Nearly 25 years after the breakup of Yugoslavia another country in the periphery of the EU is burning. Again there is a fight between pro-Western and pro-Russian forces mixed with local ethnic antagonisms. It could be a coincidence. But there are many similarities that seem to indicate that the EU plays an active role in the destruction of its neighborhood.
The problems started in periods when those countries were paralyzed politically and simultaneously suffered serious economic problems. Yugoslavia had failed to find a replacement for the party to tie the country together. Such a things takes time and it wasn’t granted that. Ukraine still hasn’t managed to restrict the power of the oligarchs.
In this situation of a weak state the West started to promote “pro-Western” forces. In Yugoslavia Slovenia and Croatia were encouraged to secede. In Ukraine a color revolution was organized. Vague promises of EU membership – seen by many as a promise of wealth - were used to attack supporters among the population.
In the process international law was violated. The secession of Slovenia and Croatia went not according to the Helsinki Declaration and the Yugoslav constitution, which both prescribed mutual agreement. The encouragement of the protesters on the Maidan by Western political leaders was a clear violation of the principle of non-interference in the internal affairs of other countries.
In the next step the West presented the results of these actions as the new reality. But the losers in the situation didn’t accept that. This made communication difficult. It didn’t help that the West refused to accept compromises. In Bosnia and Croatia their independence was presented as a new reality and from that it was concluded that those countries were now free to deal with their minorities as they wished. In the meantime their Serb minorities believed that their position was unsettled and needed to be negotiated first.
Such obstacles, like the Croatian Serbs who demanded autonomy or the Ukrainians who rejected the Maidan revolution, form a problem for the West. It doesn’t sound very democratic to demonize a whole segment of the population. And so their actions are attributed to the influence of some evil genius like Milosevic or Putin. Of course this is denigrating for those people, but most observers in the West won’t notice.
Role Play
Different segments of the “West” play different roles in those tragedies:
- Germany is inclined to ham-handed power politics. In the case of Yugoslavia it was its early recognition of Croatia. In Ukraine it was its refusal to let the EU pay attention to Ukraine’s relationship with Russia when it was negotiating a trade treaty with the EU.
- The EU is inclined to jump to conclusions when faced with problems in its neighborhood. This is due to a mix of feelings of responsibility, fear of irrelevance and US pressure. Unfortunately its bureaucratic nature makes it very difficult later to change its position. In the case of Yugoslavia it became stuck when it adopted the legalistic excuses of the Badinter Commission to ignore international law. In the case of Ukraine It was its adaptation of the Maidan protests.
- For the US the Cold War has never ended and every excuse is grabbed to reenact it. It is the US that helps “pro-Western” forces with training, arms or whatever they need. In the neocon view that is dominant in the US every compromise is a partial victory for Putin and for that reason repugnant. When Croatia and Kosovo seemed ready to talk about border changes this was blocked by the US. In Ukraine too they have pushed the government to be uncompromising.
In this constellation the West still regularly triest to achieve peace but it never succeeds. Every agreement is soon violated by both sides. And although both sides carry guilt only the “anti-Western” forces are sanctioned. When things go badly on the battle field for the “pro-Western” side you see a push for an armistice. But that truce is only an opportunity to rearm, not to achieve peace. Occasionally European politicians become hesitant. Then Washington sends in some high ranking guys like Biden or Kerry to put them under pressure. With help from friends from the Baltics and Poland they often achieve what they want.
Friday, February 13, 2015
Monday, February 09, 2015
The Ukrainian conflict is not about Ukraine
The big question of the Ukrainian conflict is: what do we want? Peace in Ukraine or teaching Putin a lesson? In the latter case the demands on Russia and the rebels will be much stronger and the preparedness to make concession much weaker.
All sign are that the US wants the latter. Russia is not respecting the rules of the post-Cold War world as the West - and specially the US - understands them. And implementing the logical solutions in Ukraine would mean accepting this Russian behavior. Russia interfering with a treaty between the EU and Ukraine, Russia occupying and annexing Crimea, Russia supporting an uprising in East Ukraine, Russia demanding that Ukraine doesn't become a NATO member: it is all unacceptable. It doesn't matter that the US tends to do similar things. It doesn't matter that Russia is reacting to a US sponsored "coup" (as they see it) in Kiev. It doesn't matter whether Russia's complaints about the authoritarian nature of the government in Kiev are true. For much of the Russian population these are circumstances that justify its policies in Ukraine. But many in the West see only an interference that they consider unacceptable. As a consequence we see in response Western policies that don't take the local circumstances in Ukraine in account but make it a kind of principle that what Russia does is wrong.
A good illustration is when General Breedlove talks about his reasons for wanting to arm Ukraine. He acknowledges that the government can't win no matter how many arms it would receive. "But", he says "we must try to raise the price on the battlefield for Putin to slow this whole problem down so sanctions and other measures have time to work". Freely translated this means that Breedlove is prepared to sacrifice many thousands of Ukrainians at a time when opinion polls show that 70% of the population wants to stop the war. His expectation that in the end Putin will give in under the pressure of sanctions is controversial. In the likely case that he doesn't thousands will have died in vain. The only people benefitting will be some hardliners who can claim that they have done all they could to rein in Russia.
The logical solution for the Ukrainian problem is autonomy for Donbass. Even before the conflict started there were demands for autonomy from both the Eastern and Western ends of Ukraine. It was also part of the Minsk agreement in September and the Ukrainian parliament adopted then a law to implement it. Unfortunately Ukraine's government blocked the law, claiming that it would create yet another Russian supported enclave like South-Ossetia, Abkhazia and Transdniester. That claim is not very credible: unlike those areas Donbass is not ethnically different from the rest of the country. Ukraine is just a very big country where the Western extreme of the country has grabbed the power at the moment and the Eastern extreme doesn't agree. Given time they will find a solution to live together again when power returns to the center.
But just like the demand of the government that the rebels return the land that they conquered since september the rejection of autonomy is in fact an excuse to say no. The same applies to the rejection of the Russian demand that Ukraine shouldn't become a NATO member. NATO membership was - until people got swept up in the heated rhetoric of the war - unpopular and most Ukrainians would happily give up on it if that could bring peace. The Ukrainian government isn't bothered about any of those points as such. It is aiming to win the war and is just grabbing the most credible sounding excuse to reject any peace initiative. It does so both under pressure of Washington - that sees the conflict in Cold War terms - and as it depends for its power primarily on right extremist militias and oligarchs and not on popular support it is afraid that some kind of recognition for Donbass would shift the balance of power.
The Ukrainian government has tried to turn the argument around by claiming that the rebels don't adhere to the Minsk agreement. They like to point to the clause that gives the government control of the borders. However, you cannot see that clause separate from the rest. The idea of Minsk is a situation where Donbass is an autonomous part of Ukraine. In that context it is logical that Kiev controls the borders. However, the clause does not mean that Kiev has the right to encircle and suffocate Donbass.
Merkel and Hollande have now proposed strong autonomy and a 50-70km demilitarised zone.
This proposal faces the risk to be rejected in the same way as Minsk was. The question is how Russia and the rebels will react. It looks like they see this initiative as the last chance. That if this doesn't work it doesn't make sense to once more conclude a truce that will only enable Kiev to rearm and attack once more. Instead they may launch a full scale attack in the hope that a massive loss of territory will bring Kiev to its senses. Given that the Ukrainian army just suffered a major blow at Debaltsevo that might go rather easy and bring less humanitarian costs than waiting.
Merkel and Hollande are supporters of the Maidan revolution and their sudden interest in peace comes mainly from the fact that Ukraine's army is in serious trouble in Debaltsevo. This raises some doubt whether they are really prepared to accept a peace where Russia and the rebels get some of their demands fulfilled. Their proposal contains basic elements like autonomy, but the devil is the details and those haven't been published. One rumor claims that they have set Putin a deadline and threatened with sanctions. Already one can see in pro-Russian media speculation that they may be cooperating with Obama in a good cop bad cop act.
The big question of the Ukrainian conflict is: what do we want. Peace in Ukraine or teaching Putin a lesson?
All sign are that the US wants the latter. Russia is not respecting the rules of the post-Cold War world as the West - and specially the US - understands them. And implementing the logical solutions in Ukraine would mean accepting this Russian behavior. Russia interfering with a treaty between the EU and Ukraine, Russia occupying and annexing Crimea, Russia supporting an uprising in East Ukraine, Russia demanding that Ukraine doesn't become a NATO member: it is all unacceptable. It doesn't matter that the US tends to do similar things. It doesn't matter that Russia is reacting to a US sponsored "coup" (as they see it) in Kiev. It doesn't matter whether Russia's complaints about the authoritarian nature of the government in Kiev are true. For much of the Russian population these are circumstances that justify its policies in Ukraine. But many in the West see only an interference that they consider unacceptable. As a consequence we see in response Western policies that don't take the local circumstances in Ukraine in account but make it a kind of principle that what Russia does is wrong.
A good illustration is when General Breedlove talks about his reasons for wanting to arm Ukraine. He acknowledges that the government can't win no matter how many arms it would receive. "But", he says "we must try to raise the price on the battlefield for Putin to slow this whole problem down so sanctions and other measures have time to work". Freely translated this means that Breedlove is prepared to sacrifice many thousands of Ukrainians at a time when opinion polls show that 70% of the population wants to stop the war. His expectation that in the end Putin will give in under the pressure of sanctions is controversial. In the likely case that he doesn't thousands will have died in vain. The only people benefitting will be some hardliners who can claim that they have done all they could to rein in Russia.
The logical solution for the Ukrainian problem is autonomy for Donbass. Even before the conflict started there were demands for autonomy from both the Eastern and Western ends of Ukraine. It was also part of the Minsk agreement in September and the Ukrainian parliament adopted then a law to implement it. Unfortunately Ukraine's government blocked the law, claiming that it would create yet another Russian supported enclave like South-Ossetia, Abkhazia and Transdniester. That claim is not very credible: unlike those areas Donbass is not ethnically different from the rest of the country. Ukraine is just a very big country where the Western extreme of the country has grabbed the power at the moment and the Eastern extreme doesn't agree. Given time they will find a solution to live together again when power returns to the center.
But just like the demand of the government that the rebels return the land that they conquered since september the rejection of autonomy is in fact an excuse to say no. The same applies to the rejection of the Russian demand that Ukraine shouldn't become a NATO member. NATO membership was - until people got swept up in the heated rhetoric of the war - unpopular and most Ukrainians would happily give up on it if that could bring peace. The Ukrainian government isn't bothered about any of those points as such. It is aiming to win the war and is just grabbing the most credible sounding excuse to reject any peace initiative. It does so both under pressure of Washington - that sees the conflict in Cold War terms - and as it depends for its power primarily on right extremist militias and oligarchs and not on popular support it is afraid that some kind of recognition for Donbass would shift the balance of power.
The Ukrainian government has tried to turn the argument around by claiming that the rebels don't adhere to the Minsk agreement. They like to point to the clause that gives the government control of the borders. However, you cannot see that clause separate from the rest. The idea of Minsk is a situation where Donbass is an autonomous part of Ukraine. In that context it is logical that Kiev controls the borders. However, the clause does not mean that Kiev has the right to encircle and suffocate Donbass.
Merkel and Hollande have now proposed strong autonomy and a 50-70km demilitarised zone.
This proposal faces the risk to be rejected in the same way as Minsk was. The question is how Russia and the rebels will react. It looks like they see this initiative as the last chance. That if this doesn't work it doesn't make sense to once more conclude a truce that will only enable Kiev to rearm and attack once more. Instead they may launch a full scale attack in the hope that a massive loss of territory will bring Kiev to its senses. Given that the Ukrainian army just suffered a major blow at Debaltsevo that might go rather easy and bring less humanitarian costs than waiting.
Merkel and Hollande are supporters of the Maidan revolution and their sudden interest in peace comes mainly from the fact that Ukraine's army is in serious trouble in Debaltsevo. This raises some doubt whether they are really prepared to accept a peace where Russia and the rebels get some of their demands fulfilled. Their proposal contains basic elements like autonomy, but the devil is the details and those haven't been published. One rumor claims that they have set Putin a deadline and threatened with sanctions. Already one can see in pro-Russian media speculation that they may be cooperating with Obama in a good cop bad cop act.
The big question of the Ukrainian conflict is: what do we want. Peace in Ukraine or teaching Putin a lesson?
Sunday, February 08, 2015
Competing visions on Ukraine
Reading “pro-Russian” and “pro-Western” articles about the conflict in East Ukraine and hearing politicians on both sides talk about it one gets the impression of two different realities. The “conversation” below gives a good impression of the arguments used.
Pro-Western:
The Maidan revolution came from the desire of the Ukrainian people for more freedom and democracy.
Pro-Russian:
The Maidan revolution was an US sponsored coup. It was a classical color revolution. See the leaked conversation between Victoria Nuland and US ambassador Pyatt as evidence.
Pro-Western: Opinion polls show that support for Yanukovich was very low at the time of the revolution.
Pro-Russian:
Opinion polls show that only about 50% supported the “coup”. Most of the rest didn’t like Yanukovich but they believed that the constitution should have been respected and that Yanukovich should have been allowed to serve the rest of his term.
Pro-Western:
The new government will finally liberate Ukraine from the oligarchs and reform its economy.
Pro-Russian:
Oligarchs control the new government. Since the revolution there have been almost no reforms. Very likely Yanukovich would have introduced more reforms. Not because he liked it, but because he would have been forced by the IMF. Since the revolution the Western countries have played sugar daddy for Ukraine, taking away the need to reform.
Pro-Western:
Ukraine is now democratic and free.
Pro-Russian: Since the massacre of protesters in Odessa on 2 May and the farcical investigation of that disaster adversaries of the Maidan have become very careful about protesting. The coming lustration with very general criteria further adds to their fear.
Pro-Western: Russia is violating Ukraine’s independence by supporting the uprising in the East.
Pro-Russian: The US violated Ukraine’s independence by installing a puppet regime in Kiev.
Pro-Western: Poroshenko was democratically chosen.
Pro-Russian:
There was no level playing field: a pro-Russian candidate was beaten up by protesters. Also Poroshenko betrayed his voters. Before he was chosen he promised that he would immediately start peace talks. After the election he increased the hostilities, claiming that true peace could only come through a total victory.
Pro-Western: The parliamentary elections showed that support for right extremist groups is low. Neither Right Sektor nor Svoboda passed the 5% threshold.
Pro-Russian:
The power of right extremists in Ukraine is not rooted in their popularity but in the threat coming from their militias and in their occupation of key positions in the army and police. Since the revolution the mainstream parties have copied much of their agenda.
Pro-Western: The Russians and the rebels started the violence.
Pro-Russian: The violence started with Right Sektor and other Maidan militia harassing local administrators who didn’t support the Maidan and disturbing anti-Maidan protests.
Pro-Western: Without support from Russia the uprising would never have come from the ground. The rebels are armed from Russia. And without the influx of Russian soldiers in September the government could have ended the uprising.
Pro-Russian:
Putin has said many times that he considers a defeat of the rebellion not acceptable. He wants a negotiated solution.
Pro-Western: The rebels shot the plane. There are lots of indications that the plane was shot by a BUK missile and that the rebels had such a missile at the time of the disaster.
Ukrainian government: Russian troops shot the plane. Only they had the knowledge and technology.
Pro-Russian: The plane was shot by an Ukrainian BUK or by an Ukrainian war plane. The Ukrainian government keeps refusing to disclose information such as the conversation with the cockpit and the radar images.
Pro-Russian:
Autonomy for the Donbass was at the core of the Minsk Protocol. But Ukraine refuses to give it.
Pro-Western: Autonomy for the Donbass would create yet another Russian “protected” enclave like South Ossetia, Abkhazia and Transdniester.
Pro-Russian: South Ossetia, Abkhazia and Transdniester have remained problems because the US has encouraged the regimes in Georgia and Moldova to be uncompromising. It is not only Russia’s fault. Also, those are ethnic conflicts in a sense that Donbass isn’t.
Autonomy is a standard solution shortly after conflicts when there isn’t trust between the parties. When trust comes back it can be gradually reduced. By refusing autonomy the West implicitly states that the conflict can only be solved by surrender of the rebels.
Pro-Western: The goal of the present rebel offensive is to increase the economic viability of their enclave. It is against the spirit of Minsk. They want to conquer Shchastya for its power plant, Andiivka for its coke factory and Mariupol for its steel mills. They want Donetsk airport because it blocks their northern expansion. They want Mariupol because it would open the road to a land
bridge towards Crimea. And they want Debaltsevo because that would make it easier to import weapons by rail from Russia and so enable an offensive elsewhere.
Pro-Russian: The goal of the present rebel offensive is to make the Donbass less
vulnerable for shelling by the government army and for sudden attacks. The reason why the government has so many troops in Debaltsevo is because they planned another attack from there.
Pro-Western:
Russia wants to control Ukraine’s foreign policy. They have made many demands in that direction for peace in Ukraine.
Pro-Russian:
Russia’s demands are rather limited and are shared by a large segment of the Ukrainian population. It was the EU that tried to force Ukraine to a foreign policy that it didn’t want when it forced it to choose between the EU and Russia – instead of allowing it to maintain its traditional role as bridge between the two.
About the Maidan revolution
Pro-Western:
The Maidan revolution came from the desire of the Ukrainian people for more freedom and democracy.
Pro-Russian:
The Maidan revolution was an US sponsored coup. It was a classical color revolution. See the leaked conversation between Victoria Nuland and US ambassador Pyatt as evidence.
Pro-Western: Opinion polls show that support for Yanukovich was very low at the time of the revolution.
Pro-Russian:
Opinion polls show that only about 50% supported the “coup”. Most of the rest didn’t like Yanukovich but they believed that the constitution should have been respected and that Yanukovich should have been allowed to serve the rest of his term.
Pro-Western:
The new government will finally liberate Ukraine from the oligarchs and reform its economy.
Pro-Russian:
Oligarchs control the new government. Since the revolution there have been almost no reforms. Very likely Yanukovich would have introduced more reforms. Not because he liked it, but because he would have been forced by the IMF. Since the revolution the Western countries have played sugar daddy for Ukraine, taking away the need to reform.
Pro-Western:
Ukraine is now democratic and free.
Pro-Russian: Since the massacre of protesters in Odessa on 2 May and the farcical investigation of that disaster adversaries of the Maidan have become very careful about protesting. The coming lustration with very general criteria further adds to their fear.
Pro-Western: Russia is violating Ukraine’s independence by supporting the uprising in the East.
Pro-Russian: The US violated Ukraine’s independence by installing a puppet regime in Kiev.
Elections
Pro-Western: Poroshenko was democratically chosen.
Pro-Russian:
There was no level playing field: a pro-Russian candidate was beaten up by protesters. Also Poroshenko betrayed his voters. Before he was chosen he promised that he would immediately start peace talks. After the election he increased the hostilities, claiming that true peace could only come through a total victory.
Pro-Western: The parliamentary elections showed that support for right extremist groups is low. Neither Right Sektor nor Svoboda passed the 5% threshold.
Pro-Russian:
The power of right extremists in Ukraine is not rooted in their popularity but in the threat coming from their militias and in their occupation of key positions in the army and police. Since the revolution the mainstream parties have copied much of their agenda.
The violence in the East
Pro-Western: The Russians and the rebels started the violence.
Pro-Russian: The violence started with Right Sektor and other Maidan militia harassing local administrators who didn’t support the Maidan and disturbing anti-Maidan protests.
Pro-Western: Without support from Russia the uprising would never have come from the ground. The rebels are armed from Russia. And without the influx of Russian soldiers in September the government could have ended the uprising.
Pro-Russian:
Putin has said many times that he considers a defeat of the rebellion not acceptable. He wants a negotiated solution.
MH17
Pro-Western: The rebels shot the plane. There are lots of indications that the plane was shot by a BUK missile and that the rebels had such a missile at the time of the disaster.
Ukrainian government: Russian troops shot the plane. Only they had the knowledge and technology.
Pro-Russian: The plane was shot by an Ukrainian BUK or by an Ukrainian war plane. The Ukrainian government keeps refusing to disclose information such as the conversation with the cockpit and the radar images.
The Minsk Peace Process
Pro-Russian:
Autonomy for the Donbass was at the core of the Minsk Protocol. But Ukraine refuses to give it.
Pro-Western: Autonomy for the Donbass would create yet another Russian “protected” enclave like South Ossetia, Abkhazia and Transdniester.
Pro-Russian: South Ossetia, Abkhazia and Transdniester have remained problems because the US has encouraged the regimes in Georgia and Moldova to be uncompromising. It is not only Russia’s fault. Also, those are ethnic conflicts in a sense that Donbass isn’t.
Autonomy is a standard solution shortly after conflicts when there isn’t trust between the parties. When trust comes back it can be gradually reduced. By refusing autonomy the West implicitly states that the conflict can only be solved by surrender of the rebels.
Pro-Western: The goal of the present rebel offensive is to increase the economic viability of their enclave. It is against the spirit of Minsk. They want to conquer Shchastya for its power plant, Andiivka for its coke factory and Mariupol for its steel mills. They want Donetsk airport because it blocks their northern expansion. They want Mariupol because it would open the road to a land
bridge towards Crimea. And they want Debaltsevo because that would make it easier to import weapons by rail from Russia and so enable an offensive elsewhere.
Pro-Russian: The goal of the present rebel offensive is to make the Donbass less
vulnerable for shelling by the government army and for sudden attacks. The reason why the government has so many troops in Debaltsevo is because they planned another attack from there.
Pro-Western:
Russia wants to control Ukraine’s foreign policy. They have made many demands in that direction for peace in Ukraine.
Pro-Russian:
Russia’s demands are rather limited and are shared by a large segment of the Ukrainian population. It was the EU that tried to force Ukraine to a foreign policy that it didn’t want when it forced it to choose between the EU and Russia – instead of allowing it to maintain its traditional role as bridge between the two.
Saturday, January 10, 2015
Religion and respect
In all the "I am Charlie" upheaval about the attacks in Paris one can also sometimes hear a countervoice. That is a voice that says that "they had it coming" by insulting 1.6 billion Muslims in the core of their existence: you need only one madman who doesn't suffer in silence but takes action.
These approaches come from different cultural backgrounds. Those countervoices come from societies where religions live in mutual respect. They have the assumption that society is static and that people will die in the religion in which they were born. In such an environment religion is something like the color of your skin: it is a part of your identity and as such it should be respected. Atheists who want to denounce their former religion will find that their freedom to do so is severely restricted.
However, religion is not just a passive identity. It can be very active, both trying to recruit converts and to impose its vision on society. In that form religion looks a lot like ideologies and for ideologies we don't have this kind of respect. We don't mind people accusing communism of enslaving people or neoliberalism of stealing from the poor to give to the rich. We may not agree but we believe it is essential free speech. In this context we know the borders between free speech and respect. We may not agree with our communist neighbor or colleague but we will not use our arguments in a way that humiliates them. We still respect them as a human.
Similarly we usually know the limits of joking about religion. There are much more jokes about the "foot between the door" of the proselytizing Jehovah Witnesses than about the Virginal Birth because the first is an active "ideological" point while the latter is a basic part of the belief without consequences for non-believers.
Jihadi's are by excellence Muslims with an activist "ideological" agenda. Often they actively seek points of difference so that they can achieve small victories. See for example "Islamic banking" that was invented as an ideological statement yet has no long long history within Islam. In this context Charlie Hebdo's criticism of Islamist extremism is fully justified.
These approaches come from different cultural backgrounds. Those countervoices come from societies where religions live in mutual respect. They have the assumption that society is static and that people will die in the religion in which they were born. In such an environment religion is something like the color of your skin: it is a part of your identity and as such it should be respected. Atheists who want to denounce their former religion will find that their freedom to do so is severely restricted.
However, religion is not just a passive identity. It can be very active, both trying to recruit converts and to impose its vision on society. In that form religion looks a lot like ideologies and for ideologies we don't have this kind of respect. We don't mind people accusing communism of enslaving people or neoliberalism of stealing from the poor to give to the rich. We may not agree but we believe it is essential free speech. In this context we know the borders between free speech and respect. We may not agree with our communist neighbor or colleague but we will not use our arguments in a way that humiliates them. We still respect them as a human.
Similarly we usually know the limits of joking about religion. There are much more jokes about the "foot between the door" of the proselytizing Jehovah Witnesses than about the Virginal Birth because the first is an active "ideological" point while the latter is a basic part of the belief without consequences for non-believers.
Jihadi's are by excellence Muslims with an activist "ideological" agenda. Often they actively seek points of difference so that they can achieve small victories. See for example "Islamic banking" that was invented as an ideological statement yet has no long long history within Islam. In this context Charlie Hebdo's criticism of Islamist extremism is fully justified.
Tuesday, December 30, 2014
Using psychology against ISIS
In its article "In Battle to Defang ISIS, U.S. Targets Its Psychology" the NY Times discussed a "brain trust" set up by Maj. Gen. Michael K. Nagata, commander of American Special Operations forces in the Middle East in order to better understand ISIS. His assumption is that in order to defeat ISIS he will first need to understand its attraction and strength. According to the article they are humble: "We have not defeated the idea. We do not even understand the idea." Well, they never will. Their mistake is too fundamental. This is not about just an idea: this is about a winning idea.
50 years ago Arab socialism was in fashion and many in the Middle East believed that Islam was holding the region back. The spirit of Atatürk, who modernized Turkey while sidelining Islam, was still very much alive. So there is nothing in the Arab culture or the Muslim religion that makes the present obsession with radicalism inevitable. That radical Islam became as strong as it is is the result of deliberate decisions by both local and Western politicians:
- From the 1950s on Saudi Arabia and the Gulf States have played a major role in promoting radical Islamist movements and uprisings. That way they want to protect themselves both from the appeal of Arab socialism and the appeal of Western liberalism. It helps them to keep influence in the region and it keeps the restless at home busy with foreign adventures.
- Saudi Arabia and the other Gulf States have not stopped promoting radical Islam. They have only switched from promoting the Brotherhood to promoting Salafism. For the average Jihadi in the West this won't make much of a difference: their Islamic organizations always looked more like individualistic Salafism than like the very organized Brotherhood.
- Afghanistan was another contributing factor. Thanks to US machinations Islamists won there in the 1970s from one of the main superpowers.
- Oil wealth also counts: for the many Arab migrant workers in the Gulf States it is seductive to believe that conservative Islam and wealth are related.
- More recently the US further helped the Islamists by overthrowing one secular leader after another: Saddam, Gaddafi, Ben Ali and Mubarak. Assad is still under attack. It is really amazing to see how easily the US could be manipulated by the Saudi's to support their agenda.
ISIS and radical Islam have now the aura of being winners. That counts more than any specific ideology. And given the many sources of this winner aura and the weakness of the alternative ideologies this isn't likely to change soon.
See also my post from a few years ago Comparing communists and the Muslim Brotherhood. It discusses similarities between how radical Islam is organized now and how communism was organized in its heydays outside the communist countries.
50 years ago Arab socialism was in fashion and many in the Middle East believed that Islam was holding the region back. The spirit of Atatürk, who modernized Turkey while sidelining Islam, was still very much alive. So there is nothing in the Arab culture or the Muslim religion that makes the present obsession with radicalism inevitable. That radical Islam became as strong as it is is the result of deliberate decisions by both local and Western politicians:
- From the 1950s on Saudi Arabia and the Gulf States have played a major role in promoting radical Islamist movements and uprisings. That way they want to protect themselves both from the appeal of Arab socialism and the appeal of Western liberalism. It helps them to keep influence in the region and it keeps the restless at home busy with foreign adventures.
- Saudi Arabia and the other Gulf States have not stopped promoting radical Islam. They have only switched from promoting the Brotherhood to promoting Salafism. For the average Jihadi in the West this won't make much of a difference: their Islamic organizations always looked more like individualistic Salafism than like the very organized Brotherhood.
- Afghanistan was another contributing factor. Thanks to US machinations Islamists won there in the 1970s from one of the main superpowers.
- Oil wealth also counts: for the many Arab migrant workers in the Gulf States it is seductive to believe that conservative Islam and wealth are related.
- More recently the US further helped the Islamists by overthrowing one secular leader after another: Saddam, Gaddafi, Ben Ali and Mubarak. Assad is still under attack. It is really amazing to see how easily the US could be manipulated by the Saudi's to support their agenda.
ISIS and radical Islam have now the aura of being winners. That counts more than any specific ideology. And given the many sources of this winner aura and the weakness of the alternative ideologies this isn't likely to change soon.
See also my post from a few years ago Comparing communists and the Muslim Brotherhood. It discusses similarities between how radical Islam is organized now and how communism was organized in its heydays outside the communist countries.
Saturday, December 27, 2014
How Obama is repeating one of Bush's worst mistakes
In May 2003 - a little over a month after the fall of Baghdad - the newly arrived Paul Bremer released two radical orders: he barred members of the Baath Party from all but the lowliest government posts and he disbanded the Iraqi army.
Those orders are nowadays generally seen as the spark that caused the Sunni insurrection in Iraq. Yet at the time the criticism was limited and even now Bremer and some others defend the orders.
What strikes in this defense is the use of generalizations as in "to the vast majority of Iraqis [the army] was a symbol of the old Baathist-led Sunni ascendancy" and [the army] was "mistrusted by the very Iraqi people it is supposed to protect". In the logic of Bush, Rumsfeld and Bremer there was only one "Iraqi people" and they were happy that Saddam was gone. Somehow they didn't get it that most Sunni and at least some Shiites might not be happy that Saddam was gone. Neither did they get it that many Shiites - seeing the anarchy - might have serious doubts about the new order.
That brings me to Obama. His methods may have been a bit different, but Obama has beaten Bush with the number of regime changes he has achieved. One of those was in Ukraine. Ukraine is still full of US advisors who are very influential. There too there will now be a very comprehensive "lustration". And there too the police and army are cleansed of "pro-Russians".
Other former communist countries had lustrations too. However, these were meant to get rid of a few embarrassing left-overs of communist times. Unlike those in Iraq and Ukraine they were not meant to shift the power balance and to rob a large segment of the population of influence on the future of the country.
Those orders are nowadays generally seen as the spark that caused the Sunni insurrection in Iraq. Yet at the time the criticism was limited and even now Bremer and some others defend the orders.
What strikes in this defense is the use of generalizations as in "to the vast majority of Iraqis [the army] was a symbol of the old Baathist-led Sunni ascendancy" and [the army] was "mistrusted by the very Iraqi people it is supposed to protect". In the logic of Bush, Rumsfeld and Bremer there was only one "Iraqi people" and they were happy that Saddam was gone. Somehow they didn't get it that most Sunni and at least some Shiites might not be happy that Saddam was gone. Neither did they get it that many Shiites - seeing the anarchy - might have serious doubts about the new order.
That brings me to Obama. His methods may have been a bit different, but Obama has beaten Bush with the number of regime changes he has achieved. One of those was in Ukraine. Ukraine is still full of US advisors who are very influential. There too there will now be a very comprehensive "lustration". And there too the police and army are cleansed of "pro-Russians".
Other former communist countries had lustrations too. However, these were meant to get rid of a few embarrassing left-overs of communist times. Unlike those in Iraq and Ukraine they were not meant to shift the power balance and to rob a large segment of the population of influence on the future of the country.
Thursday, November 06, 2014
Luxembourg Leaks
A consortium of journalists has published a list of 550 Luxemburgian tax laws: these 'Luxleaks' are now public on the site www.icij.org and told stories about how these are used by multinationals to evade taxes. See also this article in Dutch.
The destruction of banking
The site Follow The Money (FTM) has an article (in Dutch: "EEN BLIK ACHTER DE GORDIJNEN BIJ RABO’S BIJZONDER BEHEER") about the department for problematic customers of Rabo Bank, based on a number of interviews with former employees and customers of the bank.
In the past this department operated as you would expect such a department to operate: trying to get as much money from the customer as possible. Now things have changed and an important part in that has been played by the activism over the local oversight organisations.
Several former employees confirmed that they are judged on filing their reports on time and having checked all the points in the file and not on how much money they have saved for the bank. Rabobank is very afraid that its more than hundred semi-independent local branched don't have their files on order, among others because they got a fine a few years ago from the AFM (Authority for the Financial Markets) because there were problems in the mortgage files of some local branches. Oversight of the banks has also become much stricter since it was transferred to the European Central Bank. ‘Banks in Europa are under great pressure to make clear how many bad loans they have and whether they have enough provisions to cover them. That causes labor intensive administration that doesn't benefit the customer’, according to Sonja.
Nowadays the accent in the department is on "closing the files" and reporting. One employee describes spending five days to write a report on a client who went bankrupt a week later. Adapting a loan - reducing it or delaying the payment - has become a very burdensome bureaucratic process that needs several approvals.
The big question of course is to what an extent similar processes are happening at other banks. I am not optimistic.
In the past this department operated as you would expect such a department to operate: trying to get as much money from the customer as possible. Now things have changed and an important part in that has been played by the activism over the local oversight organisations.
Several former employees confirmed that they are judged on filing their reports on time and having checked all the points in the file and not on how much money they have saved for the bank. Rabobank is very afraid that its more than hundred semi-independent local branched don't have their files on order, among others because they got a fine a few years ago from the AFM (Authority for the Financial Markets) because there were problems in the mortgage files of some local branches. Oversight of the banks has also become much stricter since it was transferred to the European Central Bank. ‘Banks in Europa are under great pressure to make clear how many bad loans they have and whether they have enough provisions to cover them. That causes labor intensive administration that doesn't benefit the customer’, according to Sonja.
Nowadays the accent in the department is on "closing the files" and reporting. One employee describes spending five days to write a report on a client who went bankrupt a week later. Adapting a loan - reducing it or delaying the payment - has become a very burdensome bureaucratic process that needs several approvals.
The big question of course is to what an extent similar processes are happening at other banks. I am not optimistic.
Thursday, October 09, 2014
What game is the US playing in Iraq and Syria?
What strikes me about the role of the US air force in Iraq and Syria is that its role is so restricted. It only drops very expensive precision bombs. It never carpet bombs areas, it never strifes hostile forces from a plane with machine guns and it never drops supplies on allied forces that are surrounded. Coordination with allied forces seems to be minimal. The first days when the US air force operated in synch with the Kurds were an exception. Nowadays it seems to fulfil its own program of targets that has hardly any relationship with the needs of the allied troops on the ground.
Kobane's chances would much improve if the US supplied the Kurdish fighters there with anti-armor arms.
The Yazidi's are still fighting against the IS and complain that they hardly get any support from the US air force.
Soldiers from the fallen Iraqi base of Camp Saqlawiyah complained of lack of food and water - things that easily could have been supplied from the air.
The allies
Formally The Gulf States and Turkey are allies in our fight against ISIS. I don't believe it for a moment. They just have concluded that - as the US will attack anyway - they better be involved so that they can minimize the "harm" (as they see it) that the US is doing. Erdogan has gone as far as saying that he considers the PYD (the ruling Kurdish party in Kobane) equally harmful as ISIS.
There are lots of theories about what Turkey and the Arabs want to achieve. They keep pushing for more active US involvement against Assad. They might well believe that a massacre in Kobane would be beneficial to draw the US closer into the Syrian conflict.
Turkey wants now a buffer zone inside Syria that would give the rebels a home base. Conveniently it would also allow Turkey to crush the zones that are now controlled by the PYD. Predictably the Kurds oppose the idea.
One can only hope that one day Obama will realize that his whole Arab Spring project was madness disguised as policy. And that he finally will bring up the courage to say that regime change is not inside his job description. Unfortunately until now he is behaving like a servant to the belligerent anti-Assad rhetoric from the Gulf States and Turkey.
Many have noticed that Obama only became interested in attacking ISIS after it had killed some American journalists. This suggests that Obama is more influenced by opinion polls than by a clear vision in such an important issue - a devastating conclusion that suggests incompetence.
Kobane's chances would much improve if the US supplied the Kurdish fighters there with anti-armor arms.
The Yazidi's are still fighting against the IS and complain that they hardly get any support from the US air force.
Soldiers from the fallen Iraqi base of Camp Saqlawiyah complained of lack of food and water - things that easily could have been supplied from the air.
The allies
Formally The Gulf States and Turkey are allies in our fight against ISIS. I don't believe it for a moment. They just have concluded that - as the US will attack anyway - they better be involved so that they can minimize the "harm" (as they see it) that the US is doing. Erdogan has gone as far as saying that he considers the PYD (the ruling Kurdish party in Kobane) equally harmful as ISIS.
There are lots of theories about what Turkey and the Arabs want to achieve. They keep pushing for more active US involvement against Assad. They might well believe that a massacre in Kobane would be beneficial to draw the US closer into the Syrian conflict.
Turkey wants now a buffer zone inside Syria that would give the rebels a home base. Conveniently it would also allow Turkey to crush the zones that are now controlled by the PYD. Predictably the Kurds oppose the idea.
One can only hope that one day Obama will realize that his whole Arab Spring project was madness disguised as policy. And that he finally will bring up the courage to say that regime change is not inside his job description. Unfortunately until now he is behaving like a servant to the belligerent anti-Assad rhetoric from the Gulf States and Turkey.
Many have noticed that Obama only became interested in attacking ISIS after it had killed some American journalists. This suggests that Obama is more influenced by opinion polls than by a clear vision in such an important issue - a devastating conclusion that suggests incompetence.
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