An Anchorless World

The United States, through its secretary of state and president respectively, promises an “unbelievably small” military response to the gassing of hundreds of Syrian children by President Bashar al-Assad, then vows that “the United States military doesn’t do pinpricks,” and then backs away. Britain abandons its closest ally at crunch time. The European Union is divided, Germany silent, France left dangling, and NATO an absentee. If there are other pillars of the trans-Atlantic alliance, do let me know.

Vladimir Putin steps into the Western void, spurred by an off-the-cuff remark in London from John Kerry (that he himself seemed to dismiss), and suddenly Assad’s Syria promises to give up to international supervision the chemical weapons whose existence it has previously denied.

A war-weary America clutches at this Syrian straw and defers to Russian mediation; a congressional vote on military action that President Obama seemed set to lose is indefinitely postponed. A State Department spokeswoman had it right when she initially described Kerry’s proposal as purely “rhetorical,” because “this brutal dictator with a history of playing fast and loose with the facts cannot be trusted to turn over chemical weapons.”

The hesitancy since the chemical attack has highlighted a lack of U.S. leadership throughout the Syrian conflict. The just cause of rebels fighting the 43-year tyranny of the Assad family was never backed by arming them; and when Islamist radicals moved into Syria, their presence was used to justify the very Western inaction that had fostered their arrival.

The sight of a president who draws a red line on chemical attack and then says “I didn’t set a red line” (the world did); who has Kerry plead a powerful case for military action only to stall; who notes that for “nearly seven decades the United States has been the anchor of global security,” and then declares “America is not the world’s policeman” — the sight of all this has marked a moment when America signaled an inward turn that leaves the world anchorless.

NY Times, Sept 12, 2013

Europe’s Truths

Over the past three years, since Greece hit the panic button, Europe’s pain has been much examined, with inconclusive results.

The crisis that began in Greece has been controlled for now, but much of Europe, including France, is in recession. The questions triggered here about the future of Europe, and its common currency, are unresolved.

The Union that was the European miracle of the second half of the 20th century now embodies the malaise of the 21st.

A counterargument exists. It is that the agony of the euro will end up illustrating Jean Monnet’s phrase that crises are the great federators of history. The planned European banking union, single supervisory system and fiscal harmonization will prove to be the catalysts of the Continent’s ever closer union.

What is unquestionable is that Europe is living its deepest unease since the end of the Cold War.

France and Germany were the twinned engines of European integration: France gave the political lead, Germany the economic muscle. That is over. German dominance over a drifting France is so evident as to be almost embarrassing.

The French can no longer persuade themselves that the Union will be France writ large, and so they are ambivalent. Germany, uncertain about power because of the way it once used it, is hesitant about assuming what it is: Europe’s leading nation. It faces plenty of misgivings, not least in Greece, about any whiff of German assertiveness.

Britain might have stepped into this void. Instead, it stepped out the way. Under a Tory leader, in the grip of diffuse anger spewing from austerity, it has gone on a euro-skeptic walkabout. A referendum looks likely on continued E.U. membership in 2017.

It is compounded by austerity, exacerbated by strong feelings of injustice, fed by the fact that in countries like Greece credit is not getting into the real economy. Without credit there can be no resumption of growth. Massive fiscal adjustments have been made but people do not believe the worst is over — and they blame the Union.

What, they ask, is this undemocratic thing for? Not for our defense (peace is taken for granted); not for our prosperity (it has dwindled); not to build a United States of Europe that will count (the idea has become fanciful).

Ingratitude and short memories are facts of life. The Union is suffering from them at a time when the euro needs federalizing measures to be a credible currency. The question is whether these needed unifying steps are politically tenable as a populist anti-European right is rising in France, under Marine Le Pen, and elsewhere.

The federalizing path is achievable. But it will require new leadership to make the case. About 80 percent of the world’s growth in the past five years has been in developing countries. For a Europe of dwindling importance to break itself up would be to ignore the course of history.

Europe needs a persuasive idea of its future that can rebuild democratic support. It needs growth. For that it needs competitiveness. These truths must be told. As the 100th anniversary of World War I approaches, the European killing fields of the 20th century fade. Their story, and how the Union stopped the cycle of bloodshed, and how it later cemented the freedom of ex-Communist states, needs to be retold.

The euro is a political idea born of calamitous European experience. Unraveling would provide a sharp reminder of the calamities. That truth also needs to be retold. I can think of no one better to do so than the winner of the German election in September.

Crisis can still be the federator if leaders have a sense of history and a view of the future that extends beyond tomorrow.

The International Herald Tribune, July 2, 2013

DIPLOMACY IS DEAD

Effective diplomacy — the kind that produced Nixon’s breakthrough with China, an end to the Cold War on American terms, or the Dayton peace accord in Bosnia — requires patience, persistence, empathy, discretion, boldness and a willingness to talk to the enemy.

This is an age of impatience, changeableness, palaver, small-mindedness and an unwillingness to talk to bad guys. Human rights are in fashion, a good thing of course, but the space for realist statesmanship of the kind that produced the Bosnian peace in 1995 has diminished. The late Richard Holbrooke’s realpolitik was not for the squeamish.

There are other reasons for diplomacy’s demise. The United States has lost its dominant position without any other nation rising to take its place. The result is nobody’s world. It is a place where America acts as a cautious boss, alternately encouraging others to take the lead and worrying about loss of authority. Syria has been an unedifying lesson in the course of crisis when diplomacy is dead. Algeria shows how the dead pile up when talking is dismissed as a waste of time.

Violence, of the kind diplomacy once resolved, has shifted. It occurs less between states and more dealing with terrorists. One result is that the military and the C.I.A. have been in the driver’s seat in dealing with governments throughout the Middle East and in state to state (Pakistan, Afghanistan, Iraq) relations. The role of professional diplomats is squeezed.

Of course diplomats do many worthy things around the world, and even there were a couple of significant shifts — in Burma where patient U.S. diplomacy has produced an opening, and in Egypt where U.S. engagement with the Muslim Brotherhood was important and long overdue.

Breakthrough diplomacy is not conducted with friends. It is conducted with the likes of the Taliban, the ayatollahs and Hamas. It involves accepting that in order to get what you want you have to give something. The central question is: What do I want to get out of my rival and what do I have to give to get it? Or, put the way Nixon put it in seeking common ground with Communist China: What do we want, what do they want, and what do we both want?

NY Times, Jan 21, 2013

Date: 2015-12-24; view: 835