News Abroad

Confessions of a Recovering Weapons Addict

by William J. Astore

Perhaps you’ve heard of “Makin’ Thunderbirds,” a hard-bitten rock & roll song by Bob Seger that I listened to thirty years ago while in college. It’s about auto workers back in 1955 who were “young and proud” to be making Ford Thunderbirds. But in the early 1980s, Seger sings, “the plants have changed and you’re lucky if you work.” Seger caught the reality of an American manufacturing infrastructure that was seriously eroding as skilled and good-paying union jobs were cut or sent overseas, rarely to be seen again in these parts.If the U.S. auto industry has recently shown sparks of new life (though we’re not making T-Birds or Mercuries or Oldsmobiles or Pontiacs or Saturns anymore), there is one form of manufacturing in which America is still dominant. When it comes to weaponry, to paraphrase Seger, we’re still young and proud and makin’ Predators and Reapers (as in unmanned aerial vehicles, or drones) and Eagles and Fighting Falcons (as in F-15 and F-16 combat jets), and outfitting them with the deadliest of weapons. In this market niche, we’re still the envy of the world.

Don't Ignore Electoral Fraud in Egypt

by Daniel Pipes

When Egypt's Lower House convened on Jan. 23, Islamists held 360 out of its 498 seats, or 72 percent. This astounding figure, however, reflects less the country's public opinion than it does a ploy by the ruling military leadership to remain in power.In a recent article ("Egypt's Sham Election," Dec. 6) we argued that just as Anwar El-Sadat and Hosni Mubarak in the past "tactically empowered Islamists as a foil to gain Western support, arms, and money," so do Mohamed Tantawi and his Supreme Council of the Armed Forces (SCAF) "still play this tired old game." Mohamed ElBaradei left the presidential race complaining about its fraudulent quality.

What’s Japanese for “Locavore?” Oh, Never Mind.

by Jonathan Dresner

That Japanese agriculture is a political issue is no surprise.  As in the United States, agriculture is the recipient of political and economic support, is seen as both an economic engine and a strategic resource, and despite decades of technological and social change, is still viewed as a repository of historical and traditional values.

Ending the Palestinian "Right of Return"

by Daniel Pipes

Between 1967 and 1993, just a few hundred Palestinians from the West Bank or Gaza won the right to live in Israel by marrying Israeli Arabs (who constitute nearly one-fifth of Israel's population) and acquiring Israeli citizenship.  Then the Oslo Accords offered a little-noted family-reunification provision that turned this trickle into a river:  137,000 residents of the Palestinian Authority (PA) moved to Israel in 1994-2002, some of them engaged in either sham or polygamous marriages. The Israeli Supreme Court building in Jerusalem.

"We're on a Destabilizing Planet": Interview with Tom Engelhardt

by David Austin Walsh

Tom Engelhardt is the creator and editor of The Nation Institute's TomDispatch.com, former Senior Editor at Pantheon Books, and the author of numerous works on American foreign policy, including The American Way of War: How Bush's Wars Became Obama's and most recently The United States of Fear. I talked with Mr. Engelhardt over the phone about a wide range of issues, foreign and domestic.Thanks for taking the time to talk with HNN.  What's your reaction to the end of the Iraq War? Was the official end truly a meaningful milestone?

Will Pakistan’s Crisis Affect the U.S. in Afghanistan?

by Juan Cole

Pakistan is an important country and a key U.S. partner, and so it is bad news that it is lurching from political crisis to political crisis.  There is a crisis between the military and the civilian government.  There is a crisis between the military and the U.S. government.  There is a crisis between the Supreme Court and the other two branches of government.  There was a big Taliban bombing in Pakistan the day before yesterday.  And, the Zardari government may fall at any time, either to clear a path to new elections or because of yet another military coup.Pakistan is the world’s sixth most populous country, just after Brazil.  It has only the 46th largest gross domestic product (in nominal terms).  But it has a stockpile of nuclear warheads, and has perhaps the seventh largest army in the world, after the U.S., Russia, China, India and the two Koreas.  It is a major recipient of U.S. foreign aid, though some of that has been put on hold by an angry U.S. Congress.

South Sudan, Israel's New (Troubled) Ally

by Daniel Pipes

It's not every day that the leader of a brand-new country makes his maiden foreign voyage to Jerusalem, capital of the most besieged country in the world, but Salva Kiir, president of South Sudan, accompanied by his foreign and defense ministers, did just that in late December.  Israel's President Shimon Peres hailed his visit as a "moving and historic moment."  The visit spurred talk of South Sudan locating its embassy in Jerusalem, making it the only government anywhere in the world to do so.This unusual development results from an unusual story.Today's Sudan took shape in the nineteenth century when the Ottoman Empire controlled its northern regions and tried to conquer the southern ones.  The British, ruling out of Cairo, established the outlines of the modern state in 1898 and for the next fifty years ruled separately the Muslim north and Christian-animist south.  In 1948, however, succumbing to northern pressure, the British merged the two administrations in Khartoum under northern control, making Muslims dominant in Sudan and Arabic its official language.

Americans Are Less Nationalistic than Flag-Waving Politicians Think

by Lawrence S. Wittner

Are American politicians out of sync with the public when it comes to foreign policy?  There is considerable reason to believe so. Throughout the scramble for the GOP presidential nomination, the major candidates have certainly been rabidly nationalistic.  In a major foreign policy address on October 7, 2011, Mitt Romney proclaimed that “the twenty-first century can and must be an American Century.”  Championing a vast military buildup, he argued that, to secure this “American Century,” the United States should have “the strongest military in the world.”  By contrast, he assailed the “shameful” role of the United Nations and other international institutions and declared that he did not see any reason to obey them—or the international law they represented—when it did not suit the U.S. government.

Who Will Be the Next Pope?

by Charles Keenan

Two weeks ago, Pope Benedict XVI named twenty-two new cardinals, who will be formally appointed—“created,” in Catholic parlance—during a consistory next month.  The cardinal’s hat is one of the highest honors that can be given in the Catholic Church, and although the office has become largely honorific over the centuries, the College of Cardinals remains the sole elector of popes when it meet in conclave.Benedict XVI’s nominations stand out because of the types of clerics he has elevated to the cardinalate, and the geographic distribution of these men.By way of background:  the origins of the cardinalate itself are still somewhat murky; the term itself derives from the Latin cardinis, or “hinge,” referring to how these men were attached (“incardinated”) to particular churches.  The first cardinals were simply the clergy of parishes in the city of Rome, and therefore served in the diocese of Rome under the pope.

How Beijing Sees Us

by Michael H. Hunt

What is China going to do?  Now that our Middle East wars are winding down, this question has fixated the U.S. policy community and policy commentators.  Even aspirants for high political office feel compelled to have an answer.  Will a rising China accommodate to international norms and institutions or try to reshape or undermine them?  Is Beijing predisposed to cooperate with countries along its long land and maritime border, or will it seek domination?  Are the Chinese bent on displacing the United States as number one internationally, or will they limit their aspirations the better to focus on domestic affairs?While everybody has an opinion, no one has a compelling answer.  And with good reason.  China’s Communist leaders make their decisions behind closed doors so outsiders are necessarily left in the dark.  In any case, leaders at the top may not have a shared, coherent notion of the path ahead.  And even if they do, their plans—like all plans—are hostage to contingent events.

Was 2011 Really the "Year of the Protester"?

by Jeffrey Wasserstrom

It was hardly a surprise when Time magazine announced in mid-December that “The Protester” was its 2011 Person of the Year.  After all, outbursts of discontent had made headlines during each of the preceding months.  Nor did stories of dramatic protest end when Time made its choice, for just as reports of the magazine’s decision began to circulate, so did news of angry residents in the South China village of Wukan evicting the Communist Party’s representatives from their community and stories of rallies in Moscow by Russians fed up with Putinism.  In light of 2011’s status as a year that will be remembered in part for its protests, the following question is worth asking.  Have recent events, from the Arab Spring to Occupy Wall Street, confirmed or contradicted standard ideas about the nature of collective action developed to make sense of earlier Years of the Protester, such as 1789, 1968, and 1989?

Hamas is Making History by Reaching Out to Sunni Islam

by Nimrod Hurvitz

The Arab Spring, now entering its winter, is recasting Palestinian politics.  Hamas, the Palestinian Islamist party, and Fatah, the historic Palestinian nationalist party, seem closer than ever to signing an agreement regarding an interim government and setting a date for elections.Along with internal Palestinian changes, Hamas is also revaluating the nature of its struggle against Israel.  Hamas spokesman Tahir al-Nono has stated that the use of violence against Israel is not their preferred policy.  A similar comment was made by Hamas leader Khaled Mashal, who noted that Hamas will focus on popular resistance, and strive for a Palestinian state within the 1967 borders.  Both of them added the proviso that Hamas still reserves the right to use violence in self-defense.

The Remoteness of 1 Percent Wars

by William J. Astore

America’s wars are remote.  They’re remote from us geographically, remote from us emotionally (unless you’re serving in the military or have a close relative or friend who serves), and remote from our major media outlets, which have given us no compelling narrative about them, except that they’re being fought by “America’s heroes” against foreign terrorists and evil-doers.  They’re even being fought, in significant part, by remote control—by robotic drones “piloted” by ground-based operators from a secret network of bases located hundreds, if not thousands, of miles from the danger of the battlefield.

Revisiting a Massacre in Lebanon's Civil War—Were Lebanese Christians Responsible?

by Franck Salameh

This past September marked the twenty-ninth anniversary of the assassination of Lebanon’s president-elect Bashir Gemayel.  Like its most recent clone, the 2005 murder of former Prime Minister Rafik Hariri, memories of the 1982 crime continue to haunt many Lebanese, some of whom are still persuaded its perpetrators to have been Syrian operatives bent on scuttling end-of-conflict prospects for Lebanon.  Today, as Syria’s “Alawite era” teeters on the edge of its twilight, and as the international community prepares to indict it for ongoing crimes against its own people, the regime’s shady gruesome past is coming back to assail its tattered present days. 

Anti-Liberal Netanyahu Slams Arab Spring as Anti-Liberal

by Juan Cole

Israeli Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu said [on Thursday] that he had been right to oppose the forced resignation of Egyptian President Hosni Mubarak last February and categorized the uprisings in the Arab world as “anti-Western, anti-liberal, anti-Israeli and anti-democratic wave.”  He gave the “uncertainty” in the region as yet another excuse for the Likud Party to continue to steal and squat on ever greater portions of the Palestinian West Bank.Netanyahu’s outburst is of course completely illogical, and also deeply dishonest.  When the Arabs were ruled by dictatorships then that was the reason for which Israel could or should steal Palestinian land and keep the Palestinians stateless and devoid of rights.  If they have anti-authoritarian grassroots movements demanding parliaments, now that is the reason for the same policies.

Is a Nuclear War with China Possible?

by Lawrence S. Wittner

While nuclear weapons exist, there remains a danger that they will be used.  After all, for centuries national conflicts have led to wars, with nations employing their deadliest weapons.  The current deterioration of U.S. relations with China might end up providing us with yet another example of this phenomenon.The gathering tension between the United States and China is clear enough.  Disturbed by China’s growing economic and military strength, the U.S. government recently challenged China’s claims in the South China Sea, increased the U.S. military presence in Australia, and deepened U.S. military ties with other nations in the Pacific region.  According to Secretary of State Hillary Clinton, the United States was “asserting our own position as a Pacific power.”But need this lead to nuclear war?

We Don't Need a "Pacific" President—We Need an American One

by Kenneth Weisbrode

“Geopolitics” is a strange word.  In fusing geography with politics, it flips the academic term—political geography—on its head.  It defines the political manipulation of territory more than the influence of political factors upon geography per se.  Its import and orientation have accordingly been more normative and ideological than empirical.Among the more notable founders of modern geopolitics were Germans—Friedrich Ratzel, Karl Haushofer—and a few of their ideas—namely, Lebensraum, or living space—were once sought eagerly and eastwardly by Nazis.  For this reason geopolitics has had a checkered reputation.  Although some concepts are well known—Russia with its “Near Abroad”; Pakistan and “Strategic Depth”—geopolitics tends to be a favorite of armchair (and some real) generals and journalists; many geographers do not regard it seriously.

The European Debt Crisis is a Problem of Political Will

by Iwan Morgan

Back in the summer, as U.S. politicians seemed on the verge of failing to agree a debt limit extension to avoid default on America's obligations, Europeans looked on in scornful amazement at an apparent failure of leadership.  Now the shoe is very much on the other foot.  Speaking on November 16, President Barack Obama accused the Eurozone of suffering from "a problem of political will" that put the future of the single currency at risk.  America's leaders succeeded in averting a default crisis when common sense finally prevailed (though the Democrats paid a higher political price for reason than the Republicans).  Whether Europe's leaders can pull off their own great escape is much more open to doubt, because in their case their sovereign debt problem is much graver than America's debt limitation problem and the solution to it is far less readily apparent.

This Thanksgiving Feed a Silent Guest and Build World Peace

by William Lambers

The holiday season is upon us.  It's a time to give thanks and, thanks to Black Friday, to shop.  But it could also be a season when Americans take the reins of their country's foreign policy . . . and build peace in the new year.Can ordinary people, not someone in Washington, be in charge of American diplomacy abroad?  It may sound impossible.  But it has been done before.In 1947, before the U.S. government launched the famous Marshall Plan, everyday Americans spent the holiday season fighting hunger in Europe and helping those countries recover from World War II.  There was a train that traveled across America, stopping in cities and towns to collect food that would be shipped overseas.  The Friendship Train was a powerful symbol of American humanitarianism and peacemaking.

Friendless in the Middle East

by Daniel Pipes

The Arab upheavals of 2011 have inspired wildly inconsistent Western responses.  How, for example, can one justify abiding the suppression of dissidents in Bahrain while celebrating dissidents in Egypt?  Or protect Libyan rebels from government attacks but not their Syrian counterparts?  Oppose Islamists taking over in Yemen but not in Tunisia?Such ad hockery reflects something deeper than incompetence:  the difficulty of devising a constructive policy toward a region where, other than in a few outliers (Cyprus, Israel, and Iran), populations are predominantly hostile to the West.  Friends are few, powerless, and with dim prospects of taking control.  Democracy therefore translates into hostile relations with unfriendly governments.Both the first wave of elections in 2005 and the second wave, just begun in Tunisia, confirm that, given a free choice, a plurality of Middle Easterners vote for Islamists.  Dynamic, culturally authentic and ostensibly democratic, these forward a body of uniquely vibrant political ideas and constitute the only Muslim political movement of consequence.