Jan Sampiemon Archives - Karel van Wolferen

Time For Nato to Shut Up (23 june 2011)

Jan Sampiemon — Thu, 23 Jun 2011 19:12:44 +0000

Europe ought to be grateful to Robert M Gates. In his farewell speech in Brussels he read the allies a lesson they could not have misunderstood. If, from hereon, Europeans are not prepared to deliver more to the alliance, American voters – and with them Congress – will dump NATO. Why be grateful for that statement? Because a better demonstration of the bankruptcy of the alliance is difficult to imagine. The Europeans can only gain from a confrontation with that reality, and Gates has just made such a confrontation more likely. If the European states comply with the demands made by the departing American defense secretary this would boil down to them accepting a permanent status as vassals of the United States. Washington determines how many, where and when. The why of it all remains unclear and can change by the day. Take the case of Libya where as the main purpose of military action regime change has been substituted for protection of the population.

What did Gates say about Afghanistan? A recent visit to that country had convinced him of the reality of progress. But “It is no secret that for too long, the international military effort suffered from a lack of focus, resources, and attention …. When NATO agreed at Riga in 2006 to take the lead for security across the country, I suspect many allies assumed that the mission would be primarily peacekeeping, reconstruction and development assistance – more akin to the Balkans. Instead, NATO found itself in a tough fight against a determined and resurgent Taliban returning in force from its sanctuaries in Pakistan.”

How does Gates evaluate what NATO has made of this fight? “Though we can take pride in what has been accomplished and sustained in Afghanistan, the ISAF mission has exposed significant shortcomings in NATO – in military capabilities, and in political will. Despite more than [a combined 2 million non-American] troops in uniform NATO has struggled, at times desperately, to sustain a deployment of 25- to 40.000 troops, not just in boots on the ground, but in crucial support assets such as helicopters, transport aircraft, maintenance, intelligence, surveillance and reconnaissance, and much more.”

What did he say about Libya? Also here the minister begins on a positive note. “To be sure, at the outset, the NATO Libya mission did meet its initial military objects – grounding Qaddafi’s air force and degrading his ability to wage offensive war against his own citizens. (…) However, while every alliance member voted for the Libya mission, less than half have participated at all, and fewer than a third have been willing to participate in the strike mission. Frankly, many of those allies sitting on the sidelines do so not because they do not want to participate, but simply because they can’t. The military capabilities simply aren’t there.” For example: “We have the spectacle of an air operations center (in Italy) designed to handle more than 300 sorties a day struggling to launch about 150. Furthermore, the mightiest military alliance in history is only 11 weeks into an operation against a poorly armed regime in a sparsely populated country – yet many allies are beginning to run short of munitions, requiring the U.S., once more, to make up the difference.”

And then comes Gates with a grand conclusion: “In the past, I’ve worried openly about NATO turning into a two-tiered alliance: Between members who specialize in ‘soft’ humanitarian, development, peacekeeping, and talking tasks, and those conducting the ‘hard’ combat missions. Between those willing and able to pay the price and bear the burdens of alliance commitments, and those who enjoy the benefits of NATO membership – be they security guarantees or headquarter billets – but don’t want to share the risks and the costs. This is no longer a hypothetical worry. We are there today. And it is unacceptable.”

Gates contradicts himself, it is not about not being able to but also about not wanting to. Worse than that, it is about allies who wish to have the pleasure without the pain.

What can one say about how America’s defense secretary inherited from the George W. Bush administration sees the world? At a minimum through a very distorting lens with respect to the reasons why Europeans continue grudgingly to lend soldiers to American efforts in the first place. He appears to presuppose a great deal of naïveté on the part of the European allies. He portrays things as if the American security guarantees and the headquarter billets, which come with it, still mean anything in a world in which the security guarantee offered by the United States has been replaced by the security risk of American adventurism.

All right, but what about Libya? One could argue that here we have, in the first place, an instance of European adventurism, with Britain and France in the front lines. It is possible that these two militarily inclined European states would like to think that about themselves. But if so, Paris and London have a rather warped view of things. After a moment’s thought, it is not in any way imaginable that a European group of countries would have begun an aerial war somewhere in North Africa on its own. Gates’ scathing remarks about that group’s performance should be enough to remind everyone who is boss in this adventure.

Parenthetically, Gates says sweet things about Greece, Albania, Norway, Denmark, Belgium and Canada. But no wonder, these countries have by now an ingrained habit to behave as American vassals and to look after America’s dirty laundry. But for the rest, Gates appreciation for NATO’s pioneering in Libya is scornful, his utterances about it interwoven with disdain. The U.S. is still needed ‘to make up the difference’. And that has consequences.

As he says: “… some two decades after the collapse of the Berlin Wall, the U.S. share of NATO defense spending has now risen to more than 75 percent. (…) The blunt reality is that there will be dwindling appetite and patience in the U.S. Congress – and in the American body politic writ large – to expend increasingly precious funds on behalf of nations that are apparently unwilling to devote the necessary resources or make the necessary changes to be serious and capable partners in their own defense. Nations apparently willing and eager for American taxpayers to assume the growing security burden left by reductions in European defense budgets.” And for those who have not fully figured it out yet: “Indeed, if current trends in the decline of European defense capabilities are not halted and reversed, future U.S. political leaders – those for whom the Cold War was NOT the formative experience that it was for me – may not consider the return on America’s investment in NATO worth the cost.”

Whether Gates’ threat of dumping NATO will find much support in the rest of America’s military establishment is doubtful. It has until now lent just a little bit more official legimitacy to American military actions. As long as it is there, it remains a huge reserve pool of auxiliary troops that can be employed for American purposes by cajoling or even intimidating the official allies, when these are reluctant to send their soldiers into American battles. Gates farewell speech appears designed to do exactly that in advance. It also takes advantage of American public ignorance with his cheap populist appeal to the imagined taxpayer who bears the burden.

Through their domestic propaganda, Americans have the impression that ungrateful Europeans left them mostly to fend for themselves after the terrorist attacks of 2001, being unaware that NATO for the first time ever invoked article 5 of the treaty – stipulating that an armed attack against one shall be considered an attack against all – but was told by Colin Powell to stay out of what Washington was planning to do and would only be called upon when needed. Americans are also ignorant of the fact that their president George W. Bush violated article 4 of the treaty – [members] will consult together whenever, in the opinion of any of them, the territorial integrity, political independence or security of any … is threatened – and when asking NATO for particpation in Iraq and Afghanistan substituted command for consultation.

Things are topsy turvy in the Atlantic Basin. While Americans portray NATO as a weight around their neck, it has become clearer by the year that the supposed alliance with shared goals is a weight around Europe’s neck. Is more evidence needed than Gates’ unvarnished way of expressing himself in Brussels?

Not if the European political elites listen carefully. The Atlantic playing field has drastically changed and the old rules of the game are superseded. European states have mortgaged their sovereignty to Washington. No European sovereignty has taken the place of surrendered national sovereignty. If there could have been any doubts about that, the recent apparently intractable problems with uncoordinated financial systems within the European Union and the fear for the future of the euro should have taken those away. They demonstrate that European cooperation has so far not delivered a political institution, a political mechanism with the authority and credibility to overcome a damaging impasse kept going through ideologically inspired memberstate governments and banks.

The same goes for Europe’s relations with the rest of the world. As long as the governments of Europe support the American approach to the world out of their conviction that ‘without United States nothing will work’, and believe that superior wisdom with regards to international relations can only be found in Washington, there would be no future for European-style cooperation.

The key word in the utterances of Gates is ‘defense’. Along with many of his colleagues and commentators in Washington he exists in an imaginary world in which the Cold War continues, and security can only be expressed in military terms. In this collective fantasy the front line has moved from the Elbe to the Hindu Kush. What is known as ‘out of area’ unrest immediately makes the alarm bells go off. Self-control was, once, one of the most valuable characteristics of NATO. America’s thirst for action and Europe’s docility have ended that.

Servitude to what America sees as its interests obstructs the development of an European vision. Responsibility for the place that Europe occupies in the world has been outsourced. The security insurance policy is kept in the White House. But the U.S. has unilaterally rewritten that policy. The grand Atlantic alliance has detoriated to an opportunistic ‘coalition of the willing’, and in that same timeframe the infantilization of European politics has become inescapable. It is huge what Gates has brought to our attention.

NATO in Afghanistan – Zombies in a Vicious Circle (18 Sep 2009)

Jan Sampiemon — Fri, 18 Sep 2009 19:21:53 +0000

Recent casualities among the Dutch soldiers fighting in Afghanistan have come at a very inopportune moment for the political and militairy leadership of the Netherlands. Discussion has begun, inside and outside Parliament, as to what form the Dutch presence in that country could take, when Dutch leadership of NATO troops in the province Uruzgan terminates at the end of next year. American pressure on the government in The Hague to remain active in Afghanistan, militarily if possible, is considerable and is likely to increase. On the other hand, increasing doubt and criticism among the public forces the political top to rethink the meaning of the project and, one step further, reflect on the question as to whether membership of NATO remains at all meaningful for the Netherlands. The continuing loss of life, the duration of the war (longer than either of both world wars in the twentieth century), and the apparent hopelessness of the undertaking are eroding whatever was there as a public foundation for the exercise. The death toll among the Dutch soldiers serving in Afghanistan reached 21 when last week a 44-year-old sergeant major riding in an open jeep hit an improvised explosive device. A few days before that a 26-year-old Dutch commando had been killed in a gun battle.
In the meantime the government has regularly signalled that it is ready to discuss the continuation of the Dutch contribution in Afghanistan, albeit in a modified format. That admission weakens their negotiation position vis-à-vis the United States, as well as vis-à-vis partners who are supposed to substitute for the Dutch. The government’s position was weakened once before with the earlier extension of the mandate, when the minister in charge said more than he should have. The Hague has been doubly warned because of the tragedy in Bosnia, at Srebrenica, where thousands of Moslems were slaughtered under the eyes of passive Dutch UN troops, something that resulted from Dutch indulgence in the face of agreements by allies that were broken.
The American generals, directly responsible for the Afghanistan campaign, who visit The Hague these days are meeting Cabinet members apparently hobbled by what they feel is an insoluble dilemma. There are three arguments that the Dutch government uses to justify a longer stay in Afghanistan. They will sound very familiar to the American public. The aim of the mission is good – pacification and democratisation of Afghanistan. It would be a shame to give up what has already been achieved. And the soldiers in the field deserve support, their losses should not have been in vain. Immediately after the death of the sergeant major last week, the commander of the Dutch forces, Peter van Uhm (who himself lost a son in Afghanistan) made a for the Netherlands unusual direct appeal to the public: “I once again express the hope that the population of the Netherlands will remain standing as one block behind our soldiers and their home front, and will support them in their difficult work.” This startling appeal to the patriotism of a nation that normally is averse to expressions of patriotism offered a glimpse of the tormented state of mind among those responsible for Afghanistan policy.
Uhm’s appeal reflects the official story: the Dutch do not wage war, but accomplish work, difficult work to be sure. The soldiers repeat this message to the reporters embedded with them, and so it gets multiplied in the Dutch media. In one place a school has been built or patched up, in another the road has been lined with streetlights. The Dutch mission is supposed to be one of reconstruction, a reconstruction that must spread over the country like an ink blot. Because of Taleban activities there is a temporary need for a bit more fighting, but there is light at the end of the tunnel. It does not make sense to talk with the “hard-core Taleban”, but perhaps the ink blot will convince a number of doubters. So the story goes.
Should the Dutch government, and behind it that of the United States, be concerned about public opinion in what is perhaps the most reliable and certainly the most subservient ally in the Afghan operations? The Ministry of Defence recently held that public opinion against the light, and found that a majority was against the mission, but 57% of polled citizens claimed to be proud of the soldiers. A ‘turnaround’, declared the quality newspaper NRC Handelsblad, with respect to the Netherlands military disaster in Srebrenica. This explains Uhm’s concerns. How will the allies react when the Dutch make themselves scarce?
A professor at the Netherlands defence Academy summed it up: “from the very beginning of the mission there has never been much support among the Dutch population for Uruzgan. Never more than one third stood behind it.” He reiterates the point that people in all of Europe became very sceptical about the idea of a “war on terror”, after the invasion of Iraq.
The Dutch majority that has turned against the mission in Afghanistan is well aware that it rests on a shaky basis. Those who support it make much of the need to think of the alliance as a whole. If only to remain credible as a partner there seems little choice but to aim for a compromise guaranteeing further Dutch presence over there, they say. What this argument overlooks is that notwithstanding the NATO stamp on the military campaign, this organisation has virtually no influence on the strategic and tactical decisions that are being made. The war – it is nothing else in which we are involved – is being waged by Americans. The Allies serve as fronts, meant to beguile the world into believing that we are dealing here with a true international intervention in the service of world peace.
In the meantime, a more fundamental question for the American commanders than Dutch public opinion is the disunity of the allied performance. On a spectrum ranging from hard and relentless military action to the soft winning of hearts and minds there are quite a few variations. The Americans and Brits fight, the Germans concentrate on reconstruction, and the Dutch are found somewhere in between. Unexpected incidents may complicate things from time to time, and the roles may be reversed. The commander of the German contingent, in the relatively peaceful northern area of Kunduz, felt threatened by two tankers which had fallen into the hands of the Taleban. Disturbed by a vision of them being turned into huge bombs on wheels driving into a German camp, he called for air support. Dozens of dead Afghans were the result. This incident occurred during a phase in which the Americans want to be more prudent with respect to the lives of the population.
As far as we can see there is no sign of the change that President Obama had announced, also for Afghanistan, during his election campaign. In his Washington as much as the one of his predecessor serious interest in what is actually happening in that faraway country is simply not to be found. As Obama has confirmed: we are in Afghanistan to wipe out Al Qaeda and to make sure that this lot can do us and our allies no more harm. For Americans it is not easy to distinguish between Al Qaeda and the Taleban, the latter standing in for the invisible terrorists who might be anywhere, if they remain relevant at all. That every Afghan death by allied fire creates potential re-enforcement for the Taleban does count for something in the capitals of the allies, but since NATO does not decide things this consideration cannot influence policy. In most of the countries that participate in the Afghan mission, this is done against the will of the majority of their populations. But with the now classic American-style appeal to “support the troops” that has wafted over the Atlantic, along with the fairy tales about all the good things that the Afghans may experience because of the mission, those majorities are made to doubt their opposition, as continues to be revealed by the contradictions in opinion polls.
To recapitulate: When the Americans invaded Afghanistan in the autumn of 2001 their aim was to capture, dead or alive, those that were believed to be responsible for the September 11 attacks. It had nothing to do with Afghanistan, or the Afghans, and absolutely nothing with the education level of Afghan women. The Americans were not in the mood to have others looking over their shoulders and responded with a “thanks, but no thanks!” to the NATO declaration of solidarity, as it invoked article 5 for the first time in its history. Washington did not want a repeat of the NATO intervention in Kosovo, when the leaders of the participating NATO member states wanted to have a say in military procedures. The continued existence of NATO follows from the urge for survival among the NATO bureaucracy and the addiction among Europe’s political leaders to what they still consider an American security guarantee. And that is what has placed NATO on the Afghan stage; not as a mature alliance of responsible member states but as an occasional “coalition of the willing”. The result is that the European participants in the Afghan adventure have turned themselves into vassals of American policy. They run around as zombies in a vicious circle powered by the apparently decisive argument for remaining in Afghanistan: We are already there! Politicians and military leaders are caught in the horrible prospect that otherwise they will have to face the families of the dead soldiers with the message that, yes, they died for nothing.

A Self-Righteous Obama in Moscow (10 July 2009)

Jan Sampiemon — Fri, 10 Jul 2009 19:36:32 +0000

Which Obama was visiting Moscow this week? The Obama of the outstretched hand or the Obama of incontestable opinion? In his speech to students of the New Economic School (which was created with support from the West after the demise of the Soviet Union) both Obamas were on display. The presence in the audience of the last president of the Soviet Union, Michael Gorbachev, seemed to underline the new start, the “reset”, which this American president says he wants to achieve in relations with Russia.
The outstretched hand: “To begin with, let me be clear: America wants a strong, a peaceful, and prosperous Russia. This belief is rooted in our respect for the Russian people, and a shared history between our nations that goes beyond competition. Despite our past rivalry, our peoples were allies in the greatest struggle of the last century.” And: “So as we honor this past, we also recognize the future benefit that will come from a strong and vibrant Russia. Think of the issues that will define your lives: security from nuclear weapons and extremism; access to markets and opportunity; health and the environment; an international system that protects sovereignity and human rights, while promoting stability and prosperity. These challenges demand global partnership, and that partnership will be stronger if Russia occupies its rightful place as a great power.”
Incontestable opinion: In spite of all the pious words have devoted to the future of his young audience, Obama demonstrated a conspicuous lack of any willingness to take Russian sensitivities into account. A major concern centers on the American plans to establish a missile shield in Eastern Europe. For a short while before his inauguration there had been talk that Obama would scrap those plans as they dated from the Bush era, but in Moscow he brushed aside the Russian objections: “I know Russia opposes the planned configuration for missile defense in Europe. And my administration is reviewing these plans to enhance the security of America, Europe and the world. And I’ve made it clear that this system is directed at preventing a potential attack from Iran. It has nothing to do with Russia.” Obama added that if the threat from Iran were removed “the driving force for missile defense in Europe will be eliminated, and that is in our mutual interests.”
As if Iran would ever contemplate attacking the heavily nuclear armed powers of the United States, Russia or Europe with its own atomic bomb. That would mean the instantaneous suicide of the Iranian people. Expressing things that way, Obama has taken a considerable diplomatic risk by linking Russian relations directly with the status of relations with Iran. Aside from that, the governments in Eastern Europe definitely do view the American missile plans as a security guarantee against Russia. Thus Obama appears to awaken the demons of the Cold War that he says he wants to exorcise.
It is not the only area in which Obama refuses to take Russian objections seriously. Moscow understandably views the gradual expansion of NATO in an easterly direction as in conflict with Russian interests. It gets the feeling that it is being beleaguered in the West and, in increasing measure, also in the south. NATO membership of the Ukraine and Georgia in particular would be experienced as an assault on Russian security. And there ought to be no doubt that there exists no difference of opinion between the leaders in the Kremlin and the vast majority of the Russian people concerning this issue.
But for such kind of sensitivities Obama does not display the beginning of even a little understanding: “State sovereignity must be a cornerstone of international order. Just as all states should have the right to choose their leaders, states must have the right to borders that are secure, and to their own foreign policies. That is true for Russia, just as it is true for the United States. Any system that cedes those rights will lead to anarchy. That’s why we must apply this principle to all nations – and these includes nations like Georgia and Ukraine. America will never impose a security arrangement on another country. For any country to become a member of an organization like NATO, for example, a majority of its people must choose to; they must undertake reforms; they must be able to contribute to the Alliance’s mission. And let me be clear: NATO should be seeking collaboration with Russia, not confrontation.” He could have added: “just simply believe that we are as good as our word”.
It is becoming increasingly clear that Obama’s policy is not so much a change from what we had in the Bush era but a return to the days of Bill Clinton. The warning that striving for spheres of influence dates from the 19th century, and is therefore anachronistic, sounds familiar. Obama: “And there is a 19th century view that we are destined to vie for spheres of influence, and that great powers must forge competing blocs to balance one another. These assumptions are wrong. In 2009, a great power does not show strength by dominating or demonizing other countries. The days when empires could treat sovereign states as pieces on a chess board are over.” Historically speaking he swapped cause-and-effect, since the so-called sovereign states emerged from the empires that subsequently ceased to exist.
All this is reminiscent of the arguments with which in the beginning of the 1990s the project known as “partners for peace” for the former members of the Warsaw Pact in Eastern Europe was held out as some kind of vestibule for NATO membership. Bill Clinton argued that as a consequence of the end of the Warsaw Pact and the disintegration of the Soviet Union Central and Eastern Europe were suffering from a power vacuum that in some way had to be met. It sounded like a 19th century approach. But Clinton had no intention that by filling the vacuum he would expand the western sphere of influence to the detriment of the Kremlin. In his perspective the Atlantic alliance should be judged as the keeper of general order for the benefit of all countries concerned. The then Russian President Boris Yeltsin initially agreed with this way of looking at things, until his foreign policy specialists blew the whistle on it. Since then the Kremlin prefers to see the “partnership for peace” and NATO membership of its former satellites in realistic perspective: as an unwanted eastward expansion of the western sphere of influence.
In retrospect we can ascertain that Obama’s choice of Biden as a running mate, and Hillary Clinton as his secretary of state was not just inspired by a desire for unity within the Democratic party. While during his election campaign Obama presented himself as the bringer of entirely new policies, it turns out that he continues with a foreign policy that was always bereft of any chance to bring renewal.
The younger Bush may, during his eight years, have experimented with the extremes of this policy, but the “basics” of American relations with the world had earlier been established. In spite of all the rhetoric about new chances, recognition of the quality of states and people, American policy toward Eastern Europe, Russia, the Middle East, and East and Central Asia have not changed since 1992. That assessment has unfortunately been confirmed by Obama’s message to Moscow. America’s self-styled righteousness is its shield and sword with which it confronts the world. The outstretched hand is merely a way to distract our attention from that.

A Crucial Russian-American Summit (06 June 2009)

Jan Sampiemon — Sun, 07 Jun 2009 19:37:54 +0000

As the America of Barack Obama is tentatively reducing its distance to Russia, the question re-emerges as to what is, from a European point of view, the optimal diplomatic distance between the two former Cold War rivals.
President Obama will visit Moscow in early July to meet his Russian counterpart Dmitri Medvedev. This meeting is clearly of vital importance to Europe. If the talks fail it will mean a serious upset of relations on the continent. If the meeting becomes a success the chances for a considerable improvement of American Russian relations will increase, an improvement that will also benefit Europe as a whole.
Everything depends on whether or not Americans and Russians will succeed to establish a new Strategic Arms Reduction Treaty (START) before December 5, when the existing treaty expires. The Bush government throughout its eight years in power refused to cooperate in establishing a follow-up. An expired treaty also means that the verification of the mutual reduction of nuclear arms comes to an end. Unless Obama and Medvedev agree on a new START and a new verification system the world will face nuclear anarchy.
The Russian-American movements do involve a historical European dilemma. More distance means hostility and that makes Europeans nervous. After all they share their continent with the Russians. But American-Russian relations that are a bit too warm create problems as well. How much influence can Europe exercise on those? Already during the Cold War some European countries were suspicious of attempts to promote detente between Washington and Moscow. An anxious question was whether growing unreliability of American guarantees concerning European security might become the price for relaxation of tensions. On the other hand tensions increased when such guarantees were emphasised. In this context The plans for placing cruise missiles in Europe, for instance, which were meant as an extra insurance for Europe’s political safety, caused a paradoxical crisis of confidence among the European populations in general.
There certainly is warmth in the air today. Here is what President Obama said recently after talks in the White House with the Russian Minister of foreign affairs, Sergei Lavrov: “As I’ve said before, I think we have an excellent opportunity to reset the relationship between the United States and Russia on a whole host of issues, from nuclear weapons and nuclear proliferation, the situation in Afghanistan and Pakistan, how we approach Iran, how we approach the Middle East, commercial ties between the two countries, and how we address the financial crisis that has put such a strain on the economies of all countries around the world.” Lavrov responded with: “I think we work in a very pragmatic, businesslike way on the basis of the common interest whenever our positions coinside, and on the basis of respect to each other whenever we have disagreements, trying to narrow the disagreements for the benefit of our countries and the international stability.” Directly addressing Obama, he added: “And I can convey to you once again that President Medvedev is really looking forward to meeting you in Moscow in July.”
Not much of this optimistic tone can be found in the mainstream media. The story there revolves primarily around incidents that tease the imagination in a way reminiscent of how it has been fed throughout Cold War decades. In line with the tradition in those days, these relate one day to the deportation of Russian diplomats accredited with the NATO Russia Council in Brussels as persona non grata (the two were accused of spying for Russia). And on another day the news relates to the NATO summer manoeuvres in Georgia, which a year after the troubles in that former Soviet land are viewed by the Kremlin, surprise!, surprise!, as a provocation.
An unwary observer might well consider the dividing line between diplomatic liaison and espionage to be inevitably vague in the Brussels case. And also that large-scale NATO presence at the southern border of Russia can only be seen as completely at odds with the many good intentions that Obama and Lavrov displayed in Washington for examination by the outside world. When the American president uses words like “reset” and “drift” he tries to add substance to his appeal for “change”. America’s Russia relations showed “drift” in the period just behind us, rendering them ready for a “reset”.
But are the noses in Washington and inside the Atlantic alliance pointed in the direction indicated by Obama? Do the civil and military bureaucrats seek to accomplish a “reset” with the same dedication as the president says he will put into it? Or are those transatlantic bureaucrats still led by nostalgia for a time in which they called the tune?
Obama has increased tensions surrounding the July meeting merely by announcing which problems he wants to bring to Medvedev’s table. Nothing less than all the larger international issues of the moment will be on their agenda: Nuclear arms, their proliferation, Afghanistan, Pakistan, Iran and the Middle East. Obama’s summing up appears to contain an acknowledgement that improvement in relations with Moscow is a condition for achieving progress in all these areas.
Take Pakistan. It has always been a source of concern. Still, for many years Washington has considered it a partner rather than an opponent. But in the context of the AfPak war, as the extended war in Afghanistan and Pakistan is now named, Pakistan has pushed even the reviled Iran down from the number one position on America’s list of priorities among world problems deserving its special attention. As far as Obama’s America is concerned all risky developments threaten to come together in the AfPak war. In this strategically positioned area terrorism and nuclear proliferation appear to shake hands with each other. A long drawn-out American nightmare appears to become reality: Pakistan is a nuclear power. There is also no question about the increasing anarchy there. And it is conceivable that such anarchy could place that nuclear wherewithal in the hands of Muslim fundamentalists. Obama’s Secretary of State, Hillary Clinton, has characterized that very possibility as a “mortal threat” to the world.
International affairs know no “time out”; a short moment during which the game is suspended and the players get time for reflection and deliberation. Obama and Medvedev could use such a pause in the run-up to their July meeting. No developments demanding immediate reaction for just a bit would allow the contemplation of what Minister Lavrov on his visit to Washington referred to as the common interest, the benefit of our countries and international stability. In his election campaign as well as after entering the White House Obama has emphasised his readiness to listen and to consult, which has prompted appropriate appreciation. But in the meantime new facts emerge, prompting new questions. To what extent, for instance, has Obama reconciled himself with Israeli priorities in his recent meeting with Netanyahu? In this meeting he did plead for a two-state solution (a Palestinian state next to Israel), and for a halt in the building of settlements on the West Bank, but that was in accordance with previous practice. His two predecessors urged the same without any success.
The American president demonstrated anew his great rhetorical talents with his recent speech in Cairo, in which he announced a revised relationship between the United States and the world of Islam. But what that will look like appears already to have been determined by assumptions that are not noticeably new. Reactions from that Islamic world are therefore reserved at best.
With respect to Iran Obama keeps “all options on the table”, just like George W Bush. Which means that he does not exclude an attack on that country. And remember what Hillary Clinton once said: “if need be we totally obliterate Iran”. This was during her election campaign, but she hasn’t taken it back after becoming Washington’s top diplomat, and Obama hasn’t asked her to do so. Obama wishes to discuss “how we approach the Middle East” with his Russian counterpart, but it would seem that on cardinal points he has already laid down the approach to be followed.
The unexpected changeover in the American military leadership in Afghanistan is not a sign that Obama wants to turn his proclaimed intentions into reality. When he was in Europe he talked about a more reserved military stance, and about more room for a political approach to the divisions in that country. While the departing General McKiernan was hardly known as a softy, the appointment of special forces commander Stanley McChrystal may count as a signal that Obama wants to go for the jugular, and that he doesn’t share Hillary Clinton’s admiration, recently expressed in The Hague, for the inkblot approach of the Dutch (winning the hearts and minds of the population through a gradual spreading of law and order).
The missile defence that America wants to station in Poland and the Czech Republic glitters by its absence on Obama’s list of priorities. It is an indigestible chunk in Russian throats. Medvedev is not likely to avoid that subject. Obama may bring it up in the discussion of the approach to Iran, with the contention that if that country stops its uranium enrichment projects the missile defence will no longer be necessary. In the Alice in Wonderland world in which Washington is situated the missiles are supposed to protect Europe against an Iranian attack. But that story will not convince the Russians.
Another item lacking on Obama’s list is North Korea. An issue that has only gained in urgency since the meeting between the president and Lavrov. What is known about an Obama strategy for that part of the world would suggest that it too has been inspired by the policies of his predecessor. A program of enticement with concessions appears to have been dumped for a tactic of camouflaged threats. Washington’s Defence Secretary Gates, for instance, declared when travelling in Asia just now that a nuclear powered North Korea is not acceptable for his government. Gates failed to reveal how America wants to prevent it.
Europe merely observes from the sidelines how also its future is being decided. It does have a High Representative of the Common Foreign and Security Policy of the European Union, named Javier Solana. This gentleman could of course take the telephone on behalf of Europe if Obama or Medvedev would dial his number. As far as we know this has not, as yet, happened.

Petraeus’ Advice (04 May 2009)

Jan Sampiemon — Mon, 04 May 2009 19:18:13 +0000

Pakistan will become a ‘mortal threat’ if the Taliban manage to take power in that country, according to Secretary of State Hillary Clinton in recent testimony before Congress. The immediate cause for this warning was the agreement the government of Pakistan has entered into with local leaders of the Taleban permitting the introduction of Islamic Sharia law in the Swat-Valley adjoining the Afghan border. The Taleban has, moreover, advanced to approximately 100 km from Pakistan’s capital, Islamabad. Clinton suggested that with present trends the Pakistani nuclear bomb may fall into the hands of the extremist Muslim movement. A mortal threat.
The developments in Pakistan are negating the plans of President Obama to make a new start in Central Asia. At the Afghanistan conference held this spring in The Hague, a list was unveiled topped by the demand to win the hearts and minds of the population through durable assistance and restrained military behaviour. Clinton, when speaking in The Hague, offered the Dutch approach in the province of Uruzgan as a model for the United States and other partners in the NATO effort to stabilize Afghanistan.
The American military leaders think differently. They do not think that the allies are sufficiently vigorous. By withdrawing troops from Iraq more manpower will become available for Afghanistan. With money and fine words the local warlords and clan leaders must be seduced to choose the side of the invader. But the actual American presence ‘on the ground’ is at least as important in the thinking of the generals as are the good intentions of the new planners. If need be the allies can simply stay home is the audible complaint among those wearing stars.
How serious matters have become is illustrated by remarks made by the commander of the US Central command – of which Afghanistan is a part. Gen David Petraeus, architect of the ‘surge’, the temporary reinforcement of American troops in Iraq in 2007 (which according to prevailing propaganda has delivered results) has declared: “We do believe we can achieve progress [in Afghanistan], but it’s going to get worse before it gets better. When you go into the enemy’s sanctuaries, they will fight you for it. There will be tough months ahead, without question.” He also had a recipe for overcoming the huge dilemma with which the Americans are confronted – how to fight a motivated and well trained opponent in the midst of a population that is not at all inclined spontaneously to choose the side of the Westerners, but whose sentiments must nevertheless be respected. Petraeus: “You have to apply it [the U.S. strategy] in a way that’s culturally appropriate. You don’t move into the villages; you have to move to their edge.”
“Tough months ahead!” Or tough years? Or tough decades? The British and the Russians have in the days of ‘the great game’ broken their teeth on Afghanistan. The Russians did so once again in the 1980s. It is now the turn of the Americans and their partners to repeat the exercise in a nightmare-like scenario which they have authored themselves. What were heroes for the free world when the Russians were trying to control the area are, today, corrupt political leaders for sale. But the NATO allies are placing their bets on them.
Gloomy thinkers – or realists – have warned Pres Obama that Afghanistan could well become the geopolitical quicksand that will suck in and smother his government. The Americans have of course plenty of experience in quicksand territory: Vietnam and Iraq are the examples now frequently pointed at. But it applies also to Pakistan, in whose political quicksand Washington, through the invasion of neighboring Afghanistan, has more and more been drawn without the ability to exercise any control whatsoever on the course of events.
Behold the failed attempt to swing things around in the Pakistani forcefield by the George W Bush government when it reintroduced Benazir Bhutto. She had been judged capable to keep the Taleban plus the military government of Gen Musharraf under her thumb, all the while promoting democracy as well. What is the reality today? The Pakistani democracy, or what passes for it, is making room for the Taleban. The Pakistani military secret service remains narrowly connected with the fighters for Allah, while the Armed Forces engage in pretence; they act as if their fight against the Taleban is something serious.
Under the circumstances a new beginning of American policy in the area is obviously completely out of the question; and they have conspired to push the United States in a disastrous mess. The mess originates in an idea that Americans have about themselves. In the eyes of the average American their country cannot be “simply a nation among nations”, as Roger Cohen formulates the thought in a review article for the New York Review of Books. Cohen: “America was born as an idea, and so it has to carry that idea forward. It is in many ways the last ideological country on earth. We all know that India and China are rising, but we’d be hard pressed to say what they stand for. An American revival without its universalist embodiment of liberty, democracy, the rule of law and free enterprise seems to me impossible; the trick is in how that’s done in an interconnected world where problems require joint action”.
Much would be gained by an open acknowledgement on the part of President Obama that the United States is, after all, simply a nation among nations, and will operate as such. The first chore within that revised plan of operations would be to give up the ideologically inspired positions “in the villages and even at the edges” of other countries. That would be in line with Petraeus’ advice about a ‘culturally appropriate’ strategy.

Prolonging a Misbegotten Project (03 Apr 2009)

Jan Sampiemon — Fri, 03 Apr 2009 19:16:52 +0000

We are “determined to end the tragic conflict in Afghanistan and promote national reconciliation, lasting peace, stability and respect for human rights in the country”. This could have been a quote from remarks made this week in The Hague at a special conference on Afghanistan in which 72 countries participated, along with the United Nations. But the line is from a preamble to the Petersberg Accord signed on December 5th 2001 at the Petersberg conference site along the Rhine river.
It did not take long to become clear that the route chosen in Petersberg, paved with good intentions, led the Afghan people straight to hell. On the ground everything changed into its opposite. No conciliation, no peace, no stability, no human rights. Although the Taleban was pushed to the background for a while, the culprits behind the attacks in New York and Washington, which some months earlier had made several thousand victims, disappeared in the caves and tunnels of the Tora Bora mountain range that straddles the border between Afghanistan and Pakistan. They have remained untraceable since then. The original aim of the American invasion, apprehending Osama bin Laden and his henchmen “dead or alive”, melted into the haze of the Central Asian underworld roughly at the same time the Petersberg conference offered its results.
Now, almost eight years later, the Taleban has re-emerged and the struggle continues in all its ferocity. President Obama’s team no longer uses the term ‘war on terrorism’, which might point to a recognition that this way of speaking produced a fata morgana, a delusion and no solutions. The previous American administration needed the misnomer for declaring a kind of emergency, enabling it to rescind essential civil liberties. The Americans themselves have, so it is now hoped, been delivered from all that. But the fate of the Afghan people has become only more dismal between Petersberg en The Hague.
At the Petersberg conference it was still Afghans who, in the presence of their country’s UN envoy, settled on how things ought to develop from thereon. There was a steering American hand in the background, to be sure. It prevented a return to power of the Afghan king so as to make room for Washington’s choice, Karzai, who was living in American exile. But judged by the public part of the conference one could still conclude that the clan leaders and warlords had had the last word.
How does The Hague compare to that? President Karzai has found himself this time in the midst of a censorious international community. The warlords at the Petersberg conference were permitted to congratulate themselves as “expressing their appreciation to the Afghan mujahideen who, over the years, have defended the independence, territorial integrity and national unity of the country and have played a major role in the struggle against terrorism and oppression, and whose sacrifice has now made them both heroes of jihad and champions of peace, stability and reconstruction of their beloved homeland, Afghanistan.” This week the gentlemen in question were being held responsible, for much of what has gone wrong, for the corruption, the violence, the drug trade and assorted criminality. Even more so than the Taleban who have returned to the front. The switch marks a new approach of hesitant attempts to start talks with the “moderate” Taleban, which appears to signal a recognition that only with the support of the adversary will any chance arise for improvement in this divided and ravaged country.
In any case, expectations must be adjusted after The Hague conference. While last year November one could hope for a 180 degree reversal in American foreign policy, it is now clear that the Obama team has merely chosen for a bit more, more of the same. The conference participants and the reporters shadowing them parrot each other. There will be more room for civil reconstruction, the military approach must not anymore be so much an exercise on its own.
The proud hosts in The Hague even heard Minister Clinton praise the Dutch contribution as a lesson for the rest, including the United States. The Dutch imagine that order and peace and quiet are spreading over ever more Afghan rural communities like an inkblot, in a resolute fight with the Taleban for the hearts and minds of the population. It may be expected that a good number of inkpots will be emptied to make the inkblot theory of The Netherlands reach its full fruition. Less kicked in doors, more respect for Afghan women during house searches, less cowboy behavior on the part of the apostles of peace. Good intentions galore. In that sense nothing has changed since the Petersberg conference.
When they talked with Americans and Europeans on the banks of the Rhine, some Afghans could perhaps still hope for an international effort to open a route to peace for their country. The vocabulary in use in The Hague can only have reminded them of the platitudes of the past years that have brought nothing but death, mutilation and dire misery.
It is the ‘arrogance of power’, a concept from the late stages of the war in Vietnam, that thwarts the Americans, and with them the international community. Lots of lip service is given to the condition that the survival of Afghanistan is a case for the Afghans themselves. At the same time the grip on the country of alien soldiers is only being strengthened.
Few have better put into words the danger of Western-American fundamentalism for Afghanistan than Anatol Lieven, that remarkable journalist and historian. In his book from 2004, America Wright or Wrong, An Anatomy of American Nationalism, he writes this about features of American nationalism: “They include the belief of the national security elite that its access to intelligence makes it supremely wise and well informed – despite repeated and catastrophic evidence to the contrary. The belief in the democratization of Afghanistan by the mujahideen reflected a messianism rooted in the American Creed but was accompanied by a total ignorance of Afghan history, society, tradition or reality in general.”
The hypothesis that populations of colonised territories were not yet ready for independence dates from the waning years of colonialism. More time was needed to prepare them for it. That hypothesis is now to a wearisome degree repeated when it comes to countries like Afghanistan, that have been disqualified as ‘failed states’.
President Obama and his team have not escaped from this heritage of looking at things. It is this erroneous frame of reference that seduced President Carter to arm the mujahideen even before the Russians had placed one foot on Afghan soil, and that brought President Reagan to support these mujahideen in a maximum way as champions for the cause of the “free West”. That backfired with its creation of militarised Islamic martyrs. The American response to that has intertwined American and European interests in an unholy Afghanistan mess, a misbegotten trend that The Hague promises to prolong.

A Smokescreen Summit (03 Mar 2009)

Jan Sampiemon — Fri, 06 Mar 2009 19:34:45 +0000

“We must avoid constructing a new Iron Curtain in Europe”, so addressed the Hungarian prime minister Ferenc Gyurcsany his twentysix EU-partners last weekend in Brussels. Attached to this appeal was a request for a recovery plan for banks in Eastern Europe worth between 160 en 190 billion Euros. The Hungarian government chief implied that if such a plan did not materialize, Europe would be divided once more, which would blow up the European Union.
The Iron Curtain hyperbole was of course nonsensical and failed to impress Gyurcsany’s negotiating partners, but it did reflect the general atmosphere created by rather panicky leaks from Brussels, and the more widespread speculation that Europe’s current problems, and the seeming inability to come up with credible measures to cope with those, has caused the Union to drift into a danger zone.
The convocation of this summit of heads of state and of government at Brussels had a bizarre background. It was to begin with a product of the generally unwelcome initiatives and ideas of French President Nicolas Sarkozy, who earlier had reproached the Czechs and their current Union presidency for a lack of inventiveness and activism.
It is no secret that Czech premier Topolanek dislikes sudden summits organized outside the scheduled mandatory meetings. To be sure, the current crisis demands intensive cooperation and adjustments on top government levels, but repeated performances by leading politicians on the European stage for the benefit of their domestic publics does not benefit crisis solutions. Vague communiqués at the end of these performances do not contribute to the creation of confidence among Europe’s citizens.
As soon became clear, the cold shoulder for the Hungarian prime minister did not just come from the member states of Western Europe, but also from East Europeans who wanted to make it known that they did not appreciate being lumped together with the Hungarians. So, no Iron Curtain or, for that matter, one made of more supple material separating East from West was anywhere to be seen. The Czech premier Mirek Topolanek, European Union president for the first half of 2009, spoke reassuringly about a European Union that very clearly would not leave anyone “in the lurch”. Presidents and prime ministers talked about solidarity, but left it that the need and supply of aid would be evaluated on a case by case basis, and that aid already offered would be re-examined.
The conference did highlight something else that is of more than a passing interest: the phenomenon of the Sarkozy shows. They keep the French president visible and seemingly involved with the issues of the day, but they serve a purpose rather different from effective government and arriving at political solutions. This particular show was not the first high-level meeting on the crisis that the French president pulled out of his hat. And he appears to be able successfully to exploit every weighty development to place himself in the limelight, be it the violence in Georgia or Gaza, or the preservation of jobs in the French car industry.
The world outside France got a first taste of the phenomenon when Cécilia, Sarkozy´s second wife, stole the show – literally – for her husband on the occasion of the freeing of five Bulgarian nurses and a Palestinian physician from Lybian captivity. They had been condemned to die under suspicion of having been responsible for the death of young patients in the hospital where they worked. Their release was the result of intensive diplomacy on the part of European Union representatives, but these had hardly any choice but to disappear in the wings when the then French First Lady appeared on stage.
Sarkozy continued his show series with his spectacular divorce from Cécilia, and with an even more spectacular third marriage with a well-known Italian model and singer. The series began to get bad reviews as a result of repetitive high-handed presidential interference with sensitive dossiers, something that has earned him the ire of especially Germany.
Sarkozy’s condescending attitude toward the German Chancellor inspired Le Figaro, a Sarkozy admiring newspaper, to run the headline last Sunday ´La France bouscule le sommet des Vingt-Sept´ (France turns the summit of the 27 upside down) and subsequently commented that the meeting showed the imprint of just one man, Nicolas Sarkozy. It has been the unceasing demand of the president of the Republic, so argues Le Figaro, finally endorsed by the German chancellor Angela Merkel, that the Czech president call his 26 partners to a short meeting of no more than three hours, devoted to an economic crisis that weakens the European Union day by day.
One sign of such weakening is the talk about possible impending protectionism among member states; obviously a sign of considerable regress in a grouping that began as a “common market” that had done away with internal trade barriers. And here again Sarkozy played a provocative part. During an extensive television interview he had promised the French car industry assistance amounting to 7.8 billion Euro, provided the manufacturers would use that money inside France. It so happens that the French car makers, attracted by the low wages in the Czech Republic have set up factories in that traditional automobile manufacturing country. Sarkozy’s condition that manufacturing units outside France should not profit from government support appeared to signify a direct assault on Czech employment conditions. “Protectionism” is how the Czechs callled that, the most serious reproach possible of one member state directed at another. Again, the internal European market without borders is the pivot around which the European economic community has turned for over half a century. Topolanek even talked about “a kiss of death”.
But the French president came up with a distinction. He had not asked to close factories outside France in order to protect those in France, he had only asked not to close them in France, something very different so he thought.
As the summit of only a few hours drew to a close, the partners appeared to have accepted Sarkozy’s explanation. There was no question of any form of protectionism inside the European Union, and thus no harm done to any market. The European Commission had already given green light for Sarkozy’s plans concerning the French car industry, and he had already asserted that “the others are now imitating us’. He may actually be proven right before long. A collapsing General Motors could very well drag its German daughter company, Opel, down with it. The leaders of the German Länder (federal states) with Opel division within their borders are not likely to accept a refusal of Berlin to come to their aid.
The summit participants could go home with the message for their domestic constituencies that solidarity within Europe had remained intact. There is no dividing line across Europe. There is no question of any protectionism. Protecting one’s own industry in times of emergency is possible without violating the rules of the treaty. A typical Brussels invention.
A lot of what most troubles several of the member states remained outside the summit’s agenda. Much of that revolves around the Euro. Sixteen of the twenty seven member states have adopted the European currency, and having done so form so-called Euroland.
Among the new members only Slovenia and Slovakia are within Euroland, and there appears to be no enthusiasm whatsoever to have the others join within the foreseeable future. The half year rotating European Union presidency is currently held by a country outside Euroland, the Czech Republic, something that gives the show-prone Sarkozy greater opportunity for posturing. Inside Euroland Greece, Ireland, Italy and Spain have become problem countries with debts that have exceeded permissible limits as measured against their national income. To avoid a Euro crisis the others are under pressure to come to their aid. Outside Euroland but inside the Union, Hungary, Rumania, and the Baltic States – especially Latvia – are experiencing great economic difficulties.
Leading up to the Brussel’s summit the political gossip concerned the weakened European Union in its entirety. Doom scenarios began to appear, especially in the Anglo-American media. Had the Euro reached the brink of its existence? Was the entire European experiment now doomed to fail? The government leaders attending the summit had heard the alarm bells and have at least clearly drawn the one primary conclusion that, no matter the increased mutual mistrust, they could not appear to be divided before their electorates. In a few weeks there will be another European Union summit. That one will prove whether or not the one of last Sunday has merely marked a postponing of the moment of truth when the lack of European political cohesion brings on disaster. The ties that unite Europe have proven to be fairly elastic, but rubbber bands can snap even so.

On Nuclear Collision And Disarmament (23 Feb 2009)

Jan Sampiemon — Mon, 23 Feb 2009 19:20:31 +0000

The terrorist with a nuclear bomb is the spectre that has now haunted us for some years. It has kept security agencies more than busy. The legal position of free citizens has been sacrificed in the process, and it has justified massive defense expenditures.
And then, suddenly, we hear about the collision of two nuclear submarines in oceanic depths, the British HMS Vanguard and the French Le Triomphant. Both were carrying nuclear ballistic warheads. Their names by themselves are suggestive of the military fairy-tale that has produced these vessels. As if we are still living in the time of Napoleon and Lord Nelson, the navies of these NATO allies and European Union partners are keeping their navigation details hidden from each other. With a near catastrophe as the result. It took several weeks before the world heard snippets of information about it.
A position analysis is overdue. The financial crisis demands all attention. We have “change”, the key promise of Obama’s election campaign, in abundance, but it is of quite a different kind than the new president would seem to have envisaged. He would re-unite the American nation, correct the disastrous excesses of the domestic and foreign policies of his predecessor, and establish affordable healthcare for all Americans. Last week he attached his signature to the most expensive economic stimulus program ever, meant to put a brake on fast rising unemployment figures, but one about which an apparent consensus among economists has concluded that it does not begin to be enough. Obama’s attempts to muster broad support from both parties have been wrecked by the refusal of the Republicans to listen to his siren songs; there exists nothing remotely resembling repentance prompted by the Bush disasters among that lot.
Inconsistent with what he ought to understand, Mohamed ElBaradei, director general of the IAEA – the UN nuclear watchdog in Vienna – writes in the International Herald Tribune: “After two mostly wasted decades since the end of the Cold War, nuclear disarmament is again high on the international agenda”. “Wasted decades”, sure. But “high on the international agenda”? How does he get that idea?
Insofar any thought is given to “nuclear disarmament” this pertains to the disarmament of Iran and NorthKorea, and to the threat of a repeat of September 11, this time with nuclear weaponry. Obama’s foreign minister Hillary Clinton began her travels to East Asia with an ultimatum addressed to NorthKorea. Earlier in Munich, Vice President Joe Biden aimed threatening language at Iran. Both countries are suspected of being at the point of stepping over the nuclear threshold, but that has so far not inspired official America with new thinking.
It is possible to see ElBaradei’s musings as an attempt to encourage Obama to seek new directions by reminding him of his own earlier pronouncements. ElBaradei: “President Obama has pledged to seek a world free of nuclear weapons – a legal commitment under the Non-Proliferation Treaty”.
The last point is pivotal; or ought to be that. The NPT, dating from 1968, starts from the premise that there are two categories of countries: those with and those without nuclear weapons. The latter signatories committed themselves to forego the use, the manufacture and the acquisition of a nuclear arsenal. The haves committed themselves to eventually giving these up.
As it happened, various further treaties have been entered into, but “arms control” has been revealed as something rather different from disarmament. Notwithstanding all the treaties, new nuclear poweres have emerged: India, Pakistan, and Israël. The least that one can say about this is that in this matter countries are judged by contradictory criteria. Those three do not experience the slightest opposition to what they have done, while Iran and NorthKorea are without any hesitation labeled as rogue states.
The “road map” drawn up by ElBaradei leads to the implementation of the NPT in all its provisions. That would thus have to include the destruction of the existing nuclear arsenals – of which the American-Russian share constitutes 95% of the world’s total of 27.000 nuclear warheads. The IAEA chief presents himself as an optimist: “Former statesmen are getting together to demand the scrapping of all nuclear weapons. After eight years in which arms control was not a priority for the United States, the fog has lifted. The challenge now is how to ensure that this new enthusiasm does not fizzle out.”
Those former statesmen mentioned by ElBaradei are two former American foreign ministers – one of them Henry Kissinger – as well as a former defense minister, and a former senator – two Democrats and two Republicans. All four played a significant role during the Cold War. Two years ago they published a plea on the op-ed page of the The Wall Street Journal for abolition of all nuclear arms as the ultimate aim of a new arms control-regime.
The prestige and services rendered by those four have made the subject of total nuclear disarmament debatable. Which means that Obama did not risk his credibility when he mentioned it in his campaign, and that ElBaradei can run ahead of himself by stating that it is placed high up on the international agenda.
The unexpected effect of the financial crisis could well be that the international agenda has hardly any place for that other great threat to the globe – the atomic bomb, except for those selected partial problems of Iran en Noord-Korea.
Whether the new American government has enough courage, energy, and imagination in reserve for starting together with the other nuclear armed states on a path toward total nuclear disarmament, as imagined by ElBaradei, is very doubtful.
After all, nuclear arms are contemporary symbols of the virulent nationalism that easily may accompany the kind of crisis that we experience at the moment. France’s return to the command structure of the NATO is making some French people nervous. Was that the reason why a former French defense minister, Michèle Alliot-Marie, wrote in Le Figaro: “La souveraineté nationale sur la force nucléaire est la base intangible de notre indépendance. Personne ne la discute.’’ (National sovereignty leaning on nuclear power is the inviolable basis of our independence. No one contests this).
Le Triomphant will therefore be at sea for some time to come. The idea of a world without nuclear arms will therefore remain an idea. The collision under the ocean surface reminds us of a world in which true change remains a wonderful wish.

Does Biden’s Speech Portend Bush Era Foreign Policy? (10 Feb 2009)

Jan Sampiemon — Tue, 10 Feb 2009 19:30:56 +0000

Both the speech of vice-president Joe Biden of the United States before the annual security conference in Munich and the reactions it triggered were very disappointing. The speech had been anticipated with more than normal eagerness, and the euphoria of Biden’s European audience was palpable. But just at this time at which they had an opportunity to present the United States with a European approach to the deadlocks that have emerged in the world these past eight years, they remained remarkably passsive. By allowing the opportunity to slip by unused they have remained the vassals that George W. Bush has made of them.
Even the Russian vice-premier Sergei Ivanov spoke of a “very strong signal” for the restoration of the dialogue between the United States and Russia. But that can stand on its own. After all, there can be no doubt about the independent position of the Kremlin and its influence on what is happening in the world.
If we take the concept ‘change’ from Obama’s election campaign as point of reference, it applied in Munich mostly to the tone rather than content. Biden: “I come to Europe on behalf of an administration that is determined to set a new tone in America’s relations around the world.” It made the French Le Figaro conclude Les Etats-Unis veulent ‘ecouter’ le reste du monde and the German Süddeutsche Zeitung breathe more easily with an Ende der bleiernen Zeit (“the United States wants to listen to the rest of the world” and “The end of the black era”).

There is tone and there is content. They need not harmonize. As seen against the foreign policy of the Bush era and the election promises of Obama, Biden’s speech reminds one more of the former than the latter. The most telling example is Iran. Biden: “We will be willing to talk to Iran, and to offer a very clear choice: continue down your current course and there will be pressure and isolation; abandon the illicit nuclear program and your support for terrorism and there will be meaningful incentives”. Now, how can that be distinguished from the approach of the just departed Bush clan? And what is left of Obama’s offer of an open discussion on the highest level? It makes one think: could perhaps the campaign promise of aspiring candidate Hillary Clinton – now Secretary of State – that the United States could ‘totally obliterate’ Iran still be something to take seriously?
Saying that you are prepared to talk while making demands and uttering threats characterised Bush era tactics. Obama says he wants to talk and listen, but does so with conditions attached that cannot be accepted from the start by any discussion partner who takes himself seriously.
There was no counter-fire from the European side. To the contrary, both Chancellor Merkel and President Sarkozy were pleading for heavier sanctions against Iran if that country continues with its nuclear program. Preventing Iran from becoming a nuclear power was, in Merkel’s contention, a litmus test for the international community. Sarkozy wanted to portray Russian readiness to support sanctions against Iran as a touchstone for the relationship with the Kremlin. With that the French president gave the fuse of the roadside bomb under European security in the hands of the ayatollahs. He probably sees this differently himself.

With regard to Israel Biden’s words were equally unpromising. The American vice-president merely repeated a known wish list: an equitable two-state solution. “We will work to achieve it, and to defeat the extremists who would perpetuate this conflict”. That a lasting solution also requires talking with Hamas has not yet registered with Washington, or for that matter with the European capitals, notwithstanding the proven incapacity of Israel to knock out that movement. For a while, during the recent assault on Gaza, Sarkozy created the impression that he was looking for an opening. He visited Cairo three times. But there was no sign of that anymore in Munich.
In the eyes of the American government European preparedness to support it in Afghanistan has become the touchstone of European loyalty. Washington is preparing a ‘surge’, a (perhaps temporary) strengthening of its combat troops over there, after the Iraqi example. As Biden sees it: “The result must be a comprehensive strategy for which we all take responsibility that brings together our civilian and military resources that prevents a terrorist save haven, that helps the Afghan people develop the capacity to secure their own future.”
In this matter European support comes with conditions. The German government in particular does not appear to have the slightest intention to cooperate by fighting against the Taliban in the southern part of the country. The Bundeswehr is in a relatively comfortable position in the North. (The ethnic factor of the minority position of the Pashtun, giving the Taliban no good foothold in that part of the country, does not deter German politicians from claiming that the German approach of winning hearts and minds is superior to that of the United States).
The relations with Russia and the position of NATO are, of course, central. There were expectations that the United States would take an important diplomatic move in the direction of the Kremlin by postponing the program for placing missiles in Poland and the Czech Republic. Biden merely repeated the Bush era argument that those missiles must stop Iranian rockets, “provided the technology is proven and it is cost effective”. Everything will happen after consultation with NATO partners and with Russia, but there is no sign that the decision has been rescinded.
But, so warned Biden as if agreement about the missiles has already been reached, “we will not agree with Russia on everything. The US will not recognize Abkhazia and South Ossetia as independent states. We will not recognize any nation having a sphere of influence.”
That last statement is a refrain from the Clinton era when Europe was deceived into understanding that expansion of NATO did not imply an expansion of the American sphere of influence. Perhaps we should not exclude the possibility that the Americans themselves also thought so at the time, shortly after the demise of the Iron Curtain.
But we know better now. If one country occupies another or assists it militarily, this means an expansion of the territory over which it has a say. That has been the case in earlier centuries, and it is not different today. Looked at from that perspective, Poland lies in the American and South Ossetia in the Russian sphere of influence.
But what is truly ambiguous about the emerging international relations as seen by the Obama people is the broader context in which Biden has placed them: “As America renews our emphasis on diplomacy, development, democracy and preserving our planet, we will ask our allies to rethink some of their own approaches – including their willingness to use force when all else fails”. Hmmm. That could have been said by Bush, Cheney, Rumsfeld, Powell, or Rice.

Can the Dutch Come to Terms with the Past (02 Feb 2009)

Jan Sampiemon — Sun, 08 Feb 2009 19:32:35 +0000

Vergangenheitsbewaltigung – the German for “struggle to come to terms with the past” is the name of the game today. It originates in the German moral awakening concerning the Holocaust in the years immediately after World War II. But it is applicable to the manner in which the youngest history is dealt with, whether it be the credit crisis, the war on terror, or more specifically the invasion of Iraq. Many, rich or poor, leftwing or rightleaning, religious or secular, are engaged in this struggle. As the philosopher George Santayana remarked about those who forget the past: they “are condemned to repeat it”. A warning that has been a forceful spur to reviewing our lessons learned.
This week it was the Netherlanders’ turn to, once again, wrestle with their past. They may gradually have become used to this exercise. ‘Srebrenica’ is carved in the collective memory here as a military disgrace, and as a shocking example of how good intentions may be derailed in a nation which tells itself that, not quite like the others, it pursues nothing but the good.
In the manichean world that George W. Bush had on offer, this self-image easily got the Dutch to seek comfort under the wings of the United States. It led to “political support” for the American invasion of Iraq in 2003. In practice this came down to participation in the military occupation of that country after the invasion.
Just as happened in developments connected with the Dutch military disaster in Srebrenica, new facts keep emerging concerning the motives for participation. Dutch fighting units were there from summer 2003 through spring 2005 in 5 shifts of some 1200 troops under responsibility of the British in a southern the province. Many things went wrong there, and new information about that is emerging as well. These newly known facts cause disquiet and political strife.
One thing that has become very clear is that top government officials had, at the very beginning, understood the core of a potentially huge problem right away. They knew that the government could get into considerable trouble by helping with an attack on a sovereign state, and a fellow member of the UN, without a mandate of the Security Council and without the excuse of self-defence. A memo from the judicial department inside the ministry of foreign affairs, which has just surfaced, leaves no room for doubt on that score.
Like their American and British colleagues had done before them, the responsible ministers wanted nothing less than legal support for a decision that apparently had already been made. But they thereby set a trap for themselves. The bureaucrats who had been asked for a legal justification indulged in excessive zeal by warning their minister about the risks, which of course had not been part of the plan. No wonder then that the top official at the foreign ministry had scribbled on the document: ‘Many thanks. Please put away in the archives for posterity, no more discussion about this.’
The minister, Jaap de Hoop Scheffer, is today Secretary General of NATO. But in line with that scribbled remark he can insist that he has never seen the document, and did not know about its existence.
The point of departure for the reasoning of the international law specialists at the ministry had been their assessment that The Netherlands would lose a possible process before the International Court. What they saw as essential was the UN prohibition of violence against a sovereign state, and the well-known exceptions – UN mandate or self-defense – did not apply. This makes the memo from these officials important for everyone who believes that good intentions are sufficient as justification for aggression. As jurists they did not give a hoot for the official reasoning of the Dutch government, which held that Saddam Hussein’s refusal to abide by successive UN resolutions was enough. These resolutions, together with the one of 1991 authorizing the armed liberation of Kuwait, were presented as rendering any new mandate superfluous.
The memo says more, and indirectly also takes aim at the Kosovo intervention of 1999 that also took place without a mandate. It contains a general warning that could not be more clear: “acceptance of a license such as this will open the door for unlawful military interventions. In case countries, not only the United States but also Russia and China, would regularly take the law into their own hands so as to enforce with arms compliance with Security Council resolutions, there would eventually be little left of the fundamental basis for international law, which is still the prohibition of violence.
Jan-Peter Balkenende who was prime minister in 2003, and has been that ever since, has resisted any kind of investigation into the circumstances under which the decision to participate in Iraq was taken. Changing majorities in parliament had supported him in his earlier refusal to have the matter opened up again. Until last Monday when, under a barrage of new questions in parliament, he no longer appeared to have had any choice. One of the agreements that his (Christian Democrat) party managed to extract from its (Social Democrat) coalition partner during the negotiations at the start of 2007 for a new government under his leadership was that this party, which before elections had insisted on such an investigation would not initiate one. Labor’s lame excuse for such cooperation was that even its support would not have formed a parlementary majority for a investigation at the time. As one of the Netherlands’s grey eminences, minister of state Hans van Mierlo, commented: they negotiated away what was not theirs, the unalienable right of the citizens to learn the truth.
All along Balkenende of course gave the impression of wanting to hide something that could bring down his government. Persistent rumors had it that participation with the United States was necessary to get Jaap de Hoop Scheffer, who had been sidelined for the leadership of his own party, his current top job at NATO.
But the investigation that the opposition in parliament has wanted is not what it is getting. During the parliamentary debate in the week that has just ended, the Social Democrats were meek, but the opposition on the left as well as the right side of the Dutch political spectrum was up in arms.
What Balkenende has agreed to comes down to a compromise. The opposition wanted a parliamentary investigation, the most effective weapon available to elected representatives to get to the bottom of a questionable political matter. What they are getting is a commission presided over by a former president of the highest court (W.J.M. Davids), which will produce a report in November. Balkenende says that the current financial crisis demands the utmost from his government, and that his commission will settle the questions over Iraq, which will take away the confusion and unrest.
The suspicion is widespread that Balkenende is engaged in a cover-up. The commission is a creature of the the prime minister, and it meets and hears witnesses behind closed doors. A parliamentary investigation, by contrast, is public and hears witnesses under oath. The leftist Social Democrats who agreed to silence about the matter in exchange for a coalition position are, again, the obstacle to find out what many want to know. Attempts from the large leftist contingent in parliament to get them to defect from the coalition have failed.
It remains a question to what extent the Balkenende government can hush up what must be made known. In the parliamentary debate this week the investigation of Lord Goldsmith in the UK was several times a point of reference. This acknowledged international law specialist and adviser to 10 Downingstreet, was supposed to have given his blessing to the invasion of Iraq, but later it became known through leaks that this support had not been as wholehearted as was presented. Only a summary was ever made public.
A Dutch parliamentary majority, consisting of the Christian Democrats, an ultra Christian splinter, and the Social Democrats has, once again bowed before Balkenende’s direction. Does this mean that the Dutch will never get to the bottom of the reasons why they were in Iraq? Probably. Will the Dutch come to terms with their past, be it concerning Srebrenica or Iraq? Perhaps the Dutch are condemned to repeat their past. As has actually been clear since its colonial wars: Vergangenheitsbewaltigung is not a Dutch specialty.