Pandas to Tokyo

You know, with all the tension between China and various foreign powers these days, you have to wonder if they're going to run out of pandas.

Hezbollah Training Iraqis in Iran

Today's New York Times reports that the American military has found compelling evidence that Hezbollah has training camps set up in Iran for the purposes of training Iraqi Shiite militias. I'm still digesting this, but my first reaction, assuming that the reports are credible, is that it undermines the notion that Iranian support for Iraqi militias is confined to certain enclaves within the Iranian military and intelligence services and is not part of Iranian state policy. Arms leaking over the border is one thing. I can legitimately imagine that Tehran could not completely control that even if it wanted to. I have a tough time believing, though, that Hezbollah could be operating multiple training camps within Iran without the consent, if not the direction, of the Iranian central government. Coupled with Iran's suspension of talks with the U.S. over Iraqi security matters this morning, this does not bode well.

On J Street

The invaluable weekly "News from the Front" roundup of news on the Israeli-Palestinian conflict over at Foreign Policy Watch has directed me to a pair of op-eds in the Jerusalem Post relating to the new lobbying organization J Street. J Street aims to provide a more progressive counterweight to AIPAC and other hard-line pro Israel lobby groups, describing itself as the "political arm of the pro-Israel, pro-peace movement." It is dedicated to the notion that the United States can best help Israel by working aggressively towards negotiating a peace deal with Palestine, rather than by reflexively supporting some of the Israeli government's less constructive policies.

The first op-ed, by Isi Leibler, blasts J Street as essentially an anti-Israel group in disguise. The second, by Andrew Silow-Carroll, takes a somewhat more nuanced view, noting that all would benefit if mainstream U.S. politicians didn't have to obsessively pander to the right wing. Both pieces are worth reading, but I must say the first one made my head hurt a bit. In arguing that the Israeli government already bows compulsively to U.S. pressure (a pretty misguided notion if you ask me - often as not it seems to be the other way around), Leibler asserts:

...the Olmert government has lost the confidence of its people precisely because of unilateral concessions which undermine Israel's security and embolden terrorists. His government is an amen chorus which capitulates to every demand imposed on it by US Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice. It has provided weapons to the Palestinians which will almost certainly once again be redirected against Israel; it has released and granted amnesty to terrorists; and despite bitter opposition from the IDF, it has closed checkpoints and acceded to demands compromising security which have already resulted in Israeli casualties.

I suppose, in the strictest sense, Leibler is right (though I'm frankly pretty tired of policy being made based on a desire not to "embolden" one's enemies; once people are at the point where they're willing to blow themselves up in the middle of nightclubs, motivation becomes a pretty academic issue). The Olmert government has indeed made some concessions in recent months, opening a few border crossings, closing a few checkpoints etc. Anyone being honest, though, would acknowledge that Israel has consistently refused to make concessions on the one issue that really matters: settlements. As I have said before, Israelis need to decide - soon - whether they are truly willing to mortgage the future of their nation to the minority of hard-liners who view Israel's occupation of the West Bank as a religious calling. As Mr. Silow-Carroll points out, Prime Minister Olmert understands full well the implications of such a course. He is quoted as saying that:

"If the day comes when the two-state solution collapses and we face a South African-style struggle for equal voting rights [among Palestinians of the occupied territories], then, as soon as that happens, the State of Israel is finished."

In other words, Israel simply cannot continue to occupy the West Bank and remain a democratic and Jewish state. That Mr. Olmert evidently lacks the political muscle to act on this realization is regrettable, but does nothing to diminish its prescience.

I am not so naive to think that a final peace deal in the Levant would be based exactly on the 1967 "Green Line." More than half a million settlers live in the West Bank. Some will almost surely have to stay there. The problem, though, is that settlements have been built so as to carve up the territory in such a way that it could never constitute a viable state. No sovereign people can be expected to navigate a maze of foreign military checkpoints in order to move around in their own territory. George Kennan once said that power makes a mockery of sovereignty. Such a situation would be more than a mockery; it would be a farce.

Finally, it is worth noting that, over the last decade, the political situation in Israel and Palestine has deteriorated dramatically. The Palestinians are weak and divided, with half their people under military occupation and beholden to a semi-functioning government of questionable legitimacy, and the other half trapped in an impoverished, crowded battle zone, beholden to a government that is not even recognized or dealt with by the rest of the world. The Israelis, meanwhile, are stuck in political deadlock with the far right slowly creating "facts on the ground" that increase the difficulty of a final deal with each passing day.

In this environment, an American lobby that pushes for both sides to make real concessions and come to a lasting peace strikes me as long overdue.

The Vagaries of a Common Currency

Today's Times has a terrific article on the tenth anniversary of the Euro (my how time flies). Evidently a resurgent German economy combined with a falling dollar has been reopening the north-south economic divide between prosperous northern Europe, which wants to keep inflation in check, and more sclerotic, export-driven (and therefore highly sensitive to currency fluctuation) southern Europe (Italy, Greece, Spain, Portugal), which wants a weaker Euro to push up exports and raise standards of living.

The article, though, echoes my sense that European integration, at least at the economic level, long ago passed the point of no return. As much as the incoming Berlusconi government might like to have a lira to devalue and thereby juice the Italian economy, the overall political and economic costs of abandoning the centerpiece of the Maastricht Treaty wouldn't be worth it by a long shot. Still, it'll be interesting to see how such tensions play out in the coming years, and in particular how the newer E.U. states of Eastern Europe line up. I'll need to do a bit more research into the state of their economies in order to make any kind of informed analysis (and even then it'd be on the amateurish side - my economics knowledge doesn't get much past the Macro 101 level), but stay tuned in any case.

Chuckles

This is a pretty frivolous aside, but Robert Schlesinger (son of Arthur Schlesinger Jr., son of Arthur Schlesinger) was on the Daily Show this evening, wearing an eye-poppingly multicolored bow tie. Anyone who has ever seen pictures of his father should recognize the homage. A great interview as well.

UPDATE: You can catch the interview here.

Pakistan

Check out Arif Rafiq's recent piece on the U.S.-Pakistani relationship. A very insightful and practical set of prescriptions in my view. He refers to Senator Biden's proposal as a model for building a relationship with the Pakistan people, not just the upper echelons of Pakistan's government, and advises Washington to stop interfering in Pakistan's internal politics.

I have a couple of quibbles. I'm not sure how realistic it would be to replace NATO troops in Afghanistan with those from non-bordering Muslim nations like Turkey and Indonesia, but I guess it might be worth a shot some day. Also, I'm not always sure what authors mean when they say that the U.S. shouldn't "interfere" in others' internal politics. If what Mr. Rafiq means is that Washington ought to be dispassionate and uninterested in Pakistan's political winds, that strikes me as pretty unrealistic. If, on the other hand, he means that America should step back, and try to influence Pakistan's long term political development by putting itself on the right side of events rather than trying to tinker in the country's political minutae, then in my view he's being quite insightful.

In any case, definitely worth a read for anyone interested.

Ahmadinejad in India

The New York Times reports that Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad is currently on a high-profile visit to India. Though no major new breakthroughs in Indian-Iranian relations (which are fairly good, and based on real mutual strategic interests) are expected, the visit gives the Indian government a chance to show its independence from the United States by dealing with a leader openly loathed by Washington. I'm sure some people in this town are wringing their hands at the visit, but frankly, I think in the long run, it's a net positive for the U.S. It allows the Indian government to deflect criticism that it is Washington's pawn without having to make concrete strategic moves that would damage America's position in South Asia. It might even help get our stalled nuclear deal back on track, which I continue to support, albiet cautiously.

More to the point, India will never be an American client state, nor, probably, a steadfast ally in the Western European mold; however, solid relations with India are both achievable and desirable for Washington, if only because the state has cultivated links with so many other important international actors (Iran, Russia, China, Japan) that will require a delicate hand in the coming decades. Engaging India as a strategic partner in managing such relationships - both the good and the bad - makes imminent practical sense. America's relationship with Iran is going to have to change, either for better or worse, over the next decade. Overall I think it's a good thing that a potential American partner on Persia's doorstep keep relations open with Tehran.

And I So Naively Thought We'd Be Able to Avoid This...

Yesterday's New York Times article about Debbie Almontaser, a New York educator who helped start a public school with an Arab focus, is making me cringe a bit. The article describes Almontaser's vision for the school thusly:

Children of Arab descent would join students of other ethnicities, learning Arabic together. By graduation, they would be fluent in the language and groomed for the country’s elite colleges. They would be ready, in Ms. Almontaser’s words, to become “ambassadors of peace and hope.”

Sounds like a terrible concept doesn't it?

Evidently there have been numerous problems at the school, most of which aren't really the concern of this blog (I'm not particularly qualified to make pronouncements on modern primary and secondary pedagogy), but the upshot is that Ms. Almontaser has been forced out of her position as principal by "a chorus of critics who claimed she had a militant Islamic agenda." Significantly, the article puts this incident into a larger context of groups in America that have begun bracing against what they call "soft jihad" waged by law-abiding citizens who seek to promote a creeping Islamicization* of American society.

The article takes particular note of Daniel Pipes, a trained historian who heads up the Middle East Forum and who helped lead the oh-so-constructively-named "Stop the Madrassa Coalition" against Ms. Almontaser's school. According to the article:

...as the authorities have stepped up the war on terror, those critics have shifted their gaze to a new frontier, what they describe as law-abiding Muslim-Americans who are imposing their religious values in the public domain.

Mr. Pipes and others reel off a list of examples: Muslim cabdrivers in Minneapolis who have refused to take passengers carrying liquor; municipal pools and a gym at Harvard that have adopted female-only hours to accommodate Muslim women; candidates for office who are suspected of supporting political Islam; and banks that are offering financial products compliant with sharia, the Islamic code of law.

The danger, Mr. Pipes says, is that the United States stands to become another England or France, a place where Muslims are balkanized and ultimately threaten to impose sharia.
“It is hard to see how violence, how terrorism will lead to the implementation of sharia,” Mr. Pipes said. “It is much easier to see how, working through the system — the school system, the media, the religious organizations, the government, businesses and the like — you can promote radical Islam.”

A gym at Harvard adopting female-only pool hours? Quel horreur! I'd better hide my booze and get used to eating halal, because it would seem like a full-blown Islamic revolution is right around the corner!

In all seriousness, though, to act as though minor accomodations to a few Islamic cultural practices represent the first step toward imposing sharia law in the United States is simply absurd. Some European countries are having problems with their Muslim populations because of a combination of foolish immigration policies, status-quo economic management, and the perpetuation of inflexibly antiquated conceptions of their own political communities. The French have a model of "Frenchness" that is exclusivist to the point that nobody from another culture could ever hope to strike a proper balance between fidelity to their own traditions and accomodation with those of the society around them (this phenomenon, ironically enough, was one of the catalysts of the Zionist movement at the end of the nineteenth century). The United States is supposed to be different. We are supposed to have the kind of nationalism that is supple, that absorbs others' cultures and traditions even as it assimilates them into its own. I am supremely confident that we will be able to incorporate Muslims into American society without sacrificing our sovereignty to some nebulous "radical" threat posed by Islamic practices.

Confident, that is, as long as conservative yahoos who have Samuel Huntington complexes and are somehow offended by foot washing basins in public bathrooms - people like Mr. Pipes - are relegated to the margins of national discourse. A good rule of thumb to keep in mind when talking about American politics - one that goes all the way back to the Alien and Sedition Acts - is that whenever someone starts talking about vague, underground, conspiratorial movements to radically alter the face of American society, it's probably bull$@#!. The fact that a few cabbies won't give you a ride because you're carrying booze, or that a few colleges have put foot sinks in their bathrooms so that Muslim students can wash their feet before prayer without breaking their necks, or that for a few hours a week some pools are restricted to women, isn't a sign of some nefarious plot to islamicize American society. It's a sign that institutions are making some reasonable accomodations to the cultural practices of the people around them. It's the very definition of an appropriate, balanced, liberal response to cultural difference. Last time I checked, after all, Christmas was still a Federal holiday. I doubt we'll hear Mr. Pipes complaining about that any time soon.

*I have no idea if this is actually a word, but I like it and have decided to use it going forward.

Weapons in Lebanon

The Washington Post reports today that Lebanese civilians are beginning to arm themselves in anticipation that there will be no resolution to the country's political deadlock. This is evidently reflected in skyrocketing prices for small arms. All I can say is this can't be good.

Hamas and a Peace Deal

Jimmy Carter - a man for whom I have enormous respect, whatever some of his detractors say - has reported that the leadership of Hamas has told him that they would be open to a peace deal with Israel if it were approved by Palestinian citizens in a referendum, even if the deal contained some provisions with which Hamas disagreed. I must admit that I've been back and forth about whether or not Israel and the international community should bring Hamas into peace negotiations. I very much understand that Israel doesn't want to negotiate with a group that continues to deny its right to exist and thereby put that issue "back on the table" so to speak, but I think it's time to face up to the strategic reality that Israeli sanctions haven't brought about the collapse of the Hamas government in Gaza, and that as long as Hamas controls such a large portion of the Palestinian populace, no agreement will be possible without its assent. The Hamas leadership's statements to Carter might be sincere or they might be tactical, but for hard-nosed strategic reasons I think it's time to give them the benefit of the doubt and bring Hamas to the table in some capacity, if only because there aren't many other viable options.