American-European Relations

Strategic Intelligentia

(InFocus) – During the presidential campaign, Barack Obama positioned himself as a strong proponent of diplomatic engagement. He pledged to work with Europe to solve international disputes and heed the advice of others when it came time to crafting America’s foreign policy. In practice, President Obama hoped that his approach would stand in stark contrast to George W. Bush’s “cowboy diplomacy” — the philosophy where, “You’re either with us or you’re with the terrorists.”

It is no surprise, then, that in the aftermath of President Obama’s electoral victory, the sense of optimism in Western Europe was palpable. According to a poll by the Pew Research Center’s Global Attitude Project conducted in May and June 2009, Germany’s favorable opinion of the U.S. more than doubled from the attitudes held in 2008 – from 31 to 64 percent. During the same period, Britain, Spain, and France also saw an increase of 16, 25, and 33 percent respectively. The belief that Obama would “do the right thing in world affairs” – which according to most Europeans means placing faith in multilateral institutions – was shown to be nearly universal in Western countries. In France and Germany, no fewer than nine-in-ten expressed confidence in the new American president, exceeding the ratings achieved by Nicolas Sarkozy and Angela Merkel in their own countries.

Indeed, the importance Europe places in multilateralism is manifest when compared to the polling data from the first year of the Bush administration. A Pew Research Center poll from August 2001 measured the confidence levels of European nations toward the Bush administration and found that much of the opposition resulted from Europe’s frustration with Bush’s unilateralist approach to world affairs. It was therefore no surprise that more than 80 percent of Europeans disapproved of Bush’s rejection of the Kyoto Protocol and more than 60 percent disapproved of the U.S. withdrawal from the Anti-Ballistic Missile Treaty and the Defense Missile Development Program. Yet the question remains: Do European perceptions towards the U.S. matter?

Obama promised hope and change, and that optimism was to extend to his diplomacy with Europe. The question, from a U.S. standpoint, was which path to Europe offers the highest probability of success? Should the new administration reach out to individual European nations — that is, the bilateral approach — or is it best to engage with collective bodies, such as the European Union (EU) or the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO)? And how different would Barack Obama’s approach be in reality from that of George W. Bush?

Read Full Article: InFocus

Barak Seener is the CEO of Strategic Intelligentia and a former Middle East Fellow at the Royal United Services Institute (RUSI). He is on Twitter at @BarakSeener.

Can the IAEA Be Saved?

(InFocus) – When the International Atomic Energy Association (IAEA) was established in 1957, it was largely a technically-oriented body focused on the peaceful uses of atomic energy in accordance with U.S. President Dwight D. Eisenhower’s vision of “Atoms for Peace.” The Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty (NPT), signed 11 years later in 1968, was designed to enforce this vision of peace. However, the system has been beset with flaws from its inception. It was based on the notion that all states would be honest about their nuclear programs, and their intentions. Accordingly, there are no enforcement provisions.

The IAEA has, over time, lost sight of its original mission. Rather than performing technical studies to assess the nuclear capacity of states and leaving the political considerations to the United Nations Security Council, the IAEA has strayed into the business of international politics. In this capacity, it has too often apologized for proliferators rather than hindering their illicit actions.

The Paradox of the NPT

The NPT, which is essentially the IAEA’s mandate, has made headlines of late. Faced with the challenge of thwarting Iranian attempts to harness nuclear energy for weapons, U.S. President Barack Obama has underscored the importance of the NPT’s three pillars: non-proliferation, disarmament, and the right to civilian nuclear activities.

These pillars, however, are not always easy to reconcile. Several of the President’s recent speeches underscore this. For example, in his Prague speech, on April 5, 2009, Obama declared that the international community must support his vision of a world without nuclear weapons. Yet, Obama also stated that, “as long as these [nuclear] weapons exist, the United States will maintain a safe, secure, and effective arsenal to deter any adversary, and guarantee that defense to our allies.” So much for disarmament.

Then, in a speech from Cairo two months later, Obama stated, “No single nation should pick and choose which nation holds nuclear weapons.” This seems to undercut the notion that the U.S. has the right to impose economic sanctions against offending states. So much for non-proliferation

Finally, Obama has repeatedly underscored the right of any state to develop nuclear power for civilian purposes. Yet, the IAEA lacks the ability to ensure that these programs are strictly for civilian use.

Read Full Article: InFocus

Barak Seener is the CEO of Strategic Intelligentia and a former Middle East Fellow at the Royal United Services Institute (RUSI). He is on Twitter at @BarakSeener.

Targeting Israelis via International Law

Barak Seener - Strategic Intelligentia

(The Middle East Quarterly) – Based on principles derived from the Hague and Geneva conventions, individuals have been brought to trial for war crimes, crimes against peace, and crimes against humanity. The outstanding examples of such trials were those held at Nuremberg after World War II where numbers of leading Nazis were brought to court for some of the many crimes committed by Germany under the Third Reich. The shadow of those trials is still visible today. In July 2009, John Demjanjuk, a Ukrainian accused of crimes while working for the Nazis as a concentration camp guard was deported from Canada to Germany to stand trial. On a smaller but significant scale, cases have been brought against individuals responsible for the genocide that took place during the Bosnian war of 1992-95. More recently, however, individuals and organizations with political grievances have started to make use of war crimes legislation in order to pursue a variety of officials from states equipped with well-run courts and tribunals, notably the United States, Great Britain, and—most of all—Israel. Should this matter to us? Aren’t war crimes clear and cut; shouldn’t those who commit them be pursued with the full force of the law? This essay tries to answer those questions and others

The poster of Dan Halutz, former IDF chief of staff and Israeli air force commander, is an example of attempts to delegitimize Israel and present its officials as war criminals for conducting antiterrorist actions.

Again and again attempts have been made to indict Israeli soldiers and civilians as war criminals when their only crimes have been to thwart terrorist actions or punish those responsible for murder.[1] A boost was given to this gambit when speeches at the Durban Conference on Racism in 2001 branded Israeli antiterrorist actions as “war crimes” and condemned Israel as “an apartheid state” that has committed ethnic cleansing and acts of genocide. This has set the tone for a series of attempts to summon Israelis before foreign courts, from Ariel Sharon and Amos Yaron (particularly with regard to the 1982 Sabra and Shatila massacre in Beirut, which had already been investigated by Israel’s own Kahan Commission),[2] to Avraham (Avi) Dichter for the assassination of a Hamas leader while he was director of the Israeli security service, Shin Bet, to Doron Almog, an Israeli general accused of mass murder in 2002, and Moshe Ya’alon, former head of Israeli military intelligence (and later chief of staff), indicted for bombings in Qana, Lebanon, in 1996.
The sweep of charges is wide. The individuals charged have been important figures in Israeli life and major contributors to Israel’s security. Attempts to charge them with crimes against humanity have never been matched by calls to indict Palestinian terrorist chiefs. The bias is very clear, and it is inspired not by humanitarian concerns or a desire for justice but by political motives.

(for all references see the source article)

Read Full Article: The Middle East Quarterly

Barak Seener is the CEO of Strategic Intelligentia and a former Middle East Fellow at the Royal United Services Institute (RUSI). He is on Twitter at @BarakSeener.

Israel’s Strategy Deficiency

Strategic Intelligentia

(The National Interest) – Israel’s unilateral ceasefire in Gaza has left Israel with no strategic goals achieved. As attested by the Winograd Commission-set up by the Israeli government in 2006 to draw lessons from the then-recent war with Hezbollah-Israel, so adept at engaging tactically, cannot consolidate gains due to its numerous contradictory goals. One is forced to recall Kissinger’s statement decades ago that Israel does not have policy, but politics.

On January 16, 2009, a memorandum of understanding was signed between Foreign Minister Tzipi Livni and then-Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice. This statement constitutes the basis of U.S.-led interception of smuggled weapons into Gaza by monitoring the Persian Gulf, Sudan and neighboring states. The United States is taking a leading role in lending its military and intelligence assets, including detection and surveillance equipment, to governments in the Middle East that are allied with this endeavour. Why did Israel not push for this mechanism during the eight years it was being bombarded with rockets? Why did the Bush administration rush it through before it left office?

Ceasefires, like the one recently declared at the end of the conflict in Gaza, have traditionally been used by terrorist organisations to build up their weapons capabilities. They aren’t effective in the long term. The current ceasefire could heighten Hamas’s stature by recognizing it as a party and give it greater legitimacy. Hamas remains in possession of at least several hundred rockets, some of which are able to reach major population centers, and several others are still being lobbed at Israel.

Hamas’s capacity to rapidly reconstitute its capabilities was facilitated by UN Secretary General Ban Ki-moon who sought a ceasefire in and of itself without caring about its effectiveness at preventing smuggling and enhancing security for Israel. To this end he declared: “We cannot wait for all the details, the mechanisms, to be conclusively negotiated and agreed, while civilians continue to be traumatized, injured or killed.” Similarly, when asked about the exact details of the agreement, and what new contributions it provides, Israel’s Foreign Minister Tzipi Livni acknowledged, “This is a beginning . . . I completely agree that we have now an understanding and it needs to be translated, also in the future, to more concrete measures.” Israel’s subscription to the vague agreement with the United States monitoring weapons smuggling into Gaza reflects the ambiguous aims that it had in going to war in the territory in the first place.

Read Full Article: The National Interest

Barak Seener is the CEO of Strategic Intelligentia and a former Middle East Fellow at the Royal United Services Institute (RUSI). He is on Twitter at @BarakSeener.

The Threat From Israel’s Arab Population

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(InFocus) – While Iran and Syria, along with their proxies Hamas and Hizbullah, are often cited as Israel’s primary security concerns, Israeli Arabs are a growing strategic threat. What began as hostility toward the Jewish identity of the state has evolved into a growing identification with Palestinian nationalism and Islamism. Thus, the challenge posed by Israel’s Arabs to the security of the state is now characterized by religious ideology as well as political identity, making rapprochement increasingly less likely.

Israeli Arabs in Context

Despite allegations that Israel cleansed itself of its Arab population, Arabs have lived in the state of Israel since the founding of the state. Approximately 150,000 Arabs elected to live in Israel after the armistice of 1949. In accordance with Israeli law, the state took measures to ensure that Israeli Arabs enjoyed the same rights and privileges as Jewish Israeli citizens. Over six decades, however, the Israeli Arabs have developed a unique political identity, distinctly separate from the Israeli political identity, and often hostile to it.

In 2000, a poll published by the Israeli daily Yediot Ahronot revealed that 66 percent of Israeli Arabs would back the Palestinians in any confrontation with Israel, while only 13 percent would support their own country. Similarly, a 1999 survey by the Institute for Peace Research at Givat Haviva found that 32.8 percent of Israeli Arabs believed that only “Israeli” was “appropriate to their self-identity.”

At the beginning of 2001, the Israeli Central Bureau of Statistics (ICBS) reported that 18.7 percent of Israel’s population, including East Jerusalem, was Arab. Today, the Israeli Arab population centers and political hotbeds outside of Jerusalem are found in an area known as the “Triangle” in Northern Israel, where the majority of the Israeli Arabs live.

Read Full Article: InFocus

Barak Seener is the CEO of Strategic Intelligentia and a former Middle East Fellow at the Royal United Services Institute (RUSI). He is on Twitter at @BarakSeener.

Transparently Corrupt

Strategic Intelligentia

(The National Interest) – The most transparent thing about the Palestinian Authority is its wastefulness. If the international community is serious about jump-starting the peace process, it can start by holding the PA accountable.

Without transparency, how can a government properly represent its people, let alone function properly? Western democracies police their own governments rigorously, but, unfortunately, these same countries fail to hold the recipients of their aid to the same robust standards. The international community’s support of the Palestinian Authority (PA) is a striking example of and a cautionary lesson in the perils of bankrolling a corrupt regime while turning a blind eye to its dysfunction. The PA’s lack of transparency, democracy and civil society has exacerbated hostilities with Israel, resulted in internecine conflict and served as an incubator for Islamic fundamentalism and terrorism. But despite all this, $7.4 billion was pledged to the “Palestinian State” for 2008-2010 at the Paris Conference. The international community must cease paying endless lip service to the creation of a viable Palestinian state. Instead, it should force PA accountability through international donations, making contributions contingent upon transparent governance and setting benchmarks for the establishment of a stable and democratic state infrastructure.

Corruption thrives in the PA, as those controlling the purse strings benefit from the absence of accountability and by embezzling funds earmarked for critical infrastructure projects. Far from attempting to generate a dynamic economy, the PA-first under Yasir Arafat and now under Mahmoud Abbas-perpetuates a system based on monopolies in various industries granted by PA officials in exchange for kickbacks. At times during Arafat’s reign, a third of the PA’s budget went for “expenses of the President’s office,” without further explanation, auditing or accounting. The international community, particularly European governments, disbursed funds, often in bags of cash delivered directly to Arafat, watching silently as billions of dollars of international aid disappeared into personal bank accounts. Officials throughout Europe ignored the evidence of this widescale corruption.

Read Full Article: The National Interest

Barak Seener is the CEO of Strategic Intelligentia and a former Middle East Fellow at the Royal United Services Institute (RUSI). He is on Twitter at @BarakSeener.

Reflections on U.S. policy, international affairs and the limitations of the Bush administration

Strategic Intelligentia

(The Henry Jackson Society) – In a candid conversation with Barak M. Seener, Richard Perle offers insightful observations and analyses ranging from the current administration’s recent departure from neo-conservatism, the failings of the Presidential bureaucracy, and the fundamentally flawed strategy pursued by the U.S. in Iraq. Perle delves into the principles of neo-conservatism and addresses the misconceptions surrounding it. He asserts that the promotion of alternative energy is central to national security. Perle goes on to construct an argument for the continued use of interventionism as a legitimate and justifiable policy option. He also delineates the threat of U.S. military primacy and the steps necessary to sustain it. Finally, he discusses his perception of the inevitable failure of any Israeli- Palestinian peace negotiations which ignore the aims of Palestinians, and considers the possibility of militarily engaging Iran and North Korea.

B.M.S. Do you not find it problematic that the Neo- Conservative movement was short-sighted in the fact that they promoted a coherent philosophy which stated that there exists a nexus between autocratic states which lack human rights and their attempt to provide logistical and financial support to terrorist groups around the world? These same regimes threaten international security by their promotion of nuclear proliferation which may find their way into sub-state actors. On the other hand, they did not conduct a rigorous quantitative study as to how the current troop capacity would be able to achieve the grand aims of macro-democratization in the region.

R.P. I would, firstly, like to say that there does not exist a Neo Conservative’Movement’.Neo-Conservatismisaninclination and what does exist is a group of like-minded individuals that share the same inclination on a number, but by no means all, issues. The people who advanced the need to promote democratization as a doctrine did not have in mind military force to facilitate this. To associate support for regime-change with the advocacy of military force is a common misconception. Amongst the many of articles I have written, testimony I’ve given to Congress, television appearance and the like, I have never advocated the use of force as the way to achieve the development of democratic institutions. Douglas Feith and Paul Wolfowitz have argued against the use of military force to achieve this end. Thus, there was no Neo- Conservative focus on the Revolution in Military Affairs in connection with the advancement of democratic institutions. They simply did not consider force. Rather, they saw the necessity in creating institutions such as the National
Endowment for Democracy which would offer political and moral support for subjugated people seeking democracy. Portugal under Salazar or Franco under Spain, as well as Serbia under Milosevic, were all democratized primarily through political action.

Read Full Article: The Henry Jackson Society

Barak Seener is the CEO of Strategic Intelligentia and a former Middle East Fellow at the Royal United Services Institute (RUSI). He is on Twitter at @BarakSeener.

Report and Retort: A Response to John Hulsman

Strategic Intelligentia

(The National Interest) – The following is part of an ongoing debate between Barak M. Seener and John C. Hulsman.Seener offered a critique of Hulsman’s article “Designated Driver Diplomacy.” Hulsman responded, and Seener gets the last word here.

It is impressive how a supposed response manages to ignore several examples of how Britain either openly opposed or pro-actively reinforced U.S. foreign policy. These examples cannot be dismissed as merely being “trees pointing the other direction” in comparison to a forest, as they were pivotal moments in history. Instead, an onslaught is made upon my alleged policy leanings due to my being a “representative of the Henry Jackson Society.” I have never been affiliated with neoconservatism for reasons described below. Ironically, I find myself in the position of wanting to cite the same Cary Grant lines despite it being unbefitting for an alleged neoconservative to recall the effeminate and debonair British actor.

In an emotive appeal to those subscribing to conspiracy theories, the author holds neoconservatives responsible for hijacking U.S. foreign policy. None of the Bush’s cabinet advisors were neoconservatives. They were traditional realists who perceived the world as a dark and dangerous place with amorphous transnational threats that needed to be tackled, especially after 9/11. The notion of a neoconservative coup- which ignores most Democrats’ position in 2002-is facile. It also enables those not subscribing to neoconservatism to evade responsibility for also actively promoting Iraq’s invasion.

Just as historical readings ought not be conducted in a two-dimensional manner, similarly policy affiliations are allowed to be nuanced.

Read Full Article: The National Interest

Barak Seener is the CEO of Strategic Intelligentia and a former Middle East Fellow at the Royal United Services Institute (RUSI). He is on Twitter at @BarakSeener.

Report and Retort: The Special Relationship is Not Flat

Strategic Intelligentia

(The National Interest) – In “Designated Driver Diplomacy”, John C. Hulsman applies an ill-advised one-dimensional world-view to U.S.-British relations, writes Barak M. Seener.

In 1884 Edwin A. Abbott published his famous book Flatland, followed in 2001 by Ian Stewart’s Flatterland. The main message of these books is that persons thinking in terms of one or two dimensions are unable to comprehend “depth” and cannot grapple with multi-dimensional dynamics. Despite geo-strategy’s nuance and evasion of neat policy formulations, John Hulsman engages in “flat” thinking in his article “Designated Driver Diplomacy.” Hulsman suggests that the Macmillanite strategy-“The Americans are crazy; we must always agree with them strategically, and curb their excesses (and promote our national interest) tactically”-defines British policy towards the U.S. post-Suez.

It remains conjecture whether Macmillan disagreed with U.S. presidents in private. But by stating that Britain has aligned itself with the United States merely to curb the latter’s excesses, Hulsman paints a monochromatic picture of the geopolitical landscape. In fact, Britain has overtly opposed American leaders’ foreign policy without engaging in subtle Machiavellian strategies to “curb their excesses.”

Prime Minister Harold Wilson ignored Lyndon Johnson’s desperate pleas for even symbolic participation in Vietnam, while Australia obliged Washington’s requests.

Read Full Article: The National Interest

Barak Seener is the CEO of Strategic Intelligentia and a former Middle East Fellow at the Royal United Services Institute (RUSI). He is on Twitter at @BarakSeener.

Re-evaluating the Links Between the Israeli-Palestinian Conflict and the Threat of Global Jihadism

Strategic Intelligentia

(The Henry Jackson Society) – B.M.S. Your new book, ‘The Fight for Jerusalem’, is unique as it effectively manages to fuse both contemporary realities and policy analysis with the historical, cultural, religious and even archaeological backgrounds to the region. This is rarely achieved as focus is usually granted to only one of these factors at best. You demonstrate how historically, territorial concessions that are made as part of conflict resolution have become springboards for further terrorist attacks elsewhere in the world. In over a decade’s worth of experience with the ‘land for peace’ paradigm, has Israel not realized that this has generated further attacks? Why does it continuously revert back to this failed approach?

D.G. We have a deep perceptual problem across the Western alliance about how to halt the advance of radical Islam. Unfortunately many in the West believe that radical Islam springs up from ongoing political grievances with respect to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. Indeed many European leaders are convinced that if they could resolve tomorrow the Israeli- Palestinian conflict, this would lower the flames of radical Islamic rage, weaken al-Qaeda, and improve the security of the Western alliance including the security of Europe.

However in ‘The Fight for Jerusalem’, I demonstrate that this assumption is completely false. In fact what leads to the spread and growth of radical Islam are not political grievances, but rather a sense of victory. That is the gasoline that is fuelling the engine of al-Qaeda. We also see this in several historical examples. al-Qaeda was not formed in relationship to any of Israel’s wars whether it be in 1948, 1948 1956, 1967 or 1973, but in 1989 when the Soviet Union was defeated in Afghanistan and withdrew. That led the founders of al-Qaeda to conclude that they had just defeated a superpower. They had scored a huge victory against the great powers of the day and they were replicating Islamic history. In the 7th Century, the armies of Mohammed and the early Caliphs eventually decimated both the Persian and Byzantine empires, and spread Islam from N. Africa to China.

Essentially what we learn from the Soviet withdrawal from Afghanistan is that the sense of victory that the Arab mujahadeen who fought there had, led them to conclude that they should form al-Qaeda and challenge the other great Superpower-the US along with its allies. A second time a withdrawal has a powerful impact upon the growth of Jihadism is when Israel withdrew from Southern Lebanon. That led to the perception that, “Israel had a national will as thick as a spider web”, to quote Sheikh Hassan Nasralla, the Secretary General of Hezbollah. It was followed by a massive rearmament of Hezbollah by Iran.

Read Full Article: The Henry Jackson Society

Barak Seener is the CEO of Strategic Intelligentia and a former Middle East Fellow at the Royal United Services Institute (RUSI). He is on Twitter at @BarakSeener.