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Volume 98, Number 6
TRUMP’S MIDDLE EAST Disaster in the Desert 10 Why Trump’s Middle East Plan Can’t Work Martin Indyk
The Dream Palace of the Americans 21 Why Ceding Land Will Not Bring Peace Michael S. Doran
There Will Be a One-State Solution 30 But What Kind o State Will It Be? Yousef Munayyer
The Unwanted Wars 38 Why the Middle East Is More Combustible Than Ever Robert Malley
The Middle East’s Lost Decades 48 Development, Dissent, and the Future o the Arab World Maha Yahya
America’s Great Satan 56 The 40-Year Obsession With Iran COVER: LINCOLN Daniel Benjamin and Steven Simon
The Tunisia Model 67
AGNEW Lessons From a New Arab Democracy Sarah Yerkes
November/December 2019
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ESSAYS War Is Not Over 74 What the Optimists Get Wrong About Conict Tanisha M. Fazal and Paul Poast
The Nonintervention Delusion 84 What War Is Good For Richard Fontaine
The Unwinnable Trade War 99 Everyone Loses in the U.S.-Chinese Clash—but Especially Americans Weijian Shan
The Progressive Case Against Protectionism 109 How Trade and Immigration Help American Workers Kimberly Clausing
Nowhere to Go 122 How Governments in the Americas Are Bungling the Migration Crisis Alexander Betts
Let Russia Be Russia 134 The Case for a More Pragmatic Approach to Moscow Thomas Graham
Beyond Great Forces 148 How Individuals Still Shape History Daniel Byman and Kenneth M. Pollack
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Pratap Bhanu Mehta Alexander Stille on Kristine Lee on on the gutting of Italy’s precarious Chinese leadership at India’s democracy. triumph over populism. the United Nations.
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REVIEWS & RESPONSES Obama’s Idealists 162 American Power in Theory and Practice Peter Beinart
How a Caliphate Ends 170 On the Frontline o the Fight Against ISIS Anne Barnard
What Is White America? 177 The Identity Politics o the Majority Nell Irvin Painter
The Virtue of Monopoly 184 Why the Stock Market Stopped Working Felix Salmon
The New Masters of the Universe 191 Big Tech and the Business o Surveillance Paul Starr
Recent Books 198
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November/December 2019
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November/December 2019 · Volume 98, Number 6 Published by the Council on Foreign Relations
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CONTRIBUTORS
Writing in these pages in 2002, MICHAEL DORAN, then a professor at Princeton, was among the rst to argue that the primary motive behind the 9/11 attacks was to fuel conict within the Muslim world. Doran went on to serve in the George W. Bush administration, working in the White House, the State Department, and the Pentagon. In “The Dream Palace o the Americans” (page 21), Doran, now a senior fellow at the Hudson Institute, argues that only the Trump administration’s return to blunt power politics will yield any progress in the Israeli-Palestinian quagmire.
MAHA YAHYA holds the rare distinction o having completed two doctoral dissertations, both on the connections among politics, memory, and urban change. From 2012 to 2018, Yahya led UN eorts to promote development and democ- ratization in 17 Arab countries. She also advised the World Bank and the UN Development Program on social and urban policy across the region. In “The Middle East’s Lost Decades” (page 48), Yahya, now director o the Carnegie Middle East Center, discusses why so many Arab states have stalled politically and economically.
The son o Chinese civil servants, WEIJIAN SHAN grew up at the height o the Cultural Revolution and as a teenager spent six years as a forced laborer in the Gobi Desert. After obtaining several degrees in the United States, he taught at the Wharton School. Shan quickly rose to become one o the country’s most successful nanciers, serving as managing director o J.P. Morgan. Today, Shan is chair and CEO o the Hong Kong–based private equity rm PAG. In “The Unwinnable Trade War” (page 99), he argues that U.S. taris against China will miss their intended target— and inict the most damage on the United States itself.
PETER BEINART was editor o The New Republic from 1999 to 2006 and has written three books on American foreign policy, including The Icarus Syndrome: A History of American Hubris. Today, he is a professor o journalism at CUNY’s Craig Newmark Graduate School o Journalism and a professor o political science at the CUNY Graduate Center. He also is a contributing editor at The Atlantic. In “Obama’s Idealists” (page 162), Beinart reviews the memoirs o three foreign policy hands in the Obama administration: Susan Rice, Samantha Power, and Ben Rhodes.
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TRUMP’S MIDDLE EAST
he Trump administration’s contracted out to Israel and Saudi Arabia. Middle East policies jumped into The new course is a asco, he argues, Tthe headlines this past summer, and has led directly to the current crisis. as the region moved to the brink o war. Not so, responds Michael Doran. It Since the situation is confused and was President Jimmy Carter who aban- confusing, we’ve compiled a guide for doned Kissinger’s policy, inserting a the perplexed. personal obsession with the Palestinian The Middle East has a distinct history, question into the American position. culture, and geopolitical logic, with local The successes o the peace process, such powers locked in an eternally shifting as Israel’s treaties with Egypt and great game. Too weak to avoid temporary Jordan, were sensible material bargains, domination by outsiders, they are never- not quests for justice. Similar deals with theless strong enough to resist full Syria and the Palestinians are highly absorption. As a result, grand schemes for unlikely. Trump’s real crime is acknowl- regional order inevitably go up in smoke, edging this, shattering long-held illusions. the exasperated foreigners eventually Israeli power does make a two-state leave, and the game continues. solution impossible, agrees Youse In the mid-twentieth century, the Munayyer—which is a good thing, United States took over from the United because no Palestinian Bantustan Kingdom as the outside power o record. achieved through the existing peace By the 1970s, it had to deal with the process could ful ll Palestinian national residue o the Six-Day War, in which aspirations. Instead, both peoples Israel captured territory from Egypt, should live in a single constitutional Jordan, and Syria. U.S. Secretary o State democracy that would oer equal rights Henry Kissinger used American diplo- to Jews and Palestinians alike. macy to facilitate the transfer o land for Beyond the Arab-Israeli issue, things peace, setting in motion decades o what get even more challenging. Robert is now known as “the Middle East peace Malley and Maha Yahya sketch the process.” But by 2016, that process had region’s unique strategic dynamics and ground to a halt. Most incoming admin- developmental challenges, respectively; istrations would have tried to get it Daniel Benjamin and Steven Simon going again. Instead, President Donald look at its most persistent headache, Trump pulled the plug. Iran; and Sarah Yerkes reports on its Martin Indyk explains how the sole glimmer o hope, Tunisia. administration abandoned a hal century These articles oer a clear window o U.S. policy for a dream o hegemony onto the Middle East’s stark new land- on the cheap—continued U.S. with- scape. Read them and weep. drawal, with the containment o Iran —Gideon Rose, Editor
03_Comment_div_Blues.indd 8 9/23/19 3:12 PM UPLOADED BY "What's News" vk.com/wsnws TELEGRAM: t.me/whatsnws The Trump administration abandoned a half TRUMP’S MIDDLE EAST century of U.S. Middle East policy for a dream of hegemony on the cheap.
Disaster in the Desert The Middle East’s Lost Decades Martin Indyk 10 Maha Yahya 48
The Dream Palace o the Americans America’s Great Satan Michael S. Doran 21 Daniel Benjamin and Steven Simon 56
LINCOLN There Will Be a One-State Solution The Tunisia Model Yousef Munayyer 30 Sarah Yerkes 67 AGNEW The Unwanted Wars Robert Malley 38
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The indignation was calculated. Disaster in the Guided by his boss Jared Kushner, the president’s son-in-law and senior adviser Desert on the Middle East, Greenblatt was trying to change the conversation, to “start a new, realistic discussion” o¡ the sub- Why Trump’s Middle East ject. U resolutions, international law, Plan Can’t Work global consensus—all that was irrelevant. From now on, Washington would no Martin Indyk longer advocate a two-state solution to the con¥ict, with independent Jewish and
TRUMP’S MIDDLE EAST n July 2019, Jason Greenblatt, then Palestinian states living alongside each U.S. President Donald Trump’s envoy other in peace and security. Ifor Israeli-Palestinian negotiations, Greenblatt’s presentation was part o¡ attended a routine quarterly ® Security a broader campaign by the Trump Council meeting about the Middle East. administration to break with the past Providing an update on the Trump and create a new Middle Eastern order. administration’s thinking about the peace To please a president who likes simple, process, he pointedly told the surprised cost-free answers, the administration’s audience that the United States no longer strategists appear to have come up with a respected the “¯ction” o¡ an international clever plan. The United States can consensus on the Israeli-Palestinian issue. continue to withdraw from the region Greenblatt went out o° his way to but face no adverse consequences for attack not some extreme or obscure doing so, because Israel and Saudi Arabia measure but ® Security Council Resolu- will pick up the slack. Washington will tion 242, the foundation o° hal¡ a century subcontract the job o¡ containing Iran, o¡ Arab-Israeli negotiations and o¡ every the principal source o¡ regional instabil- agreement Israel has achieved within ity, to Israel and Saudi Arabia in the them, including the peace treaties with Levant and the Persian Gulf, respec- Egypt and Jordan. He railed against its tively. And the two countries’ common ambiguous wording, which has shielded interest in countering Iran will improve Israel for decades against Arab demands their bilateral relationship, on which for a full withdrawal from occupied Israel can build a tacit alliance with the territory, as “tired rhetoric designed to Sunni Arab world. The proxies get broad prevent progress and bypass direct leeway to execute Washington’s mandate negotiations” and claimed that it had hurt at will, and their patron gets a new, rather than helped the chances for real Trumpian order on the cheap. Unfortu- peace in the region. nately, this vision is a fantasy. In the mid-1970s, even as the United MARTIN INDYK is a Distinguished Fellow at the Council on Foreign Relations and the author States retrenched after its defeat in of the forthcoming book Henry Kissinger and Vietnam, U.S. Secretary o¡ State Henry the Art of the Middle East Deal. He has served as Kissinger successfully laid the founda- U.S. Ambassador to Israel, Assistant U.S. Secretary of State for Near Eastern Aairs, and tions for a new, U.S.-led Middle Eastern Special Envoy for Israeli-Palestinian Negotiations. order. His main tool was active diplo-
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Disaster in the Desert
Let’s make a deal: Melania Trump, Donald Trump, and King Salman in Riyadh, May 2017 macy to reconcile Israel and its Arab diplomatic landscape in the Middle neighbors. In many respects, his e orts East. Any recent administration would and those that followed were strikingly have responded to this situation by successful, producing peace treaties going back to basics and painstakingly between Israel and Egypt and between trying to reconstruct the order Kis- Israel and Jordan, as well as an interim singer built, since it has, on balance, agreement with the Palestinians. served U.S. interests well. Instead, the Progress stalled during the twenty-rst Trump administration decided to blow
ALAMY / UPI century, however, as the second intifada up what was left. dashed hopes for Israeli-Palestinian This is not reckless mayhem or mere reconciliation, the Iraq war empowered a domestic politics, goes the ocial line, revolutionary Iran, and the Arab Spring but creative destruction—demolition PHOTO STOCK destabilized the region and triggered the necessary to clear the ground for a grand rise o the Islamic State, or . new diplomatic structure opening soon. Whoever won the presidency in 2016, The brochures look great; they always do. therefore, would have faced a bleak But it is just another illusion.
November/December 2019 11
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Martin Indyk
The Trump administration likes to see missile program, and it did not address itsel as clear-eyed and tough-minded, a Iran’s aggressive eorts at regional confronter o the hard truths others destabilization. Still, the agreement took refuse to acknowledge. In fact, it under- the nuclear le o the table and set a stands so little about how the Middle East pattern for how to resolve contentious actually works that its bungling eorts disputes. So the obvious next step for have been a failure across the board. any incoming administration would have As so often in the past, the cynical locals been to build on the and tackle are manipulating a clueless outsider, the other issues on the docket. Instead, in advancing their personal agendas at the May 2018, overruling then Secretary o naive Americans’ expense. State Rex Tillerson and Secretary o The Trump administration’s Middle Defense James Mattis and blatantly lying East policies cannot possibly create a new, about Iran’s compliance, Trump shred- more stable regional order. But they will ded the agreement. certainly do a good job o continuing the This was partly due to Trump’s destruction o the old one, and risking all personal obsession with Barack Obama. that it had gained. And this will t neatly Anything his predecessor had done into Trump’s overall campaign to do had to be undone, and the Iran deal was away with the liberal international order Obama’s signature accomplishment. But in favor o the law o the jungle. there was more to it than pique. In a speech soon after the U.S. withdrawal O JERUSALEM from the deal, Trump’s new secretary o Each aspect o the Trump administration’s state, Mike Pompeo, unveiled the supposed new strategic triangle is miscon- administration’s “maximum pressure” ceived, starting with Iran, a hostile would- campaign o reimposed sanctions to cut be regional hegemon with a well-ad- o Iran’s oil exports, an eort that was vanced nuclear program that Washington designed to prevent the country from has been trying to contain for decades. In having “carte blanche to dominate the 2015, U.S. and European diplomats made Middle East.” Pompeo issued a list o a major breakthrough by negotiating the demands that together amounted to Joint Comprehensive Plan o Action Iranian capitulation: no uranium enrich- ( ), a classic multilateral arms ment, ever; no interference with the control agreement that nally brought International Atomic Energy Agency’s Iran’s nuclear program under extensive inspections, anywhere; no development international supervision. By the time o nuclear-capable missiles; no support Trump entered o©ce, the agreement was for Hamas, Hezbollah, Palestinian functioning well in practice, and its Islamic Jihad, Iraqi Shiite militias, the inspections provided a high degree o Taliban, or Yemen’s Houthis; no Iranian- condence that Iran was not actively commanded forces in any part o Syria; pursuing a nuclear weapons program. and no threatening behavior toward The deal was hardly perfect. Its Israel, Saudi Arabia, or the United Arab terms enabled Iran to resume parts o its Emirates. In case there was any doubt, nuclear program after ten years, it did Pompeo was explicit: there would be no not deal adequately with Iran’s ballistic renegotiation o the .
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Disaster in the Desert
These moves were not coordinated publicly with its neighbors. Arab states with U.S. allies and partners. The are often willing to make common cause appeals o the other signatories to the with Israel under the table; Saudi È¢¬—China, Russia, the United Arabia has been doing so since the Kingdom, France, Germany, and the 1960s. But an open association with the ¤—were ignored, and they were even Jewish state would allow Iran to pum- threatened with U.S. sanctions i they mel them for their apostasy and gener- dared to buy Iranian oil, in contradic- ate domestic dissent. tion to the agreement they had signed. In February o this year, for exam- Meanwhile, the president was deter- ple, Trump and Israeli Prime Minister mined to withdraw U.S. forces from the Benjamin Netanyahu attempted to region even more quickly than his organize an anti-Iran conference in predecessor had. The administration Poland. Netanyahu tweeted that it was dramatically increased its demands on “an open meeting with representatives Iran, in other words, at precisely the o leading Arab countries, that are same time that it was reducing its ability sitting down together with Israel in and will to deter Tehran’s nefarious order to advance the common interest activity in the region. The gap between o combating Iran.” Yet the Arab rhetoric and reality was best expressed foreign ministers refused to appear on by Pompeo, who, one month after the same panel with him in the confer- Trump made clear that he was deter- ence’s general forum. The best the mined to remove every remaining U.S. Israeli leader could do was post an soldier from Syria, declared that the illicitly Älmed video on YouTube o the United States intended to “expel every foreign ministers o Bahrain, Saudi last Iranian boot” from the country. Arabia, and the United Arab Emirates The chasm between intentions and discussing Israel. (The video was capabilities would not be a problem, the quickly taken down.) As for the United Trump team insisted, because most o States’ European allies, they mostly the burden o containing Iran would be sent low-level representatives, whose borne by Washington’s two powerful fate there was to be publicly chastised regional partners, Israel and Saudi by U.S. Vice President Mike Pence for Arabia. There was a superÄcial logic to attempting to discourage Iran from this approach, since Israel is now the breaking out o the nuclear agreement. strongest power in the region and Saudi In Syria, meanwhile, Israel can’t Arabia is rich and inÁuential. But it achieve its objective o evicting the cannot stand up to scrutiny. Iranian presence, which includes Iranian- Israel has formidable military capa- backed militias with some 40,000 bilities and a common interest with troops, without outside help. But with Sunni Arab states in countering Iran, the United States heading for the exits but the United States cannot depend on there, Israel has had no choice but to the Jewish state to promote its interests seek Russia’s assistance, given its mili- in the Arab world. Israel’s unresolved tary presence and its inÁuence on the conÁict with the Palestinians has placed Assad regime. Repeated visits by a ceiling on its ability to cooperate Netanyahu to Moscow, however, have
November/December 2019 13
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Martin Indyk
gained only Russian President Vladimir with its explicit prohibition on the acqui- Putin’s qualiÄed acquiescence in Israeli sition o territory by force, which made airstrikes on Iranian targets. The Israeli clear that the Golan Heights was Syrian prime minister had hoped to use U.S. sovereign territory. Nevertheless, that £ pressure and promises o sanctions relie resolution, which Greenblatt was so keen to persuade Russia to press Iran to leave to disparage before the £ Security Syria, but that plan didn’t pan out either. Council, allowed Israel to retain posses- This past June, Netanyahu invited the top sion o the Golan Heights until a Änal U.S. and Russian national security advis- peace agreement was reached. That is ers to Jerusalem to discuss joint action why Israel never annexed the territory, against Tehran. There, the Russian poured even though it considers it strategically cold water on the plan, explaining publicly crucial, maintains settlements there, and that Russia and Iran were cooperating on even has established vineyards and a counterterrorism issues, that Iran’s inter- robust tourism industry in the area. ests in Syria needed to be acknowledged, (Instead o claiming sovereignty, in a con- and that Israeli airstrikes on Iranian assets troversial decision in 1981, Prime Minis- in Syria were “undesirable.” ter Menachem Begin extended Israeli law Netanyahu was so alarmed by to the Golan, for which Israel was con- Trump’s surprise announcement that he demned by the £ Security Council, with would withdraw residual U.S. troops the United States voting in favor.) from eastern Syria, where they were Israel and Syria managed to keep their helping prevent Iran from establishing deal going for generations, even uphold- a land bridge from Iraq to Lebanon, ing it as the latter descended into civil that he had to plead with the White war and anarchy. When Netanyahu asked House to delay the withdrawal. But this for Russia’s help in keeping Iranian- stopgap measure has done nothing to backed militias out o the Golan Heights remove Iran’s Syrian strongholds, and in July 2018, he explicitly invoked the hundreds o Israeli strikes on Iranian disengagement agreement, as did Putin positions have only increased the risk in his press conference with Trump at that the conÁict will spread to Iraq and their ill-fated Helsinki summit that same Lebanon and escalate to a full-scale war month. But that was all before Netanyahu between Israel and Hezbollah. sought Trump’s help in his latest reelec- Israel’s border with Syria had been tion bid. In what Trump subsequently quiet for almost four decades after referred to as a “quickie” brieÄng, he was Kissinger negotiated the Israeli-Syrian asked on Netanyahu’s behal by Kushner disengagement agreement in 1974. The and David Friedman, the U.S. ambassa- agreement included a carefully negoti- dor to Israel, to recognize Israeli sover- ated side deal between the United States eignty over the Golan Heights (without and Syria that committed the Assad even informing Pompeo, who happened regime to preventing terrorists from to be visiting Israel at the time). operating against Israel from the Trump was quick to agree. “I went, Syrian side o the Golan Heights. The ‘bing!’—it was done,” he later told the disengagement agreement was based on Republican Jewish Coalition at its £ Security Council Resolution 242, annual meeting in Las Vegas. And so in
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Why do e orts to prevent election violence succeed in some cases yet fail in others? Focusing on three case studies of countries with a history of election violence, Preventing Election Violence through Diplomacy identifi es the key dimensions of preventive diplomacy to prevent or reduce election violence. Drawing on personal experience, the literature, and expert interviews and roundtables with academics and practitioners, the book highlights conditions for the success and the failure of preventive diplomacy, o ering recommendations to the international community for maximizing the e cacy of this unique tool.
Praise for Preventing Election Violence Through Diplomacy
Bhojraj Pokharel’s extensive experience as a diplomat gives him unique insight into the e cacy of preventive diplomacy. This theoretically informed and empirically rich text shows how early, sustained, and multidimensional international action can help stop election violence. Preventing Election Violence through Diplomacy is an important contribution to the study and practice of confl ict prevention. — Geo rey Macdonald, Bangladesh Country Director at the International Republican Institute
Bhojraj Pokharel is eminently qualifi ed as an experienced practitioner and researcher to take on the critical subject of preventive diplomacy to lower election violence. His insights are valuable, and conclusions are sound. This book should be required reading for people working to make elections in countries at risk of violence safe and fair. — B . Lynn Pascoe, Former Under-Secretary-General for Political A airs at the United Nations
Making Peace Possible
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Martin Indyk
March o this year, he issued a presiden- ing role in the American-led order. tial proclamation declaring that the Egypt, Iraq, and Syria were always the Golan Heights was part o Israel. Trump key players in Arab politics. But with Iraq boasted that he had done something no battered, Syria in chaos, and a stagnant other president was willing to do. He was Egypt being whipsawed by revolution and clearly unaware that no previous Israeli counterrevolution, the way was clear for government had been willing to do it an ambitious, headstrong, and ruthless either, knowing that it would violate a core young Saudi prince to stake his country’s principle o £ Security Council Reso- claim to Arab leadership. Coming to lution 242 and not wanting to reap the power in 2015, at the age o 29, Crown whirlwind. Prince Mohammed bin Salman, known The cheap political gambit wasn’t even as MBS, Ärst consolidated his control successful. Netanyahu couldn’t secure a over the kingdom’s military and security majority in national elections two weeks apparatus and then launched an ambitious later and was forced to take part in economic development program at another campaign in the fall, in which he home and aggressive interventions abroad, came up short again. But Trump’s snap including a brutal campaign to suppress decision will have lasting implications, Iranian-backed Houthi rebels in Yemen. undermining the disengagement agree- Newly exposed to Middle Eastern ment, giving Putin justiÄcation for his diplomacy on taking oce, Trump illegal annexation o Crimea, and reinforc- jumped at the short-term beneÄts Saudi ing U.S. and Israeli diplomatic isolation. Arabia promised to deliver in both The result is a Tehran now free to security and economics (a $350 billion establish its militias’ presence on the arms deal that never materialized and the Syrian side o the border—with the promise o huge investments in the blessing o Damascus, unconstrained by United States). The young Saudi scion the antiterrorism commitment that Hafez soon developed a bromance with his al-Assad made to Kissinger all those American counterpart, Kushner, which decades ago. Sure enough, by July o this led to Trump’s Ärst trip abroad, to an year, Israel was Änding it necessary to Arab and Islamic summit in Riyadh in bomb Hezbollah positions in the Golan 2017. This gathering was supposed to Heights, left with violence as its only facilitate greater cooperation on counter- tool to prevent Iran from making mis- ing violent extremism across the region; chie there. its sole tangible result was Trump’s greenlighting o an Emirati-Saudi deci- SAUDI STYLE sion to blockade neighboring Qatar, a Saudi Arabia has proved to be an even crucial U.S. partner in the Gul because weaker reed for the United States to it hosts Al Udeid Air Base, the largest lean on. Riyadh has never before sought U.S. military facility in the Middle East. to lead the Arab world in war and peace. Instead o focusing on Iran, the Saudis Recognizing their country’s limitations had duped Trump into taking sides in a as a rich yet vulnerable state with a local ideological contest, against another fragile domestic consensus, Saudi rulers American friend to boot. The result was have preferred to play a quiet, support- to split the Gul Cooperation Council,
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Disaster in the Desert
further undermining its already limited murder o the Saudi dissident Jamal ability to counter Iran in the Gulf, while Khashoggi by Saudi o cials in the Saudi driving Qatar into Iran’s arms, since it consulate in Istanbul in 2018. Trump and had no other way o maintaining access Netanyahu did their best to shield their to the world except by utilizing Iranian Saudi partner from international con- airspace, something which the Iranians demnation, and Trump even restricted were only too happy to provide. This congressional access to intelligence about asco has bedeviled the administration the murder, sowing further divisions in ever since, with the Saudis blocking all Washington. With Riyadh so dependent attempts at patching up the rift. on Washington and MBS momentarily MBS’s war in Yemen has also created vulnerable to intrafamily rivalries, the the worst humanitarian crisis in the White House could have used the crisis to world. Saudi Arabia’s atrocities against insist that MBS take responsibility for the Yemeni civilians, carried out with murder and rein in his foreign exploits. U.S.-supplied aircraft using U.S. ord- But Trump didn’t even try, allowing the nance, have brought global outrage. The e cacy o Saudi leadership o the anti- damage to the United States’ reputation Iran coalition to be further undermined. has been so great that a bipartisan Nor has Saudi Arabia helped much on congressional consensus tried to suspend the peace process. Experienced hands arms sales to Saudi Arabia. Trump could have told Trump that the Saudis brushed aside the challenge, but only by would never get out ahead o the Pales- invoking executive powers, which further tinians. But Trump had given responsi- infuriated Congress and has jeopardized bility for the peace process to Kushner, the sustainability o one o the pillars o who was impressed by MBS’s refresh- the U.S.-Saudi relationship. ingly open attitude to Israel and disdain MBS’s determination to seek a for the Palestinians and uninterested in military solution in Yemen has met its the lessons o past failures. In 2017, MBS match in the Houthis, whose dependence promised Kushner that he could deliver on Iran has grown with their ambitions to the Palestinian leader Mahmoud Abbas rule the country. Tehran is now supplying to the negotiating table on Trump’s them with ballistic missiles and armed terms. He summoned Abbas to Riyadh drones for use against Saudi targets, and told him to accept Kushner’s ideas in including civilian airports and oil facili- exchange for $10 billion in Saudi fund- ties. (Hence initial suspicions o Houthi ing. Instead, Abbas refused and promptly involvement in a September attack that leaked the details o the exchange, causing took out almost hal o Saudi Arabia’s oil a furor in the Arab world. production capacity. Although the disrup- MBS also promised Kushner that tion was short lived, Saudi Arabia’s once Saudi Arabia would acquiesce in Trump’s stalwart reliability as the world’s largest recognition o Jerusalem as Israel’s oil exporter has been put in doubt by the capital and reassured him that any nega- unintended consequences o its Trump- tive reaction on the Arab street would encouraged adventurism.) die down in a couple o months. That The outrages continued to pile up was enough for Trump to dismiss all when MBS apparently ordered the objections and announce his decision at
November/December 2019 17
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Martin Indyk
the end o 2017 to recognize Jerusalem as them into submission by cutting o aid, Israel’s capital and to move the U.S. closing down the Palestine Liberation embassy there. Organization’s oce in Washington and MBS was right about the reaction in the U.S. consulate general in Jerusalem, the Arab street; it was hardly noticeable. and attempting to eliminate the £ Relie But he had failed to warn Kushner o the and Works Agency for Palestine Refu- other consequences. The crown prince gees in the Near East. Once again, as might not have cared about Jerusalem, anybody with experience in the region but his father certainly did. And while could have predicted, this didn’t work. MBS may have been in day-to-day Punishing the Palestinians only made control o the kingdom’s aairs, Änal say them dig in their heels and rally behind still lay with King Salman. The al Aqsa their (otherwise unpopular) leadership. mosque, in Jerusalem, is Islam’s third- Without the Saudis and the Palestin- holiest shrine; as custodian o the two ians, Kushner had little chance to secure others, King Salman could not stay Egyptian or Jordanian support for the silent. He promptly condemned Trump’s crucial part o the plan, the political and decision and summoned the region’s security arrangements. King Abdullah o Arab leaders to a meeting the following Jordan, in particular, became increasingly April to denounce it collectively. King alarmed by the prospect that he might Salman has repeatedly stated ever since have to choose between Trump and the that Saudi Arabia will not support any Palestinians i Kushner came forward settlement that does not provide for an with Trump’s ideas. King Abdullah’s independent Palestinian state with East largely Palestinian population would be Jerusalem as its capital—something furious i he accepted the plan, yet he Trump refuses to endorse. feared alienating Trump and jeopardiz- The Jerusalem decision and embassy ing his billion-dollar annual aid package move blew up Kushner’s scheme to have i he rejected it. (The Palestinian Au- Saudi Arabia play a leading role in the thority was already Änding alternatives peace process. It also drove the Pales- to Trump’s aid cuts, but those sources tinians away from the negotiating table. weren’t available to Jordan.) Neverthe- In the wake o the decision, they cut o less, when Kushner made his Änal ask all ocial contact with the Trump this past summer, the king refused—after administration, with Abbas condemning which the launch o the full plan was the forthcoming Trump peace plan as “a once again rescheduled for some “more shameful bargain” that will “go to hell.” appropriate” time. Recognizing that it When Kushner unveiled the economic had no future, Greenblatt resigned. dimensions o Trump’s peace plan at a Another Saudi-inspired initiative, the meeting in Bahrain this past June—de- proposed Middle East Strategic Alliance, signed to show the Palestinians that they also went nowhere. Riyadh assumed would beneÄt from peace—the Pales- that Trump could pull the neighboring tinians boycotted the conference. Arab states into a coalition to counter Iran. Bullying was no more eective than Dubbed the “Arab £¬¡¢,” it had Egypt, bribing. Trump thought the Palestinians Jordan, and the Gul Cooperation were so weak that he could bludgeon Council coming together under a U.S.
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Disaster in the Desert
security umbrella to enhance their coop- Up to that point, the Iranians had eration and, as a White House spokes- been exercising what they termed person put it, “serve as a bulwark against “strategic patience”—waiting for the Iranian aggression.” Israel would be a 2020 U.S. presidential election, tough- silent partner. The project’s internal con- ing things out in the meantime, and tradictions revealed themselves at the keeping the Europeans onboard by initial meeting in September 2017, and it sticking to the nuclear agreement. Now, quickly stalled. Trump eventually Iran decided to retaliate. appointed Anthony Zinni, a former First, it reduced its compliance with commander o U.S. Central Command, the È¢¬ by expanding its stockpile o as a special envoy to move things for- low-enriched uranium. Then, it resumed ward. Given the reluctance o the other higher levels o enrichment. And in Arab states to bait the Iranian bear, September, it restarted centrifuge however, Zinni was unable to make any development, shortening the breakout headway, and he resigned in January. time for nuclear weapons production. Three months later, Egypt withdrew, and Since Trump was the Ärst to walk away the initiative died. from the accord, ripping up the pains- takingly developed international legal IRAN AMOK consensus that prevented Iran’s acquisi- Just like its blundering on other fronts, tion o nuclear weapons, the United the Trump administration’s eorts on States was in no position to say or do Iran have produced few positive results. It anything to stop it. seemed for a while that the “maximum Iran’s moves are putting Trump in an pressure” campaign was reducing Iran’s increasingly tight corner. I he does not funding o its proxies abroad. Yet those persuade the Iranians to reverse course, operations have always been run on the he will come under pressure from his cheap, and with some belt-tightening, they hawkish advisers and Netanyahu to bomb have continued apace. Hezbollah is still their nuclear program, a dangerous trying to add precision-guided missiles to adventure. But the only way to persuade its arsenal in Lebanon, Iranian-backed them is to grant Iran sanctions relief, militias in Syria are staying put, and the which Trump is clearly loath to do. The Houthis in Yemen and Hamas and tension is also rising because Iran is now Palestinian Islamic Jihad in Gaza have striking at U.S. interests across the actually had their funding increased. region: six oil tankers hit by mysterious Not content with the maximum, in attacks just outside the Strait o Hormuz, April o this year, Trump dialed up the an Iranian missile attack on the Golan pressure even further by designating Heights, confrontations in Gaza pro- Iran’s Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps voked by Palestinian Islamic Jihad, and as a terrorist organization and denying Saudi oil Äelds struck by drones. waivers to China and India for the In May, Trump responded by dis- purchase o Iranian oil. With its economy patching a carrier strike group and crashing and the Europeans failing to bombers to the Gulf, but when it came provide adequate sanctions relief, Tehran to retaliating for the shooting down o a decided enough was enough. U.S. drone, he blinked. The Iranians
November/December 2019 19
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Martin Indyk
got the message: Trump likes to talk its gains or topple its regime. Maintain war, but he doesn’t like to wage it. They the residual U.S. troop presence in Iraq understood that he prefers making and Syria. Get back to the È¢¬ and deals. So they cleverly oered to start build on it to address other problematic negotiations. Sensing another made-for- Iranian behavior, using measured sanc- television summit, Trump jumped at tions relie as leverage. Resolve the the oer and invited Iranian President dispute in the Gul Cooperation Council Hassan Rouhani to meet on the margins and engage all the relevant parties to o the £ General Assembly in Septem- try to end the conÁict in Yemen. Return ber, saying o the Iranian problem, “We to the pursuit o an equitable resolution o could solve it in 24 hours.” the Israeli-Palestinian conÁict, where The about-face alarmed Trump’s prospects for a breakthrough may be low partners, especially Netanyahu, who but engagement is necessary to preserve spoke out against it. The Saudis became the hope o a two-state solution down more circumspect in responding to the the road. Treat Israel and Saudi Arabia September drone attack on their oil as crucial regional partners but not Äelds. The Emiratis wasted no time in subcontractors free to do whatever they hedging their bets, dispatching ocials want. And instead o spurning interna- to Tehran to resume long-stalled tional consensus, try to shape it to align maritime security talks. For Trump’s with U.S. interests. Middle Eastern partners, a meeting This alternative path might eventu- between the impulsive and unpredict- ally lead to a successful renovation o the able U.S. president and the cool, grand project Kissinger began hal a professional Iranian president was their century ago. But i the United States worst nightmare. continues to follow Trump’s folly instead, Almost three years into his term, it should not be surprised to Änd itsel Trump has nothing to show for his alone in the desert, chasing a mirage.∂ eorts to counter Iran or promote peace in the Middle East. Instead, his policies have fueled the conÁict between Iran and Israel, alienated the Palestinians, supported an unending war and a humanitarian crisis in Yemen, and split the Gul Cooperation Council, possibly permanently. There is another path the United States could take in the region, an approach far more conducive to the interests o Washington and all its allies and partners. It would require stepping up U.S. diplomacy and scaling back U.S. objectives to what can plausibly be accomplished with the means available. Contain Iran rather than try to roll back
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real crime is challenging people’s EAST MIDDLE TRUMP’S The Dream Palace illusions—and that is an unforgivable oense. of the Americans THE ROAD TO 242 Israel’s con¥ict with the Arabs has long Why Ceding Land Will Not functioned as a screen onto which outsid- Bring Peace ers project their own psychodramas. Actual Middle East politics, meanwhile, Michael S. Doran churns on relentlessly, following the same laws o¡ political physics as politics every- where else: the strong do what they can, he Trump administration’s and the weak suer what they must. Middle East policies have been The United States entered the regional T roundly attacked by the U.S. geopolitical game in earnest during foreign policy establishment. There are World War II, drawn in by the strategic various lines o¡ criticism, including importance o¡ the oil recently discovered ones concerning its approaches to under the Arabian Desert and elsewhere. Egypt, Iran, Saudi Arabia, and Syria, With postwar power came regional but the administration’s gravest sin is responsibility, however, and Washington generally held to be its support for eventually had to decide how to deal Israel. By moving the U.S. embassy to with the messy residue o¡ the British Jerusalem, blessing Israel’s annexation mandate for Palestine. o¡ the Golan Heights, and other ges- In 1948, U.S. President Harry Truman tures, the Trump team is said to have came under domestic political pressure to overturned hal¡ a century o¡ settled U.S. recognize a soon-to-be independent policy, abandoned the Palestinians, and Israel. The foreign policy establishment killed the two-state solution. opposed the move, arguing that U.S. These are serious charges. But on support for Zionism would alienate the close inspection, they turn out to say Arab states and drive them into the arms more about the hysteria o¡ the prosecu- o¡ the Soviet Union. Many o¡ the voices tors than the guilt o¡ the defendant. making these arguments were diplomats Some o´ President Donald Trump’s and experts with deep ties to the Arab policies are new, some are not, and it is world and little sympathy for Jews, too early to see much impact. So why however, and Truman was not persuaded all the hue and cry? Because the admin- by their analysis, so he went ahead and istration openly insists on playing recognized Israel anyway. The establish- power politics rather than trying to ment considered it a major blot on his move the world beyond them. Trump’s record—a gross mistake driven by the intrusion o¡ amateur domestic politics MICHAEL S. DORAN is a Senior Fellow at the into professional foreign policy. Hudson Institute. From 2005 to 2007, he served With the British gone from Palestine, as Senior Director for the Near East and North Africa at the National Security Council and as the Arabs attacked, and when the dust U.S. Deputy Assistant Secretary of Defense. cleared, Israel had not just been granted
November/December 2019 21
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Michael S. Doran
independence by others but won it on belligerents, placed the Egyptian mili- the battleÄeld. This demonstration o tary on high alert, moved troops into strength did not change any ocial the Sinai, cut o Israel’s maritime minds, however, and the Arabist camp access to Asia, and linked up with the continued to see the United States’ militaries o Jordan and Syria. Israel commitment to Israel as a strategic responded with a preemptive strike liability—a sentimental luxury that inter- against its enemies and gained another fered with serious policy. In 1956, victory, a lightning triumph that left it Egypt lost a second war to Israel, which in control o territories captured from was joined in the Äghting by France and all three: Egypt (the Sinai and Gaza), the United Kingdom, and the Israelis Jordan (Jerusalem and the West Bank), captured the Sinai Peninsula. Reluctant and Syria (the Golan Heights). to be identiÄed with either Zionism or U.S. President Lyndon Johnson now imperialism, the administration o U.S. faced the same dilemma as Eisenhower: President Dwight Eisenhower hastily Should he let Israel keep what it had stepped in to force its European allies won? Some ocials might have pined to back down and Israel to withdraw, for the traditional policy o appeasing the quickly and nearly unconditionally. For Arabs at Israel’s expense, but the case Eisenhower, at least, the decision was was increasingly hard to make. Israel business, not personal. He was trying to had now won three straight wars against Äght a regional and global Cold War, its supposedly stronger Arab oppo- and the oil-rich Arabs had a lot to oer. nents, the last one a blowout. The Weak little Israel, in contrast, had to defeat o powerful Soviet proxies by an take one for the team. underdog American proxy had embar- A decade later, things heated up again. rassed the Soviet Union and boosted Moscow encouraged the Egyptian the United States’ regional standing leader Gamal Abdel Nasser to start a along with Israel’s. Egypt and its Soviet crisis with Israel, as explained in a ¬ patron had been recklessly provocative, summary o intelligence from a Soviet and Israel had made them pay for it, ocial, “to create another trouble spot dearly. Stepping in once again to punish for the United States in addition to that the victor and reward the vanquished already existing in Vietnam.” Moscow was unthinkable. even passed him fake intelligence Yet i forcing Israel to disgorge the claiming that Israel was massing troops conquered territories was not an option, on its northern border in preparation neither was allowing it to annex them for an attack against Syria. Nasser outright, which appeared to risk provok- quickly learned the intelligence was false ing yet another war. So the Johnson but decided to act on it anyway, choos- administration chose a third course, ing to see Moscow’s move as an invita- turning the crisis into an opportunity by tion to heat up Israel’s southern border linking the settlement o this particular in the name o Arab solidarity. war with the broader regional conÁict. So in 1967, purporting to come to Its plan was sensible: the Arab Syria’s aid, Nasser expelled the £ combatants would get back much o the peacekeepers separating the former territory they had lost, but only in
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The Dream Palace of the Americans
From his lips to God’s ears: Trump at the Western Wall, May 2017
return for recognizing Israel within determine the extent o Israel’s with- secure boundaries and ending the violence. drawal. In the meantime, Israel would After months o talks, U.S. negotiators retain and administer the territories. convinced the Soviets to accept some- thing close, and the result became the ENTER KISSINGER famous formula enshrined in Security At this point, eager to turn its attention Council Resolution 242, a call for the back to Vietnam and the home front, “withdrawal o Israeli armed forces from the Johnson administration delegated territories occupied in the recent conict.” matters to the Swedish diplomat The wording was deliberately am- Gunnar Jarring, serving as the biguous. The Arab states later insisted special representative for negotiating a that the sentence meant that Israel must deal. Unfortunately, the talks quickly
JONATHAN immediately withdraw from “all o the” broke down over the irreconcilable territories occupied, but the Americans interpretations o Resolution 242. The had taken pains to ensure that the United States and Israel called for / REUTERS ERNST ocial text read only “from territories.” direct negotiations between the bellig- The United States had demanded erents over the terms o a settlement, language that clearly supported its policy: while the Soviet Union and its Arab bilateral negotiations between Israel and allies insisted on an Israeli commitment each o the belligerent states would to full withdrawal as a precondition for
November/December 2019 23
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Michael S. Doran
any talks—even as Moscow scrambled surely have been the one to seal the to rebuild the Egyptian military. A deal. He would have been regarded as a newly emboldened Nasser soon chal- diplomatic wizard: ending the Egyptian- lenged Israel along the Suez Canal, the Israeli conÁict while simultaneously Israelis retaliated with airstrikes, and bringing Egypt into the Western bloc. skirmishing escalated into what is now As it turned out, however, it was the referred to as the War o Attrition. Carter administration that brokered the Watching Israel more than hold its Camp David accords, and that fact own, U.S. President Richard Nixon and greatly inÁuenced the lessons that his national security adviser, Henry subsequent generations learned from Kissinger, decided that the Jewish state the triumph. had earned respect as an ally and eventu- Getting the parties to commit to a ally built Israel’s new strength into the Änal settlement was a huge diplomatic administration’s strategizing. Kissinger accomplishment that required single- saw Israeli power as a tool for changing minded presidential focus and enormous the geopolitical map, a lever that could reserves o patience and tenacity, for Áip Egypt, then the most powerful Arab all o which Carter deserves immense state, from the Soviet camp to the U.S. credit. In the process o Änishing what one. To regain its lost territory and reopen Kissinger started, however, he embed- the Suez Canal, he reasoned, Egypt had ded his own ideas about the region’s true to negotiate directly with Israel. The Sovi- problems and solutions into the U.S. ets could help Cairo make war, but only position—ideas that were less accurate the United States could help it make than Kissinger’s but would end up peace. Washington could deliver the sanctiÄed as gospel because they coin- Israelis and broker a lasting settlement— cided with the success o the earlier, but only i Egyptian President Anwar more hard-bitten strategy. al-Sadat would abandon Moscow. After yet another major war in 1973, ENTER CARTER the strategy worked. The Sinai Interim Carter and his team were contemptuous Agreement, signed by Egypt and Israel o the diplomacy that had led to the in 1975, included a withdrawal o Israeli Sinai Interim Agreement. They believed forces from land bordering the Suez it was necessary to solve the entire Arab- Canal—the recent grand reopening o Israeli conÁict all at once, in a single, which had included, at Sadat’s insistence, grand, multilateral forum. It was Kis- an American warship. The “interim” singer who had Ärst convened such a part o the deal was a pledge by both conference in Geneva back in 1973, but sides to negotiate a Änal peace deal purely in order to raise an international without resort to war. It laid the ground- umbrella over his personal diplomacy. work for the historic peace between Carter wanted to reconvene the Geneva Egypt and Israel that would eventually conference, this time for real, with the be signed at Camp David in 1978. Soviets playing the role o true partners. Had U.S. President Gerald Ford The underlying problem in the defeated his Democratic challenger, Middle East, Carter passionately Jimmy Carter, in 1976, Kissinger would believed, was the Israeli suppression o
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Michael S. Doran
Palestinian nationalism. He was certain Egyptian-Israeli track, U.S. negotiators that i Israel could be compelled to give pined for a comprehensive peace and a back the occupied territories, the Arab full Israeli withdrawal from the West states would make peace—even Syria. Bank and Gaza. Carter’s national So his administration turned Kissinger’s security adviser, Zbigniew Brzezinski, Bismarckian balancing into a driven called it a “concentric circles approach.” quest for a comprehensive peace, one in The idea, he explained in his memoirs, which the Arab states bordering Israel was to begin working for “the Egyptian- would negotiate a lasting settlement in Israeli accord, then expanding the circle return for Israel’s withdrawal to its by including the Palestinians on the West pre-1967 borders and the creation o a Bank and Gaza as well as the Jordanians, Palestinian homeland. and Änally moving to a still wider circle This policy put all the local parties by engaging the Syrians and perhaps into an awkward situation. Whatever even the Soviets in a comprehensive they loudly proclaimed, the Arab states settlement.” had little interest in the Palestinians. The Carter team built the concentric Washington’s embrace o the Palestinian circles concept into the Camp David cause gave them some leverage against accords, which contained both a bilateral Israel, but it also threatened to derail Egyptian-Israeli agreement and the progress on important bilateral con- “Framework for Peace in the Middle cerns. Sadat’s two goals in coming to East.” This second document called for the negotiating table, for example, had “the resolution o the Palestinian been to reclaim the Sinai and join the problem in all its aspects” and “full American camp. Now Carter, hung up autonomy” for the inhabitants o the on the Palestinians, was bringing the West Bank and Gaza, with the establish- Soviets into the talks as equals and ment o “a self-governing authority” wanted to add Syria and the Palestine that would then participate in Änal- Liberation Organization to boot—noth- status negotiations. Thus was born the ing that would advance Sadat’s agenda. peace process that would continue So the Egyptian leader stole a march forward for decades, all the way to Oslo and reshaped the diplomatic landscape. and beyond. Imprinted in its very ²£¬ On November 19, 1977, he became the was a utopian impulse to settle all the Ärst Arab leader to visit Israel, deliver- conÁict in the Middle East by starting ing his message o “no more war, no with the Palestinian question. more bloodshed” directly to the Knesset. The Carter administration believed Carter felt blindsided, and he was that the “Framework for Peace” was a angry that his dream o a comprehensive crucial part o the overall plan, providing peace was receding. He eventually political cover to the Egyptians for turned his attention back to the bilateral making peace with Israel. Sadat played Egyptian-Israeli negotiations. But he along with the “comprehensive settle- chafed at the eort. And although the ment” game so long as he needed the administration scrapped plans for a new Americans to pressure Israel to return Geneva conference, it never changed its the Sinai to Egypt, but once he got mindset. Even as they supported the that, he displayed little interest in the
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The Dream Palace of the Americans
Palestinian issue. And a close reading o found a uniquely promising opportunity the Carter administration’s internal to reach for it. documents shows that it was the Ameri- By this point, the Soviet Union was cans, not the Egyptians, who were on the brink o collapse, Iraq had been obsessed with the “Framework for roundly defeated in the Gul War, Iran Peace,” none more so than the president was still recovering from its eight-year himself. When Israeli Prime Minister slugfest with Iraq, and Syria and the Menachem Begin fought him on grant- Palestine Liberation Organization were ing the Palestinians autonomy and weak and broke. With all the rejectionist refused to commit to a freeze on Israeli spoilers o previous peace eorts hors settlements in the territories, the de combat, the road was clear to pursue president became livid. Because Carter a regional settlement on U.S. terms. had much grander ambitions than The eort began with the Bush admin- Kissinger, the successful completion o istration’s 1991 Madrid conference, an Egyptian-Israeli settlement left him continued with the Clinton administra- deeply frustrated—to him it was a glass tion and the Oslo accords o 1993 and hal empty rather than hal full. He 1995, and for a few years really seemed blamed Begin for the failure on the to be getting somewhere: a temporary Palestinian track and never forgave him. deal between Israel and the Palestinians, When Begin and Sadat received the an Israeli-Jordanian treaty, tantalizing Nobel Peace Prize, Carter wrote in his prospects o success on the Syrian track. diary, “I sent Begin and Sadat a con- As so often in the 1990s, a beautiful gratulatory message after they received future seemed just around the corner. the Nobel Peace Prize jointly. Sadat And then things ground to a halt. In deserved it; Begin did not.” 1995, trying to derail the process, an Israeli right-wing extremist assassinated THE RISE AND FALL OF THE PEACE Israeli Prime Minister Yitzhak Rabin. PROCESS Negotiations bogged down as neither The peace process languished during side made deep enough concessions to the 1980s, as U.S. President Ronald satisfy the other’s concerns. And then, Reagan cared more about East-West in 2000, the Palestinians turned back to issues than Arab-Israeli ones and his violence. The second intifada’s grisly administration was divided between campaign o terrorist attacks directed the Israel-as-liability and Israel-as-asset against cafés, pizza parlors, discotheques, camps, frustrating bold initiatives. A and other civilian gathering places killed year after Camp David, moreover, the over 1,000 Israelis and injured many Iranian Revolution upended regional thousands more, leaving deep scars in politics, shifting the geostrategic center Israel’s national psyche. The median o gravity (along with attention and Israeli voter became convinced that resources) eastward to the Persian ceding land to the Palestinians brought Gulf. But the George H. W. Bush conÁict rather than peace, and unsatis- administration came into oce favoring fying withdrawals from Lebanon in the Carter administration’s goal o a 2000 and Gaza in 2005 only reinforced comprehensive peace, and in 1991, it the feeling.
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Michael S. Doran
In retrospect, the ultimate failure o “Assad told me in late February 2011 that the Oslo process should not have been he would sever all anti-Israel relationships surprising. The successes o the peace with Iran, Hezbollah and Hamas and process have come not from Carteresque abstain from all behavior posing threats to dreams but from Kissingerian realpoli- the State o Israel, provided all land lost tik. Egypt made a private side deal with by Syria to Israel in the 1967 war—all o Israel in the 1970s, and Jordan did so in it—was returned.” the 1990s, but both were hardheaded, materialistic transactions: Egypt made FACING FACTS peace to get back the Sinai and a place For 70 years now, many American (and within the American system, and Jordan European) policymakers have seen it as did it to keep its place in that system their mission to stabilize the Middle East and insulate itsel from the vicissitudes by constraining Israel’s power and o the peace process. Both sought to getting the country to give back at the extricate themselves from the Palestinian negotiating table what it has taken on the problem, not solve it. battleeld. Over the decades, however, Since 1994, the main parties without Israel has grown ever stronger and more a deal have been the Palestinians and able to resist such impositions. It has the Syrians, and it is di¨cult to say become a modern industrial power whether they were ever serious about center, with a thriving economy and a making peace. They certainly convinced fearsome military backed by nuclear their U.S. interlocutors that they were, weapons—even as the Palestinians have and they parlayed that success into remained impoverished wards o the decades o continued power, status, and international community, with threats international largess. And yet somehow o terror their chie negotiating tool. the nal settlement was always six Most Arab states moved on long ago. months away—and always would be. They now treat Israel as a normal Thus did the Palestinian leader Yasir player in the eternal great game o Arafat start the 1990s exiled in Tunis yet regional power balancing. So now has end them as a king in Ramallah. And the Trump administration. And for thus did the Assad dynasty in Syria that, it has been excoriated. survive down the decades. The administration’s approach is a When the peaceful democratic disaster, critics say, because it concedes revolutions o the Arab Spring broke so much to Israel upfront that the out in late 2010, the Assad regime came Palestinians will never agree to negoti- under re just as its counterparts ate. The critics are correct about the elsewhere did. But instead o increasing unlikely prospects for a deal anytime pressure on the Syrian dictator, Wash- soon. But that makes the Trump admin- ington cut Bashar al-Assad a lot o slack. istration dierent from its predecessors Why? In part because he yet again how? U.S. Secretary o State John dangled before them visions o the elusive Kerry squandered more than a year o Israeli-Syrian peace. As Frederic Hof, the the Obama administration trying in o¨cial then handling Syria policy at the vain to jump-start peace talks, a quixotic U.S. State Department, would later write, eort that even his own negotiators
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The Dream Palace of the Americans
knew would not succeed. Is that the having conquered the staging areas its benchmark against which Trump is to be enemies regularly used to attack it, will judged? I so, he will end up failing a lot never give all o them back. Observing more cheaply. an emerging regional tripolarity, he has The awkward truth that Washington pulled two o the poles, Israel and is only gradually beginning to admit to Saudi Arabia, into a de facto alliance to itsel is that the Israeli-Palestinian contain the menacing third pole, Iran. conÁict will not, in fact, be solved with In short, he seems to be embracing an a two-state solution. It might once have updated version o the “twin pillars” been, and phalanxes o negotiators over Middle East policy that Washington hal a century tried everything they adopted in the 1970s, with Israel taking could to bring it o. But the local Iran’s place as the second pillar. parties to the conÁict were never quite This may advance U.S. interests ready. The moment never got seized, eectively in the long run, and it may and somewhere along the way the not. But the idea that the administration’s opportunity passed. approach is a travesty o professional During the Israeli election campaign diplomacy by a bunch o bumbling in September, Prime Minister Benjamin amateurs is just a story that veterans o Netanyahu announced his intention “to lost wars tell to comfort themselves.∂ apply Israeli sovereignty over the Jordan Valley and the area o the northern Dead Sea upon the establishment o the next government.” To the ears o a U.S. diplomatic establishment raised on dreams o Oslo, this sounded like the ravings o a right-wing extremist. But even Netanyahu’s centrist rivals call for the retention o the Jordan Valley, a united Jerusalem, and Israeli control o major settlement blocs. It is not obvious how the United States should deal with this new reality, and the Trump administration’s plans for solving the problem are no more likely to succeed than those o its predecessors. But give the president his due. He looks at the Middle East like any other region, and respects power. Without the ideo- logical blinders o the professional peace processors, he has recognized that the Palestinian issue is not a major U.S. strategic concern and has essentially delegated its handling to the local parties directly involved. He can see that Israel,
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end to Israeli settlement building in the There Will Be a occupied territories. That was three years ago. And since then, Israel has continued One-State to build and expand settlements. The arrival o U.S. President Donald Solution Trump in the White House put the nal nail in the con. “I am looking at two-state, and one-state, and I like the But What Kind of State Will one that both parties like,” Trump It Be? explained in February 2017. Policy wonks and seasoned diplomats rolled their eyes
TRUMP’S MIDDLE EAST Yousef Munayyer at the reality- celebrity turned com- mander in chie describing the options or nearly three decades, the as i they were dishes on a buet table. so-called two-state solution has But the remark indicated a genuine Fdominated discussions o the shift: since the current phase o the Israeli-Palestinian con¢ict. But the idea o peace process began in the early 1990s, two states for two peoples in the territory no U.S. president had ever before both occupy was always an illusion, and in publicly suggested accepting a single state. recent years, reality has set in. The two- What Trump had in mind has become state solution is dead. And good riddance: clear in the years that have followed, as he it never oered a realistic path forward. and his team have approved a right-wing The time has come for all interested Israeli wish list aimed at a one-state parties to instead consider the only outcome—but one that will enshrine alternative with any chance o delivering Israeli dominance over Palestinian lasting peace: equal rights for Israelis and subjects, not one that will grant the Palestinians in a single shared state. parties equal rights. It has been possible to see this Under Prime Minister Benjamin moment coming for quite a while. As Netanyahu, Israel has abandoned any he tried to rescue what had become pretense o seeking a two-state solution, known as “the peace process,” U.S. and public support for the concept Secretary o State John Kerry told among Israelis has steadily dwindled. Congress that the two-state solution had Palestinian leaders continue to seek a one to two years left before it would no separate state. But after years o¡ failure longer be viable. That was six years ago. and frustration, most Palestinians no Resolution 2334, which the © Security longer see that path as viable. Council passed with U.S. consent in The simple truth is that over the late 2016, called for “salvaging the decades, the Israelis developed enough two-state solution” by demanding a power and cultivated enough support number o steps, including an immediate from Washington to allow them to occupy and hold the territories and to YOUSEF MUNAYYER is a writer and scholar create, in eect, a one-state reality o who serves as Executive Director of the U.S. Campaign for Palestinian Rights. The views their own devising. Netanyahu and expressed here are his own. Trump are seeking not to change the
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There Will Be a One-State Solution
Waiting for a state: Palestinians at a checkpoint in Bethlehem, August 2010
status quo but merely to ratify it. The occupation with no right to vote for the question, then, is not whether there government that rules them and around will be a single state but what kind o¡ two million o¡ whom live in Israel as state it should be. Will it be one that second-class citizens, discriminated cements de facto apartheid in which against based on their identity, owing to Palestinians are denied basic rights? Or Israel’s status as a Jewish state. Two will it be a state that recognizes Israelis million more Palestinians live in the and Palestinians as equals under the besieged Gaza Strip, where the militant law? The latter is the goal that Palestin- group Hamas exercises local rule: an ians should adopt. The Americans and open-air prison walled o from the the Israelis should also embrace it. But world by an Israeli blockade. ¯rst they must realize that the status Meanwhile, between 500,000 and quo will eventually prove unsustainable 700,000 Jewish Israeli settlers live and that partitioning the land will among millions o´ Palestinians in the
JEPPE SCHILDER JEPPE never work—and that the only moral occupied West Bank. Protecting the path forward is to recognize the full settlers and increasing their numbers humanity o° both peoples. have been chie¡ priorities for Israel ever since it captured territories from the
ALAMY / FACTS ON THE GROUND Arab states it defeated in the Six-Day Between the Jordan River and the War o¡ 1967. In 1993, the Oslo accords Mediterranean Sea live approximately 13 started a new phase o¡ the relationship, PHOTO STOCK million people, all under the control o¡ based on a quid pro quo: Israel would the Israeli state. Roughly hal¡ o¡ them withdraw from parts o¡ the occupied are Palestinian Arabs, some three territories and abandon some settlements million o¡ whom live under a military in return for an end to Palestinian
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Yousef Munayyer
resistance and the normalization o Israeli occupation o the West Bank relations with Israel’s Arab neighbors. began. Nevertheless, Israel has forged But a vast settlement-building project ahead with its expansion and has never sat easily with that goal and enjoyed unÁinching U.S. support, even created strong political incentives to as Israeli ocials periodically warned avoid it. Today, large numbers o Israelis about its irreversibility. support keeping much o the occupied Palestinian leaders also made decisions territories forever. A week before the that reduced the chances for a workable Israeli election in September, Netanyahu partition—none more signiÄcant than delivered a televised address announcing agreeing to the Oslo framework in the his intention to annex the Jordan Valley Ärst place. In doing so, they consented and every Israeli settlement in the West to a formula that encouraged Israel’s Bank—a move that would eat up 60 expansion, relinquished their ability to percent o the West Bank and leave the challenge it, and sidelined the interna- other 40 percent as isolated cantons, tional community and international unconnected to one another. law. Under Oslo, the Palestinians have What was remarkable about Netan- had to rely on the United States to yahu’s announcement was that it was so treat Israel with a kind o tough love unremarkable: among Jewish Israelis, that American leaders, nervous about annexation is not a controversial idea. their domestic support, have never A recent poll showed that 48 percent o been able to muster. In the 26 years them support steps along the lines o between the 1967 war and the signing what Netanyahu proposed; only 28 o the Oslo accords in 1993, the popula- percent oppose them. Even Netanyahu’s tion o Israeli settlers (not including main rival, the centrist Blue and White those in occupied Jerusalem) grew to alliance, supports perpetual Israeli control around 100,000. In the 26 years since o the Jordan Valley. Its leaders’ response then, it has reached roughly 400,000. to Netanyahu’s annexation plan was to As the failure o the peace process complain that it had been their idea Ärst. became clearer over time, Palestinians This state o aairs should not come rose up against the occupation—some- as a surprise to anyone, especially times violently. Israel pointed to those policymakers in Washington. In fact, reactions to justify further repression. one national intelligence estimate drawn But the cycle was enabled by Palestinian up by U.S. agencies judged that i Israel leaders who resigned themselves to continued the occupation and settle- having to prove to Israel’s satisfaction ment building for “an extended period, that Palestinians were worthy o self- say two to three years, it will Änd it determination—something to which all increasingly dicult to relinquish peoples are in fact entitled. control.” Pressure to hold on to the territories “would grow, and it would be CONQUER AND DIVIDE harder to turn back to the Arabs land Arguments about the conÁict often which contained such settlements.” devolve into shouting matches about That estimate was written more than who bears more o the blame for the 50 years ago, mere months after the failure o the two-state solution. But
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There Will Be a One-State Solution
such disputes miss the point: any plan be moved around and dismembered, that saw partition as a means to a just because they were not a people deserv- solution was always doomed to fail. ing o demographic cohesion. Twenty The belie in the viability o a years later, the British Peel Commission two-state solution has depended on a proposed a partition plan that would Áawed assumption that the conÁict was have kept together the vast majority o rooted in the aftermath o the 1967 war. the Jews in Palestine but would have Peace through partition would be split the Arab population into three possible, advocates argued, i only the separate political entities: one Arab, one two sides could break the violent cycle Jewish, and one British. A decade after o occupation and resistance that took that, in the wake o the Holocaust, a £ hold after the war. Yet the dilemmas partition plan presented a similar vision, posed by partition long predate 1967 with borders drawn to create a Jewish- and stem from a fundamentally insolu- majority state and with the Palestinians ble problem. For the better part o a again divided into multiple entities. century, Western powers—Ärst the In 1948, as British rule over Palestine United Kingdom and then the United came to an end, Zionist militias began to States—have repeatedly tried to square create a Jewish state on the ground by the same circle: accommodating the force, relying on the £ partition plan to Zionist demand for a Jewish-majority legitimize their aims. In the war that state in a land populated overwhelm- followed, the majority o the land’s ingly by Palestinians. This illogical Palestinian inhabitants were forced out pro ject was made possible by a willing- or Áed ahead o Israeli incursions; they ness to dismiss the humanity and rights were never allowed to return. Their land o the Palestinian population and by was seized by the new state, their villages sympathy for the idea o creating a were razed, and their urban homes were space for Jews somewhere outside given to Jewish newcomers. They Europe—a sentiment that was some- became refugees, their lives thrown into times rooted in an anti-Semitic wish to limbo. Palestinians refer to this historical reduce the number o Jews in the moment as the nakba—the “catastrophe.” Christian-dominated West. The 19 years that followed might be In 1917, the British government the only time in the past two millennia issued the Balfour Declaration, outlining that the land o Palestine was actually the goal o creating a “national home” divided. None o the great powers who in Palestine for the Jewish people had ruled over the territory—the without infringing on “the civil and Romans, the Byzantines, the Umayyads, religious rights o the existing non-Jewish” the Abbasids, the Fatimids, the crusad- population. This formulation contained ers, the Ayyubids, the Mameluks, the a fundamental Áaw, one that would mar Ottomans, the British—had ever all future partition plans, as well: it divided Gaza from Jerusalem, Nablus conceived o the Jews as a people with from Nazareth, or Jericho from Jaa. national rights but did not grant the Doing so never made sense, and it still same status to the Palestinians. The doesn’t. Indeed, when Israel took Palestinian population could therefore control o the territories in 1967, it
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Yousef Munayyer
actually represented a return to a Having led the armed struggle against historical norm o ruling the land as a Israel for decades, Yasir Arafat’s Palestine single unit. But it did so with two Liberation Organization was known and systems, one for Jewish Israelis and the accepted by ordinary Palestinians. By the other for the people living on the land late 1980s, however, the group had that the Israelis had conquered. become a shell o its former self. Already isolated by its exile in Tunisia, the §¢ ARAFAT’S ERROR became even weaker in 1990 after its What is the problem that the two-state wealthy patrons in the Gul cut funding solution seeks to solve? As the Oslo when Arafat backed Saddam Hussein’s process has dragged on, the answer has grab for Kuwait. On the ground in the become clear: not so much a conÁict territories, meanwhile, the Ärst intifada— between Israelis and Palestinians but a grassroots revolt against the occupa- one among Israelis themselves. Israel tion—was making news and threatening likes to consider itsel a democracy even to displace the §¢ as the face o Palestin- as it rules over millions o subjects ian resistance. By embracing the Oslo denied basic political rights. Endless process, Arafat and his fellow §¢ leaders negotiations have only obscured that found a personal path back to inÁuence fundamental fact. Actual progress in the and relevance—while trapping the talks would threaten Jewish control o Palestinian community in a bind that has the land, something that has proved held them back ever since. more important to Israel than democ- The §¢’s decision was all the more racy. That is why the Israelis have regrettable considering the global context favored Oslo-type negotiations, which in which it was made. The Soviet Union make it appear they are earnestly trying had just collapsed, fueling a global wave to deal with the Palestinian issue but o democratization. South Africa was never force them to actually do so. dismantling apartheid, demonstrating that The Palestinian leadership, on the a country could willingly abandon a other hand, has devoted itsel to the system o racist oppression in favor o two-state solution, even though any democracy. The §¢ could not have asked state it could conceivably win through for a more favorable moment in which to the existing negotiating process would demand equal rights in a democratic state. fall far short o minimal Palestinian Instead, the leaders o the §¢ grasped at needs. Such a state would not allow immediate relevance and allowed Pales- Palestinian refugees to return to their tinians’ fundamental rights to be the ancestral towns and villages, or oer subject o three-way negotiations in which full equality to Palestinian citizens o they would always be the weakest party. Israel, or grant Palestinians genuine independence and sovereignty. Accept- TIME TO MOVE ON ing a role in this misbegotten exercise The §¢’s choice condemned the Palestin- was a giant strategic mistake, one driven ians to still more oppression under less by the basic needs o Palestinian military occupation and misery in refugee nationalism than the personal interests camps as they waited for a mythical deal. o Palestinian leaders. Decades later, even after everybody else
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There Will Be a One-State Solution
has moved on, Arafat’s successors in the not possible (which it isn’t), the status Palestinian Authority still cling to the quo or one state with equal rights, they peace process and the two-state solution. chose the latter by a two-to-one margin. Having sunk so much eort and credibil- The United States has been able to ity into their state-building project, they secure what it desires most in the are having diculty letting go. Middle East—the steady Áow o natural This accommodation should stop. The resources—without a just peace. But time has come for the Palestinian Au- that has come at the price o perpetual thority to abandon its advocacy o a instability. A shared state with equal two-state solution, an idea that has rights for all would serve U.S. interests become little more than a Äg lea for the even better, because it would Änally United States and other great powers to stabilize the region and generate hide behind while they allow Israel to broader opportunities for economic proceed with de facto apartheid. Instead, growth and political reform. Palestinians should acknowledge the Israelis would beneÄt from a shift to reality that there is and always will be such a state, as well. They, too, would gain only one state between the river and the security, stability, and growth, while also sea and focus their eorts on making that escaping international isolation and state a viable home for all o the terri- reversing the moral rot that the occupa- tory’s inhabitants, Jews and Arabs alike. tion has produced in Israeli society. At the Some will object that such a shift in same time, they would maintain connec- strategy would undercut the hard-won tions to historical and religious sites in the consensus, rooted in decades o activism West Bank. Most Israelis would far prefer and international law, that the Palestinians to perpetuate the status quo. But that is have a right to their own state. That just not possible. Israel cannot continue to consensus, however, has produced little for deny the rights o millions o Palestinians the Palestinians. Countless £ resolutions indeÄnitely and expect to remain a have failed to stop Israeli settlements or normal member o the international gain Palestinians a state, so they wouldn’t community. The Middle Eastern version be losing much. And in a one-state o apartheid will eventually be recognized solution worthy o the name, Palestinians for what it is, and then Israel’s true would win full equality under the law, so options will be clear: move to one state they would be gaining a great deal. with equal rights or become a pariah. The Trump administration will not embrace the concept o equal rights for A NEW CONSTITUTION all inhabitants, including the Palestin- Advocates o equal rights for all must ians. But American voters might. A poll take steps to make sure that “one-state conducted last year by the University o solution” does not become as empty a Maryland found that Americans were slogan as “two-state solution.” To focus roughly evenly split between supporting and ground their vision, they should a two-state solution and supporting a therefore propose not only a new state but one-state solution with equal rights for also a new constitution. That would both all inhabitants. Yet when asked what they demonstrate their commitment to democ- preferred i a two-state solution were racy and highlight Israel’s lack o the
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Yousef Munayyer
same. When the country was founded in In order for such a state to function, 1948, Zionist leaders were trying to those constitutional principles would have expedite the arrival o more Jews, prevent to be considered foundational, and they the return o Palestinians, and seize as would be subject to a very high bar for much land as possible. They had no amendment—say, a requirement o at interest in deÄning citizenship criteria, least 90 percent approval in the legislative rights, or constraints on government branch. This would ensure that basic power. So instead o writing a constitu- rights could not be altered by means o a tion, the Jewish state instituted a series o simple majority and would prohibit any “basic laws” in an ad hoc fashion, and one group from using a demographic these have acquired some constitutional advantage to alter the nature o the state. weight over time. A transition to a new system with In place o that legal patchwork, which equal rights would require a kind o trust has been used to protect the rights o that cannot be built as long as victims o some and to deny the rights o others, oppression, violence, and bloodshed over Israelis and Palestinians should work the decades feel that justice has not been together to craft a constitution that would done. So the new state would also need uphold the rights o all. The new constitu- a truth-and-reconciliation process tion would recognize that the country focused on restorative justice. For would be home to both peoples and that, inspiration, it could look to past eorts despite national narratives and voices on in South Africa and Rwanda. either side that claim otherwise, both Some will dismiss this vision as naive peoples have historical ties to the land. It or impractical. To them, I would ask: would acknowledge the Jewish people’s More naive and impractical than un- history o being persecuted and the scrambling the omelet that the Israeli paramount importance o ensuring that occupation has created? How many all citizens, regardless o religion, ethnic- more decades o failure must we endure ity, or national origin, have a right to before we can safely conclude that safety and security. And it would also partition is a dead end? How many more recognize the wrongs done to Palestinian people must we condemn to oppression, refugees and begin a process to repatriate violence, and death? and compensate them. The idea o equal rights for Israelis A new constitution could oer citizen- and Palestinians in a shared state has been ship to all the people currently living in around for decades, perhaps as long as the land between the river and the sea and have eorts to partition the land. But it to Palestinian refugees and would create has always been cast aside to accommo- pathways for immigrants from elsewhere date the demands o Zionism, even at the to become citizens. All citizens would expense o peace. Countless lives have enjoy full civil and political rights, includ- been lost, and generations have had their ing the freedom o movement, religion, rights denied, all while partition has speech, and association. And all would become less and less realistic. Neither side be equal before the law: the state would can aord to go on this way. Now is the be forbidden from discriminating on moment to adopt the only genuine way the basis o ethnicity or religion. forward: equal rights for all.∂
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#1 Master’s Program* in International Studying in the nation’s capital offers unparalleled access to scholars Affairs and practitioners actively engaged in developing solutions to complex global problems. When you join Georgetown’s extensive alumni community, which spans the globe and includes leaders in the public, private, and non-profit sectors, you are preparing to make a difference. oin the legacy, change the world.
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Iran, as a response to debilitating U.S. The Unwanted sanctions; or by an Iranian-backed Shiite militia in Iraq. I° Washington decided to Wars take military action against Tehran, this could in turn prompt Iranian retaliation against the United States’ Gul¡ allies, an Why the Middle East Is attack by Hezbollah on Israel, or a Shiite More Combustible Than militia operation against U.S. personnel in Ever Iraq. Likewise, Israeli operations against Iranian allies anywhere in the Middle East Robert Malley could trigger a regionwide chain reac-
TRUMP’S MIDDLE EAST tion. Because any development anywhere in the region can have ripple eects he war that now looms largest is everywhere, narrowly containing a crisis a war nobody apparently wants. is fast becoming an exercise in futility. TDuring his presidential cam- When it comes to the Middle East, paign, Donald Trump railed against the Tip O’Neill, the storied Democratic United States’ entanglement in Middle politician, had it backward: all politics— Eastern wars, and since assuming o¼ce, especially local politics—is international. he has not changed his tune. Iran has no In Yemen, a war pitting the Houthis, until interest in a wide-ranging con¥ict that not long ago a relatively unexceptional it knows it could not win. Israel is rebel group, against a debilitated central satis¯ed with calibrated operations in government in the region’s poorest nation, Iraq, Lebanon, Syria, and Gaza but one whose prior internal con¥icts barely fears a larger confrontation that could caught the world’s notice, has become a expose it to thousands o¡ rockets. Saudi focal point for the Iranian-Saudi rivalry. It Arabia is determined to push back has also become a possible trigger for against Iran, but without confronting it deeper U.S. military involvement. The militarily. Yet the conditions for an Syrian regime’s repression o¡ a popular all-out war in the Middle East are riper uprising, far more brutal than prior than at any time in recent memory. crackdowns but hardly the ¯rst in the A con¥ict could break out in any one o¡ region’s or even Syria’s modern history, a number o¡ places for any one o¡ a morphed into an international confronta- number o¡ reasons. Consider the Septem- tion drawing in a dozen countries. It has ber 14 attack on Saudi oil facilities: it resulted in the largest number o´ Russians could theoretically have been perpetrated ever killed by the United States and has by the Houthis, a Yemeni rebel group, as thrust both Russia and Turkey and Iran part o¡ their war with the kingdom; by and Israel to the brink o¡ war. Internal strife in Libya sucked in not just Egypt,
ROBERT MALLEY is President and CEO of the Qatar, Saudi Arabia, Turkey, and the International Crisis Group. During the Obama United Arab Emirates (®) but also administration, he served as Special Assistant Russia and the United States. to the President, White House Middle East Coordinator, and Senior Adviser on countering There is a principal explanation for the Islamic State. such risks. The Middle East has become
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The Unwanted Wars
Ries and rifts: Houthi rebels in Sanaa, Yemen, December 2018 the world’s most polarized region and, others, none ever truly or fully resolved. paradoxically, its most integrated. That Today, the three most important rifts— combination—along with weak state between Israel and its foes, between Iran structures, powerful nonstate actors, and and Saudi Arabia, and between compet- multiple transitions occurring almost ing Sunni blocs—intersect in dangerous simultaneously—also makes the Middle and potentially explosive ways. East the world’s most volatile region. It Israel’s current adversaries are chie¥y further means that as long as its regional represented by the so-called axis o¡ posture remains as it is, the United States resistance: Iran, Hezbollah, Hamas, and, will be just one poorly timed or danger- although presently otherwise occupied, ously aimed Houthi drone strike, or one Syria. The struggle is playing out in the particularly eective Israeli operation traditional arenas o¡ the West Bank and
HANI AL½ANSI against a Shiite militia, away from its next Gaza but also in Syria, where Israel costly regional entanglement. Ultimately, routinely strikes Iranian forces and Iranian- the question is not chie¥y whether the a¼liated groups; in cyberspace; in Leba- United States should disengage from the non, where Israel faces the heavily armed,
PICTURE ALLIANCE / PICTURE region. It is how it should choose to Iranian-backed Hezbollah; and even in engage: diplomatically or militarily, by Iraq, where Israel has reportedly begun to exacerbating divides or mitigating them, target Iranian allies. The absence o¡ most and by aligning itsel´ fully with one side Arab states from this frontline makes it or seeking to achieve a sort o° balance. less prominent but no less dangerous.
DPA / For those Arab states, the Israeli- ACT LOCALLY, THINK REGIONALLY Palestinian con¥ict has been nudged to
AP / The story o¡ the contemporary Middle the sidelines by the two other battles.
IMAGES East is one o¡ a succession o¡ rifts, each Saudi Arabia prioritizes its rivalry with new one sitting atop its precursors, some Iran. Both countries exploit the Shiite- taking momentary precedence over Sunni rift to mobilize their respective
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Robert Malley
constituencies but are in reality moved by geometry o the Middle East’s internal power politics, a tug o war for regional schisms may Áuctuate, yet one struggles inÁuence unfolding in Iraq, Lebanon, to think o another region whose Syria, Yemen, and the Gul states. dynamics are as thoroughly deÄned by a Finally, there is the Sunni-Sunni rift, discrete number o identiÄable and with Egypt, Saudi Arabia, and the ¬¤ all-encompassing fault lines. vying with Qatar and Turkey. As Hussein One also struggles to think o a region Agha and I wrote in The New Yorker in that is as integrated, which is the second March, this is the more momentous, i source o its precarious status. This may least covered, o the divides, with both strike many as odd. Economically, it ranks supremacy over the Sunni world and the among the least integrated areas o the role o political Islam at stake. Whether in world; institutionally, the Arab League is Egypt, Libya, Syria, Tunisia, or as far less coherent than the European Union, aÄeld as Sudan, this competition will less eective than the African Union, and largely deÄne the region’s future. more dysfunctional than the Organization Together with the region’s polarization o American States. Nor is there any is a lack o eective communication, regional entity to which Arab countries which makes things ever more perilous. and the three most active non-Arab There is no meaningful channel between players (Iran, Israel, and Turkey) belong. Iran and Israel, no ocial one between Yet in so many other ways, the Middle Iran and Saudi Arabia, and little real East functions as a uniÄed space. Ideologies diplomacy beyond rhetorical jousting and movements spread across borders: in between the rival Sunni blocs. times past, Arabism and Nasserism; With these fault lines intersecting in today, political Islam and jihadism. The complex ways, various groupings at times Muslim Brotherhood has active branches join forces and at other times compete. in Egypt, Iraq, Jordan, the Palestinian When it came to seeking to topple Syrian territories, Syria, Turkey, the Gul states, President Bashar al-Assad, Saudi Arabia and North Africa. Jihadi movements and the ¬¤ were on the same side as such as al Qaeda and the Islamic State, Qatar and Turkey, backing Syrian reb- or , espouse a transnational agenda els—albeit dierent ones, reÁecting their that rejects the nation-state and national divergent views on the Islamists’ proper boundaries altogether. Iran’s Shiite role. But those states took opposite coreligionists are present in varying stances on Egypt, with Doha and Ankara numbers in the Levant and the Gulf, investing heavily to shore up a Muslim often organized as armed militias that Brotherhood–led government that Riyadh look to Tehran for inspiration or sup- and Abu Dhabi were trying to help bring port. Saudi Arabia has sought to export down (the government fell in 2013, to be Wahhabism, a puritanical strain o Islam, replaced by the authoritarian rule o Abdel and funds politicians and movements Fattah el-Sisi). Qatar and Turkey fear Iran across the region. Media outlets backed but fear Saudi Arabia even more. Hamas by one side or another o the Sunni- stands with Syria in opposition to Israel Sunni rift—Qatar’s Al Jazeera, Saudi but stood with the Syrian opposition and Arabia’s Al Arabiya—have regional reach. other Islamists against Assad. The The Palestinian cause, damaged as it may
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The Unwanted Wars
now seem, still resonates across the region STATES OF CHAOS and can mobilize its citizens in a way Along with the Middle East’s polarization that arguably has no equivalent world- and integration, its dysfunctional state wide. Even subnational movements, such structures present another risk factor. as Kurdish nationalism, which spreads Some states are more akin to nonstate across four countries, promote transna- actors: the central governments in Libya, tional objectives. Syria, and Yemen lack control over large Accordingly, local struggles quickly take swaths o their territories and popula- on regional signiÄcance—and thus attract tions. Conversely, several nonstate actors weapons, money, and political support operate as virtual states, including Hamas, from the outside. The Houthis may view the Houthis, the Kurds, and the Islamic their Äght as being primarily about Yemen, State before it was toppled. And these Hezbollah may be focused on power and nonstate actors often must contend with politics in Lebanon, Hamas may be a nonstate spoilers o their own: in Gaza, Palestinian movement advancing a Pales- Hamas vies with jihadi groups that tinian cause, and Syria’s various opposition sometimes behave in ways that under- groups may be pursuing national goals. mine its rule or contradict its goals. Even But in a region that is both polarized and in more functional states, it is not always integrated, those local drivers inevitably clear where the ultimate policymaking become subsumed by larger forces. authority lies. Shiite militias in Iraq and The fate o the Arab uprisings that Hezbollah in Lebanon, for example, began in late 2010 illustrates the dynamic engage in activities that their titular sover- well, with Tunisia, where it all began, eigns don’t control, let alone condone. being the lone exception. The toppling o Weak states cohabiting with powerful the regime there happened too swiftly, nonstate actors creates the ideal circum- too unexpectedly, and in a country that stances for external interference. It’s a was too much on the margins o regional two-way street—foreign states exploit politics for other states to react in time. armed groups to advance their interests, But they soon found their bearings. Every and armed groups turn to foreign states to subsequent rebellion almost instanta- promote their own causes—that is all too neously became a regional and then open to misinterpretation. Iran almost international aair. In Egypt, the Muslim certainly helps the Houthis and Iraqi Brotherhood’s fortunes and the future o Shiite militias, but does it control them? political Islam were at stake, and so Qatar, The People’s Protection Units, a move- Saudi Arabia, Turkey, and the ¬¤ dove ment o Kurdish Äghters in Syria, are in. The same was true in Libya, where aliated with the Kurdistan Workers’ Egypt, once Sisi had prevailed and the Party in Turkey, but do they follow its Brotherhood had been pushed out, joined command? the fray. Likewise for Syria, where the The fact that nonstate actors operate as civil war drew in all three regional battles: both proxies and independent players Israel’s confrontation with the “axis o makes it hard to establish accountability resistance,” the Iranian-Saudi struggle, and for violence or deter it in the Ärst place. the intra-Sunni competition. A similar Iran might wrongly assume that it will not scenario has played out in Yemen, too. be held responsible for a Houthi drone
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Robert Malley
attack on Saudi Arabia, a Palestinian relative decline. There are also the Islamic Jihad attack on Israel, or an Iraqi aftershocks o the recent Arab uprisings, Shiite militia strike on a U.S. target. notably the dismantling o the regional Saudi Arabia might misguidedly blame order and the propagation o failed Iran for every Houthi attack, just as Iran states. These are exacerbated by domes- might blame Saudi Arabia for any violent tic political changes: a new, unusually incident on its soil perpetrated by internal assertive leadership in Saudi Arabia and a dissident groups. The United States new, unusual leadership in the United might be convinced that every Shiite States. All these developments fuel the militia is an Iranian proxy doing Teh- sense o a region in which everything is ran’s bidding. Israel might deem Hamas up for grabs and in which opportunities accountable for every attack emanating not grabbed quickly will be lost for good. from Gaza, Iran for every attack ema- The United States’ key regional allies nating from Syria, the Lebanese state are simultaneously worried about the for every attack launched by Hezbollah. country’s staying power, heartened by the In each o these instances, the price o policies o the Trump administration, misattribution could be high. and anxious about them. The president This is no mere thought exercise: After made it a priority to repair relations with the attack on Saudi oil facilities in Sep- Egypt, Israel, Saudi Arabia, and the , tember, the Houthis immediately claimed all o which had frayed under his prede- responsibility, possibly in the hope o cessor. But Trump’s reluctance to use enhancing their stature. Iran, likely seeking force has been equally clear, as has his to avoid U.S. retaliation, denied any willingness to betray long-standing allies involvement. Who conducted the opera- in other parts o the world. tion and who—i anyone—is punished That combination o encouragement could have wide-ranging implications. and concern helps explain, for example, Even in seemingly well-structured Saudi Arabia’s uncharacteristic risk-taking states, the locus o decision-making has under the leadership o Saudi Crown become opaque. In Iran, the government Prince Mohammed bin Salman, or MBS: and the Islamic Revolutionary Guard its continuing war in Yemen, its blockade Corps, the branch o the military that o Qatar, its kidnapping o the Lebanese answers directly to the country’s su- prime minister, its killing o the dissident preme leader, at times seem to go their Jamal Khashoggi. MBS perceives the separate ways. Whether this reects a current alignment with Washington as a conscious division o labor or an actual tug eeting opportunity—because Trump o war is a matter o debate, as is the might not win reelection, because he is question o who exactly pulls the strings. capable o an abrupt policy swing that could see him reach a deal with Iran, and THREAT MULTIPLIERS because the United States has a long- A series o global, regional, and local standing desire to extricate itsel from transitions has made these dynamics Middle Eastern entanglements. The even more uncertain. The global transi- feeling in Israel is similar. The United tions include a newly present China, a States’ partners in the region are both resurgent Russia, and a United States in seeking to take advantage o Trump’s
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The Unwanted Wars
tenure and hedging against one o his backed one set o Islamist-leaning rebel sudden pivots and the possibility o a groups, and Saudi Arabia and its allies one-term presidency, an attitude that backed others. Russia—concerned about a makes the situation even more Áuid and shift in Syria’s orientation and sensing unpredictable. American hesitation—saw a chance to Meanwhile, growing Chinese and reassert itsel in the Middle East and also Russian inÁuence have given Iran some intervened, placing it directly at odds encouragement, but hardly real conÄ- with the United States and, for a time, dence. In the event o an escalation o Turkey. And Turkey, alarmed at the tensions between Tehran and Washing- prospect o U.S.-backed Kurdish forces ton, would Moscow stand with Iran or, enjoying a safe haven in northern Syria, hoping to beneÄt from regional disrup- intervened directly while also supporting tion, stand on the sidelines? Will China Syrian Arab opposition groups that it ignore American threats o sanctions hoped would Äght the Kurds. and buy Iranian oil or, in the wake o a With Syria an arena for regional potential trade deal with the United tensions, clashes there, even inadvertent States, abide by Washington’s demands? ones, risk becoming Áash points for larger Uncertainty about American intentions confrontations. Turkey shot down one could be even more dangerous. Iran Russian Äghter jet (Moscow blamed Israel senses Trump’s distaste for war and is for the downing o another), and U.S. therefore tempted to push the envelope, forces killed hundreds o members o a pressuring Washington in the hope o private Russian paramilitary group in securing some degree o sanctions relief. eastern Syria. Turkey has attacked U.S.- But because Tehran does not know where backed Kurds, raising the prospect o a the line is, it runs the risk o going too U.S.-Turkish military collision. And Israel far and paying the price. has struck Iranian or Iranian-linked targets in Syria hundreds o times. TWO CAUTIONARY TALES Syria also illustrates why it is so To understand how these dynamics could dicult for the United States to circum- interact in the future, it is instructive to scribe its involvement in Middle Eastern look at how similar dynamics have conÁicts. During the Obama administra- interacted in the recent past, in Syria. tion, Washington backed rebel groups Saudi Arabia and others seized on a Äghting both the Assad regime and homegrown eort to topple the Assad but claimed not to be pursuing regime regime as an opportunity to change the change (despite supporting forces that regional balance o power. They banked wanted exactly that), not to be seeking on the opposition prevailing and thereby a regional rebalance (despite the clear ending Damascus’ longtime alliance impact Assad’s downfall would have on with Tehran. Iran and Hezbollah, fearful Iran’s inÁuence), not to be boosting o that outcome, poured resources into Turkey’s foes (despite supporting a the Äght on the regime’s behalf, at huge Kurdish movement aliated with human cost. Israel also stepped in, Turkey’s mortal enemy), and not to be seeking to roll back Iran’s growing pres- seeking to weaken Russia (despite Mos- ence at its borders. Qatar and Turkey cow’s anity for Assad). But the United
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Robert Malley
States could not, o course, back rebel anti-Houthi Äght or get sucked into an groups while distancing itsel from their Iranian-Saudi battle. As in Syria, this objectives, or claim purely local aims eort largely was in vain. The United while everyone else involved saw the States could not cherry-pick one part o Syrian conÁict in a broader context. the war: i it was with Saudi Arabia, that Washington became a central player in a meant it was against the Houthis, which regional and international game that it meant it would be against Iran. purportedly wanted nothing to do with. A similar scene has played out in WASHINGTON ADRIFT Yemen. Since 2004, the north o the President Barack Obama’s largely fruitless country had been the arena o recurring attempt to conÄne U.S. involvement in armed conÁict between the Houthis and the region reveals something about the the central government. Government unavoidable linkages that bind various ocials early on pointed to supposed Middle Eastern conÁicts together. It also Iranian Änancial and military aid to the reveals something about the choices now rebels, just as Houthi leaders claimed facing the United States. Obama (in whose Saudi interference. After the Houthis administration I served) had in mind the seized the capital and marched southward United States’ extrication from what he in 2014–15, Saudi Arabia—dreading the considered the broader Middle Eastern prospect o an Iranian-backed militia quagmire. He withdrew U.S. troops from controlling its southern neighbor—re- Iraq, tried to resolve the Israeli-Palestinian sponded. Its reaction was magniÄed by conÁict, expressed sympathy for Arab the rise o MBS, who was distrustful o popular uprisings and for a time dis- the United States, determined to show tanced himsel from autocratic leaders, Iran the days o old were over, and intent shunned direct military intervention in on making his mark at home. Faced with Syria, and pursued a deal with Iran to intense pushback, the Houthis increas- prevent its nuclear program from ingly turned to Iran for military assis- becoming a trigger for war. Libya doesn’t tance, and Iran, seeing a low-cost oppor- Ät this pattern, although even there he tunity to enhance its inÁuence and bog apparently labored under the belie that down Saudi Arabia, obliged. Washington, the 2011 £¬¡¢-led intervention could be still in the midst o negotiations over a tightly limited; that this assumption nuclear deal with Tehran, which Riyadh proved wrong only reinforced his initial vehemently opposed, felt it could not desire to keep his distance from regional aord to add another crisis to the brittle conÁicts. His ultimate goal was to help relations with its Gul ally. the region Änd a more stable balance o Despite its misgivings about the war, power that would make it less dependent Washington thus threw its weight behind on direct U.S. interference or protec- the Saudi-led coalition, sharing intelli- tion. Much to the Saudis’ consternation, gence, providing weapons, and oering he spoke o Tehran and Riyadh needing diplomatic support. As in Syria, the to Änd a way to “share” the region. Obama administration looked to limit But Obama was a gradualist; he was U.S. aims. It would help defend Saudi persuaded that the United States could territorial integrity but not join Riyadh’s neither abruptly nor radically shift gears
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The Unwanted Wars
and imperil regional relationships that U.S. presence to countering Iran; in Iraq, had been decades in the making. As he where the United States wants a fragile once put it to some o us working in the government that is now dependent on close White House, conducting U.S. policy was ties to Tehran to cut those ties; in Yemen, akin to steering a large vessel: a course where the administration, Áouting Con- correction o a few degrees might not gress’ will, has increased support for the seem like much in the moment, but over Saudi-led coalition; and in Lebanon, where time, the destination would dier drasti- it has added to sanctions on Hezbollah. cally. What he did, he did in moderation. Iran has also chosen to treat the region Thus, while seeking to persuade Riyadh as its canvas. Besides chipping away at its to open channels with Tehran, he did so own compliance with the nuclear deal, it gently, carefully balancing continuity and has seized tankers in the Gulf; shot down change in the United States’ Middle East a U.S. drone; and, i U.S. claims are to be policy. And although he wanted to avoid believed, used Shiite militias to threaten military entanglements, his presidency Americans in Iraq, attacked commercial nonetheless was marked by several costly vessels in the Strait o Hormuz, and interventions: both direct, as in Libya, struck Saudi oil Äelds. In June o this year, and indirect, as in Syria and Yemen. when the drone came down and Trump In a sense, his administration was an contemplated military retaliation, Iran experiment that got suspended halfway was quick to warn Qatar, Saudi Arabia, through. At least when it came to his and the ¬¤ that they would be fair game approach to the Middle East, Obama’s i they played any role in enabling a U.S. presidency was premised on the belie attack. (There is no reason to trust that that someone else would pick up where the domino eect would have ended he left o. It was premised on his being there; Iraq, Israel, Lebanon, and Syria succeeded by someone like him, maybe a could well have been drawn into the Hillary Clinton, but certainly not a ensuing hostilities.) And in Yemen, the Donald Trump. Houthis have intensiÄed their attacks on Trump has opted for a very dierent Saudi targets, which may or may not be at course (perhaps driven in part by a simple Iran’s instigation—although, at a mini- desire to do the opposite o what his mum, it is almost certainly not over predecessor did). Instead o striving for Tehran’s objections. Houthi leaders with some kind o balance, Trump has tilted whom I recently spoke in Sanaa, Yemen’s entirely to one side: doubling down on capital, denied acting at Iran’s behest yet support for Israel; wholly aligning himsel added that they would undoubtedly join with MBS, Sisi, and other leaders who felt forces with Iran in a war against Saudi spurned by Obama; withdrawing from the Arabia i their own conÁict with the Iran nuclear deal and zealously joining up kingdom were still ongoing. In short, the with the region’s anti-Iranian axis. Indeed, Trump administration’s policies, which seeking to weaken Iran, Washington has Washington claimed would moderate chosen to confront it on all fronts across Iran’s behavior and achieve a more much o the region: in the nuclear and stringent nuclear deal, have prompted economic realms; in Syria, where U.S. Tehran to intensify its regional activities ocials have explicitly tied the continued and ignore some o the existing nuclear
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Robert Malley
deal’s restraints. This gets to the contra- intersecting rifts, where local disputes diction at the heart o the president’s invariably take on broader signiÄcance, Middle East policies: they make likelier will remain at constant risk o combusting the very military confrontation he is and therefore o implicating the United determined to avoid. States in ways that will prove wasteful and debilitating. De-escalating tensions is WHAT MATTERS NOW not something the country can do on its A regional conÁagration is far from own. Yet at a minimum, it can stop inevitable; none o the parties wants one, aggravating those tensions and, without and so far, all have for the most part abandoning or shunning them, avoid shown the ability to calibrate their actions giving its partners carte blanche or so as to avoid an escalation. But even enabling their more bellicose actions. Änely tuned action can have uninten- That would mean ending its support for tional, outsize repercussions given the the war in Yemen and pressing its allies to regional dynamics. Another Iranian attack bring the conÁict to an end. It would in the Gulf. An Israeli strike in Iraq or mean shelving its eorts to wreck Iran’s Syria that crosses an unclear Iranian economy, rejoining the nuclear deal, and redline. A Houthi missile that kills too then negotiating a more comprehensive many Saudis or an American, and a reply agreement. It would mean halting its that, this time, aims at the assumed punishing campaign against the Palestin- Iranian source. A Shiite militia that kills ians and considering new ways to end the an American soldier in Iraq. An Iranian Israeli occupation. In the case o Iraq, it nuclear program that, now unshackled would mean no longer forcing Baghdad to from the nuclear deal’s constraints, exceeds pick a side between Tehran and Washing- Israel’s or the United States’ unidentiÄed ton. And as far as the Iranian-Saudi tolerance level. One can readily imagine rivalry is concerned, the United States how any o these incidents could spread could encourage the two parties to work across boundaries, each party searching for on modest conÄdence-building mea- the arena in which its comparative advan- sures—on maritime security, environmen- tage is greatest. tal protection, nuclear safety, and trans- With such ongoing risks, the debate parency around military exercises—before about the extent to which the United moving on to the more ambitious task o States should distance itsel from the establishing a new, inclusive regional region and reduce its military footprint is architecture that would begin to address important but somewhat beside the point. both countries’ security concerns. Should any o these scenarios unfold, the An administration intent on pursuing United States would almost certainly Änd this course won’t be starting from scratch. itsel dragged in, whether or not it had Recently, some Gul states—the ¬¤ chie made the strategic choice o withdrawing among them—have taken tentative steps from the Middle East. to reach out to Iran in an eort to reduce The more consequential question, tensions. They saw the growing risks o therefore, is what kind o Middle East the the regional crisis spinning out o control United States will remain engaged in or and recognized its potential costs. Wash- disengaged from. A polarized region with ington should, too, before it is too late.∂
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widely shared view among Western The Middle East’s observers o¡ the Middle East: that the Arab world’s dysfunction was a product Lost Decades o¡ social and political arrangements that thwarted human potential, furthered inequality, and favored a small elite to Development, Dissent, and the detriment o¡ the broader population. the Future of the Arab World During the ¯rst decade o¡ this century, progress was slow. Under the Maha Yahya surface, however, d¾scontent was r¾s¾ng. This discontent culminated in the protests
TRUMP’S MIDDLE EAST ince the 9/11 attacks, the Arab o¡ 2010–11, commonly known as the world’s relative economic, social, Arab Spring. In countries as diverse as Sand political underdevelopment Egypt, Libya, Syria, and Tunisia, ordinary has been a topic o¡ near-constant inter- citizens took to the streets to challenge national concern. In a landmark 2002 their authoritarian rulers and demand report, the ® Development Program dignity, equality, and social justice. For (®ÀÁ) concluded that Arab countries a moment, it seemed as i¡ change had lagged behind much o¡ the world in ¯nally arrived in the Middle East. development indicators such as political Yet in the aftermath o¡ the Arab freedom, scienti¯c progress, and the Spring, development stalled. Although rights o¡ women. Under U.S. President some countries, such as Tunisia, were George W. Bush, this analysis helped able to consolidate democratic systems, drive the “freedom agenda,” which authoritarian leaders in much o¡ the aimed to democratize the Middle region successfully counterattacked. In East—by force i¡ necessary—in order to Egypt, the military led a coup in 2013 eradicate the underdevelopment and to depose the democratically elected authoritarianism that some o¼cials in government; in Libya and Syria, dicta- Washington believed were the root tors responded to peaceful protests with causes o¡ terrorism. Bush’s successor, violence, precipitating brutal civil wars Barack Obama, criticized one o¡ the that turned into international proxy cornerstones o¡ the freedom agenda— con¥icts. Even in countries that did not the U.S. invasion o´ Iraq in 2003—but descend into violence, autocrats clamped he shared Bush’s diagnosis. In his ¯rst down on dissent and poured resources major foreign policy speech as presi- into suppressing their own people and dent, delivered in Cairo in 2009, undermining democratic transitions across Obama called on Middle Eastern gov- the Middle East. Meanwhile, progress ernments to make progress in democracy, on the human development indicators religious freedom, gender equality, and prioritized by both international experts “economic development and opportu- and U.S. policymakers either stagnated nity.” Implicit in his remarks was a or went into reverse. Today, nearly ten years later, the MAHA YAHYA is Director of the Carnegie situation in the Middle East looks even Middle East Center. worse than it did before the Arab Spring.
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The Middle East’s Lost Decades
Spring is in the air? A protest in Algiers, May 2019 Political repression is more onerous. take to the streets to demand a better Economic growth is sluggish and unequal. future, even in the face o¡ repression. Corruption remains rampant. Gender The Arab Spring may not have ushered equality is more aspiration than reality. in the immediate reforms that many Yet something fundamental has had hoped for, but in the long run, it may changed. Arab governments have tradi- have accomplished something more tionally rested on what political scientists important: awakening the political call an “authoritarian bargain,” in which energies o¡ the Arab world and setting the state provides jobs, security, and in motion the long process o¡ Arab services in exchange for political loyalty. revitalization. This bargain is based on the assumption that ordinary people will remain passive. BEFORE THE SPRING
RAMZI But today, that assumption no longer During the second hal¡ o¡ the twentieth holds. Citizens no longer fear their century, Washington’s attitude toward BOUDINA governments. Now more than ever before, Arab development was essentially prag- ordinary people across the Middle East matic and cynical. Although it favored the
/ REUTERS are politically engaged and willing to Middle East’s economic growth, the voice dissent. And as the massive protest United States believed that the region movements in Algeria and Sudan earlier was best governed by friendly autocrats, this year showed, they remain willing to such as Egypt’s Anwar al-Sadat and
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Maha Yahya
Iran’s Mohammad Reza Pahlavi, who began to come undone. During this could provide political stability and pro- period, the region came to be deÄned tect Western interests. by three key trends: growth without This attitude changed after 9/11. well-being, lives without dignity, and Drawing on the work o international liberalization without freedom. experts, such as those at the £², U.S. On the economic front, many Arab policymakers concluded that the ex- countries, encouraged by experts at tremism emanating from the Middle institutions such as the International East was, in part, a byproduct o the Monetary Fund, began to privatize Arab world’s dismal development state-owned Ärms, liberalize their trade record: its repressive governments, policies, and end price controls in an entrenched inequalities, and stagnant, eort to spur growth and reduce budget- state-managed economies, which denied ary pressures on the state. In Egypt, for opportunities to ordinary Arab citizens. instance, the share o people employed Democratizing the Middle East and by the government dropped from 32 unlocking the human potential o its percent in 1998 to 26 percent in 2006. citizens were touted by the Bush Yet although these policies produced administration as a justiÄcation for its some growth, they did not result in the wars in the region. After invading sort o “trickle down” prosperity prom- Afghanistan in 2001 and Iraq in 2003, ised by their architects. Instead, well- the United States cast its subsequent connected insiders captured nearly all the occupation o both countries as an beneÄts o these reforms. In Tunisia, 220 extended exercise in democracy build- Ärms aliated with the family o Presi- ing. Bush announced the broader dent Zine el-Abidine Ben Ali captured freedom agenda for the Middle East, close to 21 percent o all net private-sector creating programs, such as the Middle proÄts between 2000 and 2010—a fact East Free Trade Area Initiative, to that was revealed only when the Ärms promote free markets and the growth o were conÄscated after the revolution civil society. that began in late 2010. State-connected The freedom agenda did not work Ärms also managed to evade $1.2 billion out as planned. After the United States in import taxes between 2002 and 2009. deposed the Iraqi dictator Saddam A similar pattern held in Egypt and Hussein in 2003, Iraq sank into a Lebanon, where insider Ärms were able decade o civil conÁict that combined to secure lucrative contracts for housing an anti-U.S. insurgency with a regional and construction projects and receive proxy war. This led to a decline in many government licenses to invest in key o the key development indicators that sectors, such as oil and gas and banking. the £² had identiÄed as the source o As part o this push to liberalize their Iraq’s problems. But the Middle East’s economies, Arab states also ended their diculties went deeper than this employment guarantees and scaled back high-proÄle debacle. Throughout the on the provision o public services, Ärst decade o this century, the authori- education, and health care. This led to tarian bargain that had long been the declining living standards among large foundation o the region’s governments swaths o the region’s middle class,
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which was composed mainly o employ- ees in the public and security sectors and which had historically been the biggest defender o the status quo. By 2010, 40.3 million people in the Arab Your global region were either at risk o or suering from multidimensional poverty, as journey dened by the and the Oxford Poverty and Human Development begins Initiative (). Between 2000 and 2009, overall living standards declined across the region, as did levels o health
and education. In Egypt, the percent-
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age o people living below the national O
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poverty line rose from 16.7 percent in E
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2000 to 22.0 percent in 2008; in Yemen, R
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the poverty rate rose from 34.8 percent E
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in 2005 to 42.8 percent in 2009. O
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L The withdrawal o public-sector A T V I employment guarantees and the reduc- A , V A IR tion in the range and quality o public A V IK E services resulted in a number o inter- - FR EI connected development challenges. BE RG A, VI Although literacy and school enrollment SITS THE OOL. increased overall, education did not PARDEE SCH translate into opportunity. Between 1998 O ering a and 2008, the number o unemployed youth in the Middle East increased by ONE YEAR MA 25 percent, with that increase concen- in International trated among the better educated. By Relations. 2010, one in four o the region’s young people were unemployed, the highest rate in the world. The paucity o em- ployment opportunities forced millions o men and women to turn to the informal economy, where workers typically earn low pay, have unstable
incomes, and lack basic social protec- SCHOOL PARDEE tions, such as health insurance and bu.edu/PardeeSchool @BUPardeeSchool pensions. In 2009, at least 40 percent o nonagricultural workers in Algeria, Egypt, Morocco, and Tunisia were Frederick S. Pardee employed in the informal economy; in School of Global Studies Syria, the number was 20 percent.
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Maha Yahya
Yet for most o the Middle East, a restoration since 2011. In Egypt, in 2013, more liberal economy did not result in a the military overthrew the country’s more liberal political sphere. Modest Ärst democratically elected government, protest movements in Egypt and Syria replacing it with a dictatorship under were quickly suocated by the govern- the control o President Abdel Fattah ment. Civic initiatives were stiÁed, el-Sisi. Since taking power, Sisi has ruled whereas the work o Islamic charities the country with an iron Äst: between and other faith-based organizations was 2013 and 2018, the security forces encouraged, especially in social and disappeared over 1,500 Egyptians. And emergency assistance, poverty allevia- in July 2019, the country’s parliament tion, and microÄnance programs. For approved a draconian law curtailing the the leaders o these states, economic inÁuence o nongovernmental organiza- liberalization was not intended to tions by limiting their scope o action promote free markets and free minds; and freedom o movement. instead, it was seen as a means to main- The starkest example o autocratic tain the cohesion and loyalty o the restoration is in Syria. In 2011, the regime’s elite. As state resources came country saw massive protests against the under strain, privatization became a dictatorial regime o President Bashar al- strategy for funneling assets to those Assad. Yet rather than step down or already in power. meet popular demands for reform, Assad This unraveling served as the back- ordered his troops to Äre on peaceful drop to the Arab Spring. In December demonstrators, launching a bloody civil 2010, a Tunisian street vendor set himsel war that has killed more than hal a on Äre to protest his mistreatment at million people and displaced millions the hands o a local ocial. His act set more. Today, the once tottering Assad o a tsunami o protests. In the ensuing regime is mopping up the last remnants months, people across the region—in o opposition and reestablishing control. Algeria, Bahrain, Egypt, Iraq, Jordan, Thousands o political prisoners have Kuwait, Lebanon, Libya, Mauritania, been disappeared or languish in regime Morocco, Oman, Sudan, Syria, Tunisia, dungeons, and the government is pre- Yemen, and the Palestinian territories— venting around 5.6 million refugees and took to the streets to demand justice, 6.2 million internally displaced people equality, and an end to their countries’ from returning home. repressive political regimes. Meanwhile, the Saudi and Emirati regimes, faced with domestic criticism DÉJÀ VU ALL OVER AGAIN o their stalled war in Yemen, have jailed The economic and political conditions bloggers, human rights activists, jour- that produced the Arab Spring have nalists, and lawyers for criticizing the only worsened in recent years. With the government online. In perhaps the most exception o Tunisia, where the opposi- notorious example o this increased tion succeeded in establishing a demo- intolerance o dissent, Saudi agents cratic political system that remains in murdered the journalist Jamal place today, many countries o the Khashoggi at the Saudi consulate in Middle East have seen an autocratic Istanbul in October 2018. In Lebanon,
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The Middle East’s Lost Decades
often touted as a beacon o freedom in East and North Africa were not in the region, the government has begun school, a regression to 2007 levels. to crack down on freedom o speech. In When one takes gender and wealth 2018, 38 people were prosecuted for inequality into account, conditions in their online posts, four times the the region look even more dismal. Along number in 2017. Most o these posts with the Palestinian territories, 11 Middle criticized politicians, the president, or Eastern countries—Algeria, Egypt, Iran, the country’s security agencies. And Iraq, Jordan, Lebanon, Morocco, Saudi according to Freedom House, freedom Arabia, Syria, Tunisia, and Yemen—fall o the press declined in 18 o the into the worst-performing category on Middle East’s 21 countries between the £’s Gender Development Index, 2012 and 2017. This regional regression which measures the dierence between is captured by the Economist Intelli- a country’s male and female score on gence Unit’s Democracy Index, which the £’s Human Development Index shows that together the Middle East (¨²), a composite measure o develop- and North Africa continue to make up ment statistics. the lowest performing region in the The worst declines have been in world on all measures o democracy: countries such as Syria and Yemen, which civil liberties, the electoral process and have both experienced violent conÁicts pluralism, the functioning o the over the past decade. Syria dropped 27 government, political culture, and places between 2012 and 2017 on the political participation. ¨²; Yemen dropped 20 places. Nearly As political freedoms have eroded, 85 percent o Syrians and 80 percent o so, too, have the development gains o Yemenis now live in poverty. And in the past few decades. A 2018 global 2018, 10.5 million Syrians and 20 million report on multidimensional poverty by Yemenis were food insecure. the £² and ¢¨ found that nearly This stagnation or regression on key one-Äfth o the population o the Arab development indicators is coupled with states, or 65 million people, lived in sluggish economic growth. According to extreme poverty, deÄned by the World the Economist Intelligence Unit, Bank as people earning less than $1.9 economic growth in the Middle East per day. Another one-third was either and North Africa has been steadily “poor” or “vulnerable.” In fact, the Arab declining following a drop in oil prices region was the only region in the world between 2014 and 2016. The region to experience an increase in extreme averaged 3.6 percent growth in 2015–16, poverty between 2013 and 2015, with but that number fell to 1.6 percent in the rate rising from around four percent 2017 and 1.3 percent in 2018. This to 6.7 percent. In Egypt, recent data stagnant growth has put a strain on indicate that the poverty rate has risen government Änances. Lebanon’s public from 28 percent in 2015 to 33 percent debt is now equal to more than 153 today, largely as a result o austerity percent o ³², the third-highest level measures and the devaluation o the in the world. Even resource-rich Egyptian pound in 2016. In 2016, more countries, such as Saudi Arabia, are than 15 million children in the Middle feeling the pinch. To reÄll state coers
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Maha Yahya
and Änance its growing budget deÄcit, Arab Barometer surveys o nationally the kingdom is planning to issue more representative samples from six Arab than $31 billion in debt this year. And countries (Algeria, Egypt, Jordan, earlier this year, Moody’s downgraded Lebanon, Morocco, and Tunisia) and the Oman’s credit rating to “junk” status, Palestinian territories, public trust in gov- citing low oil prices and the country’s ernment has decreased over the past ballooning deÄcits. decade. In 2016, more than 60 percent o Faced with mounting economic the respondents said that they trusted challenges, governments in the region government “to a limited extent” or are stressing the need for entrepreneur- “absolutely [did] not trust it,” compared ship in the private sector. The United with only 47 percent in 2011. On the Arab Emirates has turned itsel into a other hand, 60 percent o the respon- destination for startups and now boasts dents in 2016 said that they trusted the major success stories such as the ride- military to “a great extent,” up from 49 sharing app Careem, the e-commerce percent in 2011. In a December 2018 platform Souq, and the real estate Zogby poll, a majority o the respondents platform Property Finder. Egypt, too, in Egypt, Iraq, and Tunisia said that they is a growing regional hub. According to were worse o than they were Äve years a report by MAGNiTT, an online earlier. And earlier this year, a community for Middle Eastern start- survey o ten Arab countries found that ups, in 2018, Egypt was the fastest more than hal o the respondents growing in the region “by number o between the ages o 18 and 29 wanted to deals.” And governments from Bahrain emigrate. Thousands o others have been to Lebanon and Saudi Arabia have conscripted into the region’s wars. unveiled initiatives, such as Riyadh’s Vision 2030, to promote private-sector POWER TO THE PEOPLE investment. In many respects, then, the Middle East This modest expansion o the private looks worse on many development sector, however, has not been enough to indicators than it did a decade ago. Yet provide good jobs for citizens. Unem- there is one key dierence. Although ployment in the Arab states is still the protests o the Arab Spring did not high—in 2018, it averaged 7.3 percent; lead to the reforms that many had hoped excluding the oil-rich states o Bahrain, for, they did succeed in fostering a Kuwait, Oman, Qatar, Saudi Arabia, culture o political activism and dissent and the United Arab Emirates, it sat at among Arabs, especially the young, 10.8 percent. Foreign direct investment that persists today. Governments can no remains low; in 2018, according to the longer assume that their citizens will International Monetary Fund, foreign remain passive. direct investment in Arab countries In 2018 alone, there were protest amounted to only 2.4 percent o the movements in Iraq, Jordan, Lebanon, global total. Morocco, Sudan, and Tunisia. Earlier It should come as no surprise, then, this year, protesters in Algeria and that Arab citizens’ conÄdence in their Sudan forced their countries’ respec- governments is collapsing. According to tive leaders, Abdelaziz BouteÁika and
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The Middle East’s Lost Decades
Omar al-Bashir, to step down. In both dictator Hafez al-Assad. The regime countries, the protesters took care to may have won the civil war, but these remain peaceful—even in the face o demonstrations suggest that it will violent government responses—while struggle to restore its authority. at the same time demanding genuine The Middle East today is witnessing democratic reforms rather than a new a perfect storm: as social and economic form o military rule. And in both conditions erode and regimes double countries, the protesters seemed to down on the repressive policies that have learned from the failed demo- provoked the Arab Spring, a new cratic transitions in Egypt and Syria. generation is coming to the fore. The In Sudan, protesters continued to call young Arabs o this new generation are for a peaceful political transition and an accustomed to voicing their dissatisfac- accountable government, even after a tion. They have seen both the promise massacre in June that left at least 100 and the failures o the 2010–11 revolts, dead and scores injured. On August 17, and they are resistant to their leaders’ the Sudanese military and the opposition attempts at manipulation. Those leaders, reached an agreement on a three-year moreover, no longer have the means to transitional period, during which civil- buy o their populations. What today ians and the military will alternate turns looks like a regional regression since in power. 2011 may well, in the future, be regarded In Algeria, despite the resignation o as the initial phase in a much longer the ailing BouteÁika in April, citizens process o Arab revival. The road to that have continued to demand the ouster o revival will likely be a dicult one, key Ägures o the old guard. Some paved with pain. But i there is one thing members o BouteÁika’s inner circle that Arab populations know, it is that have resigned or been arrested, and the status quo cannot be sustained.∂ elections have been announced for December. Many protesters are skepti- cal o the elections, which they see as an eort by the military to bring a pliant president to power. Yet they have already shown that they are not willing to be cowed into accepting a modiÄed version o the old regime. This new culture o protest is also on display in Syria, which has seen a wave o civilian protests in former rebel strongholds now under the control o the Assad regime. Earlier this year, for example, hundreds o Syrians in the southern city o Daraa—the birthplace o the anti-Assad protests in 2011— turned out to oppose the installation o a statue o Assad’s father, the longtime
November/December 2019 55
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and adopted a policy o¡ “maximum America’s Great pressure” to strangle the Iranian econ- omy. Iran, meanwhile, has responded by Satan heightening tensions, attacking several oil tankers traversing the Persian Gulf, shooting down a U.S. drone, and striking The 40-Year Obsession an oil facility in Abqaiq, Saudi Arabia. With Iran No U.S. president has been as capri- cious as Trump, and there is a possibility Daniel Benjamin and Steven that, after ¥irting with escalation, he Simon will pivot toward an accommodation with
TRUMP’S MIDDLE EAST Iran. (His recent dismissal o´ National magine historians a century from now Security Adviser John Bolton, an extreme trying to decide which foreign power Iran hawk, suggests that this process Ithe United States feared most in the could already be underway.) But Trump’s decades from the late Cold War through approach during his ¯rst three years in 2020. Sifting through the national security o¼ce did not emerge from a void. It was strategies o¡ successive administrations, an extension o¡ the deep animus toward they would see Russia ¯rst as an archenemy Iran that has plagued U.S. policymaking o¡ the United States, then as a friend, and for the last 40 years. Previous administra- ¯nally as a challenging nuisance. They tions had balanced this hostility with would see China transform from a pragmatism and periodic attempts at sometime partner to a great-power rival. outreach, often cloaked in the language North Korea would appear as a sideshow. o¡ confrontation; now, driven by greater Only one country would be depicted political incentives and intensi¯ed as a persistent and implacable foe: Iran. lobbying by Israel and Saudi Arabia, In its o¼cial rhetoric and strategic Trump has in¥ated this animus to documents, Washington has, since Iran’s cartoonish proportions. In doing so, he Islamic Revolution in 1979, consistently runs the r¾sk o¡ a ser¾ous m¾scalculat¾on. portrayed the country as a purely hostile Iran is not an existential threat to the and dangerous actor. In recent months, United States, but a serious con¥ict the United States and Iran have once with it—at a time when Washington is again, as they have many times in the past, threatened by great-power rivals and approached the brink o¡ con¥ict: U.S. committed to drawing down its presence President Donald Trump has ripped up in the Middle East—would be costly his predecessor’s nuclear deal with Iran and counterproductive. Faced with the real prospect o¡ a war DANIEL BENJAMIN is Director of the John Sloan Dickey Center for International Under- that would bene¯t no one, it is time for standing at Dartmouth College. He served as the United States to rethink some o¡ the Coordinator for Counterterrorism at the U.S. assumptions that have led to the current State Department from 2009 to 2012. impasse. It is time to relegate Iran’s STEVEN SIMON is Professor of International remarkable grip on U.S. strategic think- Relations at Colby College and served on the National Security Council in the Clinton and ing—call it “the Persian captivity”—to Obama administrations. the dustbin.
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America’s Great Satan
Don’t believe the hype: Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps troops, July 2018
A COUNTRY OR A CAUSE? risk with its September attacks on Saudi In balance-of-power terms, Washington’s Aramco facilities). obsession with Tehran is absurd. Iran’s Despite Iran’s paltry conventional population is one-fourth the size o¡ the capabilities, U.S. policymakers—who United States’, and its economy is barely have long sought to prevent any regional two percent as large. The United States state from exercising hegemony in the and its closest allies in the Middle East— Persian Gulf—have seen Iran as a threat Israel, Saudi Arabia, and the United Arab for two interlocking reasons. The ¯rst Emirates—together spend at least $750 is geography: Iran has a long shoreline billion annually on their armed forces, on the Persian Gulf, through which about 50 times as much as what Iran about one-¯fth o¡ the world’s oil ¥ows. spends. Both Israel and the United States In theory, it could attempt to block the can produce state-of-the-art weapons, as ¥ow o¡ oil by closing the Strait o¡ well as reconnaissance, surveillance, and Hormuz, with potentially disastrous battle-management technologies. Iran eects on the global economy. Yet practi- cannot. Its industrial base is aged. Its air cally speaking, this threat is remote. At no force and navy ¯eld outdated weapons time in the last 40 years has Iran man- systems. It possesses ballistic and cruise aged to close the strait, and even i¡ it did, missiles and long-range drones that Iraq, Qatar, Saudi Arabia, and the United SIPA could strike Israel or the Gul¡ states, but Arab Emirates could all use or develop
USA it cannot use them without inviting alternative export routes. Iran could not.
AP / devastating retaliation (although, The second cause for U.S. concern is
admittedly, it appears to have run this Iran’s nuclear program. I´ Iran produced
November/December 2019 57
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Daniel Benjamin and Steven Simon
an atomic weapon, it could conceivably It is true that Iran has committed establish the regional hegemony that more than its share o atrocities. Yet it is U.S. strategic doctrine seeks to prevent. no longer the same country that it was in A nuclear-armed Iran would revolution- the 1980s, when its revolutionary Islamist ize the strategic landscape in the Middle government really was bent on remaking East and pose a signiÄcant threat to the regional order. Iran’s support for Israel, Washington’s closest ally in the terrorism, for example, has diminished region. Under U.S. President Barack substantially in the last 20 years. And Obama, the United States largely solved although Tehran and its proxies still this problem with the 2015 nuclear deal, occasionally pull o a successful attack, the Joint Comprehensive Plan o Action, such as the 2012 bus bombing in Burgas, which for all intents and purposes ended Bulgaria, their attempts are o a smaller the country’s nuclear program for 15 scale than before, and many o their recent years. In 2018, however, Trump withdrew plots have been absurdly ineective. In from the È¢¬, arguing that a better 2011, for instance, an Iranian plot to agreement with Iran was possible. Since assassinate the Saudi ambassador in then, his administration has been using Washington was doomed from the outset sanctions to try to force Iran’s leaders back because the Iranian agent approached to the negotiating table. an informant for the Drug Enforcement Much o the administration’s antipathy Administration to carry out the killing. toward Iran is explained by what Secre- And in 2012, Iranian terrorists in Bangkok tary o State Mike Pompeo routinely accidentally set o an explosion in their refers to as Iran’s “malign activities”—its own safe house. When Thai police arrived attempts to spread its inÁuence across the at the scene, one o the Iranians threw a Middle East through terrorism, politi- grenade—which hit a tree, bounced back cal subversion, and assistance to Shiite at him, and blew o one o his legs. groups. These activities are the reason why All terrorism is bad, but the hawks Iran is routinely (and deservedly) referred exaggerate the threat posed by Iranian- to as “the world’s foremost state sponsor sponsored terrorism, which is relatively o terrorism.” They are also, for Iran lackluster compared with the jihadi hawks, the best evidence that the coun- terrorism that has at times been tolerated try is still a revolutionary power dedicated or even Änanced by Washington’s Sunni to undermining the interests o the partners. Iran’s activities are less damag- United States and its allies. For oppo- ing to global stability than, say, Pakistan’s nents o the È¢¬, including the Trump support for terrorist groups that target administration, the deal oered Iran tacit India or Russia’s annexation o Crimea, recognition as a legitimate interlocutor. yet Washington treats Tehran as a Iran’s compliance with the deal, these pariah while preserving relations with opponents argued, was a cynical ploy to Islamabad and Moscow. There is clearly advance its expansionist objectives within something going on that transcends the region. (This, o course, was a classic strategic interest. Catch-22: the hawks saw both compliance One major caveat is that Iran supports with the deal and any lack o compliance the Lebanese terrorist group–cum– as evidence o Iran’s malign intentions.) political party Hezbollah, whose large
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America’s Great Satan
stockpile o missiles and rockets poses a phrase has been invoked by much lazier serious threat to Israel. Yet Tehran’s strategists to justify a permanent hard motivations are as much geopolitical as line against Iran. After all, i your adver- ideological: the missiles are Iran’s main sary is motivated primarily by ideology, strategic deterrent against Israel. And then it is less likely to be open to com- this deterrence has generally prevailed promise or accommodation. The problem since 2006, when it broke down through is that this framing has blinded many incompetence and misperception. The American analysts to Iran’s real motiva- Israeli government has made it clear that tions: maximizing its security interests in i it ever has to Äght another war with a deeply hostile environment. Hezbollah, it will invade Lebanon and leave only after it has destroyed Hezbollah BAD BLOOD and its armory. The situation is obviously The United States’ relations with Iran delicate, but neither Israel nor Iran has an date back to World War II, when interest in upsetting the apple cart. thousands o U.S. troops were deployed Aside from terrorism, many o Iran’s to Iran to secure a rail line essential to attempts to expand its reach throughout the year-round supply o the Soviet the Middle East should be seen for Union, then a U.S. ally. Although U.S. what they are: opportunistic responses to involvement in Iran remained limited in blunders by the United States and its the early postwar period, Washington did partners. Hawks often warn o Iran’s participate as a junior partner in a British inÁuence in Iraq, for instance, but this is conspiracy to overthrow Iran’s elected fundamentally a result o the U.S. inva- prime minister, Mohammad Mosaddeq, sion in 2003, which toppled Saddam in 1953. The overthrow o Mosaddeq was Hussein’s Sunni minority government and the original sin o the U.S.-Iranian empowered the country’s Shiite majority. relationship, and Iranian anger at the Even with increased Iranian inÁuence, coup was later compounded by U.S. and moreover, successive governments in Israeli support for Mohammad Reza Baghdad have maintained good relations Shah Pahlavi, whose repressive policies with both Tehran and Washington—in- and inept attempts at modernization deed, the current government may be the undermined popular support for his most pro-U.S. Iraqi government yet. Iran’s regime. The shah’s intimate relationship backing o the regime o Syrian Presi- with the United States tainted both dent Bashar al-Assad is an attempt to sus- parties in the eyes o Iranians, contribut- tain the status quo—and defend a once ing to the resentment that resulted in reliable ally—after it was threatened by the Islamic Revolution o 1979. Sunni Arab states that were trying to over- The revolution marked a turning point. throw Assad by arming and funding Syrian In late 1979, Iranian students stormed rebels. And Iran’s support for the Houthis the U.S. embassy in Tehran and took its in Yemen has been a largely convenient American sta hostage, leading U.S. attempt to bleed its Saudi rivals dry. President Jimmy Carter to sever diplo- The archrealist Henry Kissinger matic relations in April 1980. Soon, U.S. famously said that Iran must “decide and Iranian interests were clashing across whether it is a country or a cause.” The the Middle East. In 1980, Iraq attacked
November/December 2019 59
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Daniel Benjamin and Steven Simon
Iran; after repulsing this initial assault, in States’ old hostility has reemerged with 1982, Iran invaded Iraq with the aim o a vengeance. overthrowing Saddam and spreading the The durability o the United States’ Islamic revolution, sparking U.S. fears o 40-year obsession with Iran is remark- Iranian hegemony in the Persian Gulf. In able. Consider that the United States 1983, after a U.S. peacekeeping mission fought and lost a decadelong war in in Lebanon transformed into an inter- Vietnam that claimed more than 58,000 vention backing the country’s Christian American lives, yet full diplomatic ties government, Iran and Syria supported between Washington and Hanoi were Lebanese Shiite militias that attacked reestablished in 1995, only two decades American diplomats, military personnel, after the last helicopters left Saigon. and intelligence ocers. And although Iranian misdeeds—above all, holding 52 the United States, fearful that an Iraqi U.S. diplomats and other citizens hostage victory could lead Iran to turn to the for 444 days from 1979 to 1980—have Soviet Union for help, made eorts during certainly played a role. But the number the mid-1980s to back Tehran in the o American deaths that can in any way Iran-Iraq War, by the late 1980s, after be attributed to Iran since 1979 is shy o the revelation o the Iran-contra scandal 500. On 12 occasions over the last 18 had rocked the Reagan administration, years, the polling organization Gallup has Washington had decisively thrown its asked Americans the question, “What support behind Baghdad. one country anywhere in the world do By the early 1990s, the United States you consider to be the United States’ had painted itsel into a corner. Wash- greatest enemy today?” Iran topped the ington felt that it had to indeÄnitely list Äve times, ranking higher than China suppress the ambitions o both Iran and six times and higher than Russia eight Iraq, rather than use one to balance the times, despite not having nuclear weap- other. Yet this policy proved unsustain- ons, a deep-water navy, or the ability to able. After the United States demol- project power in any serious fashion. ished Saddam’s regime in 2003, it was How can this hostility be explained? left with an enemy, Iran, but no local One reason is that Iran Äts neatly into partner to contain it. At the same time, a well-deÄned American idea o what a the U.S. invasion o Iraq convinced serious threat should look like. Similar Iranian leaders—now faced with U.S. to the Soviet Union during the Cold troops on both their Afghan and their War, Iran has a revolutionary ideology, Iraqi borders—to take the opportunity an expansionist orientation, and a to draw U.S. blood by transferring network o allies around the world—in deadly explosive devices to Iraqi Shiite Iran’s case, the Shiite communities in militias, further worsening relations the Middle East and in their diasporas between the countries. For a brie in South America and West Africa. period during the Obama administration, And until the U.S. invasion o Iraq, the United States was able to use a Iran had some success in cultivating its combination o diplomacy and pressure image as a global ideological power, to create space for the negotiation o the posing as the leader o Muslim resis- È¢¬. But under Trump, the United tance to U.S. hegemony. With the fall
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Daniel Benjamin and Steven Simon
o Saddam and the empowerment o The distorting eect o Israeli inÁu- Iraq’s Shiite community, however, the ence on U.S. policy toward Iran has been region’s Sunni rulers eectively recast especially pronounced since 2012. That the Iranian threat as a confessional one year, the Republican candidate for presi- within the Islamic world. Instead o dent, Mitt Romney, seized the U.S.- being seen as an anticolonial power, Israeli relationship as a Republican asset, Iran became the leader o a “Shiite winning a quasi-ocial endorsement crescent” menacing the United States’ from Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Sunni allies. Netanyahu. Politicians and policymakers To make matters worse, the United on both sides o the aisle rushed to States and Iran have dealt with each outdo one another with displays o their other in a dramatically dierent manner commitment to helping Israel secure its than the United States and the Soviet interests. More recently, Saudi Crown Union did. Cognizant o their respective Prince Mohammed bin Salman, who has nuclear arsenals and global reach, Wash- not so discreetly aligned himsel with ington and Moscow sought to stay Israel while also skillfully courting the engaged with each other and carefully Trump family, has turned Riyadh into a avoided interfering with each other’s Republican asset, as well. To a greater vital interests. Kissinger famously charac- extent than ever before, the United States terized the Soviet leadership as “essen- under Trump has outsourced its Middle tially shits,” but that did not stop him— East policy to Israel and Saudi Arabia. In or other U.S. leaders—from interacting August, for instance, the Trump adminis- with them. By contrast, the United tration permitted Israel to carry out an States has refused to engage with Iran, airstrike in Iraq against an Iranian-allied and the two countries’ relationship has militia—an action that clearly cut against been one o near-constant irritation the U.S. interest in Iraqi stability. and provocation. For the United States, this hostility I anything, U.S. antipathy toward toward Iran is costly. For one thing, it Iran has grown more intense over the last increases the risk o armed conÁict. It is two decades, even as Tehran has dialed both true and fortunate that since 1987–88, back its revolutionary ambitions. This when U.S. and Iranian ships clashed in increased animus has coincided with both the waters o the Persian Gulf, the two the rising inÁuence o evangelical Chris- countries have avoided open hostilities. tians within the Republican Party and the But the current proximity o U.S. and growth o public support for Israel in the Iranian forces, the countries’ history o United States. In 1989, Gallup found that sustained antagonism, and their leaders’ 49 percent o Americans had a favorable tendency to see each other as locked in a overall view o Israel. Today, the Ägure zero-sum struggle all heighten the risk stands at 69 percent. Pro-Israel sentiment o conÁict. The absence o diplomatic ties has risen especially rapidly among conser- and other communication channels vative Republicans, reaching a peak o makes confrontations even more likely to 87 percent last year. Democrats’ support escalate. Everyone knows what a major has also grown, but currently sits at only U.S. war in the Middle East would look 62 percent. like, and it is clearly best avoided.
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America’s Great Satan
The current U.S. approach to Iran enormous strains on neighboring coun- also risks driving a wedge between the tries—would be even worse. United States and Europe. Although the Europeans have no great love for the WE CAN WORK IT OUT Iranian regime, they prefer negotiation to Washington and Tehran have rarely conÁict. They are particularly proud o gotten along. Yet Trump’s blanket hostil- having helped author the È¢¬, which, ity toward Iran represents a departure apart from its other virtues, was a master- from the norm o previous presidents. piece o complex diplomatic coordina- From the time o the Islamic Revolution, tion. The transatlantic disconnect on Iran successive U.S. administrations have had reaches back at least to the administration an ambivalent relationship with Iran. o U.S. President Bill Clinton, when Publicly, they have often taken a hard Congress voted to impose sanctions on line, suggesting that the country harbors European companies selling equipment an immutable enmity for the United to Iran’s oil industry. But it has intensiÄed States. In private, however, both Demo- under Trump. The transatlantic alliance cratic and Republican administrations may not have the same profound strate- have sought a more pragmatic approach. gic importance that it did during the Cold None, prior to the Trump administration, War, but in an era when both China has consistently taken the position that a and Russia are challenging the West, it working relationship with the clerical is nonetheless vital. Allowing Iran to regime is beyond the pale. become a sore point between the United This split between public and private States and Europe would be staggeringly approaches began under Carter. After imprudent. the shah Áed Iran in January 1979 and Finally, U.S.-Iranian antipathy poses a requested entry into the United States threat to regional stability. The majority for medical care, Carter waÔed for o states in the Middle East are fragile; in months before Änally admitting him in the past decade alone, two, Libya and October, against the advice o his ambas- Yemen, have collapsed, and one, Syria, has sador in Tehran. Behind the scenes, the come close. The economic, political, ¬ continued to provide the new Iranian and environmental strains on the region government with sensitive intelligence will only increase over the coming years. until November 1979, when Islamist For most states, with the exception o a students, outraged at Carter’s decision, few oil monarchies, there is little prospect seized the U.S. embassy in Tehran. It o relief. The United States has an was only the hostage crisis, followed by a interest in helping these countries hold botched U.S. attempt to rescue the together. But its campaign o maximum hostages in 1980, that Änally convinced pressure on Iran, which is intended to Carter that the revolution had damaged bankrupt the regime and foster revolu- U.S.-Iranian ties beyond repair. tionary conditions, runs precisely counter Even President Ronald Reagan, to this interest. However distasteful the canonized for his moral clarity, was current government in Tehran may be, willing to work with Iran when it was the consequences o state collapse in convenient. During Reagan’s Ärst year Iran—including a likely refugee crisis and and a hal in oce, the United States
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Daniel Benjamin and Steven Simon
allowed Israel to send Iran a vast quan- it resumed under his successor, Clinton. tity o American-made weapons to aid in After Washington tightened sanctions, the war against Saddam. Despite the fact Iran orchestrated the 1996 bombing o that Iran and Syria colluded in separate the Khobar Towers complex, in Saudi attacks in 1983 against the U.S. embassy Arabia, then in use by American military and a U.S. Marine barracks in Beirut, personnel enforcing a no-Áy zone over killing 17 embassy personnel and 241 Iraq. Nineteen members o the U.S. Air U.S. troops, Reagan never retaliated. By Force were killed. (As it has under his second term, he was once again Trump, American pressure invited an looking for an opening to Iran. His Iranian response.) Yet by the time blame administration had two main reasons for for the attack could be authoritatively resuming ties: it needed Iran’s help to pinned on Iran, in 1997, retaliation had free U.S. hostages held by Iranian lost its attraction—all the more so since proxies in Lebanon, and it wanted to Mohammad Khatami, who had pledged increase U.S. leverage in Tehran at a to end Iran’s provocative foreign policy, time when it seemed as i the Soviets had been elected president in the in- might try to ingratiate themselves with terim. Clinton moved swiftly to capital- the clerical regime. In 1985, the United ize on Khatami’s reform program but had States resumed selling military equip- little leeway to reduce the congressio- ment to Iran via Israeli intermediaries, nally mandated sanctions, an Iranian sine an operation that continued for over a qua non for meaningful diplomatic year, until it was exposed by a Lebanese progress. What might have been an newspaper. The revelation o these sales opportunity to normalize the bilateral nearly destroyed Reagan’s presidency— relationship Äzzled. especially once it emerged that the President George W. Bush never National Security Council staer Oliver really had chance to implement an Iran North had used money from the sales to policy before the 9/11 attacks derailed his illegally fund the Nicaraguan contras. plans. Once Bush regained his balance, The usual story about the Iran-contra however, the United States and Iran scandal is that Reagan was desperately cooperated closely in Afghanistan follow- concerned about the U.S. hostages in ing the 2001 U.S. invasion. But in May Lebanon, but it may be closer to the truth 2003, U.S. intelligence intercepted a to say that Reagan’s approach to Iran congratulatory message from al Qaeda paralleled his approach to the Soviet militants under house arrest in Iran to Union. He believed that both regimes the terrorists who had assaulted a housing were unsustainable and that the best compound in Riyadh. Bush promptly way to hasten their demise was through shut down U.S. cooperation with Iran in dialogue backed by military strength. Afghanistan, Iran began shipping weap- His problem, o course, was that Iran had ons to Shiite insurgents in Iraq, and the no Mikhail Gorbachev, the reformist chance for cooperation vanished. Soviet premier who became Reagan’s The failures o U.S.-Iranian rap- negotiating partner. prochement cannot be laid solely at the Although U.S. Iran policy fell into a feet o Washington, o course. Since 1979, lull under President George H. W. Bush, Iran has often gone out o its way to
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foment tension. Tehran and its proxies have carried out assassinations, kidnap- pings, and terrorist attacks against
Americans and U.S. allies. The clerical The 2008 global financial crisis brought the world's regime has made anti-Americanism a core economy closer to collapse than ever before. component o its ideology and public Has enough been done to rhetoric. And although elements o the prevent another crisis? Iranian leadership have long favored détente, powerful constituencies within Tehran—including hard-line clerics and the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Systemic Corps—have time and again sought to scuttle eorts at diplomatic outreach. Risk The Obama administration, how- ever, demonstrated that Tehran’s in the belligerence need not be an unsur- mountable obstacle to progress. Like Financial Clinton, Obama entered oce deter- mined to get tough on Iran. During his Sector rst term, he used his credibility with the Europeans to expand multilateral Ten Years after the Great Crash sanctions on Iran, hoping to force EDITORS DOUGLAS W. ARNER Tehran to negotiate over its nuclear EMILIOS AVGOULEAS DANNY BUSCH weapons program. Then, Iranian STEVEN L. SCHWARCZ presidential elections in 2013 replaced the incendiary Mahmoud Ahmadinejad with Hassan Rouhani, a Western-edu- cated cleric who was willing to ex- AVAILABLE NOW change a long-term freeze on Iran’s Systemic Risk in the Financial Sector: Ten Years after the Great Crash draws on some of the world’s nuclear weapons program for relie from leading experts on financial stability and regulation U.S. sanctions. The resulting agree- to examine and critique the progress made since 2008 in addressing systemic risk. The book covers ment, the , was narrowly focused topics such as central banks and macroprudential on the nuclear issue: it was not intended policies; fintech; regulators’ perspectives from the by either side to resolve the myriad United States and the European Union; the logistical and incentive challenges that impede standardization other impediments to U.S.-Iranian and collection; clearing houses and systemic risk; reconciliation. But many supporters o optimal resolution and bail-in tools; and bank the deal thought that the successful leverage, welfare and regulation. negotiation o such a complex agree- ment would set a useful precedent, allowing for future dialogue on other CIGI Press books are distributed by McGill-Queen’s University Press (mqup.ca) and can be found in better bookstores and through online book retailers. issues. After bringing maximal multilat- eral pressure on Iran in his rst term, Obama left oce having laid the groundwork for improved relations.
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Daniel Benjamin and Steven Simon
GETTING BACK TO NORMAL party in oce—will want to use U.S. There are, to be sure, Áickering signals power to beat Iran into submission. that Trump will end up conforming to A second U.S. goal must be to gain the established pattern on Iran, striving some leverage over Iranian foreign policy to seem tough in public while seeking a in order to reduce the likelihood o a private accommodation. His decision not conÁict between Washington and Tehran. to retaliate against Iran’s downing o an This is easier said than done, since a U.S. American drone in June, his eorts to administration would have to simultane- arrange a phone call with Rouhani, and ously reach out to the Iranians and his recent Äring o Bolton all point in mitigate the anxieties o U.S. allies. It this direction. But such an about-face is will also be challenging because o unlikely. Trump’s Republican backers, potential spoilers on the Iranian side— both in and out o Congress, still support namely, the hard-liners who have on a hard line against Tehran, and the several occasions blocked rapprochement. Iranians will be doubtful that Trump can At a minimum, gaining meaningful be trusted to stick with any deal. He will inÁuence over Iranian policymaking would likely leave oce as determined to require opening a military-to-military subjugate Iran as he was on entering it. channel o communication with Iran, Yet the United States—i not under with the initial goal o preventing Trump, then under his successor—has a accidental clashes. That link could then compelling interest in Änding a modus progress to quiet multilateral talks on vivendi with Iran, just as it repeatedly technical questions, move on to higher- sought to do with the Soviet Union level political discussions regarding areas during the Cold War. Washington’s o potential cooperation, and Änally most important goal should be to culminate in diplomatic normalization. prevent Iran from acquiring nuclear Only when the U.S. embassy reopens weapons—a development that could in Tehran will there be enough regular, destabilize the entire Middle East. The businesslike interactions between the two most eective way to do this is through sides for the United States to inÁuence multilateral diplomacy along the lines o Iranian decision-making. Now that the the È¢¬. This would not only provide war in Syria is eectively over, deterrence for an inspections regime that would is holding on the Israeli-Lebanese border, augment Western intelligence gathering Israel has demonstrated its resolve in but also create incentives for Iranian preventing Iran’s entrenchment near the cooperation; by contrast, a confronta- Golan Heights, and the United Arab tional approach will strengthen Iran’s Emirates has walked away from the hard-liners and produce perpetual Saudi war in Yemen, there is an opportu- incentives for Iran to cheat. Finding a nity for cautious movement. Trump is workable arrangement, however, will unlikely to grasp it, largely because the require bold diplomacy by a future perceived political cost is too high. But Democratic administration, which will the next administration should, at long need to overcome the objections o both last, give sustained engagement a try.∂ the Republican Party and an Israeli government that—regardless o the
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footsteps have become mired in civil war, EAST MIDDLE TRUMP’S The Tunisia Model as has happened in Libya, Syria, and Yemen. Others, such as Bahrain and Egypt, have returned to repression and Lessons From a New Arab authoritarianism. Tunisia, by contrast, Democracy has drafted a progressive constitution and held free and fair elections at the presi- Sarah Yerkes dential, parliamentary and local levels. In July, when President Beji Caid Essebsi died at the age o¡ 92, the transition to a he story o° how the Tunisian caretaker government was smooth and revolution began is well known. unremarkable. Several problems persist TOn December 17, 2010, a 26-year- and continue to hobble the country, in old fruit vendor named Mohamed particular a long track record o¡ economic Bouazizi from the town o¡ Sidi Bouzid mismanagement and a disconcerting lack set himsel¡ on ¯re outside a local gov- o¡ trust in public institutions. But for all ernment building. The man’s self- the un¯nished business Tunisia still faces, immolation—an act o¡ protest against its example remains a source o° hope repeated mistreatment by police and local across the region. o¼cials—sparked protests that quickly In achieving this feat, Tunisia has spread across the country. Within a few helped dispel the myth that Arab societies weeks, President Zine el-Abidine Ben Ali or Islam is not compatible with democ- had stepped down and ¥ed the country racy. But the country’s story also oers after 23 years in power, oering Tunisia lessons for beyond the Arab world: that an unprecedented opportunity for a transitions from authoritarianism require democratic opening. A massive wave o¡ brave leaders willing to put country above uprisings soon swept the country’s politics and that such transitions are by neighbors, reaching all the way to the nature chaotic and halting. For the Levant and the Persian Gulf. international community, this means that Less well known is what happened states in transition should be oered the inside Tunisia next. Even though the diplomatic and, above all, ¯nancial country had become ground zero o¡ the support they need to bear the growing Arab Spring, its transition was quickly pains o¡ democracy and come away with overshadowed by events in more popu- as few scars as possible. lous Arab countries with deeper ties to the United States and more patently AFTERSHOCKS OF REVOLUTION cruel rulers. But nearly a decade on, Postrevolutionary Tunisia inherited a Tunisia remains the only success story to state in disrepair. The Ben Ali regime have come out o¡ the many uprisings. had been notoriously corrupt. It plun- Across the Arab world, countries that dered the country’s public coers and looked as though they might follow in its stashed the money in bank accounts belonging to Ben Ali’s wife, Leila SARAH YERKES is a Fellow at the Carnegie Trabelsi, and her family. The government Endowment for International Peace. favored certain coastal regions, neglecting
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Sarah Yerkes
the south and the interior o the country, alliance with two smaller, secular parties, from where the revolution would later imposing a semblance o order on the emerge. Political competition was postrevolutionary chaos. But beneath the nonexistent, and potential challengers to surface, the situation remained unstable, Ben Ali’s ruling party, the Democratic in part because many secularists were as Constitutional Rally, were either banned afraid o Ennahda’s Islamist agenda as outright or forced to operate under they were o a return to authoritarianism. restrictions so severe as to permanently In 2013, frustration with the Ennahda-led keep them on the sidelines. Those who government culminated in a national ran afoul o the regime were imprisoned crisis. In February o that year, Islamist and tortured. extremists murdered the prominent Leaving this dismal record behind was leftist opposition leader Chokri Belaid. not easy, and in the Ärst years after Ben The assassination sparked mass protests, Ali’s ouster, the country endured serious with many accusing the government o setbacks. Debates on the role o religion standing by in the face o violent extrem- in public life were particularly divisive. ism. The Tunisian General Labor Union, Ben Ali’s regime had prided itsel on its or ³¡¡, called its Ärst general strike secular and progressive approach to wom- since 1978, bringing the country to a en’s rights in a country where 99 percent standstill for days. When another leftist o the population is Sunni Muslim. leader, Mohamed Brahmi, was assassi- When a popular Islamist political move- nated a few months later, more large- ment, Ennahda, emerged in the 1980s, scale demonstrations followed. Protesters Ben Ali promptly banned it and impris- were now calling for the Constituent oned or exiled tens o thousands o its Assembly to dissolve. members. But when Tunisians voted for a The turmoil o 2013 could have easily constituent assembly to draft a new, derailed the entire transition process. postrevolutionary constitution in the fall That it did not was largely due to the o 2011—the country’s Ärst-ever demo- work o four powerful civil society cratic election—Ennahda received the organizations—the ³¡¡, the country’s most votes o any party, setting up a bar association, its largest employers’ Äerce Äght over the direction the transi- association, and a human rights group— tion. Among the most contentious issues which came together for talks in the was women’s standing in civic and summer o 2013. The National Dialogue political life. For Ennahda, women were Quartet, as the group came to be known, “complementary” to men—but that term represented constituencies with widely angered non-Islamists, who feared that diering interests, but its members soon writing it into the constitution would agreed on a path forward, calling for a open a back door to gender discrimina- new electoral law, a new prime minister tion. The critics eventually prevailed. and cabinet, and the adoption o the But the constitution-drafting process had long-delayed constitution. It then medi- exposed painful cleavages within Tuni- ated a national dialogue among the major sian society. political parties. The talks convinced Ennahda’s win in the 2011 election Ennahda to step down and brought a allowed it to form a three-way governing new, technocratic government to power.
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The Tunisia Model
Good news: a merchant in Tunis, May 2017 The Quartet also helped the Constituent o¡ non-Islamist parties and activists Assembly resolve sticking points in the united in their opposition to the Islamist new constitution, and in January 2014, the group and little else. deputies passed the new text in a near- Essebsi therefore took Islamists and unanimous vote. secularists alike by surprise when, shortly It would not be the last time that after the election, he formed a coalition coalition building allowed postrevolution- with Ennahda. Essebsi, it soon emerged, ary Tunisia to weather a moment o¡ had been meeting for secret talks with uncertainty. In late 2014, the country the Ennahda leader Rached Ghannouchi, held its ¯rst-ever free parliamentary and a remarkable development, given that presidential elections. The contest was Essebsi had served as foreign minister fair, but turnout—48 percent o¡ eligible under the regime that had imprisoned voters for the legislative and 45 percent and tortured Ghannouchi. Their public for the presidential election—was low for rapprochement sent a powerful message such a monumental event, suggesting to the public: the days o° bitter political that Tunisia was not the vibrant democ- rivalries were in the past. A democratic DANIELLE VILLASANA racy many had hoped for. And the results Tunisia could accommodate leaders o¡ all seemed to set Tunisia up for further stripes—Islamists and secularists, conser- con¥ict. Essebsi, the presidential candi- vatives and liberals. date with the most votes, was a staunch Violent extremism, however, still secularist and longtime member o¡ the punctuated the country’s progress.
/ REDUX pre-revolutionary regime who had run on Terrorist attacks in early 2015, ¯rst at the an explicitly anti-Ennahda platform. His National Bardo Museum, in downtown party, Nidaa Tounes, was a loose coalition Tunis, and later at a beach resort in
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Sarah Yerkes
Sousse, killed a total o 60 people, most Foreign assistance has helped the coun- o them European tourists. The attacks try in a number o areas, including were a signiÄcant blow to Tunisia’s counterterrorism, but it bears emphasizing tourism industry, which makes up around that the main drive for change came from eight percent o the country’s ³². They within. Before 2011, U.S. ties with also shed light on the severity o Tuni- Tunisia were as good as nonexistent. U.S. sia’s problem with Islamist fundamental- President Barack Obama came to power ism. The chaos o the early transition seeking a new beginning with the Mus- years had made it dicult for the Tuni- lim world and made clear that, unlike his sian government to clamp down on the predecessor, he had no intention o recruitment o extremists, particularly in imposing democracy on the Arab world. the country’s traditionally marginalized But when grassroots-led democratic interior. And as democracy Áourished movements swept the region, the Obama without providing real change to the lives administration was determined to protect o Tunisians—the economy remained them, at least initially. It threw its weight stagnant and unemployment high—many behind the protests, both rhetorically and felt they had nothing to lose by joining Änancially. U.S. Secretary o State the ranks o extremist groups. By 2015, Hillary Clinton visited Tunisia less than Tunisia was infamous for being both the two months after Ben Ali’s departure to sole democracy in the Arab world and the emphasize U.S. support for the transi- top exporter to Iraq and Syria o foreign tion. U.S. bilateral assistance to Tunisia Äghters for the Islamic State, or . jumped from $15 million in 2009 to $26 To make matters worse, Tunisia million in 2011. Multilateral programs shared a porous border with Libya, provided several hundred million dollars where a chaotic civil war had allowed more, bringing the U.S. total to over to Áourish. Without much hassle, $1.4 billion since 2011. (The Trump Tunisian citizens could cross into Libya, administration has tried to make train in camps there, and return to dramatic cuts in each o its proposed Tunisia to carry out attacks at home—as budgets, in line with its eort to slash the perpetrators o the Bardo and foreign aid globally, but consistent Sousse attacks had done. To this day, congressional support has kept aid for extremists also hide out on the other Tunisia steady.) The European Union side o the country, in the mountainous and its member states also upped their border area between Tunisia and Alge- support in the years following the ria, from where they periodically carry revolution, providing $2.65 billion out small-scale attacks against Tunisian between 2011 and 2017. security forces. Thanks largely to Despite that assistance, Tunisia still Western assistance, the Tunisian state faces several major obstacles. Youth has greatly improved its counterterrorism unemployment hovers around 30 percent, capabilities. But as the region’s only and inÁation is rising. Since the revolu- democracy, Tunisia has a target painted tion, the suicide rate has nearly doubled, on its back. This past summer, both and close to 100,000 highly educated and al Qaeda and called for Äghters to skilled workers have left the country. refocus their attention on the country. Tunisia recently overtook Eritrea as the
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The Tunisia Model
country with the largest number o country’s Ärst-ever local elections, held in migrants arriving in Italy by sea. To slow May 2018, were a step in the right this trend and improve Tunisians’ direction. Not only did they introduce economic prospects, the government will one o the most progressive gender-parity need to take some unpopular measures, requirements o any electoral law globally, such as cutting wages in the public sector. with 47 percent o local council seats This will require confronting the powerful going to women; they also opened the labor unions—in particular, the ³¡¡— gates to young candidates, with 37 percent which at times have eectively shut down o the seats going to those under 35. the country with massive strikes. But inac- tion will only turn o international lenders BUILDING THE SHIP AS IT SAILS and exacerbate the brain drain, mass Tunisians are quick to point out that their emigration, and extremist recruitment. country doesn’t provide a model that can Reforming sclerotic government insti- be cut and pasted onto other national tutions is another priority. The judi- contexts. But their experience still holds ciary remains largely unreformed. Many important lessons about how to support judges are holdovers from the Ben Ali democracy. For outsiders, the main era, and the byzantine legal code is not takeaway is to keep one’s distance at Ärst. always in line with the constitution. Most Tunisia succeeded thanks not to the egregious, the country currently has no presence o a pro-democracy agenda led constitutional court, largely because by other countries but to the absence o lawmakers cannot agree on whom to such an eort. The transition began with appoint as judges. The Ärst democratically a grassroots call for change, which elected parliament, in oce from 2014 foreign donors and international partners to October 2019, struggled mightily to later stepped in to support. This made it pass legislation and suered from severe hard for the government to discredit the absenteeism, with around hal its mem- protests as a foreign-driven, neocolonial- bers missing in action on any given day. ist project. Wherever possible, the United The most important item on the States and Europe should allow home- agenda is regaining the conÄdence o the grown change to occur without prema- Tunisian public. As o early 2019, only 34 ture interference. Once democratic percent o Tunisians trusted the presi- transitions take root, outside govern- dent, and only 32 percent trusted their ments should be quick to oer Änancial parliament, according to a poll by the support and training. In places where International Republican Institute. When change seems unlikely to emerge on its it comes to voicing their concerns, many own, foreign donors should make use o o them, especially the young, prefer the conditional aid and provide larger pots streets over the ballot box. Around 9,000 o funds to countries that meet certain protests are held each year, the majority political and economic indicators. The o which originate in the same tradition- Millennium Challenge Corporation and ally marginalized regions where the the European Union’s “more for more” revolution started. This problem has no principle, both o which reward coun- easy solution, but devolving greater tries for political and economic reform, powers to the local level would help. The are good examples o this approach.
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Sarah Yerkes
Young democracies, for their part, can moribund—and the country with a learn from Tunisia’s brand o consensus broken social contract. For many politics. Tunisia’s transition could well Tunisians, the new regime has not have failed in 2013 had two leaders, delivered the dignity they demanded in Essebsi and Ghannouchi, not put democ- 2010, and as a result, the public distrusts racy and pluralism ahead o their own the new democratic institutions. But political ambitions. Budding democratic trying to Äx the economy before taking leaders are often tempted to fall into on the challenge o political reform autocratic patterns o behavior and could have backÄred, too. There was no promote their own agendas by hoarding guarantee that once the economy im- power. In the early stages o a democratic proved, transitional leaders would have transition, however, leaders need to remained committed to democratic share political space and prioritize plural- reform. Ultimately, economic challenges ism over exclusion, such that once the are inevitable during democratic transi- situation has stabilized, there is enough tions, and the only viable solution may be room for healthy political competition. for outsiders to provide a stronger safety Likewise, democracies in the making net through loan guarantees, budget should heed the cautionary tale o support, and foreign direct investment in Tunisia’s gridlocked Constituent Assem- the hope o maintaining public support bly. For its Ärst three years, the new for democracy. government in Tunis operated without a Tunisia is a beacon o hope for pro- constitution to guide its actions. And democracy movements across the Middle today, almost six years after the constitu- East, but even for the region’s many tion’s ratiÄcation, much o it has not been autocrats, the country’s successful demo- implemented. Several o the bodies it cratic transition is more than just a mandates, such as a constitutional court, cautionary tale—for there are worse remain to be formed. Tunisia is build- fortunes they could face. Ben Ali’s forced ing the democratic ship as it sails, retirement in Saudi Arabia may not strike which has led to public frustration and them as enviable—but it must certainly confusion. Transitioning countries would seem preferable to the fates o some who be well served by clearly establishing refused to bow out, be it death at the the rules o the game from the outset and hands o insurgents (Libya’s Muammar al- developing an ecient and realistic QaddaÄ); seeing one’s country be timeline for forming the crucial institu- plunged into years o civil war, devasta- tions to make democracy work. tion, and economic disaster (Syria’s There are limits, however, to what Bashar al-Assad); or both (Yemen’s Ali one can learn from Tunisia. In particu- Abdullah Saleh). These divergent fortunes lar, its experience oers no satisfying will loom large in the minds o rulers i answer about how to sequence political they are faced with mass protests today. and economic reforms. Leaders in Tunis As for the region’s many activists, Tunisia chose to focus Ärst on political renewal, oers a safe haven that is far more drafting a new constitution, holding accessible than Europe or the United elections, and creating political institu- States—and an example o Arab democ- tions. Doing so has left the economy racy to emulate.∂
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ESSAYS
The idea that humanity is past the era of war is based on awed measures. – Tanisha Fazal and Paul Poast
TYLER TYLER HICKS War Is Not Over Nowhere to Go Tanisha M. Fazal and Paul Poast 74 Alexander Betts 122
/ THE The Nonintervention Delusion Let Russia Be Russia Richard Fontaine 84 Thomas Graham 134 NEW
YORK The Unwinnable Trade War Beyond Great Forces Weijian Shan 99 Daniel Byman and TIMES Kenneth M. Pollack 148
/ REDUX The Progressive Case Against Protectionism Kimberly Clausing 109
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War Is Not Over What the Optimists Get Wrong About ConÁict Tanisha M. Fazal and Paul Poast
he political turmoil o recent years has largely disabused us o the notion that the world has reached some sort o utopian “end To history.” And yet it can still seem that ours is an unprece- dented era o peace and progress. On the whole, humans today are liv- ing safer and more prosperous lives than their ancestors did. They suer less cruelty and arbitrary violence. Above all, they seem far less likely to go to war. The incidence o war has been decreasing steadily, a growing consensus holds, with war between great powers becoming all but un- thinkable and all types o war becoming more and more rare. This optimistic narrative has inÁuential backers in academia and politics. At the start o this decade, the Harvard psychologist Steven Pinker devoted a voluminous book, The Better Angels of Our Nature, to the decrease o war and violence in modern times. Statistic after sta- tistic pointed to the same conclusion: looked at from a high enough vantage point, violence is in decline after centuries o carnage, re- shaping every aspect o our lives “from the waging o wars to the spanking o children.” Pinker is not alone. “Our international order,” U.S. President Barack Obama told the United Nations in 2016, “has been so successful that we take it as a given that great powers no longer Äght world wars, that the end o the Cold War lifted the shadow o nuclear Armageddon, that the battleÄelds o Europe have been replaced by peaceful union.” At the time o this writing, even the Syrian civil war is winding down. There have been talks to end the nearly two decades o war in Afghan-
TANISHA M. FAZAL is Associate Professor of Political Science at the University of Minnesota.
PAUL POAST is Associate Professor of Political Science at the University of Chicago and a Nonresident Fellow at the Chicago Council on Global A®airs.
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War Is Not Over
istan. A landmark prisoner swap between Russia and Ukraine has re- vived hopes o a peace agreement between the two. The better angels o our nature seem to be winning. I this sounds too good to be true, it probably is. Such optimism is built on shaky foundations. The idea that humanity is past the era o war is based on Áawed measures o war and peace; i anything, the right indicators point to the worrying opposite conclusion. And the anarchic nature o international politics means that the possibility o another major conÁagration is ever present.
BODY COUNTS The notion that war is in terminal decline is based, at its core, on two insights. First, far fewer people die in battle nowadays than in the past, both in absolute terms and as a percentage o the world population. Experts at the Peace Research Institute Oslo pointed this out in 2005, but it was Pinker who introduced the point to a wider audience in his 2011 book. Reviewing centuries o statistics on war fatalities, he argued that not only is war between states on the decline; so are civil wars, genocides, and terrorism. He attributes this fall to the rise o democ- racy, trade, and a general belie that war has become illegitimate. Then there is the fact that there has not been a world war since 1945. “The world is now in the endgame o a Äve-century-long trajec- tory toward permanent peace and prosperity,” the political scientist Michael Mousseau wrote in an article in International Security earlier this year. The political scientist Joshua Goldstein and the legal schol- ars Oona Hathaway and Scott Shapiro have also argued as much, ty- ing the decline o interstate war and conquest to the expansion o market economies, the advent o peacekeeping, and international agreements outlawing wars o aggression. Taken together, these two points—fewer and fewer battle deaths and no more continent-spanning wars—form a picture o a world in- creasingly at peace. Unfortunately, both rest on faulty statistics and distort our understanding o what counts as war. To begin with, relying on body counts to determine i armed con- Áict is decreasing is highly problematic. Dramatic improvements in military medicine have lowered the risk o dying in battle by leaps and bounds, even in high-intensity Äghting. For centuries, the ratio o those wounded to those killed in battle held steady at three to one; the wounded-to-killed ratio for the U.S. military today is closer to ten to
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Tanisha M. Fazal and Paul Poast
one. Many other militaries have seen similar increases, meaning that today’s soldiers are far more likely to wind up injured than dead. That historical trend undermines the validity o most existing counts o war and, by extension, belies the argument that war has become a rare oc- currence. Although reliable statistics on the war wounded for all coun- tries at war are hard to come by, our best projections cut by hal the decline in war casualties that Pinker has posited. What’s more, to focus only on the dead means ignoring war’s massive costs both for the wounded themselves and for the societies that have to care for them. Consider one o the most widely used databases o armed conÁict: that o the Correlates o War project. Since its founding in the 1960s, ¢´ has required that to be considered a war, a conÁict must generate a minimum o 1,000 battle-related fatalities among all the organized armed actors involved. Over the two centuries o war that ¢´ covers, however, medical advances have drastically changed who lives and who dies in battle. Paintings o wounded military personnel being carried away on stretchers have given way to photographs o medevac helicopters that can transfer the wounded to a medical facility in un- der one hour—the “golden hour,” when the chances o survival are the highest. Once the wounded are on the operating table, antibiotics, antiseptics, blood typing, and the ability to transfuse patients all make surgeries far more likely to be successful today. Personal protective equipment has evolved, too. In the early nineteenth century, soldiers wore dress uniforms that were often cumbersome without aording any protection against gunshots or artillery. World War I saw the Ärst proper helmets; Áak jackets became common in the Vietnam War. Today, soldiers wear helmets that act as shields and radio sets in one. Over the course o the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq alone, medical improvements have decreased the number o deaths from improvised explosive devices and small-arms Äre. As a result o these changes, many contemporary wars listed in ¢´’s database appear less intense. Some might not make it past ¢´’s fatality threshold and would therefore be excluded. Better sanitation has left its mark, too, especially improvements in cleanliness, food distribution, and water puriÄcation. During the American Civil War, physicians often failed to wash their hands and instruments between patients. Today’s doctors know about germs and proper hygiene. A six-week campaign during the Spanish-American War o 1898 led to just 293 casualties, fatal and nonfatal, from Äghting
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War Is Not Over
but a staggering 3,681 from various illnesses. This was no outlier. In the Russo-Turkish War o 1877–78, nearly 80 percent o the deaths were caused by disease. Because counting and categorizing casualties in a war is notoriously dicult, these statistics should be taken with a grain o salt, but they illustrate a broader point: as sanitation has improved, so has the survivability o war. The health o soldiers also skews battle deaths, since ill soldiers are more likely to die in battle than healthier soldiers. And military units Äghting at their full complement will have higher survival rates than those decimated by disease. Moreover, some o the advances that have made modern war less deadly, although no less violent, are more reversible than they seem. Many depend on the ability to quickly Áy the wounded to a hospital. For the U.S. military, doing so was possible in the asymmetric con- Áicts against insurgents in Afghanistan and Iraq, where the United States had almost total control o the skies. In a great-power war, however, airpower would be distributed much more equally, limiting both sides’ ability to evacuate their wounded via air. Even a conÁict between the United States and North Korea would severely test U.S. medevac capabilities, shifting more casualties from the “nonfatal” to the “fatal” column. And a great-power war could involve chemical, biological, radiological, or nuclear weapons, which have been used so rarely that there are no good medical models for treating their victims. Skeptics may point out that most wars since World War II have been civil wars, whose parties might not actually have had access to sophisticated medical facilities and procedures—meaning that the de- cline in casualties is more real than artiÄce. Although this is true for many rebel groups, civil wars also typically involve state militaries, which do invest in modern military medicine. And the proliferation o aid and development organizations since 1945 has made many o these advances available, at least to some extent, to civilian popula- tions and insurgents. A foundational principle o humanitarian orga- nizations such as the International Committee o the Red Cross is impartiality, meaning that they do not discriminate between civilians and combatants in giving aid. In addition, rebel groups often have external supporters who provide them with casualty-reducing equip- ment. (The United Kingdom, for example, shipped body armor to the insurgent Free Syrian Army at the start o the Syrian civil war.) As a result, even databases that include civil wars and use a much lower fatality threshold than ¢´, such as the widely referenced database o
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Tanisha M. Fazal and Paul Poast
the Uppsala ConÁict Data Program, may end up giving the erroneous impression that civil wars have become less prevalent when in fact they have become less lethal. Collecting exact data on the injured in civil wars is admittedly di- cult. As a recent report by the nongovernmental organization Action on Armed Violence argues, fewer re- sources for journalists and increased War has not become any attacks on aid workers mean that those less prevalent; it has only most likely to report on the wounded become less lethal. are less able to do so today than in the past, leading to a likely undercount- ing. Dubious statistics thus come out o conÁicts such as the Syrian civil war, with media reports suggesting a wounded-to-killed ratio o nearly one to one since 2011. But common sense suggests that the real number o injuries is far higher. I one ignores these trends and takes the existing databases at face value, the picture is still far from rosy. The tracker managed by the Uppsala ConÁict Data Program shows that even according to existing databases that may undercount conÁict, the number o active armed conÁicts has been ticking up in recent years, and in 2016, it reached its highest point since the end o World War II. And many o today’s conÁicts are lasting longer than past conÁicts did. Recent spikes o violence in the Democratic Republic o the Congo, Mexico, and Yemen show few signs o abating. To be sure, the decline o battle deaths, when considered on its own, is a major victory for human welfare. But that achievement is revers- ible. As the political scientist Bear Braumoeller pointed out in his book Only the Dead, the wars o recent decades may have remained relatively small in size, but there is little reason to expect that trend to continue indeÄnitely. One need only recall that in the years preceding World War I, Europe was presumed to be in a “long peace.” Neither brie Áashes o hostility between European powers, such as the stando be- tween French and German forces in Morocco in 1911, nor the Balkan Wars o 1912 and 1913 could dispel this notion. Yet these small conÁicts turned out to be harbingers o a much more devastating conÁagration. Today, the long shadow o nuclear weapons ostensibly keeps that scenario from repeating. Humanity has stockpiles o nuclear warheads that could wipe out billions o lives, and that terrifying fact, many argue, has kept great-power clashes from boiling over into all-out
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War Is Not Over
wars. But the idea that military technology has so altered the dynam- ics o conÁict as to make war inconceivable is not new. In the 1899 book Is War Now Impossible?, the Polish Änancier and military theorist Jan Gotlib Bloch posited that “the improved deadliness o weapons” meant that “before long you will see they will never Äght at all.” And in 1938—just a year before Hitler invaded Poland, and several years before nuclear technology was considered feasible—the American peace advocate Lola Maverick Lloyd warned that “the new miracles o science and technology enable us at last to bring our world some mea- sure o unity; i our generation does not use them for construction, they will be misused to destroy it and all its slowly-won civilization o the past in a new and terrible warfare.” It may be that nuclear weapons truly have more deterrent potential than past military innovations—and yet these weapons have intro- duced new ways that states could stumble into a cataclysmic conÁict. The United States, for example, keeps its missiles on a “launch on warning” status, meaning that it would launch its missiles on receiving word that an enemy nuclear attack was in progress. That approach is certainly safer than a policy o preemption (whereby the mere belie that an adversary’s strike was imminent would be enough to trigger a U.S. strike). But by keeping nuclear weapons ready to use at a mo- ment’s notice, the current policy still creates the possibility o an acci- dental launch, perhaps driven by human error or a technical malfunction.
SMALL GREAT WARS All in all, recent history does not point to a decline o war at large. But what about war between great powers? The historian John Lewis Gad- dis famously referred to the post-1945 era as “the long peace.” De- terred by nuclear weapons and locked into a global network o international institutions, great powers have avoided a repeat o the carnage o the two world wars. When the European Union was awarded the Nobel Peace Prize in 2012, it was in part for this remark- able achievement. There has, indeed, not been a World War III. But that does not necessarily mean the age o great-power peace is here. In truth, the last century’s world wars are a poor yardstick, as they bore little resem- blance to most o the great-power wars that preceded them. The 1859 Franco-Austrian War lasted less than three months; the 1866 Austro- Prussian War was a little over one month long. Each produced fewer
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Tanisha M. Fazal and Paul Poast
than 50,000 battle deaths. Even the 1870–71 Franco-Prussian War, which paved the way for a uniÄed German empire, lasted just six months and resulted in about 200,000 battle deaths. The world wars were orders o magnitude dierent from those conÁicts. World War I was over four years long and produced some nine million battle deaths. World War II lasted six years and led to over 16 million battle deaths. In other words, World War I and II have severely skewed our sense o what war is. Scholars and policymakers tend to view these conÁicts as emblematic o war. They are not. Most wars are relatively short, lasting less than six months. They tend to result in 50 or fewer battle deaths per day—a number that pales in comparison to the Ägures produced during World War I (over 5,000 dead per day) and World War II (over 7,000 per day). In fact, i one excludes these two outliers, the rates o battle deaths from the mid-nineteenth century until 1914 are consistent with those in the decades since 1945. There have, in fact, been a number o great-power wars since 1945. But they are rarely recognized as such because they did not look like the two world wars. They include the Korean War, in which the United States faced o against forces from China and the Soviet Union, and the Vietnam War, which also pitted the United States against Chinese forces. In both cases, major powers fought each other directly. The list o recent great-power conÁicts grows much longer i one includes instances o proxy warfare. From U.S. support for the muja- hideen Äghting Soviet forces in Afghanistan during the Cold War to the foreign rivalries playing out in Syria and Ukraine, major powers regularly Äght one another using the military labor o others. Outsourc- It is far from certain that ing manpower like this is no recent today’s wars will remain as invention and is in fact a relatively small as they have been normal feature o great-power war. Consider Napoleon’s march to Rus- since 1945. sia in 1812. The invasion is famous for the attrition suered by the Grande Armée as it pushed east. Far less known is that despite its immense size o over 400,000 men, the force was largely not French. Foreign Äghters, be they mercenaries or recruits from conquered ter- ritories, made up the overall majority o the troops that set o to in- vade Russia. (Many o them soon tired o marching in the summer heat and abandoned the coalition, shrinking Napoleon’s forces by
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Tanisha M. Fazal and Paul Poast
more than hal before he was yet one-quarter o the way through the campaign.) Still, his reliance on foreign troops allowed Napoleon to place the burden o the Äghting on non-French, and he reportedly told the Austrian statesman Klemens von Metternich that “the French cannot complain o me; to spare them, I have sacriÄced the Germans and the Poles.” Put simply, most violent conÁicts, even among great powers, do not look like World War I or II. This is not at all to diminish the im- portance o those two wars. Understanding how they happened can help avoid future wars or at least limit their scale. But to determine i great-power war is in decline requires a clear conceptual understand- ing o what such a war is: one that recognizes that World War I and II were unparalleled in scale and scope but not the last instances o great-power conÁict—far from it. The behavior o states has not nec- essarily improved. In truth, the apparent decline in the deadliness o war masks a great deal o belligerent behavior.
DON’T CELEBRATE TOO EARLY The idea that war is increasingly a thing o the past is not just mis- taken; it also enables a harmful brand o triumphalism. War’s ostensi- ble decline does not mean that peace is breaking out. Certainly, the citizens o El Salvador, Guatemala, Honduras, and Venezuela would object to the notion that their countries are peaceful, even though none is technically at war. As the sociologist Johan Galtung has argued, true peace, or “positive peace,” must also contain elements o active engage- ment and cooperation, and although globalization since the end o the Cold War has linked disparate communities together, there have also been setbacks. Following the collapse o the Berlin Wall, there were fewer than ten border walls in the world. Today, there are over 70, from the fortiÄed U.S.-Mexican border to the fences separating Hungary and Serbia and those between Botswana and Zimbabwe. Even when ongoing wars do come to an end, caution is warranted. Consider civil wars, many o which now end in peace treaties. Some, such as the 2016 Colombian peace deal, are elaborate and ambitious documents that run over 300 pages long and go far beyond standard disarmament processes to address land reform, drug policy, and wom- en’s rights. And yet civil wars that end with peace agreements tend to sink back into armed conÁict sooner than those that end without them. Often, what looks to the international community as an orderly
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War Is Not Over
end to a conÁict is just a means for the warring parties to retrench and regroup before Äghting breaks out anew. Likewise, it strains credulity that the better angels o our nature are winning when humanity is armed to the teeth. Global military expen- ditures are higher today than during the late Cold War era, even when adjusted for inÁation. Given that countries haven’t laid down their arms, it may well be that today’s states are neither more civilized nor inherently peaceful but simply exercising eective deterrence. That raises the same specter as the existence o nuclear weapons: deter- rence may hold, but there is a real possibility that it will fail.
FEAR IS GOOD The greatest danger, however, lies not in a misplaced sense o progress but in complacency—what U.S. Supreme Court Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg, in a dierent context, called “throwing away your umbrella in a rainstorm because you are not getting wet.” At a time o U.S.-Russian proxy wars in Syria and Ukraine, rising tensions between the United States and Iran, and an increasingly assertive China, underestimating the risk o future war could lead to fatal mistakes. New technologies, such as unmanned drones and cyberweapons, heighten this danger, as there is no consensus around how states should respond to their use. Above all, overconÄdence about the decline o war may lead states to underestimate how dangerously and quickly any clashes can escalate, with potentially disastrous consequences. It would not be the Ärst time: the European powers that started World War I all set out to wage lim- ited preventive wars, only to be locked into a regional conÁagration. In fact, as the historian A. J. P. Taylor observed, “every war between Great Powers . . . started as a preventive war, not a war o conquest.” A false sense o security could lead today’s leaders to repeat those mistakes. That danger is all the more present in an era o populist leaders who disregard expert advice from diplomats, intelligence com- munities, and scholars in favor o sound bites. The gutting o the U.S. State Department under President Donald Trump and Trump’s dis- missive attitude toward the U.S. intelligence community are but two examples o a larger global trend. The long-term consequences o such behavior are likely to be profound. Repeated enough, the claim that war is in decline could become a self-defeating prophecy, as political leaders engage in bombastic rhetoric, military spectacles, and coun- terproductive wall building in ways that increase the risk o war.∂
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The Nonintervention Delusion What War Is Good For Richard Fontaine
s the casualties and Änancial costs o the United States’ Mid- dle Eastern wars have mounted, Americans’ appetite for new Ainterventions—and their commitment to existing ones—has understandably diminished. The conventional wisdom now holds that the next phase in the United States’ global life should be marked by military restraint, allowing Washington to focus on other pressing issues. This position seems to be one o the few principles uniting actors as diverse as foreign policy realists, progressives, nearly all o the presidential candidates in the 2020 Democratic primary, and President Donald Trump. It’s not hard to see why Americans would look at U.S. military involvement in Afghanistan, Iraq, and Libya and conclude that such interventions should never be repeated. The costs o these wars have been extraordinary: at a rally in Ohio in April 2018, Trump estimated them at $7 trillion over 17 years and concluded that the country has nothing to show for the eort “except death and destruction.” Al- though the precise Änancial cost depends on how one counts, what is certain is that more than 4,500 U.S. military personnel have been killed in Iraq and nearly 2,500 in Afghanistan, plus tens o thousands injured in both wars—to say nothing o the casualties among allied forces, military contractors, and local civilians. Critics o these resource- intensive operations blame them for bogging down the United States in a region o second-tier importance and distracting Washington from the greater threats o China and Russia, as well as from pressing domestic issues.
RICHARD FONTAINE is CEO of the Center for a New American Security. He has worked at the U.S. State Department, at the National Security Council, and as a foreign policy adviser for U.S. Senator John McCain.
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The Nonintervention Delusion
With the costs so high, and the beneÄts seen as low, the imperative is obvious to political leaders in both parties: get out o the existing conÁicts in Afghanistan, Iraq, and Syria and avoid starting new ones. In his State o the Union address this year, Trump declared that “great nations do not Äght endless wars.” Scores o House Democrats have signed a pledge to “end the forever war,” referring to the global war on terrorism and U.S. military involvement in Afghanistan, Iraq, Jordan, Niger, Somalia, Syria, Thailand, and Yemen, as have many o the Democrats running for president. Joe Biden, the former vice presi- dent and current presidential candidate, has also promised to “end the forever wars.” He has described the Obama administration’s with- drawal o U.S. troops from Iraq as “one o the proudest moments o [his] life” and has called for pulling U.S. forces out o Afghanistan. Many experts are o a similar mind. Discussions o “oshore bal- ancing,” a strategy in which the United States would dramatically scale back its global military presence and reduce the frequency o its interventions, were once mostly conÄned to the halls o academia, but today the idea is garnering new attention. Faced with such a sweeping political consensus, one might conclude that Washington should simply get on with it and embrace restraint. The problem is that such a strategy overlooks the interests and values that have prompted U.S. action in the Ärst place and that may for good reasons give rise to it in the future. The consensus also neglects the fact that, despite the well-known failures o recent large-scale interventions, there is also a record o more successful ones—including the eort underway today in Syria. To assume that nonintervention will become a central tenet o future U.S. foreign policy will, i anything, induce Americans to think less se- riously about the country’s military operations abroad and thus generate not only less successful intervention but possibly even more o it. In- stead o settling into wishful thinking, policymakers should accept that the use o military force will remain an essential tool o U.S. strategy. That, in turn, requires applying the right lessons from recent decades.
GOODBYE TO ALL THAT? The Ärst sign that the sweeping consensus around “ending endless war” is more problematic than it Ärst appears is the telling set o caveats that emerges even among its most ardent advocates. Consider the many qualiÄcations that Democratic presidential candidates are
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Richard Fontaine
applying to a withdrawal from Afghanistan. Biden has said that he would bring U.S. combat troops home during his rst term but that he remains open to a “residual presence” to conduct counterterrorism operations—roughly the same approach as Trump’s. Senator Cory Booker o New Jersey has promised that as president he would imme- diately begin a “process” to withdraw troops from Afghanistan, while somehow ensuring that the country does not again become a safe haven for terrorists. Pete Buttigieg, the mayor o South Bend, Indi- ana, who served as a naval ocer in Afghanistan, has agreed that “it’s time to end this endless war,” and yet he envisions a peace agreement that keeps U.S. special operations forces and intelligence operatives there. Such concessions, responsible policy though they are, stop well short o terminating the United States’ longest war. Even the most committed anti-interventionists continue to come up with exceptions. The foreign policy manifesto o Senator Bernie Sanders o Vermont, published in Foreign A airs in June, is titled “Ending America’s Endless War,” and yet he has acknowledged that “military force is sometimes necessary, but always—always—as the last resort.” His foreign policy adviser has emphasized Sanders’ commitment to collective defense among allies and has said that genocide and mass atrocities would “weigh heavily” on Sanders when contemplating mili- tary action. Advocates o oshore balancing, such as the scholar John Mearsheimer, favor using force i a regional balance o power is breaking down, and Mearsheimer has written that his approach would not preclude operations to halt genocides like the one that befell Rwanda in 1994. Even at a rhetorical and intellectual level, then, the end o interven- tion is not nearly as clear-cut as today’s politicians suggest. The reality o being commander in chie complicates things further: on the cam- paign trail, Bill Clinton, George W. Bush, Barack Obama, and Trump each pledged to engage in fewer foreign military adventures and redi- rect resources toward needs at home. In oce, each reluctantly pro- ceeded to not only continue existing wars but also launch new oensives. The result is that, according to a Congressional Research Service estimate, the United States has employed military force over 200 times since the end o the Cold War. Many o these operations have taken place in or around the Middle East, including in Afghanistan, Iraq, Libya, Somalia, Syria, and Yemen. But other, less frequently recalled interventions have occurred elsewhere, as in Bosnia, Colom- bia, Haiti, Kosovo, Liberia, and the Philippines. What’s more, the
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The Nonintervention Delusion
Paved with good intentions: Bernie Sanders at a rally in Michigan, April 2019 tendency to intervene is not simply the product o¡ the United States’ emergence as an unbridled superpower after the Cold War. Between 1948 and 1991, during a time o¡ supposedly stabilizing bipolar compe- tition, the United States sent its military to ¯ght abroad more than 50 times. American military action is not, as many believe, a feature o¡ post–Cold War overstretch; it has been a central element o¡ the United States’ approach to the world for decades.
BRITTANY GREESON THE CASE AGAINST Just because the United States has intervened so frequently over its history does not mean that it will continue to do so or that it should. The case against intervention generally takes ¯ve forms. And although there are elements o¡ truth to each, they also threaten to obscure other, / THE more complicated realities.
NEW The ¯rst argument holds that the United States need not employ military means in response to terrorism, civil wars, mass atrocities, YORK and other problems that are not its business. Washington has used TIMES force against terrorists in countries ranging from Niger to Pakistan,
/ REDUX with massive human and ¯nancial expenditures. And yet i¡ more Americans die in their bathtubs each year than in terrorist attacks, why no war on porcelain? The post-9/11 overreach, this camp contends,
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Richard Fontaine
endures some 18 years later, having stretched well beyond eradicating the original al Qaeda perpetrators and their Afghan base. In this view, as the threats have diminished, so should American attention. The civil wars in Libya, Syria, and Yemen may be tragic, but they do not demand a U.S. military response any more than did the atrocities in Rwanda, eastern Congo, or Darfur. Adopting such a cramped view o American interests, however, car- ries its own costs. Terrorism remains a threat, and the eect o successful attacks on Americans goes beyond their immediate casualties to include increased pressure to restrict civil liberties at home and wage impromptu operations abroad—operations that end up being costlier and less eec- tive than longer-term, better-planned ones would be. After the Islamic State (or ) took hold in Iraq and Syria and footage o terrorists de- capitating American hostages horriÄed the public, Obama undertook a far larger operation than would have likely been necessary had he left a residual force in Iraq after 2011. As for genocide and civil war, certain cases can pose such serious threats to U.S. interests, or be so oensive to American values, as to merit intervention. Successive presidents have used military might to prevent, halt, or punish mass atrocities—Clinton to cease the genocide against Bosnian Muslims in the Balkans, Obama to protect the Yezidi minority in Iraq, and Trump after Bashar al-Assad’s chemical attacks against his own people in Syria. There is every reason to believe that similar cases will arise in the future. The second argument against intervention highlights its supposedly poor track record. For all o the United States’ good intentions— stopping terrorists, ending genocide, stabilizing countries, spreading democracy—Washington simply is not very successful in its attempts. Iraq and Libya look worse today than when the wars against Saddam Hussein and Muammar al-QaddaÄ began, and the Taliban currently control more o Afghanistan than at any time since 2001. Long gone are U.S. aspirations to turn these countries into democracies that would radiate liberalism beyond their borders. Yet this argument ignores the many other times in which the use o American force worked. It ejected Saddam from Kuwait, it ended a war in Bosnia, it stopped ethnic cleansing in Kosovo, it paved the way for a democratic transition in Liberia, and it helped defeat narcoter- rorists and bring temporary peace to Colombia. Even in Afghanistan, it should not be forgotten that Washington denied al Qaeda a safe haven, and in Iraq and Syria, it eliminated ’ physical presence,
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Richard Fontaine
limited the Áow o foreign Äghters, and liberated cities from depravity. Then there are other, harder-to-measure eects o U.S. intervention, such as enforcing norms against ethnic cleansing and deterring coun- tries from oering terrorists sanctuary or engaging in wars o aggres- sion. To get an accurate picture o intervention’s mixed track record, one cannot cherry-pick the disastrous cases or the successful ones. The third argument against intervention points to the slippery slope involved in such eorts: start a military campaign, and the United States will never get out. After the 1995 Dayton peace accords formally ended the ethnic conÁict in Bosnia, U.S. troops stayed in the area for ten years, and £¬¡¢ retains a presence in Kosovo to this day. The United States seems to be stuck in Afghanistan, too, because without a peace deal with the Taliban, the U.S.-backed government could fall. In Iraq, Obama removed all U.S. troops, only to send them back in when established a vast presence there. Check in to a military intervention, and it often seems like you can never leave. Once deployed, American troops often do stay a long time. But stay- ing is not the same as Äghting, and it is wrong to think o troops who are largely advising local forces the same way as one thinks about those who are actively engaged in combat. There is a stark dierence between what it meant to have U.S. forces in Iraq during the peak o the war and what it means to have U.S. troops there now to train Iraqi forces—just as there is a massive gul between deploying troops to Afghanistan dur- ing the troop surge there and keeping a residual presence to strengthen the government and its security forces. Some American interests are worth the price o continued military deployments, and the aim should be to diminish those costs in blood and treasure as the conditions stabi- lize. Even once they do, there may remain a case for an enduring role, particularly when the U.S. troop presence is the only thing maintaining the domestic political equilibrium, as was the case in Iraq before the 2011 withdrawal and as is true in Afghanistan today. The fourth argument can be boiled down to the plea, “Why us?” Why must the United States always run to the sound o the guns, especially when other countries are capable o taking on such burdens and may have more skin in the game? Europe is geographically closer to Libya and Syria, at far greater risk from terrorism and refugee Áows, and possesses capable military forces o its own. Middle East- ern allies have their own resources, too. The American role might not be so indispensable after all.
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The Nonintervention Delusion
For all the contributions o U.S. partners, however, more often than not, only the United States has the will and the capability to lead successful military operations. France led a successful operation in Côte d’Ivoire in 2004 and in Mali in 2013, and the United Kingdom led one in Sierra Leone in 2000, but those were exceptions. Iraq would not have left Kuwait in 1991 had the United States not led the eort; mass slaughter in the Balkans during the 1990s would not have ended without a dominant U.S. role, even though it took place on European soil. In Afghanistan and Syria, U.S. allies have made it clear that they will stay as long as the United States does but will head for the exit otherwise. U.S. friends in Europe have proved decidedly uninterested in taking matters into their own hands, and when Washington has declined to meaningfully intervene itself, they have often stood idly by. In Libya after QaddaÄ’s fall, the Europeans failed to impose secu- rity even as growing numbers o refugees and migrants set sail across the Mediterranean. In Syria before U.S. bombing began, they under- took no military campaign against , even as the arrival o Syrian refugees destabilized European politics. When U.S. allies do take matters into their own hands, they can make a bad situation worse. Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates decided to intervene in Yemen’s civil war, but their brutal and indiscriminate campaign led to a humanitarian disaster and strengthened the very Iranian role it sought to eliminate. The Änal reason most frequently oered for getting out o the intervention business relates to its costs, both direct ones—the lives lost and damaged, the dollars borrowed and spent—and opportunity costs. It is increasingly clear that China and Russia represent the fore- most challenge to the United States over the long term and that the competition with them has begun in earnest. I that’s the case, why tie up scarce resources in less important military interventions? Here, too, a dose o subtlety is in order. The prospect o great- power competition should indeed structure the United States’ coming approach to national security, but a focus on counterterrorism is required, as well. After all, the George W. Bush administration en- tered oce hoping to focus on China, only to see its best-laid plans upended by the 9/11 attacks. Withdrawing prematurely from terrorist safe havens such as Afghanistan, Iraq, and Syria would threaten the great-power emphasis necessary in the next phase o the United States’ global life. A major terrorist attack on U.S. soil, for instance,
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Richard Fontaine
would likely cause Washington to once again embrace counterterrorism as its chie national security priority, leaving it more vulnerable to threats from China and Russia. Unless the United States chooses to give up its global role and instead focus only on Asia and Europe, it must engage in great-power competition while attending to other security challenges in other areas.
A SUBTLER STRATEGY Every possible intervention, past and future, raises dicult what-ifs. I presented again with a situation like that in Rwanda in 1994— 800,000 lives in peril and the possibility that a modest foreign mili- tary eort could make a dierence—would the United States once again avoid acting? Should it have stayed out o the bloodbath in the Balkans or intervened earlier to prevent greater carnage? Should it have left QaddaÄ to attack Benghazi? Pursued al Qaeda after the 1998 attacks on the U.S. embassies in Kenya and Tanzania, perhaps obviat- ing the need to overthrow the Taliban three years later? In such discussions, the gravitational pull o the Iraq war bends the light around it, and for obvious reasons. The war there has been so sear- ing, so badly bungled, and so catastrophically costly that, according to former Secretary o Defense Robert Gates, anyone thinking o a similar engagement “should ‘have his head examined,’ as General MacArthur so delicately put it.” Almost everything that could go wrong in Iraq did. What started as a war to eliminate weapons o mass destruction found none. The impulse to liberate the Iraqi people from tyranny pushed them into a civil war. The desire to open another front in the war on terrorism created far more terrorists than it eliminated. A war that some U.S. ocials promised would be a “cakewalk” exacted an unbear- able toll on U.S. troops, their families, and the Iraqi people themselves. Ironically, many among Washington’s political and national secu- rity elite, especially on the Republican side, were for years unable to admit publicly that the invasion was the mistake it so clearly was. After the 2003 invasion, politics and a resistance to suggesting that American sacriÄces were in vain kept such observations private. Re- publican political leaders’ failure to admit that the war’s costs exceeded its beneÄts undermined their credibility, which was already tarnished by their general support for the war in the Ärst place. That, in turn, may have helped usher in the blunt anti-interventionism so prevalent today. Washington needs a subtler alternative to it.
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The Nonintervention Delusion
U.S. military interventions take diverse forms—an isolated drone strike in a remote area o Pakistan is as dierent from a theoretical future war with China as is possible to contemplate. As a result, there are no precise rules about when leaders should and should not use force. Context matters, and human judgment always comes into play. Yet it is possible to sketch out several principles, informed by the experience o recent decades, that should guide the general conduct o U.S. decision-making. The Ärst guideline is to avoid overlearning the supposed lessons o past interventions. It’s often said that generals are always Äghting the last war, and the same can be said o policymakers. Sometimes, they draw the right lessons, but sometimes, they do not. President Harry Truman sent troops north o the 38th parallel in Korea, drawing China into the Korean War, so in Vietnam, U.S. ground forces re- mained on their side o the demilitarized zone—which put enormous emphasis on extensive bombing campaigns against the North. Hop- ing to avoid a Vietnam-style quagmire, when the George H. W. Bush administration fought the Gul War, it sought to limit its objective to the speciÄc aim o restoring Kuwaiti sovereignty. But because Sad- dam was left in power, the Iraq problem festered. The second Iraq war was supposed to Änish the job—but it showed how a purportedly short conÁict can lead to an indeÄnite occupation. To prevent that from happening in Libya, Obama decided to use airpower to help oust QaddaÄ but keep American boots o the ground; he was thus unable to contain the chaos that followed. And so in Syria, Obama and Trump would Äght terrorists without attempting to remove Assad. Sticking to rigid lines based on prior errors can easily lead to new and dierent pitfalls. Another guideline is to pick interventions that meet clear condi- tions and commit to those that are chosen. The United States should generally undertake interventions only when political leaders— namely, the president and a majority o Congress—believe that force is necessary to attain a clearly stated objective. They should have a reasonable expectation that allies, especially those in the region in question, will join the eort, and they should make serious eorts to enlist them. They should conclude that the beneÄts o a military in- tervention over the long run are reasonably expected to exceed the costs. And they should undertake military interventions in which they are prepared for the possibility that U.S. forces will have to stay for a long time, indeÄnitely i necessary.
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Richard Fontaine
Guidelines such as these cannot possibly supply all the answers policymakers might need, but they can point to the right questions. Requiring decision-makers to clearly deÄne the objectives o the pos- sible intervention, for example, will force them to distinguish between managing a problem (such as preventing Afghanistan from becoming a terrorist safe haven) and solving it (such as rendering that country a Taliban-free modern democracy). Enlisting allies in the eort should involve an honest assessment o their strengths and weaknesses, whether those allies are someone in the nature o Afghan President Hamid Karzai, or exiles in Iraq, or European troops in Libya, or the Syrian Democratic Forces. And the judgment about an operation’s likely costs and beneÄts should include an analysis o the success or failure o various approaches in the past, such as targeted counterter- rorism operations or a full-Áedged counterinsurgency campaign. One traditional way o thinking about intervention is represented by the Powell Doctrine, developed by General Colin Powell during the Gul War, which emphasizes the importance o using decisive force, having a clear exit strategy, and mobilizing U.S. public support. But the opposite has proved at least equally important in recent wars: there will be cases in which the employment o modest force over an open-ended timeline will be the better strategy. Policymakers’ general unwilling- ness to contemplate a long-term U.S. presence in a foreign country, along with their tendency to see conÁicts as temporary problems that can be solved in a limited period o time, often makes them rush for the exits when the going gets tough. Had the United States not frantically sought an o-ramp in both Afghanistan and Iraq, for instance, its pros- pects for success in both conÁicts would have been brighter—and, para- doxically, the wars might have ended sooner. Even many years after the initiation o those conÁicts, sustainable, low-cost, and long-term Amer- ican engagement is preferable to unconditional withdrawal. A new set o guidelines would also take a more nuanced approach to determining whether an intervention is politically sustainable. The usual model holds that presidents should paint a picture o the threat for Americans and then elicit their support for war, hoping to wind down operations before the public grows weary o the conÁict. Yet political support hinges less on a war’s duration than it does on its Änancial costs, casualties, and perceived progress. Reducing losses and making concrete steps toward a conÁict’s stated objective are critical to maintaining popular support over the long run. Instead o
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Richard Fontaine
suggesting that ultimate success is just around the corner, policymak- ers should articulate the case for an enduring engagement and then work to lower the human and Änancial costs associated with it. Perhaps the most dicult guideline is to rigorously estimate the long-term costs and beneÄts. Although the need to run a cost-beneÄt analysis seems patently obvious, recent experience suggests that it is not. In the run-up to the Iraq war, for example, U.S. leaders mini- mized the estimated cost o troops and reconstruction aid and wildly overinÁated their projections o success. During the deliberation over intervention in Libya, it appears that policymakers ignored the lesson that would-be nuclear proliferators might draw in watching the United States topple a leader who had previously turned over his weapons o mass destruction. Most important is an examination o the speciÄc case itself, including the history o the people and the forces at play. Analogies to past wars and unrelated historical experiences, or aspira- tions to abstract principles—such as needing to be on the right side o history—add little value.
FROM THEORY TO PRACTICE Applying these guidelines would rule some past and potential inter- ventions in and others out. Intervention in the Balkans and Rwanda likely would have passed the test, particularly given the limited objec- tives (in the Balkans, an end to atrocities without toppling govern- ments) and the military means required (in Rwanda, reinforcing £ peacekeepers already on the ground or jamming radio broadcasts). The 2001 decision to attack al Qaeda and the Taliban in Afghanistan would have met the mark, too, as would have the anti- campaign in Iraq and Syria, given that nonmilitary approaches were unable to shut down the safe havens. The 2003 Iraq war would not have met the test, given a realistic projection o the costs and beneÄts and the ever-changing objectives. In Libya, these principles would have led Washington to either mount a limited operation to stop a massacre in Benghazi and leave QaddaÄ in power or stay out o the Äght altogether. Instead, the Obama administration chose to topple the regime and then disengage. For the ongoing interventions in Afghanistan, Iraq, and Syria, the guidelines would rule in favor o a residual, indeÄnite troop presence. Preventing these countries from regressing into terrorist hubs and, in the cases o Afghanistan and Iraq, supporting the governments that keep them from doing so are objectives that merit continued
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The Nonintervention Delusion
U.S. engagement. Additionally, the costs o redeploying to these countries after a descent into terror-ridden chaos—as happened in Iraq after 2011—would almost certainly be higher than the costs o remaining. Simply ignoring the emergence o terrorist sanctuaries could be even more catastrophic. Several practical changes would help policymakers evaluate possi- ble military interventions. To ensure that cost-beneÄt analyses are as accurate as possible, for example, they must be based on the entire range o possible costs down the line—not just the expected casualties and direct expenses associated with operations but also those o con- tractors and intelligence personnel, as well as longer-term costs, such as veterans’ care. They should also include the likely eect o military action on civilians living in the country in question and the likely ef- fect o military inaction on the U.S. population. Congress must also play a role far beyond its power o the purse and its ability to authorize force. For all the focus on the outdated 2001 Authorization for Use o Military Force, which permitted the use o U.S. military force against the perpetrators o 9/11, legislators would It’s often said that generals do better to concentrate on the conduct o the wars themselves. That means in- are always ¥ghting the last vestigating on-the-ground conditions, war, and the same can be measuring progress, interrogating poli- said of policymakers. cymakers and military leaders, and of- fering alternative strategies. To do that, Congress would have to use the full panoply o its informal powers to engage in oversight: conducting hearings and brieÄngs, sending con- gressional delegations, initiating investigations, and so on. Ironically, it is the counter- mission in Syria—the one that so frequently elicits calls for its end—that provides a reasonably success- ful example o how U.S. military intervention can work in practice. With the deployment o roughly 2,000 special operations forces, the United States armed, trained, and advised up to 70,000 local Arab and Kurdish Äghters. The operation has banished Iran, Russia, and Syrian government forces from a third o the country, eliminated ’ physical caliphate and forestalled its resurgence, deterred a Kurdish-Turkish clash, and kept refugee Áows in check. U.S. casualties and Änancial expenditures have been relatively low, and international support rela- tively high: fewer than ten U.S. troops have lost their lives in Syria, and
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Richard Fontaine
U.S. operations there compose only a fraction o the $15 billion budget for Operation Inherent Resolve, as the military campaign against in Iraq and Syria is known. Such Änancial costs are signiÄcant, and the human losses tragic, but there is reason to believe that they will be much lower in the future, given the elimination o ’ physical caliphate. Still, Washington could cut yet more costs by allowing more regular troops to relieve the burden placed on elite special operations forces. Over time, it could reallocate expensive military equipment—such as F-35 and F-22 aircraft—to arenas o great-power competition and in- stead invest in cheaper aircraft for anti- bombings in Iraq and Syria. Doing so would free up resources for missions in other regions and reduce the Änancial burden. I calls for disengagement from Syria prevail, however, it is likely that conditions on the ground will eventu- ally deteriorate, and the United States may once again have to deploy ground forces to prevent the reemergence o a terrorist stronghold.
THE PERILS OF PREDICTION Ultimately, the unpredictability o world events puts a priority on human judgment and undermines rigid formulas. That is precisely why it is so unwise for 2020 presidential candidates to make categor- ical commitments to end the United States’ involvement in Afghani- stan, Iraq, and Syria and why it is unwise for Trump to focus on an exit to those conÁicts rather than the right conditions that would safely enable one. This uncertainty is also a reason why voters must place a priority on the judgment o their would-be leaders. Amid all the justiÄed frustration with the United States’ post– Cold War approach and pledges to dial back intervention and end forever wars, far more subtlety is needed when it comes to consider- ing if, when, and how the United States should use force abroad. No grand strategy can be built on the presumption that military inter- vention is mostly an erroneous activity o yesteryear, rather than an enduring feature o U.S. foreign policy. Now, as the world enters its post–post–Cold War phase, Ameri- cans need to do some hard thinking. Their country remains a global power, with strongly held interests and values that require defend- ing. The United States need not look abroad for monsters to de- stroy. But it must not lull itsel into believing that such monsters have disappeared.∂
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The Unwinnable Trade War Everyone Loses in the U.S.-Chinese Clash—but Especially Americans Weijian Shan
n late June, the leaders o China and the United States announced at the G-20 meeting in Osaka, Japan, that they had reached a Idétente in their trade war. U.S. President Donald Trump claimed that the two sides had set negotiations “back on track.” He put on hold new taris on Chinese goods and lifted restrictions preventing U.S. companies from selling to Huawei, the blacklisted Chinese telecommunications giant. Markets rallied, and media reports hailed the move as a “cease-Äre.” That supposed cease-Äre was a false dawn, one o many that have marked the on-again, o-again diplomacy between Beijing and Washington. All wasn’t quiet on the trade front; the guns never stopped blazing. In September, after a summer o heated rhetoric, the Trump administration increased taris on another $125 billion worth o Chinese imports. China responded by issuing taris on an additional $75 billion worth o U.S. goods. The United States might institute further taris in December, bringing the total value o Chi- nese goods subject to punitive taris to over hal a trillion dollars, covering almost all Chinese imports. China’s retaliation is expected to cover 69 percent o its imports from the United States. I all the threatened hikes are put in place, the average tari rate on U.S. imports o Chinese goods will be about 24 percent, up from about three percent two years ago, and that on Chinese imports o U.S. goods will be at nearly 26 percent, compared with China’s average tari rate o 6.7 percent for all other countries.
WEIJIAN SHAN is Chair and CEO of PAG, a Hong Kong–based private equity firm, and the author of Out of the Gobi: My Story of China and America. This article is part of a project of the Library of Congress’ John W. Kluge Center, supported by the Carnegie Corporation of New York.
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Weijian Shan
The parties to this trade war may yet step back from the abyss. There have been over a dozen rounds o high-level negotiations without any real prospect o a settlement. Trump thinks that taris will convince China to cave in and change its allegedly unfair trade practices. China may be willing to budge on some issues, such as buy- ing more U.S. goods, opening its market further to U.S. companies, and improving intellectual property protection, in exchange for the removal o all new taris, but not to the extent demanded by the Trump administration. Meanwhile, China hopes that its retaliatory actions will cause enough economic pain in the United States to make Washington reconsider its stance. The numbers suggest that Washington is not winning this trade war. Although China’s economic growth has slowed, the taris have hit U.S. consumers harder than their Chinese counterparts. With fears o a recession around the corner, Trump must reckon with the fact that his current approach is imperiling the U.S. economy, posing a threat to the international trading system, and failing to reduce the trade deÄcit that he loathes. Trump may back away from his self-destructive policy toward China, but U.S.-Chinese competition will continue beyond his tenure as president. Much o the coverage o the conÁict makes it seem like a clash o personalities, the capriciousness o Trump against the im- placable will o Chinese President Xi Jinping and the Chinese Com- munist Party. But this friction is systemic. The current costs o the trade war reÁect the structural realities that underpin the relationship between the U.S. and Chinese economies. It’s worth tracing that dynamic as the two great powers try to Änd a new, Ätful equilibrium in the years ahead.
CONSIDER THE LOBSTERS The trade war has not produced the desired results for the United States. Washington Ärst raised taris on Chinese imports in 2018. In the same year, Chinese exports to the United States increased by $34 billion, or seven percent, year-over-year, while U.S. exports to China decreased by $10 billion, or eight percent. In the Ärst eight months o this year, China’s exports to the United States dropped by just under four percent compared with the same period in the previous year, but U.S. exports to China shrank much more, by nearly 24 percent. Instead o narrowing the trade gap, the taris have coincided with a
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The Unwinnable Trade War
Paying the price: at a Black Friday sale in Niles, Illinois, November 2018 widening o¡ the U.S. trade de¯cit with China: by nearly 12 percent in 2018 (to $420 billion) and by about another eight percent in the ¯rst eight months o¡ this year. There are at least two reasons why Chinese exports to the United States have not fallen as much as the Trump administration hoped they would. One is that there are no good substitutes for many o¡ the products the United States imports from China, such as iPhones and consumer drones, so U.S. buyers are forced to absorb the taris in the form o° higher prices. The other reason is that despite recent headlines, much o¡ the manufacturing o¡ U.S.-bound goods isn’t leaving China anytime soon, since many companies depend on sup- ply chains that exist only there. (In 2012, Apple attempted to move GURINDER manufacturing o¡ its high-end Mac Pro computer from China to Texas, but the di¼culty o¡ sourcing the tiny screws that hold it together OSAN prevented the relocation.)
AP / Some export-oriented manufacturing is leaving China, but not for the United States. According to a May survey conducted by the Amer-
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Weijian Shan
ican Chamber o Commerce in Shanghai, fewer than six percent o U.S. businesses in China plan to return home. Sixty percent o U.S. companies said they would stay in China. The damage to the economy on the import side is even more pro- nounced for the United States than it is for China. Economists at the Federal Reserve Bank o New York and elsewhere found that in 2018, the taris did not compel Chinese exporters to reduce their prices; instead, the full cost o the taris hit American consumers. As taris raise the prices o goods imported from China, U.S. con- sumers will opt to buy substitutes (when available) from other coun- tries, which may be more expensive than the original Chinese imports but are cheaper than those same goods after the taris. The price dierence between the pre-tari Chinese imports and these third-country substitutes constitutes what economists call a “dead- weight loss” to the economy. Economists reckon the dead-weight loss arising from the existing taris on $200 billion in Chinese imports to be $620 per household, or about $80 billion, annually. This represents about 0.4 percent o U.S. ³². I the United States continues to expand its tari regime as scheduled, that loss will more than double. Meanwhile, Chinese consumers aren’t paying higher prices for U.S. imports. A study by the Peterson Institute for International Economics shows that since the beginning o 2018, China has raised the average tari rate on U.S. imports from 8.0 percent to 21.8 percent and Much of the manufacturing has lowered the average tari rate on of U.S.-bound goods isn’t all its other trading partners from 8.0 leaving China anytime soon. percent to 6.7 percent. China imposed taris only on U.S. commodities that can be replaced with imports from other countries at similar prices. It actually lowered duties for those U.S. products that can’t be bought elsewhere more cheaply, such as semiconductors and pharmaceuticals. Consequently, China’s import prices for the same products have dropped overall, in spite o higher taris on U.S. imports. Beijing’s nimble calculations are well illustrated by the example o lobsters. China imposed a 25 percent tari on U.S. lobsters in July 2018, precipitating a 70 percent drop in U.S. lobster exports. At the same time, Beijing cut taris on Canadian lobsters by three percent,
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Weijian Shan
and as a result, Canadian lobster exports to China doubled. Chinese consumers now pay less for lobsters imported from essentially the same waters.
THE INESCAPABLE DEFICIT Beijing has proved much more capable than Washington o minimizing the pain to its consumers and economy. But the trade war would be more palatable for Washington i its confrontation with China were accomplishing Trump’s goals. The president thinks that China is “rip- ping o” the United States. He wants to reduce the United States’ overall trade deÄcit by changing China’s trade practices. But levying taris on Chinese imports has had the paradoxical eect o inÁating the United States’ overall trade deÄcit, which, according to the U.S. Census Bureau, rose by $28 billion in the Ärst seven months o this year compared with the same period last year. The uncomfortable truth for Trump is that U.S. trade deÄcits don’t spring from the practices o U.S. trading partners; they come from the United States’ own spending habits. The United States has run a persis- tent trade deÄcit since 1975, both overall and with most o its trading partners. Over the past 20 years, U.S. domestic expenditures have always exceeded ³², resulting in negative net exports, or a trade deÄcit. The shortfall has shifted over time but has remained between three and six percent o ³². Trump wants to boost U.S. exports to trim the deÄcit, but trade wars inevitably invite retaliation that leads to signiÄcant reductions in exports. Moreover, increasing the volume o exports does not necessar- ily reduce trade deÄcits unless it is accompanied by a reduction in the country’s spending in terms o consumption and investment. The right way to reduce a trade deÄcit is to grow the economy faster than concur- rent domestic expenditures, which can be accomplished only by encourag- ing innovation and increasing productivity. A trade war does the opposite, damaging the economy, impeding growth, and hindering innovation. Even a total Chinese capitulation in the trade war wouldn’t make a dent in the overall U.S. trade deÄcit. I China buys more from the United States, it will purchase less from other countries, which will then sell the dierence either to the United States or to its competi- tors. For example, look at aircraft sales by the U.S. Ärm Boeing and its European rival, Airbus. At the moment, both companies are operating at full capacity. I China buys 1,000 more aircraft from Boeing and 1,000 fewer from Airbus, the European plane-maker will still sell those
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The Unwinnable Trade War
1,000 aircraft, just to the United States or to other countries that might have bought instead from Boeing. China understands this, which is one reason it hasn’t put higher taris on U.S.-made aircraft. Whatever the outcome o the trade war, the deÄcit won’t be greatly changed.
A RESILIENT CHINA The trade war has not really damaged China so far, largely because Beijing has managed to keep import prices from rising and because its exports to the United States have been less aected than anticipated. This pattern will change as U.S. importers begin to switch from buy- ing from China to buying from third countries to avoid paying the high taris. But assuming China’s ³² continues to grow at around Äve to six percent every year, the eect o that change will be quite modest. Some pundits doubt the accuracy o Chinese Ägures for eco- nomic growth, but multilateral agencies and independent research institutions set Chinese ³² growth within a range o Äve to six percent. Skeptics also miss the bigger picture that China’s economy is slow- ing down as it shifts to a consumption-driven model. Some manufac- turing will leave China i the high taris become permanent, but the signiÄcance o such a development should not be overstated. Inde- pendent o the anxiety bred by Trump’s taris, China is gradually weaning itsel o its dependence on export-led growth. Exports to the United States as a proportion o China’s ³² steadily declined from a peak o 11 percent in 2005 to less than four percent by 2018. In 2006, total exports made up 36 percent o China’s ³²; by 2018, that Ägure had been cut by half, to 18 percent, which is much lower than the average o 29 percent for the industrialized countries o the Organ- ization for Economic Cooperation and Development. Chinese lead- ers have long sought to steer their economy away from export-driven manufacturing to a consumer-driven model. To be sure, the trade war has exacted a severe psychological toll on the Chinese economy. In 2018, when the taris were Ärst announced, they caused a near panic in China’s market at a time when growth was slowing thanks to a round o credit tightening. The stock market took a beating, plummeting some 25 percent. The government initially felt pressured to Änd a way out o the trade war quickly. But as the smoke cleared to reveal little real damage, conÄdence in the market rebounded: stock indexes had risen by 23 percent and 34 percent on the Shanghai and Shenzhen exchanges, respectively, by September 12, 2019.
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The resilience o the Chinese economy in the face o the trade war helps explain why Beijing has stiened its negotiating position in spite o Trump’s escalation. China hasn’t had a recession in the past 40 years and won’t have one in the foreseeable future, because its economy is still at an early stage o development, with per capita ³² only one-sixth o that o the United States. Due to declining rates o saving and rising wages, the engine o China’s economy is shifting from investments and exports to private consumption. As a result, the country’s growth rate is expected to slow. The Interna- tional Monetary Fund projects that Chinese leaders have long China’s real ³² growth will fall from sought to steer their 6.6 percent in 2018 to 5.5 percent in economy toward a 2024; other estimates put the growth consumer-driven model. rate at an even lower number. Al- though the rate o Chinese growth may dip, there is little risk that the Chinese economy will contract in the foreseeable future. Private consumption, which has been increasing, representing 35 percent o ³² in 2010 and 39 percent last year, is expected to continue to rise and to drive economic growth, especially now that China has expanded its social safety net and welfare provisions, freeing up private savings for consumption. The U.S. economy, on the other hand, has had the longest expan- sion in history, and the inevitable down cycle is already on the horizon: second-quarter ³² growth this year dropped to 2.0 percent from the Ärst quarter’s 3.1 percent. The trade war, without taking into account the escalations from September, will shave o at least hal a percent- age point o U.S. ³², and that much o a drag on the economy may tip it into the anticipated downturn. (According to a September Washington Post poll, 60 percent o Americans expect a recession in 2020.) The prospect o a recession could provide Trump with the im- petus to call o the trade war. Here, then, is one plausible way the trade war will come to an end. Americans aren’t uniformly feeling the pain o the taris yet. But a turning point is likely to come when the economy starts to lose steam. I the trade war continues, it will compromise the international trading system, which relies on a global division o labor based on each country’s comparative advantage. Once that system becomes less
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The Unwinnable Trade War
dependable—when disrupted, for instance, by the boycotts and hostility o trade wars—countries will start decoupling from one another. China and the United States are joined at the hip economically, each being the other’s biggest trading partner. Any attempt to de- couple the two economies will bring catastrophic consequences for both, and for the world at large. Consumer prices will rise, world economic growth will slow, supply chains will be disrupted and labori- ously duplicated on a global scale, and a digital divide—in technology, the Internet, and telecommunications—will vastly hamper innovation by limiting the horizons and ambitions o technology Ärms.
SILVER LININGS Trump’s trade war does not seem to simply seek to reduce the trade deÄcit. Rather, his administration sees the taris as a means to slow China’s economic rise and check the growing power o a geopolitical competitor. At the heart o this gambit is the notion that China’s system o government involvement in economic activities represents a unique threat to the United States. Robert Lighthizer, the U.S. trade representative, has insisted that the purpose o the taris is to spur China to overhaul its way o doing business. Ironically, it is China’s private sector that has been hardest hit by the trade war, as it accounts for 90 percent o Chinese exports (43 percent o which are from foreign-owned Ärms). I the trade war persists, it will weaken the private sector. China may well agree to commit to purchasing large quantities o U.S. goods as part o a settlement. But such purchases can be made only by the govern- ment, not by the private sector. The United States should recognize that securing such a commitment would basically compel the Chi- nese government to remain a large presence in economic aairs. The trade policy o the Trump administration threatens to undermine its own stated objectives. U.S. ocials should reconsider their analysis o the Chinese econ- omy. To think that there is a unique “China model” o economic development, which represents an alternative and a threat to liberal market systems, is ahistorical nonsense. China has achieved rapid growth in the past 40 years by moving away from the old system o state control o the economy and embracing the market. Today, the market plays a dominant role in resource allocation, and the private sector accounts for more than two-thirds o the economy.
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Weijian Shan
However, the government-controlled sector remains too big, ine- cient, wasteful, and moribund, more o a bane than a boon to the econ- omy. It is also a source o growing friction between China and the West, which fears, with good reason, that Chinese government subsidies and support unfairly advantage state-owned Ärms. This arrangement needs to change, both for China and for its trading partners. China can maintain its economic momentum only by structurally reforming its economy to move in the direction o a freer, more open market. I it fails to do so, its growth will hit a ceiling and its rise will be curtailed. U.S. negotiators should push China to further trim its state-owned sector, to guarantee equal access to its market for trade and investment, and to develop a better regime o intellectual prop- erty protection. These measures would accelerate the trajectory o reform that China embarked on 40 years ago, which has led to the rise o a vibrant private sector in China and the country’s economic integration with the global market. Speeding up this process will not be painless and will be resisted by vested interests in China. But such changes will beneÄt China as well as its trading partners, including the United States. Beijing and Washington should share these objec- tives in their trade negotiations. I they succeed in meeting these goals, both sides will win the trade war. It is in the best interests o both countries to move away from zero- sum thinking and put an end to the ad hoc decoupling that the trade war has threatened. The best path forward is not to close but to tear down existing barriers and further open up trade. To maintain its global primacy and technological leadership, the United States needs China— the biggest and fastest-growing consumer market in the world. To sus- tain the momentum o its economic ascent, China needs to further its reforms and continue opening up to the world market. Ultimately, a mix o cooperation and competition within a rules-based system will lead to the greatest prosperity for both countries and for the world economy, as all trading nations have learned throughout history.∂
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The Progressive Case Against Protectionism How Trade and Immigration Help American Workers Kimberly Clausing
t has almost become the new Washington consensus: decades o growing economic openness have hurt American workers, in- Icreased inequality, and gutted the middle class, and new restric- tions on trade and immigration can work to reverse the damage. This view is a near reversal o the bipartisan consensus in favor o open- ness to the world that deÄned U.S. economic policy for decades. From the end o World War II on, under both Democratic and Re- publican control, Congress and the White House consistently favored free trade and relatively unrestrictive immigration policies. Candi- dates would make protectionist noises to appease various constituen- cies from time to time, but by and large, such rhetoric was conÄned to the margins. Almost never did it translate into actual policy. Then came the 2016 presidential election. Donald Trump found a wide audience when he identiÄed the chie enemy o the American worker as foreigners: trading partners that had struck disastrous trade agreements with Washington and immigrants who were taking jobs from native-born Americans. Everyday workers, Trump alleged, had been let down by a political class beholden to globalist economic ideas. In oce, he has followed through on his nationalist agenda, withdrawing the United States from the Trans-PaciÄc Partnership (¡) and routinely levying higher taris on trading partners. On immigration, he has implemented draconian policies against asylum
KIMBERLY CLAUSING is Thormund A. Miller and Walter Mintz Professor of Economics at Reed College and the author of Open: The Progressive Case for Free Trade, Immigration, and Global Capital.
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Kimberly Clausing
seekers at the border and undocumented immigrants within the United States, as well as reducing quotas for legal immigrants and slowing down the processing o their applications. But Trump has not been alone in his battle against economic open- ness. During the 2016 campaign, he was joined in his calls for protec- tionism by the Democratic primary candidate Bernie Sanders, who also blamed bad trade agreements for the plight o the American worker. Even the Democratic nominee, Hillary Clinton, who as secretary o state had championed the ¡, was forced by political necessity to abandon her earlier support for the agreement. Democrats have not, fortunately, mimicked Trump’s anti-immigrant rhetoric, but when it comes to free trade, their support has often been luke- warm at best. While some Democrats have criticized Trump’s coun- terproductive taris and disruptive trade wars, many o them hesitate when asked i they would repudiate the administration’s trade poli- cies, especially with respect to China. The political winds have shifted; now, it seems as i those who purport to sympathize with workers and stand up for the middle class must also question the merits o economic openness. American workers have indeed been left behind, but open eco- nomic policies remain in their best interest: by reducing prices for consumers and companies, free trade helps workers more than it hurts them, and by creating jobs, oering complementary skills, and paying taxes, so do immigrants. Instead o hawking discredited nation- alist economic ideas, politicians seeking to improve Americans’ eco- nomic lot—especially progressives focused on reducing inequality and rebuilding the middle class—should be looking to domestic policy to address workers’ needs, while also improving trade agree- ments and increasing immigration. That, not taris and walls, is what it will take to improve the plight o regular Americans.
THE TRADE BOOGEYMAN Forty years o widening inequality and slow wage growth have left many Americans searching for answers. It may be tempting, then, to blame the United States’ trading partners, many o which have expe- rienced remarkable jumps in ³² and wages. China, perhaps the most spectacular example, saw its ³² per capita expand more than 22-fold from 1980 to 2018—in terms o 2010 U.S. dollars, from $350 to $7,750. Yet during the same period, U.S. ³² per capita grew from $28,600
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The Progressive Case Against Protectionism
to $54,500. That’s less in relative terms—advanced economies usually grow more slowly than poor ones—but far more in absolute terms, and enough to signiÄcantly boost standards o living. The problem, however, is that the gains have not been evenly shared. Adjusted for inÁation, the average income o the bottom 50 percent o earners stayed nearly Áat between 1980 and 2014. For those in the 50th to 90th percentiles, it grew by about 40 percent, lagging far be- American workers have hind expectations based on the experi- ence o prior generations. Among the indeed been left behind, top one percent, meanwhile, average but open economic policies income has skyrocketed, ballooning by remain in their best 205 percent over the same period. No wonder so many Americans are disap- interest. pointed. The U.S. economy has failed to achieve its most basic aim: generating inclusive growth. Trade does deserve some o the blame. When the United States buys goods from labor-abundant countries such as China and India, the demand for domestic labor falls. This appears to be what hap- pened after the big surge in Chinese imports to the United States in the early years o this century. In a series o oft-cited research papers about “the China shock,” the economists David Autor, David Dorn, and Gordon Hanson estimated that trade with China may have dis- placed the jobs o one million to two million Americans during this period. But it’s important to keep those numbers in perspective. The U.S. economy is a dynamic place, with more than six million jobs lost and created every single quarter. Moreover, the share o Americans working in manufacturing has been declining steadily since 1950, even as growth in trade has waxed and waned—suggesting that fac- tors other than trade are also at play. Indeed, the U.S. economy has experienced other huge changes. Workers have lost bargaining power as unionization has declined (from 30 percent o the labor force in 1960 to less than 11 percent today) and large companies have steadily increased their market power (corporate proÄts as a share o ³² are 50 percent higher than they were in prior decades). Perhaps most important, technology has disrupted countless industries and lowered the demand for less edu- cated labor. Most economists believe that technological change is a far more important factor than international trade in explaining the
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Kimberly Clausing
disappointing outcomes in American labor markets. Across all indus- tries, the returns to education have increased, as less educated workers are disproportionately displaced by automation and computerization. And although manufacturing output continues to rise, manufacturing employment has fallen, as capital takes the place o labor and work- ers steadily move into the service industry. Yet in spite o all this evidence about the eects o technological change, politicians still point Ängers at foreigners.
THE MYTH OF BAD DEALS Critics o trade on both the left and the right contend that much o the problem has to do with bad trade deals that Washington has struck. On the left, the concern is that trade agreements have prioritized the interests o corporations over those o workers. On the right, it is that trade agreements have focused on the goal o international cooperation at the expense o U.S. interests. Trump has argued that U.S. trade deals have been tilted against the United States, contributing to the large trade deÄcit (meaning that the country imports more than it exports) and hollowing out the manufacturing sector. Sanders has echoed these concerns in the past, for example, claiming that the North American Free Trade Agreement (£¬µ¡¬) cost 43,000 jobs in Michigan and is behind Detroit’s urban decline. But just as trade in general is not to blame for the woes o the American worker, neither are the speciÄcs o individual trade deals. In fact, the terms o trade agreements are typically highly favorable to the United States. That’s because such deals usually require U.S. trading partners to lower their trade barriers far more than the United States must, since Washington tends to start o with much lower trade barriers. Such was certainly the case with Mexico, which, prior to £¬µ¡¬, had taris that averaged ten percent, compared with U.S. taris that averaged two percent. This is not to say that trade agreements cannot be improved; useful tweaks could counter the excessive prioritization o intellectual prop- erty and reduce the reach o the mechanism by which investors and states resolve disputes, which critics allege gives companies too much power to Äght health and environmental regulations. The ¡ attempted to modernize £¬µ¡¬ by placing a greater emphasis on the rights o workers and protecting the environment, and future agreements could go even further.
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ZALMAN SHOVAL From British-ruled Palestine to Israel’s ambassador to the U.S. Foreword by Dennis Ross
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Kimberly Clausing
That said, it is easy to overstate the stakes here. Even ideal trade agreements would do little to address economic inequality and wage stagnation, because trade agreements themselves have little to do with those problems. Compared with other factors—the growth o trade in general, technological change, the decline o unionization, and so on—the details o trade agreements are nearly inconsequen- tial. In fact, in the late 1990s, just after the adoption o £¬µ¡¬, the United States saw some o the strongest wage growth in four de- cades. As studies by researchers at the Congressional Research Ser- vice and the Peterson Institute for International Economics have shown, any disruption to the labor market caused by £¬µ¡¬ was dwarfed by other considerations, especially technological change. And even when trade has cost jobs, as with the China shock, the eect did not depend on the particulars o any trade deal. There was and is no U.S. trade agreement with China, just the “most favored nation” status the country was granted when it joined the World Trade Organization in 2001—a status that it would have been hard to deny China, given the country’s massive and growing economy. What really mattered was the mere fact o China’s emergence as an economic powerhouse. Critics o trade are also dead wrong when they argue that U.S. agreements have expanded the trade deÄcit. In fact, it’s the result o borrowing. As economists have long understood, trade deÄcits emerge whenever a country spends more than it earns, and trade surpluses arise whenever a country earns more than it spends. Trade deÄcits and surpluses are simply the Áip side o international bor- rowing and lending. Some countries, such as the United States, are borrowers. They consume more o others’ goods than they send abroad, and they pay the dierence in ¢s (which take the form o foreign investment in U.S. stocks, bonds, and real estate). Other countries, such as Germany, are lenders. They loan money abroad, accruing foreign assets, but receive less in imports than they send in exports. Which country is getting the better end o the deal? It is hard to say. U.S. households enjoy consuming more now, but they will even- tually have to repay the debt; German households get returns on their investments abroad, but they forgo consumption in the present. What this means is that i policymakers wish to reduce the U.S. trade deÄcit—and for now, it is not alarmingly large—they should reduce borrowing, which they can accomplish by shrinking the budget
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The Progressive Case Against Protectionism
The price is right: in a supermarket in Baltimore, Maryland, July 2018 de cit. Instead, policymakers are moving in the opposite direction: the budget de cit has swelled in recent years, especially after the 2017 tax cuts. The new U.S. taris, meanwhile, have done nothing to improve the trade de cit. That came as no surprise to economists.
THE PRICE OF PROTECTIONISM As easily debunked as these myths about trade are, they clearly have a powerful hold on policymakers. That is troubling not merely for what ANDREW MANGUM it reects about the state o public discourse; it also has profound real- world implications. As they lambast trade, politicians are increasingly reaching for protectionist policies. Yet for American workers, such measures only add insult to injury, making their lives even more / THE precarious. They do so in four distinct ways.
NEW First and foremost, taris act as regressive taxes on consumption.
YORK Although the Trump administration likes to claim that foreigners pay the price o taris, in truth, the costs are passed along to consumers, TIMES who must pay more for the imports they buy. (By this past spring,
/ REDUX the cost o the trade war that began in 2018 exceeded $400 per year for the average U.S. household.) Beyond that, taris fall dis- proportionately on the poor, both because the poor consume more
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Kimberly Clausing
o their income and because a higher share o their spending goes to heavily taried products, such as food and clothing. That is one reason why progressives in the early twentieth century, outraged by the inequality o the Gilded Age, pushed for moving away from taris and toward a federal income tax: it was widely recognized that taris largely spared the rich at the expense o the poor. Now, the reverse is happening. After having championed tax cuts that disproportionately beneÄted well-o Americans, the administration has tried to collect more revenue from regressive taxes on trade. Second, taris and trade wars wreak havoc in U.S. labor markets by raising costs for American companies. Many large U.S. manufacturers are heavily dependent on imports. Boeing is a top U.S. exporter, but it is also a major importer, relying on crucial parts from around the world. General Motors now pays over $1 billion in annual taris, no doubt one factor behind the company’s recent decision to shutter a plant in Ohio. When taris interrupt global supply chains, they disadvantage U.S. companies relative to foreign ones. I the goal is to make the United States a more internationally competitive place to locate jobs and direct investment, protectionism is a completely backward approach. Third, trading partners do not sit on their hands when Washington raises taris on their products. Already, the Chinese, the Indians, and the Europeans have slapped serious retaliatory taris on U.S. goods. The victims o these measures include soybean farmers in Iowa and Minnesota (who have lost market share to Canada as Chinese buyers look elsewhere) and whiskey distillers in Kentucky and Tennessee (who have seen their exports to Europe and elsewhere plummet). Finally, trade wars harm the global economy and U.S. trading partners, weakening Washington’s network o alliances and jeopar- dizing the cooperation required to deal with pressing international problems. Recent meetings o the G-7 and the G-20 have been dom- inated by discussions aimed at diusing trade conÁicts, distracting precious diplomatic attention from climate change and nuclear non- proliferation. It is easy to take peace and international cooperation for granted, but they are prerequisites for the success o the U.S. economy in the decades ahead. The world is witnessing another rise in economic nationalism, which makes it easy for politicians and publics to embrace nationalist tendencies in other spheres. It is worth remembering that after the last era o globalization came to a halt, what followed was the Great Depression and World War II.
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The Progressive Case Against Protectionism
PEOPLE POWER Protectionism is harmful for most American workers, but even more destructive are policies that make the United States less welcoming to immigrants. Setting aside the Trump administration’s actions against refugees and the undocumented—a serious moral stain on the coun- try—its eorts to limit immigration are also economically harmful. Immigration has long been an enormous boon for the U.S. econ- omy. Study after study has shown that it is good for economic growth, innovation, entrepreneurship, and job creation and that almost all economic classes within the United States beneÄt from it. Even though only 14 percent o the current U.S. population is foreign- born, immigrants create a disproportionate number o businesses. Fifty-Äve percent o the United States’ $1 billion startups were founded or co-founded by immigrants, and more than 40 percent o the Fortune 500 companies were founded or co-founded by immi- grants or their children. In recent decades, immigrants have ac- counted for more than 50 percent o the U.S.-aliated academics who have won Nobel Prizes in scientiÄc Äelds. Immigrants also provide countless skills that complement those o native-born American workers. Highly educated foreigners with technological skills (such as computer programmers) make up for persistent shortages in the U.S. high-tech sector, and they comple- ment native-born workers who have more cultural Áuency or com- munication skills. Less skilled immigrants also Äll labor shortages in areas such as agriculture and eldercare, where it is often dicult to Änd native-born workers willing to take jobs. There is little evidence that immigration lowers the wages o most native-born workers, although there is some limited evidence that it may cut into the wages or hours o two groups: high school dropouts and prior waves o immigrants. In the case o high school dropouts, however, there are far better ways to help them (such as strengthen- ing the educational system) than restricting immigration. As for prior waves o immigrants, given how substantial their economic gains from migration are—often, they earn large multiples o what they would have made back home—it’s hard to justify their subse- quent slower wage growth as a policy concern. Immigrants have another economic beneÄt: they relieve demo- graphic pressures on public budgets. In many rich countries, popu- lation growth has slowed to such an extent that the government’s
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Kimberly Clausing
Äscal burden o caring for the elderly is enormous. In Japan, there are eight retired people for every ten workers; in Italy, there are Äve retirees for every ten workers. In the United States and Canada, although the budget pressures o an aging population remain, higher immigration levels contribute to a healthier ratio o three retirees for every ten workers. It also helps that recent immigrants have above-average fertility rates. Many objections to immigration are cultural in nature, and these, too, have little grounding in reality. There is no evidence that immi- grants, even undocumented ones, increase crime rates. Nor is there evidence that they refuse to integrate; in fact, they are assimilating faster than previous generations o immigrants did. Given the many beneÄts from immigration, greater restrictions on it pose several threats to American workers. Already, the United States is beginning to lose foreign talent, which will hurt economic growth. For two years straight, the number o foreign students study- ing in U.S. universities has fallen, which is a particular shame since these students disproportionately study science, technology, engi- neering, and mathematics—areas in which the country faces large skills shortages. Encouraging such students to stay in the country after graduation would help the United States maintain its edge in innovation and promote economic growth. Instead, the Trump ad- ministration is discouraging foreign students with visa delays and a constant stream o nationalist rhetoric. Restricting immigration also harms the economy in other ways. It keeps out job creators and peo- ple whose skills complement those o native-born workers. And it increases the pressure on the budget, since restrictions will lead to a higher ratio o retirees to workers. A more sensible immigration policy would make it easier for for- eign students to stay in the United States after graduation, admit more immigrants through lotteries, accept more refugees, and pro- vide a compassionate path to citizenship for undocumented immi- grants currently living in the United States. Promoting U.S. interests means more immigration, not less.
WHAT WORKS While reducing trade and immigration damages the prospects o American workers, free trade and increased immigration are not enough to ensure their prosperity. Indeed, despite decades o relative
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The Progressive Case Against Protectionism
openness to trade and immigration, wages remain stagnant and in- equality high. This has dire implications. As the economist Heather Boushey has argued, inequality undermines the U.S. economy by inhibiting competition and stiÁing the supply o talent and ideas. Unmet economic expectations also fuel voter discontent and political polarization, making it easy to blame outsiders and embrace counter- productive policies. For the sake o both the country’s economy and its politics, economic growth needs to be much more inclusive. To achieve that, the United States needs, above all, a tax system that ensures that economic prosperity lifts all boats. The Earned In- come Tax Credit is a powerful tool in that regard. A credit targeted at lower-income workers that grows as those workers earn more, the ¤¡ subsidizes their work, making each hour o it more lucrative. This Immigration has long been credit should be expanded in size, it should reach further up the income an enormous boon for the distribution, and it should be made U.S. economy. more generous for childless workers— changes that would particularly beneÄt those lower- and middle-class Americans who have seen their wages stagnate in recent decades. This policy would work well alongside an increase in the federal min- imum wage, which would help combat the increased market power o employers relative to employees. Beyond these steps, the federal government should set up a wage insurance program, which could make up some o the dierence in lower wages for workers who have been displaced by foreign compe- tition, technological change, domestic competition, natural disasters, or other forces. The federal government should also make greater investments in infrastructure, education, and research, all o which would beneÄt workers by increasing their productivity and thus their incomes. And it should strengthen the safety net, making improved health-care access and aordability a top priority. None o this will be cheap, o course. To raise revenue, the U.S. tax system needs to be modernized. For corporations, Congress should curb international tax avoidance, closing loopholes and reforming minimum taxes so as to raise government revenues without chasing proÄts oshore. Congress should also strengthen individual and estate taxation, and it can do so without resorting to extreme rates. For the income tax, it can cap or end various deductions and preferences; for
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Kimberly Clausing
the estate tax, it can raise rates and reduce exceptions. And it can bee up enforcement o both. Congress should also enact a long- overdue carbon tax. Coupled with the other policies, a carbon tax could raise substantial revenue without harming poor and middle- class Americans, and it would Äght climate change. Finally, policymakers need to reckon with corporations’ growing market power. They should modernize antitrust laws to put more emphasis on labor and modernize labor laws to suit the nature o work today, making sure that they adequately protect those in the service sector and those in the gig economy. Although large compa- nies are often good for consumers, their market power narrows the share o the economy that ends up in the hands o workers. So the balance o power between companies and their workers needs to be recalibrated from both ends: policies should empower labor move- ments and combat companies’ abuses o market power. In the end, global markets have many wonderful beneÄts, but they need to be accompanied by strong domestic policies to ensure that the beneÄts o international trade (as well as technological change and other forces) are felt by all. Otherwise, economic discontent fes- ters, empowering nationalist politicians who oer easy answers and peddle wrong-headed policies. American workers have every reason to expect more from the economy, but restrictions on trade and immigration ultimately damage their interests. What those who care about reducing inequal- ity and helping workers must realize, then, is that protectionism and nativism set back their cause. Not only do these policies have direct negative eects; they also distract from more eective poli- cies that go straight to the problem at hand. On both sides o the aisle, it’s time for politicians to stop vilifying outsiders and focus instead on policies that actually solve the very real problems aÔicting so many Americans.∂
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Nowhere to Go How Governments in the Americas Are Bungling the Migration Crisis Alexander Betts
n 2015, over 1.2 million asylum seekers arrived in the European Union. They were Áeeing war zones in Afghanistan, South Sudan, Iand Syria; economic deprivation in Nigeria and Pakistan; and po- litical instability in Somalia. The largest group came across the Aegean Sea; many o them reached European territory in Greece and then made their way to Germany. Others crossed the Mediterranean on rickety, overloaded boats or traversed the Bosporus, the Dardanelles, or the Gibraltar strait. Politicians and journalists labeled the situation a “crisis” to reÁect its unprecedented scale. But this was not a crisis o numbers. It was a crisis o politics. European leaders initially resorted to unilateral, quick-Äx solutions. German Chancellor Angela Merkel implemented a short-lived open-border policy. Hungarian Prime Min- ister Viktor Orban built a razor-wire fence. Other countries sought to accommodate, sequester, or cast out the migrants—mostly to no avail. The human consequences were devastating: over 10,000 people have drowned while crossing the Mediterranean since 2015. Those who made it were greeted not as survivors but as usurpers, free riders, or covert extremists; they soon became scapegoats for the radical right. The political consequences changed Europe forever. The Western Hemisphere now faces a migration crisis on a similar scale, with consequences that will likely be just as far-reaching. So far, this crisis has received a piecemeal treatment. Central American mi- grants arriving at the U.S.-Mexican border, Venezuelans crossing dry plains into Colombia, Bolivians seeking work in Argentina and Chile—these are treated as separate phenomena but are in fact part o
ALEXANDER BETTS is Professor of Forced Migration and International Aairs and William Golding Senior Fellow in Politics at Brasenose College, both at the University of Oxford. He is a co-author (with Paul Collier) of Refuge: Transforming a Broken Refugee System.
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Nowhere to Go
On the road again: a caravan of migrants from Arriaga, Mexico, October 2018 the same underlying set o problems. To avoid the kind o human and political toll that the migration crisis produced in Europe, political leaders and policymakers must treat this new situation holistically and learn from past examples. Already, policymakers in the United States and elsewhere in the Americas are repeating European mistakes. So far this year, the U.S. Border Patrol has apprehended over 800,000 people at the southern border—the highest number in over a decade. The previous peak in apprehensions occurred in 2000 and re- sulted mainly from “pull” factors, namely, the high demand for cheap labor. Today’s migrants, in contrast, are responding to “push” factors, including many o the same things that inspired masses o people to ee to Europe four years ago: failed or fragile states, violence, and economic insecurity. To contend with the new arrivals, the United
UESLEI MARCELINOUESLEI States is weighing many o the same approaches that European coun- tries have tried but ultimately found wanting. From border walls to bilateral deals linking immigration to trade and aid, Washington has borrowed directly from a playbook that fell short abroad. For instance, U.S. President Donald Trump’s “Remain in Mexico” policy, requiring / REUTERS migrants hoping to gain asylum in the United States to have their claims assessed while they wait in Mexico, mirrors the ’s long-standing failed attempts to set up similar systems in Libya and elsewhere.
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Alexander Betts
Despite some dierences between the two cases, there are a few strategies that the New World could draw on from the Old World. The key lesson from the European experience o 2015 is that when it comes to migration, there are limits to unilateralism and bilateralism. The sense o crisis began to abate only when the ¤ adopted a multipronged approach grounded in cooperation among the migrants’ countries o origin, transit, and destination.
SEEING DOUBLE The European and American crises are alike in a number o ways. The total number o people apprehended at the U.S. border or deemed in- admissible at a U.S. port o entry since October 2018 is now nearly the same as the number o asylum seekers who arrived in Europe in the whole o 2015. Observers on both sides o the Atlantic have also stum- bled on eerily similar scenes. The widely published photograph o the bodies o Óscar Martínez and his 23-month-old daughter, Valeria, who drowned while attempting to cross the Rio Grande in June, resembles the picture o Alan Kurdi, a Syrian toddler who drowned while trying to cross the Mediterranean in 2015. Both images have come to symbol- ize the awful toll o transnational migration in a world o closed borders. The eects o migration on the European and American political systems are likewise comparable. The rhetoric o xenophobic right- wing Ägures in the United States echoes—and, in some cases, draws on—the pronouncements o their European counterparts. In Europe, such rhetoric fueled anti-immigrant sentiment and encouraged sup- port for right-wing parties. It has had similar eects in the United States, where rising xenophobia has underwritten the Trump admin- istration’s punitive approach to migrants. There are more parallels between the two crises when it comes to their causes, their consequences, and governments’ responses. Both crises resulted from state collapse. In Europe, the immediate trigger was the Syrian civil war. State fragility in Afghanistan and Iraq also contributed to mass displacement, and the chaos in Libya created a transit option and haven for smugglers facilitating movement from sub-Saharan Africa across the Mediterranean. In the Americas, El Salvador, Guatemala, and Honduras have grown highly unstable in recent years. Guatemala appears on the “high warning” list o the Fragile States Index; Honduras is just one grade below. In these states, governing capacity is low, corruption is high, and organized crime
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Nowhere to Go
dominates business, politics, and society. Since the summer o 2018, all three countries have experienced severe drought. Crop failure rates have reached higher than 80 percent; as a result, food insecurity has become a major cause o outmigration. On the opposite side o the Caribbean, Venezuela has crumbled under its president and would-be strongman, Nicolás Maduro. Over four million people have Áed the country, the majority bound for Colombia, Ecuador, or Peru, making this the second-largest displacement crisis in the world. The Americas are also witnessing a human tragedy as dramatic as the one that engulfed Europe in 2015, when more than 3,700 people drowned while crossing the Mediterranean. The number o those dy- ing at the U.S.-Mexican border is considerably smaller—around 400 in the Ärst eight months o this year—but the Ägure is still signiÄcant. What is more, that statistic does not account for the thousands o people who have been subjected to inhumane conditions or have suf- fered injuries on the journey north. Meanwhile, the fact that the rich- est country in the world has resorted to indeÄnitely detaining migrant children signals a lapse in the application o human rights standards similar to what Europe witnessed in 2015. Europe’s initial response to the crisis was characterized by unilater- alism rather than international cooperation. In 2015, the 28 ¤ states struggled to agree on a common response. Merkel’s plea for open bor- ders fell on dea ears, as Austria and Hungary quickly shut their doors. A major source o frustration for northern European states was the sense that southern European states were largely indierent to the problem, simply waving migrants through in the hope that they would move northward. The Mexican government also stood by when mi- grant caravans originating in Central America crossed Mexico en route to the United States in late 2018. And just as richer northern European countries were unable to force their southern neighbors to take more responsibility for the problem, Washington’s unilateral eorts to bully or bribe Mexico to respond more energetically have come to naught. Although South American countries have been far more receptive to Venezuelan migrants than their northern neighbors have been to those Áeeing Central America, they have similarly struggled to develop stan- dardized responses or mechanisms for regional collaboration. The dis- tribution o migrants across the region is highly uneven: by the end o 2018, there were around 1.3 million in Colombia, 768,000 in Peru, 288,000 in Chile, 263,000 in Ecuador, 168,000 in Brazil, and 130,000
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Alexander Betts
in Argentina. Each o these countries handles work permits, public services, and refugee status dierently. In light o the xenophobic back- lash in several countries, some governments have put in place deter- rence measures similar to those that European states used back in 2015; Ecuador, for instance, has introduced a policy requiring Venezuelans to present their criminal records at the border in response to an upsurge in anti-immigrant violence in late 2018.
DITCH THE DICTIONARY The crisis in the Americas—like the European one before it—has raised questions about the usefulness o conventional categories such as “refu- gees” and “economic migrants.” The £’s 1951 Refugee Convention de- Äned a refugee as someone who has “a well-founded fear o being persecuted for reasons o race, religion, nationality, membership o a particular social group or political opinion.” In the 1980 Refugee Act, the U.S. Congress enshrined that description in U.S. law, as well. But the 1951 deÄnition was written to address the upheavals o the early Cold War, especially the emigration o Soviet dissidents. Today, most migrants are not Áeeing powerful regimes that are out to get them. Nor are they simply seeking better economic opportunities. Rather, they are running from states that have failed or that are so fragile that life has become dif- Äcult to bear for their citizens. What Europe saw in 2015 and what the Americas are witnessing today are not simply refugee Áows or market- driven population movements but rather “survival migration”—a term I initially coined to describe the exodus o Zimbabweans from Robert Mugabe’s regime in the early years o this century. Between 2003 and 2010, around two million Zimbabweans Áed to South Africa and other neighboring states. Most o them wanted to escape hyperinÁation, ban- ditry, and food insecurity—the economic consequences o the underly- ing political situation—rather than political persecution per se. Because the majority o these migrants could not be described as either refugees or economic migrants, humanitarian action around the crisis stalled. Many o the migrants who arrived in Europe in 2015, notably those from Syria, were clearly refugees under the 1951 convention. Others— including some Albanians and Kosovars who used the Balkan routes toward Germany alongside the Syrians—were plainly economic mi- grants. But signiÄcant numbers o those crossing the Aegean were Áee- ing fragile states such as Afghanistan and Iraq. European governments were, by and large, unsure o how to label these migrants. In the Ärst
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quarter o this year, 46 percent o Iraqi asylum seekers received recog- nition in Germany, compared with 13 percent in the United Kingdom. Petitioners from failed or fragile Middle Eastern or sub-Saharan Afri- can countries faced—and still face—a sort o recognition lottery whose outcome depends on whether judges and bureaucrats are prepared to shoehorn today’s circumstances into Cold War categories. But few Eu- ropean governments wanted to abandon the old terminology and cate- gories. Governments led by right-of-center parties did not want to open themselves up to possibly greater obligations; those led by left-of- center parties did not want to risk jeop- ardizing the 1951 convention. The rhetoric of xenophobic A similar dynamic seems to be at work in the Americas today, where out- right-wing ¥gures in the dated notions obscure the reality o sur- United States echoes the vival migration. Nowhere is this truer pronouncements of their than in Central America. In the Ärst eight months o this year, around 508,000 European counterparts. people left the so-called Northern Tri- angle region, which consists o El Salvador, Guatemala, and Hondu- ras, bound for the United States. This represents almost double the number who made that trip in any single year since 2014, an increase that has played a major role in the dramatic spike in U.S. border ap- prehensions. Meanwhile, in the past six years, there has been a more than tenfold increase in the number o U.S. asylum applications from these three countries. The reasons Central American migrants have for emigrating are often complex. Poverty levels are high across the Northern Triangle. Drought has contributed to large-scale crop failure, undermining live- lihoods and food security in these predominantly agricultural societies. The £ has suggested that climate change is in part to blame. Mean- while, weak governance contributes to pervasive corruption and vio- lence in the absence o public services. The most visible manifestation o survival migration from the Northern Triangle has been the migrant caravans that have periodi- cally tried to enter the United States through Mexico. A survey by the International Organization for Migration o 800 people in the Ärst caravans o 2019 revealed the complicated motives o the Central Americans who have participated in the northern exodus, with 45 per- cent o those polled indicating that they had moved mainly for better
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economic conditions, nine percent because o violence and insecurity, and 45 percent because o a combination o both. Sixty-eight percent also said that they had had to change their residence in their country o origin in the previous year due to violence or insecurity. As Wash- ington has stepped up enforcement and detention, many Central American migrants have opted to surrender to the U.S. Border Patrol in order to claim asylum rather than try to sneak across the border— contributing to a growing backlog o claims at the U.S. border.
AN UNEASY WELCOME Central America is not the only source o the Western Hemisphere’s migrants, and the United States is hardly their only destination. Un- rest in Venezuela has also driven massive numbers o people from their homes to seek refuge in many other places in the region. Under Maduro’s increasingly authoritarian rule, the country has been beset by violence and economic upheaval since late 2015. Venezuela now has one o the highest murder rates in the world. Ninety percent o the population lives below the poverty line. There was close to 1.7 million percent hyperinÁation in 2018. The exodus ramped up in 2017, when the full weight o the eco- nomic crisis came to bear. Since then, up to four million Venezue- lans—at least seven percent o the country’s population—have left. This is an unprecedented development in the region, arguably sur- passed only by the period between 1979 and 1992, when over 25 per- cent o El Salvador’s population Áed a civil war. Venezuela’s neighbors have responded in vastly dierent ways. Co- lombia’s approach has been the most progressive. The country opened its doors to roughly 1.5 million Venezuelans and has granted them the right to work and to receive basic services. It has recognized Vene- zuelan immigration as a development opportunity, receiving a $31.5 million grant from the World Bank earlier this year, alongside addi- tional concessional Änance, to provide jobs and improved social ser- vices to the migrants and the communities that host them. But Colombia’s government refuses to call these Venezuelans refugees, since doing so might exacerbate a bureaucratic backlog in the asylum system and risk a political backlash in a country where anti-immigrant rhetoric is growing in the border regions. Other countries have been less welcoming. At Ärst, Peru opened its borders, allowing Venezuelans to apply for short-term stays or for asy-
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Nowhere to Go
lum and, from January 2017 until December 2018, oering Venezuelan migrants temporary access to work, education, and banking services. But by the end o 2018, Peru suspended that practice amid concerns that it was creating an incentive for more Venezuelans to come. In 2017, Brazil began oering Venezuelan migrants two-year residency visas and gave all asylum seekers from Venezuela access to work permits and basic services. In 2018, however, the governor o Roraima State ap- pealed to the Supreme Federal Court to close the border until the conditions for “humanitarian reception” were in place. (The court dis- missed the case.) Brazil has also tried, with limited success, to carry out an in- Most South American ternal relocation scheme, in which around 5,000 Venezuelans in the border migrants rely on their kith area have been transferred to 17 other and kin to survive. states across the country. For its part, Ecuador initially welcomed Áeeing Venezuelans but eventually intro- duced stricter border controls in August 2018. In January, the country witnessed a xenophobic backlash after a Venezuelan migrant killed his pregnant Ecuadorian girlfriend; in the face o the resulting anger and violence, many Venezuelans left Ecuador for Colombia. Meanwhile, international organizations have struggled to even de- Äne the crisis in South America, much less deal with it. Until this past spring, the £ High Commissioner for Refugees had only vaguely noted that the region was experiencing a “migrant crisis.” But on May 21, under pressure from human right activists, the £¨ released a statement suggesting that most Venezuelan migrants were actually refugees in need o international protection. The World Bank has characterized the Venezuelan migration as “mainly based on economic reasons but with the characteristics o a refugee situation in terms o the speed o inÁux and levels o vulnerability.” And yet everyone dealing with the situation on the ground agrees that a humanitarian tragedy is unfolding. On the border in Cúcuta, Colom- bia, around 50,000 people cross the checkpoint each day at the Simón Bolívar International Bridge. They set out with suitcases, bags, and hand trolleys to collect food and basic provisions that cannot be easily found in Venezuela. They buy and sell in Cúcuta’s La Parada market or eat at the soup kitchens run by organizations aliated with the World Food Program, which serve a total o 8,000 meals per day. Up to 3,000 o those who cross every day wind up staying in Colombia. Those with passports
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can regularize their status, access public services, and Änd work. By con- trast, those without papers cannot get even the most basic entitlements. Competition and a lack o adequate coordination among £ agencies and nongovernmental organizations is palpable. For example, during my recent visit to the border, some organizations pushed for unrestricted cash assistance to Venezuelans, while others—among them, the Colom- bian government—strongly counseled that this would merely exacerbate existing tensions between migrants and locals. Several agencies com- plained that other agencies initiated schemes without consulting relevant partners, despite the existence o an inter-agency coordination platform. There are, o course, some guiding lights. In beleaguered Cúcuta, a “one-stop shop” border point operated by £ agencies and nongov- ernmental organizations oers emergency relie and guidance to those who most need it. Here, and at other points along the border, £¤µ provides vaccines to the youngest migrants. And a few reception cen- ters oer overnight housing, but only on a temporary basis. Most migrants, however, rely on their kith and kin to survive.
LESSONS FROM THE PAST A new approach is needed to handle this situation—one that recognizes the contemporary realities o survival migration and relies on interna- tional cooperation rather than unilateralism. In 2016, Europe belatedly began to Änd solutions by strengthening international cooperation both among and beyond the 28 ¤ member states. The drop in Mediterra- nean crossings between 2016 and 2019 is due in part to improvements in the security situation in Syria. But the change has also come from stra- tegic reforms aimed at strengthening internal and external cooperation. In March 2016, the ¤ signed an agreement with Turkey, which dur- ing the crisis was the last place that millions o migrants passed through on their way to Europe. The ¤ oered Turkey around two billion eu- ros o assistance in exchange for hosting and integrating refugees while limiting their outward movement. (Although criticized for making some migrant journeys even more dangerous, the deal has reduced Ae- gean Sea crossings for Greece and supported Turkey’s capacity and willingness to host 3.7 million refugees. Unfortunately, due to the growth o anti-immigrant sentiment in Turkey, ocials in Ankara have recently started resettling refugees in the Levant.) The ¤ also created an emergency assistance fund for Africa in late 2015 and dedicated more than four billion euros to support collaboration in the broad area o
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“migration and development” with African states. Agreements that the ¤ forged with countries such as Ethiopia and Jordan have created jobs, supported existing enterprises, and provided more sustainable oppor- tunities for refugees and migrants in those countries. Europe’s approach has been far from perfect—that much is clear. But it is also undeniable that the crisis ended in part owing to policies that created sustainable development opportunities and removed some o the “push” factors that had caused the migrant surge. I U.S. policymakers are serious about developing more sustainable immigration policies, perhaps they ought to borrow European tactics, creating multilateral deals with coun- tries in Latin America that aim to ensure the safety and economic op- portunity o migrants in their countries o origin, transit, and asylum. The Western Hemisphere could also look to its own past for inspi- ration. In 1984, the countries o the region issued the Cartagena Dec- laration on Refugees, which extended the deÄnition o “refugee” to include people Áeeing “massive violations o human rights or other circumstances which have seriously disturbed public order.” This def- inition aptly describes the circumstances o many o the region’s con- temporary survival migrants. But until now, nearly all states have refrained from applying this extended deÄnition to the plight o Cen- tral Americans or Venezuelans. Policymakers could also draw lessons from the 1989 International Conference on Central American Refugees (¤µ¬)—which identi- Äed regional solutions for around two million displaced people across the hemisphere, more than hal o whom were displaced across bor- ders. C¤µ¬ is, in short, one o the most successful historical ex- amples o cooperation on refugees anywhere in the world. The conference set standards for recognizing and responding to dierent categories o migration. And through ¤µ¬, countries created sus- tainable sanctuaries closer to home for the region’s migrants. The impetus behind the conference was just as dramatic as the migration crisis that is troubling the political landscape in the present day. By the end o the 1980s, after a decade o regional conÁict that had produced around 160,000 casualties, there were millions o dis- placed people in Central America. O these, around 150,000 were recognized as refugees, around 900,000 were displaced across borders but not regarded as refugees, and around 900,000 were considered internally displaced. C¤µ¬ aimed to remedy this problem as part o the region’s peace process at the end o the Cold War. The initiative for
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the conference came from the £, working closely with the Contadora Group (Colombia, Mexico, Panama, and Venezuela) and major donors such as the United States and the ¤. As part o the process, the £¨ and the £ Development Program established a joint secre- tariat, based in San José, Costa Rica. The aim o ¤µ¬ was to address forced displacement through a development-based approach. Conference attendees called for the ¤µ¬ secretariat to implement 36 initial projects that would re- quire $375 million over a three-year period. Most o the projects aimed to ensure that, rather than having to migrate long distances in search o security and opportunity, migrants could receive protection and achieve prosperity closer to home. For example, through ¤µ¬, the Mexican government undertook the development o large parts o the Yucatán Peninsula, including Campeche and Quintana Roo, states that at the time hosted tens o thousands o Guatemalan refu- gees. The project created agricultural jobs and other opportunities for Guatemalan refugees to build sustainable lives in Mexico, while simultaneously supporting the development o relatively impover- ished areas o the peninsula. A number o other ¤µ¬ projects encouraged self-reliance on the part o refugees, empowering them to access opportunities both at home and in neighboring countries. For example, 62,000 Nicaraguans, 45,000 Guatemalans, and 27,000 Salvadorans returned home because integrated development projects cropped up in their local communities, schemes aimed at improving employment, infrastructure, and social services. In the end, ¤µ¬ is estimated to have channeled more than $422 million in additional resources to the region, most o it from the United States and the ¤. But ¤µ¬ was not just a one-o pledging confer- ence: it was an ambitious political undertaking that lasted from 1987 to 1995. It led to sustainable solutions even for those who were not o- cially refugees, using the term “externally displaced persons” to capture the needs o people in migration situations that the traditional termi- nology failed to describe. Ultimately, ¤µ¬ did more than just ad- dress a migration crisis: it laid the foundations for two decades o relative peace in Central America.
ANCHORS, NOT WALLS What the Americas need today is a revival o the spirit o international cooperation that drove ¤µ¬. The recently forged Global Compact
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on Refugees—endorsed at the £ General Assembly last year—is a step in the right direction. The agreement calls for responsibility shar- ing on refugee issues and encourages what could be termed “solidarity summits,” gatherings at which countries faced with major displacement challenges can present projects and proposals to the global donor com- munity. Such summits would provide a platform for governments to agree on policies and norms around migrants, refugees, and those who fall in between. The summits would allow governments to pilot new approaches to forced displacement, creating mutually beneÄcial growth opportunities for both displaced populations and host communities. The most obvious place to start would be a solidarity summit to ad- dress Venezuelan refugees and migrants, since there is a clear consen- sus in South America on the need for cooperation and an existing institutional mechanism through which to achieve it. Such a meeting could be hosted by the so-called Quito Group, 11 countries that signed a declaration in 2018 in the Ecuadorian capital calling for “substantially increased” resources to deal with the crisis. Whichever countries from the group that were prepared to move forward with the initiative could do so. The £¨ and the International Organization for Migration would play a key role. (Eduardo Stein, the two organizations’ joint special representative for Venezuelan refugees and migrants, called for a “coherent, predictable, and harmonized regional response” in Au- gust.) Ideally, the summit would lead to a sustained process resembling the one employed by ¤µ¬, run by an intergovernmental secretariat and backed by donor countries in the global North. The main purpose o the process would be twofold: to channel international funding into development projects that will beneÄt both migrants and host-country citizens and to commit to common regional standards for the reception and recognition o migrants across countries. Rich countries such as Canada and the United States have strong incentives to contribute, given the risk that an anti-immigrant backlash across Latin America may spread populist and even revolutionary politics. The goal, above all, must be to expand some o the provisions tra- ditionally available only to refugees to the survival migrants that are the face o today’s crisis. C¤µ¬ proved that such an approach can work, and its legacy is indisputably positive—the sustainable inte- gration o thousands o refugees and other displaced populations. It is high time that the region embarked on a similar project, focused on building anchors rather than walls.∂
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Let Russia Be Russia The Case for a More Pragmatic Approach to Moscow Thomas Graham
ince the end o the Cold War, every U.S. president has come into oce promising to build better relations with Russia—and each Sone has watched that vision evaporate. The Ärst three—Bill Clinton, George W. Bush, and Barack Obama—set out to integrate Russia into the Euro-Atlantic community and make it a partner in building a global liberal order. Each left oce with relations in worse shape than he found them, and with Russia growing ever more distant. President Donald Trump pledged to establish a close partnership with Vladimir Putin. Yet his administration has only toughened the more con- frontational approach that the Obama administration adopted after Rus- sia’s aggression against Ukraine in 2014. Russia remains entrenched in Ukraine, is opposing the United States in Europe and the Middle East with increasing brazenness, and continues to interfere in U.S. elections. As relations have soured, the risk o a military conÁict has grown. U.S. policy across four administrations has failed because, whether conciliatory or confrontational, it has rested on a persistent illusion: that the right U.S. strategy could fundamentally change Russia’s sense o its own interests and basic worldview. It was misguided to ground U.S. policy in the assumption that Russia would join the community o liberal democratic nations, but it was also misguided to imagine that a more ag- gressive approach could compel Russia to abandon its vital interests. A better approach must start from the recognition that relations between Washington and Moscow have been fundamentally competi- tive from the moment the United States emerged as a global power at the end o the nineteenth century, and they remain so today. The two
THOMAS GRAHAM is a Distinguished Fellow at the Council on Foreign Relations and served as Senior Director for Russia on the National Security Council sta during the George W. Bush administration.
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Let Russia Be Russia
Team of rivals: Putin and Trump at the G-20 summit in Hamburg, Germany, July 2017 countries espouse profoundly dierent concepts o world order. They pursue opposing goals in regional conicts such as those in Syria and Ukraine. The republican, democratic tradition o the United States stands in stark contrast to Russia’s long history o autocratic rule. In both practical and ideological terms, a close partnership between the two states is unsustainable. In the current climate, that understanding should come naturally to most U.S. policymakers. Much harder will be to recognize that ostra- cizing Russia will achieve little and likely prove to be counterproduc- tive. Even i its relative power declines, Russia will remain a key player in the global arena thanks to its large nuclear arsenal, natural resources, geographic centrality in Eurasia, Security Council veto, and highly skilled population. Cooperating with Russia is essential to grappling with critical global challenges such as climate change, nu- clear proliferation, and terrorism. With the exception o China, no country aects more issues o strategic and economic importance to the United States than Russia. And no other country, it must be said, is capable o destroying the United States in 30 minutes. EVAN A more balanced strategy o restrained competition would not only VUCCI reduce the risk o nuclear war but also provide the framework for the
AP / cooperation needed to tackle global challenges. Smarter relations with Russia can help guarantee European security and strategic stability,
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bring a modicum o order to the Middle East, and manage the rise o China. As U.S. policymakers demand that Russia moderate its behav- ior, they must be prepared to scale back their near-term goals, espe- cially in settling the crisis in Ukraine, to forge a more productive relationship with Moscow. Above all, U.S. policymakers will need to see Russia plainly, with- out sentiment or ideology. A new Russia strategy must dispense with the magical thinking o previous administrations and instead seek in- cremental gains that advance long-term U.S. interests. Rather than trying to persuade Moscow to understand its own interests dier- ently, Washington must demonstrate that those interests can be more safely pursued through both considered competition and cooperation with the United States.
END OF THE ILLUSION Washington’s initial post–Cold War emphasis on partnership and in- tegration fundamentally misread the reality in Russia, positing that the country was in the midst o a genuine democratic transition and that it was too weak to resist U.S. policies. To be sure, the premise that Russia was shedding its authoritarian past did not appear unrea- sonable in the early 1990s. In the U.S. view, the Cold War had ended with the triumph o Western democracy over Soviet totalitarianism. The former Soviet bloc countries began to democratize after the revo- lutions o 1989. The rising forces o globalization fed the belie that free-market democracy was the pathway to prosperity and stability in the decades ahead. The leaders o the new Russia—President Boris Yeltsin and the dynamic young reformers around him—declared their commitment to sweeping political and economic reforms. Yet even in the 1990s, there were signs that these assumptions were wrong. Contrary to the dominant Western narrative, the col- lapse o the Soviet Union marked not a democratic breakthrough but the victory o Yeltsin, a populist, over Soviet leader Mikhail Gorbachev, who ironically was a more committed democrat, having overseen what remain the freest and fairest elections in Russian his- tory. Russia had few enduring native democratic traditions to draw from and only a shaky sense o political community on which to base a well-functioning democracy. To make matters worse, the state institutions fell prey to rapacious oligarchs and regional barons. Ruthless cliques competed, often violently, to carve up the assets o
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Let Russia Be Russia
a once totally nationalized economy. Political chaos spread as old- time Communists and Soviet patriots battled more progressive forces. The disorder intensied throughout the 1990s to the point that many observers feared Russia would crumble, just as the Soviet Union had earlier in the decade. The task o restoring order fell to Yeltsin’s successor, Putin. Even as he packaged his plans in democratic rheto- ric, Putin made clear in a document called “Russia at the Turn o the Millennium” (released on December 30, 1999) that he intended to return to the traditional Russian model o a strong, highly centralized authoritarian state. “Russia,” he wrote, “will not soon, i ever, become a version o the United States or England, where liberal values have deep historical roots. . . . For Russians, a strong and sturdy state is not an anomaly to be resisted. To the contrary, it is the source and guaran- tor o order, the initiator and driver o any change.” U.S. ocials were not blind to the obstacles to democratic reform or to Putin’s intentions, but in the afterglow o the Cold War victory, they insisted that partnership with Russia had to be grounded in shared democratic values; mere common interests would not suce. To build public support for its policies, each administration assured Americans that Russia’s leaders were committed to democratic re- forms and processes. From the 1990s on, the White House measured the success o its approach in large part in terms o Russia’s progress toward becoming a stronger and more functional democracy, an un- certain enterprise over which the United States had little inuence. Not surprisingly, the strategy collapsed when it proved impossible to bridge the gap between that illusion and Russia’s increasingly authori- tarian reality. For Clinton, the moment o truth came when Yeltsin installed a new government o conservatives and Communists after the 1998 nancial collapse in Russia; for Bush, it came when Putin cracked down on civil society in reaction to the Orange Revolution in Ukraine in 2004; and for Obama, it came when Putin announced in 2011 that, after having served as prime minister, he would reclaim the presidency. The second awed premise—that Russia lacked the strength to challenge the United States—also appeared sensible in the early post-Soviet years. Russia’s economy contracted by nearly 40 percent between 1991 and 1998. The once feared Red Army, starved o in- vestment, became a shadow o its former self. Russia was dependent on Western nancial support to keep both its economy and its gov- ernment aoat. In these circumstances, the Clinton administration
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for the most part got its way, intervening in the Balkans and expanding £¬¡¢ without serious pushback from Russia. This premise, however, became less plausible as Russia’s economy rapidly recovered after Putin took oce and restored order by clamping down on the oligarchs and regional barons. He subsequently launched a concerted eort to modernize the military. Yet the Bush administration, convinced o Washington’s unparalleled might in the “unipolar moment,” showed little respect for renewed Russian power. Bush withdrew from the Anti-Ballistic Missile Treaty, expanded £¬¡¢ further, and welcomed the so-called color revolutions in Georgia and Ukraine, with their anti- Russian overtones. Similarly, the Obama administration, although less certain o American power, still dismissed Russia. As the upheavals o the Arab Spring unfolded in 2011, Obama declared that Syrian Presi- dent Bashar al-Assad, a Russian client, had to go. Washington also paid little heed to Russia’s objections when the United States and its allies exceeded the terms o the £ Security Council–backed intervention in Libya, turning a mandate to protect an endangered population into an operation to overthrow the country’s strongman, Muammar al-QaddaÄ. Both the Bush and the Obama administrations were brought crash- ing down to earth. The Russian incursion into Georgia in 2008 dem- onstrated to the Bush administration that Russia had a veto over £¬¡¢ expansion in the guise o the use o force. Similarly, Russia’s seizure o Crimea and destabilization o eastern Ukraine in 2014 shocked the Obama administration, which had earlier welcomed the ouster o Vik- tor Yanukovych, the pro-Russian Ukrainian president. A year later, Russia’s military intervention in Syria saved Assad from imminent defeat at the hands o U.S.-backed rebels.
WILL TO POWER Today, nearly everyone in Washington has dropped the pretense that Russia is on the path to democracy, and the Trump administration considers Russia to be a strategic competitor. These are overdue course corrections. Yet the current strategy o punishing and ostra- cizing Russia is also Áawed. Beyond the obvious point that the United States cannot isolate Russia against the wishes o such major powers as China and India, this strategy makes some grave mistakes. For one thing, it exaggerates Russian power and demonizes Putin, turning relations into a zero-sum struggle in which the only acceptable outcome o any dispute is Russia’s capitulation. But Putin’s foreign
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Let Russia Be Russia
policy has been less successful than advertised. His actions in Ukraine, aimed at preventing that country’s westward drift, have only tied Ukraine more closely to the West while refocusing £¬¡¢ on its original mission o containing Russia. Putin’s meddling in U.S. elections has complicated relations with the United States, which Russia needs to normalize to win greater foreign investment and to create a long-term alternative to its excessive strategic dependence on China. In the absence o concerted Western action, Putin has inserted Russia as a major player in many geopolitical conÁicts, most notably in Syria. Nevertheless, Putin has yet to demonstrate that he can bring any conÁict to an end that consolidates Russia’s gains. At a time o economic stagnation and spreading socioeconomic Putin’s foreign policy has discontent, his activist foreign policy been less successful than now risks overstretch. In these circum- advertised. stances, Putin needs to retrench. And that imperative should open up possibilities for the United States to turn to diplomacy and reduce the burden o competition with Russia while protecting U.S. interests. Another Áaw in the current strategy is that it imagines Russia as a pure kleptocracy, whose leaders are motivated principally by a desire to pre- serve their wealth and ensure their survival. To work, this policy assumes that sanctioned ocials and oligarchs will pressure Putin to change his policy in Ukraine, for example, or unwind Russia’s interference in Amer- ican domestic politics. Nothing o the sort has happened because Russia is more like a patrimonial state, in which personal wealth and social position are ultimately dependent on the good graces o those in power. U.S. policymakers are also guilty o not reckoning seriously with Russia’s desire to be perceived as a great power. Russia is indeed weak by many measures: its economy is a fraction o the size o the U.S. economy, its population is unhealthy by U.S. standards, and its invest- ment in the high-tech sector is far below U.S. levels. But Russian leaders cling to the conviction that to survive, their country must be a great power—one o the few countries that determine the structure, substance, and direction o world aairs—and they are prepared to endure great ordeals in pursuit o that status. That mindset has driven Russia’s global conduct since Peter the Great brought his realm into Europe more than 300 years ago. Since the collapse o the Soviet Union, Russian leaders have focused on restoring Russia’s great-power
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status, just as their predecessors did after the national humiliation o the Crimean War in the 1850s and then again after the demise o the Russian empire in 1917. As Putin wrote two decades ago, “For the Ärst time in the past two to three centuries, [Russia] risks sliding to the second, and possibly even third, echelon o world states. To prevent this, we must exert all our intellectual, physical, and moral forces. . . . Everything depends on our ability to grasp the dimensions o the threat, to rally together, and to commit to this long and dicult task.” Part o that task is countering the United States, which Putin sees as the primary obstacle to Russia’s great-power aspirations. In con- trast to what it imagines as Washington’s unipolar ambitions, the Kremlin insists on the existence o a multipolar world. More con- cretely, Russia has sought to undermine Washington’s standing by checking U.S. interests in Europe and the Middle East and has tried to tarnish the United States’ image as a paragon o democratic virtue by interfering in its elections and exacerbating domestic discord.
RUSSIA’S WORLD In its quest for great-power status, Russia poses speciÄc geopolitical chal- lenges to the United States. These challenges stem from Russia’s age-old predicament o having to defend a vast, sparsely settled, multiethnic country located on a landmass that lacks formidable physical barriers and that abuts either powerful states or unstable territories. Historically, Rus- sia has dealt with this challenge by maintaining tight control domesti- cally, creating buer zones on its borders, and preventing the emergence o a strong coalition o rival powers. Today, this approach invariably runs against U.S. interests in China, Ukraine, Europe, and the Middle East. No part o eastern Europe and the former Soviet Union has loomed larger in the Russian imagination than Ukraine, which is strategically positioned as a pathway into the Balkans and central Europe, blessed with tremendous economic potential, and hailed by Russians as the cradle o their own civilization. When a U.S.-supported popular movement in 2014 threatened to rip Ukraine out o Russia’s orbit, the Kremlin seized Crimea and instigated a rebellion in the eastern re- gion o the Donbas. What the West considered a Áagrant violation o international law, the Kremlin saw as self-defense. When they look at Europe in its entirety, Russian leaders see at once a concrete threat and a stage for Russian greatness. In practical terms, the steps Europe took toward political and economic consolidation
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Let Russia Be Russia
raised the prospect o an enormous entity on Russia’s borders that, like the United States, would dwar Russia in population, wealth, and power. Psychologically, Europe remains central to Russia’s great- power sensibilities. For the past three centuries, Russia has demon- strated its prowess on Europe’s great battleÄelds and through its grand diplomatic conferences. After the defeat o Napoleon in 1814, for example, it was the Russian emperor Alexander I who received the key to the city o Paris. Europe’s consolidation and the continued expansion o £¬¡¢ have had the eect o pushing Russia out o Eu- rope and diminishing its voice in continental aairs. And so the Kremlin has accelerated eorts to exploit the fault lines within and between European states and to stoke doubts in vulnerable £¬¡¢ members about their allies’ commitment to collective defense. In the Middle East, Russia has returned after an absence o some 30 years. At Ärst, Putin intervened in Syria both to protect a long- standing client and to prevent the victory o radical Islamist forces with ties to extremists inside Russia. But after saving Assad and see- ing the absence o a strong U.S. role, his ambitions grew. Russia de- cided to use the Middle East as an arena to showcase its great-power credentials. Largely bypassing the £-sponsored peacemaking pro- cess, in which the United States is a central player, Russia has teamed up with Iran and Turkey to seek a Änal political resolution o the crisis in Syria. To reduce the risk o a direct conÁict between Iran and Israel, Russia has strengthened its diplomatic ties to Israel. It has rebuilt relations with Egypt and worked with Saudi Arabia to manage oil prices. It has also grown closer to China in developing a strategic counter- balance to the United States. This relationship has helped Russia resist the United States in Europe and the Middle East, but the greater concern for Washington should be how it enhances Beijing’s capabilities. Russia has aided China’s commercial penetration o Cen- tral Asia and, to a lesser extent, Europe and the Middle East. It has given China access to natural resources at favorable prices and has sold the country sophisticated military technology. In short, Russia is abetting China’s rise as a formidable competitor to the United States. Moscow’s more assertive foreign policy today is a reÁection not o the country’s growing strength—in absolute terms, its power hasn’t increased much—but o the perception that U.S. disarray has magniÄed Russia’s relative power. The country’s behavior is also driven by a per- sistent fear that guides Russian foreign policy: the sense that in the long
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run, Russia will fall dangerously behind both the United States and China. The Russian economy is stagnating, and even ocial projections see little hope for improvement in the next ten years. Russia cannot invest as much as its two competitors in the critical technologies, such as artiÄcial intelligence, bioengineering, and robotics, that will shape the character o power in the future. Putin may be pressing hard now, at the time o Russia’s heightened relative power, to better position the country in the new multipolar world order he sees emerging.
BETWEEN ACCOMMODATION AND RESISTANCE The challenge Russia now poses to the United States does not echo the existential struggle o the Cold War. Rather, the contest is a more limited competition between great powers with rival strategic impera- tives and interests. I the United States was able to reach accommoda- tions with the Soviet Union to strengthen global peace and security while advancing American interests and values, surely it can do the same with Russia today. Beginning in Europe, U.S. policymakers should give up any ambi- tions o expanding £¬¡¢ farther into formerly Soviet spaces. Rather than courting countries that £¬¡¢ is unwilling to defend militarily— note the limp responses to Russian attacks on Georgia and Ukraine— the alliance should strengthen its own internal cohesion and reassure vulnerable members o its commitment to collective defense. Halt- ing £¬¡¢ expansion eastward would remove a central reason for Rus- sia’s encroachments on former Soviet states. But the United States should still cooperate on security matters with those states, a kind o relationship that Russia tolerates. So far, the United States has insisted that the possibility o £¬¡¢ membership remains open to Ukraine. Washington has categorically rejected Russia’s incorporation o Crimea and insisted that the conÁict in the Donbas be brought to an end on the basis o the agreement signed in Minsk in 2015, which stipulates a special autonomous status for separatist regions inside a reunited Ukraine. This approach has made little headway. The Donbas conÁict continues, and Russia is putting down deeper roots in Crimea. Distracted from reform by the struggle with Russia, Ukraine is beset by corruption, political volatil- ity, and economic underperformance. The recent election in Ukraine o a new president, Volodymyr Zelensky, whose supporters now dominate the parliament, has created
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an opening for a comprehensive resolution o the crisis. Two tradeos are essential. First, to allay Russian concerns, the United States should tell Ukraine that £¬¡¢ membership is o the table, while deepening bilateral security cooperation with Kiev. Second, Kiev should recog- nize Russia’s incorporation o Crimea in exchange for Moscow’s acceptance o the full reintegration o the Donbas into Ukraine with- out any special status. In a comprehen- sive agreement, Ukrainians would also receive compensation for lost property After defeating Napoleon, in Crimea and Ukraine would be af- the Russian emperor forded access to oshore resources and Alexander I received the guaranteed passage through the Kerch Strait to ports on the Sea o Azov. The key to the city of Paris. United States and the ¤ would incre- mentally ease their sanctions on Russia as these arrangements took eect. At the same time, they would oer Ukraine a substantial as- sistance package aimed at facilitating reform in the belie that a strong, prosperous Ukraine is both the best deterrent against future Russian aggression and a necessary foundation for more constructive Russian-Ukrainian relations. Such an approach would be met initially with great skepticism in Kiev, Moscow, and elsewhere in Europe. But Zelensky has staked his presidency on resolving the Donbas conÁict, and Putin would wel- come the chance to redirect resources and attention to countering spreading socioeconomic unrest in Russia. Meanwhile, European leaders are suering from Ukraine fatigue and want to normalize rela- tions with Russia while still upholding the principles o European security. The time is ripe for bold diplomacy that would allow all sides to claim a partial victory and accommodate the hard realities on the ground: £¬¡¢ is not prepared to accept Ukraine as a member, Crimea is not going back to Ukraine, and a separatist movement in the Don- bas is nonviable without Moscow’s active involvement. A smarter Russia strategy would also better reckon with the impli- cations o the Kremlin’s military intervention in the Middle East. It is Iran—not Russia—that poses the main challenge there. When it comes to Iran, Russia has diverging, but not necessarily opposing, interests from those o the United States. Like the United States, Russia does not want Iran to obtain nuclear weapons—that was why it supported the nuclear deal with Iran, the Joint Comprehensive Plan
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o Action, from which the Trump administration withdrew in 2018. Like the United States, Russia does not want Iran to dominate the Middle East; Moscow seeks to forge a new equilibrium in the region, albeit with a dierent conÄguration than the one sought by Washing- ton. The Kremlin has worked to improve relations with other regional powers, such as Egypt, Israel, Saudi Arabia, and Turkey, none o which is especially friendly with Iran. Russia has paid particular at- tention to Israel, allowing it to strike Iranian and Hezbollah positions in Syria. I the United States deferred to Russia’s limited security in- terests in Syria and accepted Russia as a regional player, it could likely persuade the Kremlin to do more to check aggressive Iranian behavior. The Trump administration is already moving in this direction, but a more vigorous eort is warranted. Washington must also update its approach to arms control. What worked for the last 50 years no longer will. The world is shifting toward a multipolar order, and China in particular is modernizing its forces. Countries are developing advanced conventional weapons capable o destroying hardened targets once vulner- able only to nuclear weapons and cyber- When it comes to Iran, weapons that could put at risk nuclear Russia has diverging, but command-and-control systems. As a re- not opposing, interests from sult, the arms control regime is breaking those of the United States. down. The Bush administration with- drew from the Anti-Ballistic Missile Treaty in 2002, which the president de- scribed as an obsolete relic o the Cold War, and in 2018, the Trump administration withdrew from the Intermediate-Range Nuclear Forces Treaty, which it had derided as ineective and out o date. Nevertheless, the United States should prolong New ¡¬¡—the strategic arms reduction treaty signed in 2010 that is set to expire in 2021—a move that Russia supports despite the Trump administra- tion’s hesitation. The treaty fosters transparency and trust between the two countries—essential qualities in a time o strained rela- tions—but it does not restrain the accelerating arms race in increas- ingly sophisticated and powerful weapons. The most promising systems—hypersonic weapons and cyberweapons, for example—fall outside the New ¡¬¡ treaty’s purview. Policymakers need to de- velop a new arms control regime that encompasses novel, rapidly developing technologies and includes other major powers. Although
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Let Russia Be Russia
it is necessary to bring China into the process at some point, the United States and Russia should take the lead, as they have before— they possess unique experience in considering the theoretical and practical requirements o strategic stability and corresponding arms control measures. Together, Washington and Moscow should develop a new arms control regime and then bolster it with multilateral support. On strategic nuclear issues and other matters, the United States cannot prevent the rise o China, but it can channel growing Chinese power in ways that are consistent with U.S. interests. It should make Russia part o this eort rather than drive Russia into China’s em- brace, as the United States is now doing. It is impossible, o course, to turn Russia against China; Russia has every reason to pursue good relations with a neighbor that has already surpassed it as a major power. But the United States could deftly encourage a dierent balance o power in Northeast Asia that would serve U.S. purposes. To do so, U.S. policymakers should help multiply Russia’s alterna- tives to China, thereby improving the Kremlin’s bargaining position and reducing the risk that its trade and security agreements with Bei- jing will be tilted heavily in China’s favor, as they are now. As U.S.- Russian relations improve in other areas, the United States should focus on removing those sanctions that prevent Japanese, South Ko- rean, and U.S. investment in Russia’s Far East and that block joint ventures with Russian Ärms in Central Asia. Increasing Russia’s options would give the Kremlin greater leverage in dealing with China, to the United States’ advantage. U.S. eorts to moderate competition on regional issues could incline Russia to curb its electoral meddling, but the problem won’t go away easily. Some level o interference, from Russia and from other states, is unavoidable in today’s interconnected world. Because European de- mocracies face similar challenges, the United States should work with its allies to develop joint and reinforcing responses to these cyberthreats. There should be some redlines regarding Russian behavior; for instance, U.S. ocials should take a strong stance against hacking that aims to weaponize stolen information or corrupt data, including voter rolls and vote counts. With better-coordinated exchanges o intelligence, the sharing o best practices, and occasional joint action, the United States and its allies must harden critical electoral infrastructure, push back against Russia with criminal prosecutions and targeted sanctions, and, when appropriate, launch cyber-counterstrikes.
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Thomas Graham
Russian propaganda outlets, such as the television channel ¡, Sputnik radio, and social media accounts, pose a trickier problem. A conÄdent, mature, and sophisticated democratic society should be capable o containing this threat with ease without frantically trying to shut down oending websites and Twitter accounts. Amid hyper- partisan rancor in the United States, however, the media and the political class have exaggerated the threat, blaming Russia for do- mestic discord and dangerously narrowing the room for critical de- bate by insinuating that opinions that might align with ocial Russian preferences are part o a Kremlin-inspired inÁuence cam- paign. A more constructive approach would be for the United States and other democracies to foster greater awareness o the arts o me- dia manipulation and help raise the critical reading skills o their publics, without dampening the vigorous debate that is the lifeblood o democratic societies. Some Scandinavian countries and Baltic states have devoted considerable eort to these tasks, but the United States has lagged behind. As the United States hardens its systems and educates its citizens, it should also involve Russia in establishing rules o the road in cyber- space. Even i such rules are not fully observed in practice, they could act as a restraint on the most troubling behavior, much in the way the Geneva Conventions have constrained armed conÁict. On all these issues, the proposed mix o accommodation and resis- tance takes into account the hard realities o Russian interests and American power. This approach stands in sharp contrast to the ones U.S. administrations have pursued since the end o the Cold War, which misread Russia and refused to recognize U.S. limitations. In many ways, this strategy would represent a return to the tradition o U.S. foreign policy before the end o the Cold War. That grand tradition was forward-looking, pursuing foreign policy with patience over time and satisÄed in the short term with incre- mental gains. The United States did not fear making accommoda- tions with Moscow because it was conÄdent in its values and its future, aware o its great power but mindful o its limitations and respectful o its rival’s power. This subtle understanding marked the strategies that all U.S. Cold War–era presidents pursued to master the challenge from Moscow. By recapturing the virtues o its past, the United States can master that challenge again today.∂
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BUILDING DEMOCRACY CREATING OPPORTUNITY PROMOTING PEACE
November 22—24, 2019 • Halifax Nova Scotia • HalifaxTheForum.org UPLOADED BY "What's News" vk.com/wsnws TELEGRAM: t.me/whatsnws
Beyond Great Forces How Individuals Still Shape History Daniel Byman and Kenneth M. Pollack
istory used to be told as the story o great men. Julius Caesar, Frederick the Great, George Washington, Napoléon HBonaparte, Adol Hitler, Mao Zedong—individual leaders, both famous and infamous, were thought to drive events. But then it became fashionable to tell the same stories in terms o broader struc- tural forces: raw calculations o national power, economic interde- pendence, or ideological waves. Leaders came to be seen as just vehicles for other, more important factors, their personalities and predilections essentially irrelevant. What mattered was not great men or women but great forces. In his 1959 classic, Man, the State, and War, the scholar Kenneth Waltz made the case for this new approach. He argued that focusing on individual leaders or human nature more broadly oered little purchase when it came to understanding global politics. Instead, one should look at the framework o the international system and the distribution o power across it. In the midst o the Cold War, Waltz was contending that it mattered little whether Dwight Eisenhower or Adlai Stevenson occupied the White House, or Joseph Stalin or Nikita Khrushchev the Kremlin. The United States and the Soviet Union would pursue the same interests, seek the same allies, and otherwise be forced by the pressure o Cold War competition to act in a certain way. Academics embraced the “structuralist” Zeitgeist, and in subse- quent decades, although some theorists expanded their list o the primary movers in international relations to include regime types, institutions, and ideas, they continued to downplay leaders. Today, at
DANIEL BYMAN is a Professor at Georgetown University’s School of Foreign Service and a Senior Fellow at the Brookings Institution.
KENNETH M. POLLACK is a Resident Scholar at the American Enterprise Institute.
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Beyond Great Forces
a time when vast impersonal forces appear to deÄne our world, that bias against the individual might seem justiÄed. Economics, technol- ogy, and politics are all changing in ways that seemed unimaginable only decades ago. Developments in communications, transportation, climate, education, cultural values, and health have fundamentally altered relationships among people within communities and across the globe. The information revolution has given rise to the super- empowered individual and the superempowered state and pitted them against each other. Meanwhile, power is being redistributed across the globe, with the unipolar era o American primacy that fol- lowed the Cold War giving way to an unpredictable multipolarity. Such are the faceless beasts wreaking havoc today. Structural factors and technological change no doubt drive much o states’ behavior, but they are not the only pieces o the puzzle. Even today, individual leaders can ride, guide, or resist the broader forces o international politics. And so there are still some men and women who are charting their nations’ paths—some beneÄcial, some disastrous, but all inconceivable without those leaders’ individual characters.
THE REVOLUTIONARIES Saudi Arabia’s de facto ruler, Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman, or MBS, is the most obvious example o a leader defying the pressure o both domestic politics and international circumstances and, in so doing, redeÄning both, for better and worse. For decades, change in Saudi Arabia moved at a glacial pace. The question o whether women should be allowed to drive, for example, had been debated since 1990 with no resolution. Saudi leaders ruled collectively, ensuring that any policy changes were accepted by all the major branches o the sprawl- ing royal family and the religious establishment. Although the ruling elite talked about the importance o fundamental reform for years, they did little to nothing, thwarted by conservative clerics, powerful economic interests, and a consensus-oriented political culture. Then came MBS. MBS means to upend Saudi Arabia’s economy and society (but, crucially, not its political system), and he has begun secularizing Saudi society, overhauling the kingdom’s traditional ed- ucational system, and reforming its stunted economy. Like an earlier generation o autocratic modernizers—Benito Mussolini o Italy, Kemal Ataturk o Turkey, Stalin, and Mohammad Reza Shah Pahlavi o Iran—he is determined to drag his country into the new century
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and isn’t put o by the human cost o doing so. Whether he succeeds or fails, MBS has deÄed the risk-averse logic o Saudi politics and is betting everything on his far-reaching reforms. On foreign policy, MBS has also broken with decades o tradi- tion. From 1953 to 2015, under Kings Saud, Faisal, Khalid, Fahd, and Abdullah, Saudi Arabia had a modest international role. It mostly relied on others, primarily the United States, to secure its interests, tossing in a little checkbook diplomacy from time to time. It rarely fought wars, and when it did, it was only as a bit player fol- lowing someone else’s lead. It kept its squabbles with its Arab allies under wraps and hewed closely to the American line. MBS has charted a radically dierent course. Holding Lebanon’s prime min- ister hostage to force him to resign, intervening in the Yemeni civil war, isolating Qatar, killing the Saudi dissident Jamal Khashoggi in Turkey, cozying up to China and Russia, threatening to acquire nu- clear weapons, forging a tacit alliance with the Israelis at the ex- pense o the Palestinians—all represent breathtaking departures from past policy. Although the kingdom’s changing international circumstances make some o this understandable, MBS has consis- tently chosen the most radical option, at the far extreme o what international incentives alone would have predicted. It is useful to consider what might have happened i the system had worked as it traditionally had. In 2017, King Salman, who had ascended to the throne two years earlier, sidelined the incumbent crown prince, his nephew Mohammed bin Nayef, and replaced him with MBS, one o his younger sons. Naye was a close U.S. counter- terrorism partner and an establishment man who favored stability above all. Indeed, his initial appointment as crown prince was in part meant to calm any fears that King Salman would take the country in a dramatically dierent direction. It is hard to imagine that Naye would have risked alienating the clerical establishment while em- barking on high-risk gambits across the Arab world. But owing to some combination o ambition, vision, ego, youth, risk tolerance, insight, and ruthlessness, MBS has done exactly that. Such top-down revolutionaries are few and far between. Yet when they appear, they are transformative. Stalin turned the Soviet Union into an industrial power, slaughtering tens o millions o people in the process. Mao tried to do something similar in China, successfully uniting the country and destroying the power o traditional elites,
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Beyond Great Forces
Prince Charming: Mohammed bin Salman in London, March 2018 but at the cost o¡ millions o° lives. His successor, Deng Xiaoping, trans- formed the country again by dumping Mao’s state-centric economic model, thus enabling China’s remarkable rise.
THE DECIDERS Across the Persian Gulf, MBS’ great rival is a very dierent kind o¡ leader, but one who also exercises an outsize impact. Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, Iran’s supreme leader, is a cautious old man. I´ MBS is defying the impersonal forces o° both Saudi Arabia’s domestic politics and its traditional foreign policy, Khamenei sits at the crossroads o¡ Iran’s intersecting domestic and international pressures and directs the tra¼c as he sees ¯t. Today, it is simplistic, but not entirely inaccurate, to say that Ira- nian politics is a struggle between two opposing camps. A group o¡
ALASTAIR reformists and pragmatists seeks to reform Iran’s foreign and economic policies to address the dire needs o¡ the Iranian people. Their ap- proach represents a natural response to Iran’s circumstances: it is a GRANT resource-rich country that has been impoverished and immiserated
AP / by its own aggressive behavior. Opposing the pragmatists is a group o° hard-liners devoted to both aggression abroad and repression at
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Daniel Byman and Kenneth M. Pollack
home, and they dominate Iran’s domestic politics. This camp is mo- tivated more by its Persian nationalism and revolutionary zeal than by a cool-headed examination o how to grow Iran’s economy or end its diplomatic isolation. Khamenei is the pivot. He weighs the international pressure push- ing Iran in the direction o the reformists and pragmatists against the domestic pressure from the hard-liners. With these impersonal forces more or less in balance, it is Khamenei who gets to choose which way to tack as each issue comes before him. Sometimes, he sides with the hard-liners—for instance, doubling down on the support o militias in Iraq, Syria, and Yemen. At other times, he sides with the pragma- tists, as when he accepted the 2015 nuclear deal brokered by the United States, an agreement that promised to revive Iran’s economy through international trade in exchange for limits on its nuclear program. It was not inevitable that an Iranian leader would act this way. After the death o Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini, in 1989, one leading candi- date to succeed him was Mohammad Reza Golpaygani. Anyone cho- sen would have agreed with the general contours o the revolutionary frame- There are still some men work established by Khomeini, but and women who are within those guidelines, much remained charting their nations’ unsettled. Compared with Khamenei, paths—some bene¥cial, Golpaygani was a more traditional conservative, skeptical o what he saw some disastrous. as the regime’s social tolerance by al- lowing music on radio and television, yet far less revolutionary in his foreign policy views. In the end, revolutionary legitimacy trumped scholarly strength, and the mul- lahs—with Khomeini’s blessing—selected Khamenei. How might Golpaygani have ruled? Given his preferences, he would likely have erred more on the side o social conservativism and less on the side o aggressive foreign policy. Similarly, he prob- ably would have favored more limits on the clergy’s role in politics, taking a more traditional view that religious leaders should stick to issues o morality. In this scenario, Iran since 1989 would have fo- cused more on enforcing social mores at home and less on stirring the pot abroad. Yet it was Khamenei that ascended to Khomeini’s throne, and so it has been he who has chosen among the competing strands o Iranian policy.
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Beyond Great Forces
I Khamenei is the most obvious example o a leader who makes the ultimate choice o which current to ride when the impersonal forces are in conÁict, he is hardly the only one. In dierent circum- stances, German Chancellor Angela Merkel plays the same role. During the eurozone crisis, the international economic forces aect- ing Germany consistently called for a more proactive approach to Greece’s insolvency and the economic troubles o Germany’s other eurozone partners. Yet Merkel instead took the more conservative path, which resonated with Germany’s domestic politics, even though this ended up dragging out the crisis. At the same time, on the issue o refugees, she embraced liberal international norms and took in hundreds o thousands o Syrians at a time when domestic politics in Germany and the rest o Europe was turning against charity to foreigners. Another chancellor might have made dierent choices: indeed, the politician who held the number two position in Germany at the time, Vice Chancellor Sigmar Gabriel, favored a more generous approach toward the Greek government, but on refugees, he bowed to domestic pressure and called for caps on admissions.
THE SURVIVORS Bashar al-Assad and Nicolás Maduro are marked men. When it comes to both Syria’s president and Venezuela’s, there are many people who want them out o power, i not dead. And yet by re- maining alive and in oce, they have compromised the best inter- ests o their countries. Both Syria and Venezuela are desperate nations, racked by internal conÁict, tormented by starvation, shedding refugees in epic quanti- ties, and beset by various external powers. There is nothing about the power or the international position o either Syria or Venezuela that has caused its anguish. Both suered a horriÄc breakdown in their internal politics, but in both cases, there were Äxes that could have been made long ago to end the misery. Getting rid o Maduro would have been a huge step toward alleviating Venezuela’s pain, just as get- ting rid o Assad could have made it possible to reach a compromise to end the Syrian civil war. It’s not that simple, o course: many Venezuelan elites, particularly the military, are unwilling to depose Maduro, and many Syrian mi- nority groups, particularly the ruling family’s own Alawite community, feel the same way about Assad. Yet there is also no question that the
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Daniel Byman and Kenneth M. Pollack
principal grievance o the Venezuelan opposition, and o the United States, has become Maduro himself, and should he Änd a comfort- able exile on a Caribbean island, it would be far easier to resolve the conÁict. Likewise, in years past, both the Iranians and the Russians at times Áoated to the United States the idea that they were willing to sacriÄce Assad as long as their own interests—and those o the Alawites—were protected. I Assad had found himsel on the wrong end o an assassin’s knife or under an enforced vacation during a visit to Tehran, a new leader might have proved willing to make more concessions to the opposition and lay the groundwork for a negoti- ated peace. Yet both leaders’ continued hold on power, in the face o both international and domestic pressure to go, has locked their countries into needless agony. Some might sco at this argument, contending that vast imper- sonal forces—the ruthless domestic politics in a country roiled by civil war and a regime’s inherent desire to survive—make it unimag- inable that any leader in such a position would ever step down. Yet it is worth remembering that South African President F. W. de Klerk did just that. De Klerk had plenty o incentives to Äght for apartheid to remain in power, just as his predecessors did. Indeed, when de Klerk assumed power, Archbishop Desmond Tutu, an antiapartheid activ- ist, said that the leadership change was “just musical chairs.” I de Klerk had remained committed to apartheid, the most likely out- come would have been South Africa’s descent into even greater racial violence or quite possibly an all-out civil war, not much dierent from what is happening in Syria and Venezuela today. Yet de Klerk did the opposite, dismantling apartheid, allowing free elections in 1994, and yielding power when he lost. Despite a background that suggested he would Äght to preserve the apartheid system, he recog- nized both the need to avert civil war in South Africa and the oppor- tunity to bring his country into the ranks o civilized nations.
THE OPPORTUNISTS Fortune favors the bold, and some leaders are skilled at seizing oppor- tunities as they arise. Russian President Vladimir Putin exempliÄes how a wily leader can parlay a relatively weak position into a much stronger one. In 1999, Putin replaced Sergei Stepashin as Russia’s prime minister, becoming the Äfth person to occupy the post in two years. Few expected this creature o the Russian system to shake things
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Beyond Great Forces
up, but within weeks, he capitalized on violence in Chechnya to renew the war there, gambling (correctly) that a no-holds-barred Äght would increase his popularity, and soon succeeded Boris Yeltsin as president. Putin represented a sharp break with the past. Yeltsin and the pre- Putin prime ministers under him had favored accommodation with the West, acquiesced in £¬¡¢ interventions in the Balkans, recog- nized Russia’s seemingly irreversible military weakness, and largely abandoned Russia’s former friends, such as Syria. Putin oered something new. Fearing that parts o the former Soviet Union were becoming too close to the West, he supported separatist movements in Georgia and Ukraine, annexing Crimea outright. Farther aÄeld, he has backed Assad with limited military commitments to showcase Russian power, and he is even taking sides in Libya’s civil war. Most dramatically, Putin rolled the dice and covertly backed the U.S. presidential campaign o Donald Trump as part o a broader eort to intensify polarization in the United States and other Western coun- tries. It’s hard to imagine all o this as part o any long-term plan. Rather, Putin has proved a master o Russian and international poli- tics, cutting and thrusting whenever his foes present an opening. A dierent faceless bureaucrat coming to power after Yeltsin might have shifted course, too. Russia’s weakness abroad and economic col- lapse at home left the Yeltsin regime with few enthusiasts. Yet the course o such change probably would have been more modest, with less emphasis on adventurism abroad. Stepashin, for example, had little interest in renewing the war in Chechnya, and he ended up join- ing a political party that favors improved ties with the United States and even membership in the ¤. Putin, by contrast, has evinced a combination o pride, cynicism, nationalism, and comfort with risk, all o which have made him willing to take on the West around the world at a time when many observers have considered his country weak.
THE EGOISTS L’état, c’est moi (I am the state), words often attributed to Louis XIV, may seem to reÁect a bygone age, when the purpose o the state was to reÁect the glory o one person. But Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan, who has dominated his country’s politics for nearly two decades, embodies how egoism can still shape foreign policy. For decades, dierent Turkish regimes had pursued the country’s complex set o interests in largely similar ways: trying to stay out o the
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imbroglio in the Middle East, aligning Turkey with £¬¡¢ and the United States, and portraying the country as a secular, westernizing nation that deserved membership in the ¤. By the turn o this cen- tury, Turkey seemed to be growing ever more stable and westernized as it moved away from domestic military dominance. Long friendly toward the West, it was now on the path to democracy, turning into a normal European state, with strong institutions. Erdogan had other plans. Since he became prime minister, in 2003, Turkish policies have repeatedly whipsawed. The regime sup- ported its Kurdish citizens and then persecuted them; worked with Assad, tried to overthrow him, and then cooperated with him again; rejected Russia and then embraced it; cooperated with Israel and then denounced it. Domestically, Erdogan shelved democratic reforms and heightened his repression. Part o the about-face can be attributed to opportunism and real- politik, but much o it reÁects Erdogan’s response to perceived per- sonal slights and his pursuit o glory. In 2010, an Israeli raid on a Áotilla trying to break the blockade o the Gaza Strip led to the deaths o ten Turks on the ship the Mavi Marmara. Despite decades o close strategic cooperation between Turkey and Israel, Erdogan demanded an apology, recalled the Turkish am- bassador to Israel, and moved closer to Russian President Vladimir Hamas in Gaza. A year later, he viewed Putin exempli¥es how a Assad’s crackdown on demonstrators wily leader can parlay a as yet another slight, since it gave the relatively weak position lie to his claim that he could temper the Syrian dictator, prompting Erdogan into a much stronger one. to back an array o opposition forces against Assad. An analysis o the Turk- ish leader’s verbal output by the scholars Aylin Gorener and Meltem Ucal found that he scored high in believing he can control events and in distrusting others but also that he sees the world in black and white, is hypersensitive to criticism, and has trouble focusing on the implementation o policies. Erdogan seems convinced that he and only he is equipped to save Turkey from its enemies. An alternative leader, even one who managed to channel the same anti-Western political coalition that Erdogan has, would probably have pursued a remarkably dierent foreign policy. Indeed, members o Erdogan’s own party have espoused dierent views on the Kurds,
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Beyond Great Forces
Syria, and other core issues. Had one o them taken power instead, that leader might still have pivoted to the Middle East and away from Europe, but it is far less likely that he would have acted so er- ratically or personalized politics to such a degree. A more pragmatic head o state might have cracked down sooner on the Islamic State (or )—for years, Erdogan allowed the group to use Turkey as a jihadi highway to Syria—cooperated more with Saudi Arabia and other opponents o Assad, or even tried earlier to strike a deal with the Syrian dictator. At times, egoists can approach absurdity and drag their countries into outright disaster. Idi Amin, who seized power in Uganda in a 1971 coup, took on more and more titles as his ego ballooned, eventually becoming “His Excellency President for Life, Field Marshal Alhaji Dr. Idi Amin Dada, ¥, ²¢, «, ¤.” Uganda’s foreign policy swung wildly: a country that had taken a pro-Western, pro-Israeli stance soon struck up a close relationship with the Soviet Union and Muam- mar al-QaddaÄ’s Libya and openly supported terrorists. At home, Amin expelled Uganda’s Asian minority and killed hundreds o thou- sands o civilians from rival ethnic groups. With his circle o support steadily shrinking, he blamed Tanzania for his country’s problems and, in 1978, invaded it. Tanzania promptly counterattacked, driving Amin into exile.
LIABILITIES AND ASSETS Some leaders drag their countries or causes down, needlessly reduc- ing their performance on account o their own particular weaknesses. On paper, Ayman al-Zawahiri has the perfect résumé for the head o a terrorist group. As the journalist Lawrence Wright has recounted, Zawahiri formed his Ärst terrorist cell in 1966, when he was only 15 years old, to plot against the Egyptian regime. He then spent several years in Egypt’s jails, moved to Pakistan to aid the anti-Soviet jihad in Afghanistan, and was by Osama bin Laden’s side in Pakistan when al Qaeda was founded, in 1988. So when U.S. forces Änally caught up to bin Laden in 2011, Zawahiri was the obvious successor as leader o the terrorist group. Yet al Qaeda’s star has dimmed under Zawahiri’s leadership. Al- though the fall o secular autocrats, such as Egyptian President Hosni Mubarak, and the outbreak o civil wars around the Arab world presented a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity for jihad’s leading
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brand, it was a rival group——that seized the day. Whereas bin Laden tried to transcend the divisions within the jihadi movement, Zawahiri often aggravates them, especially by denouncing his rivals. Zawahiri’s public statements betray a pedantic tone, an overbearing manner, and impatience with critics. Those who met bin Laden often described him as charismatic. No one says that about Zawahiri. Not surprisingly, al Qaeda has stagnated on his watch: the core organization has not conducted a major attack in the West for over a decade, and its aliates tend to shun the global jihadi agenda in favor o local concerns. The United States has hunted Zawahiri since the mid-1990s, and it is useful to consider what might have happened had it knocked him out. His replacement might have tried to make the movement more appealing by establishing his own credentials as a warrior. Perhaps he might have made al Qaeda more like its Even mature liberal eventual rival, , by coming out o democracies are not hiding to join the Äght directly, plan- ning more attacks in the West, or en- immune to the charms of gaging in more gruesome behavior, such a dominant personality. as beheadings. Or another leader might have moved away from al Qaeda’s global agenda, embracing the local and regional politics favored by many al Qaeda aliates. But it seems unlikely that he would have done what Zawahiri has: giving uninspiring speeches while takes over the leadership o the global jihadi movement. Other leaders, by contrast, punch above their weight. Exhibit A might be Sheikh Mohammed bin Zayed, or MBZ, the crown prince o Abu Dhabi and the de facto leader o the United Arab Emirates. Once, the country’s foreign policy consisted o trying to keep its head down and get even richer, following Saudi Arabia wherever it went. Although the ¬¤ has a population o just ten million (only a tenth o whom are actually ¬¤ citizens), under MBZ, it has reshaped the Middle East. MBZ helped engineer the 2013 coup in Egypt, inter- vened in Yemen to turn back the advance o the Houthi rebels, pushed the blockade o Qatar, and backed a warlord in Libya’s civil war who is now banging on the gates o Tripoli. Thanks to MBZ’s military reforms, ¬¤ forces demonstrated surprising competence in the Äght- ing in Yemen, which made the ¬¤, for a time, the dominant player in much o the country. In a chaotic region, MBZ has managed to lever- age his country’s wealth and military prowess to make the ¬¤ thrive.
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Beyond Great Forces
PUTTING PEOPLE FIRST Individuals aren’t everything, o course: countries still have national interests, domestic politics, bureaucracies, and other forces that can play profound, even overwhelming, roles in shaping foreign policy. Yet it is equally facile to use such terms as “national interests,” “domes- tic politics,” and “bureaucratic resistance” without recognizing how leaders create, bend, exploit, override, or succumb to these factors. Consider how individuals interact with institutions. I MBS had somehow come to power in a Saudi Arabia that was a mature liberal democracy, for example, he would no doubt have had a harder time fundamentally reorienting his country. In autocracies, which by deÄ- nition lack democratic checks and balances, it is particularly easy for leaders to dominate policymaking. But autocracies can also produce weak leaders who merely reÁect the impulses o their countries’ bu- reaucracies, militaries, or ruling elites. Algerian President Abdelaziz BouteÁika remained in power for years even though he was nearly comatose, serving as a front for the country’s political elite until he resigned at the age o 82, earlier this year. Meanwhile, the likes o a Putin or an Erdogan can step into a more pluralistic system and bend it to his will. Even mature liberal democracies are not immune to the charms o a dominant personality. Today, U.S. President Franklin Roosevelt is revered as a demigod, but in his day, he was denounced for all manner o highhanded and dictatorial behavior, ranging from trying to pack the Supreme Court to enacting supposedly socialist eco- nomic policies. Before the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor, Roosevelt shaped popular sentiment when he rearmed the country, oered the United Kingdom military aid, and pushed Japan to the brink, pav- ing the way for the eventual U.S. entry into World War II. Roo sevelt remade the United States’ institutions as much as he was constrained by them, using his economic policies to expand the federal govern- ment’s power and the war to lay the groundwork for the country’s subsequent global military dominance. As the philosopher Ralph Waldo Emerson wrote, “An institution is the lengthened shadow o one man.” In his own way, Trump has also laid bare the limits o institutions. Whereas Roosevelt cajoled, guided, and shaped American institu- tions, Trump has derided and corroded them, largely on behal o his own ego and prejudices. Yes, the American bureaucracy has saved
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Daniel Byman and Kenneth M. Pollack
this president from some o his worst instincts—for instance, talking him out o withdrawing troops from Syria and quitting £¬¡¢. Yet contrary to his appointees’ advice, his party’s long-standing prefer- ences, and even his own political interests, Trump has dramatically altered the course o U.S. foreign policy. He has rejected the Paris climate accord and the Trans-PaciÄc Partnership, walked away from the Iran nuclear deal, raised taris on China, rooted for far-right candidates in European elections, and moved the U.S. embassy in Israel to Jerusalem. At home, Trump has revealed that many sup- posed traditions o American politics—such as refusing to hire your relatives, pretending to be upset by corruption, revealing your personal Änancial activities, not threatening to arrest your political opponents, and promptly Älling important cabinet positions—are powerless against a wrecking ball. His tenure has been marked by thoughtlessness and chaos; this does not appear to be a well-crafted plot. Individuals can rise above institutions, norms, systemic forces, and domestic politics, leaving their countries stronger or weaker than they might otherwise have been. Leaders can create new enemies or friends, weaken or strengthen alliances, disregard norms, or take risks when others might have balked. They can fundamentally alter the national aspirations and overarching strategies o a country. Otto von Bismarck rendered Germany peaceful and a pillar o the European status quo; his successor, Kaiser Wilhelm, made Germany the greatest threat to European stability and the main instigator o World War I. Once the role o individuals is taken into account, politics becomes less certain and more contingent than simple models o international relations might have it. In good times, this insight should make one cautious, since one man or woman in the wrong place at the wrong time can set a country on a dangerous course. In bad times, however, faith in the power o individuals can serve as a source o hope. For although leaders can make the world more dangerous, they can also make the world safer and more prosperous. In a democracy at least, this means that while choosing leaders is a burdensome task, it is also one that everyone should welcome.∂
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REVIEWS & RESPONSES
The disasters in Libya and Syria have helped Trump jettison the notion that the United States has any real responsibility for human rights beyond its borders. – Peter Beinart
Obama’s Idealists The Virtue o Monopoly Peter Beinart 162 Felix Salmon 184
EVAN How a Caliphate Ends The New Masters o the Universe
VUCCI Anne Barnard 170 Paul Starr 191
AP / What Is White America? Recent Books 198 Nell Irvin Painter 177
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Äght the plague. To convince other Obama’s Idealists nations to join the eort, she, President Barack Obama, and various cabinet ocials “made scores o calls to incredu- American Power in Theory lous counterparts” in foreign govern- and Practice ments. For her part, Power, then ambas- sador to the United Nations, disregarded Peter Beinart the pleas o her young son—who cried, “Mommy, I’m certain you will bring back Bola”—and Áew to Liberia and Sierra Leone under strict medical supervision Tough Love: My Story of the Things to help oversee the eort. Back at the Worth Fighting For White House, in an attempt to counteract BY SUSAN RICE. Simon & Schuster, mounting hysteria about the disease, 2019, 544 pp. Obama hosted Nina Pham, a Texas nurse who had been successfully treated The Education of an Idealist: A Memoir for Ebola. When she arrived at the Oval BY SAMANTHA POWER. Dey Street Oce, he greeted her with a hug. Books, 2019, 592 pp. During the Obama administration, U.S. policymakers aorded Africa a The World as It Is: A Memoir of the level o concern and respect that was Obama White House unprecedented in American history and BY BEN RHODES. Random House, is unimaginable in the Trump era. This 2018, 428 pp. attention to Africa reÁected not merely a geographic orientation but an ideo- he events that Susan Rice and logical one: a belie that human security, Samantha Power describe in even in the poorest and weakest o Ttheir new memoirs o their time states, matters to U.S. national security. in the Obama administration occurred Rice, who began her career working only a few years ago. But they belong to on Africa policy in the Clinton admin- a dierent age. istration, made eight ocial trips to “That chart shook up the Principals the continent while serving as Obama’s Committee like nothing I have seen Ärst ambassador to the £. When before or since,” Rice writes in Tough South Sudan gained independence, in Love. The chart estimated the number 2011, she hosted “a loud, super-sweaty o people the Ebola virus might kill in dance party on the twenty-second Áoor Guinea, Liberia, and Sierra Leone. o the new U.S. mission building where Rice, then national security adviser, Americans, South Sudanese, African goes on to describe how she helped delegates and many others boogied long convince the Pentagon to send almost into the evening.” Before the Obama 3,000 U.S. troops to West Africa to administration, no U.S. cabinet ocial had ever visited the tiny Central PETER BEINART is a contributor to The Atlantic, a columnist at the Forward, and a African Republic. In an eort to Professor at the City University of New York. contain religious violence there, Power,
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Obama’s Idealists
who became £ ambassador when Rice human lives.” For Power, it starts took over the National Security Council during her time as a war correspondent (£), visited four times. Try to imag- in Bosnia, where the besieged residents ine that happening under President o Sarajevo asked her to “tell Clinton” Donald Trump. about the horrors she had seen. For But while it’s poignant that less than Rhodes, it begins with 9/11 and the Iraq a decade ago top U.S. ocials cared war, which left him yearning to harness enough about South Sudan to dance the the idealism he felt the Bush adminis- night away celebrating its indepen- tration had squandered. dence, American goodwill didn’t keep In each book, three moments during the newborn country from collapsing the Obama administration play outsize into civil war. Rice doesn’t hide her roles in chastening this youthful ideal- disappointment. In fact, disappoint- ism: the decision to bomb Libya in ment is a theme o the memoirs by Rice 2011, the decision not to bomb Syria in and Power, as well as o the one pub- 2013, and the 2016 election. lished in 2018 by Obama’s top foreign As Rice notes, the Arab Spring policy speechwriter, Ben Rhodes. The opened a generational divide within the three books intimately evoke the per- Obama foreign policy team. When an sonal journeys o Obama’s former uprising began in Libya, and Muammar advisers and their frustration in en- al-QaddaÄ’s forces closed in on the city countering what Rhodes, in his title, o Benghazi to crush it, the administra- calls “the world as it is.” In so doing, tion’s Gen-Xers, who had come o age the memoirs end up chronicling both during the genocides in Bosnia and the decline o American power and the Rwanda, pushed for military action. In decline o American exceptionalism: the a meeting in the Situation Room, belie that the United States is immune Power handed Rhodes a note warning to the tribalism and authoritarianism that, as he paraphrases it, Libya would that plague other parts o the world. be “the Ärst mass atrocity that took place on our watch.” Rice, then £ YES WE CAN? ambassador, recalls telling Obama that In dierent ways, each book traces a he “should not allow what could be narrative arc that begins with a vow, perceived as his Rwanda to occur.” A made in young adulthood, to use the phalanx o older policymakers—Vice United States’ might for good and ends President Joe Biden, Defense Secretary with a sober realization about how Robert Gates, National Security Ad- hard fulÄlling that vow actually is. For viser Thomas Donilon, and White House Rice, the arc begins with her failure, as Chie o Sta William Daley—warned a young £ aide, to rouse the Clinton against entering another Middle administration to halt the 1994 Rwandan Eastern war. But aided by Secretary o genocide, after which she pledged “to State Hillary Clinton, the young go down Äghting, i ever I saw another idealists won. The United States and instance where I believed U.S. military its allies saved Benghazi and helped intervention could . . . make a critical topple QaddaÄ. The New York Times dierence in saving large numbers o reported that Libyan parents—who had
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Peter Beinart
seen Rice vote at the £ to authorize appetite for a protracted commitment military action—were naming their once QaddaÄ was gone. children after her. There’s a reason Rice isn’t more Then, as in South Sudan, things fell forthright. In her prologue, she an- apart. As Rice admits, post-QaddaÄ nounces, “Tell-all books, which sell copies Libya became “a state without an at the expense o others, are tacky and eective government, and an exporter not my style.” Power and Rhodes are o refugees.” Rival militias have now equally polite. Unfortunately, their good carved up the country, and the chaos manners come at the reader’s expense. has proved fertile ground for the The problem isn’t that Rice, Power, Islamic State, or . Given the eort and Rhodes shade the truth to make that Rice, Power, and Rhodes devoted themselves look good. To the contrary, to ensuring that the United States all three are, at various points, admirably intervened in Libya—and the importance frank about their mistakes. The prob- each accorded to humanitarian inter- lem is that by refusing to reveal what vention in general—their explanations happened behind closed doors, they fail for postwar Libya’s woes are frustrat- to help readers understand what lessons ingly skimpy and vague. Rhodes dis- to draw from the Libya debacle. Is the cusses the 2012 attack on U.S. facilities lesson that presidents who lack the in Benghazi that ensnared him and stomach for nation building shouldn’t Rice in a Fox News–fueled pseudo- topple regimes? Is it that the United scandal, but he says virtually nothing States needs greater diplomatic capacity? about what happened to postwar Libya Is it that brutal dictatorships are better itself. Rice acknowledges that the than failed states? By not explaining administration “failed to try hard Libya’s lessons, liberal internationalists enough and early enough to win the like Rice, Power, and Rhodes make it peace.” Power suggests that it “could easier for nativist bigots like Trump to have exerted more aggressive, high- proer a lesson o their own: that level pressure on Libya’s neighbors to Washington should care less about back a uniÄed political structure” after people overseas, especially i they are QaddaÄ’s fall. not Christian or white. But why didn’t it? Rice oers a clue The second event that dampens the when she writes, “in Washington, idealism o all three authors is Syria, a lingering ambivalence among some catastrophe over which, Rice writes, Principals about the original operation led “my heart and my conscience will the £ to convene few Principals forever ache.” Rhodes supported Committee meetings at a time when our Obama’s decision to pull back from the eorts might have had a maximum military strikes he had authorized in impact” in stabilizing post-QaddaÄ Libya. response to Bashar al-Assad’s chemical Since the national security adviser weapons attack in 2013. Rice and Power convenes such meetings, that sounds opposed it, the former more forcefully. like a dig at Rice’s predecessor in the job, But the more signiÄcant divergence Donilon. It can also be read as a veiled came not over how the United States jab at Obama himself, who showed little should respond to one chemical attack
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Obama’s Idealists
In these brie¡ statements, one can glimpse the embryo o¡ a debate about state sovereignty, U.S. interests, and human rights. To protect Syrians from their murderous regime, Power proposed eectively dismembering the Syrian state. The obvious question is whether the American people—who didn’t even support missile strikes in retaliation for Assad’s use o¡ chemical weapons— would have backed a U.S. commit- ment to, essentially, defend a chunk o¡ Syrian territory against the Syrian government. Rice, by contrast, seems to have reluctantly moved toward the view that i° brutal leaders like Qadda¯ and Assad threaten their own citizens but not the United States, then it but over how it should is better to let them quash respond to Syria’s dissent than to launch an ghastly civil war itself. intervention that Washing- Power urged “a no-¥y ton can’t sustain and that zone over select areas o¡ may produce a failed state. Syria that were under At times, it appears that opposition control,” Obama agreed. “Maybe we even though that would never would have done Rwanda,” have required destroying he tells Rhodes at one point. Syria’s air defenses, This shadow debate is important. which, according to the Pentagon, were Among the lessons young liberals such ¯ve times as strong as Libya’s. Rice, by as Rice, Power, and Rhodes took from contrast, suggests that the mistake lay Bosnia and Rwanda is that defending not in doing too little but in promising human rights can require infringing on too much. Perhaps, she proposes, the state sovereignty. Among the lessons ILLUSTRATION Obama administration should “have o´ Libya and Syria is that state collapse avoided declaratory statements such as can be as brutal as state repression. ‘Assad must go’ or red lines as on chemical These disasters have helped Trump weapons that raised expectations for jettison the notion that the United BY
BRIAN CRONIN actions that may not have served U.S. States has any real responsibility for interests.” Rhodes wearily concurs. He human rights beyond its borders, and calls Syria “a place where our inaction they have helped him outline an was a tragedy, and our intervention would international vision in which sover- only compound the tragedy.” eignty is king.
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Peter Beinart
What Democrats think about sover- also as chronicles o America’s declin- eignty is less clear. Rice and Rhodes ing exceptionalism. In retrospect, the appear more willing than Power to belie in democracy promotion and declare the end o the era o humanitar- humanitarian intervention that Rice, ian military intervention. But the debate Power, and Rhodes embraced early in is not just about military force. In an their careers rested on a faith that age o declining U.S. power, is it mor- democracy was stable at home. With ally necessary or strategically productive that faith now eroded—and the United for the United States to challenge other States battling its own rising tribalism, countries’ sovereignty—in such places as authoritarianism, and brutality—it is Hong Kong, Xianjing, and Kashmir— hard to imagine a book like Power’s “A in the name o human rights? The next Problem From Hell,” a critique o the Democratic president will face a version country’s repeated failure to stop o that question but won’t Änd much genocide, becoming the sensation it did guidance in these three books. in 2002. As Americans have grown In each, the saga o disillusionment more preoccupied with, and more reaches its nadir in 2016, with Russia’s pessimistic about, their own country’s electoral interference and Trump’s moral condition, they have turned election. After witnessing the limits o inward. As a young woman, Power the United States’ ability to defend helped expose concentration camps in democracy and human rights abroad, Bosnia. Today’s young activists are Rice, Power, and Rhodes realize to their exposing them in Texas. As o Septem- horror the limits o its ability to defend ber, foreign policy has barely Ägured in those principles at home. When Obama the Democratic presidential debates. asks Mitch McConnell, the Republican Rice, Power, and Rhodes also end up Senate majority leader, to issue a joint chronicling the United States’ declin- statement condemning Russian interfer- ing power. In Libya in 2011, Russia ence in the election, McConnell refuses, stood aside and let Washington and its a move that Rhodes calls “staggeringly £¬¡¢ allies wage war unimpeded, a partisan and unpatriotic.” Near the end continuation o a unipolar pattern o her book, Power acknowledges, established in the 1990s by U.S.-led “While I once viewed the conÁict in interventions in the Persian Gul and Bosnia as a last gasp o ethnic chauvinism the Balkans. By 2015, Russia was not and demagoguery from a bygone era, it only thwarting the U.S. eort at now seems more o a harbinger o the regime change in Syria in the £ way today’s autocrats and opportunists Security Council; it was sending its exploit grievances . . . in order to troops to do so on the battleÄeld. By expand their own power.” Rice, in the 2016, Russia had brought its counter- Änal pages o her book, veers from oensive to American soil. Apparently foreign policy to a call for unity, civility, convinced that Washington was trying and decency at home. to foment political revolution in Although none o the authors puts it Russia, President Vladimir Putin this way, it’s possible to read their books helped foment a political revolution not only as tales o tempered idealism but inside the United States.
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Even more striking than what Rice, Power, and Rhodes say about Russia is what they don’t say about China. That Beijing gures so little in all three Erdogan’s Empire books is the clearest indication that they Turkey and the Politics of the Middle East chronicle a dierent time. In retrospect, By Soner Cagaptay the entire post–Cold War era that 9781788317399 • $27.00 framed the careers o Rice, Power, and “Soner Cagaptay is an astute and honest chronicler of the mercurial Turkish Rhodes—an era in which U.S. foreign President Recep Tayyip Erdogan. His latest book, Erdogan’s Empire, is a com- policy focused on counterterrorism, prehensive look at the Turkish leader’s nuclear nonproliferation, democracy “neo-Ottoman” foreign policy…” promotion, economic liberalization, and — e Washington Post humanitarian intervention—may turn The Lion and the Nightingale A Journey Through Modern Turkey out to have been merely a parenthesis By Kaya Genç between superpower competitions. 9781788314961 • $24.95 “In this masterful chronicle of Turkey, Genç sketches extraordinary lives in an PORTRAITS AND MEMORIES extraordinary time. Intimate, intelligent, detailed, full of life: It will become a Rhodes oers the most intimate por- classic.” trait o Obama. He describes the —Andrew Greer, author of ‘Less’ 2019-Nov-Dec-FA-Celik-Turkey_Foreign Affairs2018 Pulitzer 9/20/19 Prize 9:42 winner AM Page 1 former president as conscientious, decent, and intellectually curious but Find us on Twitter @ibtauris not exactly warm—a man easier to admire than to feel close to. At times, Obama’s almost inhuman discipline and
self-control make him intolerant o the Celebrating 36 Years of Independent Publishing limitations o others. After Rhodes loses his razor on a 2011 trip to Latin America, Obama scolds him for not “This major contribution shaving. Rhodes fumes that the presi- helps the reader to sort out the dent “seemed oblivious to the work I confusion around contemporary was doing out o his sight, work that Turkish politics left me no time to buy a razor. But as I and society. It is calmed down, I realized that . . . being full of invaluable composed and professional—doing the insights and solid job—was how he managed to take empirical analy- everything in stride. I hadn’t just failed ses of Erdoğan’s to shave. I’d deviated from his ethos o ‘New Turkey.’” unappability.” In another scene, —M. Hakan Yavuz, Rhodes reects that Obama’s tendency University of Utah to eat the same meal again and again (salmon, brown rice, and broccoli) “said hc $85 $42.50 for Foreign Affairs readers! something about his discipline—food was something that sustained his health TEL: 303-444-6684 • www.rienner.com and energy in this job, not something
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Peter Beinart
to be enjoyed.” Rhodes, by contrast, o a Sunday show. But she, too, writes douses his anxiety with late-night aectingly about a childhood that drinking and ¡¥ binge watching. combined deep love and deep trauma. Unlike Rhodes, neither Rice nor The similarities between Rice’s and Power discusses the Obama administra- Power’s upbringings are striking. Each tion in detail until the second hal o woman’s mother battled to build a career her book. In both cases, it’s a shrewd in a punishingly sexist milieu. Each decision. Because both women are loath woman’s brilliant but controlling father to oend former colleagues, they can’t objected, which spawned aairs, which oer an unvarnished portrait o the spawned an ugly divorce, which each girl personalities and struggles behind witnessed up close. As her parents’ Obama’s foreign policy. Each compen- Äghting grew more violent, Rice remem- sates for this literary problem in the bers worrying that her mother would kill same way: by oering a strikingly herself. Power writes about getting on unvarnished portrait o her own life. her knees and saying Hail Marys and Power’s talent as a writer comes Our Fathers while her parents hurled through most eloquently in the book’s dishes at each other in the kitchen. opening chapters, when she describes TerriÄed and precocious, each girl her relationship with her magnetic, tried to save her parents’ marriage. alcoholic father. “Guinness,” she writes, “Starting at seven years old,” Rice writes, “the dark brown, silky stout with the “I appointed mysel chie ÄreÄghter, thick, pillowy head—was not just his mediator, and judge, working to defuse drink; it was his craft.” She recounts the arguments, broker compromises, and long afternoons she spent as a child bring rationality to bear when emotion reading, singing, and basking in her overwhelmed reason.” Power remem- father’s love in Hartigan’s, a Dublin bar bers brandishing a 50-pence piece she that “had a smell that mingled urine, had been saving and telling her parents, chlorine disinfectant, and the swirl o “Whichever o you doesn’t argue with barley, malt, and hops.” When Power’s the other will get this.” She added, “I mother, fearful that Ireland’s sexist legal will be watching.” It’s easy to see the system would not allow her to divorce, foreshadowing. I Rice and Power snuck out o the country with Samantha endured bitter disappointment when and her brother in tow, her father began their best eorts couldn’t prevent Libya, a slow suicide that ended with the Syria, or South Sudan from disintegrat- discovery o her “dad’s decomposing ing, they were at least well prepared. body amid the stench o vomit and human waste.” Thirty years later, when WHAT’S LEFT UNSAID Power—now a famous author and At times, it’s frustrating that Rice and Obama adviser—returns to Hartigan’s, Power aren’t as self-reÁective about she asks a longtime bartender why her American foreign policy as they are father let alcohol take his life. The about themselves. When describing how bartender’s answer: “Because you left.” Afghan President Hamid Karzai ac- Rice lacks Power’s literary gifts. At cused U.S. soldiers o abusing Afghan times, her prose reads like the transcript civilians, Rice calls it a “typical but
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Obama’s Idealists
never tolerable rant” without presenting Israel can imperil a policymaker’s hope any evidence that Karzai was wrong. o ever serving in government again, it is She boasts about having “spearheaded not surprising that Rice, Power, and, to eorts to prevent Palestine from being a lesser degree, Rhodes play it safe in admitted prematurely to the £ as a full their books. But in so doing, they fail member state (a status it sought in to acknowledge the uncomfortable ways order to bypass negotiations for a in which Trump’s disregard for human two-state solution)” and about having rights represents a continuation of— vetoed a 2011 resolution declaring rather than a break from—the policies Israeli settlements illegal because it was o the government in which they “an unhelpful diversion that could set served. The price o entry for contin- back eorts to press the two parties to ued public service is discretion. The negotiate directly.” price o entry for serious policy discus- This is wildly unconvincing. Given sion is honesty. Both are legitimate Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin choices. But there’s a tension between Netanyahu’s blatant hostility to the the two. Rice, Power, and Rhodes chose creation o a viable Palestinian state, the discretion, which undermines the Palestinians—having lived without basic quality o their analysis. rights for a hal century—had every Perhaps it is Ätting that in memoirs right to appeal to the £. It’s depress- that describe the many constraints ing that, even now, Rice won’t grapple under which the Obama administration with the moral perversity o the policy labored, Rice, Power, and Rhodes she carried out. Power, for her part, manifest those constraints themselves avoids Israel almost entirely, even by failing to challenge one o the most though her abstention on a later settle- politically treacherous, and least ment resolution, in the Obama adminis- morally defensible, aspects o American tration’s waning days, was among the foreign policy. This too, evidently, is most controversial actions o her £ part o what Power, in her book’s title, tenure. Israel doesn’t even have its own calls “the education o an idealist.” One heading in her book’s index. Rhodes can only hope that in the future, it’s an comes closest to acknowledging that in education that able and decent policy- making policy toward Israel, political makers like them will feel comfortable expediency often trumped conviction. doing without.∂ “Netanyahu,” he writes, “had mastered a certain kind o leverage: using political pressure within the United States to demoralize any meaningful push for peace.” But even Rhodes never gives himsel the intellectual and moral license to imagine a U.S. policy unfettered by political limitations. It’s easy to understand these choices. Since questioning the United States’ virtually unconditional support for
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results from many months on an How a Caliphate extremely dangerous assignment. To cover the pivotal Äght to dislodge the Ends Islamic State, or , from Mosul, a city o one million to two million people in northern Iraq, he embedded On the Frontline o the Fight with Iraqi government troops, who, for Against ISIS all the years, money, and lives that Washington spent training them as U.S. Anne Barnard proxies, tend to be cheerfully uninter- ested in basic force-protection measures such as setting perimeters and over- watch points. They Will Have to Die Now: Mosul and Arriving late also means seeing the the Fall of the Caliphate conÁict with fresh eyes. Many American BY JAMES VERINI. Norton, 2019, journalists o my generation who shipped 304 pp. out to Central Asia and the Middle East after President George W. Bush’s declara- he origin story that James Verini tion o the dubiously named “war on tells about his new book, They terror” are now pushing two decades on TWill Have to Die Now, is about the beat. The intervening years have guilt—his guilt for not having gone to brought distance—even freedom, i one Iraq earlier. On 9/11, in his Ärst newspa- dares use that Iraq-war-tainted word— per job, he covered the collapse o the from the post-9/11 confusion in which Twin Towers. He writes that a couple o “America, in its fear, in its shame,” as years later, he “could have, should have, Verini writes, attacked Iraq. The original gone to Iraq but didn’t.” He was, he sin o the U.S. invasion and the mis- says, “too scared.” takes o the occupation that we reported It’s just as well that Verini waited on are now, while not beside the point, until 2016 to “face Iraq” and start almost as distant from today as the reporting on what he calls the central Vietnam War was from the United American war o our time. For one thing, States’ Ärst Iraq adventure, in 1990–91. obviously yet still shockingly, even Verini thus arrives in medias res to a arriving 13 years late, he didn’t miss it. country “whose story,” he writes, “had For another, he eventually learned a key been entwined with my country’s story lesson for a reporter: being scared for a generation now, for most o my life, doesn’t make you the wrong person for so entwined that neither place any longer the job. Verini’s deeply reported, made sense without the other.” True, beautifully written Ärst-person account although most Americans fail to think much about the war’s eects on their own ANNE BARNARD is a reporter at The New York country. Iraqis do not have that luxury. Times, where she was Beirut Bureau Chief from In today’s Iraq, American intervention 2012 to 2018. Earlier, she served as Baghdad Bureau Chief and Middle East Bureau Chief at is less an event than a condition, less The Boston Globe. an alien encounter than a problematic
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How a Caliphate Ends
The boys are back in town: Iraqi security forces liberating the village of Khalidiya, October 2016
marriage. The Iraqi troops and civilians So his account o´ Iraqis, both soldiers Verini befriends and pro¯les have lived and civilians, feels fresh, and it presents lives permeated by the war far more an occasion to examine the broader deeply than are those o¡ Americans who questions posed by the con¥ict’s recent have spent entire military careers ¯ghting events: What works and what doesn’t, it. Their generosity in trying to forge after 16 years o¡ attempts by foreigners mutual understanding with Verini, “a and locals to pacify Iraq? What happens person from the place that had made their on the ground as the United States lives a hell,” was, he writes, “humanity outsources the foot soldiering o¡ its itself.” At ¯rst glance, his book reads like wars? Is really defeated, or are years any narrative o° life with the troops, full o¡ violence in the name o´ ¯ghting o¡ worm’s-eye details on war’s chaos and terrorism likely to continue unrolling boredom and absurdity, with vivid portraits new, expanding chapters o¡ con¥ict with THAIER o¡ soldiers and their black humor. But that group and others?
AL½SUDANI these are Iraqi troops, and Verini inter- sperses the scenes with historical research FROM WASHINGTON TO BAGHDAD from the earliest annals o¡ war—some As he follows one mostly Muslim army
/ REUTERS visible in Mosul’s own archaeological into a war against another, Verini doesn’t past—to records o¡ more recent episodes bother with tired questions about Islam that explain why many citizens oered and whether there is something uniquely at least passive support to . pathological about Arabs or Muslims.
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He does situate the rise o in age-old i to say, as he puts it, “See, I knew all atavistic impulses. Not Islamic ones or along there was something horrible Middle Eastern ones but human ones— lurking in the desert there.” the violence that springs from power But it is instructive to look even more struggles, revenge, bloodlust. In the gory broadly at the successes and failures o battle scenes memorialized in Assyrian writers who have tried to make sense o friezes in Nineveh, the ancient city the chaos consuming Iraq and Syria. Too that lay near modern-day Mosul, Verini often, we approach it like the proverbial sees parallels to the gruesome photos blind men assessing an elephant: the one and videos Iraqis shared by smartphone. at the tail thinks it is like a rope, the “Everyone knew someone who’d been one at the leg says it is like a tree, and so killed on the Internet,” he writes. on. Each arena o the sprawling conÁicts Verini seeks to temper the hype poses its own challenges o access and about , and he cuts it down to size, safety. Few people have seen every portraying it as just the latest insurgent aspect from the ground, and no book has group to use terrorism as a tool for satisfyingly pulled it all together. Verini political goals. He recalls that it has focuses on Iraq and men. A recent been over a century since jihadism book by Azadeh Moaveni looks mainly at became a vehicle for anticolonialism, women who joined in Syria. reminding readers o the Royal Air Yet neither Iraq nor Syria fully makes Force’s eorts to put down the Iraqi sense without the other. The details o revolt that began in 1920, a movement the hostilities in Syria, where the that, like the rebels who fought the conÁict began not with but with British in Sudan decades earlier, in- President Bashar al-Assad’s violent voked the Almighty against an occupier. repression o a civilian protest move- “Fifteen years before Guernica,” Verini ment, are very dierent from those o writes, “the British were bombing the war in Iraq. At the same time, Iraqis unarmed Iraqis.” Nor is even the Ärst and Syrians share a sense o abandon- insurgent group to promote an apocalyp- ment and abuse by their governments and tic worldview. He mentions the Jewish the world, and their conÁicts have rebels who fought the Romans in the Ärst become inseparable. The Bush adminis- centuries and ¬² and ultimately tration’s misadventure in Iraq was the committed mass suicide on Masada. reason the Obama administration was As Verini notes, many news organi- unable or unwilling to take decisive action zations milked the story for its to stop atrocities in Syria: the United “luridness,” yielding shallow coverage States was constrained by depleted “on the same spectrum as the Caliph- resources, a war-weary population, the ate’s own blood porn.” (He acknowl- discrediting o its rhetoric about de- edges “a few exceptions”; in fact, there mocracy and human rights, and its own are many brave journalists who reported undermining o international institutions with context and measure.) Some and multilateralism. During the U.S. outlets, he muses, may have sought to occupation o Iraq, Assad’s weaponiza- absolve themselves o their lack o tion o Syrian extremists to harass skepticism before the U.S. invasion, as American soldiers in Iraq helped seed
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what became . Assad later imprisoned militias as de facto allies in Iraq but as some o those same Äghters, only to enemies in Syria, where U.S. proxies, reuse them later on. Early in the Syrian in turn, are led by Kurdish groups that revolt, even as he vacuumed civilian Turkey, a fellow £¬¡¢ member, consid- activists and army defectors into his ers terrorists. torture dungeons, he released jihadis who Moreover, combat books can only go went on to lead hardcore militant groups, so far in documenting the plight o making it easier for him to claim that the civilians; in Verini’s, anecdotes o world had to choose between him and ocers jauntily disregarding danger, or “the terrorists.” o the soldiers obscenely taunting one Going back further, had the United another about their sisters, sometimes States not invaded Iraq, the country blur together or narrowly avoid cheer- would almost certainly not have become leading. (I pine for a frontline book by a a breeding ground, and later a sitting female serial embedder, such as Jane duck, for . In fact, it’s possible to Arraf, Arwa Damon, or Kathy Gannon, imagine that without the invasion, the although the Iraqi military lags behind uprisings that swept the Arab world its U.S. counterpart in letting women beginning in late 2010, or at least the reporters take equal risks as men.) one that swept Syria, would have gone To bridge these epistemological somewhat better. Perhaps—dream for a gaps, journalists have new tools: social moment—an Iraqi revolt against media and other digital communications. Saddam Hussein could have taken root However misused these have been, organically, in partnership with the civilians, activists, and rank-and-Äle Syrian one. Instead, in the rubble left Äghters, in Syria especially, have turned by invasion, Iraq was riddled with Sunni them into an unprecedented platform to extremists, who dispatched emissaries tell the story o their own conÁicts in across the border into Syria to radicalize real time, making Syria arguably history’s the population there. A weak Iraq most documented war. I wish in hind- permeated by Iranian power also made sight that in the early years o the Iraq it easy for Iran to recruit legions o Iraqi war, then faceless insurgents and the Shiite militants and dispatch them civilians caught between them and U.S. across the border into Syria to help Ärepower could have contacted us Assad put down the revolt. directly. Yet even in recent years, online There is more to learn on the ground communications have not been used as that requires the whole picture. There early or as extensively in Iraq, perhaps for has yet to be a systematic study o as simple a reason as that dierent whether the United States’ ordnance teams o reporters typically cover the has really done better than Assad’s at two countries, and those working in sorting Äghters from civilians, especially Iraq were not as used to those tools. And since the Trump administration loos- in Syria, social media have sometimes ened the rules o engagement. There is obscured important dynamics. Before also a need for a closely observed the 2013 takeover o Raqqa by and account o the United States’ messy alli- the subsequent beheadings, foreign jihadis ances. The country treats Iran-backed heralded the arrival o the group with
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goofy selÄes, making it initially appear been the last point o identiÄcation with to be a buoonish sideshow in a crowded the Islamic State.” Äeld o more conventional actors. This observation hits home in the In Iraq, however, where and its operatic story o two middle-aged, predecessors had incubated for years, middle-class brothers in a refugee the group’s rise was plain to see amid camp who initially welcomed . Abu Iraq’s political disorder. Journalists saw Omar’s wife was killed by al Qaeda it, but strained news budgets meant militants in 2005. His brother Abu shrinking coverage as the United States, Fahad, a former army medic, also lost brieÁy it turned out, withdrew. his wife, who was killed the next year when U.S. and Kurdish troops shot up WHY THEY FIGHT the family car at a checkpoint. After Verini does an excellent job o describ- they beat him, Abu Fahad found his ing the Iraqi leg o the elephant and his eldest daughter “in the backseat o the starting point: guilt. He assigns much car trying to eat shards o window o it to U.S. policies and the leaders in glass”; she had just “watched her mother’s Iraq and elsewhere whom those policies head explode.” “Abu Fahad wasn’t a have supported or tolerated. Yes, the zealot,” Verini writes. “He wasn’t even United States helped create , not in particularly devout.” He continues: the literal way that conspiracy theorists believe but by destabilizing Iraq, ruling But he had watched his country invaded, occupied, turned upon it clumsily, and then supporting the itself; his city degraded from a scorched-earth, sectarian approach o “paradise,” as he described the Iraqi Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki. Mosul o his youth, to a hell; his Verini reminds readers o how, during wife killed; himsel and his family the run-up to the invasion, U.S. Secre- and friends humiliated by soldiers o tary o State Colin Powell elevated the the army he’d once nursed to health; obscure Abu Musab al-Zarqawi, who his children driven mad, denigrated, would found the group that became denied futures. To a man like that, , to a jihadi celebrity by citing him sane as he is, talk o a millenarian in his famous speech before the £ utopia, o any utopia, o any improve- Security Council. And Verini explains ment o life beyond the malediction how exploited the Maliki govern- it has become, holds promise. ment’s corruption, bribing or co-opting ocials as it raised money, inÄltrated Verini also gives deserved attention institutions, and amassed weapons, even to the heavy sacriÄces and bravery o as it denounced graft to gain popularity. the Iraqi forces. Twenty thousand Iraqi By the time took over Mosul in 2014, troops died between 2014 and 2016 the group was the only real alternative to alone. One gunner, known as “Sponge- Maliki, and some Moslawis, given their Bob,” a nickname bestowed on him by lived experience, decided it was worth a his young son, had earlier survived try. Amid their political, security, and torture by a Shiite militia, despite being economic rationales, one researcher tells Shiite himself. During the Äght for Verini, “religious ideology might have Mosul, he was evaporated by a suicide
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bomb—recalling, in my mind, a line best Iraqi units summarily execute from the World War II poet Randall prisoners. One o Verini’s most likable Jarrell: “When I died they washed me characters, a chubby-cheeked major out o the turret with a hose.” named Hassan, casually admits to one Verini travels mostly with the such killing and then shows Verini the Counter Terrorism Service, a group o body. The episode comes near the end special operations forces that reports to o the book and gets short shrift. I Iraq’s prime minister and that U.S. wanted more on how Verini assimilated ocials viewed as the most competent the execution into his understanding o and least politicized Iraqi unit. Yet at his frontline companions and on how every turn, he Änds the unevenness o common such killings were. twenty-Ärst-century warfare—the same type o disconnect and confusion that AFTER ISIS leads sophisticated drones to hit wed- They Will Have to Die Now documents ding parties in Afghanistan and Yemen. the practical application o a popular The Iraqis working on the ground theory informing much o U.S. policy: beneath high-tech U.S. jets carry that having locals Äght wars engenders homemade mortar tubes, forget to take less resentment. But this doesn’t always the wrapping o grenade launchers, hold true. Just like U.S. forces, Iraqis wear misspelled shoulder patches, and have struggled with the diculty o shun body armor. Verini watches them saving a city without destroying it, and work with Western special forces they have met with similar results. As ocers to call in airstrikes from an Verini writes, “The more Moslawis alarmingly exposed command post, were killed, the more they resented the communicating on WhatsApp. Opera- soldiers, and the more soldiers were tional security concerns aside, Verini killed, the more they resented the wonders about uncounted civilian Moslawis.” In some ways, the Iraqis’ casualties. Watching impact clouds challenge is worse than the Americans’, bloom across Mosul, he observes that in since they need to somehow live to- the Pentagon’s claim o scrupulous gether, to envision shared citizenship precision, “you had to smell horseshit.” with mortal enemies. Verini doesn’t dig deeply into this Mosul was recaptured in the summer but cites others’ reports: one airstrike o 2017, and the city is now in the said to target an position during throes o a slow rebuilding. Today, the battle for Mosul killed as many as has been defeated militarily as a territo- 150 civilians, according to Amnesty rial entity and discredited by its misrule International and local witnesses quoted among those who gave it a chance as a in several news outlets; a New York government. But the political problems Times investigation published in 2017 that allowed it to gain a foothold haven’t found that one in Äve airstrikes by the begun to be solved. And although its anti- coalition resulted in unin- true believers have been dealt a set- tended civilian deaths, 31 times the rate back, they are still available as recruits the Pentagon claimed. The book also for decentralized attacks in Iraq, Syria, adds to growing evidence that even the and worldwide.
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As for the rest o Iraq, short o real It pursues policies on Israel that, by trust, the best hope is the sharing o tolerating the expansion o Jewish spoils and power. The country has a settlements in the West Bank and adopt- semblance o real politics—debate on ing an increasingly one-sided approach governance that transcends sect—after to negotiations, have enshrined the the Äght against created at least a indeÄnite occupation o the Palestinian partial sense o shared purpose. The territories. And by supporting or absence o violence is a kind o success; tolerating repressive governments, it in the city o Samarra, for instance, the has given a green light to the suppression Shiite militia run by Muqtada al-Sadr, o the very forces in the region—the who rose to prominence Äghting Ameri- young and educated and motivated— can troops, is now keeping peace with a who brieÁy had the temerity to believe mostly Sunni population, partly by in and act on the universal ideals o oering lucrative business opportunities freedom, human rights, and dignity that to local Sunnis. In Syria, however, American rhetoric promoted, only to be relative quiet has come through Assad’s crushed. Victory via maximum violence wholesale doubling down on repression. against both militants and civilians is no Elsewhere in the Middle East, Leba- recipe for stability. What’s worse, the non’s rickety yet durable system, with example from Assad and others in the sectarian maÄas sharing rents a genera- region has oered authoritarians around tion after the country’s own civil war the world a grisly playbook for how to ended, somehow passes as a decent win. It also spurred a wave o refugees outcome. But it depends on perpetuat- that sent racist identity politics rippling ing sectarian mistrust and precludes through Europe and the United States. basic infrastructure investment, let alone So Verini is right to talk about an a functional state, a shared political or entwined Iraq and America. Indeed, it physical public space, or meaningful is not too far a stretch to see versions levers for ordinary citizens to eect o Iraqis’ dilemmas within U.S. borders. change. And that is in a country that is a How can armed fanatics and gunmen, fraction o the size o Iraq. who make common cause in the dark More important, instability and corners o social media and capitalize extremism will rear their heads in the on its blurring o facts, be stopped? Are Middle East as long as its people are Americans facing their own apocalypse, denied a voice in how they are governed. from the climate? How can grievances The biggest long-term threat in the and divisions be healed in a country, in region is neither nor Iran but the a world, where people don’t agree on continued de facto insistence by its own the nature o reality? And after years o leaders that the path to security and fear, what concerns are shared? Who is stability is through rule by force. “them,” and who is “us”?∂ Decades o U.S. policy have implicitly endorsed that view. Washington main- tains so-called counterterrorism alliances with despotic rulers in Egypt, Saudi Arabia, and the United Arab Emirates.
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citizens who happen to be white voting What Is White Ärst and foremost as white people. In the immediate aftermath o the election, America? commentators rushed to ascribe Trump’s victory to economic disarray in the heartland and to a subset o voters The Identity Politics o lamenting their loss o jobs and stability. the Majority It took a couple o years for journalists, pollsters, and scholars to Änd a sounder Nell Irvin Painter explanation: by and large, most white Trump supporters were not voting out o economic self-interest; rather, they were resentful o social changes that White Shift: Populism, Immigration, and threatened their taken-for-granted the Future of White Majorities position atop a social hierarchy—despite BY ERIC KAUFMANN. Abrams Press, the fact that the vast majority o those 2019, 624 pp. who held political power were white (and male), white families’ wealth was White Identity Politics still six and a hal times as great as black BY ASHLEY JARDINA. Cambridge families’ wealth, and black families University Press, 2019, 384 pp. headed by college graduates had about 33 percent less wealth than white Dying of Whiteness: How the Politics of families headed by high school dropouts. Racial Resentment Is Killing America’s Three new books seek to validate this Heartland explanation and to answer a few crucial BY JONATHAN M. METZL. Basic questions. What do these white people Books, 2019, 352 pp. want? According to these authors, they want Trump, Brexit, guns, tax cuts, Republicans, Social Security, and he U.S. presidential election o Medicare. More than anything else, they 2016 altered the prevailing want to protect their place atop society. TAmerican ideology o race. And what don’t these white people Donald Trump’s coy, borderline white want? Immigrants, Obamacare, and nationalism helped turn people who money for public schools. And above all, previously happened to be white into they don’t want to be called bigots by “white people”—coded as white in an multiculturalists; that kind o talk essential way, just as, for instance, black threatens them and encourages them to people are coded as black in an essen- embrace white nationalism. They cannot tial way. Many observers were slow to imagine a multiracial society in which grasp the political ramiÄcations o white people—however deÄned— peaceably take their place among others NELL IRVIN PAINTER is Edwards Professor of who are not white. American History Emerita at Princeton University and the author of The History of And who are these white people? White People. That’s what these books are about, and
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that’s what makes them both interesting disconnected from economic (and, in and, ultimately, vexing. All three the case o Metzl, biological) self-interest, authors seem to believe that it is possible politicians will remain free to pursue to understand whiteness ontologically, policies that beneÄt corporations and as a thing. But race is better understood the wealthy but that do ordinary white as an ongoing discourse, not as a people little good. But political issues physical reality. Although racism and that matter beyond white identity—for the discrimination that accompanies it instance, voting rights and equal treat- clearly have measurable social and ment under the law—hardly appear in economic eects, race is a concept that these books. And none o the three should be described with verbs such as books oers a convincing path out o the “to seem,” as opposed to “to be.” The dangerous territory into which the belie in the reality o race as a biologi- United States has been thrust by white cally or otherwise Äxed characteristic, identity politics. however, is like the belie in witchcraft, as the sociologist Karen Fields said IF YOU’RE WHITE, YOU’RE ALRIGHT years ago: there’s nothing one can say to Kaufmann is a professor o politics at disprove it. And, I would add, that Birkbeck, University o London. He is belie produces clear political outcomes. an expert on the politics o Northern I there is no such thing as a stable, Ireland and thus brings a sense o freestanding category o whites, how history to the subject o white identity, can one make convincing claims about which he terms “white ethno-tradition- whiteness and white identity politics? alism.” His book deals mostly with the The solution to this problem, for these United States, but Canada and Europe authors and many others, is to turn to also come into view. By his reckoning, data, measurements, charts, and graphs. race is a genetic fact, and in a manner Eric Kaufmann and Ashley Jardina reminiscent o nineteenth- and early- analyze data from opinion surveys to twentieth-century scientists’ belie in make arguments about the roots o white temperamental dierences based on race, resentment. Jonathan Metzl examines he perceives a “white arch-type” that has medical statistics and conducts inter- certain recognizable cultural manifesta- views with individuals to understand tions. He calls multicultural and multi- why white-identifying people support a racial populations in Western countries conservative political agenda that has “mixed-race” and uses the term “unmixed” had a deleterious eect on their own with scare quotes but without irony. health and well-being. Kaufmann and Kaufmann explores the attitudes o Jardina focus on white identiÄers’ white people who oppose immigrants and conservative politics but minimize the refugees and voted for Brexit or Trump Republican Party’s strategy o exploiting and argues that most o them are not the enormous emotional power o power hungry or antiblack. They’re just whiteness to advance regressive taxation, normal human beings who, feeling limit the social safety net, and disem- threatened, are engaging in cultural power workers. All three authors recog- self-defense. To prove that his claims rest nize that so long as white identity is on sound science, Kaufmann displays
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What Is White America?
Majority rule: supporters at a Trump rally in New Hampshire, August 2019 data in dozens o¡ charts and graphs. But Kaufmann’s main argument is that too often, they reduce or distort the the kind o¡ white identity politics that reality they are supposed to represent. has taken the form o¡ right-wing popu- One chart, for example, shows two lines lism results from two threats: diversi¯ca- relating to the probability o¡ someone tion through immigration, which reduces voting for right-wing populists in a given the size o¡ the white majority, and an country, correlated with whether the “anti-majority adversary culture” o¡ voter says safety is very important. The “left-modernism,” whose “most zealous caption asserts that other variables were exponents” inhabit college campuses, controlled for, but the reader is left where they pursue their “mission o¡ wondering how that control has aected replacing ‘whiteness’ with diversity.” the stated probabilities. The graph oers Kaufmann claims that the “anti-white no evidence for the direction o¡ causation narrative” o¡ “radical left-modernists” among the highlighted variables: the has pushed some white people beyond percentage o´ Muslims in the population, mere opposition to immigration into JONATHAN a person’s level o¡ concern for safety, extremist theories o¡ “white genocide.” and that person’s propensity to vote for To help white-identi¯ed people pull right-wing populist parties or candidates. back from such extremes, Kaufmann / REUTERS ERNST But Kaufmann nonetheless suggests a proposes remedies for the short and the particular causal direction, implying that long term. In essence, Kaufmann wants the presence o´ Muslims stokes con- to save white people from themselves. cerns about safety, which then encourage But some o° his proposals seem less support for right-wing populists. like antidotes to extremism and more
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like accommodations to it. Take, for To Kaufmann, the worries o “ethno- example, his suggestion for how to deal traditional nationalists” about “losing with the problems posed by refugees: the country they know” are legitimate keep them away from the majority white and not automatically worthy o con- population and house them “on a long- demnation. Those who condemn such term basis” in “camps” oering refuge thinking, he suggests, are peddling the but no prospect o permanent settlement. “anti-white narrative” o the white- Such camps could be set up in “a less hating “modernist-left” and driving new prosperous non-¤ country like Albania.” followers into the arms o right-wing Western countries that oppose refugees white nationalists. I these critics would would be willing to fund such camps, he just shut up, white people would settle writes, because “they care more about down and admit other people into the cultural impact o refugee settlement their world—provided they are light- than the economic costs.” skinned enough and willing to identify Kaufmann’s long-term solution to as white. But Kaufmann doesn’t ex- prevent the spread o extremist white plain how nonwhite people would Ät identity politics is to speed what he sees into this new polity, with its newly as an inevitable “white shift”: the entrenched and enlarged white majority. emergence o a new deÄnition o “white” Nor, crucially, does he reÁect on how that would include light-skinned people such a polity would fare when it comes with heterogeneous ancestry and, at the to protecting the fundamental values o same time, would conserve the “core liberal democracy. myths and boundary symbols” o white- ness. O course, this is a phenomenon FEAR FACTOR that has appeared in U.S. history many Less polemic and more modest than times and in many guises. Over the Kaufmann’s book, Jardina’s study applies centuries, as Kaufmann notes, deÄnitions multiple regression, the most widely o whiteness have come to incorporate used o all statistical methods, to opinion formerly denigrated groups, such as Irish polling data. Jardina, an assistant profes- Americans, Italian Americans, and sor o political science at Duke Univer- Jewish Americans. Consider, too, the sity, controls for variables representing centuries-old practice o members o the resentment o blacks, partisanship, many-hued African American popula- gender, region, and political ideology tion passing for white in a deeply racist and proposes to measure the inÁuence o society—a topic Kaufmann ignores. the degree to which white Americans Kaufmann is surely correct that ideas identify as white, stripped o all other about who counts as white are bound to characteristics. Her measure o white change. In Kaufmann’s view, this shift identity has Äve categories, ranging will help maintain white supremacy. from “being white is not at all impor- However, as I’ve written elsewhere, such tant to my identity” to “being white is an enlargement is in fact already weak- extremely important to my identity.” ening white supremacy by beneÄting Then she checks whether this measure wealthy and educated people who do not o white identity allows her to predict identify as white. political attitudes. It does.
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She writes that perceived threats to for example, Jardina’s assertion that white supremacy—a nonwhite U.S. “desires to preserve Social Security and president, a Latina justice o the U.S. Medicare are rooted in white racial Supreme Court, armative action, solidarity”—a claim that seems to ignore college courses on race—have made the role o class and age in support for white people feel “outnumbered, such programs. disadvantaged, and even oppressed.” Perhaps Jardina’s most important Political responses have followed, as argument is that “white identity is not white voters have supported strict deÄned by racial animus, and whites who immigration controls and voter identiÄ- identify with their racial group are not cation laws that reduce minority turn- simply reducible to bigots.” Without out. According to Jardina’s analysis, a passing judgment, Jardina writes that strong sense o white identiÄcation many white identiÄers resent the notion predicts negative attitudes toward that “expressing their identity would be immigration and positive attitudes seen, unfairly, as problematic or even toward Social Security, Medicare, and racist.” She cites as an example o this the policies o the Trump administra- dynamic an episode in 2015 when a deli tion. But, Jardina contends, white owner in New Jersey posted a sign at identiÄcation alone does not predict his business reading, “Celebrate your opposition to policies and programs White Heritage in March. White His- often viewed through a racial lens, such tory Month.” The deli owner was baÔed as armative action, welfare, and when some o his neighbors excoriated Medicaid. Rather, opposition to those his sign as racist. But it’s dicult to things correlates with a strong sense o accept that support for a hypothetical racial resentment that is distinct from White History Month would indicate merely identifying as white. nothing more than a blameless expression Jardina’s methodology o applying o white racial solidarity, portending no multiple regression to opinion polling ill will toward other groups. After all, data is widely used in political psychology what might be celebrated during White and other social sciences. But its pitfalls History Month? Would it highlight are well known, the most obvious being heroic white people such as the Founding the problem o determining causality Fathers, even though they are already when the eects o certain variables are broadly celebrated? Would it commemo- very small and predictions are there- rate events in U.S. history such as the fore hard to make with conÄdence. A American Revolution, which very much second pitfall lies in this methodology’s included people o color? Would it inability to characterize change over herald the ethnic cleansing o Native time—to capture changing behaviors as Americans justiÄed by Manifest Destiny? populations adjust to one another. There Answering the question o what White is, further, the temptation to search History Month might look like in among possible control variables or practice would reveal the antidemocratic among variables to predict in order to dimension o white identity and dem- Änd positive results. These pitfalls onstrate why it cannot be celebrated as suggest that one should be skeptical of, though it were historically neutral.
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Nell Irvin Painter
WHAT’S THE MATTER WITH threats posed by Mexicans and “welfare WHITE PEOPLE? queens.” Metzl calculates that “Tennes- It’s not hard to see how ethnic and racial see’s refusal to expand Medicaid cost minorities—and the polity at large— every single white resident o the state 14.1 might be harmed when white-identify- days o life,” presumably on average. ing citizens decide to vote and organize Metzl also examines the health conse- speciÄcally as white people. But to quences o Missouri’s 2016 “constitu- what extent does such political behav- tional carry” bill, a piece o legislation ior actually beneÄt white people on an that dramatically widened an individual’s individual level? Metzl explores that right to bear arms in that state. He question and Änds that, at least in reports on conversations he had with Kansas, Missouri, and Tennessee, white members o a support group for people identity politics has resulted in physical who have lost a loved one to suicide. and intellectual harm to some white Kim’s father committed suicide with a gun people. Metzl, a medical doctor and a after “he got worried about protection, professor o sociology and psychiatry at security, you know, and terrorism and Vanderbilt University, has produced a intruders.” For Metzl, “terrorism and data-driven book that alternates be- intruders” translates into fears associ- tween narrative and analysis. Metzl also ated with immigrants and the country’s relies on personal interviews to shed Ärst African American president. His light on how public policy aects par- nonwhite interviewees, less fearful o the ticular people and how they process the unknown, are less attached to their conÁicts between their physical well- rights to own and carry Ärearms. Kim being and their political convictions. joins all the others in her suicide support He wants to know why “lower- and group in rejecting proposals to middle-class white Americans vote strengthen gun control, even given the against their own biological self-interest near certainty that someone attempting as well as their own economic priorities.” suicide with a gun—statistically most Metzl begins in Tennessee with a likely to be a white man—will succeed. white man he refers to as Trevor (Metzl “It’s not the gun’s fault,” says one o the uses pseudonyms throughout), who is group’s members. “Guns are important to poor, lacks health insurance, and suers us and to our liberties.” from an inÁamed liver, hepatitis C, and But Metzl cannot come up with jaundice. Trevor staunchly supports his concrete means o saving white people’s state’s refusal to embrace Obamacare by lives within the logic o whiteness. His expanding Medicaid coverage, even main advice is that white people should be though that refusal deprives him o the less fearful o social change; they should care he needs to save his life. “O what understand that it is not a zero-sum game. was Trevor dying?” Metzl asks. The answer, he says, is the “toxic eects o NO WAY OUT? dogma” and “American notions o white- Racial identity, these three authors ness.” That dogma, according to Metzl, realize, is a gut-level belie that’s very equates Obamacare with intrusive govern- hard to shake. U.S. history has shown ment and intrusive government with the diculty o getting masses o white
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What Is White America?
people to further their economic self- It is true that vast numbers o white- interest by banding together with identiÄed people are unhappy with their nonwhites—which might explain why all loss o privileges. But those privileges three balk at advocating fundamental depended on distortions o Western political change, at least in the short run. democratic values that produced a kind All three o these books portray o hereditary aristocracy o whiteness. white identity politics as conservative The question before Americans at this and Republican, as i being white - time concerns the value they place on identiÄed leads in only one direction their democracy when one o the coun- politically. Although they evince vary- try’s two main political parties has ing degrees o sympathy for such embraced antidemocratic leadership and politics, all three concur that they are policies. Democracy will suer as long harming American society. Even as the Republican Party continues to though Kaufmann and Jardina see white function as a white people’s party, as it identity politics as a normal response to increasingly does. The presidential perceived threats, they also see a need election o 2016 oered some hope for to pull back from a reactionary trend. the future, as some three million more Kaufmann says white people need voters opposed Trump than supported “reassurance,” which will open the way him. Now, three years later, the choice “for a return to more relaxed, harmoni- between Trump’s white nationalism and ous and trusting societies,” as when the multiculturalism o the Democrats white people sat securely on top. appears even starker. One can only hope Jardina is more fearful, seeing aggrieved that increasing numbers o Americans whites as an “untapped well . . . ready will conclude that standing at the top to be stoked by politicians willing to go o a racial hierarchy is not worth the loss down a potentially very dark path.” o American democracy.∂ Although she believes that an enlarge- ment o whiteness (along the lines o Kaufmann’s white shift) will most likely occur, she sees it as insucient. Like Metzl, she wishes white identiÄers would become less fearful o social change. But she doesn’t suggest any particular means o encouraging that outcome. For his part, Metzl concludes with a plea for what he terms “white humility” and asks, “What might American politics look like i white humility was seen not as a sellout or a capitulation but as an honest eort to address seemingly intractable social issues?” I only white Americans would attempt cooperation rather than domination, American society might move away from “a biology o demise.”
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(¨µ¡s), none o which bore any visible fruit. For the truth is that even with The Virtue of the rise o high-frequency trading since the early years o this century, actual Monopoly mom-and-pop investors have never had it so good. Armed with online accounts Why the Stock Market oering trades for minuscule fees, they Stopped Working see their transactions go through instan- taneously, without the sorts o delays Felix Salmon that can allow the market to move against them before their order is Älled. I the stock market is broken, it’s not broken in a way that is obvious to retail investors. Darkness by Design: The Hidden Power in Yet Lewis was right to worry about Global Capital Markets ¨µ¡s; he just misidentiÄed their main BY WALTER MATTLI. Princeton victims. This is the revelation at the University Press, 2019, 264 pp. heart o Walter Mattli’s masterful Darkness by Design. Great books make you reexamine your assumptions, and this one ou’ve heard the story many delivers in spades. It not only oers a times. The stock market is compelling critique o how the stock Yrigged. A highly secretive group market has evolved over the past 15 o opaque Änancial institutions is years; it also forces readers to reconsider making billions o dollars from socially the idea that competition is good and useless high-frequency trading—plac- monopolies are bad. What has truly tilted ing and withdrawing stock orders the playing Äeld in favor o a handful o hundreds o thousands o times per Änancial behemoths and ¨µ¡s, Mattli second—with all those proÄts coming, argues, is the growing fragmentation o in one way or another, from the rest o stock markets, a process actively en- us. The biggest losers o all? Small, couraged by misguided government mom-and-pop, or retail, investors, who regulators. The biggest losers o that cannot hope to compete. development are not retail investors, who Perhaps the best-known proponent tend to be fairly well-o, but pension o this narrative is the author and funds, insurance companies, and other Änancial journalist Michael Lewis. In major institutional investors. his 2014 book, Flash Boys, Lewis painted Those Änancial behemoths are, in the stock market as a battle in which fact, the proverbial little guy. One o the the good guys were losing to the bad paradoxes o Änancial terminology is guys. The book sold well and even that terms such as “retail investor” and instigated a handful o criminal investi- “small business owner” connote the gations into high-frequency traders relatively impecunious, whereas in fact those investors and owners are dispro- FELIX SALMON is Chief Financial Correspon- portionately likely to be in the top one dent for Axios. percent o the wealth distribution. The
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The Virtue of Monopoly
big investors—pension funds, insurance preferences when it comes to market companies, mutual funds, and exchange- structure and rules. When those mem- traded funds—are much more likely to bers have similar amounts o¡ power, the be holding the wealth o¡ the 99 percent. result is often a democratic compro- Ordinary investors are being ripped o mise in which the greater good prevails. every day; they just don’t see it, be- But when ¯nancial institutions garner cause it is happening behind the scenes for themselves an outsize degree o¡ o¡ their life insurance policies and their power and in¥uence, they can end up index-fund investments. skewing the market structure in their favor, at the expense o¡ ideals such as A FATEFUL BATHROOM BREAK liquidity and trustworthiness. That, in a Mattli is a political scientist, and his nutshell, is what has happened in the great insight is to consider the stock global stock market—with the largest market more as a political entity than banks and brokerage companies refash- an economic one. To Mattli, markets ioning markets to serve their own ends. are ¯rst and foremost “political institu- Mattli’s book is the result o¡ years o¡ tions governed by power relations.” research into the history o¡ the New Dierent members have diering York Stock Exchange and its member companies. Granular detail about market regulation might not sound like the stu o¡ a great read. But Mattli spent a lot o¡ time in the Å’s archives and inter- viewed many o¡ its former employees and traders. As a result, Darkness by Design has an uncom- mon richness to it. Take a story that neatly illuminates
ILLUSTRATION how much has changed for the worse under today’s regula- tory regime. Bob BY Seijas, a 33-year DAVID employee o¡ the Å,
PLUNKERT told Mattli about a coworker who in the 1980s was ¯ned $50,000 (well above
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Felix Salmon
$100,000 in today’s dollars) because he market in which, as Mattli writes, left his post to go to the men’s room for almost everybody was “socialized into eight minutes and gave inadequate the value system o the Exchange” and instructions to his assistant. The man in had strong Änancial and reputational question worked as a specialist—an incentives to live up to those values. employee at the exchange who serves as an intermediary between buyers and WHEN BAD GOVERNANCE PAYS sellers. Part o his job was to buy into Those days are over. When the £Ý¤ selling pressure—buying stocks even as was a monopoly, before 2005, a single their prices were falling so as to ensure rogue specialist could destroy the smoothly continuous trading. But when reputation o the entire franchise, and the specialist went to the bathroom, his so the exchange was always working to assistant didn’t keep buying, and the improve its governance standards. But price o the stock he was charged with the £Ý¤ is no longer the only game in overseeing fell sharply, by 75 cents. town. Today, there are 23 dierent Seijas later defended the specialist, registered “national securities ex- saying that the man had spent four hours changes” in the United States, o which performing superbly before taking a the £Ý¤ is merely the second largest, bathroom break.ßA colleague simply accounting for about 12 percent o the retorted, “Don’t tell me he stopped at 20 total U.S. market. It competes directly red lights and only passed one.” with exchanges bearing names such as Indeed, the specialist himsel likely «¬Þ, Cboe ÝÞ, and Nasdaq «Þ (not expected a penalty and understood that i to be confused with Nasdaq Þ, Nasdaq negligence went unpunished, the conse- ³¤«Þ, Nasdaq ¤, or Nasdaq ¨§Þ— quences for his chosen vocation would be none o which is the main Nasdaq much worse than a one-o $50,000 hit. exchange that ordinary investors know From the 1980s all the way to the early about). And because it has to compete, years o this century, any such breach o the £Ý¤ has gone from a powerful protocol was almost certain to be norm setter and regulator in its own punished, reinforcing the trust that all right to just another market partici- participants had in the market. pant, trying to bolster its position at Specialists played a central role in any cost. Today, stock prices move up maintaining that trust. They under- or down by 75 cents almost every stood trading patterns, knew who the minute o every day, and the £Ý¤ has big buyers and sellers were, and knew neither the ability nor the inclination how best to match the two without to stop that from happening. aecting prices. They made money, but “In the new era o fragmented mar- they did so transparently, surrounded kets,” Mattli writes, “costly investments by traders who watched their every move. in good governance and commitments Attempts to front-run the market— to fairness, equality, and transparency buying or selling ahead o a client’s have to be balanced against an overriding pending order to pad one’s own proÄts new mandate to attract liquidity to at the expense o the client—were survive.” Exchanges do everything they almost always detected. The result was a can to attract the business o the major
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players, who do millions o trades per second, often accommodating them in ways that bene t those players at the INDEPENDENT TASK FORCE expense o other participants in the REPORT NO. 77 market. Although no playing eld is entirely level, today the market is much more tilted toward a handful o ultra- sophisticated traders than it ever was during the days o the ’s monopoly. The state bodies monitoring the exchanges suer from the same lack o cohesion, with predictable results: when an economic sector is governed by Innovation multiple regulators, actors will con- stantly engage in regulatory arbitrage, and National rewarding the most lenient regulators while diverting their activities away from the most stringent. Before the Security 2008 nancial crisis, for instance, two U.S. bank regulators—the Oce o Keeping Our Edge Thrift Supervision and the Oce o the Comptroller o the Currency—com- peted with each other to attract banks, Without an ambitious new which could choose which agency’s strategy, the United States risks regulation to submit to. That never made losing its leadership in science much sense, and lawmakers merged the and technology. two as part o the 2010 Dodd-Frank Wall Street Reform and Consumer Protection Act. But to this day, the Securities and Exchange Commission () and the Commodity Futures Trading Commission () compete READ THE REPORT with each other to regulate markets. cfr.org/KeepingOurEdge (Blame congressional politics: the is governed by the House and Senate Agriculture Committees, whereas the is governed by the House Financial Services Committee and the Senate Banking Committee.) In earlier days, the concentration o market power at the made up for this regulatory confusion. When it came to stock trading, the exchange proved a much more capable regulator than the
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Felix Salmon
¤ or any other federal agency ever did. Credit Suisse, Goldman Sachs, and The £Ý¤ enforcement arm had deep Merrill Lynch—that had spent limitless institutional knowledge. It knew, for hours and dollars on lobbying the ¤ instance, that i a broker placed a trade to push Reg £« through. Rather than in « stock at 12:04:45 «, he would being a utility owned by its members, need at least 22 seconds to walk over to the £Ý¤ was now a proÄt-maximizing a dierent specialist to place a dierent entity like all the other exchanges. trade. The £Ý¤ used this kind o On top o there being competition information to conduct forensic exami- among the many new exchanges, every nations o suspicious transactions, major broker-dealer also engages in examinations that the ¤ would Änd “internalization”—eectively acting as completely impossible to perform. its own mini-exchange and fulÄlling Today, however, the regulators are on orders with its own inventory o shares their own; the individual exchanges rather than sending them on to any have all but abdicated even the pretense exchange at all. Not so long ago, i you o having a governance structure with phoned up a broker and placed an order any teeth. And as Mattli points out, to buy 100 shares o «, that order “The creation o exploitative schemes by would likely be Älled on the £Ý¤. particularly powerful actors to beneÄt Today, ¨µ¡s compete with one another themselves is rational in a system o bad to pay your broker for the privilege o governance because the chances o getting taking the other side o your trade. This caught are tiny and the reputational or fragmentation beneÄts ¨µ¡s, who are material consequences o such behavior constantly searching for order Áows are largely insigniÄcant while the proÄts that they can keep for themselves rather from such schemes are high.” than having to compete for them on an open market. It also helps the major THE END OF AN EMPIRE global securities Ärms that orchestrated What caused this enormous change? the end o the £Ý¤ monopoly in the The short answer is the Regulation Ärst place, since they are paid for—or National Market System, or Reg £«, a take direct advantage of—the retail rule promulgated in 2005 by the ¤ in order Áow that they generate. Between the name o market eciency. It osten- them, these huge companies now have sibly modernized markets by moving a market share north o 70 percent. stock trading away from the £Ý¤ and The big test o any stock market is toward numerous other exchanges, but whether it has depth: whether it’s it also marked the death o the old possible to buy or sell a large number o £Ý¤. Up until that point, the exchange shares in a small amount o time without was a mutual society: Ärms could buy moving the market. Traders will natu- seats, and the exchange was owned by rally Áock to such a market, creating even its members. After 2005, it demutual- more depth—a virtuous cycle that results ized, stopped selling seats, and became in monopolies, such as the one the £Ý¤ just one among many exchanges, most enjoyed until 2005. The £Ý¤’s monopoly, o which were owned and operated by in turn, allowed it to be technically enormous global broker-dealers—think innovative, introducing everything from
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The Virtue of Monopoly
the Ärst stock ticker (1867) and the Ärst markets and jurisdictions. No regulator trading-Áoor telephones (1878) to a can hope to keep up, so these highly system capable o processing four billion secretive companies eectively operate shares a day (1999). No other stock with no code, no morals, and no values. exchange in the world could come close. Their only motivation is proÄt. Today’s internalization, by contrast, Investors once hoped that so-called has created a classic tragedy o the dark pools would oer a way out o the commons: big banks free-ride on the depth problem. Dark pools exploded in £Ý¤’s ticker, trading at the prices it popularity after 2005, since large publishes in real time, without contribut- institutions could no longer count on ing to its liquidity. The consequences the £Ý¤’s specialists to provide ample became clear during the “Áash crash” o liquidity and found themselves being May 2010, when billions o dollars o outpaced by ¨µ¡ on smaller exchanges. value suddenly evaporated, only to Because orders placed in dark pools are reappear minutes later. Without the deep not visible to other traders until they liquidity and oversight o the old £Ý¤ have been executed, the hope was that there was no one to prevent thousands o ¨µ¡s would not be able to make money stocks from collectively plunging and front-running these transactions. In then rebounding. Worse still, that kind o reality, however, even dark pools are event happens every day in individual infested with ¨µ¡, whose trade volume stocks; the only unusual thing about the the pools rely on to remain proÄtable. Áash crash was that it took place in many stocks simultaneously. HIGHFREQUENCY MANIPULATORS As the Áash crash proved, today’s The ¨µ¡s are in control o the markets market lacks depth. Large investors now. They are the must-have customers want to move billions o dollars in and for any exchange, because they drive out o the stock market but cannot do most o the volume and liquidity in the so without prices moving against them, market. The exchanges, many o them their orders being front-run by ¨µ¡s. created to serve the ¨µ¡s, cannot The ¨µ¡s who beneÄt from this system themselves prevent the latter’s domi- are the embodiment o what Adair nance. Nor can regulators, who are Turner, then chair o the United King- conÄned to single markets in single dom’s Financial Services Authority, countries, whereas ¨µ¡s roam globally. famously characterized as “socially By the time a regulator has found a useless” Änancial activity. They reinvest vaguely suspicious transaction, the their proÄts into machines that can algorithms ¨µ¡s use have long since trade in microseconds rather than moved on to something new. milliseconds; those proÄts would surely Even when blatantly illegal activity serve a higher purpose i they were happens right under their noses, regula- invested in other parts o the economy. tors generally ignore it. From 2006 to And as these outÄts become bigger and 2010, the £Ý¤ gave ¨µ¡s a physical more sophisticated, they trade increas- trading-speed advantage by openly ingly complex Änancial products—all allowing them to place their trading invented by banks—across dozens o computers right inside the exchange.
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Felix Salmon
This practice was, as Mattli notes, a market events per day. Its computers patent violation o securities law. But Áag about one percent o those—500 instead o punishing the £Ý¤, the million events per day—and a single regulators simply waited for the exchange Áag can create weeks o work for a team to ask permission, which eventually it o regulatory investigators. The vast did. Then the ¤ granted that permis- majority o suspicious transactions sion. Other cases involve special order likely go uninvestigated. types, or ¢¡s—extremely arcane forms A couple o glimmers o hope o placing a trade, designed to give ¨µ¡s remain. The European Union has made an extra advantage over real-money decent strides in improving investor investors. On rare occasions, the ¤ has protections with a 2018 directive called levied Änes on exchanges for implement- MiFID II, a new version o the Markets ing ¢¡s without permission, but the in Financial Instruments Directive, Änes are tiny compared with the proÄts which forces exchanges to be much the ¢¡s generate. more transparent about conÁicts o Mattli has a whole chapter on various interest in their disclosures to investors. forms o market manipulation that are In 2012, France implemented a 0.1 unequivocally harmful but ubiquitous. percent tax on the value o canceled or There are the ways that banks have modiÄed orders, which is a strong disin- allowed ¨µ¡s into dark pools even after centive to engage in quote stung or promising large investors that they spooÄng. And there are even occasional would not, for instance. There is quote discussions, so far conÄned largely to stung—placing millions o essentially academia, about moving to so-called fake orders for stocks, at prices far discontinuous markets, where stocks enough removed from the market price would be allowed to trade a mere ten that the orders won’t ever be Älled— times per second—slow enough that ¨µ¡s which makes it impossible to see how could not front-run orders. much liquidity there is in any given Ironically, the greatest hope o all security. That happens 125 times per may be that the technological arms race day, on average, across 75 percent o all between ¨µ¡s and exchanges will U.S.-listed equities. And there is spoof- become so astronomically expensive ing—investors placing and then imme- that it will force the world’s biggest diately withdrawing orders near the exchanges into megamergers with one market price that they never actually another, resulting in a new global intended to see through—which also monopoly spanning countries and happens every day in every major stock. markets. The idea o a single trading The nefarious activity is clear to all, venue for stocks, bonds, currencies, and as is the lack o any real enforcement. derivatives, operating 24 hours a day, The regulators are not only captured by oblivious not only to regulators but also the big banks; they are also completely out to time zones, admittedly sounds o their depth technologically. By some terrifyingly dystopian. But the lesson o counts, the Financial Industry Regula- Mattli’s book is that sometimes giants tory Authority, a private regulator can be relatively benign. It is when they overseen by the ¤, monitors 50 billion break apart that chaos results.∂
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new market form pioneered by Facebook and Google. In The Age of Surveillance The New Masters Capitalism, she argues that capitalism is of the Universe once again extending the sphere o the market, this time by claiming “human experience as free raw material for Big Tech and the Business o hidden commercial practices o extrac- Surveillance tion, prediction, and sales.” With the rise o “ubiquitous computing” (the Paul Starr spread o computers into all realms o life) and the Internet o Things (the connection o everyday objects to the The Age of Surveillance Capitalism: The Internet), the extraction o data has Fight for a Human Future at the New become pervasive. We live in a world Frontier of Power increasingly populated with networked BY SHOSHANA ZUBOFF. devices that capture our communica- PublicAairs, 2019, 704 pp. tions, movements, behavior, and rela- tionships, even our emotions and states n his 1944 classic, The Great Trans- o mind. And, Zubo warns, surveil- formation, the economic historian lance capitalism has thus far escaped Karl Polanyi told the story o the sort o countermovement described I by Polanyi. modern capitalism as a “double move- ment” that led to both the expansion o Zubo’s book is a brilliant, arresting the market and its restriction. During analysis o the digital economy and a the eighteenth and early nineteenth plea for a social awakening about the centuries, old feudal restraints on enormity o the changes that technol- commerce were abolished, and land, labor, ogy is imposing on political and social and money came to be treated as com- life. Most Americans see the threats modities. But unrestrained capitalism posed by technology companies as ravaged the environment, damaged matters o privacy. But Zubo shows public health, and led to economic panics that surveillance capitalism involves and depressions, and by the time more than the accumulation o personal Polanyi was writing, societies had rein- data on an unprecedented scale. The troduced limits on the market. technology Ärms and their experts— Shoshana Zubo, a professor emerita whom Zubo labels “the new priest- at the Harvard Business School, sees a hood”—are creating new forms o power new version o the Ärst hal o Polanyi’s and means o behavioral modiÄcation double movement at work today with that operate outside individual awareness the rise o “surveillance capitalism,” a and public accountability. Checking this priesthood’s power will require a new PAUL STARR is Professor of Sociology and countermovement—one that restrains Public A®airs at Princeton University and the author of Entrenchment: Wealth, Power, and surveillance capitalism in the name o the Constitution of Democratic Societies. personal freedom and democracy.
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Paul Starr
THE RISE OF THE MACHINES A reaction against the power o¡ the technol- ogy industry is already underway. The U.S. Justice Department and the Federal Trade Commission are con- ducting antitrust investigations o¡ Ama- zon, Apple, Facebook, and Google. In July, the ÆÇ levied a $5 billion ¯ne on Facebook for violating promises to consumers that the company made in its own privacy policies (the United States, unlike the European Union, has no general law protecting online privacy). Congress is considering legislation to limit technology companies’ use o¡ data and roll back the o¡ this year, there was a viral panic broad immunity from liability for user- about FaceApp, a mobile application for generated content that it granted them in editing pictures o´ faces that millions o¡ the Communications Decency Act o¡ Americans had downloaded to see 1996. This national debate, still uncertain projected images o¡ themselves at older in its ultimate impact, makes Zubo’s ages. Created by a Russian ¯rm, the app book all the more timely and relevant. was rumored to be used by Russian
The rise o¡ surveillance capitalism intelligence to gather facial recognition ILLUSTRATION also has an international dimension. data, perhaps to create deepfake videos— U.S. companies have long dominated rumors that the ¯rm has denied. Early the technology industry and the Internet, last year, a Chinese company’s acquisition
arousing suspicion and opposition in o¡ the gay dating app Grindr stirred BY other countries. Now, chastened by the concern about the potential use o¡ the THE
experience o´ Russian interference in app’s data to compromise individuals and PROJECT TWINS the 2016 U.S. presidential election, U.S. national security; the federal Americans are getting nervous about Committee on Foreign Investment in the stores o¡ personal data falling into the United States has since ordered the hands o° hostile foreign powers. In July Chinese ¯rm to avoid accessing Grindr’s
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The New Masters of the Universe
data and divest itsel entirely o Grindr improve user services. Together with by June 2020. It is not hard to imagine the company’s formidable capabilities in how the rivalry between the United artiÄcial intelligence, Google’s enor- States and China could lead not only to a mous Áows o data enabled it to create technology divorce but also to two what Zubo sees as the true basis o the dierent worlds o everyday surveillance. surveillance industry—“prediction According to Zubo, surveillance products,” which anticipate what users capitalism originated with the brilliant will do “now, soon, and later.” Predicting discoveries and brazen claims o one what people will buy is the key to American Ärm. “Google,” she writes, “is advertising, but behavioral predictions to surveillance capitalism what the Ford have obvious value for other purposes, Motor Company and General Motors as well, such as insurance, hiring were to mass-production-based manage- decisions, and political campaigns. rial capitalism.” Incorporated in 1998, Zubo’s analysis helps make sense Google soon came to dominate Internet o the seemingly unrelated services search. But initially, it did not focus on oered by Google, its diverse ventures advertising and had no clear path to and many acquisitions. Gmail, Google proÄtability. What it did have was a Maps, the Android operating system, groundbreaking insight: the collateral YouTube, Google Home, even self- data it derived from searches—the driving cars—these and dozens o other numbers and patterns o queries, their services are all ways, Zubo argues, o phrasing, people’s click patterns, and so expanding the company’s “supply on—could be used to improve Google’s routes” for user data both on- and search results and add new services for oÔine. Asking for permission to obtain users. This would attract more users, those data has not been part o the which would in turn further improve its company’s operating style. For instance, search engine in a recursive cycle o when the company was developing learning and expansion. Street View, a feature o its mapping Google’s commercial breakthrough service that displays photographs o came in 2002, when it saw that it could dierent locations, it went ahead and also use the collateral data it collected recorded images o streets and homes in to proÄle the users themselves according dierent countries without Ärst asking to their characteristics and interests. for local permission, Äghting o opposi- Then, instead o matching ads with tion as it arose. In the surveillance search queries, the company could match business, any undefended area o social ads with individual users. Targeting ads life is fair game. precisely and eciently to individuals is This pattern o expansion reÁects an the Holy Grail o advertising. Rather underlying logic o the industry: in the than being Google’s customers, Zubo competition for artiÄcial intelligence argues, the users became its raw-material and surveillance revenues, the advantage suppliers, from whom the Ärm derived goes to the Ärms that can acquire both what she calls “behavioral surplus.” vast and varied streams o data. The That surplus consists o the data above other companies engaged in surveillance and beyond what Google needs to capitalism at the highest level—Amazon,
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Facebook, Microsoft, and the big processes o personalization, however, telecommunications companies—also can be used to modify behavior and face the same expansionary imperatives. beliefs. This is the core concern o Step by step, the industry has expanded Zubo’s book: the creation o a largely both the scope o surveillance (by covert system o power and domination. migrating from the virtual into the real world) and the depth o surveillance MAKE THEM DANCE (by plumbing the interiors o individu- From extracting data and making als’ lives and accumulating data on their predictions, the technology Ärms have personalities, moods, and emotions). gone on to intervening in the real The surveillance industry has not world. After all, what better way to faced much resistance because users like improve predictions than to guide how its personalized information and free people act? The industry term for products. Indeed, they like them so shaping behavior is “actuation.” In much that they readily agree to oner- pursuit o actuation, Zubo writes, the ous, one-sided terms o service. When technology Ärms “nudge, tune, herd, the FaceApp controversy blew up, many manipulate, and modify behavior in people who had used the app were speciÄc directions by executing actions surprised to learn that they had agreed as subtle as inserting a speciÄc phrase to give the company “a perpetual, into your Facebook news feed, timing irrevocable, nonexclusive, royalty-free, the appearance o a BUY button on your worldwide, fully-paid, transferable phone, or shutting down your car engine sub-licensable license to use, reproduce, when an insurance payment is late.” modify, adapt, publish, translate, create Evidence o the industry’s capacity derivative works from, distribute, to modify behavior on a mass scale publicly perform and display your User comes from two studies conducted by Content and any name, username or Facebook. During the 2010 U.S. con- likeness provided in connection with gressional elections, the company’s your User Content in all media formats researchers ran a randomized, con- and channels now known or later trolled experiment on 61 million users. developed, without compensation to Users were split up into three groups. you.” But this wasn’t some devious Two groups were shown information Russian formulation. As Wired pointed about voting (such as the location o out, Facebook has just as onerous terms polling places) at the top o their o service. Facebook news feeds; users in one o Even i Congress enacts legislation these groups also received a social barring companies from imposing such message containing up to six pictures o extreme terms, it is unlikely to resolve Facebook friends who had already voted. the problems Zubo raises. Most The third group received no special people are probably willing to accept voting information. The intervention the use o data to personalize their had a signiÄcant eect on those who services and display advertising predicted received the social message: the research- to be o interest to them, and Congress ers estimated that the experiment led to is unlikely to stop that. The same 340,000 additional votes being cast. In a
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second experiment, Facebook research- ers tailored the emotional content o users’ news feeds, in some cases reduc- ing the number o friends’ posts ex- pressing positive emotions and in other cases reducing their negative posts. They found that those who viewed more negative posts in their news feeds Assistant Editor went on to make more negative posts themselves, demonstrating, as the title Foreign A airs is looking for o the published article about the study Assistant Editors to join our put it, “massive-scale emotional contagion editorial team. through social networks.” The 2016 Brexit and U.S. elections The Assistant Editor position provided real-world examples o covert is a full-time paid job o ering disinformation delivered via Facebook. exceptional training in serious Not only had the company previously journalism. Previous Assistant allowed the political consulting Ä rm Editors have included recent Cambridge Analytica to harvest personal graduates from undergraduate and data on tens o millions o Facebook master’s programs. Candidates users; during the 2016 U.S. election, it should have a serious interest in also permitted microtargeting o international relations, a Á air for “unpublished page post ads,” generally writing, and a facility with the known as “dark posts,” which were English language. invisible to the public at large. These were delivered to users as part o their Assistant Editors work for one year, news feeds along with regular content, starting in June. and when users liked, commented on, or shared them, their friends saw the For more information about how same ads, now personally endorsed. But to apply for the 2020–21 Assistant the dark posts then disappeared and Editor position, please visit: were never publicly archived. Micro- targeting o ads is not inherently illegitimate, but journalists are unable to www.foreigna airs.com/Apply police deception and political opponents cannot rebut attacks when social media Applications are due by deliver such messages outside the public January 28, 2020. sphere. The delivery o covert disinfor- mation on a mass basis is fundamentally inimical to democratic debate. Facebook has since eliminated dark posts and made other changes in response to public criticism, but Zubo is still right about this central point:
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“Facebook owns an unprecedented means Such aspirations imply a radical o behavior modiÄcation that operates inequality o power between the people covertly, at scale, and in the absence o who control the play list and the people social or legal mechanisms o agree- who dance to it. In the last third o her ment, contest, and control.” No law, for book, Zubo takes her analysis up a level, example, bars Facebook from adjusting identifying the theoretical ideas and its users’ news feeds to favor one general model o society that she sees as political party or another (and in the implicit in surveillance capitalism. The United States, such a law might well be animating idea behind surveillance held unconstitutional). As a 2018 study capitalism, Zubo says, is that o the by The Wall Street Journal showed, psychologist B. F. Skinner, who re- YouTube’s recommendation algorithm garded the belie in human freedom as an was feeding viewers videos from ever illusion standing in the way o a more more extreme fringe groups. That harmonious, controlled world. Now, in algorithm and others represent an Zubo’s view, the technology industry is enormous source o power over beliefs developing the means o behavior modiÄ- and behavior. cation to carry out Skinner’s program. Surveillance capitalism, according to The emerging system o domination, Zubo, is moving society in a funda- Zubo cautions, is not totalitarian; it mentally antidemocratic direction. With has no need for violence and no interest the advent o ubiquitous computing, in ideological conformity. Instead, it is the industry dreams o creating trans- what she calls “instrumentarian”—it portation systems and whole cities with uses everyday surveillance and actuation built-in mechanisms for controlling to channel people in directions pre- behavior. Using sensors, cameras, and ferred by those in control. As an exam- location data, Sidewalk Labs, a subsid- ple, she describes China’s eorts to iary o Google’s parent company, introduce a social credit system that Alphabet, envisions a “for-proÄt city” scores individuals by their behavior, with the means o enforcing city their friends, and other aspects o their regulations and with dynamic online lives and then uses this score to deter- markets for city services. The system mine each individual’s access to services would require people to use Sidewalk’s and privileges. The Chinese system mobile payment system and allow the fuses instrumentarian power and the Ärm, as its ¤¢, Dan Doctoro, ex- state (and it is interested in political plained in a 2016 talk, to “target ads to conformity), but its emerging American people in proximity, and then obvi- counterpart may fuse instrumentarian ously over time track them through power and the market. things like beacons and location services as well as their browsing activ- NO FUTURE? ity.” One software developer for an The Age of Surveillance Capitalism is a Internet o Things company told powerful and passionate book, the Zubo, “We are learning how to write product o a deep immersion in both the music, and then we let the music technology and business that is also make them dance.” informed by an understanding o
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The New Masters of the Universe
history and a commitment to human provoke—not only in the United States freedom. Zubo seems, however, but also around the world. The global unable to resist the most dire, over- reach o American surveillance capital- the-top formulations o her argument. ism may be only a temporary phase. She writes, for example, that the indus- Nationalism is on the march today, and try has gone “from automating infor- the technology industry is in its path: mation Áows about you to automating countries that want to chart their own you.” An instrumentarian system o destiny will not continue to allow U.S. behavior modiÄcation, she says, is not companies to control their platforms for just a possibility but an inevitability, communication and politics. driven by surveillance capitalism’s own The competition o rival Ärms and internal logic: “Just as industrial political systems may also complicate any capitalism was driven to the continuous eorts to reform the technology indus- intensiÄcation o the means o produc- try in the United States. Would it be a tion, so surveillance capitalists are . . . good thing, for example, to heavily now locked in a cycle o continuous regulate major U.S. technology Ärms i intensiÄcation o the means o behav- their Chinese rivals gained as a result? ioral modiÄcation.” The U.S. companies at least profess As a warning, Zubo’s argument liberal democratic values. The trick is deserves to be heard, but Americans passing laws to hold them to these are far from mere puppets in the hands values. I Zubo’s book helps awaken a o Silicon Valley. The puzzle here is countermovement to achieve that that Zubo rejects a rhetoric o result, we may yet be able to avoid the “inevitabilism”—“the dictatorship o no dark future she sees being born today.∂ alternatives”—but her book gives little basis for thinking we can avoid the new technologies o control, and she has little to say about speciÄc alternatives herself. Prophecy you will Änd here; policy, not so much. She rightly argues that breaking up the big technology companies would not resolve the prob- lems she raises, although antitrust action may well be justiÄed for other reasons. Some reformers have suggested creating an entirely new regulatory structure to deal with the power o digital platforms and improve “algorithmic accountabil- ity”—that is, identifying and remedying the harms from algorithms. But all o that lies outside this book. The more power major technology platforms exercise over politics and society, the more opposition they will
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o liberalism. Mill insisted that politi- Recent Books cal institutions had to manage the tradeos between liberty and equality and foster the social conditions for Political and Legal individuals to Áourish. In the United States, the reformist ideas o Theodore G. John Ikenberry Roosevelt, Woodrow Wilson, and other progressives in the early twentieth century brought these impulses into the What Was Liberalism? The Past, Present, industrial age, but only through Presi- and Promise of a Noble Idea dent Franklin Roosevelt and the New BY JAMES TRAUB. Basic Books, 2019, Deal did modern liberalism Änd a way 320 pp. to bridge a Jeersonian appeal to citizenship and a Hamiltonian commit- s liberals grapple with rising ment to an activist state. Traub argues populism and authoritarianism, that liberalism lost its way in the 1990s, ATraub turns to history and aligning itsel with globalization and theory to reclaim liberalism’s principles. losing its deeper commitment to a His book mounts one o the best eorts progressive vision o nationalism and o this kind yet, tracing liberalism’s core the common man. ideas from the age o democratic revolutions to the grand ideological Empire of Democracy: The Remaking of the struggles o the twentieth century to the West Since the Cold War, 1971–2017 convulsions o the current vexed mo- BY SIMON REIDÏHENRY. Simon & ment. Traub shows that liberalism is an Schuster, 2019, 880 pp. amalgam o often conÁicting ideas: classical republican principles, Lockean In this massive, kaleidoscopic history o individualism, the commitment to the current democratic age, Reid-Henry popular sovereignty, and evolving Änds the roots o the crisis o modern notions o rights and progressive social liberal democracy in the early 1970s. He ideals. Various settings and Ägures argues that a series o small changes in populate the narrative, but Traub sees economic, social, and political life John Stuart Mill as the pivotal thinker across the Western world conspired to linking the classical and modern strains erode the consensus-oriented model o
WALTER RUSSELL MEAD has retired as reviewer o the section on the United States, and we thank him for his outstanding contributions. We are fortunate to have as his suc- cessor JESSICA T. MATHEWS, a distinguished fellow at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace. From 1997 to 2015, she served as Carnegie’s president. Prior to that, she was director o the Council on Foreign Relations’ Washington Program and a senior fellow at µ. Earlier in her career, she served as deputy to the U.S. undersecretary o state for global aairs during the Clinton administration and as director o the Oce o Global Issues at the National Security Council during the Carter administration.
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democracy that had emerged after globalization, the fact remains that the World War II. The Bretton Woods world is more intensely interconnected regime collapsed, triggering shifts in than ever before. From Änancial mar- how governments cooperated and kets to refugee Áows to production managed their economies. The ¢¤ oil networks, there is no escaping the ways shocks ushered in stagÁation and an in which modern societies are vulner- end to the early postwar commitments able to one another. Weiss and Wilkinson to full employment. New forms o argue that scholars must urgently make identity politics followed the cultural the case that international cooperation upheavals o the 1960s. Crucially, strengthens rather than weakens people’s centrist forces and institutions across ability to take control o and improve the Western system began to break up their own lives. in this era as the old compromises between labor and capital frayed. In the This Is Not Propaganda: Adventures in the battle o ideas, the postwar Keynesian War Against Reality consensus gave way to conservative BY PETER POMERANTSEV. theories about monetarism and the PublicAairs, 2019, 256 pp. deregulation o markets. Many o these stories are familiar, but Reid-Henry is Combining personal memoir with particularly good at revealing the subtle investigative reporting, Pomerantsev social and cultural transformations that shares vivid and chilling reports from the unfolded in dozens o countries, including frontlines o the disinformation wars. some often overlooked places. He explores the worlds o hackers, trolls, and purveyors o fake news, making Rethinking Global Governance stops in the Philippines, Russia, Serbia, BY THOMAS G. WEISS AND Turkey, Ukraine, and a number o RORDEN WILKINSON. Polity, 2019, countries in Latin America. The dark 160 pp. arts are evolving as authoritarian regimes learn to speak in the vernacular Coined in the 1990s, the term “global o the digital age, spreading fake news governance” tried to capture the multi- through social media, talk shows, and faceted ways in which governments, reality ¡¥ shows. “Digital vigilantes” companies, transnational groups, and employed by hostile governments Áood international organizations worked in Western societies with conspiracy concert in a time o growing interde- theories and “alternative facts” to sow pendence. Today, talk o global gover- confusion and erode faith in democratic nance is out o fashion. Many people institutions. Through many anecdotes hear the phrase and think it is some sort and colorful stories, Pomerantsev tells a o elite form o “globalism.” This short, depressing morality tale o the age: it pithy book makes the case for a new was thought that technology and infor- scholarly focus on international coop- mation would strengthen democratic, eration. Weiss and Wilkinson argue that liberal, and open societies; make public although resurgent populism and debate more informed; and generate nationalism have prompted attacks on cooperation across borders—but the
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opposite has happened. Information is now weaponized, and one country can Economic, Social, and come close to destroying another “almost Environmental without touching it.” Richard N. Cooper Enduring Alliance: A History of NATO and the Postwar Global Order BY TIMOTHY ANDREWS SAYLE . Cornell University Press, 2019, 360 pp. The Antitrust Paradigm: Restoring a Competitive Economy Why is £¬¡¢ the longest-lasting alliance BY JONATHAN B. BAKER. Harvard o the modern era? Scholars have University Press, 2019, 368 pp. typically pointed to the shared demo- cratic values o its members, which many aker, a former director o the believe forge a unique bond. In his Federal Trade Commission, carefully researched history, Sayle Bbelieves that the U.S. govern- inverts this conventional understanding. ment has gone much too far in relaxing In £¬¡¢’s early decades, government the enforcement o its century-old elites maintained the pact as a buer antitrust laws. He places a substantial against the whims o Äckle democratic measure o blame on the so-called electorates that might too quickly Chicago school o economics, whose succumb to Soviet peace overtures and free-market theories have wielded undermine the balance o power in the substantial inÁuence over agencies Cold War. Drawing on extensive archival entrusted with the enforcement o records, Sayle rehearses in detail the Änancial regulations and over the courts, founding o £¬¡¢ and its early opera- particularly the Supreme Court. The tions, highlighting the importance o results o lax enforcement include an intergovernmental elites—ministers, increased concentration o market share diplomats, commanders—working in both new and old industries, the outside public view to manage and growth o corporate proÄts as a percent- protect the alliance’s integrity. N¬¡¢’s age o total income, and a decline in resiliency is rooted in the day-to-day overall productivity. In Baker’s view, eorts o this multinational corps o contrary to what others claim, these ocials, dedicated to keeping the outcomes are not justiÄed by any alliance aÁoat. What is £¬¡¢’s future? resulting innovation: indeed, many Sayle argues that the underlying rationale acquisitions by large Ärms are intended for the alliance still holds, although to suppress upstarts. The book’s detailed updated slightly for today: keeping the analysis draws almost entirely on U.S. Russians out, the Americans in, and the laws, institutions, and court decisions, Europeans together. albeit with a favorable nod to competition policy in the ¤. But Baker’s arguments apply to all modern economies, which must establish and maintain competition in order to thrive.
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The Sex Factor: How Women Made the awareness, and eective government. Free West Rich markets and advancing technologies BY VICTORIA BATEMAN. Polity, provide the basis for material well-being; 2019, 248 pp. a free press and strong governance check uncontrolled greed and protect against This provocative book mounts a feminist social and environmental harms. McAfee critique o much modern economic theory favors social democracy over socialism, and policy, which the author claims has a insisting on a sharp distinction between strong and continuing male bias. Bateman the two. His most surprising Änding seeks to widen the discipline’s focus on concerns the U.S. economy. Over the past marketable goods and services to include two decades, the material standard o other social and personal activities that living o Americans has continued to rise aect economies. The most striking thesis even as Americans consume fewer o the book is that the “rise o the West” physical resources, such as water, metals, during and after the Industrial Revolu- and building materials. McAfee sees these tion—a development that still puzzles trends spreading to the rest o the world. many economic historians because Europe had long lagged behind China, India, and Digital Transformation: Survive and the Islamic Middle East—was due to the Thrive in an Era of Mass Extinction way women were treated dierently in BY THOMAS M. SIEBEL . western European societies. Although RosettaBooks, 2019, 256 pp. women are subordinate to men in most societies, women enjoyed relatively greater The “mass extinction” o the subtitle freedom in western Europe (particularly refers to business Ärms that fail to in Protestant northwestern Europe) than digitize their operations. Successful in other parts o the world at the time. digitization, according to Siebel, involves Women married later, had fewer children, mastering four key technologies: Áexible and were better educated. This greater cloud computing, big data, artiÄcial freedom led to more saving and more intelligence, and the Internet o Things. productive investment. In the public sector, digitization will allow governments to reduce costs and improve services. Siebel details useful More From Less: The Surprising Story of case studies o U.S. and European Ärms How We Learned to Prosper Using Fewer that have beneÄted from digitization, Resources—and What Happens Next such as John Deere, 3M, and Italy’s Enel. BY ANDREW M CAFEE. Scribner, 2019, He also examines the U.S. Air Force’s 352 pp. use o artiÄcial intelligence to anticipate maintenance requirements for airplanes. McAfee oers an optimistic outlook for The book sounds a note o warning in the future o mankind—or at least for tracing the ambitious pace o digitization those who live in wealthy, democratic in China, which is virtually at war with countries. This unusual book highlights the United States and other Western “four horsemen o the optimist”: eective countries in developing and exploiting capitalism, technological progress, public new technologies.
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American and Chinese Energy Security: describes how the decision was made. A Grand Strategic Approach For Bush, the alternative to the surge was BY RYAN OPSAL. Lexington Books, defeat. He met with considerable opposi- 2019, 228 pp. tion at high levels o his own administra- tion but skillfully managed the process o The survival o any country as a func- winning broad support for his view. The tioning society depends on having book features some dissenting voices, but reliable sources o energy. Preserving most o the interviewees approved o access to energy is not simply an eco- both the handling and the outcome o the nomic matter but a question o grand surge. Conspicuous in their absence are strategy. This informative book focuses Secretary o Defense Donald Rumsfeld on how China and the United States, and General George Casey, commander both large importers o oil, secured their o U.S. forces in Iraq. They stayed energy supplies between 1992 and 2013. committed to their established strategy It compares the evolution o both even though it was widely judged to be countries’ strategies for guaranteeing oil failing. Indeed, the book leaves one security through shifts in policy and wishing that the original decision to advances in technology. Opsal claims invade Iraq had been taken with as much that the United States is well ahead o care as the decision to change course. China in oil security on many fronts, Although repetitive at times, this is a but China is rapidly catching up. fascinating contribution to the history o the war.
Military, ScientiÄc, and The Nuclear Spies: America’s Atomic Technological Intelligence Operation Against Hitler and Stalin BY VINCE HOUGHTON. Cornell Lawrence D. Freedman University Press, 2019, 248 pp.
The atom bomb was never a high priority The Last Card: Inside George W. Bush’s for the Nazis, at least when compared Decision to Surge in Iraq with their development o long-range EDITED BY TIMOTHY ANDREWS cruise and ballistic missiles. A major U.S. SAYLE, JEFFREY A. ENGEL, HAL intelligence operation during World War BRANDS, AND WILLIAM INBODEN. II conÄrmed that the German nuclear Cornell University Press, 2019, 416 pp. threat was not as great as had been feared. Specialist teams followed the n early 2007, as U.S. troops struggled Allied armies into Italy and Germany, to contain a raging civil war in Iraq, gathering information on the German IPresident George W. Bush announced atomic project but also trying to secure a “surge” o Äve additional brigades to the relevant scientists, materials, and the country. Based on interviews with papers before they could fall into Soviet many o the key participants, including hands. Intriguingly, U.S. intelligence the president, the Ärst part o this book ocials also hoped to keep the French
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at a distance because o the feared Pirates: A New History, From Vikings to communist sympathies o France’s Somali Raiders leading nuclear scientists. In this neat, BY PETER LEHR. Yale University enthralling study, Houghton wonders Press, 2019, 272 pp. why this successful intelligence opera- tion was followed by the failure to Marque and Reprisal: The Spheres of anticipate the Ärst Soviet nuclear test in Public and Private War August 1949. He points to the incoher- BY KENNETH B. MOSS. University ence o the U.S. intelligence system Press o Kansas, 2019, 464 pp. after the war and the complacent underestimation o the capacities o a In his lively, vivid history o pirates, Lehr communist government. Änds some striking continuities from ancient to modern times. Although Power to the People: How Open pirates are motivated above all by greed, Technological Innovation Is Arming creed and religion have often inÁuenced Tomorrow’s Terrorists their choice o targets. The lure o large BY AUDREY KURTH CRONIN. rewards from little eort has always Oxford University Press, 2019, 440 pp. attracted the impoverished. Careers tend to be short, as much because o the Alfred Nobel’s invention o dynamite hazards o the sea as the threat o legal was a boon to major infrastructure sanction and punishment. Most pirates projects around the world, but the have preferred to ambush their prey, explosive was also adopted by anarchists frightening the crew into surrender and determined to blow up heads o state. only Äghting their way onboard i neces- A young sergeant named Mikhail sary. The best defense against pirates is Kalashnikov Ägured out how to improve having a vessel faster than theirs. Regions the standard assault riÁe used by the plagued by weak governance and local Soviet army in World War II. The gun corruption enable piracy. Certain coast- that still bears his name is easy to use, lines have long been favorable hunting reliable, and durable—and became the grounds: in the 1990s, Somali pirates weapon o choice for terrorists and “loitered in the approaches o the Bab militias around the world. In this el-Mandeb in the Gul o Aden,” just as meticulously researched book, Cronin John “Long Ben” Avery did in the shows how groups such as the Islamic seventeenth century. State (or ) exploit new technologies There has always been a Äne line such as the Internet, smartphones, between piracy and privateering. Queen autonomous vehicles, and artiÄcial Elizabeth I declared Sir Francis Drake to intelligence. Cronin hardly wants be “her” pirate because the rival Spanish innovation to stop just because o suered the most from his depredations. potentially malign applications. Instead, Moss’ account overlaps with Lehr’s book she argues that governments must in showing how otherwise illegal acts develop countermeasures to preempt could be sanctioned in the name o the militants from co-opting innovations state under letters o marque and reprisal. to catastrophic eect. This thorough and thoughtful history
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focuses on the pivotal role o privateers Johnson’s, excluding purely private in the struggles for control o the sea behavior or actions that the authors judged and the spread o European empires. to be merely partisan or ideological. Their Moss highlights the legal and political work has now been reissued with added issues raised by privateering, including reviews o eight more administrations the right o privateers to defend (Nixon’s through Barack Obama’s). The themselves, the ownership o the booty new volume was spearheaded by Banner, a they seized, and their relationship to member o the original team, who de- the states that gave them licences. scribes it as an exercise o “historians’ civic Privateers remain active today, just in oce.” The result is a fascinating glimpse dierent forms. The private sector has into a largely unstudied aspect o U.S. expanded to Äll in gaps left when political history and a look at the disap- all-volunteer armies handle the complex pointing, i not depressing, weaknesses o demands o counterinsurgency. Con- the political, legal, and constitutional tractors have joined the Äghting in Iraq, remedies available to deter or punish for instance, often to detrimental eect. presidential malfeasance. Particularly Moss brings the book right up to the rewarding are overviews written by present with a discussion o the private Woodward and Banner, which include the sector’s participation in cyberconÁict. sort o judgments that the authors o the individual reviews were directed to avoid.
The United States Kissinger on Kissinger: Reections on Diplomacy, Grand Strategy, and Leadership Jessica T. Mathews BY WINSTON LORD. All Points Books, 2019, 176 pp.
Presidential Misconduct: From George Henry Kissinger has written about his Washington to Today time in government in lengthy books that EDITED BY JAMES M. BANNER, JR. often go into excruciating detail. This New Press, 2019, 528 pp. little volume, his only foray into oral history, does the opposite: it distills—and n 1974, John Doar, special counsel to therein lies its attraction. As one man’s the House committee handling view o events, it does not pretend to be a Iimpeachment proceedings against balanced history. But Kissinger’s accounts U.S. President Richard Nixon, decided o the strategies that he and U.S. Presi- that the committee’s work would beneÄt dent Richard Nixon pursued in a series from expert analysis that would compare o crucial events—the opening to China, Nixon’s wrongdoing to that o past the 1972 summit with Soviet leader presidents. In an astonishing eight weeks, Leonid Brezhnev, the Ärst arms control a team o 15 scholars, recruited and led by negotiations with the Soviets—make for the historian C. Vann Woodward, pro- fascinating reading and serve as a timely duced a volume o brief, factual reviews o reminder o what serious, farsighted misconduct by every administration from diplomacy looks like. Participants must George Washington’s through Lyndon from the outset be able to answer the
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question, “What are we trying to do help avoid a repetition o those blunders here?” They must be deeply versed in and misdeeds. Ironically, Mazarr himsel is the other side’s history and present unable to pinpoint when and how the interests, demonstrate steely patience, decision to go to war was made. But his and know that the precondition for a story is an important one, and well told. successful negotiation is “victory for both sides.” Kissinger’s insightful conversa- Ill Winds: Saving Democracy From tions with Lord, a veteran diplomat who Russian Rage, Chinese Ambition, and worked as a close aide to Kissinger, are American Complacency refreshingly stripped o the formal BY LARRY DIAMOND. Penguin Press, language o a published memoir, allowing 2019, 368 pp. his insights to shine through. If We Can Keep It: How the Republic Leap of Faith: Hubris, Negligence, and Collapsed and How It Might Be Saved America’s Greatest Foreign Policy Tragedy BY MICHAEL TOMASKY. Liveright, BY MICHAEL J. MAZARR. 2019, 288 pp. PublicAairs, 2019, 528 pp. Diamond and Tomasky, both longtime Mazarr begins with the pundit George students o democracy, have produced Will’s assessment that the decision to similarly impassioned works on the invade Iraq in 2003 was “worse than current democratic crisis. Diamond’s view Vietnam, and the worst in American is global, describing the worldwide slide history.” Yet, he notes, we still don’t know toward authoritarianism over the past two when or how the decision to go to war was decades. Tomasky focuses on what is made: our understanding o why this happening in the United States, tracing catastrophe took place is “radically incom- the country’s current woes back almost to plete.” His attempt to close the gaps puts a its founding. The global trends Diamond great deal o the story into one thoroughly chronicles predate the election o U.S. researched and eminently readable President Donald Trump, but his analysis volume. Mazarr attributes the decision to rests heavily on his “anguished knowledge” invade to a characteristically American o what the Trump presidency means for “missionary impulse” combined with governance around the world. By contrast, “intuitive, value-driven judgment.” That’s Tomasky writes that “most o this book a polite way o saying that the war was could have appeared just as it now stands” conceived by men and women who, no matter who won the 2016 election. although not evil, were so sure in their Notwithstanding such dierences, both convictions regarding a country about authors identify the same ultimate saviors: which they knew hardly anything that they not politicians or legal or constitutional excused themselves from rigorous thought changes but, in Diamond’s words, “the last about what they were doing and why they line o defense: ‘We the People.’” were doing it and indulged in egregious Diamond compellingly traces a distortions o the facts regarding Iraq’s “twelve-step program” that autocrats use weapons programs. It’s not obvious that to solidify their power. But he inÁates the there are lessons in this sorry tale that will conventional military threats that the
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United States faces from China and Russia. has not spent his entire career studying As his own analysis shows, the more the American Revolutionary War. Yet pressing threat from both countries comes Atkinson is best known as the author o from their eorts to exploit fractures in acclaimed volumes on World War II. the U.S. political system and the polariza- Like those books, his new one is mostly tion o American society. His solutions a military history, and less an account o include ranked-choice voting to strengthen the broader revolution. Still, Atkinson candidates who appeal to the political displays a remarkable ability to bring center and independent commissions to leaders and unnamed soldiers alike into put a stop to extreme gerrymandering. three-dimensional clarity. Wonderful Tomasky notes that most adults living maps enrich the narrative and capture in the United States today were born the reader’s imagination, distinguishing between 1945 and 1980, a period he terms taverns from churches and rail fences “the Age o Consensus”—a brie inter- from stone walls. Although the narra- regnum in 200 years o otherwise intense tive at times wallows in the sheer physical partisan division. As a result, they are misery o Äghting and dying in a brutal taken aback by today’s polarization even war, few who read the prologue will though it represents a return to the want to put the book down until they’ve historical norm. The dierence, however, Änished the whole thing. is that in earlier eras, the two main parties were “divided within themselves as much as with each other.” Those broad, unstable Western Europe coalitions had to negotiate positions internally. Today, a “near-total absence o Andrew Moravcsik intraparty polarization” has allowed the country to devolve into political tribalism. Tomasky convincingly describes how this The Unsettling of Europe: How Migration happened but not why; nor can he explain Reshaped a Continent why members o Congress compete so BY PETER GATRELL. Basic Books, Äercely to dedicate their lives to an 2019, 576 pp. institution that gets almost nothing done. Tomasky’s list o Äxes is almost identical his important book puts today’s to Diamond’s, but he concedes that many levels o migration to Europe in o those measures will take a very long T historical perspective. Far from time, or will make relatively little being unprecedented, large population dierence, or are merely “pies in the sky.” movements have been the norm since World War II, after which over 12 The British Are Coming: The War for million people Áed Eastern Europe and America, Lexington to Princeton, 1775–1777 the Soviet Union. From the 1950s on, BY RICK ATKINSON. Henry Holt, Eastern Europeans steadily left the 2019, 800 pp. Soviet bloc. In the 1960s, decolonization led millions to head for metropoles in It is hard to believe that the author o the West, and guest workers came this sparkling, minutely detailed history northward to Germany from countries
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such as Turkey (although the great place greater value on intellectual diver- majority o these Gastarbeiter returned sity, tolerant leadership, and grassroots home). The end o the century saw organization within left-wing politics. further displacement caused by wars in Hobsbawm’s writings helped revolution- the former Yugoslavia and waves o ize the historical profession. He wrote economic immigration. The author, a omnivorously, on banditry, Luddism, local demographic historian, concludes with a anarchism, rural uprisings, agricultural dose o idealism: Europe should embrace collectives, and other forms o working- immigration and diversity, which have class and peasant resistance to the march made the continent what it is. Yet this o industrialization. In later life, as a seems to ignore political reality. Recent respected university professor and migration rates are the highest Europe lecturer, he penned a series o revisionist has seen since the postwar movement o Marxist histories o Europe’s industrial- Germans. The percentage o foreign- ization, revolutions, and empires that born people in France, Germany, Italy, became bestsellers—not least in the Sweden, and the United Kingdom is developing world, which was then under- substantially higher than it was decades going similar upheavals. ago. In a period o low economic growth, European societies are grappling with Protest and Power: The Battle for the tricky questions o cultural integration Labour Party and dierence. This book does surpris- BY DAVID KOGAN. Bloomsbury, 2019, ingly little to illuminate how many 448 pp. governments today face the political pressure to restrict immigration. Two decades after the triumph o “New Labour” under Tony Blair, why is the Eric Hobsbawm: A Life in History British Labour Party run by a left-wing BY RICHARD J. EVANS . Oxford radical who favors nationalization, coddles University Press, 2019, 800 pp. autocrats, Áirts with anti-Semitism, and lacks either the will or the ability to This biography traces the life o Eric oppose Brexit outright? Based on detailed Hobsbawm, one o the greatest historians interviews and crammed with juicy o the twentieth century and an unrepen- anecdotes, this book is in many ways the tant communist. His story, with all its deÄnitive chronicle o Jeremy Corbyn’s contradictions, parallels that o many unlikely march from backbench obscurity radical leftist intellectuals in Europe during to party leadership. Like many accounts the middle o the century. A lower-class by insider journalists, however, its under- Jewish orphan who grew up in Vienna lying explanation rests almost entirely on and Berlin during the 1930s, Hobsbawm personalities, accidents, errors, and dumb took to the streets to Äght fascists and luck. From this perspective, the reemer- reasonably concluded that strict solidarity gence o the Labour left resulted from a with a radical party was the only way to backlash against Blair’s involvement in the make political change. He never re- Iraq war, changes that “democratized” nounced communism, as so many other Labour party rules and boosted radicals leftists ultimately did. But he did come to over moderates, and New Labour’s
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mismanaged privatization policies. Kogan that aren’t rarely add anything new. Yet neglects to trace the larger forces—includ- this vivid and painstakingly researched ing globalization, inequality, deindustrial- volume revises fundamentally how ization, and nationalism—that have under- historians ought to view the geopolitical mined the political order in every Western motivations o the Nazi leader. Simms democracy, not just in the United Kingdom. argues that Hitler did not see the Soviet Union as the primary obstacle to his The Silk Road Trap: How China’s Trade expansionist ambitions. From the start, Ambitions Challenge Europe his real enemies were the United King- BY JONATHAN HOLSLAG . Polity, dom and the United States, the victors o 2019, 232 pp. World War I, the conÁict that had deci- sively shaped his worldview. These Holslag claims that China poses a mortal countries were (from Hitler’s perspective) economic threat to Europe and the West. racially pure “Anglo-Saxon” superpowers The topic is timely, since the ¤ is cur- that possessed signiÄcant air and naval rently considering following the United power, lorded over colonies, and molded States in tightening controls on Chinese the “plutocratic” system o international trade and investment. O course, this book Änance. Hitler’s supposedly controversial is hardly the Ärst to list Beijing’s sins: strategic choices—such as diverting bilateral trade surpluses, unfair treatment military resources to the Balkans, declar- o foreign investors and Ärms, and forced ing an apparently needless war on the technology transfers. Nor does it contain United States, launching a brutal attack original data or rigorous analysis. For on the Soviet Union, and even attempt- example, nowhere does Holslag explain ing to exterminate the Jews—were far why bilateral deÄcits and debt should more rational than most critics allow, matter to a region that runs a net external given his often idiosyncratic assumptions. surplus or specify exactly what political All these actions were part o a larger threats a competitive China poses to mobilization o resources and popular Europe. The author argues, however, that support for an inevitable war o attrition what is needed is less theory and more against the Anglo-Saxons. Some will policy analysis: in the introduction, he dispute this thesis. Nevertheless, the suggests that European countries need to book is engaging and essential reading for band together and act decisively in order anyone interested in Hitler’s policymaking. to maximize their economic growth. It is surprising, therefore, that the conclusion The Future of British Foreign Policy: Security proposes no speciÄc policies except, in just and Diplomacy in a World After Brexit one sentence, the adoption o stronger BY CHRISTOPHER HILL. Polity, but fewer European standards. 2019, 256 pp.
Hitler: A Global Biography This book by a respected Cambridge BY BRENDAN SIMMS . Basic Books, professor seeks to predict how Brexit will 2019, 704 pp. aect the United Kingdom’s diplomacy Too many books are written about Hitler. and geopolitical standing. A classic Many are amateur eorts, and even those academic policy book, it proceeds at a
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leisurely pace. It takes a hundred pages to rulers and rebels (“sword”), and cynical, reach the central question: Will Brexit compromised religious institutions actually make any dierence to British (“stone”) have perennially plagued the foreign policy? Or can London and its region. The Aztecs, the Incas, and the partners simply replicate their current Spanish were all bloody-minded peoples levels o cooperation by other, perhaps tamed only by brutal despots; home- more informal means? Here, Hill seems grown revolutionaries inevitably became unsure. On the one hand, he persuasively “tinpot dictators, insatiable caesars.” dismisses as nonsense the rhetoric o Arana’s bleak vision sees no enduring Brexiteers about renewing special relation- success stories, no emerging middle- ships with English-speaking peoples and class democracies, no meaningful social forging bilateral agreements with China, progress. Latin America is deÄned only India, Russia, and others. On the other by “the essential exploitation at its hand, he recognizes that ¤ foreign policy core, the racial divisions, the extreme is still decentralized, with member states poverty . . . the corrosive culture o allowed to set their own agendas, and that corruption.” By perpetuating such the United Kingdom has always played a profoundly negative (and poorly sub- “semi-detached” role in the making o ¤ stantiated) stereotypes, Arana inadver- foreign policy. How much will actually tently provides ammunition for U.S. change? This Äne overview concludes with President Donald Trump’s disparaging more questions than answers. comments about the region. In sharp contrast to Arana, who uses lurid, Áorid prose, Townsend employs the Western Hemisphere meticulous language o a scholar who has immersed hersel in primary texts. Richard Feinberg Townsend mined the accounts written in the Aztec language, Nahuatl, by indig- enous historians in the decades immedi- ately following the Spanish conquest. Silver, Sword, and Stone: Three Crucibles These texts present an invaluable counter- in the Latin American Story point to the self-serving narratives o the BY MARIE ARANA. Simon & Schuster, Spanish conquistadors and their priests. 2019, 496 pp. Townsend rejects the portrayal o the Aztecs as driven by blood lust, supersti- Fifth Sun: A New History of the Aztecs tion, and fatalism. Instead, she shows that BY CAMILLA TOWNSEND . Oxford the Aztec emperor Montezuma II be- University Press, 2019, 336 pp. haved rationally, drawing on his extensive intelligence-gathering system, carefully n trying to weave a coherent narra- weighing his policy options, and tending tive o centuries o Latin American to the responsibilities o government. The Ihistory, Arana too often relies on a Spanish forces’ superior weaponry and handful o thin sources and simpliÄes access to reinforcements from Spain— complicated events. In her telling, venal, coupled with the devastation wreaked by self-interested elites (“silver”), violent smallpox—eventually led to the defeat o
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the Aztecs. Other histories have also The Caribbean Policy of the Ulysses S. shown how the Spanish conquistador Grant Administration: Foreshadowing an Hernán Cortés skillfully exploited Informal Empire divisions among the indigenous tribes, BY STEPHEN M CCULLOUGH. who aligned with the Spanish often out Lexington Books, 2017, 230 pp. o spite for the Aztecs. But Townsend’s book is still a landmark masterpiece, After the Civil War, the United States powerful in its precision and subtle in its embraced its “manifest destiny” to weaving o tragedy and glory. expand not only westward to the PaciÄc Ocean but also southward into the Lost Children Archive: A Novel Caribbean. U.S. leaders actively BY VALERIA LUISELLI. Knopf, 2019, considered the annexation o Cuba and 400 pp. the Dominican Republic, spurred by the lobbying o wealthy pro-annexation The daring Äction and nonÄction o elites from both nations, who found a Luiselli, a New York–based, Mexican-born ready audience in corrupt, Gilded Age writer, combine literary brilliance, empa- Washington. The case for annexation fell thetic politics, and a dazzling imagination. apart after wrangling between Congress She has the intellectual Ärepower to be and the Grant administration; however, her generation’s Susan Sontag (whose a consensus emerged in Washington that interest in collection, documentation, and the United States should replace Spain memory Luiselli references) but possesses and the United Kingdom as the domi- an even wider, more global sensibility. In nant foreign power in the Caribbean and her novel Lost Children Archive, Luiselli that it was necessary to set up naval conjures a couple with two young chil- bases and coaling stations across the dren, aged ten and Äve, on a long road basin to protect an eventual transoceanic trip from New York to the southwestern canal in Central America. U.S. ocials United States in search o the grave o the diered on how to achieve these goals. Apache leader Geronimo. The novel’s Some argued for direct military inter- “lost children” include the last Apaches as vention; others preached patience in well as today’s desperate young migrants allowing U.S. commercial power to from Central America. Eventually (spoiler organically secure greater inÁuence in the alert), the couple’s two children go Caribbean. These opposing visions o missing. Luiselli envisions the Southwest how the United States should project its as desolate and haunted by genocide, a power in the world still lie at the heart xenophobic wasteland occupied by a o foreign policy debates today. brutal border patrol. The loving interplay between the two children lightens the Rojo brooding atmosphere. Miraculously, the DIRECTED BY BENJAMIN children never quarrel during long hours NAISHTAT. Bord Cadre Films, 2018. o driving, instead amusing themselves with songs, word games, and fantasies. In This thoughtful, disturbing melodrama Luiselli’s deft hands, children are our is set in a nondescript provincial town shame and our redemption. in Argentina in 1975. The Älm’s action
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occurs just prior to the 1976 military coup that launched the “Dirty War,” a period Eastern Europe and Former o repression that would end up killing Soviet Republics thousands o Argentines. Naishtat focuses on the silence and complicity o Maria Lipman average citizens more interested in safeguarding their own modest, quiet lives than in resisting the atrocities visited on their neighbors and peers by We Need to Talk About Putin: How the right-wing death squads, which were West Gets Him Wrong already “disappearing” opponents even BY MARK GALEOTTI. Ebury Press, before the coup. The lm is dedicated to 2019, 160 pp. a recently deceased legal defender o political prisoners. The protagonist is aleotti is an established authority Claudio, an aloof, rather haughty lawyer, on Russia’s criminal underworld well respected in his community. He and on the country’s formidable gradually becomes aware o the horrors G security service and other uniformed occurring all around him, but he does not agencies. His new book, however, follows get involved. Claudio’s moral center a trend among studies o Russia by collapses utterly when he decides to make seeking to explain what President Vladi- quick prots from the empty properties mir Putin really stands for. But unlike o victims o state terrorism. Naishtat most such accounts, Galeotti’s manages to skillfully mixes mundane scenes o daily completely overturn the conventional life (birthday parties, tennis matches) wisdom. The result is easily the shrewdest with noir atmospherics and absurdist and most insightful analysis yet o Putin’s comedy. Could it happen here? The lm policymaking. Putin is not a “cool genius,” reminds viewers everywhere that, indeed, Galeotti writes; rather, he is an opportun- it did happen in Argentina and that it ist without a master plan. His system is was all too easy for many Argentines to an “adhocracy,” in which lackeys do not avert their gaze from the state-sponsored receive direct instructions but instead rely violence o the Dirty War. on hints and guesses to determine what will please the boss. Putin is not a cham- pion o conservatism; indeed, he holds no particular philosophy. There is one thing, however, Putin feels strongly about on a gut level: he is a patriot, committed to making outsiders treat Russia as a great power. Putin is not a kleptocrat, says Galeotti: wealth may be important to him, but the thing that drives him is power, not money. Some o Galeotti’s insights may not be new to close observers o Russia. But nonexperts will appreciate his brevity and his reader-friendly style.
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Catherine and Diderot: The Empress, the An Impeccable Spy: Richard Sorge, Stalin’s Philosopher, and the Fate of the Enlightenment Master Agent BY ROBERT ZARETSKY. Harvard BY OWEN MATTHEWS. Bloomsbury, University Press, 2019, 272 pp. 2019, 448 pp.
Zaretsky is a historian o France and, as Richard Sorge was a German enraptured he admits, a newcomer to Russian with communism. In 1929, he became a history. Hence, his short and entertaining Soviet spy in the Far East. Operating in book tells readers more about Denis Japan from 1933 until his arrest in late Diderot than about the Russian empress 1941, Sorge became a close adviser to who invited the leading Enlightenment the German ambassador in Tokyo and philosopher to St. Petersburg. When the built a formidable espionage machine at 60-year-old Diderot arrived in Russia in a time when all foreigners were under 1773, it was the Ärst time he had ventured close scrutiny from Japanese authorities. far from home. He shared with other Sorge’s main mission was to Änd out French philosophers o his time a view whether Japan was planning to attack o Catherine the Great as the embodi- the Soviet Union. But his most famous ment o enlightened despotism, a report was one that warned o Germa- leader driven by a faith in reason and ny’s imminent invasion in 1941—a progress and dedicated to ensuring the warning that was dismissed by his happiness o her subjects. As the book bosses, who were fearful o contradict- makes clear, the philosopher initially ing Stalin’s belie that Hitler would not seemed poised to realize his dream o breach the Nazi-Soviet Nonaggression playing mentor to the monarch. Cath- Pact. Matthews’ meticulously researched erine eagerly engaged in debates with book draws in particular on materials Diderot. She was enthralled by his from Soviet intelligence archives that audacious thinking, and he respected her have never before been accessed by a devotion to Enlightenment ideals. Western historian. These documents Mutual disenchantment was, o course, show that, despite the vital intelligence inevitable. Diderot eventually concluded he provided, the Soviets always re- that the concept o enlightened despotism garded Sorge as a potential traitor. Mat- was an oxymoron and that Catherine, alas, thews’ book is a spy thriller that dou- was merely a despot. Catherine, mean- bles as an enthralling history o while, gradually came to see philosophers revolutionary Germany in the 1920s, as useless, their writings paving the way Tokyo during the country’s prewar to endless calamities. Sill, Zaretsky cannot militarization, and Moscow in the help but admire Catherine and Diderot’s 1930s, where Stalin’s mass terror con- mutual aection, which their mutual sumed, among others, seven o Sorge’s disappointment did not diminish. military intelligence bosses.
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The Russian Job: The Forgotten Story of How Vasily Grossman and the Soviet Century America Saved the Soviet Union From Ruin BY ALEXANDRA POPOFF . Yale BY DOUGLAS SMITH. Farrar, Straus University Press, 2019, 424 pp. and Giroux, 2019, 320 pp. Vasily Grossman was a humanist By the early 1920s, the Bolsheviks had bearing witness to an inhuman age. The won an outright victory over their class Russian writer’s dispatches from the enemies within Russia. But the devasta- Battle o Stalingrad described Red tion caused by the four years o civil war Army soldiers as freedom Äghters facing eventually forced them to turn for help down the fascist menace, and they to their class enemies abroad. Smith tells cemented his literary fame. In 1944, the story o how the American Relie Grossman was among the Ärst to report Administration rescued Soviet Russia on the Nazis’ Treblinka death camp. when it was struck by the worst famine After the war, Grossman extended his Europe had ever known. Based on rich lens to depict Stalin’s regime as a foe o archival materials, his book focuses on humanity, as well. He went further a group o young Americans who set still, taking aim at all the parties to the o for Russia, lured by the exotic and Cold War that were amassing weapons the unknown, and found themselves in o mass destruction. Unfortunately, the middle o a horriÄc tragedy. A¬ Grossman’s universal concerns take a members and the Soviets they hired back seat in Popo’s biography, which operated in a vast territory where whole presents the writer as a Western-style villages were dying o hunger, corpses dissident in conÁict with the Soviet were being left unburied along the state. Her account Áattens Grossman’s roads, and reports o cannibalism were complex humanism, in which progres- not uncommon. Rare photos included in sive nineteenth-century traditions the book lend Smith’s account an eerie mixed with the pathos o the Soviet vividness. During the two years the revolution and—later in his life—west- ¬¬ spent there, it saved millions o ernizing impulses. Drawing a straight lives in some 28,000 towns and villages line from the Stalinist past to the by providing food, medical supplies, present, Popo claims that Russia under and disinfectants, as well as restoring Vladimir Putin is once more sidelining hospitals, purifying water, and organizing Grossman. But she makes no mention mass inoculations. The ¬¬’s head, o a serialized production o his novel Herbert Hoover, believed that by Life and Fate that aired on ocial rescuing Soviet Russia from hunger, the Russian television in 2012 and garnered U.S. government could also rescue it prizes and rave reviews. This book is a from communism. He left deeply missed opportunity to more fully disappointed. But to the young Ameri- engage with a writer whose abiding moral cans who staed the ¬¬, the experience concerns reached far beyond the Soviet delivered an existential intensity that, Union and remain vital after the pass- once back home, they longed for but ing o the communist state. could never quite Änd again. È¢¨¤£ ¨¤§§¤¶
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Understanding Russia: The Challenges of Transformation Middle East BY MARLENE LARUELLE AND JEAN RADVANYI. Rowman & LittleÄeld, John Waterbury 2018, 184 pp.
Instead o rekindling Western powers’ Assad or We Burn the Country: How One historical fears o Russia, Laruelle and Family’s Lust for Power Destroyed Syria Radvanyi present the country as an BY SAM DAGHER. Little, Brown, 2019, “ambivalent” nation—part o a con- 592 pp. tinuum o Western politics rather than an outlier. The authors skillfully place Syria’s Secret Library: Reading and Russia’s 30-year transformation since Redemption in a Town Under Siege the Soviet leader Mikhail Gorbachev’s BY MIKE THOMSON . PublicAairs, perestroika reforms in the context o 2019, 320 pp. broader developments in Europe, North America, and elsewhere. This slim but hese two books oer wildly wide-ranging volume comes at a crucial contrasting portrayals o the time, as growing domestic unrest tests Tregime o Syrian President Russian President Vladimir Putin’s Bashar al-Assad and the hugely destruc- 20-year rule and as opposition mounts tive civil war that has raged in Syria to his repression o dissenting voices. since 2011. Dagher started reporting At the same time, the book is also a from Damascus for The Wall Street forceful reminder that “Russia is much Journal in 2012. He interviewed key more than its president” and that actors and dissidents, among them understanding the country requires Mana Tlass, once a close friend o the nuanced consideration that goes beyond ruling Assad family. Mana’s father was merely analyzing Putin. The authors a regime stalwart, a longtime defense explain, for instance, how the Kremlin minister, and a key liaison between the has channeled both nationalism and Alawite Assads and the majority Sunni globalism in addressing a slew o population o Syria. Mana eventually Russia’s problems, including the dispari- defected from the regime after Assad ties between urban and rural life and a brutally suppressed the largely Sunni persistent brain drain. Laruelle and opposition. Dagher tells a story o Radvanyi argue that although Russia paranoia and unbridled violence. He is wants to advance an alternative to the unequivocal in his condemnation o the current world order, its motivations are Assad regime and catalogs the world’s more complicated and less sinister than acquiescence in the regime’s brutality, many Western pundits assert. enabled in part by the focus on battling ££¬ ¶¨¨¨¤¥¬ the Islamic State (or ). Dagher
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interviewed some survivors o Assad’s Bashar al-Assad in 2011. It takes some torture centers, who aord hope for a mental gymnastics to see how Hezbollah’s better future, but otherwise, this book role in Syria either mounts resistance to chronicles the triumph o evil. Israel or defends the territory o Leba- Some o those torture survivors are non. Daher has spent years in the Bekaa the subject o Thomson’s moving chroni- Valley close to Hezbollah strongholds. cle o the four-year siege o Daraya, a Her portrayal o the organization is suburb o Damascus that was once home rather sympathetic. The book’s strongest to 90,000 people. Thomson, a feature is its analysis o the charismatic correspondent, learned that among those appeal o Hezbollah’s secretary-general, who remained in the suburb were a num- Hassan Nasrallah. Daher’s superÄcial ber o young Darayans who collected treatment o the organization’s Änances— books to establish a secret, underground and the group’s consequent ability to library, sheltered from the barrel bombs, eschew corruption and rent seeking—is snipers, and tanks o Assad’s forces. less satisfying. The author refutes accusa- The library became the embodiment o tions o terrorism leveled at Hezbollah, both resistance and the hope for a more particularly the Ändings o the interna- humane future. Thomson never visited tional tribunal that investigated the 2005 Daraya and knew his heroes only assassination o former Lebanese Prime through Skype and WhatsApp. Still, he Minister RaÄq Hariri. She challenges the became fast friends with the insurgent evidence that Hezbollah was behind this librarians. Rebels in Daraya held out for killing and other violent incidents. four years, enduring famine and trauma. In the summer o 2016, they were Iran Resurgent: The Rise and Rise of the evacuated by the regime to Idlib prov- Shia State ince, which itsel is now under attack by BY MAHAN ABEDIN. Hurst, 2019, 272 pp. Assad’s forces. Syrian troops unearthed and looted the secret library. Abedin packs an extraordinary amount into this compact and lucid survey o Hezbollah: Mobilization and Power regime dynamics and grand strategy in BY AURÉLIE DAHER. Hurst, 2019, Iran. The author is a British Iranian 432 pp. journalist who writes with the style o an insider. He ris on the regime’s Daher considers how the Shiite militant internal politics and traces the roles and group Hezbollah gained legitimacy decision-making o key players. Much o through its resistance to Israeli incursions the book is devoted to Iran’s foreign in Lebanon. Hezbollah went from policy, particularly in the Middle East. strength to strength after Israel withdrew Abedin stresses that Iran’s relationship from southern Lebanon in 2000 and after with Syria is no mere tactical alliance. its partial victory against an Israeli To force Iran out o Syria is “an impos- incursion in the summer o 2006. Her sible task.” Syria is Iran’s only formal ally book was Ärst published in French in 2014 and the linchpin o Iran’s “axis o resis- and does not investigate how Hezbollah tance,” an anti-U.S. and anti-Israeli decided to go to war in Syria on behal o alliance spanning Iran, Syria, Hezbollah
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in Lebanon, Iraqi militias, and the ideological terms o jihadis can counter Houthis in Yemen. With or without their appeal, and counterterrorism nuclear weapons, Iran can project power strategists must consider using the through much o the Arab world. What it Internet in ways they have not yet tried. lacks in advanced weaponry it makes up for in granular knowledge o the region, experience Äghting various kinds o wars, Asia and PaciÄc and superior intelligence gathering. Although Iranians are weary o sanctions, Andrew J. Nathan the government remains strong, and in the absence o an invasion by an outside power, regime change seems unlikely. China’s New Red Guards: The Return of Spear to the West: Thought and Radicalism and the Rebirth of Mao Zedong Recruitment in Violent Jihadism BY JUDE BLANCHETTE. Oxford BY STEPHEN CHAN. Hurst, 2019, 176 pp. University Press, 2019, 224 pp.
This small tome is packed and requires Minjian: The Rise of China’s Grassroots some rereading to fully grasp the argu- Intellectuals ment. Chan, the founding dean o the BY SEBASTIAN VEG. Columbia University o London’s School o Orien- University Press, 2019, 368 pp. tal and African Studies, dismisses the notion that violent jihadism feeds o contentious struggle between poverty and marginalization. Rather, reformers and conservatives jihadism draws from a line o reasoning Amarked Chinese politics in the that is “modernist” and poses a stark Ärst decade o Deng Xiaoping’s re- alternative to liberal globalization. Chan forms. That battle seemed to have dips in and out o brie sketches o inÁuen- disappeared after the 1989 Tiananmen tial thinkers (including the medieval crackdown, but in fact it had migrated Sunni theologian Ibn Taymiyyah and from politics to intellectual life. As the the twentieth-century writer and activist post-Deng leadership was busy shrink- Sayyid Qutb); he selects them based on ing the role o state-owned enterprises the number o clicks each Ägure gets in and pushing China deeper into the Internet searches. He undermines some global trading economy, intellectuals on o his argument by conceding that the left used academic conferences and contemporary jihadis don’t always read the Internet to mount critiques o these thinkers. The author outlines the neoliberalism and globalization, arguing 12 steps that lead to the online recruit- that these policies coddled capitalists, ment o jihadis, but he oers no evi- hurt workers, and sold out China’s dence that this method is especially sovereignty. Although some leftists called prevalent or important. Chan’s argument for a “second Cultural Revolution,” they can be a bit hard to follow, but it has at did not use violence, as the Red Guards least two major implications: only had done in an earlier era. But they those capable o speaking within the shared with the Red Guards the same
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veneration o Mao Zedong as the avatar leftist students who try to support o an egalitarian, anti-Western develop- workers’ strikes. Yet on the evidence o ment model. With his rich description these two books, it is unlikely that even a o personalities and issues, Blanchette regime as repressive as Xi’s can com- brings these sometimes windy debates to pletely stiÁe Chinese intellectual life. life, revealing a little-known inner script o Chinese politics. Special Duty: A History of the Japanese During the same period, other thinkers Intelligence Community retreated from the ambitious theorizing BY RICHARD J. SAMUELS . Cornell that had been fashionable in the 1980s to University Press, 2019, 384 pp. focus on the concrete problems o migrant workers, sex workers, petitioners, and In the early twentieth century, adven- victims o Maoist persecution. Veg turous Japanese businessmen, diplo- thoughtfully situates these “grassroots mats, and military ocers produced intellectuals” in a social history o Chinese on-the-ground information that helped thinkers and delves into their personal Japan defeat Russia and invade China. histories, their work, and their debates But Japanese intelligence gathering with one another. They used Äction and went into decline thereafter. Military essays, newspaper reports, oral history, domination o intelligence work fos- documentary Älms, blogs, and lawsuits to tered groupthink, which led to spec- argue for creative freedom, expose the tacular mistakes, such as underestimat- crimes o the Mao years, and promote ing the U.S. response to the attack on social justice and the rule o law. Their Pearl Harbor. After World War II, program converged with that o the Japan’s intelligence agencies suered Maoist left in its concern for the under- from weak public support, tur battles, privileged, but they did not share the left’s a failure to share information, and hatred o the West or its endorsement constant leaking. With the end o the o authoritarianism. The authorities for Cold War, the rise o China, the grow- the most part tolerated the leftists—partly ing threat from North Korea, and the because many o them came from elite relative decline o U.S. power, a series Communist families—but subjected the o Japanese prime ministers started grassroots liberals to censorship, tax strengthening the system. They tight- investigations, closings o publications ened classiÄcation rules, invested in and think tanks, detentions, and arrests. cybersecurity, and established the Since he came to power in 2012, Xi Defense Intelligence Headquarters and, Jinping has acted on the belie o later, the National Security Council to Blanchette’s “new Red Guards” that improve communication among agen- the state must be dominant in order to cies. This engrossing history o Japanese withstand attacks from enemies at home intelligence demonstrates how such and abroad. He also shares their view that changes have made Japan a better any criticism o Mao is an attack on the security partner for the United States legitimacy o the Chinese Communist while preparing the country to stand on Party. The regime clamps down hard on its own i the U.S. security guarantee liberal writers and activists and arrests loses its credibility.
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Nightmarch: Among India’s Revolutionary since the country’s transition in 1990 Guerrillas from communism to a troubled but still BY ALPA SHAH. University o Chicago functioning democracy. Whatever the Press, 2019, 320 pp. state o Mongolia’s domestic politics, the enduring geostrategic reality is the Over years o Äeldwork, the anthropolo- presence o two large, intrusive neigh- gist Shah gained unusual access to the bors, China and Russia. Mongolia’s “third leftist Naxalite insurgency that has neighbor” policy osets their inÁuence persisted in the hills and forests o central by pursuing relations with as many and eastern India for over 50 years. She other countries and institutions as pos- builds her analysis around a dramatic sible, including the United States, the narrative o a seven-night, 155-mile march ¤, and Asian democracies—and also she took with a platoon o guerillas. The North Korea, which Mongolian ocials Maoist movement is rooted in disadvan- see as a potential transit route to the taged Adivasi, or tribal, communities and PaciÄc, and Iran and Turkey, two led by educated, middle-class cadres from countries seeking to diversify their own elsewhere in the country. Shah dismisses foreign relations. Mongolia has been less theories that peasants join insurgencies for successful in avoiding economic depen- economic beneÄts or for protection, dence on China. The collapse o the emphasizing instead the emotional bonds Soviet Union led to the “renomadization” the guerillas form with young Adivasis by o much o the Mongolian workforce treating them as equals. She balances her when trade and aid from Moscow mostly favorable picture o the insurgency ended, leaving the economy increas- with accounts o how movement leaders ingly reliant on Chinese investments insinuate themselves alongside bureau- in and purchases from the country’s crats and politicians into the informal coal, copper, and iron mines and oil economy o protection payos and illegal Äelds. The only way out o this depen- logging, how some guerillas join merce- dency would be to strengthen links nary gangs that cooperate with the police, with other economies, which ironically and how the movement’s Maoist doctrine would depend on persuading Beijing on gender repression blinds it to the to include Mongolia in its Belt and relatively egalitarian reality o Adivasi Road Initiative. gender relations. Her recurring theme is the unending cycle o violence among The Greater East Asia Co-Prosperity exploitative landlords, the oppressed tribal Sphere: When Total Empire Met Total War people, and the military, whose frontline BY JEREMY A. YELLEN . Cornell soldiers are also young Adivasis. University Press, 2019, 306 pp.
Mongolia’s Foreign Policy: Navigating a The Greater East Asia Co-Prosperity Changing World Sphere, a supranational framework BY ALICIA CAMPI. Lynne Rienner, promoted by Japan from the 1930s to 2019, 349 pp. 1945, has a bad reputation in history as a Campi provides a richly informative thin disguise for World War II–era survey o Mongolian foreign policy Japanese imperialism. But Yellen shows
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that it was an authentic vision—however “informationized local wars,” recogniz- murky and evolving—for a new kind o ing the importance o information and regional order. Drawing on what were data to modern warfare. The authors o then widely accepted ideas about racial this edited volume are leading observers hierarchies, regional economic blocs, and and analysts o the §¬ and Chinese economic planning, the sphere’s advo- defense aairs. Eighteen meticulously cates envisioned Asia as a “familial researched chapters examine all aspects community” that would free itsel from o the reforms, including their motiva- European exploitation under the leader- tions, the changes to command struc- ship o an advanced Japan. Each nation tures they have brought about, and their would perform its economic role accord- eect on civil-military relations. The ing to its natural abilities, coordinated by reforms are unprecedented in their scale a planning system that would ensure a and scope, abolishing the old general- share in common prosperity for everyone. sta system, strengthening the party’s Nationalist elites in Burma and the Central Military Commission, and Philippines—two case studies Yellen uses creating new theater commands to make to illustrate Asian responses to this the armed forces more agile in war. vision—thought they would be freer in an «. ¡¬Ý§¢ µ¬¥¤§ empire run according to those principles than in the British and American empires, to which their countries belonged, Africa respectively, at the time. This study suggests that Japanese thinking during Nicolas van de Walle the war was not so dierent from that o other ambitious powers throughout history, which believed they were helping African Americans and Africa: A New other peoples by dominating them. History BY NEMATA AMELIA IBITAYO Chairman Xi Remakes the PLA: Assessing BLYDEN. Yale University Press, 2019, Chinese Military Reforms 280 pp. EDITED BY PHILLIP C. SAUNDERS, ARTHUR S. DING, ANDREW SCOBELL, ANDREW N. D. YANG, AND JOEL lyden has produced a fascinating WUTHNOW. National Defense book on the relationship be- University Press, 2019, 782 pp. Btween African Americans and the African continent from the era o This terriÄc book deÄnitively assesses slavery, to the late-nineteenth-century the ongoing reforms to China’s armed movements to return African Ameri- forces that General Secretary Xi Jin- cans to West Africa, to the twentieth- ping announced in late 2015. The century civil rights movement, to the reforms seek to strengthen the People’s eventual presidency o Barack Obama Liberation Army’s operational eective- in the twenty-Ärst century. She skill- ness and ability to conduct joint opera- fully reveals the emergence and evolu- tions in what Chinese strategists call tion o a distinctly African American
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identity through the writings and lives inequality is one o the motivations for o black intellectuals, ranging from the young Africans to undertake the very eighteenth-century ex-slave and poet dangerous trip to Europe but suggests Phillis Wheatley to later Ägures such as that a “sense o adventure” spurs their the historian and activist W. E. B. Du journeys, as well. Although he laments Bois and the author Richard Wright. A the region’s poverty, he views sharp recurring theme o the book is that increases in the number o African African Americans have looked to Africa immigrants to Europe as inevitable, even when their prospects in the United i African economies continue their States have seemed particularly bleak recent acceleration. Greater access to and unpromising. Blyden also notes the funds and closer links with Europe will ambiguity o that longing for Africa; for strengthen both the ability and the many African Americans, engagement desire o would-be immigrants to make with the continent has sparked a recogni- the trip. The book ends on a sour note, tion o their distinctly American identity arguing that this scramble for Europe as much as it has engendered a sense o will only sap Africa o the energy it solidarity with Africans. Over a million needs to confront its own challenges and Africans have immigrated to the United will increase unemployment and under- States in the last 30 years, a trend that mine welfare states in Europe. may again remake black America. Amílcar Cabral: A Nationalist and The Scramble for Europe: Young Africa on Pan-Africanist Revolutionary Its Way to the Old Continent BY PETER KARIBE MENDY. Ohio BY STEPHEN SMITH. Polity, 2019, University Press, 2019, 238 pp. 200 pp. This accessible biography o Amílcar In this sometimes rambling but always Cabral will not satisfy readers wanting to interesting long essay, Smith directly better understand why some consider tackles the issue o African immigration him one o the most thoughtful left-wing to Europe only in the last couple o rebels o the twentieth century, rivaling chapters. The preceding sections focus Lenin and Mao in his analyses o state on recent socioeconomic trends in power and revolutionary struggle. Mendy Africa, with a particular emphasis on often draws such grandiose comparisons the continent’s demographics. Smith but fails to substantiate them. But he makes the familiar idea o an African does succeed in following the fascinating “youth bulge” (in which high fertility arc o Cabral’s life. Cabral went from an results in a very young population) impoverished youth in the Portuguese more compelling by documenting a new colonies o Cape Verde and Guinea- dividing line when it comes to inequality Bissau to a university scholarship in in the region: age. Today, in countries Lisbon. He had a brie but illustrious across the continent, a minority o older career as an agricultural engineer for the people is trying to retain its political Portuguese colonial government before and economic privileges at the expense he became a revolutionary advocate o o a younger cohort. Smith argues that independence and the leader o an
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armed guerrilla movement in Guinea- Patriotic Front (the party currently in Bissau. He was gunned down in myste- power), and a vice president under the rious circumstances by a disgruntled presidency o Michael Sata. Scott lieutenant a year before the country brieÁy became acting president, for won its independence, in 1974. Cabral three months, in late 2014, after Sata’s tirelessly sought international support death. In this engaging and often witty for his movement, and Mendy ably memoir surveying his career, Scott revels describes the pace and spirit o the in the fact that this last credential makes international anticolonial circuit o the him the only white person to have served 1960s and early 1970s, with Cabral as president in an African electoral jetting to endless rounds o consultations democracy. His memoir is particularly in capitals such as Havana and Bucha- entertaining concerning recent Zambian rest and addressing the £’s Special politics, with its nasty personal rivalries Committee on Decolonization, all while and underhanded conspiracies. Scott trying to outwit Portuguese intelligence recounts with great insight the rise o services. the Patriotic Front through two national elections. He is a modest narrator, and Adventures in Zambian Politics: A Story in the real hero o his story is Sata, his Black and White political patron and mentor. Although BY GUY SCOTT. Lynne Rienner, 2019, observers o Zambia often criticize Sata 259 pp. as an unscrupulous populist whose election in 2011 began the current Born in what was then Northern Rhode- democratic backsliding, he emerges from sia to British parents, Scott renounced this book as an eccentric but brilliant his British citizenship and chose to political entrepreneur who cared deeply remain in Zambia after the country won about Zambia and its people.∂ its independence in 1964. He has been a government economist, a farmer, a leader o a farmers’ union, a democracy activist, one o the founders o the
IB OHLSSON has retired as Foreign Aairs’ contributing artist. Beginning in 1994, Ohlsson produced more than 300 drawings for our pages. His wit and artistry have provided Áashes o illumination and delight among the endless gray columns o text, and his gentle mockery has kicked the pedestals out from under legions o the high and mighty. We thank him for his contributions.
Foreign Aairs (ISSN 00157120), November/December 2019, Volume 98, Number 6. Published six times annually (January, March, May, July, September, November) at 58 East 68th Street, New York, NY 10065. Print subscriptions: U.S., $54.95; Canada, $66.95; other countries via air, $89.95 per year. Canadian Publication Mail–Mail # 1572121. Periodicals postage paid in New York, NY, and at additional mailing oces. ¡¢£¤¥¢£¦§: Send address changes to Foreign Aairs, P.O. Box 324, Congers, NY 10920. From time to time, we permit certain carefully screened companies to send our subscribers information about products or services that we believe will be o interest. I you prefer not to receive such information, please contact us at the Congers, NY, address indicated above.
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Do Morals Matter? Sandinistas Presidents and Foreign A Moral History Policy from FDR to Trump ROBERT J. SIERAKOWSKI JOSEPH S. NYE, JR. A bold new perspective on Written by one of the world’s the liberation movement that leading scholars of international brought the Sandinista National relations, this book o ers a Liberation Front to power in concise yet penetrating analysis Nicaragua in 1979. Sierakowski of the role of ethics in US explores how a diverse coalition foreign policy during the of activists successfully post-1945 era. challenged the Somoza dictatorship and its entrenched networks of power.
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Peace as War A World Divided Bosnia-Herzegovina, Post- The Global Struggle for Dayton Human Rights in the Age DRAŽEN PEHAR of Nation-States ERIC D. WEITZ “The book explains how both the legal and political frame- “Weitz, one of the foremost works that defi ne the current historians of human rights and existence of Bosnia-Herze- genocide, brings a lifetime of govina have been formed and research to bear in this sweep- fashioned in such a way that ing and accessible book.” perpetuating confl ict appears — Kathryn Sikkink, author of almost inevitable.” Evidence for Hope — Stan Markotich
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DAN SNODDERLY, Editor Glossary of Terms for How India is Making Its Confl ict Management and Place in the World Peacebuilding, Second Peace Ter ms ALYSSA AYRES Edition DAN SNODDERLY A rising India wants a seat at the table of global powers, and Peace Terms contains over 350 is ready to set its own terms concise defi nitions, including on everything from defense to over 70 new or revised terms, climate to trade. Available in and covers a wide range of paperback November 2019. GLOSSARY OF TERMS FOR CONFLICT MANAGEMENT AND PEACEBUILDING complex and often confusing SECOND EDITION concepts. Now available in Arabic, French, and Spanish.
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Was the War in Afghanistan a Mistake? Foreign Aairs Brain Trust We asked dozens o experts whether they agreed or disagreed that Washington should not have committed to a sustained, large-scale military presence in Afghanistan. The results from those who responded are below.
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10
0 STRONGLY DISAGREE NEUTRAL AGREE STRONGLY DISAGREE AGREE
DISAGREE, CONFIDENCE LEVEL 10 AGREE, CONFIDENCE LEVEL 8 Husain Haqqani Vikram Singh Director for South and Central Asia at the Senior Adviser to the Asia Program at the Hudson Institute and former Pakistani U.S. Institute of Peace and former Deputy Ambassador to the United States Special Representative for Afghanistan and Pakistan at the U.S. State Department “The United States could have left sooner had it actually committed to a sustained military presence. “A sustainable and relatively small mission— The war has been prolonged because the Taliban, and consisting of Special Forces, intelligence, and the Pakistani generals who back them, thought they training and support eorts—in pursuit of a could wait out the Americans, who constantly talked political solution to the Afghan civil war is, and about getting out.” always was, the best approach.”
See the full responses at ForeignAairs.com/AfghanistanWar
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Scripps Pier at UC San Diego Discover our degrees in International Aairs & Public Policy The UC San Diego School of Global Policy and Strategy provides analytical training for the next generation of policymakers, using the latest science and technology to solve the world’s greatest challenges.
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