John Feffer's Blog, page 102

All Over the Map

All Over the Map: The Best of World Beat

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Foreign policy analyst John Feffer looks at global affairs in the Obama era. This collection of more than 125 Foreign Policy In Focus columns covers war, peace, terrorism, global economics, culture, democracy, and the environment. It critically analyzes what's happening all over the map, from the financial crisis to the Arab Spring, and offers specific recommendations for Washington policymakers

Crusade 2.0

My latest book, Crusade 2.0: The West's Resurgent War against Islam, will be published this March by City Lights Press. You can pre-order it here. Book presentations in March and April 2012 in New York City, Philadelphia, Baltimore, Washington, DC, Durham, North Carolina, and San Francisco.

Some background information

In his offical response to the attacks of September 11th, George W. Bush invoked the Crusades, tapping into a centuries-long history of fear and aggression. The West's longstanding perception of Islam as a threat has taken on new and more complex implications in the twenty-first century, as years of migration and resulting demographic shifts have brought the "enemy" within Western borders. Virulent opposition to the planned construction of an Islamic center near the 9/11 attack site in New York City reveals much about the intensity of public sentiments simmering just below the surface. As the United States and countries across Europe struggle with a resurgence of unexamined fear and antagonism, often directed against their own citizens, the imperative for better understanding could not be greater.

Crusade 2.0 examines the resurgance of anti-Islamic sentiment in the West and its global implications. John Feffer discusses the influence of three "unfinished wars"–the Crusades, the Cold War, and the current "war on terror." He presents a timely, concise, and provocative look at current events in the context of historical trends and goes beyond a "clash of civilizations" critique to offer concrete ways to defuse the ticking bomb of Islamophobia.

Some advanced praise:

"John Feffer's Crusade 2.0: The West's Resurgent War Against Islam offers a brief but effective exposé of a social cancer that continues to grow exponentially, in America and Europe, threatening the the security and civil liberties of Muslims and the principles and values of Western democracies." —John L. Esposito, author of Islamophobia and the Challenge of Pluralism in the 21st Century and The Future of Islam

"John Feffer's illuminating and important new work, Crusade 2.0, sheds light on the disturbing phenomenon of Islamophobia in America with a clear-eyed view of history, meticulous research, and persuasive arguments. This accessible and informative book shows how fear-mongering, when married to ignorance and selfish political agendas, not only threatens to marginalize entire communities of innocent people but also undermine the core values of pluralism, tolerance and fairness that define America." —Wajahat Ali, author of The Domestic Crusaders and lead author of Fear Inc., The Roots of the Islamophobia Network in America produced by Center for American Progress

"If you want to understand the particular madness of America's twenty-first century, you need to read John Feffer's account of how Washington launched "crusade 2.0," including two invasions and occupations of Muslim lands and a Global War on Terror sporting aptly named Hellfire missiles aimed directly at the Muslim world. Add in the injection of fear of Islam directly into the American bloodstream and the rise of Islamophobia as domestic political red meat, and you have a truly American nightmare. Feffer is its Homer and this is our sad Odyssey." —Tom Engelhardt, director of TomDispatch.com, author of The United States of Fear

North Korea's Pivot

WASHINGTON, Mar 1, 2012 (IPS) – After three years of frozen relations between North Korea and the United States, the two longstanding adversaries are on the verge of a thaw.

In what has been called the "leap day deal", North Korea has pledged to stop uranium enrichment and suspend nuclear and missile tests. The United States, meanwhile, will deliver 240,000 metric tonnes of food to the country's malnourished population.

The Barack Obama administration has maintained a policy of "strategic patience" toward North Korea, which amounted to a wait-and-see approach while Washington was preoccupied with other foreign policy issues. Obama administration officials portray the leap day deal as a modest first step in reengaging the North.

"After the really tough sanctions that were put in place by the U.N. Security Council and the North Koreans announced that they wanted to return to Six-Party Talks, talks that they had previously abandoned, we and our allies made clear that North Korea needed to take a number of steps that would demonstrate their seriousness of purpose," said a senior U.S. official at a background briefing on Feb. 29.

"We were firm that we were only interested in credible negotiations leading to the denuclearisation of the Korean Peninsula."

The death of North Korean leader Kim Jong Il in late 2011 interrupted the preparatory steps toward this deal. Although the country remains officially in its 100-day mourning period, the leader's youngest son and successor, Kim Jong Un, has continued key elements of his father's policies. Foremost among these is the more energetic diplomacy North Korea has conducted over the last year.

As the Obama administration attempts a "Pacific pivot" to refocus its geopolitical energies from the Middle East to Asia, North Korea has been executing a pivot of its own. The centennial of the birth of the country's founder Kim Il Sung, 2012 is also the year that North Korea has pledged to achieve the status of kangsong taeguk: an economically prosperous and militarily strong country.

To attract the economic investment necessary to achieve this goal, North Korea has reached out to friend and foe alike.

North Korea has been negotiating with Russia, for instance, over a natural gas pipeline that would extend down the peninsula to customers in South Korea and possibly Japan. Extensive deals with China have been concluded over access to minerals and ports. Even inter-Korean relations, which bottomed out over the last several years as a result of low-level military clashes and high-level belligerent rhetoric, promise to improve as both ruling party and opposition party leaders in the South lean toward a more conciliatory policy.

Meanwhile, the industrial zone at Kaesong, run by 123 South Korean firms on North Korean territory, has expanded to employ more than 50,000 North Korean workers.

But the focus of the North Korean negotiating strategy has been the United States, with whom it has frequently insisted on bilateral discussions.

"The North Koreans have been interested in reaching some accommodation with the United States for a while now," observed Joel Wit, a former State Department official and currently a visiting fellow at the U.S.-Korea Institute at Johns Hopkins University's School of Advanced International Studies.

"It's been a year now that they've been sending signals that they're interested in talking and taking some limited steps forward. The Obama administration didn't take them up on it because the South Koreans were against it. But South Korea's position changed last summer," he said.

Another reason for the North Korean pivot is its perennial push-pull relationship with China.

"The North Koreans feel that they've become very close to China over the past few years because of the U.S. policy of 'strategic patience,' which has forced them into the Chinese arms," Wit continued. "But the North Koreans aren't comfortable with that. They're trying to create some distance with the Chinese, using the United States as a balancer."

U.S. reaction to the leap day deal has ranged from relief at North Korea's moratorium on testing and missile launches to scepticism that the deal represents anything new.

"North Korea's promise to suspend certain nuclear activities can't be taken at face value, given the almost certain existence of several undeclared nuclear facilities," said U.S. Rep. Ileana Ros-Lehtinen, chairwoman of the House Foreign Affairs Committee, in a press statement. "Pyongyang will likely continue its clandestine nuclear weapons program right under our noses. We have bought this bridge several times before."

North Korea, meanwhile, seems to interpret the agreement somewhat differently from the United States. A Korean Central News Agency article reported that the Six-Party Talks would prioritise "the lifting of sanctions on the DPRK and provision of light water reactors", neither of which are mentioned in U.S. government statements.

The humanitarian community has reacted with unambiguous support for the resumption of food aid, which will consist of nutritional supplements designed particularly for children and pregnant women.

"There have been over six nutritional assessments, most everything done on our own dime, to verify that there is a need for food," says Robert Springs, the head of Global Resource Services, one of the five NGOs involved in the last round of U.S. food aid distribution. "We welcome this nutritional assistance. It's responding to a need. It should have been done a long time ago."

A new round of multilateral negotiations through the Six-Party Talks has not yet been announced. North Korea must first make arrangements for International Atomic Energy Agency inspectors to return to the country after being expelled in 2009. Monitoring protocols for the U.S. food aid deliveries must also be negotiated.

U.S. officials remain upbeat. "They're doing it within the 100-day mourning period that's self-declared in North Korea," says a senior administration official. "So it shows that they're interested with some alacrity to reach out, to get back to the table, and begin to try to make diplomatic progress, and I think that's a positive sign."

America's Image Problem

The United States definitely sends mixed messages to the Muslim world. Early in his presidency, Barack Obama went to Cairo to "seek a new beginning between the United States and Muslims around the world, one based on mutual interest and mutual respect, and one based upon the truth that America and Islam are not exclusive and need not be in competition." The president proclaimed that America and Islam "share common principles – principles of justice and progress; tolerance and the dignity of all human beings."

That all sounds good. Unfortunately, the image has proven stronger than the word. When Muslims around the world turn on the television, open the newspaper, or check out their favorite websites, they are more likely to see injustice, intolerance, and indignity coming from America the (Not Always So) Beautiful. It's not just the iconic Abu Ghraib pictures from the Bush era. Muslims – and, of course, everyone else – can get outraged over the picture of Syed Wali Shah, a seven-year-old victim of a U.S. drone strike in Pakistan. Or the video of laughing Marines urinating on the corpses of Taliban fighters in Afghanistan.

And now with the picture of a partially burned Qur'an – part of a rescued remnant of copies that troops at the Bagram Air Force Base in Afghanistan threw into a garbage pit for incineration – the world's Muslims can be excused for believing that the Cairo speech was only words. You'd think the U.S. army would be a little more careful. Last April, when members of the Dove World Outreach Center burned a Qur'an after putting it on trial, riots broke out in Afghanistan and left scores of people dead, including seven UN staff.

This time around, the Pentagon insists that the act was inadvertent. That may well be so, but you can't see "inadvertent" in a picture. In a country where the literacy rate is 28 percent, the third-lowest in the world, a picture can indeed be worth a gazillion words. The United States obviously has a serious image problem.

Here's the paradox. The U.S. army, which is actively working with Afghans, sponsors what seems like an endless series of cultural awareness workshops to facilitate cooperation. The Marines have mandatory cultural training; you can do pre-deployment training online with the Army; there's cultural role-playing in a replica of an Afghan village at Fort Polk in Louisiana. Since it works in Muslim-majority countries around the world – Saudi Arabia, Bahrain, Kuwait – the Pentagon takes great pains to avoid charges of Islamophobia.

Yet the Pentagon still manages to fall into the same category as that other famous Qur'an burner, Terry Jones, the Florida preacher who could endure several lifetimes of cultural sensitivity training and remain a knucklehead. Believe it or not, Jones is running for president on a platform of reducing military spending and bringing all U.S. troops home from overseas. No, Jones has not suddenly become a peace activist. He still issues threats to burn more Qur'ans, most recently as a response to the possible execution of an Iranian pastor. But he is the more honest Islamophobe. He genuinely wants to stay away from all Muslims, just as an arachnophobe wants to stay away from all spiders, however irrational the fear might be.

So, how is it that the Pentagon and the Islamophobe, with their opposite views on Islam and intervention, end up generating a similar response in the Muslim world? The answer lies in the image that the Pentagon has of the Muslim world. This is America's other image problem.

U.S. military operations involve an implicit distinction between "good Muslims" and "bad Muslims." The "bad Muslims" are, of course, the Taliban, who demonstrated during their brief and bloody reign that they interpret the Qur'an much as Terry Jones interprets the New Testament and Bibi Netanyahu interprets the Old Testament. It's not a question of fundamentalism. There's really no such thing as Islamic fundamentalism, for nearly all Muslims take the Qur'an to be the literal word of God (and "fundamentalism" is really a Protestant invention anyway). Rather, it's a question of interpretation, and the Taliban have ignored all the teachings of the Qur'an that contradict their own medieval beliefs about women, religious tolerance, and warfare.

The "good Muslims," meanwhile, are Hamid Karzai and all the Afghans who are willing to fight alongside coalition forces. Coalition forces, however, deep down don't trust their Afghan partners. More than once, Karzai has threatened to quit and join the Taliban himself. And Afghan government soldiers have not just threatened to quit; they've done so and brought their sophisticated American-made weapons with them to the Taliban. Last June, Lt. Col. Daniel L. Davis visited a coalition base in the Zharay district of Kandahar province and watched as Afghan policemen ignored orders to stop suspected Taliban. "To a man, the U.S. officers in that unit told me they had nothing but contempt for the Afghan troops in their area," reports Davis in an Armed Forces Journal article, "and that was before the above incident occurred." It was also before an Afghan intelligence officer, in the wake of the inadvertent Qur'an burning, killed two American servicemen working in the Afghan Interior Ministry, prompting Washington to pull out all its advisors from the Afghan ministries. Since the start of last year, Afghans wearing police or army uniforms have killed at least 36 U.S. and NATO troops.

It's not that Afghans are inherently untrustworthy. Rather, the United States has put them in an untenable position. They must choose between supporting unpalatable insiders and unpalatable outsiders.

But it's actually worse than this. "A particularly frustrating feature of the U.S. narrative, for Muslims, is that it divides Muslim society into a progressive liberal and secular sector on one hand and on the other a regressive Islamist sector that seeks to impose backward Islamic traditions. America then seeks to promote the liberal forces and to undermine the Islamist forces," explains pollster Steven Kull. "It is particularly infuriating to Muslims when America intervenes in a way that is destabilizing, trying to root for one imagined side against another, in what Americans conceive of as an inevitable evolution toward the victory of one side."

We think we're helping them. They think we're out to destroy their way of life.

Even with all the sensitivity trainings in the world, which amount to little more than lipsticking the pig, the U.S. army remains an occupation force in Afghanistan. This occupation force has stirred the nationalist impulses of Afghans, prompted the use of desperate measures such as suicide bombings, and created the semblance of a crusade by the West against Islam. The wars conducted in Afghanistan and Iraq have had little to do with Islam per se. They have been about geopolitics, natural resources, and the reassertion of U.S. military power. But many in the Islamic world view these conflicts as an assault on their religion. The Qur'an burning is not the only indignity. Afghans, points out FPIF contributor Julia Heath, "don't approve of how U.S. troops bring dogs into their homes or touch their women because these are culturally offensive actions. Shopkeeper Wali Aziz says, 'They [U.S. troops] are careless with our holy things, and they are careless with our country.'" Whenever such desecrations take place, they reinforce the notion that religion is at the heart of the conflict rather than at the periphery.

It doesn't help that so many U.S. politicians talk about Islam as though it were the greatest enemy of humanity. President Obama was quick to apologize for the latest Qur'an burning outrage. But Republicans were equally quick to seize on the apology as proof of Obama's "weakness," as Rick Santorum put it. Mitt Romney and Newt Gingrich piled on with their own criticisms of the president's diplomatic gesture. Indeed, rarely does a day go by in the Republican primaries that one of the candidates doesn't defame Islam. Santorum and Gingrich have both laid it on thick with their wild accusations about the threat of sharia law and their misrepresentations of the Park51 Islamic cultural center.

"So far, Mitt Romney has largely remained above the fray," I write in an Other Words op-ed Running Against Islam. "He often resorts to carefully couched phrases like 'Islam is not an inherently violent faith.' But the man who has changed his position on so many issues may well be laying the groundwork for another flip-flop. Walid Phares, a right-wing pundit and prominent Islamophobe, is one of Romney's advisors. And the pro-Romney Super PAC Restore Our Future is masterminded by Larry McCarthy, the attack ad specialist. McCarthy not only designed the Willie Horton spot that swung the 1988 presidential race in George H.W. Bush's favor; he also put together an error-laced ad about Park51 that nearly deep-sixed Iowa Democrat Rep. Bruce Baley in his 2010 reelection bid."

Sure, we could try to send all the Republican candidates and some Democrats as well down to Fort Polk to train alongside U.S. soldiers and learn how to behave respectfully toward Muslims. But even if they become as diplomatic as Mr. Sensitivity himself, Barack Obama, the United States continues to wage war in predominantly Muslim countries, and fire-starters like Pamela Geller or Robert Spencer continue to badmouth not Islam or "bad Muslims" or "Islamic radicalism," but mainstream Islam itself. Park51, which expanded the Geller-Spencer soapbox to monstrous proportions, was hardly the threat they made it out to be. If they'd only bothered to read the writings of the cultural center's founder, they might have discovered a philosophical co-religionist.

As I write in my new book Crusade 2.0: The West's Resurgent War on Islam, "Ironically, Imam Feisal Abdul Rauf was just the kind of 'good Muslim' that conservatives loved to cozy up to in order to prove that they were not Islamophobic. In his writings, the imam quotes approvingly from Supreme Court Justice Antonin Scalia and conservative literary critic Allan Bloom, lauds corporate power unfettered by state control, believes that 'anti-religionism crept in as a new state religion' in the twentieth century, and condemns Hamas as a terrorist organization." But for all his conservative tendencies, the imam remains an imam. In the eyes of Geller and Spencer, the only good Muslim is a secular Muslim.

Somehow we must combine a principled engagement with the Muslim world with a principled withdrawal from areas of combat. If the troops don't come home and the drones don't stop killing civilians, fine speeches and sensitivity trainings will just seem like hypocrisy, our words and our images will remain far apart, and the chasm between the West and Islam will endure, nowhere more so than in the imaginations of those twin extremists, the Taliban and the Islamophobes.

 

Political Drift

With Egypt stuck in neutral and Syria engulfed in violence, Tunisia has emerged as one of the great success stories of the recent upheavals in the Middle East. But, as FPIF contributor Rob Prince points out, this success is not without its blemishes. "It is unfortunate but not particularly surprising that the people who made the revolution — the young and the poor — are not the ones elected to power in its wake," he writes in Tunisia at the Crossroads. "Sometime during the election campaign, the energies of the population shifted from solving the economic crisis to cultural questions that favored more traditional and conservative elements."

With Iran, meanwhile, the drift has been in a more dangerous direction as the Republican presidential candidates have all been pushing for a much harder response from Washington. "For all its talk about how 'all options are on the table,' the Obama administration appears to be trying to avoid a war," FPIF columnist Conn Hallinan writes in The Slide Toward War. "But with the 2012 elections looming, could Washington remain on the sidelines? Polls indicate that Americans would not look with favor on a new Middle East war, but a united front of Republicans, neoconservatives, and the American Israeli Political Action Committee is pressing for a confrontation with Iran."

Finally, the United States and North Korea may be ever so slowly drifting toward some form of reconciliation after three long years of standoffishness. The recent bilateral talks didn't produce anything concrete, but talking is better than stony silence. The United States could build on this momentum by "offering to postpone, suspend, or curtail the joint U.S.-ROK military exercises scheduled to take place in and around the peninsula in the coming month," writes FPIF contributor Greg Chaffin in Resuming Contact with North Korea. "Along with its use as a confidence-building measure, such action would reduce the external pressure on the transitioning regime and forestall it from lashing out in response to what it might consider to be "provocative action." Furthermore, as a decision on the exercises would require South Korean agreement, such a move could also work to improve inter-Korean relations. The political cost to President Lee Myung-bak would be low as he enters his final year in office. Indeed, such an action might enhance his legacy if it were to bring about an improvement in relations between the North and South."

Poem, Blog, Book

 

"Is there a poem in Gaza that hasn't been written?" asks FPIF contributor Kathy Engel in her poem Where. Her answer, in verse, takes us from a school in Jersey to the Dheisheh Camp in Gaza.

This week, our FPIF blog Focal Points covers the Summit of the Americas, the possibility of steep cuts in the U.S. nuclear arsenal, and the recent Saudi fatwa against tweeting.

Finally, if you live in the New York area, please swing by Bluestockings bookstore (172 Allen Street) on Monday, March 5 at 7 p.m.

Running Against Islam

Every political season has its hot-button issues. There's race, abortion, lunar colonies. But the hottest hot-button issue these days, judging from comments by Republican presidential hopefuls as well as what happened during the 2010 mid-term elections, is Islam.

Islam dominated the headlines during the summer of 2010. Remember Terry Jones and his pledge to burn the Qur'an? Or those persistent rumors of President Barack Obama's Muslim faith? Plus, of course, that controversy over Park51, the Islamic cultural center planned for lower Manhattan. Those 2010 elections became a litmus test for how a lot of politicians stood on Islam. An embarrassing number of them are against it.

Although they flirt with racism, sexism, and homophobia at their own risk, politicians indulge in anti-Islamic sentiment with near impunity.

One reason for that is the antipathy that nearly half of Americans feel toward Islam. According to a September 2011 study from the Brookings Institution and the Public Religion Research Institute, 47 percent of Americans believe that Islam doesn't jibe with American values. Republicans are more likely than Democrats to hold this view.

But the real dividing line runs right through the Republican Party. If you watch Fox News or belong to the tea party, according to that study, you're primed to see Islam as a threat. As a result, the presidential hopefuls have used Islam to mark their political territory and fire up their base.

Newt Gingrich, who once compared the Park51 organizers to Nazis, has waged a long campaign against the putative threat of sharia law in the United States. Yet virtually no one in the small Muslim-American community supports replacing U.S. laws with Islamic law. Rick Santorum, meanwhile, has argued that Islam hasn't generated a concept of equality and that Muslims don't worship the Judeo-Christian God, even though equality is central to Islam and "Allah" in the Qur'an refers to the God of Muslims, Christians, and Jews.

Only Ron Paul has forthrightly rejected Islamophobia. He even connects the anti-Islamic sentiment that's rife at home with the wars U.S. wages against majority-Muslim countries.

So far, Mitt Romney has largely remained above the fray. He often resorts to carefully couched phrases like "Islam is not an inherently violent faith." But the man who has changed his position on so many issues may well be laying the groundwork for another flip-flop.

Walid Phares, a right-wing pundit and prominent Islamophobe, is one of Romney's advisors. And the pro-Romney Super PAC Restore Our Future is masterminded by Larry McCarthy, the attack ad specialist. McCarthy not only designed the Willie Horton spot that swung the 1988 presidential race in George H.W. Bush's favor; he also put together an error-laced ad about Park51 that nearly deep-sixed Iowa Democrat Rep. Bruce Baley in his 2010 reelection bid.

It's not just the Republicans. Despite his effort to reset U.S. relations with the Islamic world, many of Obama's policies have infuriated Muslims. Whether it's the wars that generate civilian casualties who are invariably Muslim, the proxy detentions of Muslim-Americans by other countries, or the expansion of the surveillance of Muslim-Americans at home, his administration has worked hard not to appear "weak on Islam." Add in worsening relations with Iran, and you've got a toxic combination.

Certainly, the economy remains the key campaign issue. But as the Republican hopefuls sharpen their attacks on each other and prepare for a showdown with Obama in the fall, don't be surprised if Islam becomes as defining a political issue as communism was during the Cold War. If politicians push back against this new McCarthyism, we could avoid a repeat of the ugly Islamophobia of 2010. But thanks to no-holds-barred advertising and lots of it, not to mention a pervasive lack of understanding about the world's second-largest religion, the hot-button issue of Islam might just get a lot hotter.

Other Words, February 27, 2012

 

Islamophobic Contest, an OtherWords cartoon by Khalil Bendib

Our Man in Beijing?

When Hu Jintao took over as the leader of China in 2002, U.S. companies welcomed his accession as a "good sign for American business." Political analysts described Hu as a fourth-generation member of the Communist party leadership who might very well turn out to be a "closet liberal." Playing it safe, the media tended to portray him as a pragmatic enigma. In the wake of 9/11 and high-level cooperation on counter-terrorism, Hu proved to be a reliable U.S. partner, prompting Colin Powell to remarkin 2003 that U.S.-China relations were the best since 1972.

It didn't take long, however, before the media and the punditry turned sour on Hu. By 2005, The Economist was labeling him a "conservative authoritarian" for tightening party discipline and cracking down on intellectuals. Hu also came under fire for holding firm against the United States around disputes over trade, currency, intellectual property, and human rights. On counter-terrorism, U.S.-Chinese interests converged. But on this issue and most others, Hu turned out not to be a closet liberal at all. And when it came to prosecuting the "global war on terror," the Bush administration didn't want a liberal.

Now, with China gearing up for another leadership transition, Hu's putative successor Xi Jinping has embarked on his own grand tour of the United States. As with Hu, Western sources admit that they don't know very much about Xi beyond his generally "pro-business" approach. He has a celebrity wife; he doesn't like corruption; he's a basketball fan. His father was a Party loyalist until he began to sympathize with the Tiananmen Square protestors. Aside from these tidbits, journalists have been forced to sift through Xi's U.S. appearances – his meetings with the Obama administration, his return to the Iowa town he visited 25 years ago, his attendance at an LA Lakers game – for clues to the new Chinese leader's true political nature.

Xi Jinping did what he could to frustrate the media. He was careful to tailor his remarks in Washington to satisfy both his Western hosts and his colleagues back home. So, for instance, he spoke of U.S.-Chinese relations as an "unstoppable river that keeps surging ahead" and of Beijing's willingness to engage with Washington on a broad agenda of issues from counter-terrorism to North Korea. At the same time he was careful to warn his hosts to "respect the interests and the concerns of China."

This latter point, that China has its own national interests, invariably eludes Western observers no matter how often Chinese leaders repeat it. Sure, a Chinese leader might like American basketball or admire American business. But the essential fact is that he leads a political, economic, and military apparatus dedicated to preserving itself and the country's territorial integrity. The same can be said for the leaders of most countries, including the United States. Certainly no one in Beijing expects the 2012 U.S. elections to produce an American president who embraces state capitalism, a global trade order that disproportionately favors Chinese economic growth, or a ceding of U.S. military position in the Pacific to the up-and-coming superpower. And yet for some bizarre reason, U.S. observers expect the latest Chinese leader to suddenly tear off his clothes and reveal a Captain America suit underneath.

China's national interests are perhaps most visibly on display around security issues. During the early Hu years, the discussion in the West centered on China's "peaceful rise." More recently, the talk has gotten darker, as pessimists point to China's recent purchase of an old Ukrainian aircraft carrier, its ambitions in the South China Sea, its confrontation with Japan over the disputed Senkaku/Diaoyu islands, and of course its increased spending on the military. By 2015, according to IHS Jane's, Chinese military spending will reach $238 billion, more than all the projected spending in the Asian region as a whole.

But there are no real indications that Beijing has abandoned its "peaceful rise" approach. The refurbished aircraft carrier is not terribly impressive (particularly compared to the U.S. Navy's 10 modern vessels). South Korea and Japan have a similar row over a disputed island, which might lead to the conclusion that it's Japan, not China, that's abandoning its "peaceful rise."

China's claims to islands in the South China Sea, however dubious, are longstanding and date back to the pre-communist era. And it's been more than 30 years since China has conducted a significant military intervention overseas, an overall pattern of risk-averse behavior it shows no sign of abandoning. In any case, what might tip the region into conflict is not China's territorial ambitions but climate change. "As sea temperatures in the South China Sea continue to rise, large quantities of fish will migrate north into even more heavily disputed waters," writes Foreign Policy In Focus (FPIF) contributor Derek Bolton in Shifting Winds in the South China Sea. "As fishermen are forced to follow suit, the probability of future confrontations will increase, raising the likelihood of a more serious conflict."

The United States, meanwhile, continues to outspend China militarily by at least five-fold and is in the midst of a "Pacific pivot" to reorient its security policy away from the Middle East and toward Asia. Increased U.S. military cooperation with Australia, the Philippines, and even Vietnam makes China nervous. China's increased military spending is not a happy sign, but the leadership believes it has a long way to go before achieving even rough parity with its major rival. The overarching priorities of Chinese leaders remain nationalist: to keep a vast and fractious country together, maintain influence in Taiwan, and ensure a steady supply of energy through its neighboring regions to sustain high levels of economic growth. Hu and now Xi consistently tell their U.S. interlocutors that closer U.S.-Chinese relations are possible and desirable as long as Washington recognizes these national imperatives.

The underlying threat from China, of course, is not military but economic. Now the second largest economy in the world, China could very well surpass the United States during the next presidential term. Washington complains about unfair trade practices, manipulated currency, and a culture of intellectual piracy. Like all late modernizers following the example of Japan and South Korea, China has realized that making the jump from underdeveloped to developed requires some breaking of the rules.

Critics might point out that China, as an economic powerhouse, is no longer an underdog. But much of China remains underdeveloped. And China's economic power is not reflected in its voting power in international economic institutions. At both the World Bank and the International Monetary Fund, the United States commands approximately 16 percent of the votes with China much further down the list at around 4 percent. China, in other words, has been invited to the table but is not part of setting the rules of the game. No surprise, then, that it is still bending these rules.

Xi Jinping no doubt has his own thoughts about how to maintain what the Chinese might call the Three Balances: China's domestic harmony, its relations with the near abroad, and the push-pull dynamic with the United States. He is not, however, that mythic figure that the West hopes that China will one day produce.

Xi is partly his own man, partly a Party man. But he is by no means our man in Beijing.

Ratcheting up Tensions with Iran

The war watch with Iran continues. The United States and Europe have tightened sanctions; Iran has threatened to close the Strait of Hormuz and shut down oil shipments to Europe; Israel periodically nods in the direction of a preemptive strike against Iran's nuclear facilities.

War, however, is not inevitable. "Iran seems to be interested in going back to the negotiation table, with top Iranian officials constantly visiting Moscow and Ankara to lay the groundwork for talks," writes FPIF contributor Richard Javad Heydarian in Iran: Willing to Deal. "The Iranian economy is feeling the pinch, and Tehran's military options are limited. If Iran closes the Strait of Hormuz, it will not only invite a military retaliation by an armada of Western navies, but it will also jeopardize Tehran's ties with neighboring Arab countries as well as China, which considers the stable flow of oil in the Persian Gulf crucial to its energy security."

Iran's military strength, meanwhile, is overstated. Stacked up against the Gulf Cooperation Council (GCC), which includes Saudi Arabia and Bahrain, Iran comes up short on nearly every type of conventional weapon. "That the GCC spends twice as much on its military establishment than does Iran further underscores the imbalance between Iran and the Arab Gulf states," writes FPIF contributor Rex Wingerter in Iran: Outgunned in the Gulf. "The Stockholm International Peace Research Institute calculates that over the past decade, Saudi Arabia, Kuwait, and the UAE, have devoted about 7 percent of their GDP to military expenditures while Iran's expenditures have averaged just less than 3 percent of its GDP.  In terms of actual, overall military spending since 2000, the three states have averaged about $16 billion a year against Iran's expenditures of about $8 billion."

Arctic Blowout, Korean Suppression

The Obama administration has begun to permit exploratory drilling in the Arctic around the Beaufort Sea and the Chuckchi Sea. If you think that's a bad idea, just imagine what might happen if Russia proceeds with its own plans to drill in the Arctic.

"Russia has had a terrible environmental record and a history of oil spills," writes FPIF contributor Julia Heath in Preventing a Blowout in the Arctic. "The area around Usinsk, just south of the Arctic Circle, is home to what the Huffington Post calls 'the world's worst ecological oil catastrophe,' where leaks in a decommissioned oil well wreaked havoc in 2011. It wasn't the first such incident. In 1994, the town suffered the third largest oil spill in history."

In South Korea, the government is expanding its use of the controversial National Security Law to suppress dissent, particularly around the naval base being built on Jeju Island. As FPIF columnist Christine Ahn writes in South Korea Cracks Down on Dissent, "the South Korean government has used the NSL to crackdown on leftists from trade unionists to peace and reunification activists, particularly those who have visited North Korea. Not only has the Lee administration made it more difficult for South Korean humanitarian aid groups to travel to North Korea, it has also used the NSL to investigate those who have traveled as far back as 2007."

FPIF contributor Kyi May Kaung, meanwhile, has translated a poem by noted Burmese writer Naing Win Swe that compares a plant that doesn't bend its head to an activist who refuses to kowtow to the state. The Moe Ma Kha Plant begins:

That time when they

submerged my head

in water

they did not

not even

one moment

let me

raise it up

to breathe.

Finally, at our Focal Point blog, we have a refutation of a recent Washington Post column on military bases, a piece on the Syrian opposition, and an analysis of Republicans on Iran.

World Beat, Foreign Policy In Focus, February 21, 2012

 

 

 

Crusade 2.0 events

New  York, NY
Date: Monday March 5
Time: 7-9pm ET
Location: Bluestockings Bookstore
Address: 172 Allen Street, New York, NY 10002
Philadelphia, PA
Date: Wednesday March 7
Time: 7-9pm ET
Location: Robin's Bookstore
Address: 110a S. 13th Street




Baltimore, MD
Date: Thursday March 8
Time: 7-9pm ET
Location: Red Emma's Bookstore
Address: 800 St. Paul Street, Baltimore, MD 21202

 

Washington, DC

Date: Monday, March 12
Time: 6:30-8:30
Location: Institute for Policy Studies
Address: 1112 16th St., NW, Suite 600
More information here: http://knowledgecommonsdc.org/classes/islamophobia
Knowledge Commons class (free!)



Durham, NC
Date: Monday March 19
Time: 7-9pm ET
Location: Regulator Bookshop
Address: 720 9th Street, Durham, NC 27705






San Francisco, CA
Date: Wednesday April 4




Time: 7:30-9pm PT
Location: The Green Arcade
Address: 1680 Market Street (at Gough); San Francisco, CA 94102






Washington, DC
Date: Wednesday April 18
Time: 6:30-8pm ET
Location: Busboys & Poets
Address: 2021 14th St, NW, Washington, DC 20009

Letter from Okinawa

Dear Mom:

I haven't written much from Okinawa. I'm sorry about that. I guess maybe you were expecting lots of exciting war stories from your son the Marine. But honestly, the most exciting thing we've done is put in a sea wall over by the Torii Beach shoreline and then take it down again when it wasn't doing its job of controlling erosion.

I'm not really sure why we're over here in Japan, all 17,000 of us in the III Marine Expeditionary Force. Everyone talks about the Chinese threat. But I'm reading in the newspaper that the next Chinese leader is right now over there in America talking with President Obama and going to a Lakers game. He's even supposed to show up in Iowa, in Muscatine it says, right near us in West Liberty.

If I'm supposed to defend my homeland from China, maybe I should be sitting on our front porch with a .50-caliber Browning machine gun in case this fellow and his delegation come over to steal our land. But that's just craziness, I know. He doesn't want our land. Heck, we tried to sell the farm to the Crawfords last year and even they didn't want it. This Chinese fellow, he just wants to sell us more of his flat-screen TVs. And buy up more of our government's debt.

I enlisted to fight the bad guys. That's my job. Saddam Hussein. Al-Qaeda. It's just my luck to arrive out here when we're already out of Iraq and drawing down in Afghanistan. So it looks like I'll spend my whole rotation here in Okinawa, halfway around the world from where the action is. You don't have to worry about me getting hurt. Except for that wicked sunburn I got first time we hung out at the beach.

I secretly thought we'd get a hero's welcome when we arrived three months ago. But it turns out that they don't really like us over here, these Okinawans, though they're polite and all. I figured they'd be happy we were here to defend them against, I don't know, the Chinese maybe. But all the Okinawans want to do is buy those same flat-screen TVs.

Can't say I blame them much. I mean, this place is like paradise, all the beaches and the nice weather and the great food. We call our base Club Futenma! But here's the thing. U.S. bases occupy almost 20 percent of the island. And my base, Futenma, is located right smack in the middle of a big city. It's crazy! Imagine a huge military base in the middle of New York City. Remember when we went to Central Park when I was a kid? That's what it's like to fly into Futenma. Take a left at the Empire State Building, coast over Rockefeller Center, and drown out all the sound on the city streets. They tell me that a helicopter crashed into an elementary school just next to the base a few years back. It didn't kill anyone, but still.

There are other reasons why folks here are not big on the Marines. It's mostly guys here, young guys who aren't married. Like me, they joined the Marines to fight and because there weren't any other jobs around. But there's no one to fight here except each other. We're all revved up with nowhere to go. There's a lot to do on the base, I mean they even have a bowling alley, but a lot of us we want to go out on the town, see something new. There's a lot of drinking, fist fights, car accidents. Even some rapes. That's not what being a Marine is all about. We enlisted to do a job. It's not right to put us through all that training on Parris Island and then stick us somewhere with nothing to do.

If you've been reading the newspapers, maybe you know about the controversy going on right now about this base. Everyone agrees that Futenma is old and dangerous. So we're supposed to be shutting it down, sending half of us over to Guam, and keeping half behind in a new base up north where there aren't so many people. But it turns out that the Okinawans up north don't want us any more than the people around here do. And it costs way too much money to expand the bases on Guam for 8,000 Marines. So, instead, they're going to send only a couple thousand of us to Guam and rotate another couple thousand around the Pacific, in the Philippines or Australia, places like that. And the rest of us will stay here, in funky old Futenma.

Honestly I don't understand why they don't just down close down this place and send us home. Suck it up and drive on. But I guess Marines, once we set up in a place, we don't like to leave even if there's no good reason to be here. What happens if that Chinese fellow, he decides that he doesn't need to sell us any more TVs and what he really wants is Taiwan? A couple thousand Marines aren't going to make any difference if a big war breaks out. And if those crazy North Koreans decide they want to march down south, the South Koreans don't need us. I mean, the only difference I think we could make is if the government collapses up there in North Korea and we need to find their nukes and lock them down. That's the kind of assignment I'd like to have. But they'd be better off asking the South Koreans to do that job. I don't speak a word of Korean, and I got lost last time we were driving around Ginowan City.

Everybody here is talking about something called the "Pacific pivot." President Obama is saying that we have to pull ourselves away from the Middle East and pay more attention to Asia. Maybe so. I just don't see much for us Marines to do here. Like most of the guys in our squadron, I don't want to do jobs I'm not trained to do. I'm an ordnance tech. I inspect, repair, and load aviation ordnance. I'm good at my job. If there's an earthquake or something, sure I'll help out, just like I volunteered to help out with that sea wall. But I'm guessing that there are organizations that can do a better job than we can. People talk about a dispute over some islands south of here in the South China Sea. But that's for the State Department and the diplomats to work out. I'm all for this Pacific pivot. Just send me somewhere else to do the job of a Marine.

They tell me that everyone back home is talking about the economy. No different from when I left, I guess. Seems like they might get around to trimming a little bit from the military this time around. I hear that the Marines are supposed to cut 12-20,000 as part of the belt-tightening. Well, that's just about the size of our group here in Futenma. I guess it would make sense just to close us down, send us home. It would make the Okinawans and the bean-counters in Washington both happy. It's like that sea wall we built. If it's not doing its job, you just have to go out there and tear it down and use those stones for something else.

But here's the thing, Mom. I bet there's still no jobs in West Liberty or Muscatine or anywhere else in Iowa. Sure, I'll go home if they ask me to. But there sure better be something back home for me to do. Until then, I'm staying put.

Say hello to everyone in the family for me. And if you happen to run into that Chinese fellow, say hello to him too. Who knows, maybe he'll invest some money in Muscatine and build a factory. So that I can have a job when I get home.

Okinawa on the Hill

Last week, Foreign Policy In Focus (FPIF) and the Network for Okinawa sponsored a briefing on the Hill courtesy of the office of Rep. Barbara Lee (D-CA). The keynote speakers were Susumu Inamine, the mayor of Nago City where the Futenma replacement facility has been slated to go, and Denny Tamaki, a Diet member from Okinawa. The room was packed, and the press was out in force. The Japanese press, that is. The U.S. media has been singularly uninterested in the viewpoints of Okinawans toward the much-vaunted Pacific pivot announced by the Obama administration. Here's an ad that the anti-base movement in Okinawa placed on The Washington Post website, which does a good job of summarizing the Okinawan position.

I was struck at the briefing by a question from an audience member and former Marine who couldn't quite understand why the Marine Corps wasn't just shutting down Futenma and bringing home the Marines.

Even more striking is this website put together by a former Marine officer who spent a year on Okinawa. His proposal goes beyond even some Okinawan demands. "The Marines must relent and promptly close Futenma and Kinser, and close nearby Camp Foster as well," he writes. "Marine units could easily move to other U.S. military bases overseas and to larger bases in the less crowded northern half of Okinawa. These changes would increase the relevance of the U.S. Marine Corps while eliminating the major diplomatic conflict with the Japanese. This would remove half the 15,000 Marines from Okinawa, and could be accomplished within four years with no new construction or additional funding."

These inputs from former Marines prompted me to compose the above letter from an imaginary Marine on Okinawa. There is perhaps more common ground between Okinawans and Marines than either Washington or Tokyo imagines.

Syria in Flames

The situation in Syria is certainly not improving. With the UN paralyzed, the Syrian government is attempting to wipe out the resistance that began nearly a year ago. "The nature and scale of abuses by the Syrian government indicate that crimes against humanity are likely to have been committed since March 2011," UN human rights chief Navi Pillay announced on Monday.

"Although foreign military intervention is not the answer, the international community needs to take decisive steps to stop the repression in Syria and support a transition to democracy," writes FPIF columnist Stephen Zunes in Syrian Repression, the Chinese-Russian Veto, and U.S. Hypocrisy. "The Russian and Chinese veto of the moderate and reasonable UN Security Council resolution was unconscionable. Unfortunately, the policies of the United States and its allies have made it all the more difficult for the UN and peoples of the world to oppose Syrian government repression and defend the Syrian people."

Another obstacle to stopping the repression in Syria is the flow of Russian arms supporting the Syrian government. "According to Business Insider, Syria is one of Russia's largest weapons consumers, purchasing around $4 billion total in military supplies," writes FPIF contributor Anya Barry in Adding Fuel to the Syria's Fire. "Additionally, Syria's port of Tartus, where Russia recently sent an aircraft carrier, serves as Russia's sole naval base in the region. Russia has also invested around $19.4 billion in Syria's infrastructure and exports about $1.1 billion in goods to the nation. If Assad were to resign, Russian business interests could be seriously put at risk. An additional motive for Russia's staunch support for the Assad regime is the concern that if Syria's government were to crumble, it could have a domino effect in the nearby Russian North Caucasus region."

China and the NDAA

Much of the press around Xi Jinping's visit to the United States has stressed the rising competition between China and the United States. In addition to the trade and currency conflicts, the two countries compete for resources in Africa, Latin America, and the Middle East. There's also the potential for conflict in Asia.

But there's at least one place where the two countries could cooperate: Afghanistan. Both Beijing and Washington have an interest in a stable country with a functioning economy. "Many articles and statements in the Chinese press support Chinese cooperation with the United States on Afghanistan reconstruction," writes FPIF contributor Dong Yu in Is China Reentering the Great Game? "For instance, as far back as 2004, Men Honghua of the International Strategic Institute of the Central Party School discussed potential Sino-U.S. cooperation in failed states, including Afghanistan. According to a WikiLeaks cable, China has 'expressed interest in cooperating with the U.S. for delivery of non-lethal aid to Afghanistan' since 2006. But the Chinese government formally rebuffed the possibility of military cooperation in Afghanistan—namely the opening of a supply route for U.S. forces—in 2009. Particularly as U.S. involvement in the Afghanistan War decreases, U.S.-China cooperation can still go forward in the economic and cultural realms."

In our Annotate This section, FPIF contributor Carl Mirra looks at the National Defense Authorization Act and its provisions concerning the indefinite detention of U.S. citizens. "Insofar as it affirms 'existing law' as the basis for federal detention policy, the NDAA does not itself dramatically expand the government's power to detain U.S. citizens indefinitely," he writes in The NDAA and the Militarization of America. "The bad news, however, is the government has essentially already claimed this authority, and the NDAA will only provide more legal cover for the executive branch to further undermine habeas corpus."

Finally, in our FPIF blog this week, you can read about disarmament and evangelicals, the military budget as seen from the local level, and Angelina Jolie's foreign policy.

World Beat, Foreign Policy In Focus, February 14, 2012