basic rights of the Bahraini people.

Tehran has also recalled its ambassador to Bahrain "to discuss the latest developments" and the Foreign

Ministry called in the heads of missions of Saudi Arabia and Bahrain in Tehran.

Four, Tehran will do it utmost to stir up the Arab street against the Saudi military intervention in Bahrain.

Iranian media coverage of daily events is extensive and is widely disseminating it in the Arab world. There

have been public demonstrations in Lebanon, Iraq and in the eastern provinces of Saudi Arabia.

It is a big embarrassment to Riyadh that the leading Saudi Shi'ite cleric, Sheikh Hassan al-Saffar, voiced

"dismay" over the Bahrain situation - "bloodshed, violation of sanctities and intimidation of people" - and

called for dialogue and a political solution.

Tehran got a huge boost in its political campaign on Wednesday when Iraq's Grand Ayatollah Ali Sistani,

who rarely intervenes publicly in politics, called on the Bahrain regime to stop the suppression of


40

unarmed civilians. Sistani said problems should be solved through peaceful means. Iraq's Prime Minister

Nuri al-Maliki also stepped in to criticize the Saudi intervention. Iraqi Shi'ite cleric Muqtada al-Sadr's

followers have taken to the streets in large numbers.

Maliki's statement merits attention in having a hidden warning also to Washington. He said the Saudi

intervention "will contribute toward complicating the situation in the region, in a way that instead of

resolving issues could led to inflaming sectarian tensions".

Significantly, the same warning has been sounded by Iran's Defense Minister Ahmad Vahidi, who said the

Saudi "invasion" of Bahrain would heighten tensions and adversely affect regional security and stability.

"If such miscalculated and legally unjustified actions become a norm, the region could turn into a center

for incendiarism [sic], hostility and conflict." The message seems to be addressed to Washington.

Tehran appears encouraged by the regional mood. President Mahmud Ahmadinejad spoke out for the

first time on Wednesday, 48 hours after the Saudi intervention: "This military invasion is a foul and

doomed enterprise ... Regional nations will hold the US government liable for such an atrocious behavior.

The US is suffocating the world nations to rescue the Zionist regime."

Ahmadinejad's criticism of the US is noticeably restrained under the circumstances and is more in the

nature of an appeal. Curiously, one of the first things the Iranian Foreign Ministry did was to call in the

Swiss ambassador who takes care of the "Iran Section" in the embassy in Tehran.

Anyway, US President Barack Obama, too, voiced an opinion within hours of Ahmadinejad's remarks.

White House spokesman Jay Carney revealed that Obama spoke by phone to Abdullah and King Hamad of

Bahrain and "expressed his deep concern over the violence ... and stressed the need for maximum

restraint".

Carney added: "The president also stressed the importance of a political process as the only way to

peacefully address the legitimate grievance of the Bahrainis and to lead to a Bahrain that is stable, just,

more unified and responsive to its people. The president reiterated his support for the national dialogue

initiative led by Bahraini crown Prince Salman."

Obama's predicament is acute. The Wall Street Journal reported on Wednesday that Abdullah

disregarded US advice and sent in the troops to Bahrain. Reading very carefully between the lines, Tehran

senses Obama's dilemma.

Rhetoric is one thing and Tehran will make the most of it, but it cannot be lost on the Iranian "brains" that

for the fourth time in a row within the past six weeks, Iran and the US are finding themselves on the same

side of the fence - on Tunisia, Egypt and Libya, and now Bahrain. The big question is whether Obama

notices it.

********************


41

Revolution's End By: Ellen Knickmeyer .



Ellen Knickmeyer is a former Washington Post Middle East bureau chief and Associated Press Africa bureau chief.

On the eve of a pivotal constitutional referendum, Egypt's young activists are struggling for direction.

CAIRO — On a late evening in early March, down a side street off downtown Cairo, Egypt's revolution is

kept alight by a single bare incandescent bulb dangling from an extension cord. Despite being one of the

main forces behind the popular overthrow of President Hosni Mubarak, Egypt's April 6 Youth Movement

has yet to line up an office to call its own. So on this night, the eve of another protest in Tahrir Square, the

young revolutionaries are meeting on the top floor of a gutted, condemned Cairene villa, shrouded in

plastic builders tarp.

After having helped draw hundreds of thousands of Egyptians to the streets in January and February to

rout the leadership of the Arab world's most populous country, Egypt's youth activists are coming under

tremendous pressure to leave the streets. Older activists tell them it is time to grow up and join political

parties, while the Egyptian public warns them that they are harming the country's economic recovery.

And the Army, which was previously regarded by many Egyptians as the savior of their revolution, now is

accused of employing brutal beatings to force Egypt's youth to abandon their protests in Tahrir Square.

On Saturday, March 19, Egyptians will head to the polls to vote in a national referendum on a set of

constitutional amendments meant to lay the groundwork for Egypt's post-revolution political order. The

referendum, which is backed by the military junta that has temporarily replaced Mubarak, will be a critical

moment in showing whether Egypt supports the generals' road map for the future -- or whether the

country supports the young activists' desire to keep pushing for broad reforms.

But even the young activists themselves are still finding their way ahead. At the meeting, held before the

worst of the Army attacks on the remaining Tahrir protesters started last week, Ahmed Maher, a 30-year-

old leader of the April 6 movement, threw the floor of the meeting open to suggestions. Egyptian men

and women in their 20s and 30s, a couple of them still limping from attacks during the height of the

protests in January and February, tossed out opinions, the sole light bulb casting stark shadows along the

walls as they spoke.

Demand two cabinet seats for youth ministers, one activist said. We should become a political party, a

second said. I think we need to stay a movement; it's stronger than having a political party, a third

offered.

Maher closed the meeting soon after -- Cairo remains under nighttime military curfew. He urged

everyone to turn out early for the next day's protest in Tahrir. "We need to keep moving forward," he

reminded them. "The revolution is still going on."

Shortly after the meeting concluded, however, the revolution entered an entirely new phase. The

Egyptian Army, which at times protected activists during the country's 18 days of history-making protests,

is seemingly losing patience with Maher's group and others that continue to protest. On March 9, soldiers


42

and thugs destroyed the tent city in the city center, and then took dozens of activists and passers-by

across the square to the Egyptian Museum and beat them, according to Human Rights Watch and other

advocates. More army attacks have helped quell what had been daily rallies in Tahrir, though the army

still seems to tolerate the weekly mass gatherings in Tahrir after Friday prayers.

"Same shit, different uniform," Cairo-based journalist and activist Sarah Carr wrote tartly in response to

the March 9 attack. The Egyptian people turned a blind eye to the beatings, she wrote, due to "a popular

reluctance to accept that the revered army is capable of impropriety of any kind against citizens."

And in fact, as Egypt struggles to lure back tourists and investors, there is no shortage of older Egyptians

telling the young people to pack up their signs and go home.

Hisham Kassem, a newspaper publisher and longtime democracy advocate, acknowledges admiringly that

he followed the lead of "the kids" in the 18 days of protests that toppled Mubarak's regime. But now even

he's skeptical of their plan to continue taking to the street. "What are they going to do? They'll get 5,000

people out in the street to rally every time they want to change Article A, Article B of the Constitution?"

he scoffs.

As it turns out, they won't have to: March 19's referendum will be a straight up or down vote on the

constitutional amendments, which were proposed by a military-appointed panel. Just over half the

country's 80 million people are eligible to vote, according to the election overseers. For the 60 percent of

Egypt's population who are under 30, Saturday will be the first free election of their lifetime.

There are some important steps in the proposed amendments, such as limiting the president to two

terms in office and restricting use of the emergency laws by which Mubarak suspended many civil

liberties. Supporters, including the Muslim Brotherhood and Mubarak's former ruling party, argue that it

is important to accept the changes and move on to restoring Egypt's post-revolution stability. Opponents

say the amendments were written without public consultation and, like the Constitution itself, remain

deeply flawed. Egypt's youth movements and many other liberal voices are urging Egyptians to reject

Saturday's referendum and push for a transparent, consultative rewriting of the entire Constitution. Their

election emblem is a sprightly red and white script reading "la" -- Arabic for no.

For Egypt's young revolutionaries, the fear is that Egyptians are so anxious to return to normal that they

will give up the revolution before realizing the freedoms it could bring. "We have achieved so much, that

it would be a sin to stop now," wrote Mahmoud Salem, an activist who blogs under the name

Sandmonkey, in an impassioned appeal for continuing the rallies.

Egyptians have many freedoms still to win, Salem wrote. For starters: a constitution that limits the power

of the executive branch and guarantees equal rights; enforcement of a $200 monthly minimum wage; and

freeing of political prisoners.

A poll on the "We are all Khaled Said" Facebook group, one of the most important sites for organizing

online opposition to Mubarak, while admittedly unscientific, found that 49 percent of respondents

opposed the referendum, 36 percent supported it, and 13 percent were undecided.

But at late-night sessions held in some of Cairo's seedier shisha cafes, Maher and others in the April 6

movement worry that Egypt's military is strengthening its grip on power. They worry that Army officials

are blowing off meetings with the young activists and that the more-polished generals are trouncing the

less-experienced young activists in the battle for public opinion on Egypt's late-night talk shows.


43

Meanwhile, the young activists themselves have their own internal concerns to worry about, primarily the

question of whether to continue working outside the system or enter it. Maher's instincts tell him to keep

April 6 outside the political system, "like a pressure movement," he said. Among his cohort of activists,

"the majority are saying they don't want a political party," he said.

Many young people across the Arab world -- having grown up under dictators who made the political

system look weak, corrupt, or both -- have little innate confidence in political parties. Maher and his

generation already have a younger generation of activists watching them closely, alert for any signs that

the older activists are about to sell out the movement and transform it into a compromised political party

like any other.

Roaa Ebrahim, a 23-year-old protester who wears a headscarf, illustrated this broad concern about

younger Egyptians when she recounted an early post-revolution meeting of Egypt's youth groups. When

discussion among the leaders became heated, the activists abruptly kicked out news cameras and closed

the doors. Not good, Ebrahim says.

"They're being dragged into dialogue with bigger political parties and forgetting about what they have to

do in the streets right now," she worries. "It's a big danger."

********************

The Other Turkish Model By: Soner Cagapta.

Source: the Washington Institute


Soner Cagaptay is director of the Turkish Research Program at the Washington Institute.

To: The Muslim Brotherhood

From: A Fellow Muslim

Dear Brother,

As you prepare to run in Egypt's first free elections -- Inshallah, you will win -- I am writing to make

recommendations for your success, drawing from the Turkish model. Do not get me wrong; I am not

referring to Turkey's secularism or its earlier march toward a liberal democracy. Rather, I have in mind for

you the other Turkish model, namely the Justice and Development Party, or AKP, government's successful

crackdown on the media after being elected in 2002, ensuring nearly a decade of unbroken AKP rule in

Turkey. I wish the same and more to you in Egypt. So, brother, please follow these recommendations:

First, align with some liberals who will support you and your policies. In 2002, the AKP promised the

liberals a paradise if they defended the party's policies to eliminate the military's role in politics. Some

liberals helped the AKP to this end, supporting the party while it launched the Ergenekon investigation to

prosecute an alleged coup plot that was said to be orchestrated by the military, journalists, scholars and

others.

Arrest journalists by connecting them to an alleged coup plot or other purported misconduct. This will

help you intimidate the media. The AKP has implemented this goal successfully, especially targeting

Cumhuriyet, which has been steadfast and often alone in its criticism of the party since 2002. In March

2009, the police arrested Cumhuriyet's Ankara bureau chief Mustafa Balbay in connection to the alleged


44

Ergenekon plot. The government has also targeted Oda TV, the country's most prominent independent

online portal. Soner Yalcin, the portal's editor, was detained along with three other journalists in February

2011.

Wiretap independent media and journalists. You have intimidated everyone by now, so you do not even

need an excuse. The Freedom House Report for 2010 in Turkey states that the police have wiretapped

mainstream and independent dailies, such as Milliyet and Hurriyet, as well as Cumhuriyet. The police said

that such wiretaps, which took place without a court order, were justified, for "the papers were allegedly

connected to the Ergenekon coup plot." While you are at it, throw in a few wiretaps of your opponents.

Under the AKP, the police also wiretapped, without a court order, conversations between Cumhuriyet

correspondent Ilhan Tasci and Kemal Kilicdaroglu, the chair of the main opposition Republican People's

Party, or CHP, in February 2009. The former deputy chief of the national police, Chief Emin Aslan,

confirmed that the police have been wiretapping journalists, as well as politicians, judges, and civil

servants. Aslan also confirmed that the police wiretapped Milliyet in August 2008. What happened when

news broke out that the government wiretapped a major newspaper and judges? Nothing. As I said, at

this stage, everyone will be afraid of you.

Then, pass the media into the hands of pro-government businesses. Learn from the AKP, my brother: in

2002, pro-AKP businesses owned less than 20 percent of the Turkish media; today, pro-government

businesses own around 50 percent and that percentage will increase further. To this end, the party has

used and will use legal loopholes to transfer ownership of the media companies. Take for instance, the

story of Sabah-ATV, Turkey's second-largest media conglomerate. The government first charged Sabah-

ATV's owners with improper business practices and then passed control of the company to a national

regulator. The regulator then sold the media group at an auction with only one bidder: Calik Holding, a

conglomerate well-known for being an AKP supporter. Calik then appointed Prime Minister Recep Tayyip

Erdogan's son-in-law Berat Albayrak as his media group's new CEO. Subsequently, Erdogan's son-in-law

paid the government $1.25 billion just last year for this deal, having obtained loans from public banks

Halkbank and Vakifbank. The media reported that Qatari investors supported Calik's purchase, as well.

You see, brother: you can do it if you put your mind to it.

Next, pass restrictive media laws. Follow the AKP and adopt an opaque new media regulation law, open

to interpretation and abuse. For instance, the new media law, passed by the AKP on Feb. 15, 2011,

stipulates that Turkey's official broadcast watchdog, Radio and Television Higher Council, or RTUK, a

majority of whose board members are appointed by the AKP, "can determine the principles of measuring

the percentage of homes watching or listening to the broadcasting services and apply sanctions to

companies and organizations that do not comply with the principles." This gives you the opportunity to

not only control the media but also dangle the Sword of Damocles over the Internet -- you have to be

careful with the Internet!

Trust me; you can have it all in the end. The new law asserts: "In cases where national security or public

order is seriously deteriorated, the prime minister or the minister he appoints can temporarily ban

broadcasting." Finally, arrest the liberals. Since you no longer require their support, you can go ahead and

arrest those conspicuous liberals who have served their purpose. On March 3, 2011, AKP-controlled

national police arrested a number of prominent journalists, among them Ahmet Sik, whose investigative

work in 2007 helped the AKP launch the Ergenekon case. Too bad for him, but he did serve his purpose

for us -- such is life! At this stage, no target is too big: the police also arrested Nedim Sener, an

investigative reporter for daily Milliyet and a recipient of the International Press Institute's "World Press


45

Freedom Hero" award. The police charged Sener and other journalists for their alleged participation in the

Ergenekon coup plot.

By now, brother, you have the country under full, unbridled control, and trust me: you will win the

coming elections. For, while elections will continue to be free, in the absence of independent media they

will be far from fair. Follow my advice, brother, and you are sure to succeed.

********************

Egypt’s Revolution Struggles to Take Shape

By: Nathan J. Brown.

Source: Carnegie Endowment


Nathan J. Brown, a professor of political science and international affairs at George Washington University, is a

distinguished scholar and author of four well-received books on Arab politics.

On March 19, Egypt will hold a constitutional referendum that will offer Egyptians the first meaningful

electoral choice of their lives. In a visit to Egypt a week before its constitutional referendum, I found a

spirited, sophisticated, and wide-ranging public debate. But I also found a very confusing situation. A large

array of actors–often uncertain of their own strengths and capabilities–are staking out their positions,

closely examining the stances of potential partners and adversaries, and quickly calculating how to match

short-term tactics to long-term goals. And they are acting while a transition process rushes forward.

That process—designed ironically in part by the disgraced outgoing leaders—has been based on a series

of ad-hoc decisions and follows an opaque logic that engenders much speculation but scant certainty.

Each day brings new rumors, statements, and actions; opportunities open and close with dizzying rapidity.

In a short trip, I managed to speak with a variety of actors involved in the transition process—members of

the constitutional drafting committee, youth leaders, several leaders of the Muslim Brotherhood, and

knowledgeable observers.

Atmosphere

Public life in Egypt is full of uncertainties but it also can be exhilarating. I had not expected the strength of

a celebratory wave of national pride; an intensely patriotic reading of recent events has quickly emerged.

I found Egyptians happy to tell stories about what occurred “during the revolution,” referring nostalgically

at times to events that occurred mere weeks ago. Cars sport mock license plates with the series of letters

and numbers spelling “January 25.” Christians demonstrating at the state broadcasting headquarters

against media silence on sectarian attacks are surrounded by street vendors hawking Egyptian flags and

revolutionary souvenirs. Self-appointed groups still police public areas. I saw such groups directing traffic

in Tahrir Square and guarding university campus entrances, proudly wearing sashes indicating their role,

but armed only with a sense of public spirit and revolutionary enthusiasm—and provoking popular

respect, pride, and compliance to their directions.

Advertising campaigns that play on calls to national rebirth and reconstruction have already sprung up.

One Internet service provider has mounted billboards simply showing a cursor pointed to the “reset”


46

button. Flags and national banners are everywhere, and talk shows are filled with analyses of Egypt’s

revolution. In addition, enthusiastic revolutionary vocabulary unheard since the Nasserist period (and

occasionally some of that era’s songs) has returned—though without any acknowledgement that it was

Nasser’s revolution that ultimately metamorphosed into the very regime that the more genuinely

grassroots January 25 revolution is now bringing down.

Egypt’s former president, Hosni Mubarak, is quickly receding into memory; in a single month, the man

who dominated the political scene for three decades has ceased to be a political player. Even dark rumors

of a “counter-revolution” focus more on the remnants of his regime rather than the former president

himself. Most of those around him are now reviled and discredited—even as some bizarrely cling to

office. I heard only one individual say anything kind about Mubarak or his legacy—and that person did so

while complaining that such sentiments simply could no longer be comfortably voiced in public. More

generally, there is a widespread sense that Egypt has finally returned to its natural position of making

global (and certainly regional) history, a role it has not played in over a generation. Egyptians are very

proud of what they have done.

But what, precisely, have they done? Nobody seems to know, least of all those who would seem to be in

charge. A very striking feature of Egyptian public life is its unsettled and constantly shifting nature. It is as

if a group of sports fans were arguing not about which is the better team but about what the teams are

and which game they are playing—and as if the answers offered to such questions were constantly

changing. The knowledge that the Egypt of tomorrow morning may be a different place from the Egypt of

tonight is exciting for many used to the stagnation and staid stability of the past few decades.

Constitutional Reconstruction

Even if the situation in Egypt remains unresolved, the course of political reconstruction continues to

follow the basic script laid out in the old regime’s final hours. Shortly before stepping down, Mubarak

offered to amend several articles in the constitution as a last-ditch effort to save his regime. And as the

currently ruling military junta (the Supreme Council of the Armed Forces) was dragged into the spotlight

with Mubarak’s departure, it offered a sequence for rapid transition in which a committee would draft

changes to those constitutional articles. This would be followed by parliamentary and then presidential

elections. Despite widespread calls for different sequences and timetable—as well as all sorts of hints and

rumors—no changes have been made to the plan.

Why is a country where nothing can be taken for granted, the constitution has been suspended, and a

ruling junta has asserted (and found acceptance of) the principle that it can unilaterally make the laws,

still running like a Swiss watch regarding a transition process whose timetable was written hastily for a set

of circumstances that no longer exist?

There is only one persuasive explanation for the junta’s decision to cling to this sequence and timetable: it

offers the quickest route back to the barracks. Those outside pundits who proclaimed Egypt’s to be a

military regime or who said the military was the only force that mattered in Egypt were describing a

country that few Egyptian citizens (or even generals) would recognize. Egyptians living under Mubarak

talked of living in a dawla bulisiyya (police state), a mukhabbarat (intelligence) state, or even a state of

thugs (baltagiyya), but not one of generals. It is true that the old regime was led by a former air force

commander and would often turn to generals to fill some top positions, but it usually did so as a reward

for a loyal and productive career rather than as a product of any institutional reliance on the military.


47

Indeed, as an institution, the military has been carefully kept out of most internal affairs for decades.

Walled off from Egyptian politics–with a host of clubs, hotels, and perks that allowed most officers to live

at some remove from the general population–the junta does not represent the real power behind an

unoccupied throne. Instead, it is simply one of the few institutions left that can pretend to be politically

neutral. Of course it is not neutral, but its agenda is largely reactive in nature.

Clearly fearful of disorder, nervous about the possibility of chaos, and slightly at a loss in a political world

now populated with youth leaders, party blocs, intellectuals, and labor activists, members of the junta

show signs of sincerity in their commitment to return to civilian rule as quickly as possible. They have

given in to the pressure of the street when necessary, finally offering a cabinet not dominated by old

regime figures.

But most of all, they have shown discomfort in their role and uncertainty as to how to behave. Sometimes

they act roughly, using force at times and trying civilians in military courts. Other times they are far more

circumspect, such as telling Egyptian cell phone users through plaintive text messages that they have

waited thirty years for change and should remain patient or pleading with them to return any documents

taken when the State Security headquarters was stormed.

In such an environment, the generals must feel like airline pilots called upon to fix overflowing toilets,

administer first aid, and patch up flat tires. A prolonged period of governing might lead to a different

attitude; so might an effort by political groups to subject the military to the same scrutiny now given to

other state institutions. While not seeking to rule for long, the military council is anxious to preserve its

considerable autonomy and privileges in whatever system emerges. Thus, General Mohamed al-Tantawi

is neither another dictator for life nor an Egyptian Cincinnatus; he and his colleagues seem to want to

protect and return to their very comfortable (and extensive) enclave within the state apparatus.

And so the rushed constitutional amendments—limited in number and in scope and presented as a single

package to Egyptian voters just three weeks after their release—have been the military’s main tool to

quickly reinstate a civilian political system. The Egyptian people are welcome to write an entirely new

constitution, but not on the generals’ time.

To draft the modest amendments, the junta turned to a committee, selected its members according to

criteria only it knows, and asked them to make whatever adjustments to the articles are needed to

proceed with fair elections. The junta also allowed the committee members to suggest a small number of

other legal and constitutional changes they consider necessary to complement the requested

amendments.

Committee members report that once they began their work, they had no contact with the generals, save

for an attempt midway through to see if the junta would agree to more extensive changes. And when the

junta said no, they decided instead to insert a process that would eventually allow for (and, according to

one reading, require) the fundamentally new document that is now so widely demanded.

The changes the committee suggested have attracted widespread comment. But they attack only two of

Egypt’s numerous constitutional diseases: a nearly permanent state of emergency and an electoral

system designed to allow those at the top to select the winners. Committee members also drafted a small

number of legislative changes required to bring Egypt’s legal framework in line with the amendments. The

content of those changes has been described (for instance, an end to state financing of presidential


48

campaigns), but the wording has not been made public. Only if the constitutional amendments pass will

the proposed changes be transformed from a confidential report into a public law.

With such a restricted view of their task, the speed with which the committee members worked is hardly

surprising. A wide consensus existed about what sort of changes were needed in those few articles,

including a more open nomination process for presidential candidates and a return to judicial supervision

of elections. Seeing their work as technical rather than broadly political, the committee members report

that they consulted only with each other. Even the member who had served as a leader of the Muslim

Brotherhood’s parliamentary bloc insists he had no contact with the Brotherhood leadership during the

process, a claim corroborated by Brotherhood leaders with whom I spoke.

The committee members also reported that they worked well together, only once resorting to a vote (on

the length of a presidential term). The committee member from the Brotherhood even reported a light-

hearted mood at times. When mention was made of Article 5–amended in 2007 to bar religious parties–

he said other members turned to him to tease, “That was put there for your sake.” He also claimed that

since the committee agreed to leave any ideological element of the constitution untouched for now, he

did not suggest amending this article.

After their suggested changes were submitted to the public, the committee members deputized a

member to collect public reaction and then considered revisions. They settled on only one significant

change: moving the authority to issue final rulings on parliamentary electoral disputes from the Supreme

Constitutional Court (as they had originally proposed) to the Court of Cassation, the supreme court of

appeals for most cases. That change came partly after pressure from the judiciary itself. (There was a

second apparent change. A version of the amendments widely circulated had seemed to restrict the

presidency to males by referring at one point to the president’s “wife” rather than “spouse.” But two

committee members I spoke with insisted their text had always been gender neutral and that no change

had been necessary.) Having completed their work, members consider their committee to be dissolved.

While there are reports that legal changes are being contemplated (especially concerning political

parties), it is unclear just who is drafting them.

Political Forces Line Up

In the two weeks since the release of the committee’s suggested amendments, opposition to the changes

has grown. Although there are some complaints about the content of the amendments, most of the

opposition focuses on process. Not only were the amendments written in an opaque manner, but a

growing number of people object to the very idea of tinkering with the 1971 constitution and moving so

quickly to parliamentary and presidential elections before a fundamental constitutional revision has taken

place. The arguments range from the blatantly self-interested—Amr Moussa, for instance, coupled his

opposition with a call to elect a president to oversee the process—to the abstract, as legal experts

complain Egypt’s revolutionary state has rendered the 1971 constitution completely void and incapable of

being resuscitated.

The arguments animating the bulk of the country’s political forces mix principle with politics. Most leading

parties, movements, and intellectuals want to write an entirely new constitution and worry that

proceeding even on an interim basis with the deeply flawed 1971 constitution is a mistake. They wish to

move as quickly as possible from a presidential to a parliamentary or semipresidential system. (Under the

latter system, a popularly elected president would coexist with an elected parliament, and a prime


49

minister appointed by the president would serve only with the confidence of the parliament.) And they

worry that the existing political forces in the country are simply unprepared for elections.

A widespread view in Egypt holds that parliamentary elections this May or June (when the junta has

suggested they will be held) will result in a victory by the Brotherhood and the remnants of the

discredited National Democratic Party (NDP). The former is famous for its discipline and is now

experienced in running campaigns under far more trying circumstances. The latter may have seen its

buildings torched and trashed and many of its former leaders hauled off to prison, but its local leaders

learned long ago that bribing voters and attacking opponents’ supporters are sometimes the most reliable

routes to victory.

The widespread suspicion that the Brotherhood stands nearly alone in endorsing the amendments in

order to immediately press its electoral advantage misses the mark. It is true that the Brotherhood’s

leaders are confident about their electoral chances and would like an opportunity to demonstrate their

popular presence. But it is also true that they have ruled out seeking a parliamentary majority, clinging to

the strategy of “participation not domination” that they used under the old authoritarian regimes to

persuade rulers they would not try to take their places. And they have offered to form joint lists,

coalitions, and even divvy up districts with other political forces. As a result, it is not immediate power

they seek. While they want to flex their electoral muscles, they are doing so vigorously to support the

referendum rather than to seek a parliamentary majority.

Brotherhood leaders explain their endorsement of the amendments in terms of the need for stability and

the desire to take up the military’s offer to return to the barracks as quickly as possible. The latter

argument has some resonance for the historically minded Brotherhood because of the way that the

military leaders of Egypt’s 1952 coup ultimately broke a similar pledge to restore civilian rule.

But the underlying reason the Brotherhood has endorsed the amendments has to do more with inertia

and caution than with any desire to govern immediately. For the first time in some sixty years, the

Brotherhood has the possibility to regain legal status. Although the movement decided to form a political

party a quarter century ago, it could not carry out this decision until now because of Egypt’s legal and

political environment. (Brotherhood leaders do not consider the language in Article 5 banning religious

parties a barrier to their existence because they claim to be forming a civil party open to Egyptians of any

religion.)

With the junta treating the Brotherhood as a legitimate political force, appointing one of its members

(albeit not an individual with a strong leadership role within the movement) to the committee drafting

amendments, and choosing an independent intellectual respected in Brotherhood circles to lead the

committee, the Brotherhood’s leadership is now investing itself in the political process. The movement is

anxious to enter a political game that has tantalized it for a generation. So on the referendum, the

movement’s youthful activists and senior leaders seem to agree. The Brotherhood is clearly throwing not

only its voice but also its organizational weight behind securing approval for the amendments in the

referendum.

But the Brotherhood stands nearly alone. Over the past week, the voices opposed to the referendum

have clearly gained the upper hand in public debates. Had they done so earlier–or were the campaign on

the referendum to last longer–the referendum would likely be defeated. But the opposition has only

worked out a coherent approach within the past few days. It has finally coalesced around a call for a “no”


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vote. Egyptians fearful that rejection of the amendments would lead to a power vacuum are finally being

offered a consistent and coherent alternative. This includes a more comprehensive “constitutional

declaration” that is explicitly provisional; a presidential council; and an elected constituent assembly. This

would allow for a more deliberate and consensual process and would ease the military’s grip on power. A

revolutionary coalition that showed an impressive ability to pick its targets in a very focused and strategic

manner has rediscovered that technique, but may be a week or two too late to prevent the amendments’

passage.

In the meantime, Egypt has turned into a country of constant political debate, with the press and

broadcast media filled with analysis and argument; hotel ballrooms and university lecture halls have been

packed with a constant stream of conferences and seminars. I attended one such session at al-Azhar

University, in which a judge who had worked with the demonstrators in Tahrir Square explained the

amendments and presented the arguments on both sides to a lecture hall of students who listened

intently and then peppered him with questions, keeping him long past the scheduled conclusion in order

to understand their choices. Outside, a group of salafi students passed out leaflets in support of the

constitutional amendments. And if salafis—with their famous fidelity to the study of Islamic texts and

discovery of correct religious practice—have turned into analysts of man-made constitutional provisions,

then Egypt has become a remarkably different place.

Just as notable as the debate’s participants is its tone. Egypt has not become a country of comrades—

distinctions of gender, class, religion, and power still matter—but a democratic ethos sometimes seems

to infuse debates. In the al-Azhar session I attended, the dean saluted “the revolution of the youth,”

thanked the impromptu student committees that formed to defend the university, and then received an

ovation by stating that university leaders were proposing that the law governing al-Azhar be amended to

allow its top officials, including deans, to be elected rather than appointed.

Next Steps if the Amendments Pass…

While one of the main arguments in favor of the amendments is their ability to restore a sense of

stability, it is unclear whether passing them will do so. There is even an abstract constitutional debate:

would approval of the amendments mean that the 1971 constitution (as amended) is once again in

effect? Such an argument has been made, but it would be difficult to follow faithfully because the

presidency is vacant.

But does that mean that only the approved amendments would be in force as a sort of mini-constitution?

If so, which other provisions of Egypt’s constitution could be ignored and which ones should be followed?

Such abstract questions could likely be answered if the junta declares if and how much the 1971

constitution should be restored. But such a declaration might not be forthcoming until after the

referendum.

Besides such abstract legal questions, five very practical and critical questions will arise for Egypt and its

leaders if the referendum passes.

First, will the original sequence and timetable suggested by the junta be followed? There have been calls

that presidential elections should precede parliamentary elections—something the wording of the

amendments, which gives parliamentary parties some role in nominating presidential candidates, would

make difficult. There are also those who suggest stretching out the process—currently slated to end


51

before the fall—over a considerably longer period. While members of the junta have listened carefully to

such arguments, it is unknown how they will come down on these issues. Indeed, Egypt’s ruling generals

have discovered an ability to listen with seeming sympathy to a wide variety of actors without tipping

their hands.

Second, when does the junta dissolve itself? Or, to be more technical, when does the Supreme Council of

the Armed Forces revert to its role as simply the supreme council of the armed forces rather than the

country’s dictator? A logical time would be the swearing-in of the president (perhaps in September), but

an adjustment in this timing is possible.

Third, how will elections be conducted? This question has two dimensions: first, what legal changes will

be made beyond those required by the amendments themselves? The quicker the elections, the less time

exists for a comprehensive change to the electoral system. That could pose a problem for those who want

a well-managed and comprehensive transition.

The real question is whether the election will be dominated by individuals or by parties. The junta is

widely expected to issue amendments to the law governing political parties in order to grant Egyptians

more freedom on this issue. Such a step would allow a move to party lists and proportional

representation in parliamentary elections. That might give Egypt’s inchoate political scene the

opportunity to coalesce around clear electoral organizations if given additional time.

This approach could be one way to cancel out the NDP’s remaining electoral strength. It might also

counteract the greatest danger to early parliamentary elections held according to the old system—the

likelihood that the election would produce a collection of independent deputies who would have

difficulty coalescing around any coherent agenda. In the 2010 elections, the NDP dominated the

parliament not by defeating such individuals but by persuading them to join. With a weak party system

and the NDP discredited, use of the old electoral system might lead to a parliament of fat cats—and with

a variety of deputies who, even if less well-off, showed cat-like herding instincts. To expect such a

parliament to be the germ of a different kind of political system might be unrealistic.

But there is also a second dimension to this question: how will elections be conducted on the ground?

Past campaigns have featured much vote buying and violence, but few real voters. Can a system in which

the stakes are much higher cope with these problems? Can an electoral machinery built on

understandable public apathy handle the flood of new voters who may enter polling places for the first

time? Egypt’s new election system will be put to a very demanding test from its very first days—and it will

be overseen by judges selected more for their integrity than their administrative abilities.

Fourth, who will the parliament name to the body to draft a new constitution? Will it turn to technical

experts? Its own members? Representatives of various political forces (and, if so, according to what

formula)? What about civil society and Egypt’s various religious communities? This will be the most

publicly drafted constitution in Egypt’s history; it is also a document in which citizens have been led to

place enormous hopes. The legitimacy of the process will depend in part of the manner in which it is

written.

Finally, what kind of constitution will be written? Three things are clear: politically aware Egyptians want a

document that is less presidential, more protective of rights and freedoms, and carefully drafted to close


52

loopholes rather than open them. Drafters will be expected to write a document that takes very serious

steps in all three directions. But the devil will be in the details.

There are indications that consensus will not prevail in all areas. Already, divisive ideological debates are

being opened, particularly concerning provisions about religion and Islamic law. Article 2, which proclaims

“the principles of the Islamic shari`a” as “the main source of legislation” in the suspended constitution, is

considered essential by most Islamists and amendable by many others. So far, public debate on the

subject has not even progressed to the point where both sides can agree to disagree.

…And if they fail?

A shorter but in some ways more imposing list of questions will arise if the amendments fail. Rejection

will mean that the junta’s plan—and, arguably, Mubarak’s last gift to his people—will no longer be viable.

But what will happen next? The failure of Egypt’s junta to offer its own answer to this question is actually

one of the strongest arguments that amendment supporters can cite. The idea that rejection would lead

to a leadership vacuum is powerful for those who wish to see a smooth transition. How would the junta

react? Would it petulantly proclaim that the rejection of its plan means the 1971 constitution is again the

law of the land? Would it instead become a more protracted presence than anybody now wants?

The most viable alternative plan is the one offered by the revolutionary leaders who call for a

constitutional declaration, a presidential council, and a fully inclusive effort to draft a new constitution.

There is now a powerful domestic coalition behind this alternative plan. And the logic is not just

domestic—this alternative is the path that most other countries have used in undergoing transitions.

It would probably be the case that the junta members would find the alternative of an interim

constitutional declaration—and perhaps even a transitional presidential council—as the best way to

extract themselves from the political process without leaving a void. But the experience of other

countries also suggests another lesson that Egyptians are learning: countries generally make their

fundamental constitutional choices with an eye toward their own recent history. Broad international

lessons and models offered by other countries do matter, but the fundamental political questions are

generally answered largely in a domestic context. And in Egypt’s case, that context offers only the barest

of clues about the path it should follow if voters reject the amendments.

Conclusion: What Egyptians Have Accomplished

As an observer, I have no role in Egypt’s transition beyond analyzing it. But I cannot resist making two

personal comments.

First, Egyptians have an opportunity for the first time in their history to write the constitution they want

rather than live with the one offered to them by deeply entrenched incumbents. Passage of the

referendum would be a step back from that opportunity, as it would mean that a president and

parliament would be in place to initiate (and perhaps influence) the process of drafting a permanent

constitution. If presidential elections precede parliamentary ones, as some have suggested, that danger

will grow because a new president would likely entrench himself fairly deeply using tools from the 1971

constitution. Rejection of the amendments might be a leap in the dark, but my own hope is that on March

19, Egyptians exercise their newly discovered (and wholly unexpected) willingness to take risks.


53

Second, the sense of pride I referred to at the beginning of this commentary is a bit contagious. Egyptians

are not blind to the tremendous problems they face: the short-term economic implications of the

revolution are negative and there are no hints of a long-term solution to Egypt’s deep economic

problems. The explosion of sectarian issues is deeply disturbing. Even those Egyptians who hold the

former regime responsible for aggravating the problem cannot deny the tense state of Muslim-Christian

relations and the fears of some Egyptian Christians.

But if none of these problems can be ignored, neither can they obscure how well most Egyptians have

adjusted to the new atmosphere. There is remarkably little violence and a widespread acceptance that

democracy is the preferable outcome, not merely as a system of government but also as a new way of

dealing with each other.

On my just-concluded trip, I took some time out to have dinner with a friend I have known for close to

three decades, along with his family. Or rather I thought I was taking time out, but even discussion at this

dinner revolved around recent events. My friend’s two teenage daughters beamed with pride about their

own participation as well as their father’s—he attended the demonstrations on the first day. They also

showed me a video clip of their mother on television speaking as a “sawragiyya,” a neologism (as far as I

know) for revolutionary.

The January 25 revolution may not yet have produced a new political order, but I still came away with the

feeling that the pride Egyptians take in the event is deeply justified.

********************

Bloody Days in Sanaa By: Barak Barfi.



Barak Barfi is a research fellow with the New America Foundation.

For Yemeni President Ali Abdullah Saleh, rising economic grievances pose a graver risk to his grip on

power than al Qaeda ever did.

After more than 40 people were killed on March 18 in Sanaa, Yemen, where security forces and regime

loyalists opened fire on protesters, the bonds that hold the delicate country together are increasingly

fraying. For years, a combination of security and economic problems threatened the country, yet they

were never able to topple President Ali Abdullah Saleh's government. But in recent weeks, grassroots

frustrations have spurred disgruntled youth to challenge a regime that is clearly willing to use brute force

to suppress their demands. And with neither side willing to back down, they are slowly inching Yemen

toward the abyss.

In a society where violence is a preferred form of diplomacy, it should come as no surprise that Saleh

unleashed his security forces on peaceful demonstrators. In the past, tribesmen in regions hostile to the

regime killed soldiers who sought water from their wells, while clans seeking concessions from the

government kidnapped foreign ambassadors to express their frustrations. In Yemen, politics is a blood

sport.


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Having witnessed the fall of three presidents -- two of whom were assassinated -- in the four years before

he took power, Saleh has long been prepared for threats to his rule. To solidify his power, he created a

military that is loyal to him rather than the state. Following the model of his long-time ally, former Iraqi

President Saddam Hussein, Saleh chose a senior staff based on family ties rather than merit. Almost all

top military positions are held either by his kin or by members of his extended Sanhan tribe. They have as

much to lose as Saleh does if he is deposed.

For years, many Yemen observers argued that the dilemmas the country faced -- a secession movement in

the south, a sectarian rebellion in the north, and a flourishing al Qaeda affiliate -- threatened to implode

the country. But as I argued shortly after the 2009 Christmas Day bombing, these challenges were unlikely

to bring down the regime. Security unrest could never really cripple a land that has experienced political

turmoil for a thousand years. Historical instability has rendered Yemenis largely inured to a level of

violence that would be considered chaos in most countries.

Widespread societal frustrations, not regional grievances or jihadism, are at the root of the current

protests. In a country where 65 percent of the population is under 25, Yemenis are understandably more

interested in finding employment and weeding out corruption than in eliminating al Qaeda operatives in

remote tribal regions. New cadres of college graduates have protested outside government offices in Ibb

demanding jobs. Workers have crippled the port in Hudaydah, calling for the resignation of superiors who

grew rich at the public's expense.

The Yemeni people's resolve has shaken the regime, and it is beginning to reveal its cracks. Senior

provincial officials have quit their posts. Almost two dozen parliamentarians have resigned from the ruling

General People's Congress party. State electric workers have gone on strike in Taiz. Even the military has

not been spared. In the northern province of Saada, where a rebellion has flared for the past seven years,

soldiers mutinied against their senior commander. The regime is hemorrhaging defections.

But more worrisome for Saleh than these desertions is the ripple effect the unrest is causing among his

chief backers -- the tribes. For the first time in Saleh's 32-year rule, most of the tribes in the two largest

confederations oppose the president. And even among the clans that have remained loyal, such as Bayt

Lahum and Banu Suraym, his support is far from secure. Saleh has been able to win over the chiefs with

lavish financial promises and government posts, but the average tribesmen, who rarely benefit from this

patronage, have turned against him.

The unrest has spread to Yemen's financial sector as well. Foreigners are unable to withdraw hard

currency from their bank accounts, and money-changers are refusing to sell U.S. dollars. Seeking to avert

an economic crisis, Yemen asked its wealthy neighbors from the Gulf Cooperation Council last week for $6

billion in aid. But having earmarked $10 billion to shore up member nations Bahrain and Oman rocked by

political unrest, the council may be reluctant to provide more funds to a country it often views as a poor

stepsister.

Despite their accomplishments, Yemeni protesters have a long way to go before they can replicate the

success of the demonstrators in Cairo's Tahrir Square. In Egypt, President Hosni Mubarak was a pharaoh --

he could ignore the opposition because he never had to consider their views. So when protests shook the

pillars of his regime, he did not know the very people who could throw him a lifeline. But in Yemen, Saleh

is little more than a tribal chieftain who has historically relied on shifting coalitions to prop up his rule.


55

More primus inter pares than despot, Saleh has always been deft at maneuvering between factions and

parties. In fact, a number of opposition leaders currently jockeying to speak for the protesters sat in a

unity government with Saleh during the early 1990s. If Saleh's use of force was intended to frighten them

to the negotiating table, his familiarity with these personalities and intimate knowledge of their demands

may help him defuse the crisis.

Moreover, the Egyptian paradigm of "take the square and cripple the country until the president resigns"

is ill-suited to a country like Yemen. Egypt is a hydraulic civilization where approximately a quarter of the

population lives in the capital along the Nile River. So when a million protesters poured into downtown

Cairo, they paralyzed the country. But in Yemen there are too many squares in too many towns and

villages to capture. Fewer than 10 percent of Yemen's 25 million people live in Sanaa. Almost 70 percent

of the population lives in rural regions spread out across a vast area.

And though protesters have staged large demonstrations in cities such as Aden and Taiz, they have made

less headway in the president's tribal strongholds of Amran, Dhamar, and Khawlan. Holding these

provinces is crucial to Saleh's survival hopes.

Throughout his three decades in power, Saleh has successfully placated both friends and adversaries with

his well-oiled patronage machine. But today's protests are led by a young generation that refuses to be

bought off. Having rejected the government's lavish financial promises, the demonstrators are not likely

to flinch in the face of force either. And in a country where conflicts are often decided by force, more

blood may spill before the standoff is resolved.

********************

Iran Widens Crackdown on Religious Minorities By: Paul Marshall.

Source: Hudson Institute


Paul Marshall is a Senior Fellow with Hudson Institute's Center for Religious Freedom

Further to Lela Gilbert’s March 11 NRO report that, following the arrests of hundreds of Christians in

recent months, five Iranian Christians had been sentenced to one year’s imprisonment for “Crimes against

the Islamic Order,” the Iranian government is widening its crackdown on religious minorities.

Christian Solidarity Worldwide reports that Hohabet News, one of the best news sites for information on

Iranian Christians, was yesterday suspended by the government. Earlier, at least one staff member and

his family had been threatened by an e-mail from the Revolutionary Guard. The suspension came after

the site reported that last month the government had seized and burned 600 New Testaments discovered

on a bus during a border inspection in Salmas.

The Baha’i News Agency reports that in March the authorities have arrested at least nine more Baha’is.

The most recent arrests were of Baha’is providing kindergarten-level education to children in Iran’s

Kerman Province, an area devastated by an earthquake seven years ago, and where the education system

had almost been destroyed. The prosecutor general of the revolutionary court in Bam asserted that they

were arrested for “promoting their programs under the guise of kindergartens” in Bam, Kerman, and


56

Tehran, and “took advantage” of the needs following the earthquake. The Baha’i News Agency also

reports that currently 79 Baha’is are imprisoned in Iran, including most of the leadership.

Sufi Muslims are also suffering. Human Rights Without Frontiersreports that Dr. Seyed Mustafa

Azmayesh, a representative of the Neymatollahi Gonabadi Order, told the European Parliament’s

Delegation for Relations with Iran that security forces had broken into the houses of Sufi Masters and

jailed them. Sufis are also attacked in state media, where they have been called “house vermin” and

“satanists.”

********************

Iranian Christians Sentenced for ‘Crimes against the Islamic Order’ By: Lela Gilbert.

Source: Hudson Institute


Lela Gilbert, Adjunct Fellow, Hudson Institute

In recent weeks, a series of abuses against Christians has swept across the Muslim world. There has been

a murder in Pakistan, attacks on churches in Ethiopia, an attempted assassination of the Ecumenical

Patriarch in Turkey, and repeated pogroms against the Copts in Egypt.

Now, rights groups are reporting new developments in Iran’s anti-Christian crackdown, which has swept

up nearly 300 Christian believers since June 2010.

In late January 2011, Elam Ministries released a detailed briefing document announcing a “severe

intensification of arrests and imprisonment of Christians in Iran.”

Two days ago, on March 9, Christian Solidarity Worldwide (CSW) reported that five Iranian Christians had

been sentenced to one year’s imprisonment for “Crimes against the Islamic Order.”

Pastor Behrouz Sadegh-Khandjani, Mehdi Furutan, Mohammad Beliad, Parviz Khalaj and Nazly Beliad, all

members of the Church of Iran, a Jesus-Only Pentecostal denomination, were found guilty by the

Revolutionary Court in Shiraz. They have 20 days to appeal the sentence.

CSW also confirms that 282 Christians have been arrested in 34 cities since June 2010: “At least 15 of

these Christians remain in prison, while others have been released, generally after posting large amounts

of bail.” According to Elam’s report, Yousef Nadarkhani, pastor of a church in Gilan province, has been

sentenced to death. He was arrested in October 2009 and is being held in Lakan prison while his case is

appealed.

An earlier (August 2010) report from Elam describes Iranian clerics’ hostility to the country’s Christian

population. It quotes Ayatollah Seyed Hosseini Bousherhri, who calls house churches the work of the

“enemy”: “Today the global aggressors have accurately planned and invested resources for these

purposes. This why in our country there is a strong inclination towards Christianity.”

********************


57

The Arab Revolutions: An Israeli Perspective By: Ehud Yaari .

Source: The Washington Institute


Ehud Yaari is an Israel-based Lafer international fellow with The Washington Institute.

Israel has been watching the ongoing upheaval in the Arab world with steadily growing concern. While

they hope to see a happy, democratic end to the popular eruptions of protest and discontent against

dictatorial regimes, Israelis are bracing themselves for a series of less optimistic outcomes.

A different Middle East is emerging, one that may be temporarily called "square-ocracy," or the transfer

of power from governments to masses of demonstrators in the streets. Rulers are bowing to popular

demands, fearing the fate of former Tunisian president Zine al-Abidine Ben Ali and former Egyptian

president Hosni Mubarak. But it is still unclear who will lead these countries in the long term, in which

direction they will move, and what type of "freedom" will emerge. An extended period of uncertainty and

instability may lie ahead, forcing Israel to cope with a highly volatile environment and reassess some of its

longstanding assumptions about the nature of its relationships with some neighboring states.

To be sure, Israel was hardly mentioned during the huge, early demonstrations in Egypt and elsewhere.

Over time, however, some anti-Israeli slogans began creeping into the protest movement's inventory. For

example, tens of thousands cheered in Cairo's Tahrir Square when previously exiled Islamist leader Sheikh

Yusuf al-Qaradawi urged them to march on Jerusalem. Mubarak was portrayed as a Zionist agent with a

Star of David smeared over his face. Calls for suspension of the bilateral peace treaty and expulsion of

Israeli embassy staff were often heard during demonstrations in Amman. In Yemen, demonstrators

shouted accusations that President Ali Abdullah Saleh was collaborating with Israel. In Libya, insurgents

have often described Muammar Qadhafi as a Jew.

In short, a degree of anti-Israeli sentiment has slowly been mixed into the overwhelmingly domestic

agendas of Arab protesters. Israel is clearly not at the top of these agendas, but it has become a part of

the revolutionary discourse. Below is a short list of Israel's most pressing concerns about the ongoing

unrest.

Egyptian Gas Sales and Treaty Review

The Supreme Military Council under Field Marshal Muhammad Hussein Tantawi is making a quiet effort

to reassure Israel that Cairo's policy toward it has not changed, and that Egypt still regards bilateral peace

as a major strategic asset. At the same time, however, the army's high command seems reluctant to

resume gas exports to Israel for fear of public reaction. At this point, the hesitancy is political in nature,

not a function of technical difficulties. The council is particularly concerned about the current

investigation into charges of corruption involved in the most recent contract governing Egyptian gas sales

to Israel, which was orchestrated by Mubarak's close friend Hussein Salem, one of the first Egyptians to

flee the country when the revolution gained momentum. The longer this suspension continues, the more

difficulty Cairo will have announcing a resumption in sales. The latest word from the new government is

that the gas supply will resume soon but prices will be renegotiated.


58

Whatever the results of the eventual presidential and parliamentary elections, the next government will

likely seek a "review" of several elements in the 1979 peace treaty with Israel. For example, some

Egyptian politicians have indicated a desire to link progress toward Palestinian statehood with continued

implementation of the treaty. The Muslim Brotherhood has already called for resubmitting the treaty to a

national referendum.

Indeed, with the official dissolution of the Mabahith, or State Security Investigations -- the Egyptian

agency traditionally tasked with curtailing Ikhwan activities -- the Brotherhood is becoming bolder by the

day. It will certainly use its clout to contest about a quarter of the seats in the parliament, as well as to

influence the outcome of the presidential race. The organization's growing power, combined with policy

statements by potential presidential candidates, seems to indicate that Egypt's next leaders will adopt a

new policy toward Hamas in the Gaza Strip. In short, a less friendly and cooperative government in Cairo

is almost a certainty.

Instability in the Sinai

The next Egyptian government will also likely focus on removing the peace treaty's "limitations over

sovereignty," meaning the provisions requiring demilitarization of eastern Sinai. Israel has already

permitted Egypt to deploy three battalions in the demilitarized areas, to protect Sharm al-Sheikh and the

al-Arish-Rafah region bordering the Gaza Strip. Israel could also conceivably accept a limited revision of

the Military Protocol to allow an Egyptian military presence close to the border in the hope of improving

Cairo's hold over the Sinai.

Since the revolution, Egyptian authorities have effectively lost control over most of the peninsula and

some of its Bedouin tribes. The army has vacated the positions it previously maintained in Central Sinai,

instead concentrating on securing the northern coastal road and the road along the Gulf of Aqaba. As a

result, the Sinai is fast turning into a wild frontier, a safe haven for local arms smugglers and migrating

jihadist groups. Hamas is taking advantage of this situation by developing its network of allies among the

armed tribes with the intention of mounting terrorist attacks against Israel via the peninsula. Iran and

Hizballah are also redoubling their efforts to gain a solid foothold there.

These activities would only accelerate if Cairo changed its official policy toward the Hamas regime in

Gaza. In early contacts between the Egyptian military and Hamas officials, a permanent reopening of the

Rafah terminal was discussed not only for individual travel, but also as a trade corridor. This portfolio is

now with Gen. Murad Muwafi, who replaced Omar Suleiman as head of General Intelligence. In his

previous role as governor of North Sinai, Muwafi dealt with Hamas issues on a daily basis.

In light of these factors, Israel may soon face a major dilemma: how to foil terrorist attacks emanating

from the Sinai (e.g., new attempts to lob missiles at Eilat) if Egypt proves unwilling or unable to do so.

Preemptive Israeli operations across the border would certainly trigger a major crisis between the two

countries.

The Palestinian Authority

According to various indicators, some Palestinian groups may view the storm of successful

demonstrations throughout the Arab world as a model for unrest against Israel. Discussions are already

quietly under way among different Palestinian groups concerning the structure and potential format of


59

nonviolent marches by thousands of people toward Israel Defense Forces positions, West Bank

settlements, Israeli security barriers, and, most important, Jerusalem. The Israeli army is already taking

measures to prepare for these possibilities.

For its part, the Palestinian Authority has obtained information about plans to call for mass

demonstrations in the West Bank urging an end to the Fatah-Hamas split. Hamas has already allowed a

similar demonstration in Gaza. It is difficult to predict at this stage whether West Bank Palestinians would

respond to such calls in large numbers. From Israel's point of view, other dangers may emerge in addition

to the challenge of dealing with the demonstrations themselves. For example, pressure from the streets

could spur Mahmoud Abbas to accept a "unity before reconciliation" deal that gives Hamas complete

security control over Gaza, allows it to take part in a "national unity government," and enables it confront

Fatah in West Bank elections. Such a deal would legitimize Hamas without securing any substantial

concessions from the movement.

Jordan

Under constant pressure from petitions and potential demonstrations, King Abdullah has been promising

to speed up reforms in the Hashemite Kingdom. Various opposition groups -- including the Muslim

Brotherhood, Palestinian nationalists, and East Jordanian critics of the king's conduct -- are all voicing

reservations regarding peace with Israel. Attentive to this mood, Abdullah has appointed some well-

known anti-Israeli politicians to the new cabinet, formed by Prime Minister Marouf Bakhit. He also

nominated a harsh critic of Israel, Khaled al-Karaki, to the all-important job of chief of the Royal Cabinet.

Clearly, then, Amman is heading toward a policy of cooling relations with Israel, though coordination on

security and water issues continues. In fact, this may be the worst period in the short history of peace

between the two states. Israeli officials are now worried that the king will accept Iranian overtures to

improve relations and visit Tehran.

Conclusion

Severe tests lie ahead for Israel's relationships with its Arab peace partners. Much effort will be needed to

protect the peace treaties from the growing assertiveness of the Muslim Brotherhood and other hostile

factions. The United States can greatly facilitate this goal by making clear that it regards peace as the

cornerstone of its regional policies, even as it supports transition to democracy in the Arab world.

Otherwise the Middle East may enter an era of reform under reformers who view peace as a liability.

Washington should put the word out that the process begun at Camp David is not finished, and that

peace treaties are a benefit for new democracies.

********************


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Peace Now for Palestine By: Marwan Muasher and Javier Solana.

Source: Project Syndicate

Date: March14,2011

Marwan Muasher and Javier Solana (Muasher, former Foreign Minister and Deputy Prime Minister of Jordan, is Vice

President for Studies at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace and a senior fellow at Yale University. He is the

author of The Arab Center. Solana, the European Union’s former High Representative for Foreign and Security Policy, and a

former Secretary General of NATO, is President of the ESADE Center for Global Economy and Geopolitics.)

MADRID/WASHINGTON, DC – As revolutionary change sweeps across the Arab world, it is easy to think

that now is not the time to push for peace between Israel and Palestine. Until the dust settles on the new

Middle East, the old roadmaps seem dated, and conventional wisdom holds that progress toward a peace

agreement in the face of regional upheaval is wishful thinking.

But the opposite is true. Even with so many failed efforts in the past, there is a clear window of

opportunity for the United States and Israel to urgently push for a lasting settlement.

Everyone needs to start thinking differently about the Middle East. The international community’s old

approach was to prioritize stability over democracy and pursue Israeli-Arab peace on a completely

separate diplomatic track. This policy proved to be a failure – placing stability ahead of democracy

brought neither, and isolated peace efforts went nowhere.

If the US and other world powers want to make headway on their three key objectives – stability, political

reform, and peace – they need to understand how they are linked and pursue all three simultaneously

and holistically. Picking and choosing which challenges to care about only increases the risk that they will

become intractable problems instead.

The US has been behind the curve from the moment the turmoil sparked, trying to play catch up as two

authoritarian governments were toppled by popular protest and more regimes try to cling to power as

long as they can. The US needs to get out in front. And, as the US and the broader international

community attempt to address the unfolding events, it would be a mistake to leave the peace process off

the agenda.

Whereas the demands of Arab demonstrators concern governance at home, the current turmoil can be

used to help end a conflict that has confounded the world for decades. Delaying the Israeli-Palestinian

peace process would be a costly blunder. As we know from bitter experience, waiting only makes a peace

settlement harder to achieve.

For the US, sympathy for Arab publics yearning for freedom cannot exclude compassion for Palestinians

dreaming of lives of dignity, which for them includes ending the occupation. The US should not be

selective in its support for freedom and democracy. This has never been more true than today, and if

America is not seen as an avid supporter of a two-state solution, it will stay well behind the curve and

damage its own interests in the Middle East.


61

Israel also needs to revisit its policies. As political reform achieves results, Israel will no longer be able to

claim that it is the only democracy in the Middle East; with conditions changing on the ground, it will be

increasingly difficult to ignore Palestinians’ demand for independence. Israel’s concern that the region will

grow more hostile will become a self-fulfilling prophecy if new democracies see the Israeli government

impeding steps toward a viable and just solution. At the same time, a peace process backed by elected

and more legitimate Arab governments will actually help solidify long-term peace and stability.

With time for a two-state solution quickly running out, a speedy settlement is in everyone's best interest.

Waiting and hoping for more favorable conditions could easily backfire. If there is no movement toward

peace as new Arab democracies take shape, negative views of Israel and the US will be hardened.

And, as we have all witnessed in recent months, Arab public opinion clearly matters. Bad perceptions only

complicate future peace efforts, making a breakthrough even less likely. And the US could have less of a

role in a new Middle East with new governments less forgiving than their predecessors about the

continuation of the occupation.

To argue that peacemaking can’t be successful when governments and regimes are in flux ignores the fact

that it is precisely in such circumstances that outsiders can help shape the process. Instead of operating in

an environment with little influence or room for maneuver, pushing the peace process now could help

endear the Arab public to the West and give the US more sway in the new Middle East. We don’t need

never-ending bilateral negotiations between Israel and Palestine; there needs to be a regional solution.

Tomorrow’s Middle East will not be the same as it was a mere two months ago, but the shape the region

will ultimately take is unknown. The US has a chance to get on the right side of history and help shape its

direction by supporting real reform and advancing a deadlocked peace process. In the end, an uprising

against poor governance presents an opening to achieve not only democracy, but also stability and peace.

This crisis, like so many others, would be a terrible thing to waste.

**********************

Lebanon's new patriarch pledges unity By: Sami Moubayed.

Source: Asia Times

Date: Mar 19, 2011

Sami Moubayed is a university professor, political analyst, and editor-in-chief of Forward Magazine in Syria.

DAMASCUS - The big news coming from Lebanon was an unexpected visit on Wednesday by Syrian

ambassador Ali Abdul Karim to the Patriarchal See in Bkirki, congratulating the new Maronite Patriarch

Beshara al-Rai. Ambassador Abdul Karim conveyed a congratulatory note from President Bashar al-Assad,

inviting the new patriarch to visit Damascus.

Amid all the turmoil in Yemen, Libya - and Japan - this twist in Syrian-Lebanese relations was like a breath

of fresh air for the Middle East. Twenty four hours later, Patriarch Rai accepted the invitation and said he

will visit Syria soon, adding that he will extend a written invitation to Syrian authorities to attend his

inauguration.


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Patriarch al-Raid, 71, is the 77th Maronite Patriarch of Lebanon. He has promised to turn a new page

between Christians in Lebanon and between the church and different players in the neighborhood.

What's noteworthy about this development is that it reveals how wrong and strained the Maronite

Church's relations with Syria were during the long tenure of his predecessor, Mar Nasrallah Boutros Sfeir.

The former, who just resigned from office at the age of 91, had been at the post since 1986 and never

once visited Syria while in office. The fact that birthplace of the Maronite Patriarch Mar Maroun lies in

northern Syria next to the principle town of Aleppo was not enough for Sfeir to set aside his political

differences with Damascus and make the journey, either for political or religious reasons. Last September,

a Sunday Mass was held in the Syrian village of Brad commemorating the 16th centennial anniversary of

St Maroun's passing.

The area surrounding the Brad village contains around 2000 archeological sites and 2000 churches and

convents, which were toured by heavyweight Lebanese Maronite politicians, but that did not convince

Sfeir of the need to make the Syria visit. Earlier in May 2001, many expected Sfeir to accompany Pope

John Paul II on a groundbreaking visit to Syria - but even then, the Cardinal got cold feet.

The reasons for this strained relationship are many, dating back to the difficult years of the Lebanese civil

war. Although he had been at daggers' end with then-prime minister Michel Aoun back in the late 1980s,

he did not support a Syrian military campaign aimed at removing him from Baabda Palace.

Sfeir, however, unwillingly supported the Syrian-backed and Saudi sponsored Taif Agreement of 1989,

declaring that Aoun's non-acceptance of the Agreement was "illegal". In what was seen as a clear

message to Sfeir from the Vatican in November 1989, the Papal ambassador Pablo Puente condemned

the "interference of clerical persons and institutions in politics without being officially mandated to by the

church hierarchy". He added that "an end must be put to political visits and declarations that have no

clear Church mandate".

During the 1990s, Sfeir enjoyed a very cold relationship with Damascus, sulking as to the post-war order

in Lebanon and increasingly isolating himself behind the high walls of Bkirki. Young Lebanese Maronites

were unimpressed, calling for a younger, more proactive and engaged Maronite patriarch.

While advancing in age, Sfeir became more outspoken in 2000, trying to fill a visible vacancy in Maronite

leadership, given that ex-president Amin Gemayel was in exile (he returned to Lebanon that year) while

warlord Samir Gagea was behind bars, serving a life imprisonment. In March 2001, as testimony to his

rising influence, he received a hero's welcome from a tour to the US, where he lobbied with US officials

against Syrian allies in Beirut, namely then-prime minister Rafik al-Hariri.

Additionally that same year he blessed the Qornet Shahwan Gathering, a coalition of Christian politicians

aimed at getting the Syrians out of Lebanon. In 2006, he went to the US yet again, this time meeting with

hawks in the George W Bush administration, such as secretary of state Condoleezza Rice and vice

president Dick Cheney.

By 2009 he was publicly calling on Christians not to vote for the Free Patriotic Movement of General

Aoun, which commanded the largest Christian bloc in parliament, because of its alliance with Hezbollah.

Last October, he gave an interview to al-Jazeera, lashing out against Hezbollah without naming the


63

Lebanese group.

Many claim that the election for his replacement were the most democratic in Lebanon and should be

used as a catalyst for similar democracy within religious institutions, being Sunni Muslim, Shi'ite, or non-

Maronite Christians. Others are arguing that the patriarch is more important than the president of the

republic, because a head of state remains in power only for a specific term, whereas a patriarch stays -

almost always - for life.

Additionally, when the 39 bishops voted on Sfeir's replacement, they wanted a cleric who was not too

young - precisely so as not to stay in office forever, and not too old, to become incapacitated and distant,

as was the case with Sfeir. With such a background it is safe to say that Sfeir was 60% politician, 40%

patriarch. In short, he took sides with one Christian party against the other, which is something a senior

man of religion should not do, creating dramatic fissure within the Christian community.

It came as no surprise that after a one hour meeting in Rome last October, between Sfeir and an envoy of

Pope Benedict, the Lebanese cleric was told "clearly and gently" that the Vatican sees that he should step

down from Bkirki. The patriarch, due to old age and a complex internal situation in Lebanon, has

presented no initiatives aimed at improving the conditions of Lebanese Christians and become

increasingly occupied with domestic issues, petty politics, neglecting the situation of Christians at large

throughout the Arab World.

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Hezbollah unruffled by show of force By: Sami Moubayed .

Source: Asia Times

Date: Mar 15, 2011

Sami Moubayed is a Syrian political analyst, university professor, and editor-in-chief of Forward Magazine in Damascus.

DAMASCUS - Thousands of Lebanese took to the streets of Beirut on Sunday demanding that Hezbollah

disarm. Their demonstration, called for by ex-prime minister Saad al-Hariri, marked the sixth anniversary

of a massive "Cedar revolution" in 2005 staged by the same players, which demanded the withdrawal of

Syrian troops from Lebanon.

Worldwide media attention of this weekend's demonstration was minimal, however, as news agencies

were busy covering the natural catastrophe in Japan and the ongoing war in Libya. The tiny

Mediterranean country and its sectarian chiefs have also found themselves irrelevant amid the massive

upheaval that has swept the Middle East and North Africa since January.

For weeks, Hariri's Future TV had been building momentum for the Sunday march, claiming that arms

need to be controlled by the state, rather than non-state players like Hezbollah. Many argue, however,

that had Hariri not been ejected from office through the collective resignation of 11 ministers from the

Hezbollah-led camp last January, such a demonstration would have never taken place.

He seemed perfectly comfortable with a tactical alliance with Hezbollah between November 2009 and


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January 2011.

Saad's father, former premier Rafik al-Hariri, supported and endorsed Hezbollah before his assassination

in 2005, living up to his reputation as an ardent Arab nationalist. Future TV grandly celebrated the May

2000 Israeli withdrawal from south Lebanon, attributing it to the military might of Hezbollah.

Hariri also lobbied Western powers extensively after September 11, 2001 to make sure that Hezbollah

was sheltered from any international campaign and kept off Washington's "terrorist list". And it was the

same Hariri who pledged, on creating his first cabinet in November 2009, to "protect and embrace" the

arms of Hezbollah.

The only difference between father and son is that Rafik worked with Hezbollah out of conviction,

whereas Saad did it out of need. One week before his assassination, Rafik told Hezbollah secretary

general Hassan Nasrallah, "I believe in this resistance. And I am telling you that if I become prime minister

again I will not implement the [disarmament] article of [UN] Resolution 1559. I swear to you that the

resistance and its weapons will remain until the day a comprehensive regional settlement is reached, not

just until [the Israeli] withdrawal from the Shebaa Farms."

Hariri added, "On that day, when that agreement is reached, I will sit with you and say: 'Sir, there is no

further need for the resistance and its weapons.' If we agree, that's what will be. If we disagree, I swear to

you and before God [he also swore by his deceased son Hussam] that I will not fight the resistance. I will

resign and leave the country [before that happens]." Rafik after all had started out as a young man in the

Arab nationalist movement of the 1960s, taking part in student demonstrations in favor of Gamal Abdul

Nasser who spoke a language very similar to that of Nasrallah in the 1990s.

Six years after his mysterious assassination, his son came out on Sunday saying: "It is impossible that any

of us here accept tutelage over Lebanon again, whether foreign domination or the domination of arms

within Lebanon, working for foreign interests." He added, "It is impossible to accept that these weapons

continue to be turned against the democratic will of the people."

Just over a year ago, this same Saad al-Hariri visited Turkey, where at a joint press conference with his

Turkish counterpart Recep Tayyip Erdogan he strongly supported Hezbollah's right to defend Lebanon

against Israeli aggression. Then, in February 2010, Hariri had admitted that not a day passed where the

Israeli Defense Forces did not infringe on Lebanese waters or airspace, clearly breaching UN Resolution

1701.

"Terrorism," Hariri explained, "is not when one defends one's land - the opposite is correct" His cabinet, it

must be noted, had lobbied extensively with the Turks to do away with UN Resolution 1559, which calls

for the disarmament of Hezbollah. Hariri himself, it must be remembered, had visited Iran in 2010, taking

souvenir photos with the Grand Ayatollah Ali Khemeni and President Mahmud Ahmadinejad. When

Ahmadinejad, a principle patron of Hezbollah, visited Beirut last year, he was greeted with a red carpet by

Hariri at Beirut International Airport.

Nobody ordered Hariri to go to Iran and nobody forced him to cuddle up to Hezbollah; he did it all at

completely at will. He had to work with them in 2009 to secure the premiership for himself and his March

14 Coalition. No cabinet can pass in Lebanon, after all, unless the Shi'ites are represented - regardless of

who controls the majority of seats in parliament.


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Hariri bent to every one of Hezbollah's demands, mending broken fences with Damascus, pledging to

hammer out a policy statement that pleased Hezbollah, and appointing all of Hezbollah's allies in key

positions in his government. Now very swiftly, he is turning his back on all of his actions - and doing it with

a completely straight face.

To hear Hariri spill out so much venom against Hezbollah today raises one serious question. Was Hariri

the premier lying when it came to Hezbollah's arms and his support for the resistance? Or is he convinced

of the need to maintain Hezbollah's arms, as explicitly stated in his cabinet policy statement, and just

bitter at having been ejected from office?

The likely answer, given Hariri's background since 2005, is that he was never a supporter of Hezbollah and

that today he is showing his true colors. Meaning, Hariri was putting on a big show during his 14 months

in power and was completely unconvinced of any of his actions or words.

Not only does this make him look silly, both before the international community and his own

constituency, but sheds severe doubt about how fit and mature he is to assume the Lebanese

premiership.

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International Think Tank Resources Issue 30

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Transcript of International Think Tank Resources Issue 30