Diplomacy & Crisis News

What will happen when Xi is gone?

The Talmud says, “Whoever destroys a life, it should be considered as if he destroyed the world entire.  And whoever saves a life, it should be considered as if he saved the world entire.”   As American citizens, it is of pivotal importance that we all demand that Armenia hand over the remaining landmine maps to Azerbaijan at the soonest possible date, as Armenia’s refusal to do so is killing innocent people daily.  

On June 4, in the village of Susuzlug in the Kelbajar region, Siraj Abishov and Maharram Ibrahimov, employees of the Azerbaijan State News Agency and Azerbaijan Television, were blown up by a mine when performing their official duties as members of the press.  This incident was condemned by Israeli Ambassador to Azerbaijan George Deek: “We are deeply saddened by the news of the death of two journalists by a landmine.  Our thoughts and prayers are with the families of the victims.” 

The OSCE Representative on Freedom of the Media, Teresa Ribeiro, also condemned what happened to these two Azerbaijani journalists: “The tragic death of Maharram Ibrahimov and Siraj Abishov is terrible news and I extend my deepest sympathy and condolences to their relatives and colleagues.”     

Since the Second Karabakh War ended, more than 120 people have been killed by landmines, even though 35,000 landmines have been removed to date and the death toll just continues to rise. It did not need to be like that.  If Armenia handed over all of the landmine maps to Azerbaijan in a timely manner, instead of sending them over in piecemeal after getting bribed to do so, like they are required to do upon the cessation of hostilities under international law, then these deaths could have been avoided.

As the Committee to Protect Journalists declared, “The killing of Azerbaijani journalists Maharram Ibrahimov and Siraj Abishev in Nagorno-Karabakh was a needless tragedy.  Armenian authorities should share their landmine maps with the members of the press to ensure that no other journalists will become victims of this conflict.”

Yaakov Abramov, who heads the Azerbaijani Jewish community in the United States, added: “Armenian armed forces continue to commit criminal acts against civilians by mining these territories in gross violation of the basic norms and principles of international humanitarian law, including the requirements of the Geneva Convention of 1949.  Despite the three-sided agreement on the cessation of hostilities signed on November 10, people continue to die and mines continue to explode, killing civilians.   Subversive groups from Armenia continue to penetrate inside Azerbaijani territory, raise flags of non-existent entities, continue to ignore UN Security Council resolutions and refuse to provide maps of minefields.”

In the eyes of Abramov, the West has refrained from condemning Armenia sufficiently over the death of these two journalists: “Europe is silent.  But if they say anything, they only condemn Azerbaijan.  This reminds me of how the whole of Europe is unanimously condemning Israel while not saying a single world about the more than 4,000 rockets fired at Israel during the last war by terrorists from the Gaza Strip and Lebanon.”

Adika Iqbal, who heads the Azerbaijan Friendship Organization, concurred: “What happened to the two journalists is heartbreaking.  Deliberately planting landmines is a gross violation of Armenia’s international obligations.  They immediately need to hand over the landmine maps, so that more lives can be saved.”

In fact, Azerbaijan has filed a petition to the European Court on Human Rights, hoping to compel Armenia to hand over the landmine maps.    Chingiz Asgarov, who represented the Republic of Azerbaijan before the ECHR, said: “Armenia’s refusal to hand over the minefield maps has no strategic, legal or moral merits, and solely intends to cause loss of life and suffering to Azerbaijani civilians in the region. Armenia’s actions also endanger Armenians who continue to live in the liberated territories.  We once again urge Armenia to live up to their international legal obligations by releasing the minefield maps and any relevant information.”

Ayoob Kara, who served as Israel’s Communication, Cyber and Satellite Minister, concurred: “It is very tragic that two Azerbaijani journalists were killed in a landmine explosion in the Kelbajar region.  Their untimely deaths represent a violation of humanitarian values and freedom of the press. It is of critical importance for the fragile peace agreement that was established between Azerbaijan and Armenia that Armenia hand over the landmine maps at the soonest possible date, so that no more innocent civilians will get killed.”

If the West seeks for the peace agreement between Armenia and Azerbaijan to last and not unravel, then it is of paramount importance that all landmines get removed from the Nagorno-Karabakh region, so that both Armenians and Azerbaijanis who live in the area can travel freely and peacefully, without endangering their own lives. 

It is critical to note that many of these landmines are unmarked, so a child playing soccer or another civilian conducting their business can accidentally step on them and cause a series of explosions, thus rendering the whole area uninhabitable.  Without the freedom to play soccer and conduct business without getting killed, how can the peace last?   Thus, solving this issue is of paramount importance to every citizen across the globe who values peace and security in the region.

Economic sanctions have become an increasingly common foreign policy tool, especially for the United States. What is the nature of the politics behind U.S. policy regarding economic sanctions? Recent events, especially the negotiations concerning the United States’ possible return to the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action (JCPOA, often called the “Iran nuclear deal”), as well as a stint as a discussant at a political science conference featuring a paper on sanctions, prompted me to try to systematize some of my own thinking on the subject of sanctions and their role in U.S. policy and politics. Here is what I came up with.

First of all, economic sanctions are not a single thing but a category of related policy actions. Collectively, they are a foreign policy tool, an option among others such as military force, diplomacy, propaganda, or simply ignoring a problem. These tools can be used in isolation or in combination. Each category has certain costs and benefits, which will vary with the assigned task and target. Some may be better suited to achieve a specified objective in view of a particular set of tasks, targets, resources, risks, and opportunity costs. None of them will always be right for all situations. It may well be that none of them will get you all the way to the goal you seek, yet you still may feel compelled to do something. Objectives may range from convincing a target state to change its way of thinking, to compelling it to change a particular behavior, to imposing a change of regime, to simply demonstrating your dissatisfaction.

Changes over Time

In recent decades the U.S. government’s policy tool preference has shifted from a preference for military action under President George W. Bush, particularly in his first term, to a preference for sanctions under Barack Obama and especially under Donald J. Trump. The Obama administration sanctioned about three times the number of individuals and entities in its final year in office as it did in its first. The Trump administration, on average, imposed sanctions at twice the annual rate of the Obama administration. (The Trump administration, on the other hand, undertook fewer, and often smaller, enforcement actions after sanctions were imposed, and two-thirds of those resulted from companies self-reporting their own violations).

Also, the nature of economic sanctions has evolved. During the Cold War, for example, sanctions generally came in the form of full trade embargoes intended to undermine a country’s entire economy. These, however, often failed because of the political divisions rooted in the Cold War itself. The Soviet Union could not smother Yugoslavia as long as the United States was there to rescue it; the United States could not smother Cuba as long as the Soviet Union was there. That changed with the temporary unity of the immediate post–Cold War era. A trade embargo imposed on Iraq after the Persian Gulf War of 1990–91 had devastating effects on Iraqi society, devastating enough to discredit that form of sanction.

What followed were targeted, or “smart,” sanctions. These were designed to reduce a country’s capacity to threaten others or to target the policy makers responsible for a country’s unacceptable behavior without causing undue suffering to the entire civilian population. Examples include arms embargoes; targeted trade sanctions restricting certain commodities, such as “conflict diamonds”; travel sanctions against specific targeted individuals; and financial sanctions, such as asset freezes or the blocking of electronic transfers.

Advances in technology created further possibilities, sometimes referred to as “weaponized interdependence.” While the growth of widely distributed networks in the cyber age was originally expected to have a leveling effect, networks in certain fields, for reasons of efficiency, evolved in such a way as to create a few key nodes, or chokepoints. Control of those nodes is a tremendous advantage. A prime example is the global financial system. Not only do U.S. banks play a prominent role in global finance, but nearly all international transactions pass through a single chokepoint: the Society for Worldwide Interbank Financial Telecommunication (SWIFT) system. Even though SWIFT is physically located in Belgium, the United States has considerable influence over it. Unlike the Cold War examples noted above, a country that controls key financial nodes can impose effective sanctions unilaterally. It can even impose sanctions on countries with which it has no transactions to cut off. The Trump administration was not only able to re-impose sanctions unilaterally on Iran, with which it had no trade or financial ties, but it could also credibly threaten sanctions against our own allies if they failed to go along.

Two Views of Sanctions

Within the United States, there are two different approaches to economic sanctions, two different understandings that are quite different from each other. The first we can call the professional view, that of the foreign policy elites, including those who fulfill relevant roles in the foreign policy bureaucracy. The second, the popular or existentialist view, is held by many people in the general public, but frankly it is also shared by a number of foreign policy elites, including members of Congress and presidents.

Sanctions as a Practical Tool

First, in the professional view, sanctions are a practical tool for achieving a specific, well-defined outcome. To be effective, the goal needs to be achievable and the sanctions have to be accompanied by a credible promise of relief in exchange for compliance.

The issue of achievability leads to two further questions:

1. How important is the targeted behavior to the country being sanctioned?

To the extent that the leaders of the targeted country view the sanctioned behavior as vital, bringing the targeted country into compliance with the sanctioning country’s demands will become more difficult.

The difference may be seen in the contrasting results of nuclear negotiations with North Korea and Iran. North Korea evidently sees nuclear weapons as essential to its security, which has made it difficult to reach a lasting settlement, or even a short-term settlement. On the other hand it is not entirely clear that Iran even wants nuclear weapons. It was reportedly a few months away from a bomb’s worth of nuclear material for years and never went there. At the very least, Iranian elites have been divided on the issue. That’s part of why JCPOA succeeded. In recent years, with President Trump’s policy of maximum pressure, we may have been on the verge of pushing Iran into a nuclear weapons program intended just to show us that they won’t be pushed around.

2. How many countries has the targeted country offended; or, what is the magnitude of the risk inherent in the situation?

The targeted country will try to avoid the impact of embargoes by cultivating alternative sources. If sanctions are to be effective, then it will be necessary to include as many potential alternative trading partners as possible in the sanctions regime. The number of countries willing to join will depend on what the targeted country has done. Offending American sensibilities will not be enough.

Cuba, for example, survived generations of U.S. sanctions. Initially, as noted above, the United States organized a sanctions regime among its allies, but the Soviet Union came to Cuba’s rescue. With time, even that sanctions regime started coming apart. As Cuba stopped trying to promote revolution in Latin America, fewer and fewer countries saw the trade embargo as necessary. Eventually, the United States was the only country left, allowing Cuba to blame its economic problems on U.S. sanctions while trading freely with much of the rest of the world.

The United States was successful in organizing multilateral sanction against North Korea in the 2000s and 2010s, on the other hand, because many countries saw North Korea’s behavior as threatening. In an odd twist, Trump—perhaps in a witting or unwitting application of Nixon’s “madman theory” of bargaining—raised the general threat level with his “fire and fury” rhetoric in 2017. Soon, South Korea was reaching out to North Korea to calm the situation, and China was pressing North Korea to respond. But then Trump not only backed away from his rhetoric and engaged in talks, which was a positive thing, but announced that the problem had been resolved when in fact nothing had changed. The result was to undermine his own sanctions regime.

The other condition—relief for compliance—should be self-explanatory but is too often forgotten. If the targeted country does not believe that compliance with the sanctioning country’s demands will lead to the end of sanctions, then it will have little incentive to comply. Certain of the sanctions faced by Iran, for example, were imposed by the United Nations, the United States, and other countries expressly to compel Iran to negotiate about its nuclear program. When Iran reached an agreement with the United States, Britain, China, France, Germany, and Russia, which was then endorsed by the UN Security Council, those sanctions were lifted. (Sanctions imposed for other reasons were not lifted, much to Iran’s annoyance.) The Trump administration’s decision to re-impose sanctions unilaterally undermined any confidence Iran (or, for that matter, North Korea) might have had that the Trump administration would abide by any agreement that it made. Thus the administration could not even get Iran to discuss the “better deal” that it had insisted it could achieve.

Sanctions as Moral Imperative

The second understanding of sanctions, the popular view, is existential and moralistic. To oversimplify just a bit, this approach holds that some regimes are good and other regimes are evil. Evil regimes are targeted at least as much for what they are as for what they do. Thus sanctions are the punishment for being evil. In this conception, sanctions may not be aimed at curtailing a specific activity. The only worthy objective is to bring down the evil regime—or at the very least to demonstrate one’s disapproval of the regime and thus assert one’s own moral superiority.

In this conception, mere compliance by the targeted state is a trick, an attempt to escape sanctions while remaining evil. The only valid way to escape sanctions is through regime collapse. Here regime collapse is always seen as a solution to problems and never seen as likely to cause further problems—despite, say, the still continuing years of chaos and turmoil following the collapse of the Taliban regime in Afghanistan in 2001, the Saddam Hussein regime in Iraq in 2003, and the Muammar Qadhafi regime in Libya in 2011.

It is this existential understanding of sanctions that prompted the Trump administration to shift the goal posts and sanction Iran even after that country had fully complied with the JCPOA. Lifting sanctions on Iran was “siding with the terrorists.” Damage to the Iranian economy was proof of success. It did not matter that Trump’s abandonment of the JCPOA and re-imposition of sanctions were counterproductive in terms of the administration’s own stated goals.

Sanctions as a Wasting Asset

Logically speaking, the use of economic sanctions to achieve a foreign policy goal assumes that the targeted country has economic ties to the outside world, the disruption of which would be damaging to the targeted country. Otherwise, there is little point. The extended use of sanctions, however, reduces those very ties. The ability of the United States to impose unilateral sanctions on North Korea is reduced by the fact that the United States has sanctioned North Korea since 1950 and has virtually no economic ties to it at all. The Trump administration’s trade war with China has induced China to reduce its dependence by striving to produce more of its necessary goods domestically and diversifying its sources of those it cannot produce.

In cases of weaponized interdependence, where the sanctioning state controls key chokepoints, reducing outside dependence will be harder and certainly time consuming but not impossible. Avoiding the impact of sanctions might require establishing alternative institutions, which one country working alone would not be able to do. Extensive use of sanctions by a single country for its own purposes, however, could prompt others to do so eventually. In the case of Trump’s maximum pressure campaign against Iran, U.S. allies Britain, France, and Germany undertook efforts to establish an alternative system, the Instrument in Support of Trade Exchanges (INSTEX), to enable transactions with Iran without going through SWIFT. In that particular case, Western corporations, fearing U.S. sanctions against themselves, avoided using the alternative system. But the possibility still stands if the incentives grow strong enough. Weaponized interdependence is resilient, but sanctions may still be a wasting asset. The more you use them, the less you may be able to rely on them in the future.

The Domestic Politics of Sanctions

Sanctions may be imposed for a variety of reasons, either professional or popular, either for purely foreign policy purposes or in response to domestic political dynamics. Once imposed, however, they often prove difficult to remove.

In part, the difficulty is rooted in technical/legal obstacles or interactive connections to other issues. For example, the Bush administration’s sanctions on a Macao bank, Banco Delta Asia, imposed for its role in money laundering, interfered with the Bush administration’s later efforts to lift sanctions on North Korea and resume negotiations on its nuclear program because North Korean assets were frozen in that bank and the legal process of unfreezing them was convoluted. With regard to Iran, the Iran Nuclear Agreement Review Act (INARA) of 2015 requires the president to certify every 90 days that Iran is “transparently, verifiably, and fully implementing” the agreement. Iran, which continued to adhere fully to the agreement for one year after the Trump administration renounced it, then began a program of planned escalating violations at preset intervals in an attempt to coerce the United States back into compliance. Iran now says it will not comply with the JCPOA until the United States does, but INARA implies that Iran must in compliance first. Depending on one’s interpretation of INARA, returning to the agreement may also trigger a host of political/legislative hurdles that the agreement originally had to overcome in 2015. INARA thus complicates efforts to restore the deal even though it was the United States that initially—and more fundamentally—violated it.

On the other hand, the difficulty can be political rather than technical/legal, owing to the likelihood of existentialist arguments to attach themselves to the issue. Sanctions on Cuba persist decades after the original foreign policy justifications (support for guerrilla movements, alliance with the Soviet Union) have passed from the scene. Even the hurdles created under INARA were put there by arms-control skeptics taking an existentialist perspective. While foreign policy professionals may not share the existentialist understanding of sanctions, they will have to take it into consideration for domestic political reasons.

Advocates of economic sanctions often argue that they represent a reasonable middle ground in foreign policy between doing nothing and resorting to military force. They are only reasonable, however, if they are attached to realistic goals and adjusted for changed circumstances. Too often sanctions are employed to demonstrate disapproval or outrage, while the underlying issues are allowed to fester. In that respect, they are really a self-oriented activity. They create the impression of doing something, tar the adversary as morally inferior, and allow one to feel better about oneself. If demonstrating outrage is your purpose, you can do it, but it is unlikely to go far toward resolving international issues.

The United States has a legal and moral obligation to try to end the mass atrocities in Xinjiang.

How Do We Look From the Other Side?

There are two aspects of the theory of just war, jus ad bellum, or the justice of any given war, and jus in bello, referring to just conduct in the waging of war.  There may be an overlooked analogy for American diplomacy.

In the late 1990s I heard a Brazilian ambassador address an American lunch group, saying that Brazil’s growing economic heft would force a re-balance of power between the U.S. and Brazil.  I queried him on what issues made a power relationship relevant.  I expected him to point to less-visible, but real, trade or regulatory contentions.  But he did not specify any issues in his response. Rather, he answered that the U.S. would “have to take account” of Brazil.  The U.S. and Brazil had no differences of principle, and any disputes were quotidian, not all that significant.  But, it seemed, he felt U.S. diplomacy treated Brazil cavalierly because our power allowed us to.

On June 30, Vladimir Putin characterized U.S. diplomacy as “trying at all costs to maintain their monopoly position.”  Of course this statement ignored U.S. complaints of principle over Russian national conduct.  Putin also maintained his practice of casting the complaints as tools of tangible interest, and ignoring any questions of principle.  He diverted the question of pressuring dissenting social media voices by claiming the right to tax U.S. firms in Russia.  He elided legal questions around Russia’s firing on a UK ship with a comment that the world would not go to war over it.  Putin does not contest the principles but buries them by citing U.S. attitudes and hard interests.

In the analog to jus ad bellum, America is on the side of the angels.  But it should always be much more difficult for a Putin to miscast our nature, or for a friendly nation to feel slighted.  In diplomacy’s operational analog to jus in bello, we make it far too easy to dislike us.

As in a war with a just cause, we carry freedom’s moral appeal.  That appeal, however, imposes an unusual burden on American diplomacy.  A justly-originated war can retain that justice even if it is unjustly fought.  But failure to “fight this war justly” can negate the justice of the cause. 

The principles under American diplomacy and under its conduct both rest on America’s self definition in the Declaration of Independence: “We,” the “one people” separating from another, only describe ourselves as “holding” certain truths.  Our conduct must show we hold them sincerely.  America’s core interest requires U.S. diplomacy to act by our principles. 

Harmony between our deep ends and worldly means can pose a paradox.  The creed’s ethos, of rights and government by consent of the governed, leaves people free to undermine that very freedom.  The self evident truths we hold are abstract, making us free to indulge chaotic, self-defeating, even immoral pursuits.  Further, an abstract creed needs a body politic in which to live, and that body has unavoidable needs, which will conflict with others’.  We have to defend our nation, if only as the vessel of our principles, and we must act by democratic choices, even if they are selfish – or self-destructive.  Yet we cannot let our principles look like cosmetic cover for craven self interest. 

America must constantly shape its diplomacy for comportment with America’s founding creed.  That process must keep a national continuity through political mandates that can swing radically.  The nation needs an institution that sees the paradox, and can keep constant vigil for the founding tenets through shifting electoral outcomes. 

Such a guardian must have its own legitimate mandate to maintain this review.  Any American may voice an opinion about American principles – but not as national expression unless given an electoral mandate.   The only exception is for those formally charged to represent America through changing administrations.  The diplomatic service, the nation’s official, professional institutional representative, carries that charge. 

To acquit that charge today requires a highly specialized capacity.  The diplomatic service must know the jus ad bellum analog of our principles, in deep fluency with the case for the unalienable rights.  They must also keep national conduct supportive and exemplary of our ethos, in a sophisticated operational art to ensure the analog of jus in bello.  Such a capacity was unheard of before.  But 21st Century disruptions and dysfunctions confront us all with radical, basic questions: whether free will is an illusion, whether a free humanity can manage its impact in the world, whether technology can replicate people.  Everyone needs a touchstone.  America has one.  If our political process calls for this capacity, and our diplomats grasp the role, America can carry our creed in our conduct.  Brazilian diplomats will have their indignance salved.  Putin will have his cynicism debunked.  Freedom will have an unalloyed champion.

 

Prominently written on history’s ‘gate of shame’ are these haunting words: Hubris never had a worse enemy than itself; you may ask these specialists: Hitler, Pharaoh, or perhaps Lucifer. So, the extreme arrogance and the above-all-laws attitude expressed by former Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu as his apartheid regime committed war crimes and crimes against humanity during the so-called 11 day war is likely to be remembered as Israel’s self-administered demise.

The newly formed coalition government led by another darling of the extremist settlers—Naftali Bennett—asserted its commitment to continue business as usual.

Israel has been viciously oppressing the Palestinian people for more than seven decades while most of the American and Western media groups were providing disinformation or highly sanitized versions of the reality on the ground to keep their audiences oblivious and apathetic.     

Defining the Crime

The most heinous and indeed most politicized form of oppression is what is known as genocide or ethnic cleansing.  

Semantic smoke screening is often used to veil one brand of genocide or another, to accentuate the suffering of one community over others with similar experiences, to underscore sanctity of certain lives over others. Most of us, for one reason or another, have internalized such moral cognitive dissonance, therefore it is seldom challenged, And those who directly or indirectly challenge that mindset are labeled anti-Semite.

You may recall the storm of controversy and slanderous campaign targeting the prominent African-American film director, Spike Lee, after he tweeted: ‘American Slavery Was Not A Sergio Leone Spaghetti Western. It Was A Holocaust.’ 

Whether one calls it ‘Holocaust’, ‘Shoah’, or ‘Nakba’, or cataclysmic suffering or the catastrophic one, there should be no exceptionalism in such crimes against humanity. The Palestinian people have been suffering physical, economical, political, and psychological holocaust like no other society in contemporary history. 

When it comes to this issue, we need to find a footing in the moral clarity of the younger generation. It does not matter whether genocide was executed in 100 days as in Rwanda, or in 4 years as in Nazi Germany, or in decades as in apartheid Israel. The latter is executed incrementally by way of relentless daily brutality, extreme humiliation, periodical invasions, economic strangulation, mass imprisonment, torture, expulsion, home demolitions and land-grab to uproot the indigenous Palestinians in order to build, as the Jewish human rights organization B’Tselem put it, a regime of Jewish supremacy.  

So unless we play politics with justice and in the fundamental worth of human lives, we should accept the fact all aforementioned cases represent the same evil. And in that spirit, and with utmost respect to the sentimental or collective history value of Nakba, this analyst will deliberately use ‘the indigenous Palestinian holocaust’ to remind the world that the cry ‘never again’ should not be a selective moral outrage.          

Nature of the Beast

While ‘apartheid’ does provide historical reference to the racism that drives much of what the Jewish state does, it does not capture the magnitude of the horrific oppression and dehumanization that the indigenous Palestinian people live under.

If the apartheid regime could deliberately target homes, apartments or commercial towers that are the headquarters of international media such Associated Press, Aljazeera, and host of other aid organizations and civil societies on a broad daylight, try to imagine what they could do away from the cameras and media scrutiny.

Since 1948, indigenous Palestinians have been ‘cleansed’ out of much of the land that was once known as Palestine, and that vicious process is now in full force to put the last few nails on the two-state solution that has been dangled in front of the Palestinian authority for so long time. In the West Bank—an area recognized under the international law as an occupied territory—has been peppered with over 400 Israeli colonies with more than 600,000 Jewish settlers

However, if you are somewhat confused due to the false narratives advanced by certain politicians, think tanks, and media groups and you found yourself sitting on the fence on who is the oppressed and who is the oppressor, you might need to read the Human Rights Watch’s 217 page damning verdict entitled A Threshold Crossed.

Ironically, outdoing its trademark arrogance, in less than two weeks after the report ignited broad debate over the nature of the Israeli regime, Benjamin Netanyahu started in-your-face orgies of war crimes and crimes against humanity violations. So much in violation of the international law that if they were committed by another country in the world, the apartheid-protecting world’s moral police, otherwise known as the U.S., would have mobilized a ‘coalition of the willing’ to invade that country and brought it down into submission. 

But, if you still find yourself unconvinced that Israel is a racist country, let the ill-famed Jacob The ‘Settler’ tell you how the last apartheid regime in the world operationalizes land grab and justify it. In the video, a courageous Palestinian female home owner confronts Jacob (Yaakov Fauci) who literally stole her home and tells him: you are stealing my house. He responds with this heartless colonial logic: “If I don’t steal it, someone else (another settler) will….so what’s the point?” Here is him doing what he called a “damage control”.  

Will the Current ‘Cease fire’ Bring Lasting Peace?

The short answer is ‘no’; because this cease fire is not grounded on a sound political settlement,  Hamas that should be part of any political solution is still considered by the U.S. as a terrorist organization, and the apartheid forces are still provoking and violating Islam’s third holiest mosques, al-Aqsa.

For Israel and its Zionist supporters, the cease fire was a great opportunity to defuse the global moral outrage against the brutality of the apartheid regime and the above-the-law status secured to Benjamin Netanyahu who should have his day at the International Criminal Court.

Let’s be frank here, the apartheid regime has no incentive to change its modus operandi of constantly moving the goal post for solution by establishing new facts on the ground (more colonies and more Jewish settlers who mostly migrated from U.S. and Europe).

Moreover, under its current tactic, Israel deliberately destroys lives, significant number of residential and commercial towers, hospitals, schools, bridges, sacred places and other components of Gaza’s already frail infrastructure without suffering any consequences.

The U.S. provides the apartheid regime absolute protection with its ‘Veto Power’ at the UN Security Council and it mobilizes a few of her oil rich friends to bankroll the cost of reconstruction. Israel is like that spoiled boy who smashes all pottery on display at the store so his dad’s clients would pay for the damage. Apparently the ‘you broke it, you pay for it’ rule does not apply to Israel. So under such unchecked privilege and indeed power, why would Israel respect the international law and stop its war crimes and crimes against humanity?

Enhancing the Non-violent Strategy

No liberation is achieved and sustained at random, so those who have been at the forefront of the indigenous Palestinian struggle would have to think and act more strategically than ever before. And that may require pulling together divergent ideas, personalities, and priorities.

Some New and Od Ideas to Ponder:

Collecting and documenting property deeds, house keys, family photos, decapitated dolls, dead person’s shoes, bullet-ridden garments, and all other belongings that attest to the humanity that those indigenous Palestinians were denied in their lifetimes. These items should be displayed at a future museum to be named the Indigenous Palestinian Holocaust Museum.

Establish International Friends of Palestine Registry to list all organizations and activist groups for effective collaboration and motivation to sustain the global moral outrage, and intellectual intifada for liberty, justice and peace. 

Organize, fundraise, and find pro bono legal services for victims and their families to file criminal and civil lawsuits against Israeli officials and military commanders at various U.S. courts and in other Western countries that will allow.

Streamline the anti-apartheid movements and Palestine liberation advocacy groups under one vision, distinctive logo and inspiring slogan. 

Now that a federal judge has declared Georgia’s anti-BDS law to protect Israel as against the First Amendment, thus unconstitutional, the BDS movement (Boycott, Divest and Sanction) should reach every household using television, radio and other media ads as well as billboards.

Recruit celebrities, congressional figures, and other influencers to invite international media to cover their constitutionally protected civil disobedience and maybe subsequent arrests. In addition to the Israeli embassy, targets should include the State Department, Zionist and Right-Wing institutions, and all others that lend the apartheid regime funding and blind support. Imagine the curiosity and the debate it would’ve provoked if Senator Bernie Sanders—who is a Jew and a civil rights activist—getting arrested for protesting against apartheid Israel.    

Establish a counter-MEMRI TV that archives and translates into English violence inciting hate-speeches by zealot Rabbis, politicians, settlers, and others. Also the abuses, provocations, and violence intended to make life unbearable for the indigenous Palestinian people.

Meeting with editorial boards of major newspapers such as New York Times, Washington Post, etc. as well as decision makers on television and cable news to pressure them for fair coverages and to place correspondents in Gaza to better educate their respective audiences. 

Streamline speakers under one bureau that cultivates them to become well-versed on the liberation cause, to speak at various gatherings, conferences, human rights platforms, conferences such as the Congressional Black Caucasus, and call in right-wing and apartheid supporting radio programs with factual information to dispel their disinformation.

Organize a diverse team of social media savvy young men and women to monitor disinformation, to expose BOTS, disseminate factual information, and persuade the misinformed.

Solicit wealthy Muslims and non-Muslims to produce Hollywood films that tell this holocaust from the indigenous Palestinian perspective. These investments could produce films that are educational, empowering, and profitable.

Lastly and perhaps more importantly, build diplomatic, media, academia, think tanks, and social media activists alliance to pressure the U.N. to reform. And that reform must include restructuring of the Security Council and the absolute authority or ‘veto power’ granted to current 5 permanent members. Imagine if the permanent members were 9 and a ‘veto power’ required two thirds’ vote. Also, the UN must become an independently funded institution that is not politically beholden to one wealthy funder or another.

Though Israel has advanced militarily, scientifically, and in the fields of intelligence and entrepreneurship, the Zionist project is clearly a failed project of first degree. With U.S. taxpayers’ $4 billion annual free check, apartheid Israel is the mother of all ‘welfare queens.’ And that certainly is not sustainable.

America continues to lose a great deal of international credibility in its unconditional or absolute support of a ruthless colonizer and an apartheid regime that is bent on holocausting indigenous Palestinians for an exclusive Jewish state.

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Great powers should not intervene in and prolong wars in hopes of instituting democratic reforms as part of counterinsurgency.

With the recent and severe condemnation of Belarus’ actions against an opposition activist and a civil airliner, with must acknowledge that the same level of continuing condemnation should continue to address the murder of the passengers and crew of Ukrainian Airlines Flight PS752 over a year ago. Recently, the crime that was the murder of hundreds of innocent civilians on PS752 by Iran’s Air Defense forces was acknowledged as an “act of terrorism” as well as “intentional” by a Canadian court in the Province of Ontario where many of the surviving families of the victims reside.

The late Cold War sophistication of the TOR-M1 system that shot two surface to air missiles at a passenger plane three minutes after takeoff from Teheran’s International Airport is well known to have a horrific and brutal effect on victims of an airliner. The TOR-M1 has several fail safe plans and mechanisms as part of its design and implementation. It is difficult to see how an accident could have occurred on so many levels. With the firing unit of the TOR-M1 having its own radars and optical systems, as well as being linked to the tracking and guidance systems of several other TOR-M1s in the unit, PS752 would have been seen on all of their radars and ID systems. The units are always under the control of a dedicated control unit in the field that is in communication with the central command structure of the Air Defense Forces of the Iranian military, who also have information and flight plans for civilian air routes. The TOR-M1s were purchased from Russia, who often trains and organises the use of such weapons when sold abroad, and it is doubtful that the method and training on the TOR-M1s would have been lax when they were purchased and installed within Iran’s Armed Forces.

Despite the obvious horror of the murder of the passenger of Flight PS752, there has been a somewhat passive approach by Canada where most of the victims resided to achieve true justice for the families. Many of the families who lost loved ones were harassed in Iran itself, and the Prime Minister of Canada was photographed bowing, joyful and shaking hands with Iran’s foreign minister weeks after Iran killed his citizens. Hopefully the recent judgment will motivate the Government of Canada to respect the victims of this clear human rights atrocity, by acknowledging how the use of military grade weapons on civilians occurred, and move beyond simply a financial compensation package for victims where an account of justice clearly needs to take place. Considering their lack of immediate action in condemning the Uighur Genocide, there seems to be a moral deficit with many Western leaders in 2021.

With the two missiles that shot down PS752, it has been reported that many of the 4000 rockets that were fired into Israel were supplied and designed by Iran’s military as well. These missiles were aimed and fired at civilian targets in order to continue their use of military grade weapons against civilians, even pointed towards civilian airports, hospitals and schools. While the TOR-M1 missiles were precise weapons, the rockets fired are similar to smaller calibre GRAD, or Katyusha type rockets used as deadly artillery by the Soviet Army against the Wehrmacht during the Second World War. One of the most feared weapons of the Soviets during the Second World War, the GRAD rockets are designed to flatten a wide area using multiple missiles to destroy full units of dozens of tanks and troops. To fire such a military grade weapon in a populated area is a clear crime against humanity, as was the firing on Flight PS752. Governments need to show that shooting into a crowd of civilians with any type of weapon is horrific, those that choose to delay or qualify condemnation are clearly ignoring fundamental rights.

Zero tolerance is paramount in the use of military grade weapons on civilians, without an ounce of qualification.

Le 25 juin dernier, Audrey Tonnelier a publié dans Le Monde un article consacré à la dette publique française. Elle cite à cette occasion le contrechamps du numéro d’été de Politique étrangère (n° 2/2021), « Que faire de la dette ? ».

Les stigmates de la crise sanitaire continuent de peser sur les comptes publics. Au sortir de quinze mois de pandémie, la dette publique française (qui additionne celle de l’Etat, des administrations de Sécurité sociale et des collectivités) a poursuivi sa hausse, pour atteindre le niveau record de 118,2 % du produit intérieur brut (PIB) au premier trimestre 2021, soit 2 739,2 milliards d’euros, a annoncé l’Institut national de la statistique et des études économiques (Insee), vendredi 25 juin.

Cette nouvelle progression est due « en partie » aux « mesures de soutien liées à la crise sanitaire et au plan de relance », mais près de la moitié de cet endettement « alimente la trésorerie des administrations publiques », principalement celles de l’Etat et de l’Agence centrale des organismes de Sécurité sociale, qui chapeaute le réseau des Urssaf, précise l’Institut national des statistiques. Par ailleurs, la contribution des administrations locales à l’endettement public augmente légèrement, de 0,9 milliard d’euros, au premier trimestre, « principalement sous l’impulsion des régions et des communes », alors qu’Ile-de-France Mobilité et la Société du Grand Paris se désendettent de respectivement 100 millions et 200 millions d’euros. Autrement dit, si la dette publique a gonflé de 89 milliards en trois mois, seule une grosse moitié (48 milliards) est due à une hausse nette de l’endettement.

En fin d’année dernière, la dette française avait déjà explosé à 115,7 % du PIB, soit quelque 2 650 milliards d’euros, contre 98,1 % avant la crise. Traditionnellement, les montants de dette sont souvent plus élevés au premier trimestre, car l’Agence France Trésor, chargée de placer la dette française auprès des investisseurs, procède à des opérations plus importantes.

« C’est conjoncturel, relativise-t-on à Bercy. Il s’agit d’un pic qui va redescendre à la fin de l’année en parallèle des mesures de relance et d’urgence. » Après plus d’un an de « quoi qu’il en coûte », et malgré les incertitudes sanitaires toujours présentes, qui rendent difficile toute projection, le gouvernement a, en effet, prévu de réduire progressivement les outils de soutien à l’emploi et aux entreprises mis en place durant l’épidémie. D’ici à septembre, les aides aux secteurs les plus touchés par les restrictions sanitaires – hôtels, restaurants, culture, événementiel, sport… – seront progressivement arrêtées. Les chèques du fonds de solidarité et la prise en charge par l’Etat du chômage partiel doivent s’éteindre de façon dégressive sur trois mois. […]

***

Lire la suite de l’article ici.

Lire les deux articles du Contrechamps : « La dette publique est-elle un problème ? », par François Geerolf et Pierre Jacquet, et « Perspectives de l’endettement public », par François Ecalle.

Qui aurait pu croire il y a quelques années encore que les dirigeants des deux frères ennemis, l'Inde et le Pakistan, se retrouveraient deux fois en l'espace d'un mois ? Et qui aurait imaginé qu'Islamabad prendrait quelque distance avec son allié de toujours, l'Arabie saoudite ? Deux exemples de ce (...) / Afghanistan, Arabie saoudite, Asie, Intégration régionale, Inde, Iran, Pakistan, Proche-Orient, Armée, Commerce international, Conflit, Économie, État, Géopolitique, Guérilla, Idéologie, Industrie de l'armement, Services secrets, Terrorisme, Yémen, Diplomatie, Gaz naturel - 2016/03

Les gouvernements démocratiques qui ont suivi la dictature de M. Augusto Pinochet ont paradoxalement utilisé son héritage militaro-judiciaire à l'encontre des Mapuches. La nuit va recouvrir les collines de la communauté de Chekenko, semées de pins et d'eucalyptus à perte de vue. Le froid pince et des (...) / Amérique latine, Chili, Citoyenneté, Démocratie, Droits des minorités, Mouvement de contestation - 2006/02

Cette recension a été publiée dans le numéro d’été 2021 de Politique étrangère (n° 2/2021). Paul Maurice, chercheur au Comité d’études des relations franco-allemandes (Cerfa) de l’Ifri, propose une analyse de l’ouvrage dirigé par Nicole Colin et Claire Demesmay, Franco-German Relations Seen from Abroad: Post-War Reconciliation in International Perspectives (Springer, 2020, 242 pages).

La question centrale est ici de savoir si la réconciliation franco-allemande, perçue comme une évidence après 1945 dans les deux pays, avec une valeur symbolique forte dans le monde entier, peut s’appliquer à d’autres situations de conflits. Nicole Colin, professeur à l’université Aix-Marseille et Claire Demesmay, qui dirige le programme France/Relations franco-allemandes de l’Institut allemand de politique étrangère (DGAP) examinent les perceptions « externes » de la relation franco-allemande, à la fois dans une perspective historique et comme moteur d’intégration régionale. Les différentes contributions cherchent à montrer si, et comment, la réconciliation et la coopération franco-allemandes sont perçues comme un modèle dans d’autres régions.

Dans son avant-propos, le ministre allemand des Affaires étrangères Heiko Maas, estime que le fait d’examiner différents conflits dans le monde à travers « la lentille de l’expérience franco-allemande » constitue une approche efficace, même si les conflits sont toujours uniques et que cultures, histoires, religions et géographies rendent les comparaisons difficiles. L’idée de l’ouvrage est bien que dans nombre de pays touchés par des conflits, l’histoire du rapprochement d’ennemis considérés comme « héréditaires » permet d’ouvrir des perspectives d’apaisement. Mais l’idée que l’exemple franco-allemand constitue un modèle irréprochable, applicable à toute autre situation, transposable à tout autre région, doit être relativisée.

Les auteurs, qui se consacrent à 15 pays différents, analysent les relations franco-allemandes vues « de l’extérieur », mettant en relation les principes de la réconciliation avec les spécificités politiques de leur propre pays. Les situations sont très diverses, les contextes très différents des Balkans à la Pologne, de l’Ukraine à la Russie en Europe, aux conflits israélo-palestinien et indo-pakistanais, voire au Rwanda et à l’Afrique du Sud. Une approche prenant en compte les dimensions politique, culturelle et des sociétés civiles, des conflits s’impose, pour éclairer aussi les « mythes » du processus de réconciliation. La coopération franco-allemande sert ici de miroir, où les pays « tiers » peuvent considérer leur situation présente, et leur avenir possible.

Si la nature unique de l’expérience franco-allemande rend toute tentative de reproduction irréaliste, il est légitime qu’elle suscite intérêt, enthousiasme, voire fascination dans d’autres régions. Sans constituer un exemple absolu, elle peut servir de référence et d’inspiration utile dans des situations très différentes. Cet ouvrage apporte donc un double éclairage essentiel. Il reconnaît que l’expérience de la réconciliation franco-allemande peut encore fournir un cadre utile pour la résolution des crises en général. Et il propose quelques recommandations aux acteurs impliqués dans la diplomatie et les relations internationales pour mieux s’approcher, à partir de l’exemple franco-allemand, de la résolution de leur propre conflit.

Paul Maurice

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Vainqueur des élections d'octobre 2015, le parti conservateur polonais Droit et justice (PiS) multiplie les démonstrations d'autoritarisme. La Commission européenne a lancé en janvier une « procédure de sauvegarde de l'Etat de droit ». / Europe, Pologne, Démocratie, Élections, Exclusion sociale, (...) / Europe, Pologne, Démocratie, Élections, Exclusion sociale, Extrême droite, Libéralisme, Médias, Migrations, Nationalisme, Parti politique, Politique, Presse, Syndicalisme, Travail, Chômage, Retraites - 2016/03

Lorsque, au milieu du XXe siècle, ils ont émigré au Royaume-Uni pour tenter d'échapper au système de castes, les intouchables indiens n'imaginaient sans doute pas que la structure sociale oppressive de leur terre natale voyagerait avec eux. / Inde, Royaume-Uni, Élections, État, Exclusion sociale, (...) / Inde, Royaume-Uni, Élections, État, Exclusion sociale, Identité culturelle, Immigrés, Intégration sociale, Parti politique, Racisme, Religion, Travail, Hindouisme, Société civile - 2016/03

Cette recension a été publiée dans le numéro d’été 2021 de Politique étrangère (n° 2/2021). Morgan Paglia, doctorant et ancien chercheur au Centre des études de sécurité de l’Ifri, propose une analyse de l’ouvrage de Arash Azizi, The Shadow Commander: Soleimani, the U.S., and Iran’s Global Ambitions (Oneworld Publications, 2020, 304 pages).

Arash Azizi dresse ici le portrait de Qassem Soleimani, général iranien commandant de la force Al-Qods, le prestigieux corps d’élite en charge des opérations extérieures et clandestines au sein des Gardiens de la révolution islamique d’Iran.

Si le nom de Soleimani était peu connu en Europe occidentale avant qu’il soit tué le 2 janvier 2020 par une frappe de drone américain sur le tarmac de l’aéroport de Bagdad, il l’était davantage en Amérique du Nord pour son rôle déterminant dans l’insurrection contre les troupes américaines en Irak. Après y avoir orchestré la politique de subversion contre l’occupant américain, il a joué un rôle central dans la défense du régime syrien et dans la lutte contre l’État islamique en Irak.

Pourtant, rien n’indiquait dans le parcours du jeune Soleimani qu’il finirait par avoir une telle influence sur les affaires de son pays, en Iran et au Moyen-Orient. Issu d’un village de Kerman, province située aux marches de l’empire du Shah, d’origine modeste, il s’engage dans les Gardiens de la révolution pour défendre son pays. Ses qualités de combattant et de chef militaire pendant la guerre Irak-Iran lui valent d’être remarqué et de gravir les échelons de ce corps paramilitaire, érigé en bras idéologique du régime. Une fois la guerre avec l’Irak terminée, Soleimani mène la lutte contre les trafiquants de drogue et les contrebandiers qui sévissent à la frontière avec l’Afghanistan. La guerre civile qui ravage le pays au début des années 1990 le conduit à Kaboul, où ses rencontres avec les chefs de l’Alliance du Nord préfigurent la suite de sa carrière, partagée entre le terrain et des rencontres régulières avec les chefs politiques de la région.

Ses interlocuteurs décrivent un personnage modeste, courtois et charismatique. Un ancien chef du Mossad, interrogé dans une enquête publiée par le New Yorker, résumait ce subtil mélange en mentionnant qu’« il était politiquement intelligent ». Ce sont certainement ses capacités d’adaptation qui lui ont permis d’aborder sans les antagoniser des personnages politiques comme Nouri al-Maliki en Irak, Hassan Nasrallah au Liban, et de manière plus anecdotique le président russe Vladimir Poutine, à qui il rend visite personnellement en juillet 2015 pour lui demander d’appuyer le régime syrien. Soleimani a été aussi favorisé par le hasard des rencontres, et notamment celle d’Ali Khamenei, président de la République islamique dans les années 1980 et Guide suprême à partir de 1989, qui l’a nommé à la tête d’Al-Qods en 1998.

En dépit de l’habileté de l’auteur, qui parvient à convaincre du sérieux de son enquête grâce à un grand nombre de sources iraniennes, et à ses allers-retours constants entre l’histoire individuelle de Soleimani et l’histoire de l’Iran, des zones d’ombre persistent sur le personnage. Indéniablement, le travail d’historien sur Qassem Soleimani n’est pas terminé et ses futurs biographes devront composer avec plusieurs récits : la version écrite par le régime iranien – celle du héros, icône de la martyrologie chiite – ; la version de cet ouvrage, qui dresse le portrait d’un homme d’action estimé tant par ses adversaires que ses alliés… On attend désormais l’histoire personnelle, plus secrète, de l’homme et de la réalité de sa place dans les réseaux de pouvoir en Iran et au-delà, dans les pays voisins.

Morgan Paglia

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The United Nations stands ready to support Egypt, Ethiopia and Sudan in efforts to resolve their decade-long disagreement over the Great Ethiopian Renaissance Dam (GERD), senior officials told the Security Council on Thursday. 

Afghanistan will get an injection of contractor support and planes for its beleaguered Air Force.

With the Taliban insurgency expanding, the U.S. withdrawal could provoke a major humanitarian crisis.

The UN Special Representative for Haiti on Thursday, acknowledged the legitimacy of Prime Minister Claude Joseph to lead the Caribbean nation, following the “cowardly” assassination of President Jovenel Moïse on Wednesday, and welcomed his government’s commitment to hold national elections later this year.

On Telegram, pet care, gardening, and corruption scandals have replaced religious fervor.