The ticking clock(s) on Iran...

Apparently, containment of Iran is no longer an option and the Obama administration is showing signs of toughening its stance. In doing so, the administration appears to be shifting the anticipated costs and benefits (and the likelihood) of military strikes on Iran.

One of Israel's leading commentators, Ehud Yaari, had this piece in yesterday's Jerusalem Post:

I have solid information indicating that the top echelons of the administration – National Security Council, Pentagon, State Department – have reached the conclusion that the US cannot adopt the option of containing a nuclear Iran.

The option of accepting a nuclear Iran, unwillingly of course, and then trying to contain it, was advocated by many important players on the American foreign policy scene. This option is now apparently off the table.

There is a change of policy not only in terms of sanctions, both at the UN Security Council and those unilateral sanctions now imposed by both the US, EU and others, but also an understanding by the administration that in no way can Iran be allowed to acquire a nuclear weapon.

How do we know this? Among other things, because this is what the Americans have been telling Arab leaders over recent weeks.

And why have they changed their minds? Because of what the leaders of the Gulf states, including the king of Saudi Arabia, have been saying to Obama for some time now: “We cannot live with a nuclear Iran.”

So, what to make of this?

During my recent trip to Israel, the group I was with met with Yaari. He is a smart voice in Israel and he has incredible access throughout the Middle East, so I trust he is on to something. He expressed concern that there are two clocks on Iran. The first is the clock on how long it will take Iran to develop a nuclear weapon. The second, and more worrisome, clock is the time it will take Iran to fully “bury” (hide and harden) its nuclear research and production facilities. He argued that it is this second clock that is the real trigger for Israeli military action – and it is moving more quickly than the first. His general sense is that it might be a year away, but that it is almost certainly coming and the Israelis will not accept it – a line we heard from multiple officials.

There has been a lot of conversation on what happens if, and when, Tehran does develop a nuclear weapon. But, a more significant danger is the possibility that Tehran may (mis)calculate that it can go to the brink of developing a weapon and stop short. This is particularly dangerous, because in doing so, it would almost certainly expire the second clock and trigger an Israeli strike.

This concern no doubt factors into the Obama administration’s current thinking. It obviously wants a reversal from Iran. But, it also does not want an Israeli strike and is looking for ways to constrain an Israeli attack which increasingly appears like it is in the works. But the Israelis are very distrustful of this administration and Obama doesn’t have a whole lot of leverage right now (a point Drezner also was able to identify on his second day in the country). The Obama administration also knows that Netanyahu has unequivocal support from several US constituencies – the Tea Partiers just introduced House Res. 1553 which may be a non-starter here, but is a strong signal to those in Jerusalem.

Hence, Obama’s shift appears to be an effort, in part, to demonstrate the administration’s toughness to the Israelis (and to constrain them) as much as to offer reassurances to the Gulf states. So right now, the current policy is premised on the hope that the new UN, US, and EU sanctions coupled with stepping up a stronger posture by the United States might compel Tehran to change it’s course on both the first and second clocks.

However, for those keeping score at home, Obama’s new tack also changes a lot of thinking on the cost-benefit ratio of U.S. military action.

We’ve all heard that a military strike would be very difficult and costly. It would almost certainly trigger Iranian nationalism (74 million strong) and lead to a significant escalation of terrorism and violence. We would almost certainly see an Iranian response against Israel coming from Hamas and Hezbollah which have spent the last couple of years stockpiling rocket and missile upgrades. And, the Iranians could raise all kinds of hell in Iraq and in Afghanistan.

But, with the Obama administration now telling folks that it will not accept a nuclear Iran -- the perceived costs of inaction have just increased. The thinking that I've been hearing, both in Israel and more recently from friends close to the administration, is that if Iran went nuclear without a U.S. military response, we would see several things happen: 1) Iran would be emboldened to play an even greater destabilizing role throughout the region; 2) the US influence/relationships with the gulf states would collapse and trigger a wide range of regional reactions which would lead to a sharp spike in terrorism, the disruption of global oil production and distribution, and a collapse of an already vulnerable global economy (notice the second and third order effects built into the first assumption); 3) it would trigger a wave of destabilizing proliferation throughout the Middle East -- both the Saudis and Egyptians have warned that they would move quickly to develop their own capabilities; 4) radicals would see this as a victory for Islamic fundamentalism and would launch assaults on all moderate Islamic and Arab parties; and 5) the Palestinians, currently looking at the U.S.-Iran situation for cues, would radicalize if Iran wins and launch more aggressive attacks against Israel. In short, the situation would lead to a global economic crisis, massive violence, and a radicalization of politics around the globe.

And, while I challenged my interlocutors on each point with both logical and empirical arguments, I don't think I had much effect. It reminds me of the way in which the uncontested, casual assumptions emerged in pre-war Iraq discourse and fueled the groupthink.

Furthermore, the probability of war almost certainly increases when we couple this thinking with new "estimates" that the costs of war might be lower:

Other intelligence sources say that the U.S. Army's Central Command, which is in charge of organizing military operations in the Middle East, has made some real progress in planning targeted air strikes — aided, in large part, by the vastly improved human-intelligence operations in the region. "There really wasn't a military option a year ago," an Israeli military source told me. "But they've gotten serious about the planning, and the option is real now."

The general sense I have is that we have no more than a year before something will have to give. The multiple moving parts to this story are clearly dangerous and all of the various forms of brinksmanship that we'll see in the coming months are ripe for miscalculation.

"An AQ/Taliban Executioner's Dream."

Quoting an anonymous former military intelligence officer, that is how Adam Swerer described the Wikileaks' archive published Sunday in an op-ed earlier this week. Joshua Foust concurred in a PBS essay:

If I were a Taliban operative with access to a computer — and lots of them have access to computers — I’d start searching the WikiLeaks data for incident reports near my area of operation to see if I recognized anyone. And then I’d kill whomever I could identify. Those deaths would be directly attributable to WikiLeaks.

Even with the names removed from these reports, you know where they happened (many still have place names). You know when they happened. And you know an Afghan was speaking to a U.S. soldier or intelligence agent. If you have times, locations and half the participants, you don’t need names to identify who was involved in a conversation — with some very basic detective work, you can find out (and it’s much easier to do in Afghanistan, which loves gossip).

This morning, the New York Times confirmed that the presumably heavily redacted leaked reports contain numerous data-points, including specific names, that will identify Afghan informants who have provided intelligence to US forces. The Afghan government is rightly appalled:

"Whether those individuals acted legitimately or illegitimately in providing information to the NATO forces, their lives will be in danger now," said Mr. Karzai, who spoke at a press conference just after he said he discussed the issue with his advisors. "Therefore we consider that extremely irresponsible and an act that one cannot overlook."

While the government mulls options for prosecuting Assange (more thoughts on that shortly), consideration should probably be given to the legal or ethical culpability of the mainstream press as well. There are professional standards in most industries about the protection of sources. (As a political scientist, if I published my human subjects data in such a way as to put their lives at risk, I would face serious professional consequences.) Yet the paper is blithely oblivious to its own role in publicizing and legitimizing Wikileaks' actions:

A search by The New York Times through a sampling of the documents released by the organization WikiLeaks found reports that gave the names or other identifying features of dozens of Afghan informants, potential defectors and others who were cooperating with American and NATO troops.

The Times and two other publications given access to the documents — the British newspaper The Guardian and the German magazine Der Spiegel — posted online only selected examples from documents that had been redacted to eliminate names and other information that could be used to identify people at risk. The news organizations did this to avoid jeopardizing the lives of informants.

They may have redacted names in their print versions, but they publicized the archive and linked to it, ensuring its contents maximum exposure. Does this fall within the bounds of appropriate conduct for professional journalists? Based on a reading of the "minimize harm" rules in the Society of Professional Journalists Code of Ethics, I have my doubts.

Even if there's no legal requirement, it seems to me that the mainstream news media could and should play a significant role in cases like this in disseminating rights-based norms for reporting and sourcing to online journalists. There is no professional association for bloggers, no oversight for users who generate content on YouTube, Facebook or other social networking sites, no codes of conduct for one-URL entities who make it their business to raise awareness of specific issues. However, when mainstream news organizations cover the actions of those organizations or individuals in a way that raises their influence and profile, they have an ethical responsibility to consider the fall out to vulnerable individuals of that coverage.

I would argue this extends to negotiating terms with people like Assange that make cooperation contingent on guarantees of certain ethical standards in their own work. Most likely such a socialization process would have helped an amateur like Assange avoid what he himself admits were mistakes, and resulted in a set of wikileaks that minimized the "collateral damage" to Afghan citizens.

In the absence of such guarantees, the mainstream news media could have published a different story, as soon as they understood the contents of the archive: a story about the evolving relationship between new media and human security, perhaps headlined "Wikileaks Founder Poised to Endanger Civilian Lives in Afghanistan."

Instead, they treated him as a fellow journalist without holding him to any journalistic standards. Whatever the merits of the rest of the archive, The Times, the Guardian and Der Spiegel dropped the ball by cooperating fully with Assange instead of reining him in.

I wonder if an outcome of this fiasco might be the establishment of offices within mainstream news outlets specifically designed to review the ethics of complicity in publishing stories like this, staffed by individuals with human rights and ethics training whose job is to liase in a responsible manner with new media information sources upon which mainstream news reporting has increasingly come to rely.

UN Passes "Right to Water": Diplomacy everywhere but not a drop to drink.

Yesterday the General Assembly passed a non-binding resolution declaring “the right to safe and clean drinking water and sanitation as a human right that is essential for the full enjoyment of the right to life."

The vote passed with 122 countries voting and 41 countries abstaining, including United States, Britain, Canada, Australia – but also other nations like Botswana and Turkey. On the other hand, China, Russia, Germany, France, Spain and Brazil backed the resolution.

This vote comes after many years of debate. Water, increasingly seen as a strategic issue and a natural resource, is not something that countries with large amounts of fresh water (I’m looking at you, Canada) want to be obligated to part with under international law.

But the idea that water is a fundamental right is something that the UN has been working on for some time. In 2003, the WHO published an argument in favour of enshrining such a right. Their argument follows that a right to water is largely inseparable from a right to health and a reasonable standard of living. Additionally, defining water as a “right” was seen as having the has the following advantages:

• achieving basic and improved levels of access should be accelerated;
• the “least served” are better targeted and therefore inequalities decreased;
• communities and vulnerable groups will be empowered to take part in decision making processes;
• the means and mechanisms available in the United Nations human rights system will be used to monitor the progress of States Parties in realizing the right to water and to hold governments accountable.

In other words, establishing a “right” means that there will be the ability to claim that right and demand that someone act upon it. Further arguments in support of the right to water by leading proponent Maude Barlow, (who calls it the "most violated right") can be read here.

A couple of observations on this development:

First of all, I think it needs to be said that not having clean water and poor sanitation is probably an undisputable bad thing. That individuals in poorer counties are forced to drink contaminated water in this day and age is pretty much a terrible tragedy.

Additionally, while realists or sceptics may argue that defining something as a “right” in international law will basically have little to no impact, recent work by Beth Simmons suggests that this may actually not be the case. Simmon’s recent work on human rights treaties and documents demonstrates that where the possibility to organize exists (even in repressive countries) the human rights situations of some countries measurably improves.

This "right to water" approach also seems to reflect a "Basic Rights" approach advocated in the 1970s and 1980s by those (such as Professor Henry Shue) who argued that it was not very useful to divide rights up into "political" and "economic and social" but rather to think about, literally, what basic rights human beings need for survival. It's all very nice to have the right to freedom of speech, but if you're dying of thirst it's not particularly useful.

So, acknowledging the general tragedy of the situation and the fact that change may actually result from this (although more thoughts of the international legal aspect of this below), what are we left with?

I should say that after about 30 minutes of trying I cannot, for the life of me, find the text of resolution (A/64/L.63/Rev.1) on the internet. I’m assuming that it will be online later.

However, an accounting of the vote is available here. The major objections seem to be:

• The US Representative argued that the resolution describes “the right to water and sanitation in a way not reflected in existing international law since there was no right to water and sanitation in an international legal sense, as described by the resolution.” The UK agreed with this, stating that there was no customary evidence that there was such a right.
• The US Representative also suggested that the resolution was not drafted in an “open” or “clear” way and largely circumvented the traditional processes of developing “rights”. The Australian Representative seemed to agree, stating that his state “had reservations about declaring new human rights in a General Assembly resolution. Indeed, when new rights were recognized, consensus was essential.”
• The Representative of Canada argued that the resolution “appeared to determine that there was indeed a right without setting out its scope” of that right.

(For those that are interested, UNDispatch has the full US argument here.)

What also seems to be the case is that there is a parallel process on going in Geneva where there is an Independent Expert currently undertaking research in this area. This vote occurred before that expert could report.

However, it seems clear that states are opposed to the idea that human rights can be drafted in non-binding General Assembly resolutions. (In this sense it is interesting that there is so much commentary on the failure to achieve consensus. States who voted in favour regret that consensus could not be achieved and those who voted against seem to argue that the resolution was drafted and pushed through in such a way that consensus was impossible.)

Also, there is the obvious concern over sovereignty and sovereignty over resources that the Canadian representative (no surprises there) seems to be getting at. Is there an obligation for states with lots of fresh water to provide it for free to states with little?

Incidentally, my favourite statement in the whole description of the vote was that given by the Albanian Representative who stated “he had not been present for the vote and wished to place on the record that he would have abstained.” Hope it was a nice lunch then.

There is much that could be said about consensus vs voting, “rights based development”, non-binding resolutions in the General Assmembly, etc. But this is already a long post. So I’ll just leave it to listing some questions that I have, and hope that some will be answered when I do eventually get to read the text – or in subsequent international debate over the issue.

First - what about cases where states are responsible for polluting their own water? China has basically turned many of its own rivers into toxic, stinking, flowing masses of chemicals through its industrial development and poor monitoring of environmental degradation. Is there an obligation to provide water to nations that have acted irresponsibly? Or to nations that refuse to take steps to improve their own sanitation?

Second – It seems as if the resolution is not clear as to who is responsible for providing this ‘right’. The ‘emerging norm’ of the “Responsibility to Protect” makes it clear that states are responsible in the first instance. This is the long standing position of China, Russia and virtually all of the Non-Aligned Nations. So does this count for water too?

Third - Could this have perverse results? Would poorer countries that are water-rich be forced to give water to its potentially richer neighbours? Say, for example, Costa Rica (who voted in favour of the resolution and has a reasonable water/sanitation level for Central America) be forced to give water to wealthier Arab nations?

Fourth – (and this is more of an observation) in terms of international law this technically does not have much sway. Unlike the human rights treaties that Simmons is concerned with, it’s a non-binding General Assembly Resolution that does not have any enforcement mechanisms nor can it be said to have received overwhelming support. But there will be little doubt that humanitarian and NGOs will use this as evidence of an “emerging norm” regarding the obligation to provide clean water. And it is also clear that states are concerned about the emergence of such a ‘right’ – wherever and however it develops.

EDIT: Friend and very cool guy Jeremy Youde has provided me with the link! The text of the resolution is here. It is pretty short - consisting of three main points. In this sense I can see why there was some concern over the 'scope' of the right. It simply states that there is a right but does not specify who is to provide it or what may be required of states. The only indication is calling upon states to help provide better assistance... but as Jeremy points out in his comment, it does not state what happens if the water is not there to begin with.

Children shouldn't have Strontium 90

The Washington Post calls this one of the ten worst campaign attack ads of all time (ranked 2nd behind Daisy Girl). Hmmm, I actually thought it made a good point -- and certainly summed up Goldwater's views on international treaties and arms control. I thought the line "they can make you die" was a nice touch. I guess the ice cream cone might have been a bit over the top....

Still, it was Goldwater who gave us this classic during his acceptance speech at the 1964 Republican Convention...:



...that helped spawn the modern "conservative" movement of today (ranked 7th by the Post):



I've begun collecting political ads for a course I co-teach on Propaganda and War and welcome any recommendations.

Identifying Groupthink

Many of the Journolist critics have expressed concerns that the listserv's membership -- you had to be political "center to left" to join -- fomented groupthink.

Andrew Sullivan's critique is succinct, but he's hardly alone in leveling the charge: "It is this tendency to groupthink and exclusivity that concerns me."

Reihan Salam, who was generally sympathetic to Journolist in an on-line piece he wrote last week, has recalibrated his argument to criticize J-list about the alleged groupthink problem:

What I meant to say, and evidently didn’t say very effectively, is that JList is inevitable. So the best we can do is criticize pernicious groupthink, which is where the tendency of “like-minded people become friends and start to think even more alike and help each other out” goes badly wrong.

The irony, of course, is that this widely embraced criticism (and a few others) -- emanating mostly from opinion writers on the right, but resonating throughout the right-wing blogosphere and other media outlets -- actually reflects the kind of pack journalism the critics purport to be criticizing.

Of course, critics have lept to this conclusion without any real evidence. Only a tiny fraction of the more than 10,000 Journolist emails have been reproduced publicly and no one has demonstrated that the listmembers (like me) unthinkingly mimiced any kind of ideological line in their public writing.

There is actually another important example of hypocrisy embedded in Salam's latest piece as well, as the young writer reveals his early days in journalism:

I did work at The New Republic as an intern in 2001, and I spent most of my time there, and as a freelancer the year after, beating the drum for the invasion of Iraq.

Political scientists argued as early as the 2002 buildup to war that the Iraq war drums reflected groupthink. First impressions were apparently accurate -- and the media played along with the dominant narrative.

As one final point, keep in mind that "groupthink" worrywart Andrew Sullivan embraced the Iraq war like my sister once embraced David Cassidy.

From QIZ to ROZ

In 2008, after kicking around the idea for a couple of years, the US formally proposed to create Reconstruction Opportunity Zones (ROZs) in remote parts of Pakistan (FATA, NWFP, earthquake affected areas of Kashmir, a part of Balochistan province) and all of Afghanistan. The idea was modeled on the Qualified Industrial Zones (QIZ) preferential free trade agreement set up to help forge a liberal-economic peace between Israel, the Palestinian Territories, and the neighboring Arab states.

QIZ

The 2004 Egyptian-Israeli QIZ agreement, which I researched extensively while I was teaching at the American University in Cairo, did spark some cooperative ventures, particularly in the textile industry. However, the agreement was riddled with problems and often the subject of bitter complaints particularly from Egyptian merchants who felt they were being overcharged for raw materials by their Israeli counterparts. The Egyptian general public was not highly supportive (and in some quarters there was active hostility) of the QIZ agreement; although there were a few protests by workers whose factories were excluded from the agreements to be allowed into the agreement.

The way these preferential free trade agreements (PFTAs) work is that a certain percentage of the specified goods produced in a designated area must include value added by country X and/or country Y before it will be granted duty free access to the United States. These are technically non-reciprocal agreements, so while country X and/or country Y can export duty free to the US, the US may not export items duty free to those countries. (It should be noted though that Congress added provisions to the ROZ bill such that participating countries must be moving toward a market economy, protecting intellectual property, and removing trade barriers against the US as certified by the US President.) Despite the label "preferential free trade agreement," these are not free trade agreements strictly speaking, in fact they may create perverse and distortionary incentives to use inputs from parties to the agreement rather than searching for the cheapest global supplier of an input.

In the Egyptian-Israeli case, the agreement stipulated that goods needed to contain at least 11.7% Israeli components and 11.7% Egyptian components in order to gain duty free access to the US. A joint commission was set up to monitor compliance. While the QIZs did spark a modest boost in exports and help to partially break the taboo against doing business with Israel, the Egyptian government viewed the agreement primarily through an economic rather than a political lens. Hence, Egypt did not see the agreement as a mechanism to help thaw the Cold Peace as the Americans had hoped. Egypt resisted opportunities to allow the trade agreement to help foster greater social links between its citizens and Israel. And as Israel's relations with Hamas and Hezbollah worsened, the opportunity for thawing the Cold Peace receded...

ROZ

Like the QIZ, the ROZ requires that 35% of the value of the final products produced in the ROZ must be from a SAARC (South Asian Association for Regional Cooperation) member country to be eligible for duty-free export status to the United States (until the year 2023). In other words, the ROZ cannot merely be used as a front by non-South Asian countries to pry open US markets. The agreement is mainly designed to assist manufacturers of textiles, leather, carpets, marble, furniture, etc. According to the Congressional Research Service, those manufacturers would see tariffs reduced from an average of 8% to 0%. Apparel manufacturers, who pay an average tariff of 15%, would generally not benefit from this agreement.

Unlike the QIZ agreement, however, there is no joint-production provision. So Pakistani manufacturers are not being asked to work with Afghan suppliers or vice versa.

The official stated aim of the ROZ is to spur economic development and create jobs in areas rife with Taliban insurgents. The logic is that economic opportunities might help to curb some of the financial lure of fighting for the Taliban and thus help the US military to hold territory it has cleared of insurgents. The agreement is feasible because neither Afghanistan nor Pakistan is a significant trade partner for the US (combined exports and imports from each country is less than 1% of US total trade).

Stalemate

Unfortunately for South Asian businessmen, the ROZ idea has been idling in the US Congress for over a year. The House passed a bill which included the ROZs last summer, but the Senate approved an aid bill for Pakistan (S. 1707) that did not include the ROZ language. The Republican party is opposed to the labor protection measures added to the bill by House Democrats. The fear among Republicans is that this piece of legislation may set a precedent for adding similar labor protection provisions in other preferential free trade agreements. Naturally, pro-labor Democrats do not see a reason to allow duty free imports that might compete with products produced by union workers in the US. Beneath the ideological rhetoric, there are also some remaining protectionist concerns for America's dying textile (and apparel) industry. Although the ROZ concept was part of the Obama's administration's Af-Pak policy (March 2009), the White House has not apparently prioritized overcoming this deadlock in the Senate.

Of course, even if the ROZ provisions were passed by the Senate tomorrow, Afghanistan and the relevant parts of Pakistan are still active battlefields with a raging insurgency. Thus, one has to question the actual intention and design of the legislation. The notion that a reconstruction zone must be located in remote parts of Pakistan in order to generate employment within those regions is questionable since labor is mobile and sending home remittance income is a commonplace practice throughout South Asia. One could easily use Pakistan's existing textile plants and encourage laborers from FATA and NWFP (now called Khyber-Pakhtunkhwa) to migrate to those areas. This would create jobs faster and thus make a greater impact on the lives of people in the border areas.

Locating ROZ's in remote areas rather than port cities also hinders the ability of the manufacturers to rapidly export to the US market. Some of these problems, particularly for landlocked Afghanistan, may be made easier if the 2010 Afghanistan-Pakistan Tranist Trade Agreement (APTTA - see previous post) is actualized.

The addition of labor protection measures to the ROZ bill may be superfluous. American and European private firms have been quite willing in recent years to conduct their own inspections of labor conditions among contractors in order to avoid embarrassing publicity and activist campaigns. Similarly, the requirement that Afghanistan and Pakistan make good faith efforts to protect US intellectual property rights is a poor misallocation of priorities and resources when one is attempting to spur development in highly impoverished countries.

One must also question the narrow scope of the agreement. If the Congressional Research Service is correct, apparel manufacturers are all generally unlikely to benefit from the ROZ scheme. While the ROZ does extend the Generalized System of Preferences to include textiles, it does not go far enough to encourage some of the types of economic activity which South Asian manufacturers could capitalize upon. During the Cold War, the US prioritized its security over economic self-interest and extended generous access to its markets for allied economies in East Asia (Japan, South Korea, Taiwan). Certainly, if the US is interested in actually spurring economic development as a means to enhance its own national security, then it should be willing to sacrifice some domestic jobs in sunset industries for this purpose.

What the ROZ program seems to reveal is that American policymakers are mainly interested in creating the appearance of a comprehensive Af-Pak strategy that goes beyond the massive investment in the military occupation and counter-insurgency campaign. However, there is very little political will to make the sacrifices and compromises necessary to actually spur rapid economic development if it comes at the expense of American jobs. This may be an indication that despite the general rhetoric to the contrary, American lawmakers do not believe that an unstable and economically underdeveoped Af-Pak region poses a serious threat to US national security. Either that or they do believe that the region is "the most dangerous place on Earth" but they cannot overcome stale ideological debates and creatively design an ROZ scheme that would bring rapid and tangible economic benefits to Afghanistan and Pakistan.

[Cross-posted from my Afghan Notebook]

Why states shouldn't count on Facebook for foreign policy

My colleague, Ben O’Loughlin at Royal Holloway, has written a blog post on the potential consequences of states in the West, particularly the US and UK, increasingly relying on informal social networking of its citizens to promote foreign policy priorities. This would be a move away from the kind of ham-fisted attempts at public diplomacy seen in the wake of 9/11 aimed at getting Arab states to “like” the west to allowing every day citizens to debate the international issues of the day.

Thus, “The War on Terror” becomes the “The Long Change” – or changing people’s minds.

However, Ben points out several potentially huge flaws in this idea:

What is new is that this public diplomacy can be done by publics themselves through social media. The clumsy strategic communication officers of the state can stand back. This approach assumes that communication and connection between people across borders through social media can have a liberal, pluralizing effect. But its not clear why people would engage in patient, deliberative, possibly multilingual conversation with people in other countries about controversial political issues. Anyone familiar with the ‘under the line’ discussions on news websites will see how quickly and often the conversation becomes a hostile dialogue of the deaf.

So, perversely, publics must be taught how to be spontaneously deliberative. Forums for ‘global conversations’ will be created, along the lines of the BBC’s Have Your Say online spaces. These will form the ideal of what public-to-public diplomacy is about, for emulation by progressive media around the world. Unacceptable opinions or styles of participation will be moderated out. The mechanism for the long change is us, or what has been called in recent years ‘the power of we’ and ‘we the media’. But any global ‘we’ will have to be carefully constructed and edited.

It is stating the obvious to note that foreign policy issues are already being debated on the internet by both states and citizens. (The fact that the Israeli MFA actually bothered to tweet me on my Flotilla post brought that fact home to me in a big and scary way.) And I admit that I was impressed last year with the global online support for the Iranian protesters in the wake of the election there – although I do wonder if this constitutes debate? It was interesting that Obama intervened and asked that Twitter delay a service update in order to facilitate the Iranians protesting. Ben does not touch on these issues in his post. But the larger point to what he is getting to is whether such movements (particularly the one aimed at Iran) can be harnessed by states in ways that (cheaply!) support their foreign policy priorities.

I share Ben’s scepticism. However, where he seems to be concerned that “The Long Change, should it come to pass, implicates social media - and us as users and citizens – directly into international affairs in ways that require very careful scrutiny” I confess that I am more concerned over the idea that foreign policy could be constructively debated between “Beiberfan4Lyfe16” and “jiHHHAdiKilla”.

*picture from xkcd. I'm a huge nerd.

Kosovo: Countrified!

Just in case you were in suspense, the ICJ has declared that Kosovo's declaration of independence to be legal. Unsurprisingly, the Kosovars are happy, the Serbs are not happy and countries with independence movements are probably a bit more nervous. As the Guardian reports:

The ruling is expected to have profound ramifications on the wider international stage, bolstering demands for recognition by territories as diverse as Northern Cyprus, Somaliland, Nagorno-Karabakh, South Ossetia, Abkhazia and Transnistria.

Still, it was unlikely that a negative ruling would have meant the end of such movements either.

I'd link to the ruling, but I think the website is being hammered by international justice junkies.

So based off my earlier blog post, the Court has effectively confirmed (albeit in a non-binding opinion) a fait acompli. The real tangible benefit for Kosovo now is that it will probably be much more palatable for more countries to recognize it as a member of the international community. (Although whether or not it will change the minds of the Russians is another story.)

Just one final thought - the news reports on the decision have stated that the court has determined that there is nothing in international law which prevents a declaration of independence. It will be interesting to see (once their servers stop being hammered) if they do say anything about the peer-recognition of other states as well. Although this may be getting too far from the original question before the Court.

The Transit Trade Agreement

Although the story has garnered relatively little attention in the US, the Afghanistan-Pakistan Transit Trade Agreement (APTTA) is probably one of the most important developments impacting the medium-term economic and political health of Afghanistan. As the US State Department correctly noted,

"This agreement is one of the most important, concrete achievements between the two neighbors in 45 years and represents the most significant bilateral economic treaty ever signed between Afghanistan and Pakistan. It will undoubtedly bring great benefit to the people of both countries and is also a major milestone in promoting regional trade."

The 2010 APTTA, which has been in the works for several years, was pushed through with strong pressure from the US last Sunday. Basically, in exchange for Pakistan's cooperation, the US has provided Pakistan with...

"... significant investments in health, water, agriculture, government-to-government partnerships, support for the private sector, energy, security, gender equality, and a wide range of programs to help those who have been displaced by the ongoing fighting in Pakistan."

The 2010 APTTA replaces an "outdated" agreement from 1965. Under international law, states bordering landlocked countries are required to provide transit facilities, however legitimate Pakistani fears of smuggling corroded the 1965 agreement. The new agreement is actually a reciprocal agreement that permits Afghanistan to export products duty-free through Pakistan to India, while allowing Pakistan to conduct transit trade through Afghanistan to states in Central Asia. Pakistan objected to Afghanistan's request to be allowed to import products overland from India via Pakistan (nominally because India has not extended Pakistan transit rights to landlocked Nepal). Nevertheless, Afghanistan is permitted to import products from India (and any other country) via Pakistani seaports. Of course, India will soon have the ability to transit its exports to Afghanistan via Iran. So Pakistan's objection to Indian exports to Afghanistan will become largely irrelevant as road (and some rail) links from Iran's Chabahar port to Delaram are completed.

The new APTTA is carefully designed to limit opportunities for smuggling which corroded the old agreement. In the past, imported duty free goods (e.g. tea, tires) that were supposed to be sold in Afghanistan ended up flooding the Pakistani market. Smuggling of duty free goods resulted in major losses of customs revenue for the Pakistani government. Hence, the new agreement lays down precise measures to counteract those practices. According to the Associated Press of Pakistan,

"... Afghan trucks will be allowed to carry Afghan Transit Export Cargo on designated routes to Pakistani seaports and [one of the only India-Pakistan border crossing points at] Wagah.

The Afghan transport units, on return, will be permitted to carry goods from Pakistan to Afghanistan under the same expeditious procedures and conditions as Pakistani transport units.

It was also decided that all Afghan transit goods will be exported in containers of international specifications. For a period of three years, the cargo will be allowed to be transported in internationally acceptable and verifiable standards of sealable trucks while the oversize and bulk cargo which is not imported in containers - shipload will be transported in open trucks or other transport units. It was also agreed that export of perishable goods in transit will be transported in open trucks or other transport units.

According to the record note signed, the drivers and cleaners will be allowed to enter/exit the two countries on permits, identified by the biometric devices installed at the entry points.

It was also agreed that an arbitrator tribunal will be established bilaterally. In case of failure to agree on a common name of third arbitrator, two names of non-nationals and non- residents will be proposed by each side and the third arbitrator will be selected by drawing lots from the four proposed names.

To tackle the issue of unauthorized trade, it has been agreed that tracking devices on transport units will be installed and a mechanism for custom to custom information sharing (IT data and others) will be established. In this context, it has also been agreed that financial guarantees equal to the amount of import levies of Pakistan have to be deposited by authorized brokers/custom clearing agents to check the unauthorized trade and these deposits will be released after the goods exit the country.

In case, the goods do not exit the country within specified time, the guarantees will be encashed by the custom authorities."

The agreement is significant for Afghanistan because it provides Afghans with access to a vital emerging market and reduces its economic and hence political dependency on Pakistan. The government of Pakistan's exercise of hegemony over Afghanistan prior to 2001 and its clear preference for shielding certain Taliban elements even after 2001 provide ample reason for Afghanistan to seek to break free of its dependence on Pakistan.

The government of Pakistan potentially also benefits from the agreement for two reasons. First, the new agreement may reduce some smuggling of duty free goods into Pakistan. Second, Pakistan gains access to the landlocked states and resource rich states of Central Asia via Afghanistan.

Given the massive corruption in both Afghanistan and Pakistan, one must remain skeptical that this new agreement with its high tech tracking and biometric provisions will successfully curb smuggling over the long run. Nevertheless, the agreement can be seen as a medium-term "win-win" for both countries and for South Asia as an artificially divided economic region.

Any long term solution for sustainable transit trade would require building stronger states in South Asia that are less dependent on customs duties for revenue and capable of generating greater revenue from their better-off citizens. Although tax reform initiatives have been seriously debated (for example in India), unifying and widening the tax base to cover the emerging middle class (and thus creating space for lowering customs duties on imports) in South Asia will probably take many years. Faithfully ratifying and implementing the South Asian Free Trade Area (SAFTA) agreement would also be a major prerequisite. At the moment the political will and mutual trust necessary for removing barriers to intra-regional trade are weak, but the APTTA is a step in the right direction.

[Cross-posted from my Afghan Notebook]

Top Secret America: The Garrison State has arrived

A couple of thoughts on Dana Priest and William Arkin's series that began in the Washington Post yesterday. First, this is the type of story that is all but non-existent in our non-stop 24-hour news cycles -- a two-year investigative report that pulls together thousands of bits and pieces of information and carefully assembles them to tell the bigger story of where we have traveled in the past decade. (I see that the story actually bumped CNN's coverage of Sara Palin's last tweet...) (Update: My bad -- the Post actually featured Palin's last tweet above the Top Secret America in the streaming news banner... oh well..)

Second, on the substance, the sheer size of this new intelligence and security system is staggering:

Some 1,271 government organizations and 1,931 private companies work on programs related to counterterrorism, homeland security and intelligence in about 10,000 locations across the United States.

I'm guessing when others take a closer look -- we'll find that Priest and Arkin are either double counting some things or tallying things that are only peripheral to the overall system.

Nonetheless, it is clear the United States is a garrison state. We are a society that lives in fear and we have a set of institutions designed specifically to hide the costs and consequences of our security. Since 9/11, the United States has hovered around 50% of global expenditures on defense, i.e., as much as the rest of the world combined. If we add the amount of spending on domestic security and all of the related state and municipal security and intelligence spending as part of overall security expenditures, that percentage no doubt sky rockets (this doesn't even begin to consider the qualitative advantage of these capabilities -- the US spends somewhere near two-thirds of the global R&D on security technology). Furthermore, the magnitude of the effort across multiple lead departments and agencies makes accountability almost impossible. Think about it: Where can sufficient oversight come from? What kind of institutional structure would be needed to control this system?


Priest and Arkin argue that we need to have a candid discussion about these institutions and whether or not they are worth it. Of course, scholars such as Andrew Bacevich and John Mueller have been making similar arguments -- from different perspectives -- for several years. But here's the problem: there are powerful structural forces that entrench and perpetuate this system: private security firms and commercial defense industries with powerful economic motives are coupled with epistemic communities that provide the ideological justifications for the system; personnel systems that encourage/allow tight relationships and/or revolving doors between government agencies and private firms; and, massive bureaucracies that expand and adapt to new roles and missions, etc.... In addition, once the system grows as big as it is, there is a diffusion effect. For example, stimulus money is being used to construct not only new security facilities, but also to construct the infrastructure (roads, communications lines, and other municipal services) to support those facilities. This isn't just about security, its also about jobs.

Aaron Friedberg argued that the United States was able to avoid becoming a garrison state after World War II largely because of the objections of the anti-statists in the American public --= principally Midwest Conservative Republicans. But where are the domestic constituencies capable of checking the garrison state today? The Eisenhower anti-statists within the Republican party of the 1950s died with the Reagan revolution. Today's "anti-statists" aren't really anti-statist -- for example, they are farmers who oppose Obama"s "socialism" but demand agricultural subsidies or they are seniors concerned about ObamaCare because of how it might affect Medicare or their Veteran health benefits, etc... No one in the Tea Party movement that loathes the rising deficit is calling for a reduction of American defense or security expenditures.

The left is equally unwilling or incapable of stemming the flow. Progressives mobilized to elect Barak Obama. But, Obama entered office as the most constrained president since Harry Truman -- two wars and a global financial meltdown -- and much of this security infrastructure was already in place. Obama's problem-solving pragmatism has ignored the progressive agenda and there don't appear to be any articulate or strong voices challenging this "Top Secret America" system from within the Democratic Party leadership.

I agree that we need a rational discussion on risks and threat and we need more transparency regarding the institutions that are being designed. I'm just skeptical that we will have one....

What I Ended Up Reading in Between World Cup Matches Abroad

Last month during the Greece/South Korea World Cup game, my eight-year-old son noticed the players speaking to one another in English, and asked me: “Mom, is English the official language of soccer?” As with so many of his astute little queries, I didn’t know the answer at the time. But while in Asia, I read three fabulous books that kept bringing me back to this question and finally not only answered it, but helped me see why it matters.

First: How Soccer Explains the World: An Unlikely Theory of Globalization by Franklin Foer: sort of an empirical, if anecdotal, validation of FIFA’s claim that the world’s language is not English, but soccer itself.

This is a great read, if a bit simplistic. I know professors who have their students read this book freshman year, and Jon Western’s discussion of traveling in the Middle East over the past few weeks of WC finals echoes some of Foer’s insights. But Foer doesn’t actually explore the relationship between the English language and the globalization of soccer.

For that, I browsed through most of Robert McCrum‘s Globish: How the English Language Became the World’s Language. As the subtitle implies, McCrum’s central argument is that English has already become a sort of global Common.

Of course, I’ve long noticed the same trends my son picked up on: English as a kind of lingua franca in transnational spaces. [I was traveling, for example, with a native Arabic speaker, a native Filipino speaker, a brother fluent in Indonesian and Thai locals, but conversation within my group unfailingly took place in some form of English.] I have always tended to chalk this up to some combination of Anglo-American hegemony and the linguistic incompetence of Americans [my Kuwaiti friend rightly trusted his English more than he trusted my Arabic]. But McCrum demonstrates that it’s more than that. The success of English, he argues, is due in large part to the attributes of the language itself: its average word length and lack of diacritical marks make it easy to pick up, write and transliterate. [Try texting in Welsh or in Chinese characters for example.] Most importantly, it’s versatile, capable of transmogrifying (and how), evolving to fit many cultural and class contexts; and it possesses low barriers to entry (unlike say French). McCrum argues that this bundle of characteristics makes English uniquely suited to global spaces and accounts for its rapid proliferation worldwide.

An interesting functionalist account. But is it right that a particular language like English, so mired in imperial history, should take precedence over others? What does this mean about the global culture taking shape? The alternative of course is to build a global Common disconnected from such particularisms, which is precisely what the inventors of Esperanto attempted in the 19th century. But despite a small transnational community of speakers that persists to this day, Esperanto has never really filled its intended function of proliferating as a global lingua franca. Why?

McCrum doesn’t consider how English out-gamed its invented competitors, but this question is explored in the third book I read, the humorous and incisive In the Land of Invented Languages (many, many thanks to the commenter who suggested this one to me). If I had to recommend a single book this summer, here it is. I mean, it begins:

“Klingon speakers, those who have devoted themselves to the study of a language invented for the Star Trek franchise, inhabit the lowest possible rung on the geek ladder. Dungeons and Dragons players, ham radio operators, robot engineers, computer programmers, comic book collectors – they all look down on Klingon speakers…”

Author Arika Orent continues:

The lessons the Klingon phenomena can teach us about how language does and doesn’t work (trust me on this) can be fully appreciated only in the context of the long, strange history of language invention, a history of human ambition, ingenuity and struggle that, in a way, culminates with Klingon.”

This brilliant little book is a journey through some of the world’s 900 invented languages and the “mad dreamers” who made them up, pitched them to the world, and failed to get any takers. I put it down halfway inspired to become an Esperantist, for there is something beautiful in the decision to choose a global tongue for its very trans-nationalism, rather than having it chosen for you by syntax and historical circumstance – the process that McCrum documents.

But in the end, I put down my paperback (or my brother’s Kindle, whichever I happened to have) and went back to studying Thai phrases, not Esperanto, and to speaking English with my Arab and Filipino counterparts rather than struggling along in either Thai or Arabic. When Spain finally beat Holland in that dreadful final match, it was in some dialect of English – or Globish, rather - that the cheers and groans alike resounded through the beach bar, packed with Dutch, Spanish and other European tourists, where we watched. And as McCrum explains, English is indeed not only an informal working language of soccer, a game originally imported from England, but the official default language of FIFA.

So the basic answer to my son’s question is yes, but it’s what the question invites us to explore about world history, linguistics and the globalizing human mind that’s really interesting.

[cross-posted at Lawyers, Guns and Money]

Hypocrisy watch

Before departing on vacation, Stephen Walt posted about a rift between South Korea and the United States concerning spent nuclear fuel reprocessing. The U.S. is opposed, primarily because plutonium is a byproduct, while South Korea wants to reprocess waste so as to reduce the volume of nuclear refuse from its large-scale atomic energy program.

To reduce proliferation fears inherently tied to plutonium production, South Korean policy in this area reflects a pledge (and as Walt notes, implicit threat), that "We will never build nuclear weapons as long as the United States keeps its alliance with us."

After making other interesting points about the dispute, Walt makes an argument that I have often discussed in the past. The U.S. view on nonproliferation is laden with hypocricy:

it's hard not to be struck by the basic hypocrisy of the U.S. position, which it shares with other existing nuclear powers. Washington has no intention of giving up its own nuclear weapons stockpile or its access to all forms of nuclear technology. The recent New START treaty notwithstanding, U.S. government still believes it needs thousands of nuclear weapons deployed or in reserve, even though the United States has the most powerful conventional military forces on the planet, has no great powers nearby, and faces zero-risk of a hostile invasion. Yet we don't think a close ally like South Korea should be allowed to reprocess spent fuel, take any other measures that might under some circumstances move them closer to a nuclear capability of their own.

Walt and I agree about what counts as hypocrisy, what about the implications for foreign policy? Walt:

In my view, there's nothing reprehensible or even surprising about this situation; it merely reminds us that no two states have the same interests and that hypocritical (or more politely, 'inconsistent') behavior is common-place in international politics.

Criticial theorists like me are a lot lest sanguine about the meaning of hypocrisy. In fact, critical theorists see it as a basic function of their scholarship to reveal hypocritical policies and arguments in order to foment emancipatory political change. If the illogic undergirding inconsistent positions is revealed and thus undermined, replacement policies and arguments are more likely to reflect something like well-reasoned consensus. At least that's a central purpose of immanent critique.

As I've argued previously, many contemporary neorealists like Walt seem also to prefer a world with less hypocrisy. The short blog post about the U.S.-South Korea dispute is no exception:

But the U.S. ability to persuade others not to flirt with their own nuclear capabilities might be a lot stronger if we didn't place so much value on them ourselves.

Read differently: if the U.S. was less hypocritical, its policies would be more effective.

International Justice Day

Today is International Justice Day – at least according to the Coalition for the International Criminal Court. (What?! Aren’t you celebrating?!)

It comes at an interesting time. The ICC ruled this past week that the charge of Genocide may be included as part of the allegations against Sudanese President Bashir. Secondly, the ICJ will be ruling next week on Kosovo’s declaration of independence.

While both of these may suggest that international justice is strengthening throughout the system, I wonder if these events may actually demonstrate the opposite in some ways.

First, there is hope that including the charge of genocide against Bashir means that he will be easier to catch and prosecute. After all, states who have signed the Convention for the Prevention and Punishment of Genocide (not to mention any party to the ICC) would be legally obliged to hand him over. As Prosecutor Luis Moreno-Ocampo argued in the Guardian this past week:

Bashir is attacking Sudanese citizens, the same people he has the duty to protect. Now the international community has a new opportunity to provide protection. There are countries that are not members of the treaty that created the ICC, but which are members of the genocide convention. The convention could apply in this situation, triggering the responsibility of these states to prevent and to suppress the acts of genocide. Humanity has a responsibility to protect the Darfuris.

However, the tricky thing with the Genocide Convention is that while states are obliged to “prevent and to punish” genocide – nowhere in the Convention does it specify how this is actually to be done. Are states to arrest and hand over? Are they merely to deny leaders like Bashir access to their countries? Or are they actively supposed to hunt him down? And since Bashir has thus far been able to go about his duties, even while under other ICC charges, I highly doubt that this is going to make a huge difference (although I would like to be proven wrong.)

Second, no matter what the ICJ decides in its decision on Kosovo, I wonder if it is really going to make a difference. The starting point for this, of course, is that it is an advisory opinion – so it’s not going to make a huge difference either way as it is non-binding. It is either going to help solidify a fait accompli or it is going to basically make a decision that will fly in the face of political reality – Kosovo is not going back to whatever is left of the Former Yugoslavia. It may allow the Serbs to score some political points, (particularly if it goes to debate at the UN General Assembly) but that is about it.

Where this is obviously going to have greater implications is on other sovereigntist movements around the world. How they go about achieving their separatist ends will be of some interest.

Anyway, for the interested reader, I have included the CICC’s press release below.

CICC PRESS RELEASE

"INTERNATIONAL JUSTICE DAY: WORLD CELEBRATES 12TH ANNIVERSARY OF NEW global SYSTEM to end impunity : Global Coalition Urges States to Deliver on Review Conference Commitments and Reiterates its Call for Universality of the Rome Statute," 16 July 2010
http://www.coalitionfortheicc.org/documents/CICC_PR_17July2010_IJD_final.pdf

"Tomorrow 17 July the world will celebrate International Justice Day, in honor of the anniversary of the adoption of the Rome Statute, the founding treaty of the International Criminal Court (ICC). International Justice Day is a reminder of the urgency for all States committed to justice to ensure continued support for the Rome Statute's international justice system, the Coalition for the International Criminal Court (CICC) said today.

Twelve years ago on this date, the Rome Statute was adopted by an overwhelming vote of 120 nations. Today, 111 nations have joined the Court and the number keeps growing. Coalition members will celebrate this day in solidarity with victims of crimes against humanity, genocide and war crimes through a number of worldwide events.

'International Justice Day is a time to affirm that victims of crimes against humanity, genocide and war crimes deserve redress and that the ICC treaty is a great victory for the protection of universal human rights and the advancement of human security' said CICC Convenor William R Pace. 'Most of the ad hoc and special tribunals have begun the process of winding down. So today, we urge all States, international organizations, civil society and the world's media to reaffirm their commitment to justice, and to the goal that all nations should ratify the Rome Statute of the ICC, the world's only permanent system for international criminal justice,' he added.

International Justice Day is an opportunity for the world community to celebrate the historic advances in ending impunity for the worst crimes in international law. Since 1993, 181 trials, dealing with terrible crimes committed in 12 countries have been held by six international and special tribunals. Similar trials for the gravest crimes are ongoing at national level. 2 trials are being conducted at the ICC so far, investigations in 5 countries were opened, and twelve arrest warrants and three summonses to appear were issued. Allegations of crimes committed in many other countries are being considered by the ICC Prosecutor.

This year, International Justice Day takes place only a few weeks after the conclusion of the first Review Conference of the ICC Rome Statute, which was held in Kampala, Uganda from 31 May to 11 June. At the Conference, ICC Member States agreed upon amendments to the Rome Statute. In particular, the Review Conference adopted a definition for the Crime of Aggression as well as provisions governing the terms of the Court's ability to investigate and prosecute individuals for the crime of aggression. In Kampala, States also made important commitments on the issues of cooperation, complementarity, victims and affected communities and peace and justice. The Coalition for the ICC now calls on States to turn words into concrete actions.

These actions may take the form of encouraging states that have not done so to join the Rome Statute; ratifying the Agreement on privileges and immunities (APIC); implementing the Rome Statute into national law; showing consistent public support for international justice and the work of the Court; responding positively to the Court's cooperation requests; signing enforcement of sentences or victims and witnesses and victims relocation agreements with the ICC; and providing funds to the Trust Fund for Victims as well as to the Court so that it can improve its outreach and related field work. Civil society, cultural, and educational initiatives for international justice should also be supported.

The Coalition for the ICC is a civil society network of 2,500 organizations in 150 countries advocating for a fair, effective and independent ICC. Through this committed global partnership, the Coalition's guiding mission is to make justice universally accessible for victims of the gravest crimes in an effort to secure lasting peace."

The IDF's blog campaign

During my recent trip to Israel, I had the opportunity to talk to a young IDF officer who was assigned as a spokeswoman/public relations specialist for one of the IDF's commands. I told her about Stephanie's recent post on the Gaza flotilla raid and how the Israeli Foreign Ministry quickly tweeted a response to Stephanie about the post. She told me that there is a new effort by both the Foreign Ministry and the IDF to respond rapidly to information that pops up on the blogosphere. Within each IDF command, there is a separate section within the public information branches that monitors blogs and facebook sites to "correct" distorted information. She said most of these sections are staffed by young officers in their early twenties who have grown up with blogging and Facebook.

Of course, the extensive use of Facebook by young officers can also cause problems for the IDF.

More later...

Congratulations Spain!

I've been traveling in the Middle East and Europe for the past month and watched all, or parts of, 15 World Cup games in ten or so cities -- including a kibbutz in northern Israel -- with commentary in at least seven languages. I watched the games --mostly in bars -- with Algerians, Mexicans, Germans, Italians, Palestinians, Israelis, French, Australians, etc.... I also watched kids playing and dreaming of their own World Cup on street corners, parks, and alleyways in most places I visited. Truly a joy to watch -- especially in so many different places.

So, it's been a bit of an adjustment since returning to the US a few days ago. On Friday, I got into my car and turned on WEEI Sports Radio in Boston and home of the Red Sox broadcasts -- the morning show hosts (both right wingers who often plunge into political diatribes) were in the middle of a nasty rant against soccer and the World Cup. The hostility was striking and reminded me of Franklin Foer's book How Soccer Explains the World. Foer argues that globalization, in part, explains the hostility by many in the US towards soccer because it is seen as part of "the rest of the world's program" and a threat to American culture and pastimes -- so be it.

My favorite book on the topic though is National Pastime: How Americans Play Baseball and the Rest of the World Plays Soccer by Stefan Symanski and Andrew Zimbalist. Both are economists and the book lays out the historical evolution of the organizational structures of modern baseball in the US and soccer in Europe and South America. It provides an interesting cross-cultural comparision of how these organizational structures and subsequent financing and marketing in earlier eras created the identities and cultural claims and of each pastime. It also has an excellent analysis of the mega-businesses that now control both sports across the globe. Worth a read.

In the meantime, they'll be celebrating in Madrid tonight!

Fatwas and Football...erm... Soccer (or Bend It Like Osama)

I’ve noticed that there has been little ‘quacking’ (ugh, I finally went there) on the blog on the subject of the World Cup. This might be due to the fact that I think pretty much all of us, regardless of location, are North American where ‘soccer’ is a fabulous summer sport if you are a female university student or a 9 year old. (Actually, that’s not fair – I went to a DC United game last fall and had a blast. It's a well-kept secret that US soccer fans actually know how to have a good time.)

But do you know is paying attention to the World Cup? Radical Islamic militants.

That’s right. Osama bin Laden, Al Qaida’s own Christiano Ronaldo (only substantially less attractive), is according to Newsweek, a huge fan of soccer.*

bin Laden—whose strict Islamist worldview proscribes music, women’s education, gambling, drinking, homosexuality, and the shaving of beards—is a fan of the game, and his preferred position is center forward. He is one of the many jihadists who worship the world’s most popular sport. “It’s on the whole their favorite thing after jihad,” says Scott Atran, an American and French anthropologist who has studied the interplay between terror groups and soccer.

But even worse, jihadists also actually use the world’s most beloved game as a recruiting grounds of sorts for terrorism!

For many extremists, however, it’s not just about the love of the game or even Muhammad’s injunction to believers that they maintain sound bodies through exercise. In fact, soccer has a proven history as a tool of jihad—it’s a useful method of bringing recruits into the fold and helping to encourage camaraderie among those who have already joined...
He used the occasions to instill religious lessons, too, offering additional treats for participants who could answer trivia questions on the Quran and the teachings of the Prophet Muhammad during breaks in the action.
The power of soccer as an organizing force stayed with him as he traveled. When Al Qaeda was headquartered in Sudan in the 1990s, the terrorist group had its own two-team league, Wright says. It wasn’t pickup ball: this was serious soccer, with regularly scheduled practices and weekly matches between the squads after Friday prayers.

The post goes on to suggest that while militancy does not make you an Arsenal fan (though, having lived next to their old stadium for a few months in 2002, I’m not convinced) that the reverse might be true. The team that plays well together can plot well together. The perpetrators of the 2004 Madrid train bombings played football together, and apparently Hamas looks to soccer teams – tight knit groups of physically fit and young men – when looking for operatives. One of the members of the "Airliners Plot", Waheed Zaman is apparently a big Liverpool FC fan.

Being neither a huge fan of soccer nor particularly knowledgeable about Islamic militant radicalization, I can’t really assess to what degree this is true. However, it would seem to be the case that not every jihadi agrees. According to Jihadica, a fatwa has been issued against watching the World Cup. Minbar al-Tawhid wa’l-Jihad has apparently stated that watching a sport where players are paid unevenly according to goals (which, to my knowledge, isn’t actually true) amounts to a form of gambling. And of course there’s the scantily clad women (*shock* *horror*) enjoying themselves, the unethical behaviour of the players (okay – they have a point there) and the fact that it constitutes a distraction from the duty of jihad means that the faithful must refrain from watching the World Cup. According to Jihadica, the fatwa continues:

“I remind you of how the infidels have waged war against our religion, distorted our dogmas, ripped apart our people and cut off its limbs (…) After all this, how can any of us watch these matches that distract us from God and the duties of our religion and jihad against our enemies? Like a butterfly that sees the fire and then flies right into it.”

Even the Newsweek article starts by stating that the Islamic movements in Somalia have attacked supporters for watching the un-Godly beautiful game.

So there you go. It’s either a terrorist recruiting tool or a forbidden satanic temptation. Having lived in soccer-mad UK for nearly 10 years, I'm inclined to believe it is both.

At least in Catholicism we have a random guy in a pointy hat to solve these pressing theological issues.

*In the ongoing dispute between “soccer” and “football”, I’m using soccer. Because I’m Canadian and I can.

The Oceanic Conference on International Studies (and Finally, Some Thoughts on Feminist Method)

I spent the last week at the Oceanic Conference for International Studies (OCIS) in Auckland, New Zealand, a conference that was something of a luxury for me in that I had no leadership responsibilities, and got to be in a beautiful city I'd never been to literally on the other side of the world.

While zorbing and bungee jumping would normally be the highlight of such a trip, actually, the Conference was. I didn't know what to expect at first; after all, this was a regional conference far outside of my region - would there be any work of interest to me? I was pleasantly surprised on a number of levels however. First, I learned a lot about things I didn't know about. The conference opening address taught be about the history and current struggles of the Maori people in New Zealand. I got to hear a number of interesting empirical presentations about pacific life and cultures. Second, this was hands-down the best run conference I have ever been to (and I am counting the several I have run) - the organization was perfect (literally), the accommodations were excellent and affordable, the conference facilities were amazing, adequate networking breaks were provided, and there were totally rocking (frequent and yummy) meals, snacks, and (gasp) cakes.

The thing I really got out of OCIS, though, was the panels. I don't get to go to a lot of panels at ISA, or even at APSA sometimes - because I am frequently doing organizational work, service stuff, and professional development panels and stuff - so I'm not saying the panels @ OCIS were better than the other ones that I don't really get to see (though I think they might have been). That said, I attended ten panels over three days (fine, nine, if you don't count the one I was on). Highlights included: Jacqui True's talk about gender and norms, Megan MacKenzie's talk about the role of the family in security, Ann Tickner's keynote on an alliance between feminist and postcolonial historical narratives, Spike Peterson's discussion of intersectionality in feminist IR, Katrina Lee-Koo's talk on the place of gender in Australian IR, Miranda Alison's talk on inclusion of women combatants in peace processes, Tulia Thompson's talk on heterogender in Fiji, talks by Tony Burke and Laura Shepherd on ethics and security, Penny Griffin's talk on sex and global political economy, Juanita Elias' presentation on the incorporation of feminist agendas, and Ruth Jacobsen's discussion of the challenges of feminist data collection. The list could be longer. These presentations (and others) were high-quality and very interesting. OCIS left me not only with a reinvigorated enthusiasm for the research program that I am a part of but also with a renewed sense of desire to tackle its hard questions.

It is in that spirit that I now return to the discussion of feminist method that Patrick started a couple of weeks ago. I never ended up posting mostly because I was incredibly busy, but also because posting at that time would have required me to work through some of the methodological difficulties I had been struggling with recently, a place of discomfort for me. But the question of "is there a feminist methodology?" or (more how I would put it) "what is the appropriate methodological approach for feminist work in IR?" is an important one, and I'll share some thoughts.


First, there is not one feminism in IR - there are diverse feminisms - liberal ones, constructivist ones, critical ones, postcolonial ones, poststructuralist ones, postmodern ones, marxist ones, etc. Those different "takes" on feminisms do have different methodological outlooks based on different epistemological assumptions.

Second, I've described several times that I see feminist method as a journey - one of observation, critique, revealing, reformulation, reflexivity, and action, guided by feminisms’ principles. While none of those steps are necessarily unique to feminist research, perhaps that they are linked or how they are linked is particularly feminist. If methodology is the intellectual process guiding reflection on epistemological assumptions, ontological perspective, ethical responsibilities, and method choices (Ackerly/Stern/True 2006, p.8), Patrick is right that reflexivity is a substantial part of and contribution to how to "think like a feminist" - but there's more to it, I think.

Third, then, "thinking like a feminist" in IR, I think, has a number of key elements, which I'll gloss over here and discuss in more detail if any readers are interested. Those include:

1) Many feminisms share with (other) critical approaches an understanding that the relationship between the knower and the known is fundamental to knowledge, and that therefore all knowledge is political, social, contextual, and intersubjective. Feminisms add, however, that a crucial part of the position(s) of knowledge(s) is their position along gendered hierarchies of social and political thought

2) With (some) other scholars, (many) feminisms see knowledge as personal, theory as practice, and reflexivity as a key part of the research process. Unlike (most) other scholars, feminisms view that reflexivity through gendered lenses, where, in Jill Steans' words (1998, p.5), "to look at the world through gender lenses is to focus on gender as a particular kind of power relation" and therefore to trace out the ways in which gender is not only central to understanding international processes, but the ways in which gendered assumptions shape our research on gendered assumptions.

3) Like (some) development scholars, feminist researchers have recognized a difference between power-over and empowerment. Feminists, however, both understand the key role that gender has in that distinction, and that it is to be analyzed not only in the world "out there" but also in the discipline.

4) As some feminists have recently discussed (like a 2010 forum in politics and gender), feminist work is likely to look to deconstruct the quantitative/qualitative divide in IR rather than taking a "side" in it - feminist stakes in epistemology and method (where they exist) are about the purpose of the tools (in service of discovering and deconstructing gender hierarchies) rather than what the tools are. That is (oversimplified, of course) it is a question of positivism/post-positivism instead of a question of quantitative/qualitative. While not all feminists/feminisms would agree, I would argue that quantitative methods could be used effectively to serve (postpositivist, epistemologically skeptical) feminist ends.

5) This does not mean that most feminisms see utility in the use of gender as a variable (which usually means "sex" as a variable in practice in the literature). Feminist questions above all inspire feminist methods. Feminist questions often ask "how do masculinities and femininities define, constitute, signify, cause, reproduce, and become reproduced by x?" rather than "are women more x?" - the former question is one about gender hierarchy; the latter is an essentialized approach to sex that assumes that gender hierarchy either does not exist or is irrelevant to answering the question. (Most) feminisms in IR prefer the first.

6) Though there are no essential tools for feminist IR, there are a group of tools feminisms have found useful: dialectical hermeneutics, ethnography, critical discourse analysis, in-depth case studies, feminist interviewing, and other tools. Good feminist method essays (like Brooke Ackerly's in Audie Klotz and Deepa Prakash's edited volume) and books (Ackerly/Stern/True 2006, and Ackerly/True 2010) expand on these ideas.

It's radical, man.

Through the very good King’s of War blog I was directed to a post on Jihadica on the recent emergence of an apparent Al-Qaida affiliated English-language publication called “Inspire”. While the author suggests that this has thrown Western media into a panic, there was very little to actually be worried about (other than the fact that it might contain a computer virus).

The bottom line is that Inspire is a drop in an ocean of jihadi propaganda. The recent media coverage suggests that otherwise educated observers don’t seem to realise 1) how large and 2) how old that ocean is. I find this both disappointing and disconcerting. For a decade, militants have been pumping out sophisticated propaganda and genuinely dangerous training manuals to a vast Arabic speaking audience. In comes a sloppy magazine in English, and suddenly people speak of a new al-Qaida media offensive. This ignorance and linguistic myopia is inexcusable, since blogs and translation services have made information about jihadi propaganda more available than ever.
In my view, the only interesting thing about the release of Inspire is the fact that the PDF file is corrupt and rumoured to carry a Trojan virus... Personally I don’t see why either jihadis or intelligence services would deliberately disseminate viruses, given that a virus would hurt both friends and enemies. In any case, whoever created Inspire wanted attention, and they certainly got that - in spades.

I found this post particularly interesting because last week I attended a conference organized by the International Centre for the Study of Radicalization (ICSR) in New York City. This isn’t necessarily in the realm of my normal academic work – other than the fact that I am interested in the way that democracies confront threats and the threat of terrorism. (But let’s face it – it didn’t take a lot of arm twisting to sell me on a conference to New York City in July.)

The conference was interesting for a number of reasons – it brought together academics, policy makers and political leaders to address questions like “are we any safer after 9-11” and thinking about what has been learned. On the one hand there have been two attempted attacks on the US within six months of each other on the United States. On the other hand, one was a guy who literally could not set his pants on fire and the other a failed car bomb. Maybe we’re just safer because the quality of “terrorist” has gone down in the last couple of years?

Given the organizers, the focus of the conference was on radicalization (and they launched a study on radicalization in prisons). I did, however, expect a little more on thinking about these issues within the context of human rights/democracies/constitutions. (Maybe this was a bit of a sore spot as there were many former Bush administration officials there?) However, the issue was touched upon by the third panel of the second day titled “Counterterrorism Cooperation: Is It Working?” (Short answer: yes and no.) The panellists all agreed that human rights played an important part in how counterterrorism cooperation is engaged in. Australian Ambassador for Counterterrorism, Bill Paterson suggested that his country had worked towards helping to improve conditions inside of Indonesian Prisons to diminish the threat of radicalization there. Richard Barrett, head of the UN Al Qaidea/Taliban Monitoring Team maintained that human rights are one of the main pillars of counterterrorism.

Eric Rosand, the Senior Advisor in the Office of the Coordinator for Counterterrorism in the US Department of State argued that for the US this meant increasing the capacity to prosecute individuals within the United States. Interestingly, he also later added that there was a problem with some multilateral efforts. He pointed out that all UN counterterrorism work is being done in New York and Vienna and not on the ground in the countries where it matters.

Another interesting panel was on “How Terrorism Ends” – seemingly named for Audry Kurth Cronin’s 2009 book on the topic. She was at the conference and noted that while terrorism “doesn’t end” that terrorist groups do - the important question is how. She argued that there were six ways: group leadership may be ‘decapitated’ and the group withers, negotiations, success in eradication, failure to eradicate (leading to massive problems in the state or achievement of terrorist goals), mass repression and reorientation of groups. She also noted that given the variations of groups and the different ways they can be approached and confronted that the term “global terrorist insurgency” is not very useful.

I regret to say that the low-mark of the conference for me were the two plenary speakers, Lord David Trimble and Leader of the Opposition in Israel Tzipi Livni. Trimble – who helped to bring about a solution to the Northern Ireland “troubles” and won the Nobel Peace Prize – did not seem to be able to present a coherent narrative about his experiences (and went on so long that there was not time for questions). The main points I took from his talk was that peace in Northern Ireland was possible because of state power – but state power also gave them room to participate in a political process. While the UK government could have left the IRA to just eventually disappear and dissolve into its own infighting, an approach which accommodated them, according to Trimble, helped to diffuse the underlying problems causing terrorism. In addition the process helped to create political structures to address grievances and problems.

Livni, gave a speech which basically amounted to a justification of Israeli policies rather than any kind of serious engagement with the issue – or how democracies can confront the threat of radical violence. Actually, she talked about the way that Hamas ‘uses’ democracy to gain power. She literally stated that everyone “must choose a side... you are either for us or against us” – without any sense of irony or the fact that she was paraphrasing George Bush. I have a lot of sympathy with Livini (and blogged about it in one of my first posts for this site here). But there was nothing new or interesting in her talk – in fact it was rather depressing way to end the conference. (But then maybe that was the point – none of this is going away.)

So terrorism wasn’t solved but I got a really nice dinner out of it. I like to think that means "we're" winning.