CIAO DATE: 08/2012
Volume: 0, Issue: 22
Spring/Summer 2012
Larry Greenfield
What Lies Beneath the "Arab Spring"
Reva Bhalla
More than a year has passed since the fall of the region’s most stalwart Arab leader unleashed a current of dissent throughout the Arab world. That unrest, which spread from the Maghreb to the Arabian Peninsula, was simplistically treated in the media as an organic expression of liberal democracy that seemingly had the power to knock off Arab authoritarians one by one. Today, however, the initial euphoria over the so-called “Arab Spring” has predictably given way to disillusionment. After sacrificing the Ben Ali regime, Tunisia’s army and security establishment stand ready to intervene should the country’s Islamist-filled legislature overstep its boundaries in challenging the relics of the ancien régime. In Egypt, many forget (or fail to realize altogether) that the military establishment exploited the demonstrations to destroy Egyptian President Hosni Mubarak’s dynastic succession plan. Even as it seeks more creative maneuvers to rule behind what is expected to be an enfeebled parliament, the Egyptian military elite will remain the ultimate arbiter of the state for the foreseeable future. In Libya, after a rare NATO-led military intervention played the instrumental role of driving Gaddafi and his family from power, the once-celebrated rebel forces are again being viewed as a ragtag assortment of militias vying for the spoils of war in the absence of a legitimate, much less democratic, political authority. In Yemen, Ali Abdullah Saleh has given up his presidential title for now under a Saudi-mediated power-sharing agreement with his rivals. Still, there is little to hide the fact that Saleh’s regime, now led by his close family members, remains entrenched in the security, political and economic spheres of the state. Meanwhile, embattled Arab leaders are thankful for the distraction Syria has created as the latest flashpoint in the Middle East. Just as the Assad regime has proven unable to stamp out its domestic opposition, so too have Syria’s still fractious, outgunned and outnumbered opposition forces been unable to overwhelm a largely united Alawite-dominated security and intelligence apparatus. Barring a foreign military intervention—something that no military power, particularly the United States, seems keen on—the Syrian regime can endure for some time to come, even as it becomes all the more dependent on Iran for its survival. The mainstream narrative regarding the Arab unrest has by and large failed to anticipate these developments. There is little predictive value in starting with an assumption that all demonstrations will lead to revolutions, and all revolutions to liberal democracies. Geopolitical context must also be applied. In particular, there are three underlying trends that began developing well before the start of the Arab unrest—and which can help to explain what has happened over the past year, and what to expect going forward.
Morocco's Momentum
J. Peter Pham
Amid the upheaval that swept across the Middle East and North Africa since the dramatic December 2010 suicide of Mohamed Bouazizi, a 26-year-old Tunisian street vendor, ignited long pent-up frustration with the regimes across the region, Morocco has stood out as an exception. Not only has the kingdom avoided both revolutionary tumult and violent repression, but while their neighbors were still struggling to come to terms with the so-called “Arab Spring,” Moroccans adopted a new constitution and elected a new government (albeit one led for the first time in the country’s history by an Islamist party). The question now is whether this extraordinarily peaceful transformation is sustainable, and, if it is, what the implications might be for the region as a whole. Given the material reasons its people might have for grievance, Morocco was—at least superficially—a likelier candidate for revolutionary upheaval than its North African neighbors. In fact, on certain indices, Moroccans were indeed worse off than the citizens of any other country in the Maghreb. At the beginning of 2011, GDP per capita (purchasing power parity) in the kingdom was, respectively, just under half of what it was in Tunisia, three-fourths of what it was in Egypt, one-third of what it was in Libya, and two-thirds of what it was in Algeria. While the literacy rate in Morocco has been improving substantially in recent years, it still hovers at just above 50 percent, with women making up an overwhelming majority of those unable to read or write. Overall, the average Moroccan woman can expect to have six fewer years of schooling than her Tunisian sister and two years less than her Egyptian sister. Additionally, Morocco has a higher infant mortality rate and a lower life expectancy than any of the other four North African states.1 So why didn’t Moroccans revolt against a system that has so clearly left them behind their neighbors? It was not that they were unaware of the protests: satellite dishes are ubiquitous even in the poorest areas, virtually every Moroccan adult has a mobile phone, and the country has one of the most technologically advanced Internet services, both cable and wireless, in Africa. Rather, other factors were at play.
Egypt's Perfect Economic Storm
David P. Goldmann
A year after the overthrow of Hosni Mubarak, Egypt’s economic crisis has become a uniquely severe event. Markets are now forecasting a devaluation of Egypt’s currency by about two-thirds, as capital flight and an enormous structural trade deficit exhaust the country’s foreign exchange reserves. With perhaps half of Egypt’s population living on $2 per day, a major devaluation would price basic necessities out of the reach of tens of millions of people, despite the country’s extensive (if inefficient) system of subsidies. The crisis seems uncontainable; Egypt’s central bank appears to have exhausted its capacity to borrow from the domestic market, and is at odds with prospective foreign donors. As a result, Egypt now faces a financial collapse similar to those in over-indebted Latin American countries during the 1980s and 1990s, except with a crucial difference: the Latin Americans are all food exporters, while Egypt imports half its domestically consumed foodstuffs. The difference between Egypt and a Latin American banana republic is the bananas. This is an unprecedented state of affairs, a perfect economic storm. Egypt imports half its caloric consumption and is the world’s largest importer of wheat. Economic collapse will “transform a peaceful revolution into a hunger revolution,” the second-in-command of Egypt’s Muslim Brotherhood warned on February 3rd.1 After months of refusing to bargain with the International Monetary Fund (IMF), Egypt’s government has begun negotiations for a $3.2 billion loan, or less than the amount of capital flight in December alone. But the involvement of the IMF has done little to reassure Egyptian investors. And on February 11, 2012, Egypt’s Finance Minister said that his country would need $11 billion in external aid.2 Moreover, as of this writing, Egypt’s insistence on prosecuting American democracy activists threatens to shut off American aid at a critical moment. It is possible that Egypt’s leaders have abandoned hope of forestalling the crisis and are directing their energies instead toward finding a foreign entity to blame. Even under the most benign political conditions, though, it is unlikely that the West or the Gulf States would offer Egypt aid on the scale required to prevent a crisis. Unlike other countries threatened by famine, Egypt’s requirements simply are too great for the rest of the world to shoulder for an extended period of time. Its governance, moreover, is so corrupt that its capacity to use foreign aid is in doubt. The most likely outcome is a humanitarian catastrophe too large for the rest of the world to ameliorate, and a political outcome too chaotic to permit large-scale humanitarian intervention, like Somalia. An implicit assumption of public policy is that all problems have solutions. Egypt appears to be an outstanding exception, a major nation in existential crisis for which no solution will be found.
Assad's Cruel Calculus
Yehuda Blanga
On January 31, 2011, at the height of the protests in Egypt, Syrian President Bashar al-Assad gave an interview to the Wall Street Journal. He spoke of how he was reading his country’s political map correctly. He said he would soon announce reforms—because, in this day and age, Arab leaders must match their aspirations to the will of the people. Assad also declared that Syria was different from Egypt, and that, thanks to his anti-American and anti-Israeli stance, his position was better than Mubarak’s. His policy, the Syrian president said, brought him the support of the Arab street in general and of the Syrian street in particular. Though the interview was clearly detached from reality, Assad was correct in one respect: Syria is not Egypt. February 2012 marked the first anniversary of the protests and popular uprising in Syria, and yet the conflict between Assad and his own people rages on with no end in sight. So why has the Assad regime managed to weather the sustained domestic uprising of the past year—and so successfully thwarted the discontent that claimed its counterparts in Egypt, Tunisia and Libya? The answers lie in the unique dynamics of Syrian society, and the vested political stakeholders now working diligently to preserve the Assad regime’s grip on power.
Flunking the Syria Test
Matthew RJ Brodsky
With the Syrian uprising now past its one-year anniversary, it’s long past time to take stock of the carnage. More than 7,000 people have been killed to date by the Assad regime, as it has unleashed war on its own people. The spark that lit the fire was an errant one. On March 6, 2011, state security forces arrested 15 teenagers for spray painting anti-regime graffiti on a wall in the southern city of Deraa. Their continued detention sparked massive demonstrations in the city, and in turn were met by the regime’s brutal crackdown using live fire and tear gas. By the time the teenagers were released, the flashpoints between the Syrian security services and the protesters had already claimed many lives. This began the cycle of funerals which became rallying points for further protests—and further regime violence. The anti-regime opposition began as a peaceful protest against a dictatorship. President Bashar al-Assad’s brutal response—including the arrest and torture of regime opponents, the indiscriminate shelling of cities, and the cutoff of escape routes to Turkey and Lebanon for civilian refugees—has pushed the opposition to respond with force. Meanwhile, conventional wisdom in Washington and in European capitals is that the Syrian regime is doomed and that it is only a matter of time before Assad is removed from power. But these optimistic assessments are dangerously flawed. Despite Western sanctions and other punitive measures levied to date, the Assad regime as of this writing continues to maintain its grip on the four pillars of Syrian power: the unity of the Alawites; supremacy of the Ba’ath Party; supremacy of the al-Assad clan; and Alawite dominance over the military and intelligence apparatus.
Rise of the Maliki Regime
Joel D. Rayburn
One year into the “Arab Spring,” it must be said that Iraq has bucked the prevailing trend in the Arab world. While grassroots movements in half a dozen other Arab countries have dismantled or shaken authoritarian regimes, a new one is being built in Iraq. During the revolutionary year of 2011, the government of Prime Minister Nuri Maliki consolidated its power, violently suppressing a popular protest movement and cracking down on political rivals at home, while intervening in two “Arab Spring” crises abroad. In doing so, the Maliki government has created a high risk of blowback from its foreign policy initiatives, while doing little to address the underlying causes of domestic Iraqi unrest, which will continue to fester. In Iraq today, it is increasingly appropriate to speak not of the Iraqi government, or of a Shi’a-dominated government, but rather of a Maliki regime. The “Malikists”—or, in Arabic, the “Malikiyoun”—are the newly-dominant force in Iraqi politics, an analog to the “Saddamists” or “Saddamiyoun” that Iraqis once knew. These are the officials and operators who have enabled Prime Minister Maliki to consolidate control of state power and gradually marginalize other major political blocs while doing so. On an individual level, the Malikiyoun do not really represent Maliki’s Da’wa party. In the innermost circle, the Malikiyoun are instead composed of Maliki’s family and personal advisors, both official and unofficial. Those Malikiyoun who do hail from Da’wa tend to be “orphans”: Da’wa members who have no independent base of their own in the party or in the larger movement that spawned it. The Malikiyoun also include a sizeable contingent of former Ba’athists, some of whom once worked directly for Saddam or other senior leaders in the old regime. These Ba’athists-turned-Malikiyoun are especially common in the intelligence services and among Maliki’s political generals, who were almost all formerly high-ranking officers in Saddam’s army. In sectarian terms, the Malikiyoun are majority Shi’a, and exhibit clear favoritism toward their sect along with extreme distrust, sometimes crossing into paranoia, toward Sunnis and the Ba’ath. But they are not driven first and foremost by Shi’a sectarian interests. In fact, they include Sunnis, Kurds, and a few other minorities among their ranks. Though the Malikiyoun will certainly play the Shi’a sectarian card when it serves their political purposes, they are just as ready to suppress Shi’a opponents as Sunni ones. Nor are the Malikiyoun Iranian puppets, though they are, for the present, aligned with the Iranian regime’s foreign policy in the region. As a result, the Maliki regime behaves as a Shi’a sectarian power in the broader region to a greater extent than they do inside Iraq. At the same time, the Malikiyoun are distrustful of Iranian intentions toward Maliki and his government, and this has led them to try to preserve a relationship with the United States, in order to balance what would otherwise be dominant Iranian influence. The Malikiyoun are not motivated by a shared ideology. They are driven, instead, by the acquisition and holding of power, and above all are deeply committed to keeping Prime Minister Maliki in power. The common characteristic among all Malikiyoun is that their power derives entirely from their association with Maliki. If he were to fall from power, none of them would have anywhere to go, and this makes them more committed to him than any ideologue could be. Steadily, since 2008, the Malikiyoun have enabled the Prime Minister to neutralize, one by one, the checks and balances the Iraqi constitution was meant to enshrine to prevent just such a consolidation of power.1 Over the past three years, Iraq’s independent commissions, armed forces, intelligence services, and judiciary have come under the formal or de facto control of the Prime Minister’s office. The Malikiyoun have placed heavy emphasis on the coercive arms of the state and can now be found in the highest levels of the Ministry of Defense, Ministry of Interior, and intelligence apparatus. They can also be found atop the Iraqi Special Operations Forces and police commandos that now answer directly to the Prime Minister’s office and have coalesced into a new set of coup-proofing forces akin to Saddam’s Special Republican Guard. As they have gained control of these arms of the government, the Malikiyoun have gradually purged political opponents or independents from many key government positions. In addition, practically all major military, security, and intelligence appointments are now made directly by the Prime Minister’s Office, without confirmation by the Iraqi parliament. This, then, is the Iraqi regime that happened to be in power during the historic events of 2011.
Turkey's Moment of Truth
Joshua W. Walker, Nora Fisher Onar
Half a year after sweeping national elections for the third consecutive time, the Justice and Development Party (AKP) is unrivaled on Turkey’s domestic political scene and making ever more of an impression on the international front. In Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan, the party has a forceful “man of the people”; in Foreign Minister Ahmet Davutoglu, it has a grand strategist who has offered a Turkey long plagued by an identity crisis a framework through which to make sense of the country’s multi-dimensional profile. However, Turkey’s newfound confidence, in tandem with the attempt to reframe and reposition, also has upset a familiar pattern of regional interactions. This has perturbed many observers accustomed to assessing Turkey’s behavior through the prism of its convergence with—or divergence from—U.S. and EU policies and preferences. What can we expect from a more assertive Turkey in the wake of the Arab revolutions as the status quo in the region at large is being reconfigured? The answer is critical. At best, Ankara stands poised to play a leadership role in the region. At the very least, Turkey can be a game-changing “swing” state in the rapidly unfolding geopolitical changes in the region. Turkey’s changing profile in a transforming Middle East is not necessarily detrimental to the West. Rather, Turkey’s new approach could represent an important asset to its European and American partners. Yet promise does not translate into practice automatically. As U.S. Secretary of State Clinton reminded her Turkish audience on a trip to Turkey in July, “Turkish democracy is a model because of where you came from and where you are. That doesn’t mean you don’t have work to do.” In the emerging realities of the new Middle East, Turkey’s ability to deliver on that promise hinges on its consistent pursuit of democratization at home and a principled foreign policy that puts authoritarian rivals in the region to shame.
How Saudi Arabia Has Survived—So Far
Jonathan Schanzer, Steven Miller
On December 17, 2010, the self-immolation of Tunisian street vendor Mohamed Bouazizi, who was protesting the confiscation of his wares and harassment by the country’s authorities, touched off mass protests that brought about the shocking exodus of dictator Zine El Abidine Ben Ali on January 14th. Across the Middle East, the masses celebrated the drama in Tunisia as a step toward democracy. Indeed, it was the first time that mass protests forced an Arab leader from office. By January 25th, hundreds of thousands of protesters gathered in Egypt’s Tahrir Square, also calling for the end of Hosni Mubarak’s regime. At the same time, protest movements sprouted in Jordan, Libya, Syria, Bahrain, and Yemen. Media commentators called it the “Arab Spring.” For the Saudi royal family, looking to preserve their autocratic state, this was the dead of winter. They watched events unfold and waited in fear. Would Saudi Arabia’s population take to the streets? In short, the answer was no. Saudi Arabia remained remarkably quiescent during the first year of the Arab protests. Quite by accident, the Foundation for Defense of Democracies was monitoring Saudi social media during this time for another study (analyzing the ideas and influence of Saudi clerics online). What follows is an account, informed by both social media and more traditional sources, of how the Saudis dodged the proverbial bullet during the 2011 Arab uprisings, but may yet face challenges in their wake.
Learning from the "Arab Spring"
Lawrence J. Haas
The growing turmoil of the “Arab Spring”—the populist awakening that spread like a brushfire across the Middle East and North Africa after a desperate fruit peddler in Tunisia set himself afire in December of 2010—can shake the optimism of even the most enthusiastic human rights promoter. As of this writing, populist uprisings have toppled dictators in Tunisia, Egypt, Libya, and Yemen. But Egypt’s government remains in a leadership tug-of-war between its military and Islamist parties, while in Libya rebel militias control the streets and the government’s interim leaders still must establish their legitimacy, write a new constitution, and hold elections. Autocrats in Syria and Bahrain continue the brutal crackdowns on their respective populations, with the slaughter in Syria in particular reaching unspeakable levels. That experts wonder whether the “Arab Spring” is more accurately an “Arab Winter” or “Islamist Spring” reflects the uncertainty surrounding the region’s future. For the United States, the Greater Middle East has long presented a host of tricky challenges. It is home to most of the world’s oil, on which the U.S. and global economies are so dependent; a dangerous theocracy in Iran that seeks nuclear weapons, is expanding the range of its ballistic missiles, and has killed U.S. troops directly and indirectly in Afghanistan and Iraq; the world’s most active state sponsors of terrorism in Iran and Syria; and a vital U.S. ally in Israel that is surrounded by states and terrorist groups seeking its destruction and is facing cooler relations with post-Mubarak Egypt and increasingly Islamist Turkey. In the short term, the United States must protect its vital interests by navigating the economic, military, and diplomatic landmines that these challenges present. Longer term, the challenge is quite different: to promote freedom and democracy across the region (just as the United States has promoted freedom and democracy in every other region in recent decades). That’s because a freer, more democratic Greater Middle East would benefit America in myriad ways. Liberal democracies do not tend to sponsor terrorism, so a freer, more democratic region would lessen the threats to the United States and its allies. Meanwhile, new free-market economies would provide new trade and investment opportunities for U.S. businesses, generating more prosperity back home. For Washington, the question is how to get from here to there—how to support democratic forces over the long term without compromising U.S. interests in the short term. That is no easy task. The answer, however, lies not in reducing our efforts to promote freedom and democracy as a result of regional turmoil and retreating to the relative safety of “stability.” Instead, it hinges on understanding that change is coming to this volatile region whether we like it or not—and that a deft combination of savvy diplomacy, targeted economic and technical assistance, and (when necessary) military power can nudge it in the right direction.
Our Losing Wager on China
Gordon G. Chang
We hope we can convey a positive message that China and the U.S. will stick to the principle of showing mutual support to people in the same boat and strengthen cooperation,” said Chinese Vice President Xi Jinping to his American counterpart, Joe Biden, during a phone conversation on the eve of his February get-to-know-you tour of the United States. Xi, expected to become China’s next leader at the end of this year, undoubtedly used the boat analogy because he saw that Washington was reassessing the assumptions that have underpinned America’s relations with Beijing for the last forty years. The policies of today are the same as the ones President Nixon envisioned four decades ago, but only in broad outline. Chinese leaders, for good reason, are worried about recent American moves in their region. When he made his groundbreaking trip to Beijing in 1972, Nixon knew that both China and the United States shared the same principal adversary, so he traveled halfway around the world to enlist Mao Zedong as an informal partner in the Cold War against the Soviets. The successful conclusion of that global struggle, which meant America no longer needed China, did not break the ties between two countries that then had little in common. And the horrible slaughter of Chinese citizens by their own government in their capital in June 1989 only interrupted close cooperation between Washington and Beijing; it did not end it. Since Nixon’s visit to Beijing, the U.S. has sought to “engage” the Chinese and bring them into the liberal international system. This policy proved durable, despite tumultuous change over the course of decades, precisely because it was consistent with America’s conception of its global role. Chris Nelson of the daily Washington report bearing his name maintains that today’s China policies resemble those that produced the Marshall Plan because in both cases the United States was engineering, for the sake of the world, its own “altruistic decline.” Whether the two policies can in fact be linked, America’s policy of engagement of China has been enlightened, farsighted, and generous. And it has had an effect. Beijing, after Mao’s death in 1976, reciprocated overtures from Washington and the West by dismantling the controls of a command economy, opening doors to foreign investment, and participating in international commerce. This economic restructuring caused, or at least accompanied, a transformation of the country’s external policies. Beijing dropped its shrill and antagonistic talk about spreading Marxist revolution. In fact, the Chinese began to speak in pleasing tones as they opened their country to the world. “We are trying to make as many friends as possible,” said Li Zhaoxing, when he was foreign minister in 2004. “The more friends China has, the better.”1 And this was not just happy talk. Beijing did all it could to increase its friendships—and its clout. Once an outlander maintaining only one ambassador abroad, China is now close to the heart of world affairs, networked into almost every multilateral organization and virtually every other country. From its perches at the United Nations, World Bank, and International Monetary Fund, Beijing is considered an indispensable player on every continent. In fact, the Chinese have been so successful that the time we live in is considered to be their century. Consequently, Beijing’s diplomats see themselves as representatives of history’s next great power. In a sense, this is the logical conclusion to America’s engagement. It was always more probable that this century, marked by accelerating globalization that is spreading wealth around the planet, would be named after the country with more than 19 percent of world population—China—than one with less than five—the U.S. The hope of the engagers was that enmeshment of China into global institutions would lead, if not to a democratic nation, then at least to a benign one. So there was a bet that China would become a true partner rather than another Soviet Union. It was the grandest wager of our time, if not of all time.
Continuity and Change in North Korea
Andrei Lankov
Kim Jong-il, the hereditary ruler of North Korea, is dead, and his son—visibly shaken and patently unprepared for the job—has replaced him as the head of the world’s last remaining Stalinist state. The start of a new era in the DPRK is a good time to speculate on what we should expect from the “Hermit Kingdom” in future. While crystal ball-gazing has never been an exact science and history often takes quite sudden turns, it is difficult to be optimistic when thinking about North Korea’s future. Kim Jong-il’s death on the early morning of December 17, 2011, was one of those events which, while expected sooner or later, nonetheless occurred suddenly. It certainly could not be termed a surprise, however. Kim had suffered a stroke in late 2008, and never completely recovered. Soon thereafter, North Korea began preparations for a hereditary transfer of power. Many observers pointed out that these began belatedly. Had Kim Jong-il been more serious about the future of his regime, a successor should have been firmly in place by the early 2000s. Nonetheless, in October 2010 the choice of successor was made public. Kim Jong-un, Kim’s youngest (known) son, was suddenly promoted to the rank of four-star general, and thereafter his name began to appear in North Korean propaganda with growing frequency. Nevertheless, it appears that North Korea’s policy makers believed that they would have a few more years at their disposal before they would need to finalize the hereditary power transition. For, when Kim Jong-il died, Kim Jong-un had yet to officially become his second-in-command. As of mid-December, Kim Jong-un was, technically speaking, merely one of many members of the country’s top leadership: neither a Politburo member nor a member of the National Defense Commission, the supreme executive body of the state. This constituted a major potential handicap. Yet when Kim Jong-il died, no one dared exploit this potential weakness of the heir apparent. Kim Jong-un was recognized as the new leader immediately upon the death of his father and, seemingly, without much resistance. As of this writing, the transition in Pyongyang appears to be unfolding smoothly. The North Korean elite appears to be united—not so much by their loyalty to the Kim family, or by some shared ideological convictions, but rather by an understanding that political infighting at the top might endanger the whole system. They probably never heard of Benjamin Franklin’s famous adage that “We must, indeed, all hang together, or assuredly we shall all hang separately.” Yet they are acting in full accordance with this famous dictum. Still, the smoothness of the transition now taking place in Pyongyang is misleading. North Korea might in the future follow a number of different trajectories, but none guarantees an orderly and gradual transformation of the country.
Our Pyongyang Problem
Peter Huessy, General Michael Dunn (ret.)
Today, the overwhelming focus of the United States and its allies is aimed at stopping Iran from securing a nuclear weapon. The ongoing nuclear weapons program of North Korea appears to be, at best, a serious but somewhat secondary consideration. Yet the two programs are inexorably intertwined, and are part of an identical strategy adopted by these two rogue states and their allies to harm U.S. security interests. Policymakers in Washington still appear to believe in both cases that a “deal” of some kind monitoring their respective nuclear programs—as opposed to ending them—is possible. Such a view is naïve at best, and deeply dangerous at worst. This is true for two key reasons. The first is North Korea’s “Ten Step” negotiating strategy—an approach that the DPRK has successfully adopted over the past two decades to shake the U.S. and its allies down for oil, food and economic assistance and to “buy time.” The second is that North Korea’s true strategic objective—ignored all too often by experts and the media alike—is one of reunifying the Korean peninsula under Communist rule and this requires a nuclear weapons program as a shield. When viewed through these two prisms, Pyongyang’s policies in recent years make sound strategic sense. Washington’s, by contrast, too often do not.
Assessing the Asia Pivot
Walter Lohman
In the course of two months in the fall of 2011, the President and his administration—particularly the Secretary of State—conducted a political and diplomatic offensive to prove American staying power in Asia. It marked a 180-degree turn from where the White House had begun three years earlier. The fall offensive began with the long-awaited passage of the Korea-U.S. FTA (KORUS), an agreement of major economic importance. After years of accumulated opportunity costs, in October, the administration finally pushed the agreement forward and arranged for South Korean President Lee Myun-bak to be in Washington for the occasion of its passage. Secretary of State Hillary Clinton framed the new approach in her November “America’s Pacific Century” speech, wherein she declared the Administration’s “Asia Pivot.”1 President Obama gave the approach authority and economic substance at APEC, where the U.S. secured a game-changing commitment from Japan to join the Transpacific Partnership trade pact (TPP). The President then embarked on his third visit to the Asia Pacific. In Australia, he announced new training rotations of up to 2,500 U.S. Marines through Australia’s northern shore, a move with obvious implications for the security of our allies and sea lanes, and in Indonesia, he became the first American president to participate in the East Asian Summit (EAS). At the EAS meeting of 18 regional leaders, President Obama raised the importance of maritime security and freedom of navigation and “expressed strong opposition to the threat or use of force by any party to advance its territorial or maritime claims or interfere in legitimate economic activity”2—thereby tying American interests to regional concerns about China. For her part, Secretary Clinton headed to Manila to commemorate the 60th anniversary of the U.S.-Philippines Mutual Defense Treaty (MDT)—and then on to America’s other treaty ally in Southeast Asia, Thailand. In Manila Bay, she signed a reaffirmation of the U.S.-Philippines MDT on the deck of a U.S. Navy destroyer and essentially declared America ready to “fight” for the Philippines. She also announced the dispatch to Manila of the second (of what will likely be four) refurbished coast guard cutters. En route to Indonesia, President Obama phoned long-suffering Burmese human rights icon Aung San Suu Kyi to get her blessing for a Burma visit from Secretary Clinton. Clinton arrived in Burma by the end of November, meeting Suu Kyi and the Burmese president and beginning a careful, “action for action” process of normalization that could have major implications for the U.S. strategic position in the region. The Chinese have long taken advantage of Burma’s isolation from the U.S. If Burmese political reform proves to be real, it will offer an opportunity for the U.S. to reassert itself there. It will also remove a roadblock in America’s relationship with the Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN) with which it has long disagreed on Burma. A democratic Burma would tip the scales in ASEAN—a hodgepodge of governing systems—in favor of democracy, a state of play that improves the sustainability of American engagement.
Dangerous Drift: An Interview with the Honorable Robert C. McFarlane
A Robert C. “Bud” McFarlane is Founder and Chief Executive Officer of McFarlane & Associates, an international consultancy focused on energy and political risk. In a public policy career spanning more than half a century, he served as a Marine lieutenant colonel, a State Department diplomat, and—most prominently—as National Security Advisor to President Ronald Reagan from 1983 to 1985. In February 2012, he spoke with Journal editor Ilan Berman about the ongoing international stand-off with Iran, the state of our struggle against radical Islam, and the challenges facing the U.S. in the Greater Middle East.
Seeking a New Devil in Damascus
Oren Kessler
TEL AVIV–“Better the devil you know than the one you don’t.” It’s a 500-year old Irish proverb, but to Mideast policy wonks the phrase is instantly identifiable as Israel’s decades-long policy toward its nettlesome neighbor Syria. Nearly four decades have passed since the Yom Kippur War, the last conventional conflict between the two states. During that time, Syrian Presidents Hafez and later Bashar Assad kept their frontier with Israel largely quiet, continuing the fight against it via their proxies Hezbollah in Lebanon and Hamas in the Palestinian territories. In Israel’s never-ending search for regional stability—and amid uncertainty over who might replace the Assads—that arrangement seemed good enough. When in 2005 President George W. Bush asked Ariel Sharon his thoughts about toppling Assad, the Israeli premier responded with a question of his own: “Are you crazy?” Likewise, when Syrians first rose up against their regime last spring, Israeli officials remained cagey. Asked last March for comment, Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu replied laconically, “Any answer I’ll give you wouldn’t be a good one.” Shlomo Brom, a former head of IDF strategic planning and an Israeli negotiator with Syria in the 1990s, described Bashar Assad as a “known quantity,” while veteran diplomat Dore Gold urged caution given the volatility caused by anti-government dissent spreading “from the Turkish border down to the Suez Canal.”
The Transformation of Southeast Asian Terrorism
Hamoon Khelghat-Doost, Govindran Jegatesen
PENANG—One of the major repercussions following the September 11, 2001, attacks on New York and Washington was new interest in certain regions that were previously regarded as of relatively low importance with regard to terrorism hotspots. Southeast Asia is one such example. The extremely diverse ethnic, religious, cultural and linguistic texture of Southeast Asia—coupled with an alarming number of legislative deficiencies—provides a safe haven for many different varieties of extremism. The prevalence of groups such as Abu Sayyaf (the Philippines) and Al-Ma’unah (Malaysia), as well as events such as the 2002 Bali bombing, clearly demonstrate the attractiveness of Southeast Asia as a terrorism hub—and the potential for terrorist activity there. The reasons are obvious. Southeast Asia is home to more than 20 percent of the world’s Muslims, making Islamic radicalism a core security challenge for countries such as Malaysia, Singapore, Thailand, the Philippines, and Indonesia. Indeed, after knowledge of al-Qaeda’s extensive global terrorist network was made public, several extremist groups in Southeast Asia were identified as Al-Qaeda regional partners and terrorist cells. These include Jemmaah Islamiah (JI), Abu Sayyaf, the Moro Islamic Liberation Front (MILF), the Islamist separatists of Patani and Laskar Jihad (LJ).
An Islamo-Bolivarian Revolution
Joseph M. Humire
Jorge Verstrynge’s blueprint for leftist-Islamist collaboration—and how it gained global currency.
Mixed Record
Eric Rozenman
Milestones and missteps in the Bush administration’s foreign policy record—and Condoleezza Rice’s.
Death Spiral
Stanley Schrager
James Farwell demystifies the how, and why, of our worsening relationship with Pakistan.
Clumsy Assassins
Emanuele Ottolenghi
Roya Hakakian lays bare Iran’s bloody record of state terror.