One of the highlights of the past 2 months is that I made a brisket of beef and a pineapple upside down cake. Considering that my refrigerator has historically consisted of an emergency can of salmon in case of nuclear attack, this is a major life event. Karen was out of the country and I thought I’d surprise her upon her return with a ready-made Friday night dinner. It was actually better than edible.
We just returned from a visit to Australia, where they say that a good man is hard to find and a hard man is good to find. Highlights include a helicopter ride over the Great Barrier Reef, a stay in the Blue Mountains resort area 2 hours drive from Sydney, and a stopover at the Ritz Carlton Half Moon Bay resort near San Francisco. Details and photos are on this site in the travel section.
Lots has happened since the previous posting, and I have been reassessing US policy given the details that have become available. I solicited advice from various people living in the Middle East and got very little response, which either means that people there are just as confused about where things should go, or they just want to sit and complain without offering constructive advice. Printed media show more criticism and analysis than advice for the future. Whatever the case, Global Thoughts does not see itself as having the luxury of criticizing without advising.
Assessing the Current Situation: The War on Terror
The fact that so much of this discussion is being affected by the War on Terror is a problem. Terrorists and Bush have conspired to redirect the conversation of the world, and it is a diversion that will not necessarily do anything to make the world a better place. I will deal with that issue later.
First we have to discuss what I believe is actually going on. This is a matter subject to dispute, particularly since so much of the media is admitting that they swallowed the White House line and missed important points, so some sort of concrete statement on this matter is a prerequisite toward talking about the future. (I will remind you that I have been skeptical throughout the past year, but have felt that I am in the dark about the facts and patiently withheld judgment in the meanwhile). I am a bit more confident now to make some judgments.
After having been led to believe that the US was on a steep learning curve in the War Against Terror after initially being caught like a deer in the headlights, it is hard to know whether or not the detailed failures being reported relate back to original events or whether or not we are utterly incompetent. To some extent, we are getting more savvy and there have been successes to the extent that we have kept the major terrorist groups playing defense, at least with regard to planning incidents on US soil (although I must believe they are planning big stuff and sooner or later will succeed, which is why I am remaining in cash through November). We are getting better at interrogating people (or at least we are finding out how lousy we were and how much misinformation we got), using financial resources to get what we want, discerning and monitoring patterns of suspicious behavior and activity, becoming more alert, cultivating sources of cooperation and being aware of what kinds of things we should know but don’t know.
On the minus side, we have been found to have lousy intelligence which forced us to overestimate certain threats and underestimate others, have been poor at planning anything more than is apparent to the naked eye, wasted valuable moral capital detaining all sorts of people on hyped up charges who turned out to be rather unimportant and the courts have ruled that the justice department acted beyond constitutionality in these matters, have been utterly ineffective at winning hearts and minds abroad, permitted isolated activity in Iraqi prisons which brought shame to the country and its military who were tarnished more so because there was ample early opportunity to deal with it and the attitude at the top was clearly not to deal with it (and the methods used were ultimately not effective and, if they were, the downside wasn’t worth it as far as we know), suffered the consequences of breaking the rules of warfare when terrorist groups dealt in kind to Americans abroad and as a result we got an I-Told-You-So rather than sympathy from the world community, and we have an administration that has been acting confused from within its various departments with decisions appearing to be based more and more on their political ramifications than anything else. Guantanamo’s prison was resented all around the world as evidence of American hypocrisy and after 3 years all we see is that even our allies are upset with us, we have nothing to show from these prisoners and a good number of them are sitting there without charges or any evidence that they did anything. We have climbed up a tree we can’t get down without looking bad, and the Supreme Court just weighed in on all this against the Administration.
I must say that I am particularly bothered at the extent to which this White House appears to be playing politics in everything it does. People accused Clinton of this, but I think this administration is even nastier, resorting to ever-dirtier character assassination tactics against people that don’t agree with them. It used to be that you just didn’t invite your opponents to things and withheld perks; this White House has gone further. Outing a CIA agent because a spouse criticizes the administration, which is what they appear to have done, crosses the line. This White House, particularly Cheney, has gone on the record too many times stating things as clear facts which have turned out to be exaggerated, refuses to put forth facts that prove its points when it is clear that the points don’t prove out, and insists that people continue to trust it. Kerry may have a good case in convincing Americans that they shouldn’t vote for Bush simply because they have lost faith that they can believe what the President says, and polls show weakness here. I never expected Clinton to tell the truth about his having an affair; I do expect Bush to tell us at least as much as our enemies already know.
The Americans have been hitting hard in Iraq, far away from the public eye. The prison abuse that happened in Iraq in truth was no more or less than already occurs in the American prison system, but it looked really bad and it should. It also didn’t accomplish much that we can tell. Remember when the world condemned Israel for dropping the one-ton bomb on the housing complex in Gaza where Hamas leaders were hiding out a year ago? Turns out the cabinet agonized over the decision and, later being overcautious, they dropped a half-ton bomb on an actual Hamas meeting which didn’t wind up killing them at the time (which then resulted in the various operations which came later). The point is that this is all child’s play compared to what the Americans were dropping this past quarter on the various villages around Iraq, and nobody even knows enough about it to complain.
Overall, the negative has nearly canceled out the positive. Saddam has been removed but his henchmen are being restored to power and it would not surprise me if after the Americans leave they spring him from jail and crown him a hero. The majority of Iraqis have quickly come to hate and gain contempt for the Americans who were utterly inept in their attempt to win the peace and ran things so thin that they can barely provide security for themselves within the same gated compounds that Saddam holed up in. It is so bad that a recent success on sewage treatment in Iraq required high levels of secrecy because of the expectation that it would be sabotaged if disclosed to the public. The handover of sovereignty occurred early and in secret because the Americans couldn’t provide any security. The Bush administration failed to see the problem initially, applied band-aids to Afghanistan and rushed into Iraq either having lousy intelligence about what was going on inside the country or worse, deliberately hyping its capabilities in order to push for war. It should have been more honest about what it didn’t know about weapons of mass destruction and instead stressed the necessity for eliminating a regional threat to stability in the post-9/11 world. It didn’t have a plan in place for how it would run the place afterward, and it relied too much on Chalabi who, as a front for Iran, told them what they wanted to hear, neoconservative ideologues in their ivory towers, and perhaps the Iraqi generals who were telling Saddam what he wanted to hear and overstating Iraqi capabilities — the worst the neocons could expect if they were out of favor was to be ignored, the Iraqi generals could expect to be shot.
The Middle East Besides Iraq…
The Bush administration had an opportunity to salvage something out of this campaign and to accomplish something real by pushing harder on the Israeli-Palestinian front. It should have authorized Sharon to knock off Arafat and insisted in return that Israel would agree to an end game with his likely successors, several of whom could be counted as reasonable people. Instead it went along with Sharon’s plan to keep things on a back burner with the appearance of progress on the horizon and to keep Arafat neutralized but alive. It was safe for the moment but the point of reshuffling the deck was to create the momentum to get things to move forward, not stagnate. Sharon is right in tune with the region; the Emirates are negotiating to put an Israeli trade office in Abu Dhabi. The Egyptians and Jordanians are talking about reasserting influence in Gaza and the West Bank and the idea of confederation has been renewed because people have come around to figuring the Palestinians are simply incapable of organizing their own state without destroying each other and causing too much trouble to their neighbors. If it doesn’t happen, maybe Sharon just will built a moat around the place. Today the idea is ridiculed, but we all know what happens a year or two later with these crazy ideas… Egypt and Jordan should beware of being sucked into the Palestinian issue and having every problem the Palestinians with Israel becoming part of their own relationships with Israel. Even if they become the honest brokers who “initiate” ideas that the parties implement which is what the Americans were supposed to be doing. I have very little to say in favor of John Kerry but I do think he would be more diligent about trying to bring positive change on this issue. Meanwhile, Israelis think the Wall is bringing them quiet, and for the short to medium future they are probably right; they are increasingly deaf to its effects upon Palestinians because they are assuming that it is the price that has to be paid in return for their quiet. Their economy is more subject to the NASDAQ index than the peace index. The Palestinians in turn seem to be sitting on their honor, concerned more about Israel’s attempt to impose leadership on them than the fact that the Israelis are imposing a doomed future upon them. In truth, the Israelis seem to care less and less about who leads the Palestinians. As I have said a few years ago, I think it was a strategic mistake to bring violence into Israel proper; the intifadah should have been limited to the occupied territories, and civil disobedience on a massive scale would have gotten more results. The Israelis think they have won the war on terror; I think it is a short-term victory and it is relative. Humans adapt to change and get used to situations. They also suppress bad memories. It happened in Lebanon during the last 20 years and is now happening in Israel. Israel is safer and happier than it was 2 years ago, but it is much less safe and happy than it was 20 years ago. I don’t go there nowadays because I like it, but because I feel obligated, and when I do go I am always watching my back and am very happy to get out as quickly as possible. It used to be fun, and maybe it won’t ever be fun. The Israelis don’t go into town these days. The terrorists have changed life in the country. This is no victory, no matter what the government says. Victory comes when Israel becomes fun again and when Jews who have a choice want to go there to live and play. There is a problem today with religious zionism for young people; people are not excited about it in America. They are interested in religion, but not too much in zionism, especially since it has all become about not giving up territories without too much else to talk about — the idea is abstract to someone outside the country and simply being against something (ie: against giving into terror) doesn’t give one much to be for. Within Israel, a third of National Religious Party members polled internally say they favor evacuating some of the settlements. This is no surprise, and the party itself is undergoing change.
Domestically, the various countries create the impression of talks about reforms but nothing that really matters has happened. Right now in Saudi Arabia there is a document circulating the royal court (yes, it is in writing and this is a big deal!) discussing the feasibility of women having increased mobility (ie: driving privileges), but the Saudi government has just been told after years of dealing about deals that it’s not getting into the World Trade Organization any time soon because they are not up to standard. In Kuwait, the stock market is booming as the few privatized companies get oversubscribed and people consider the country a port into Iraq, but any reforms toward opening up the economy to transparency are utterly stalled in the parliament and there is no reason to think that the economy is anything but rigged and hyped by the temporarily high price of oil. I have been monitoring several months of these developments and the short story is that there is more talking going on, but very little change of legal effect. Just enough to keep people talking. Can there be democracy in Arabia? Perhaps not American style — there are different values here beginning with the desire by underemployed men to keep women down and a more religious society than ours, but it should be remembered that the America you see today didn’t exist as early as 40 years ago. Certain cantons of Switzerland did not allow women the vote until 10 years ago. We should be cautious about expecting hyper-progress in our image in a part of the world that has not done so poorly at making significant change the past 40 years in certain ways. Jordan, for example, has achieved full literacy in its school system.
How do the Arabs see Bush? The man on the street obviously doesn’t like him. But what about the governments, particularly Saudi Arabia? My conclusion is that the Saudis are OK with him. They wanted Saddam out and even made air bases available to the US during the war, we now know for certain, even though they denied it at the time. They are happy with oil at $40 a barrel and the prospect of a booming regional economy and trade with Iraq. The princes of Saudi Arabia really don’t care about anything else but the price of oil and for them, in their little world, this is fine. 9/11 was bound to happen no matter who was president; it was being planned during the Clinton presidency. The Al-Qaeda genie has been preparing to take on the Saudi royals for the past decade and it was just a matter of time (and the Saudis have been funding terrorist groups for decades, playing both ends and hedging their bets); if anything, Bush is in a position to be more understanding about what the Saudis have to do than any Democrat would have been. Bush was also quicker to deal with threats to the region such as Saddam; that is why I advised Saudi young leadership to back Bush when I visited the country in 1999 and they asked me whom they should support. They might have hoped that the US would continue to do nothing and demand nothing but time is not frozen even in the Desert Kingdom and Saddam did, after all, nearly grab the Saudi oil fields in 1990. Bush is not hostile toward these sheikhdoms; America’s elite (not to mention the Bin Laden family) are shareholders of the Carlyle Group, a holding company that owns tremendous interests in the most important strategic areas of the world, with wide interests in the Gulf. It is a company that has been profiled in world media the past year, but it is one of the first documented areas of how insidious the network of government has-beens meshes with the private sector. What this last sentence means is that of course it has always been this way, but now you could read about it in real-time in the NY Times and the Financial Times. This is a step forward and the press, even though it made mistakes the past few years, has also brought forward much investigative news, analysis and skepticism worth reading this past year.
Structural Issues that form a role in policy-making.
One area that caught my eye over the past 2 months which has since made its way into the press is the increasing presence of private sector contract personnel performing military functions. For most of military history, mercenaries did military jobs. The idea of flag-country military professionals doing these jobs is very much a product of the last 2 centuries. On one hand, the dirty business of what armies do is subject to more scrutiny, it is dirty work many people do not want to see done by not-too-educated and testosterone-driven 18 year olds, and too much thinking leads to a reluctance to do these things which can cause even more war. On the other hand, the level of professionalism goes up with such flag-country armies (especially since we eliminated the draft) and the overall history is that doing the wrong thing usually leads to bad unintended results, so it is a good idea to be doing the right thing. Here’s a thought: The main reason that the ends often do not justify the means is that the end that is supposed to be the end is usually not the end but winds up somewhere really in the middle.
Our intelligence work product is based on a professional operation and we are again realizing to the extent it is faulty, but privatizing intelligence might lead to marketplace corruption (ie: telling people what they want to hear so that they will buy it as opposed to the current situation of telling people what they want to hear so that they will get heard and promoted). It is a bad situation either way; humans are not machines and they are judgmental beings who tend to fit intelligence into a world view rather than shape a world view based on intelligence. True, people fall victim to preconceived concepts, but if intelligence is faulty (and this you only know with hindsight), it is not a sin to have an organized world view to fall back upon when calculating what to do. Both a world view and intelligence are needed; they are checks and balances to each other and a moral compass is part of what makes up a world view. Consistency is often demanded of leadership, yet conflicting intelligence forces constant reassessment and doubt which leads to accusations and perceived validations that the person was wrong to begin with or flip-flopping on the issue. Admitting error does not invite sympathy or understanding in this blame-driven society.
What we need is better intelligence and not to underestimate the importance of having public opinion on the side of America around the world; for most of this century, spying has not been a good source of it. Except for walk-ins and volunteers (ie: the 14 year old son of an Iraqi commander who told the US more than just about anybody), spies and counterspies have generally negated each other. Even after 9/11, we still do not appear to be making real headway. I said this almost a year ago and I am saying it again: What we need is not better public relations, but better policies that reflect the values of a better world. This sounds lofty but it is the best insurance of successful policy. Double-standard policies that do not benefit real people are seen for what they are, and we are losing the war against terrorism because people don’t see America as being truly for democracy in the world.
Various Issues: India, Oil Markets
An important failure these past two months was the virtually unanimous estimate that the Indian election would be won by the incumbent who was instead roundly defeated. It was a complete misreading of the views of the average person in the world’s most populous democracy which contains nearly a billion people. This is not an example of not knowing what was in the minds of Saddam’s generals or the people who run North Korea. A few years earlier it was a mystery to everyone when Pakistan launched nuclear-capable missiles, triggering a near-war situation in that region. India is a corrupt country in which very few people have either a say in day to day operations or modern facilities (only 300,00 have PC’s) and for all its reforms, it is still a backward place. But every once in a while there is an election and what the people say matters. Enough so that we should have a better pulse on what they are intending.
$2 a gallon oil is Kerry’s best friend and it threatens to bring back inflation while it is lowering the amount of discretionary income people have; WalMart says the loss of income is worth $7 per person which is roughly an hour’s pay for a laborer; the only real question is how quickly Greenspan puts controls into place by raising interest rates. I would assume that part of the reason he was reappointed by Bush is that they have agreed to certain things, and that Bush intends that the appearance of an economic recovery should aid him in the fall. Prices of petrol will go down for the rest of the year as it would in due course. The Arab sheikhs can privately claim to have helped him even though they really haven’t. Nevertheless, I think that the economy will look good in the fall and that Kerry will not win unless something unexpected happens to shift the calculus and make him seem the safer choice, as well it could.
Speaking of oil, one point I have consistently made the past few years is the shift away from the predominance of Gulf oil. This needs to be reassessed. In this year’s crisis, Saudi Arabia was said to not have enough of the kind of oil that people need so that much of their spare capacity was useless. In other media, it has been said that Saudi Arabia was quite useful in increasing production to weather several different crises this year (ie: the Iraq war, Venezuela oil strike), so I am confused. What is clear is that oil consumption by the developed world is increasing as China’s economy takes off and that global terrorism is helping keep prices high (something the Saudis may privately still figure suits their interest — high prices help them keep the country under control even though the security situation makes it appear they are losing control and increases the exodus of foreign workers that make the country work — they keep playing both ends, and remember they always have). The Saudis think they have the security situation under control and probably will move to kill some of the jihadi leaders after the amnesty runs out. Also, Saudi Arabia is still the predominant swing producer who can best bring stability to the world’s oil markets. There is interesting developments taking place with Russia and Africa, but the perception of power is still within OPEC and will be for some time. The powers that be have an interest in doing so because the world views stability as stemming from an oil price that sticks to a certain bandwidth.
Saudi Arabia, Jordan, Israel
Still, I think that time will eventually run out on the Saudi royal family. I wasn’t impressed when I visited and do believe that Bin Laden will succeed in destabilizing the country, precisely because it is a deck of cards that doesn’t need much to fall. There really is nothing there to hold it together. Most of the population is backward, lazy and so anti-American and anti-anything-not Moslem and the country itself is so large, it will be impossible for America to control it, just like it can’t control even small parts of Iraq. I suppose though that if necessary the Americans could always take over the oil facilities and just let the rest of the country screw itself. Bin Laden might nuke Washington in the process if we couldn’t get to him first, but would anyone else care?
It’s not only Western expatriates who are leaving; Moslems are getting caught in the cross-fire and the terrorists these days don’t seem to be too discerning about who they kill. I see people hedging their bets buying properties in the West, filing citizenship papers, and moving to different countries. Saudi’s tax free expatriate package no longer seems so attractive. Many Arabs are not thrilled to be in a situation where it seems like every Arab with a grievance thinks it can join a home office of a terrorist organization to take up jihad against America and the perception is that Bush’s policies have helped fuel this radicalism as an unintended consequence.
Let’s look at Jordan, where this is some good news going on. Real estate values are going up, Jordanians feel a dividend with free trade with the US, American companies are subcontracting with Jordanian companies to do business in Iraq (and Jordanians are doing a brisk trade with that country), and Jordan is beginning to bring back Arabs who left for greener pastures such as Dubai. As wages increase in Dubai and Saudi becomes more dangerous and as the business prospects improve, people are willing to take a bit of a pay cut for the relative stability of Jordan whilst salaries offered in Jordan go up enough to attract such people. The King is pretty popular and has sidelined old-school reactionaries who wouldn’t get with the program.
Elsewhere in the Middle East, Sharon survived the bribery scandal, which is what I had been told to expect. There is no Labor leadership in line and even in the Likud, I think that there are enough people who know that Bibi is no good to keep a fence around him. Arafat is neutralized, his prime minister is toast (meaning nobody takes him seriously), and Mubarak does not appear to be in good health. Sharon can continue doing whatever he wants into the indefinite future. He is a stable hand, unwilling to rock the boat, and the world seems quite willing to play ball with him.
Other Issues: Latin America, Japan, Economy, Atkins
Another important area in the world is Latin America. Six elected heads of state were violently removed during the past 3 years. It is an area of the world largely neglected by Bush, and the gains against communism during the Reagan years have been lost and discredited in this hemisphere close to home as democratic but corrupt regimes continue to exist.
In Japan, this Tuesday morning June 29, 1,700 of the country’s 2,600 publicly listed companies had their annual shareholder meetings. All at the same time. So that nobody can come to them. Which tells you that Japanese companies are not run for the benefit of shareholders. Which means that Japan has a long way to go in terms of structural reform and having companies that are responsive. It is the reason that Japan was passed by the past two decades in the competitive sphere as the rest of the world’s small companies became nimble players in the field of innovation. It’s little companies that drove a little plane into space last week and that will redirect NASA to doing things that are more useful.
Meanwhile, in America, the most important development this quarter has been the phenomenal rise of the importance of the Atkin diet. Everything including coca cola is being redesigned with low-carbs in mind. Krispy Kreme donuts reports lower profits because people are afraid to eat them. The Europeans and people of the Levant still manage to look great without all this dieting.
As far as the economy, I said several years ago that once I saw definitely that people were buying more Dell computers, I would believe a recovery was underway. The past year or two Dell did get more people to buy computers by slashing prices. But lately they have been raising prices and people don’t seem to care (although I did care enough not to have my company buy). So there is a recovery taking place. Nevertheless, I am nervous about the effects of a terrorist attack in an attempt to influence the American election and I don’t recommend any investment before November. I think that a pre-election attack in the US would only help Bush even though in Madrid it helped the opposition; but you can’t tell what is in the minds of these people who plan them. I believe that Bin Laden did not pull out all the stops on 9/11 as part of a calculated strategy; I think he will up the ante next time around, meaning the attacks will be deadlier.
So What to Do?
The War on Terror on Various Fronts
View Iraq in the manner it should be viewed, as a piece of the overall war against terrorism. That is the reason for invading in the first place; not because we knew there were weapons of mass destruction, but because we didn’t know and we didn’t approve of having a guy like Saddam in there threatening everyone including possibly us. And not because we wanted to install a democracy. The idea was not to install a democracy; the idea was to create the conditions to improve the lives of the ordinary person so as to empower people there and throughout the region to take the steps toward creating democracy, like People Power in Serbia, Georgia or the Philippines. I wrote about what the aims should be in my assessment of US foreign policy objectives in October 2003. For me it was enough that in the post 9/11 world we knew that we did not know what was going on there and we couldn’t afford to wait to find out. World stability could not afford it either. So we went into Afghanistan in order to create more stability, or at least take away the levers of statehood from the Taliban who were operating international terror under the shelter of statehood. I have always said that in the long run we have more to fear from rogues than states, so first we must have states that play by the rules. Afghanistan is now a state that plays by the rules, and so is Iraq. Libya came over from the dark side this year, and eventually so will North Korea. Iran is a bad apple that is being allowed to stall for time, but I have long been resigned to it becoming a nuclear power. We can give it a hard time using economic pressure as we did with South Africa, but the long term key here is to guide its citizens with a soft stick toward instituting democratic change themselves. I am not reconciled to North Korea and it is clear that US policy is not working although I don’t know what to suggest here except to start with the notion that it is the Chinese rather than us who can bring the Koreans to heel and we need to get them to see a compelling interest in doing this; either the US plans something for 2005 because its dance card is full for now, or we have a major failure to contend with. Perhaps the latest round of proposals by the US is on the right track — we promise not to attack them, and they promise to get rid of their nuclear military program.
Pakistan is a place where the US needs to work harder to fight the bad guys, and I am not sure who is getting the better of whom in Pakistan. I know this is a particularly tricky wicket with Musharraf, but I can’t believe it has been so hard to get at Bin Laden. I think we have to get Bin Laden, and not be so concerned that in doing so Musharraf will fall or that the Islamists will take over the country. First we have to protect ourselves, and Bin Laden on the loose means we will have trouble on US soil; we just don’t know when. Perhaps the Palestinians will bring their fight to US shores once they become desperate enough; I think this is less likely because Palestinians do receive benefits from the US and people live here. It is a more small-knit community that will not support such actions because the price to be paid is clearer.
U.S. troops should move toward the periphery in Iraq, conducting operations to secure the country’s borders and keeping a presence to keep Syria, Pakistan, Saudi Arabia and Iran honest. Let the Iraqis work things out by themselves and feed them aid to rebuild and let them take the credit for it. Everyone knows it is our money anyway. It will be a Shiite-run country that is at odds with Iran and it will keep all the other Sunni-led neighbors in a tizzy, which is good for us. We have always liked a little instability and for everyone in the region to depend on us. The less the US troops interact with Iraqis the better. The amount of aid that the US can give to Iraq is somewhat limited because the country lacks the infrastructure to absorb it. It is also filled with corruption and the cost of security adds too much to the cost of doing anything useful. The US should move as quickly as possible to help secure direct elections; I agree with the Shiite cleric Sistani who felt that the caucus system the Americans suggested was a croc that nobody could relate to; nobody understands the caucus system we have in America. The UN is a lovely fig leaf but it is not any more useful these days than NATO and it is not particularly loved in Iraq since it kept Saddam alive and was exceedingly corrupt. For better or worse, the Iraqis will have to figure out how to live with each other. So far, the Iraqis don’t seem to have much organized, but perhaps as things reach a crisis point, they will improvise for the national good and work better together, once they feel they have their own interests worth defending. I never forget how I walked around the slums of Kingston, Jamaica but saw that people smiled and took care because they felt it was their own. In Harlem, New York, people rent and they are angry and careless because it’s not theirs. In Saudi Arabia, it is the most incredibly lazy and unmotivated place I have seen on the planet because nobody feels they have any stake in the future. One of the reasons I like capitalism and liberty is that people with something to lose have an interest in taking care to improve it.
Hopefully, after the handover (which I’m not sure is that much of a handover in fact), people will see the Iraqis in charge and be less interested in justifying the sabotage going on around them. There is a big public undercurrent of the desire to create some sort of stability, and the new government will be judged first and foremost by its ability to create it. The rebels will have to get through an initial period where the public will want to see cooperation for the national good. Whatever works.
Muse: America’s Role in the World — Part of the Problem or the Solution?
Case Study: Saudi Arabia
I think one big surprise to Americans this past year is to have a sense of just how much the Arabs in the region hate America so much that they would be willing to see their own reconstruction projects destroyed to show resistance to anything resembling an occupier. It may be arrogant and misplaced, but it just seems from the Average Joe American point of view whose taxes must pay for what the government spends that the people of the region are so backward and self-destructive that any hope that any Western power can contribute toward a better future is hopeless and futile because whether or not America is involved people still hate it. People who observe the Palestinian territories also wonder how the locals could stand seeing so much of what was built up during the 90’s be destroyed for the sake of a loser intifadah these past 4 years.
By the way, it’s not just America. We need to remember some context and consider carefully who is the enemy here and not broadbrush our definition. The terrorists have been terrorizing and killing Iranians, Turkish, Egyptians, Syrians, Saudis, Koreans, Italians — you name it, they’re after them. Which again makes one wonder if there is any sanity in this region. I have to keep pinching myself to remind myself that it is unfair to tarnish an entire people because of some Islamic fanatics who don’t even care what Islam says or some other mafiosos such as the Palestinian Authority that are subjecting these people to rule under a barrel of a gun. But then you keep reading polls that say the masses of people all over the region hate us. They have good reason to hate us and I am not entirely unsympathetic to the reasons. But the fact is that Saudi Arabia has become a dangerous place to go, and I have no intention of having anything to do with the place until it changes for the better. As long as their crown prince goes around telling everyone that the Zionists are behind Al-Qaida and polls show that over 90% of his country believes it, it is hard to look for nice things to say about that country. The irony is that despite its oil, Saudi will be a poor country in another 25 years based on its poor performance. Almost a third of its GDP is diverted to the royal family while its birth rate goes up and the quality of its infrastructure and educational system goes down. Lots of Saudis do in fact like Americans and America and feel horrible about the way the world has gone since 9/11; but they are being very quiet about it because they can’t shake their split mentality about how they in fact see the world. Saudis have their own interests and we have come to a fork in the road where we are not sure if they are friend or foe. We have good reason to be afraid of what comes forth from that country. Our tax dollars (meaning the money taken off the top from the work each and every one of us do every day) do not have to solve everyone else’s problems, especially people who hate us, and it is fair for us to ask countries to at least be sensitive to our concerns in return for our sensitivity to theirs. We are entitled to have interests for our money and the rest of the world has to expect more than an America which is entirely altruistic. This does not contradict my earlier statement about having better policies which are more in tune with the desires of people around the globe — those policies should be within our interests because they will better serve our interests.
I have spent a lot of discourse on Saudi Arabia because it is a test case. We are in bed with them because there is a lot of money at stake. But their wealth is the ultimate threat both to them and to us because their wealth and duplicity are helping to feed the beast of international terror, despite what any congressional report says. We all know what is going on unofficially. An important challenge for a US president is to try and figure out what should be done with Saudi Arabia. If we can salvage the relationship, we should put it back on track. If that country is unsalvageable, then let’s let it go and make it clear that we will have nothing to do with them, and at the same time break the cord and stop coddling the royals where it suits our short-term financial interests. We should remember that Al Qaida’s first target in Saudi is the Saudi royals; America is a secondary target which is targeted in order to destabilize the first. We should consider whether or not we are benefitting by thinking that if the first target falls we are next in line. It is because America coddles the Saudis that the Al Qaida gots its raison d’etre. Nobody even pretends that they are bothered by Palestine. I’d like to see a Saudi Arabia without the royal family, and I think it should be ruled by a coalition of moderate religious and political parties. I’d like to see America get serious about developing alternatives to petroleum; Bush has done everything possible to kill such studies by feeding just enough money to show he is for it, but not enough so that such studies can produce results. Saudi Arabia is not only a test of what the Saudis want to be — it is a test of American intentions for the future of the world. If Saudi is corrupt, it is to a great degree because we let it be that way. We can’t just sit there and criticize Saudi Arabia; we are a part of the problem and a part of the solution. Part of the reason we have no moral capital in Iraq and much of the Middle East even today is that people still see the US as part of the power behind the throne in Saudi Arabia. The lofty ideas with democracy in Iraq expressed by the neocons didn’t meet the reality of what Americans who represent the power elite stand for, and Cheney, who represents the most corrupt of the power elite was not credible in the Arab world as being the mouthpiece of democracy.
9/11: A Diversion of Resources and a Crutch of Policy-Making
It’s not a good thing to have turned everything into a 9/11 oriented world. It is making things too simple — it is too pat to view the world as being either “with us or against us.” Even against the communists it was not so simple. Saddam Hussein was not Hitler; not every flavor of the month dictator we are against should be compared to Hitler. Trying to make the world flow from 9/11 is diverting too much energy from having a dynamic policy that deals with opportunity and puts the whole American effort into holding the line on defense in a war that can’t be won, simply because it is too easy for troublemakers to cause serious trouble. We might spend the next decade chasing Islamists only to find that the next nuclear bomb gets set off by Christian fanatics. Terrorism will never be eliminated anywhere. It will be a cost of doing business. We can reduce it, but the key to reducing it is to make it harder for troublemakers to get recruits and sympathy from people who harbor them. We have to get smarter and rethink our policies, or else it will be one step forward, two steps back.
I realize the threat of unconventional attack is a major issue of concern. I live in Manhattan and have to worry about it every day. But if I allow my life to be directed by that fear I am paralyzed. So I take a lot of vacations, but meanwhile run a dynamic life. So do Israelis, and so must America, on the macro and micro levels.
The Democratic Idea
One more point about Iraq and Democracy. People keep talking about whether or not the idea is that the majority rules, or that we want to create a situation where we play the factions off against each other. We need to look at the big picture about what kind of democracy is desirable and become consistent about it. Democracy is more than imposing the will of the majority; in a more profound sense it is about protecting the rights of a minority. Alexis De Tocqueville wrote about this in the 1840’s in his seminal work Democracy in America, and it is one of the important reasons that America works. The challenge in Iraq, as it is in Lebanon, the various Gulf States, and in Israel proper, is to balance the realities of the majority population holding territory against the minorities that cohabit the land. Iraqi Sunnis need to be protected; so do Israeli Arabs. It is not honest to be sensitive to the inequities in one country without realizing the analogy universally. People I speak to that understand the Israeli-Palestinian conflict on a deeper level realize that even if you could settle the issue of Palestinian statehood, the more profound problem is how to deal with the Israeli Arabs. Recent polls show that even greater numbers of Israeli Jews just want to get rid of the Arabs in their midst; this is a real problem that reflects 25% of the nation’s population and it must be dealt with. I have been mentioning this for years; nobody wants to deal with it but it is an important point in structuring policies that have end-games that meet the expectations of real people.
Russia
Finally, what to do about Russia. I think that Putin is a sophisticated and tough guy who has matters under control in the country and is genuinely popular. He has some competent people in place, particularly for economic reform matters and there are reforms taking place in the economic sector. Problem is there is nothing approaching the rule of law and even if laws are being passed, the courts are still not independent. As long as this takes place, there will be cautious foreign investment but it will always be hedged against the fact that everything is subject to the whims of who is in charge. Economic and political leverage can be used to influence Putin who wants parity on the world stage and doesn’t deserve it on the basis of Russia’s actual level of economic importance. What America is getting in return is at least less interference by Russia in its spheres of influence; that is not an insignificant gain over the 35 different battles we were fighting during the Cold War. Today our adversary in 35 places is Islamic Fundamentalism, also an enemy of Moscow. People should work with him in a savvy manner because he is doing what is good for Russia which is an unruly place that we all knew would take years to organize. Russia doesn’t need bickering political parties right now; it needs to bring itself into this century and raise its standards, and that seems to be the public mood. Meanwhile, its elites are being re-educated and in the next decade there will hopefully be enough people spread about who will be trained to implement on local levels coordinated programs that help achieve uniform standards which is what will enable Russia to get to the next level. Ditto for China, although I don’t know that its leader is anywhere nearly as popular or entrenched as Putin.
