There are 300,000 Muslims living in Australia, a democratic country of 20 million people and a good friend and ally of the US for decades now. The head of that Muslim community there, a Sheik Taj el-Din Al Hilaly, recently gave a speech in Lebanon where he vented a massive flow, in full-throated manner, of paranoid, boiling-hot hatred, praising terrorist jihad and demanding that Arab men follow their example and carry out similar mass-murdering assaults against Islam's enemies: the US and . . . well, you can guess the rest.
Part I: Introductory Comments
Why Did the Sheik Disgorge His Non-stop Malice and Calls
for Mass-Murder?
Obviously, first and foremost, because the crackling hatred in the speech corresponds to his deepest beliefs. And apparently, no less important, because --- knowing he was in a despotic Arab country --- the Sheik thought that the international media wouldn't pick up and broadcast his raging, hysterical vitriol and calls for further terrorism against the extremist fundamentalist's favorite targets: all those fantasized culprits --- conspiratorial and full of malevolence, string-pulling behind the scenes --- who are held reponsible for the Arab people's problems and psychic dislocations . . . the failed states in which they live, the omnipresent dictators, the pervasive secret police, and the economic backwardness of the entire Middle East outside Israel; not to forget, to complete the list of grievances and resentments, rampant unemployment, mass illiteracy, and the plunge in power and prestige of Islamic and Arab countries on the world scene for centuries now. In the upshot? The GDP of the 300 million Arab peoples across 22 countries totaling less than that of Spain, whose population is a mere 40 million . . . Spain itself one of the poorer members of the EU, a backward country as late as the 1950s.
Not that the Sheik's message is new. Far from it, his rant vented a fairly common paranoia of a kill-crazy Islamist sort. Islam, on this widely held view, was once purified and glorious and ruled the world; it should still do so; it doesn't, it's been repeatedly humiliated and left weak and backward, and it ought to be quickly and decisively returned to the world's center, purified anew and amid even greater glory and the reign of rigorous Islamic law, the Sharia. Globally; everywhere; no exceptions. The major way to achieve this? By mass-murdering jihad attacks, over and again, on Islam's diabolic foreign foes and --- the message more careful here, given the pervasive secret-police in the 21 Arab countries (minus Iraq now) --- their impure, traitorous puppets in power all over the Arab world.
So no; nothing really new, and nothing unpredictable --- only the ventilated rage of a paranoid dingbat-bigot in religious garb.
It's not even the first time the Sheik's said something murderoulsy flippo like this: witness another speech referred to later on here where he indulged, obsessively, in no less predictable Nazi-like Jew-hatred. But note. One thing did differ this time. At odds no doubt with the Sheik's expectations, the international media listened in and quickly transmitted his crackling vitriol and kill-loving animus around the world. That was not supposed to happen. It's a big no no. Australia, where the Sheik lives in an impressive democracy, suffered several hundred casualties in an Islamist terrorist attack in Bali less than two years ago . . . a percentage of deaths for its 19 million people equal to the 3000 deaths in the US on 9/11. Not to worry though, Australians. Back in your country, the glib PR-types who work for the Mufti have been busy reassuring his fellow citizens, with unctuous loads of suave-slick pommade, that there's no need to alarmed or even concerned; no no, it's all poetry and rhetoric taken out of context, it has to be understood in proper perspective, it's really a message of disguised love for the Sheik's fellow man, etc. etc. See September 11th Is God's Work
What Follows? Two Things
First, and very briefly, for an astute, scholarly treatment of Islamism and radical Islamist fundamentalism, see Martin Kramer, The Middle East Quarterly. And on the hostility of Islamist fundamentalism to any effective democratic development in Muslim countries, see Kramer again, Islam vs. Democracy.
Second, and more to the point, the lengthy buggy comments that ensue here divide into a two-article mini-series. Unfurled at a fairly fast pace, but with care for the kinds and quality of the evidence that supports them, these comments seek to provide some essential background perspective on the Mufti's hot-wire hatreds and ranting urges for mass-murdering revenge. Remember, the frazzled moon-beam rants aren't idiosyncratic. They are widely subscribed to in fundamentalist Islamist circles; no less important, the Sheik's paranoid style and many of his nutbin beliefs about the causes of Arab economic backwardness and other problems are rife in the so-called Arab street, part of popular Arab culture that is also vented in much of the Arab media. The evidence here? We'll deliver it in a few moments.
Meanwhile, note in passing that second article in this series, already done, will be published later today or tomorrow after its formatted for HTML Internet use. Then, slightly later, we'll complete our other mini-series hanging fire on the new US initiative, revolutionary in its sweeping vision and scope, to exert continued external pressure on the Arab dictatorships and clerical-fascist Iran to democratize and open up to the modern world more effectively.
Part II. The Wider Background of the Mufti's Murderous Extremism and Wild Hate-Filled Malice
Fundamentalist Islam and Its Paranoid Conspiratorial
World-View, Full of Hot-Wire Spite
and Urges for Revenge
As earlier buggy articles have noted, the US Muslim community --- 2-3 million in number, according to two independent academic studies that came out in 2001 --- is generally well-educated and has a higher income on an average than the US average. There are few if any signs of real alienation in that community. Most are overwhelmingly moderate and from Asia, where --- until the eruption of fundamentalist extremism of the radical Islamist sort after 1980 in Pakistan and India and now apparently in parts of Bangladesh and Indonesia --- Islam was notable for its easy-going tolerance toward others and the application of any Muslim laws (the Sharia).
The same, by the way, was true until recently of Islam in Tropical Africa, where nowadays, as extremism spreads in the Islamic communities as in Northern Nigeria, terrorist incidents, assaults on Christian communities, massacres of Christians hauled off the streets and killed during rampaging riots, are now at work . . . along with a demand that the Sharia be applied to even the large Christian communities there.
Saturday, February 28, 2004
The Head of Australia's 300,000 Muslims Calls for More Heroic 9/11 Jihads and Mass-Murder #1 of 3 articles
Posted by Michael Gordon @ 01:08 PM PST [ continue ]
Tuesday, February 24, 2004
THE BUSH REVOLUTION: A Firm Commitment to Arab Democracy: #1 of 2 Articles
The title of this mini-series, two articles in all, will no doubt surprise most of you. Many will guffaw; others rub their eyes in disbelief. The US supporting democratic changes in the 22 Arab dictatorships, vigorously and in concrete ways easy to trace even now? Come on, is it possible?
Yes, quite possible; and what's more, it happens to be the current reality. Not that skepticism here is unwarranted. Until recently, American foreign policy in the Middle East --- like that of all the industrial democratic countries --- courted all but the most brutal of Arab dictatorships (the Baathist regimes in Syria and Iraq); was primarily concerned with their stability and friendliness irrespective of their systematic human rights violations; and was equally concerned, at times with edgy intensity, to continue tapping the vast oil resources of the Arab countries in North Africa and the Persian Gulf arena. The motive forces here mixed diplomacy, security concerns, and economics. Democratic reform was never mentioned, whether by a Republican or Democratic administration . . . any more than it was by the EU countries, Japan, or the other English-speaking countries.
I. ALL THAT HAS NOW CHANGED
Yes, to repeat, changed . . . explicitly and probably once-and-for-all. The previous policy was wrong and proved harmful to US interests, as 9/11's murderous attacks by alienated and fanatical Arab terrorists showed, and no on less than President Bush himself has acknowledged this. In a pathbreaking speech at the National Endowment for Freedom last November, he said clearly, with no reservations, that . . .
"Sixty years of Western nations excusing and accommodating the lack of freedom in the Middle East did nothing to make us safe --- and in the long run, stability cannot be purchased at the expense of liberty . . . As long as the Middle East remains a place where freedom does not flourish," the President added, "it will remain a place of stagnation, resentment and violence ready for export.
"And with the spread of weapons that can bring catastrophic harm to our country and to our friends, it would be reckless to accept the status quo."
The President then went on to criticize, as we'll see, traditional US allies in the region, starting with the dictatorial regimes in Saudi Arabia and Egypt. His criticisms have continued, right through last week, when another traditional US ally in the region, Tunsia, came in for similar reproaches. See AP
II THE REVOLUTION IN US FOREIGN POLICY SOON TO BE SET OUT IN DETAIL AND WITH THE ALLIES URGED TO SIGN ON
Skepticism Justified?
Given past US policies in the Middle East --- in line with all diplomacy practiced by all the democratic countries there --- yes, some skepticism seems justified. Is the buggy prof repeating himself? Yep, you bet. All the same, purposefully; with a wait-and-see attitude as the best counsel here despite the clear changes currently at work. The changes are real, not electoral tricks; they can be pinned down concretely in easy ways; and they promise to be boldly sweeping. Even so, it's what happens in the future that counts --- the concrete follow-through.
In particular, even if unlike the EU countries (or Japan or Canada) the US never cozied up to the most brutal and mass-murdering of the Middle East Muslim countries --- Baathist Syria, the clerical-fascist regime in Iran, or Saddamite Iraq in the late 1990s (Saddam lavishly signing big-bucks industrial contracts with the Europeans and Russians) --- the diplomacy of the Bush Sr. and Clinton administrations still pulsated with the same motive-forces that had marked all US policies toward the Middle East in the cold war period: the desire for stable, friendly Arab allies no matter how dictatorial their politics, and edgy, worried concerns about continued access to Middle East oil and its price levels.
Did the initial Bush Jr. policies toward the region break with this bipartisan diplomatic line?
No; not in the first 8 months of the new administration's life. Then came the shock and blood of the 9/11 murderous attacks on US soil, and the turnaround. Along with other significant changes in US foreign policy that the attacks initiated --- all summarized under the War-on-Terrorism rubric --- our policies toward the Arab world began to change, first at a measured pace, then in 2002 and into the next year with galloping speed: the preventive war strategy, the thrust to destroy the Taliban regime in Afghanistan and next the Saddamite dictatorship in Iraq --- a government that had used poison-gas and biological warfare against its own citizens; had mass-murdered hundreds of thousands of them in other ways; had invaded two neighboring states; had tried to annex one of them, Kuwait, a member of the UN, in 1990; and had defied 16 UN Security Council resolutions on human rights violations and the production of WMD.
Since 2002's end, and especially starting last fall, the weighty changes in our diplomacy toward the Arab countries --- even the friendliest --- have been multiplying in numerous concrete ways. Even now, though, few Americans --- and fewer Europeans or Canadians or Australians or Japanese -- seem aware of the revolutionary changes at work in US policies toward region, all in a bold democratic direction.
A Key Qualification about Foreign Policy
Note quickly though. Important as they now are in the war on terrorism, the promotion of democracy and moral concerns can be clearly moved upward in policy priorities, but they can't always be at the very top of the foreign policy agenda --- whether in the Middle East or elsewhere. Foreign policy can't be conducted that way. No less than in other forms of politics, it has to usually be a compromise between competing goals and interests, and if anything with more need most of the time. To think otherwise is utopian.
Three reasons explain why.
First, most foreign policy is reactive, and necessarily so --- a day-to-day struggle with new problems and issues or ongoing ones that aren't fully susceptible to American control; just the contrary. At the same time, just as there are big vested interests in domestic policies --- among Congressmen, parts of the electorate, economic and cause-groups galore, even stubbornly hard-to-change bureaucracies within the Executive Branch --- so the same interests and restraints exist in foreign policy . . . if anything, with more weight, what with the need simultaneously to deal with 190 sovereign countries, some with considerable power, plus dozens of international organizations from the EU and the UN to the WTO or the Arab League or APEC in Asia: not to forget NATO or other military obligations of a structured alliance sort.
Yes, quite possible; and what's more, it happens to be the current reality. Not that skepticism here is unwarranted. Until recently, American foreign policy in the Middle East --- like that of all the industrial democratic countries --- courted all but the most brutal of Arab dictatorships (the Baathist regimes in Syria and Iraq); was primarily concerned with their stability and friendliness irrespective of their systematic human rights violations; and was equally concerned, at times with edgy intensity, to continue tapping the vast oil resources of the Arab countries in North Africa and the Persian Gulf arena. The motive forces here mixed diplomacy, security concerns, and economics. Democratic reform was never mentioned, whether by a Republican or Democratic administration . . . any more than it was by the EU countries, Japan, or the other English-speaking countries.
I. ALL THAT HAS NOW CHANGED
Yes, to repeat, changed . . . explicitly and probably once-and-for-all. The previous policy was wrong and proved harmful to US interests, as 9/11's murderous attacks by alienated and fanatical Arab terrorists showed, and no on less than President Bush himself has acknowledged this. In a pathbreaking speech at the National Endowment for Freedom last November, he said clearly, with no reservations, that . . .
"Sixty years of Western nations excusing and accommodating the lack of freedom in the Middle East did nothing to make us safe --- and in the long run, stability cannot be purchased at the expense of liberty . . . As long as the Middle East remains a place where freedom does not flourish," the President added, "it will remain a place of stagnation, resentment and violence ready for export.
"And with the spread of weapons that can bring catastrophic harm to our country and to our friends, it would be reckless to accept the status quo."
The President then went on to criticize, as we'll see, traditional US allies in the region, starting with the dictatorial regimes in Saudi Arabia and Egypt. His criticisms have continued, right through last week, when another traditional US ally in the region, Tunsia, came in for similar reproaches. See AP
II THE REVOLUTION IN US FOREIGN POLICY SOON TO BE SET OUT IN DETAIL AND WITH THE ALLIES URGED TO SIGN ON
Skepticism Justified?
Given past US policies in the Middle East --- in line with all diplomacy practiced by all the democratic countries there --- yes, some skepticism seems justified. Is the buggy prof repeating himself? Yep, you bet. All the same, purposefully; with a wait-and-see attitude as the best counsel here despite the clear changes currently at work. The changes are real, not electoral tricks; they can be pinned down concretely in easy ways; and they promise to be boldly sweeping. Even so, it's what happens in the future that counts --- the concrete follow-through.
In particular, even if unlike the EU countries (or Japan or Canada) the US never cozied up to the most brutal and mass-murdering of the Middle East Muslim countries --- Baathist Syria, the clerical-fascist regime in Iran, or Saddamite Iraq in the late 1990s (Saddam lavishly signing big-bucks industrial contracts with the Europeans and Russians) --- the diplomacy of the Bush Sr. and Clinton administrations still pulsated with the same motive-forces that had marked all US policies toward the Middle East in the cold war period: the desire for stable, friendly Arab allies no matter how dictatorial their politics, and edgy, worried concerns about continued access to Middle East oil and its price levels.
Did the initial Bush Jr. policies toward the region break with this bipartisan diplomatic line?
No; not in the first 8 months of the new administration's life. Then came the shock and blood of the 9/11 murderous attacks on US soil, and the turnaround. Along with other significant changes in US foreign policy that the attacks initiated --- all summarized under the War-on-Terrorism rubric --- our policies toward the Arab world began to change, first at a measured pace, then in 2002 and into the next year with galloping speed: the preventive war strategy, the thrust to destroy the Taliban regime in Afghanistan and next the Saddamite dictatorship in Iraq --- a government that had used poison-gas and biological warfare against its own citizens; had mass-murdered hundreds of thousands of them in other ways; had invaded two neighboring states; had tried to annex one of them, Kuwait, a member of the UN, in 1990; and had defied 16 UN Security Council resolutions on human rights violations and the production of WMD.
Since 2002's end, and especially starting last fall, the weighty changes in our diplomacy toward the Arab countries --- even the friendliest --- have been multiplying in numerous concrete ways. Even now, though, few Americans --- and fewer Europeans or Canadians or Australians or Japanese -- seem aware of the revolutionary changes at work in US policies toward region, all in a bold democratic direction.
A Key Qualification about Foreign Policy
Note quickly though. Important as they now are in the war on terrorism, the promotion of democracy and moral concerns can be clearly moved upward in policy priorities, but they can't always be at the very top of the foreign policy agenda --- whether in the Middle East or elsewhere. Foreign policy can't be conducted that way. No less than in other forms of politics, it has to usually be a compromise between competing goals and interests, and if anything with more need most of the time. To think otherwise is utopian.
Three reasons explain why.
First, most foreign policy is reactive, and necessarily so --- a day-to-day struggle with new problems and issues or ongoing ones that aren't fully susceptible to American control; just the contrary. At the same time, just as there are big vested interests in domestic policies --- among Congressmen, parts of the electorate, economic and cause-groups galore, even stubbornly hard-to-change bureaucracies within the Executive Branch --- so the same interests and restraints exist in foreign policy . . . if anything, with more weight, what with the need simultaneously to deal with 190 sovereign countries, some with considerable power, plus dozens of international organizations from the EU and the UN to the WTO or the Arab League or APEC in Asia: not to forget NATO or other military obligations of a structured alliance sort.
Posted by Michael Gordon @ 06:20 PM PST [ continue ]
Friday, February 20, 2004
Follow-up Exchange On US And European Diplomatic Styles
From Francis, a British citizen living a hedonistic Latin-like
existence on the French Riviera:
Francis's brief comment --- attached, originally, at the end of the previous buggy article (on the clash between the diplomatic style of the US and the mainstream style of most EU countries) --- refers to a paragraph there about the numbers of peace-keeping troops in Iraq. The comment is helpful. More important, it serves as a spingboard to some fleshed-out remarks and new evidence by the buggy prof on the wider subject of US-EU relations, above all the reasons for the ongoing tensions in the Atlantic Alliance despite a far more improved climate this winter --- as opposed to last winter and spring, when the disputes over Iraq split the alliance --- between the Bush administration and its main critics last year, the French and German governments.
A brief nit-picking correction, Prof Bug:
As far as I can tell the Dutch have at least 1100 troops in Iraq - this is in fact more than Mongolia, Korea and Japan. However tracking down the actual (as opposed to promised in a press release) numbers of all of the various countries is tricky. This page lists Italy as making a larger contribution than Poland - but other places give different figures
Thank you, Francis --- always helpful to get as precise figures as possible, hard as it might be to dig them up on the NATO web site. (Just dawned on me: maybe the Pentagon web site in this country has the up-to-date stats). At any rate, Japan has sent 750-1000 troops to Iraq, and South Korea is now sending 3000. Japan, note, has supplemented its ground force with a fairly large naval armada, no doubt to give its navy some training in far-off waters near a battle zone. What is important is that 21 of 26 NATO countries do have peace-keeping forces in Iraq, plus the Asian countries. Both Paris and Berlin, in their bandwagoning rush to restore good relations with the US --- something that someone ought to relate to the Democratic primary-race contenders, who seem to think that the US is somehow isolated among permanently sulking European allied governments --- have hinted clearly that they will send some troops to Iraq once some sort of sovereignty is transferred to an Iraqi government. And of course Britain retains a large peacekeeping force in southern Shiite Iraq.
Still, NATO's overall contributions remain fairly small in Iraq.
Consider. Besides NATO countries, Australia --- which sent a robust military force for the war last year --- has peacekeepers there too. The democratic regime in Yugoslavia --- democratic because NATO led by the US stopped Serb terrorism in 1999 and precipitated the collapse of the Milosevic government --- is also contemplating sending troops and police help to Iraq, in cooperation with some of the other former Yugoslav states in the region. None, save tiny Slovenia, are in NATO this year. Come to that, unless my memory has gone haywire, Brazil has even sent some form of police or military aid as well.
Part Two: FURTHER DISAPPOINTMENTS
If the total numbers of NATO peacekeeping forces so far in Iraq is a disappointment, it's even more disappointing in Afghanistan, where both UN Security Council and NATO approval of the war to topple the monstrous Taliban regime and its Al Qaeda thugs-in-residence has engendered a total of 5000 NATO troops only . . . all of them, up to now, far confined to Kabul, even though the plans are to disperse them more in the future.
Much of the problem lies in the trends that dominate EU public opinion and the media, still hostile to the Iraqi experiment that started with the US and UK-led war last year. Much of it also resides in the stagnant growth of the EU Continental countries and the existing use of high-level tax revenues for costly far-reaching welfare purposes. German GDP growth since 1991 has averaged 1.4% a year, roughly the same as legendary Japanese stagnation over the same period; it's not much higher in France and Italy.
The upshot? Combined, these two influence are starving almost all the West European countries of an effective military establishment, something that all the huffing-and-puffing rhetoric of EU pronouncements --- starting with the Nice, France EU Summit of 1999 for a 60,000 man Rapid Reaction Force, then more recently the German-French-Belgian-Luxembourg illusion-laden military initiative last year for another EU military force --- can't disguise, just the opposite. A modern up-to-date professional military --- reorganized for distant mobile warfare, aided by proper air-and-sea-lift transports and logistics; plus of course advanced intelligence, reconnaissance, target-acquisition, and real-time smart weaponry to destroy targets --- need not be large, as with Britain's professional forces, but it isn't to be had, trained, and kept in operational ready-form on the cheap.
NATO's Rapid Response Force
NATO, by contrast --- under US prodding --- has done much better. In particular, it has recently created the first units of a proposed 21,000 man Rapid Response Force comprised largely of European contributions for use anywhere in the world, with US air-lift transports and air-to-air refueling (which no European country has aside from a handful of such capabilities) primed to move them there and keep them supplied for effective warfare, if need be over several months. If needed, US military forces would be able in the future to supplement them . . . especially once we redeploy some troops out of South Korea and Germany. That NATO RRF is now operationally ready. Will its soon-to-be 21,000 man contingent grow in size? Very likely. Especially as new European countries join NATO and they and the existing East European members --- Poland, Czech Republic, and Hungary --- continue their military modernization schemes.
So where are we? Well, if up to now, NATO's support in Afghanastan and Iraq has been disappointing, that may, it appears, soon change. On these prospects, see the International Herald Tribune's informative article of February 20th, 2004.
As for the German-French-Belgian-Luxembourg initiative, another loudly trumpeted EU military force outside NATO, what will likely happen to it? Will it do any better than the EU RRF? For an answer, wait a few moments. In the meantime, consider a a trio of other, if related, themes.
existence on the French Riviera:
Francis's brief comment --- attached, originally, at the end of the previous buggy article (on the clash between the diplomatic style of the US and the mainstream style of most EU countries) --- refers to a paragraph there about the numbers of peace-keeping troops in Iraq. The comment is helpful. More important, it serves as a spingboard to some fleshed-out remarks and new evidence by the buggy prof on the wider subject of US-EU relations, above all the reasons for the ongoing tensions in the Atlantic Alliance despite a far more improved climate this winter --- as opposed to last winter and spring, when the disputes over Iraq split the alliance --- between the Bush administration and its main critics last year, the French and German governments.
A brief nit-picking correction, Prof Bug:
As far as I can tell the Dutch have at least 1100 troops in Iraq - this is in fact more than Mongolia, Korea and Japan. However tracking down the actual (as opposed to promised in a press release) numbers of all of the various countries is tricky. This page lists Italy as making a larger contribution than Poland - but other places give different figures
Thank you, Francis --- always helpful to get as precise figures as possible, hard as it might be to dig them up on the NATO web site. (Just dawned on me: maybe the Pentagon web site in this country has the up-to-date stats). At any rate, Japan has sent 750-1000 troops to Iraq, and South Korea is now sending 3000. Japan, note, has supplemented its ground force with a fairly large naval armada, no doubt to give its navy some training in far-off waters near a battle zone. What is important is that 21 of 26 NATO countries do have peace-keeping forces in Iraq, plus the Asian countries. Both Paris and Berlin, in their bandwagoning rush to restore good relations with the US --- something that someone ought to relate to the Democratic primary-race contenders, who seem to think that the US is somehow isolated among permanently sulking European allied governments --- have hinted clearly that they will send some troops to Iraq once some sort of sovereignty is transferred to an Iraqi government. And of course Britain retains a large peacekeeping force in southern Shiite Iraq.
Still, NATO's overall contributions remain fairly small in Iraq.
Consider. Besides NATO countries, Australia --- which sent a robust military force for the war last year --- has peacekeepers there too. The democratic regime in Yugoslavia --- democratic because NATO led by the US stopped Serb terrorism in 1999 and precipitated the collapse of the Milosevic government --- is also contemplating sending troops and police help to Iraq, in cooperation with some of the other former Yugoslav states in the region. None, save tiny Slovenia, are in NATO this year. Come to that, unless my memory has gone haywire, Brazil has even sent some form of police or military aid as well.
Part Two: FURTHER DISAPPOINTMENTS
If the total numbers of NATO peacekeeping forces so far in Iraq is a disappointment, it's even more disappointing in Afghanistan, where both UN Security Council and NATO approval of the war to topple the monstrous Taliban regime and its Al Qaeda thugs-in-residence has engendered a total of 5000 NATO troops only . . . all of them, up to now, far confined to Kabul, even though the plans are to disperse them more in the future.
Much of the problem lies in the trends that dominate EU public opinion and the media, still hostile to the Iraqi experiment that started with the US and UK-led war last year. Much of it also resides in the stagnant growth of the EU Continental countries and the existing use of high-level tax revenues for costly far-reaching welfare purposes. German GDP growth since 1991 has averaged 1.4% a year, roughly the same as legendary Japanese stagnation over the same period; it's not much higher in France and Italy.
The upshot? Combined, these two influence are starving almost all the West European countries of an effective military establishment, something that all the huffing-and-puffing rhetoric of EU pronouncements --- starting with the Nice, France EU Summit of 1999 for a 60,000 man Rapid Reaction Force, then more recently the German-French-Belgian-Luxembourg illusion-laden military initiative last year for another EU military force --- can't disguise, just the opposite. A modern up-to-date professional military --- reorganized for distant mobile warfare, aided by proper air-and-sea-lift transports and logistics; plus of course advanced intelligence, reconnaissance, target-acquisition, and real-time smart weaponry to destroy targets --- need not be large, as with Britain's professional forces, but it isn't to be had, trained, and kept in operational ready-form on the cheap.
NATO's Rapid Response Force
NATO, by contrast --- under US prodding --- has done much better. In particular, it has recently created the first units of a proposed 21,000 man Rapid Response Force comprised largely of European contributions for use anywhere in the world, with US air-lift transports and air-to-air refueling (which no European country has aside from a handful of such capabilities) primed to move them there and keep them supplied for effective warfare, if need be over several months. If needed, US military forces would be able in the future to supplement them . . . especially once we redeploy some troops out of South Korea and Germany. That NATO RRF is now operationally ready. Will its soon-to-be 21,000 man contingent grow in size? Very likely. Especially as new European countries join NATO and they and the existing East European members --- Poland, Czech Republic, and Hungary --- continue their military modernization schemes.
So where are we? Well, if up to now, NATO's support in Afghanastan and Iraq has been disappointing, that may, it appears, soon change. On these prospects, see the International Herald Tribune's informative article of February 20th, 2004.
As for the German-French-Belgian-Luxembourg initiative, another loudly trumpeted EU military force outside NATO, what will likely happen to it? Will it do any better than the EU RRF? For an answer, wait a few moments. In the meantime, consider a a trio of other, if related, themes.
Posted by Michael Gordon @ 12:56 PM PST [ continue ]
Wednesday, February 18, 2004
NATO'S CLASHING DIPLOMATIC STYLES, #2 of Two Articles
To follow the commentary here, you need to have read the previous article --- the two arguments going hand-and-glove, forming a tightly knitted mini-series on the clash between the traditional US diplomatic style and the prevailing style in the EU. The first version of the series combined the two articles and unfolded one long argument. Why the change? Quite simply, on a web site like this, it's not a good idea to uncoil a demanding argument of the original length at a blow, just the contrary . . . with lots of studies showing, among other things, that the readers of web sites have less patience with an article than they would if it were in a newspaper or journal. So voila!, the first version was split apart, and the two articles appear in its place.
The second article here, please note, continues the same divisional sections: parts one, two, three, and so on. The first article unpacked parts one and two; the current articles starts with part three, then continues through part six. The argument in those initial two parts boils down, in shorthand terms, to this claim minus the supporting evidence: an entangling alliance like NATO --- despite its regained unity among governments since last spring, when the high-tension disputes over Iraq flared --- has entered a period of increasing flux and related problems, all caused by big differences in public opinion and the media, not to mention political circles, over contrasting US and most West European views on three related matters. All three deal with the current war on terrorism, specifically:
Remember here: a good half of the 300 million Arab peoples, plus a similar percentage of the 70 million Iranians, are under the age of 15. The ongoing population explosion will double their numbers in the next two to three decades. Right now, unemployment averages 25% or so across all 22 Arab countries, and almost half the Iranians live in near or outright poverty. What might these figures be in two decades without massive changes in their societies?
Something else to remember: There are no built-in domestic motor-forces within the Arab countries that can transform and modernize them on their own. None; Nada; Gar Nichts! Only powerful stimuli from without --- as in post-Saddamite Iraq today --- can open up the prospects of the Arab peoples and the Iranians overcoming their failed states, economic backwardness, and the worst literacy levels in the world. Is it a risky undertaking? Yes. So was President Carter's human rights initiatives in the late 1970s; so were Ronald Reagan's to go on the offensive against the Soviet "evil empire" in the 1980s; so was Bill Clinton's campaign, no less contested by the EU governments and derided by the EU media as naive and dangerous, a provocation to Russia, to push vigorously in the mid-1990s for NATO's expansion right up to the Russian borders.
INTRODUCTORY REMARKS
The main disputes over each of these high-pulsating issues, to repeat, pit the US against almost all the EU countries, especially on the West European continent . . . both on the level of governments and in intellectual and media circles and left-wing political parties with their combined impact on public opinion in West Europe. True, all the EU NATO members --- including Germany and France, the two leading opponents of the US-UK initiative to destroy Saddamite Iraq last year --- are currently bandwagoning to the US, striving to put the dispute behind them. Even so, the tensions between the US and those two governments --- plus a couple of more in the EU that also belong to NATO --- persist and are likely to continue.
The major reason why?
Tersely put, no matter what the governments in West Europe are currently doing in their relations with the US, these Transatlantic tensions will endure because all the members of NATO, on both sides of the Atlantic, are democratic governments that can't afford to continually ignore domestic attitudes. In particular, in West Europe, those attitudes that prevail in the media and left-wing parties, now and very likely way into the future, are full of charged anti-American sentiments of one sort or another --- grounded in a variety of sources that we will return to here --- and, taken together, mightily shape public opinion in almost all European countries. Sooner or later, such domestic trends are bound to influence the cohesion and efficacy of NATO as a military alliance. This isn't just speculation. We already have evidence of this. Specifically, last year, neither Aznar's Spain nor Berlusconi's Italy --- two EU governments that vigorously supported the Bush-Blair initiative to topple the blood-soaked Saddamite regime (which had used biological and chemical warfare on its own citizens, slaughtered hundreds of thousands of them by means of vicious repression, showed continued contempt for the UN, had invaded a free sovereign country Kuwait in 1990, and was actively engaged in nuclear, biological, and chemical warfare programs) --- dared back up their diplomatic resolve by sending Italian and Spanish troops into battle last year. Public opinion in their countries was too adamantly opposed.
Of the European governments besides Blair that did enter the battle, both were in East Europe and are entering the EU this year: Poland and the Czech Republic. Australia, half way around the world, also send noticeable military forces at the time. No other NATO countries followed suit at the time, and almost certainly for the same reasons of staunch domestic opposition on that count.
What Are the Crux Causes of the Disputes over
the 3 Major Issues in the War on Terrorism?
Stripped to the bones, the answer is a couple of underlying contrasts between the US and most EU countries:
1) domestic differences --- cultural, economic, and politica 2) and distinctively different diplomatic styles in the US and around most of the EU, not all of it.
The domestic differences have been the subject of several buggy articles up to now; a little more will be said here about them, but not much. (See the first of these articles here. All the others can be found by clicking on the left sidebar for the archives links to American Politics and Foreign Policy.) As for the contrast in national styles --- the main concern of our mini-series --- it will be spelled out in a few moments in part four below; no need then to say anything about it right now.
Note one thing though. As you'll also soon see, both Britain and France have distinctive twists in their diplomatic styles that are at odds with those that mark almost all the rest of the EU countries . . . at any rate as manifested over the last few decades.
The second article here, please note, continues the same divisional sections: parts one, two, three, and so on. The first article unpacked parts one and two; the current articles starts with part three, then continues through part six. The argument in those initial two parts boils down, in shorthand terms, to this claim minus the supporting evidence: an entangling alliance like NATO --- despite its regained unity among governments since last spring, when the high-tension disputes over Iraq flared --- has entered a period of increasing flux and related problems, all caused by big differences in public opinion and the media, not to mention political circles, over contrasting US and most West European views on three related matters. All three deal with the current war on terrorism, specifically:
- What the nature of the threat from Islamist extremism boils down to;
- What the threat's root-causes happen to be . . . not least whether they are embedded or not in
Arab societies as currently constituted, politically and economically;
- And how to deal with those root-causes, above all whether it's necessary or not to kick-start democratic in economic changes in those Arab countries, plus Iran, in order to offset the prospects of tens of millions of young men --- angry, alienated, and unemployed, with no prospects and inclined to fundamentalist paranoid interpretations of their misery --- that will otherwise emerge over the next generation.
Remember here: a good half of the 300 million Arab peoples, plus a similar percentage of the 70 million Iranians, are under the age of 15. The ongoing population explosion will double their numbers in the next two to three decades. Right now, unemployment averages 25% or so across all 22 Arab countries, and almost half the Iranians live in near or outright poverty. What might these figures be in two decades without massive changes in their societies?
Something else to remember: There are no built-in domestic motor-forces within the Arab countries that can transform and modernize them on their own. None; Nada; Gar Nichts! Only powerful stimuli from without --- as in post-Saddamite Iraq today --- can open up the prospects of the Arab peoples and the Iranians overcoming their failed states, economic backwardness, and the worst literacy levels in the world. Is it a risky undertaking? Yes. So was President Carter's human rights initiatives in the late 1970s; so were Ronald Reagan's to go on the offensive against the Soviet "evil empire" in the 1980s; so was Bill Clinton's campaign, no less contested by the EU governments and derided by the EU media as naive and dangerous, a provocation to Russia, to push vigorously in the mid-1990s for NATO's expansion right up to the Russian borders.
INTRODUCTORY REMARKS
The main disputes over each of these high-pulsating issues, to repeat, pit the US against almost all the EU countries, especially on the West European continent . . . both on the level of governments and in intellectual and media circles and left-wing political parties with their combined impact on public opinion in West Europe. True, all the EU NATO members --- including Germany and France, the two leading opponents of the US-UK initiative to destroy Saddamite Iraq last year --- are currently bandwagoning to the US, striving to put the dispute behind them. Even so, the tensions between the US and those two governments --- plus a couple of more in the EU that also belong to NATO --- persist and are likely to continue.
The major reason why?
Tersely put, no matter what the governments in West Europe are currently doing in their relations with the US, these Transatlantic tensions will endure because all the members of NATO, on both sides of the Atlantic, are democratic governments that can't afford to continually ignore domestic attitudes. In particular, in West Europe, those attitudes that prevail in the media and left-wing parties, now and very likely way into the future, are full of charged anti-American sentiments of one sort or another --- grounded in a variety of sources that we will return to here --- and, taken together, mightily shape public opinion in almost all European countries. Sooner or later, such domestic trends are bound to influence the cohesion and efficacy of NATO as a military alliance. This isn't just speculation. We already have evidence of this. Specifically, last year, neither Aznar's Spain nor Berlusconi's Italy --- two EU governments that vigorously supported the Bush-Blair initiative to topple the blood-soaked Saddamite regime (which had used biological and chemical warfare on its own citizens, slaughtered hundreds of thousands of them by means of vicious repression, showed continued contempt for the UN, had invaded a free sovereign country Kuwait in 1990, and was actively engaged in nuclear, biological, and chemical warfare programs) --- dared back up their diplomatic resolve by sending Italian and Spanish troops into battle last year. Public opinion in their countries was too adamantly opposed.
Of the European governments besides Blair that did enter the battle, both were in East Europe and are entering the EU this year: Poland and the Czech Republic. Australia, half way around the world, also send noticeable military forces at the time. No other NATO countries followed suit at the time, and almost certainly for the same reasons of staunch domestic opposition on that count.
What Are the Crux Causes of the Disputes over
the 3 Major Issues in the War on Terrorism?
Stripped to the bones, the answer is a couple of underlying contrasts between the US and most EU countries:
1) domestic differences --- cultural, economic, and politica 2) and distinctively different diplomatic styles in the US and around most of the EU, not all of it.
The domestic differences have been the subject of several buggy articles up to now; a little more will be said here about them, but not much. (See the first of these articles here. All the others can be found by clicking on the left sidebar for the archives links to American Politics and Foreign Policy.) As for the contrast in national styles --- the main concern of our mini-series --- it will be spelled out in a few moments in part four below; no need then to say anything about it right now.
Note one thing though. As you'll also soon see, both Britain and France have distinctive twists in their diplomatic styles that are at odds with those that mark almost all the rest of the EU countries . . . at any rate as manifested over the last few decades.
Posted by Michael Gordon @ 04:46 PM PST [ continue ]
Tuesday, February 17, 2004
NATO AND CLASHING US-EU DIPLOMATIC SYTLES: #1 of 2 Articles
The following commentary --- which deals with the contrast in the diplomatic styles of the US and most West European countries (not all of them) --- was sent originally last week to an undergrad class on the US in the War on Terrorism. It's fleshed out and expanded in a variety of ways, nothing more; and it's really part of the lengthy series ---started a good two months ago, or maybe as far back as the battle of Gettysburg (hard at times to tell for sure) --- on the systematic differences between the US and most of West Europe that help explain the tensions that gripped NATO last year over the war in Iraq and its aftermath. Those tensions, though diminished of late --- with most of the European members of NATO that opposed the war diligently striving to put the war behind them and restore good relations with the US --- still jolt the alliance in a variety of ongoing, if currently low-keyed forms. What's more, they are likely to recur again in the future: maybe with less venom than over Iraq last year, but with possibly more enduring consequences.
PART ONE: INTRODUCTORY REMARKS: NATO'S CENTRAL PROBLEM
None of the ongoing tensions in NATO should be surprising. They are what will happen whenever an alliance like NATO --- no matter what else holds it together, such as: shared democracy, extensive economic ties, a and a common conception of human rights --- enters a period of flux where
1) the security threats have noticeably shifted;
2) and the member states disagree on the nature of those threats, their root causes, and the various strategy and tactics for dealing with them.
These changes have been actively at work in NATO affairs ever since the end of the cold war in 1990, and especially in the aftermath of the war on terrorism following the terrorist attacks on US soil in September 2001. But note: even during the cold war, both in the 1950s and later in the Reagan era of the 1980s, there were major disagreements between the member states on how to deal with the Soviet threat and what underlay it. In both decades --- as happened more recently --- huge, hot-wire demonstrations of a mass sort shook several European countries, notably Germany both times and in the 1950s France and Italy, where Communist parties at the start of the decade attracted 30-40% of the electorate. Those demonstrations could easily rally hundreds of thousands of protestors in major cities across much of West Europe, then and now. So nothing new. What is new are the two changes just mentioned. Since 1990, to be more precise, these disagreements between governments have flared off and on, mainly between the US and certain close allies like the British, Danes, Dutch, and --- under conservative governments more recently --- Italy and Spain on one side and on the other France, Germany in the era of the Gerhard Schroeder government in power since 1998, as well as Belgium and usually Greece.
Remember here: Governments One Thing Public Opinion and the Media Another
The distinction between the two needs to be stressed at the outset here. In particular, everywhere in the EU countries --- whatever their governments' stand over Iraq --- the media are overwhelmingly anti-American (no, not just anti-Bush), as are intellectual circles and left-wing politicians, not to forget right-extremists like Le Pen's National Front in France or Haider in Austria or the Volksblaam in Belgium. Essentially, as we've repeatedly noted, only in London is there a strong media favorable to good relations with the US and at odds with the politically correct simplities and smugness that mark the EU media's coverage on the US, Israel, the Middle East, the Bush administration, American society, and what have you. A slight exception can be found in Germany, in the Christian Democratic Party, whose leader openly criticized the Schroeder government last year in its policies over Iraq and toward the US. Even then, other members of the Christian Democrats were outspoken in their criticisms of the US and the Bush administration, and public opinion in German was so hostile that the Christian Democrats maintained a low profile last winter, spring, and well into the summer. And --- as recent poll data shows --- tiny Denmark and Holland remain the EU countries whose public opinion remains most favorably attached to the US as a country. Does this mean their media are better? Not reading Danish or Dutch, the buggy professor has to admit he just doesn't know.
No one in the US would probably care, mind you, what the EU media and gabby intellectual classes chatter about for a living or pastime were it not for NATO, and the ways in which EU media and intellectual hostility, grounded in envy, resentment, simplemindedness, and ignorance --- plus the usual moralizing utopianism of a left-wing cloud-chasing sort, and now open anti-Semitism and conspiracy-mongering in both left-wing and right-wing media circles --- influence public opinion there. Will it get worse? Most likely. In particular, the more social conflicts and strife erupt in the EU as the countries undergo forced changes in their economies and comfy little welfare states, the more backlashes and angry scapegoating can be expected --- some of it violent. The growth of strident Islamist fundamentalism all over the EU in immigrant Muslim circles will likely aggravate the strife and conflicts even more, including violent backlashes and even terrorism . . . from both sides. It's not the brightest of futures, even if the strife, violence, and terrorist backlashes will no doubt vary in venom around the EU.
What follows? Easy to say.
PART ONE: INTRODUCTORY REMARKS: NATO'S CENTRAL PROBLEM
None of the ongoing tensions in NATO should be surprising. They are what will happen whenever an alliance like NATO --- no matter what else holds it together, such as: shared democracy, extensive economic ties, a and a common conception of human rights --- enters a period of flux where
1) the security threats have noticeably shifted;
2) and the member states disagree on the nature of those threats, their root causes, and the various strategy and tactics for dealing with them.
These changes have been actively at work in NATO affairs ever since the end of the cold war in 1990, and especially in the aftermath of the war on terrorism following the terrorist attacks on US soil in September 2001. But note: even during the cold war, both in the 1950s and later in the Reagan era of the 1980s, there were major disagreements between the member states on how to deal with the Soviet threat and what underlay it. In both decades --- as happened more recently --- huge, hot-wire demonstrations of a mass sort shook several European countries, notably Germany both times and in the 1950s France and Italy, where Communist parties at the start of the decade attracted 30-40% of the electorate. Those demonstrations could easily rally hundreds of thousands of protestors in major cities across much of West Europe, then and now. So nothing new. What is new are the two changes just mentioned. Since 1990, to be more precise, these disagreements between governments have flared off and on, mainly between the US and certain close allies like the British, Danes, Dutch, and --- under conservative governments more recently --- Italy and Spain on one side and on the other France, Germany in the era of the Gerhard Schroeder government in power since 1998, as well as Belgium and usually Greece.
Remember here: Governments One Thing Public Opinion and the Media Another
The distinction between the two needs to be stressed at the outset here. In particular, everywhere in the EU countries --- whatever their governments' stand over Iraq --- the media are overwhelmingly anti-American (no, not just anti-Bush), as are intellectual circles and left-wing politicians, not to forget right-extremists like Le Pen's National Front in France or Haider in Austria or the Volksblaam in Belgium. Essentially, as we've repeatedly noted, only in London is there a strong media favorable to good relations with the US and at odds with the politically correct simplities and smugness that mark the EU media's coverage on the US, Israel, the Middle East, the Bush administration, American society, and what have you. A slight exception can be found in Germany, in the Christian Democratic Party, whose leader openly criticized the Schroeder government last year in its policies over Iraq and toward the US. Even then, other members of the Christian Democrats were outspoken in their criticisms of the US and the Bush administration, and public opinion in German was so hostile that the Christian Democrats maintained a low profile last winter, spring, and well into the summer. And --- as recent poll data shows --- tiny Denmark and Holland remain the EU countries whose public opinion remains most favorably attached to the US as a country. Does this mean their media are better? Not reading Danish or Dutch, the buggy professor has to admit he just doesn't know.
No one in the US would probably care, mind you, what the EU media and gabby intellectual classes chatter about for a living or pastime were it not for NATO, and the ways in which EU media and intellectual hostility, grounded in envy, resentment, simplemindedness, and ignorance --- plus the usual moralizing utopianism of a left-wing cloud-chasing sort, and now open anti-Semitism and conspiracy-mongering in both left-wing and right-wing media circles --- influence public opinion there. Will it get worse? Most likely. In particular, the more social conflicts and strife erupt in the EU as the countries undergo forced changes in their economies and comfy little welfare states, the more backlashes and angry scapegoating can be expected --- some of it violent. The growth of strident Islamist fundamentalism all over the EU in immigrant Muslim circles will likely aggravate the strife and conflicts even more, including violent backlashes and even terrorism . . . from both sides. It's not the brightest of futures, even if the strife, violence, and terrorist backlashes will no doubt vary in venom around the EU.
What follows? Easy to say.
Posted by Michael Gordon @ 05:33 PM PST [ continue ]
Tuesday, February 10, 2004
EXCHANGE ON MORALITY AND US FOREIGN POLICY AND INTERNET CONSPIRATORIAL RUMOR-MONGERING
The following commentary was prompted last night by an email from one of 120 students enrolled in an undergrad political science class of mine, The US in the War on Terrorism . . . even if the formal title of that course, political science 129, is different: The US, Asia, and Europe. The student asked for a buggy view of some website claim that the CIA put Saddam Hussein and the Baathists in power after 1958 and that . . . well, all sorts of other extravagantly hyperbolic claims with no evidence, only a video and a string of florid, undocumented assertions set out in a cocksure fruitcake manner. The student wasn't to blame: he only wanted my view. That view was duly delivered to the students (and others on the gordon-newspost listsever), along with several other comments about US foreign policy that might be of interest to others . . . not least because it deals with morality and its tradeoffs in the conduct of diplomacy.
From a student in PS 129
Prof Bug:
I'm in your PS129 class and I was hoping you could check out this link and confirm its historical accuracy. I'd appreciate it, since I consider you an expert on the subject.
Thanks, N
The site: http://www.bushflash.com/thanks.html
THE BUGGY RESPONSE
N:
1) Flipped-Out Paranoia
Haven't the foggiest idea what the site's driving at, other than to vent deliriously concocted scuttlebutt of the usual paranoid sort, full of conspiracy-mongering. Be sure you're very careful with this and other likeminded web sites in the future. Wacked-out paranoia flourishes on the Internet, where extremist pathologies --- left-wing, right-wing, Islamo-extremist, racist, anti-Semitic, or what have you --- swarm like cockroaches in a derelict building chock-a-block with filth. Why would the CIA have been interested in overthrowing the Iraqi monarchy, friendly to the US and the West, in 1958, and replace it with Baathist fascists . . . the Baathist parties in both Syria and Iraq, with roots in the interwar period, exact copies of Italian fascism and German Nazism?
The claim is all the more screw-loose because Iraq, under the Baathists, soon drifted into the Soviet camp, and the Soviet Union became its major arms supplier and diplomatic buddy. In 1976, France --- its Prime Minister Jacques Chirac at the time --- then buddied up to the Saddamite regime by selling it a nuclear reactor plant that even Moscow balked at doing when Saddam approached it first. I would urge you strongly to avoid these conspiratorial websites: they are intellectually a disaster.
From a student in PS 129
Prof Bug:
I'm in your PS129 class and I was hoping you could check out this link and confirm its historical accuracy. I'd appreciate it, since I consider you an expert on the subject.
Thanks, N
The site: http://www.bushflash.com/thanks.html
THE BUGGY RESPONSE
N:
1) Flipped-Out Paranoia
Haven't the foggiest idea what the site's driving at, other than to vent deliriously concocted scuttlebutt of the usual paranoid sort, full of conspiracy-mongering. Be sure you're very careful with this and other likeminded web sites in the future. Wacked-out paranoia flourishes on the Internet, where extremist pathologies --- left-wing, right-wing, Islamo-extremist, racist, anti-Semitic, or what have you --- swarm like cockroaches in a derelict building chock-a-block with filth. Why would the CIA have been interested in overthrowing the Iraqi monarchy, friendly to the US and the West, in 1958, and replace it with Baathist fascists . . . the Baathist parties in both Syria and Iraq, with roots in the interwar period, exact copies of Italian fascism and German Nazism?
The claim is all the more screw-loose because Iraq, under the Baathists, soon drifted into the Soviet camp, and the Soviet Union became its major arms supplier and diplomatic buddy. In 1976, France --- its Prime Minister Jacques Chirac at the time --- then buddied up to the Saddamite regime by selling it a nuclear reactor plant that even Moscow balked at doing when Saddam approached it first. I would urge you strongly to avoid these conspiratorial websites: they are intellectually a disaster.
Posted by Michael Gordon @ 07:35 PM PST [ continue ]
Thursday, February 5, 2004
THE DEMOCRATIC PRESIDENTIAL PRIMARIES: Take #2
A few people, students and others, have asked the buggy prof for an updated view on the Democratic primary races now that the field is being shaken out: Lieberman no longer a candidate, Dean saying he will withdraw if he loses Wisconsin, Kearney ahead, Edwards still in contention, Clark too. The first article on this topic appeared on January 22nd. What follows is a more updated view.
Lessons for Democrats Who Want To Win
Democrats who hope to win this and other presidential elections --- not to mention Congressional ones --- have to show that they're learned from their mistakes of the past, especially in the 1970s and 1980s when the public mood shifted noticeably and Democrats continued to choose candidates like McGovern, Mondale, and Dukakis who were way out of step with it . . . somewhere out in left field. Jimmy Carter, note, was only a partial exception. A Southern governor, he came to the White House after public revulsion with the Watergate scandal and the machinations of the Nixon presidency: not only did Carter sweep in against a weak candidate, Jerry Ford, but the Republicans were slaughtered in the 1974 and 1976 Congressional elections. In office, Carter --- good man, wrong job (he should have been the head of the UN or Amnesty International) --- proved a thumping disappointment, both in domestic and foreign policy. His administration only reinforced the problems the Democrats had in finding an electable candidate until Bill Clinton, maybe the best campaigner in American politics since FDR in the 1930s, and of course another Southerner, was elected.
Had Al Gore used Clinton to campaign for him in 2000, he would have probably won at least one southern state and been president. The moral? No Democrat will be elected unless he can carry some or much of the South.
The Shift in Public Mood
How did the public mood change graphically by 1980? Easy to say: survey data showed that clearly, as did electoral results.
Lessons for Democrats Who Want To Win
Democrats who hope to win this and other presidential elections --- not to mention Congressional ones --- have to show that they're learned from their mistakes of the past, especially in the 1970s and 1980s when the public mood shifted noticeably and Democrats continued to choose candidates like McGovern, Mondale, and Dukakis who were way out of step with it . . . somewhere out in left field. Jimmy Carter, note, was only a partial exception. A Southern governor, he came to the White House after public revulsion with the Watergate scandal and the machinations of the Nixon presidency: not only did Carter sweep in against a weak candidate, Jerry Ford, but the Republicans were slaughtered in the 1974 and 1976 Congressional elections. In office, Carter --- good man, wrong job (he should have been the head of the UN or Amnesty International) --- proved a thumping disappointment, both in domestic and foreign policy. His administration only reinforced the problems the Democrats had in finding an electable candidate until Bill Clinton, maybe the best campaigner in American politics since FDR in the 1930s, and of course another Southerner, was elected.
Had Al Gore used Clinton to campaign for him in 2000, he would have probably won at least one southern state and been president. The moral? No Democrat will be elected unless he can carry some or much of the South.
The Shift in Public Mood
How did the public mood change graphically by 1980? Easy to say: survey data showed that clearly, as did electoral results.
- The public was increasingly and rightly worried about law-and-order, as violent crime surged and Democrats looked way too often as if they were more concerned about the rights of criminals and alleged poverty behind the surging criminality than about victims and the public's right to safe streets, parks, schools, and other public places.
Posted by Michael Gordon @ 01:09 PM PST [ continue ]
Monday, February 2, 2004
THE US AND EUROPE: A THREE-PART MINI-SERIES: #1 Why The Bandwagoning To Bush's America?
Four good articles on recent US-European relations --- two of them, an impressive series written by John Vincour of the International Herald Tribune, makes agile use of his extensive interviews in West Europe and the US with policymaking elites --- appeared in the last two weeks and serve as the jump-off point for this up-to-date review of US policies in the war on terrorism, and especially the improved relations within the Atlantic Alliance.
The improvement shows up especially in US relations with the three major members of the blocking-coalition organized last winter over Iraq: Germany and France, both members of the EU, and Putin's Russia. Russia, of course, isn't in the EU. As for NATO, it's half-in and half-out: it has a special relationship and is consulted on most NATO business, but the US and others oppose letting it have full membership until it shows more progress in democratic development --- far more, to judge by Colin Powell's recent criticisms leveled at the Putin treatment of human rights and the media (now under tighter clamps than it was years ago) when he visited Moscow last week --- and in displaying much more explicit evidence that it will live in peace with its neighbors. We'll return to Powell's unexpected knocks later on. They're in line with the new thrust in the Bush administration to push heavily for democracy in the Middle East, South Asia, and apparently now in the half-democratic, half-authoritarian Russia of 2004.
The third article that appeared recently isn't in Vincour's league. It lacks his analytical ambitions, the ranging sweep, and the interesting evidence gathered from his extensive interviews on the two sides of the Atlantic that mark his two IHT articles --- American investigative journalism at its best. Nothing surprising. The third article's only a wire-dispatch. Still, it's encouraging. It shows clearly that the high-point of the discord within the Atlantic Alliance is now in the past, thanks to mutual give-and-take by Washington and its critics in Europe, with most of the give on the European side . . . something we'll deal with at length here. Its encouraging news? The new Secretary-General of NATO, a Dutch diplomat --- an office whose influence isn't negligible, yet not comparable to the decisive role of the major state-member governments in the alliance --- says that in his view NATO would join the US in helping to transform Iraq once a sovereign government comes into existence there this summer.
Right now, 18 members of the 25 in NATO this year have troops on the ground there, but without any common NATO policy. For that matter, there wasn't one in the first Gulf War in 1991 nor over Bosnia --- only over Kosovo in 1999 and later Afghanistan in 2001.
All of which brings us to the fourth article, in many ways the most astute of the lot, as well as the most disconcerting in its conclusions. The writer? Josef Joffe , the Harvard Ph.D. who's the editor of the influential German weekly, Die Zeit and at ease in moving between the journalistic and scholarly worlds. Entitled The Demons of Europe, it appeared last month in the no less influential American monthly, Commentary Magazine. and is a probing study of the twin ideological scourges in European life, systematically festering anti-Americanism and the new hot-wire anti-Semitism --- the two usually going hand-in-hand, but not always, in European media, intellectual, and many political circles.
PART ONE: JOSEF JOFFE AND THE BUGGY ANALYSIS OF EUROPE'S "TWIN DEMONS"
A few remarks about the Joffe argument --- by way of prelude, nothing more, to the more substantive buggy commentary that will unfold in a moment or two --- seem in order, especially since Joffe's conclusions overlap with those that appeared in three earlier buggy articles this last December (2003). on anti-Americanism and the new anti-Semitism in Europe one; two; and three.
One difference between Joffe's argument and the earlier buggy analysis is how he approaches the twin, politically charged cultural-demons in European life. In particular, though the thrust and conclusions of his argument chime with the buggy views, those views, recall, relied extensively on several academically informed surveys of public opinion in Europe and the US, including anti-Semitism and the prevailing public moods on both sides of the Atlantic: optimism and confidence in the US, gloom and pessimism in Europe. Joffe prefers a more general essay-like approach --- not that there's anything wrong with that. If that approach works in his Commentary article, it does so thanks largely to his first-hand knowledge of European developments.
That leads to a second difference. Joffe's analysis of the bursting demonic duo in West Europe is all-encompassing; his argument would have gained in rigor had he tried to trace how anti-American fervor in intellectual, media, and political circles varies across West Europe . . . less pronounced in Britain, Holland, and Denmark (ditto anti-Semitism) than in France or Germany or Spain. The same is true of the new, hot-wire anti-Semitism. Again, survey evidence underscores these differences, not to mention the foreign policies of their governments.
Posted by Michael Gordon @ 09:14 PM PST [ continue ]