Category Archives: Middle East

Obama’s Grand Slam in Cairo also Illustrates the Lack of Secular Politics in the Middle East

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He certainly is talented! I have been in Korea since August 2008, so I have not seen many Obama speeches. I am just floored by the difference with W. No wonder the press is swooning. Unlike the faux-authority projected by Cheney’s crossed hands and low voice (he was just too wrong too many times), Obama has the magic in that imperious, super well-educated look when he lifts his chin, creases his brow, and narrows his eyes. He must have been a great lawyer to see in court; he reminds me of my best grad school teachers.

1. I am intellectually pleased at how well my predictions of the speech fared. I got most everything right, both in the topics he selected and how he treated them. He did engage in lots of praise of Islam that will make Bushies, neo-cons, and evangelicals squirm. As I suspected he threw in the PBUH and references to Islamic scientific achievements. This laid the groundwork for the criticisms, so it was necessary, and thankfully there were no real eye-rolling sycophancies. But I do think calling the Koran ‘holy’ all the time did not project the political secularism needed to encourage religious pluralism in the ME, and the line about ‘battling negative stereotypes of Islam’ was a lame multicultural sop to the Muslim identity politics that lead to Durban II and the bogus, free speech-squelching notion of ‘islamophobia.’ I expect the Fox News-set will harp on that one. On the up side, Obama added a few extra themes: women’s rights, democracy, and development.

2. Just about all his comments were right.

As I argued, but hardly expected in the speech, Obama referenced Japan and Korea as examples of modernization without cultural loss.

He identified the war of necessity in South Asia and admitted that Iraq was a war of choice, while also noting that Iraqis are better of without Saddam. He didn’t apologize for Iraq, which would have set off a national-conservative backlash at home, but he seemed to imply it was an error. Very smooth.

He noted the concerns over women’s rights and modernization, but rightfully blew threw that reactionary posture pretty fast to say what needed to be said: that the ME is falling behind the rest of the world and that this feeds both poverty and radicalism.

He basically dumped ME peace back in their hands by saying we can’t do it for them. He said lots of right things about the Israeli-Palestinian dispute. He attacked Muslim anti-semitism and Holocaust denial and openly declared the illegitimacy of the Israeli West Bank settlement to an Arab audience. Nice! And he backed that with a subtle and correct shot that too many Arab regimes don’t really care to resolve the Israeli-Palestinian dispute. Also correct.

He even had the courage to touch on religious tolerance in the Muslim ME, which I think is a critical breakpoint with the West. The defense of the Copts was an important gesture, particularly to western Christians who think the Islam demands wide latitude for its practitioners in the West while denying it in the ME (basically accurate).

He also went to bat for the freedom agenda – important because it signals a continuity of US commitment to democracy across quite different administrations. Unfortunately he passed on singling out his host Mubarak, exactly the sort of US-supported ME despot that fires al Qaeda.

Finally, did you catch the subtle end of Bush-era grand strategy: “no system of government can or should be imposed upon one nation by any other”? That is pretty much the end of regime change and preemption.

3. I can’t say he really missed much. But for the PC bit about stereotypes and the missed swipe at Mubarak, this was pretty much a grand slam.

4. I was pleased with the audience reaction. At no point did it get nationalist, islamist or otherwise jingoistic. They applauded not only at the complements, but also the criticisms. Very good.

5. But there is an important and deep political theory insight to be gleaned from the language of the talk. It was not intentional but should be revelatory to secular westerners unaccustomed to ME political discourse. Obama’s constant reference to Islam and his use of religious quotations and invocation of Islamic and religious values was a deep indication of the cultural cleft between the West and Islam, albeit more between secular Europe and the religious ME. And I suspect that an upper class secular Democrat like O found it somewhat uncomfortable to be constantly referring to ‘faith.’ To this day, I admire Howard Dean’s response to G Stephanopoulos’ mandatory and obnoxious question about the role of religion in his politics. Dean simply said there was no role.

Yet Obama can’t talk that way in the ME for two reasons. First, Islamism as a social movement has exploded in the ME since 1967. The ME is alive with religion in the way of Massachusetts Bay Colony or the Amish. Islam is in the middle of a ‘great awakening’ period, and the language of religion is spilling into all areas. Hence the upsurge of Muslim identity politics and discovery of something called ‘islamophobia,’ which here is defined so broadly as to include just about any criticism. So Islam must be genuflected to and wrapped into any serious socio-political discussion in the ME. For contrast, look at Southeast Asia where is Islam is more secular.

Second, Islam has become the shield for opposition in the ME, just like Orthodoxy was in the USSR. Islam has become the channel for political resistance to atrocious government of the ME, and so it has become increasingly politicized. Politicized religion is almost always apocalyptic and absolutist, and the contemporary ME is no different. New ideas, policy proposals, criticism must invariably cite koranic verse and treat it as font of authority – as O did last yesterday. (For parallels, think about how the US right uses the writings of the Founders and Framers as touchstones for just about everything, or the way the Soviets and Chinese used to comb through Marx for quotations to support whatever new policy they wanted to pursue.)

This more than anything else betrays the bankruptcy of politics in the ME. It badly lacks a public-spirited, nondenominational language of citizenship. It is trapped in the religious and chronological parochialism of a 1400 year old revelation. This both cripples and exacerbates politics. Cripples, because the Koran (and the hadith) hardly fit the needs of social phenomena like the discovery of the New World, industrialization, space travel, or globalization. (Think of the ridiculous anti-modern intransigence of the Haredim.) And it exacerbates politics by injecting religion at every turn and so constantly raises political difference to the level of religious confrontation. Part of this is inevitably parochialism. If the Koran is the basis of wisdom and the good life, then how to deal with non-Muslims? As an example of all these problems cumulated, look at Saudi Arabia. It has no constitution, because it claims the Koran is that, and hence has all sorts of ‘religious’ problems over what should be simple technical issues questions like women drivers or proper license plates. By contrast political theory in the West has long strived to build a public-spirited universalist language (Habermas and Rawls spring to mind). This helps western democracies build citizenship across religious cleavages and also ties them internationally to each other better than any other ‘family of nations.’

Obama In Cairo

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Just about everybody has an idea for what the Great O should say. So here’s my run down:

1. Propaganda: One of the basic elements to successfully criticizing someone is to build up them before you tear them down. This is pretty simple psychology. Teachers use it all the time in trying to break it to students that their work is actually pretty bad.

Expect this from Obama, because Arab/Muslim prestige is such a big factor in Middle East politics. The ME has made it clear it would rather be right and poor than admit mistakes, flex, and get wealthy. Thomas Friedman (as well as B Lewis, F Zakaria, F Ajami, and countless others) has argued for years about just how deeply Arabs and Muslims want to fight to hang on to their ‘olive trees,’ regardless what it does to their economy, relations with the West, and overall ME power in world politics. And now, but for Africa, the Middle East is the worst governed region on earth. Yet the ME remains downright recalcitrant when it comes to learning from the West (Khomeini’s classic ‘westoxification’).

This is folly of course. One need only look at China, Japan and Korea to see how well emulation can work, and that it does not mean cultural Americanization, religious betrayal/Christianization, or wild Khomeinist Jewish conspiracy theories. Instead it it is the route to growth and weight in the international system. So 50 years ago, Nasser was more important than Mao, but today China is forging the future, and globalization is passing the ME by.

Nevertheless Obama must cater to this sensibility. He must throw out multicultural softballs about how Americans respect Islam, see it as one of the world’s great religions, value its past cultural achievements in areas like mathematics, etc. The irony of course is that none of this is true. Islam makes the West pretty nervous; its theology is radically simpler than Christianity, much less the western philosophical tradition serious thinkers must engage (and that helped make Christianity so much intellectually richer), so its unlikely most educated westerners ‘respect’ it; and who really cares about Islamic scientific progress several centuries ago? Who cares if Americans invited the lightbulb years ago? You don’t see the Chinese telling the West to respect it because of gunpowder, but rather because it is a growth dynamo, and we desperately need their savers.

2. Truth: Somehow Obama needs to say the same stuff W did about democracy, freedom, rights for women, open markets, and the US commitment to reduce terrorism. Thankfully Obama is a vastly better salesman for the ‘freedom agenda.’ 1. He is not an evangelical, but only mildly religious and mostly secular. 2. He is a Democrat, the party generally associated with multilateralism and internationalism in US foreign policy. 3. He is an intellectual and so probably understands what the freedom agenda actually is (unlike W who repeated it mantra-like, even as his administration undermined it at home). 4. His personal history speaks volumes.

So when Muslims hear a black secular liberal Democrat with the middle name Hussein who lived in Indonesia still say the same thing W did, then hopefully they will know we mean it. Just because Obama is new, young, black, more secular, whatever, doesn’t mean the region’s religious fanatics (including zionist settlers), autocrats, and terrorists should get a pass.

If Obama welches on this, if he avoids criticizing Mubarak, or if he looks a like he is accommodating Muslim supremacist thinking in order to end the GWoT, he will face crushing conservative criticism at home, and deservedly so.

3. Really Tough Truth: If Obama really has guts, he will talk about religious pluralism. To my mind, this is central cultural breakpoint between the West and Islam today. Islam as practiced today in the Middle East does not meaningful embrace religious pluralism or politically accept it. (Note: It does in Indonesia and SE Asia, which is exactly why the Saudi clerical establishment has funded the building of schools and mosques there.) ME Islam particularly seems unwilling to admit the equality of all religions before a neutral secular state. Parts of the world are still designated ‘Muslim lands;’ apostasy is still a crime in at least 8 Muslim-majority states; and even Iraq’s constitution declares it a Muslim state in which the Koran can be a source of law. So long as the supremacy of Islam is a defining feature of politics in the region, it will be hard for non-Muslims to ‘respect’ or feel comfortable with the ME. No other part of the world mixes religion and politics like this anymore. In the West, secular politics dates to the Enlightenment, if not the Reformation. When Westerners look at politicized religion in the ME, they see their own dangerous past of the religious wars of the 16th C.

4. Payoff: 2 and 3 would be pretty tough to swallow for the Islamic ME, so here is a great payoff that is good for the US (and Israel in the long-run) anyway: serious pressue on the Israelis to finally exit the West Bank and get the two-state solution rolling. The debate on this has changed enormously. For the first time since the first Bush administration, we have an adminisration ready to take on the Israel lobby at home and the Israeli government. The intellectual center of gravity has really shifted, so Obama and Clinton are now well-grounded in an emerging consensus in the US. Thanks for this most especially to Stephen Walt‘s tireless, much-derided but actually quite even-handed writing on this. You may have hated his book, but it did a lot to make clear how the the Israel lobby in the US has abetted the worst imperialist instincts of the settler movement and so made a meaning two-state deal impossible for decades. It is now clear to everybody but the most recalcitrant that Israel needs to get out. US pressure to this end will help the ME swallow points 2 and 3 at no cost to the US, because a two-state solution is now clearly in American’s interest anyway.

5. Prediction: Obama will overdose on the propaganda (watch especially, if he mentions Muhammad, if next he says ‘PBUH’ or ‘praise by upon Him’), ride gently with the truth, talk moderately but firmly in support of the two-state solution, and slide by the tough pluralist part. The reason, I think, is his desire to end the GWoT or at least tone it down, to get out of Iraq and Afghanistan as fast as possible, and then do what he really wants to do and spend where he really wants the US budget to go – on the US welfare state. If he can pull us out of the wars, draw a cool peace with the ME, and then add universal health care and green energy to the New Deal and Great Society, he will go down in history as one of the greatest presidents ever.

Religious Tolerance in Islam and an End to the War on Terror

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Here is a good column on a point widely ignored in the debate over Islam’s relationship with the other two abrahamic monotheisms. C Hitchens at Slate.com has been particularly good on this, but few have mentioned it, likely out of political correctness. The Islamic revival since 1967 has in included a powerful purifying zeal toward non-Muslim remnants in ‘Muslim’ lands. (That very expression of course is unhelpful in itself, as it suggests religious pluralism is somehow an imposition in Muslim-majority countries.) Today this is harshest in Africa, where strident Islamic insistence has generated tension across the Sahel, most notably in Nigeria and southern Sudan. Even as far away as Korea, when I teach the War on Terrorism, a lot of my Buddhist students remember the needless Taliban destruction of the Bamyan Buddhas. The Taliban were quite open in stating that Buddhism was irreligion and paganism. Of course, the Taliban are an extreme marker, but the wider issue of religious pluralism cuts both ways. If Muslims in the West enjoy religious freedom, citizenship, and all the rest, and if Muslim governments feel they can intervene in the West to ‘defend’ their co-religionsists (as the OIC did during the Muhammad cartoon flap), then eventually the question of those rights and privileges will be raised in the Middle East for non-Muslims. Without that reciprocity, the West will slide toward the idea that Muslim states are trying to export sharia to the West.

At some point this has to stop for the War on Terror to stop. If non-Muslims perceive that they will be the targets of harassment and recrimination in Muslim-majority states, the Muslim world’s isolation will only increase, FDI will never pick up, the war on terror will go on and on, Israel will remain recalcitrant on a permanent peace, etc, etc. And an intransigent monotheistic zeal and belligerence at home will certainly translate into foreign adventurism (think 9/11), and this will only encourage the clash of civilizations we all want to avoid.

Worse, thoroughgoing islamification will only worsen the problems of most of these states. The Arab/Muslim world seems to ache for a return to lost glories, but homogenization will only make that return even harder. Jeffery Herf wrote about ‘reactionary modernism’ – trying to find the future by rebuilding a romanticized past through cultural cleansing. But we know this doesn’t work. As Thomas Friedman notes again and again in his books and columns, the future belongs to open societies welcoming globalization and diversity. Ethnic/cultural cleansing reduces the pluralism that generates new ideas or visions, adds flexibility to cope with globalization’s traumas, enlivens cultural offerings from food to music, spurs artists and creators to to new innovations, keeps majorities from slipping into self-satisfied complacency, etc. (Koreans have learned this lesson, albeit with some difficulty, since the ROK’s opening with the ‘88 Olympics. They now realize the value of globalization, so markers, like good English speaking skills, have high social prestige.) It will make Muslim bridges to the rest of the world harder, not just because others will think them intolerant, but because the citizens of these homogenizing states will lack access to local others who can prepare them for globalization, travel, foreign imports and languages, etc. Closed monolithic states slip easily into paranoid xenophobia. (Watch the Russian film East-West on this; note how the ‘foreigner’ is so suspected in the USSR. Or consider Ahmadinejad’s laughable assertion, clearly bred in the isolated womb of a closed society, that Iran has no homosexuals.) The UN Arab Human Development Reports have already expressed great concern about the cultural sealing off of the Middle East. The Middle East is one of the least globalized parts of the world according to Foreign Policy/AT Kearney globalization index. Expurgating the remnants of difference will only accelerate that process, push the ME further and further behind the rest of the globalizing world (and so worsening its relative poverty, status grievances, and anger toward the rest of the world), and so drag out the end of the GWoT. 

Al Qaeda vs SK? Seriously? Why? The Enemies List isn’t Long Enough Yet?

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Most of the work on terrorism says that al Qaeda is an intelligent, serious organization of dedicated loyalists deeply committed to the cause. In the language of Cindy Combs, AQ is not a crazy or a criminal but a crusader.

This is an important insight, as our reflex is to respond angrily by denigrating them as  mad, crazy, nihilists. During WWII, we used to caricature Hitler as chewing the carpet in wild rages that almost certainly never happened. The reality is that AQ – and Hitler, Pol Pot, Stalin, and most of history’s horribles – are rational, strategic, and intelligent. These various opponents of liberal democracy have different values and pursue different (ie, awful) political goals, but they are rarely stupid or simply nihilistic.

So if AQ is rational, I don’t understand the value of attacking South Koreans. Why are the South Koreans, of all people, now ‘infidels’ too? I understand of course that in a maximal binladenist reading, a vast swathe of humanity, including Shiites, are the enemy. But if AQ is in fact acting strategically, can’t the Koreans wait their turn for elimination after the more proximate and threatening opponents (the West/Christianity, Israel/Jews, India/Hindus)? More practically, shouldn’t AQ just simply be trying to survive the GWoT right now, rather than adding another opponent?

AQ appears to see the world as a clash of civilizations. Islam, in this view, is encircled and already in conflict with errant pre-Islamic monotheisms (Christianity & Judaism), polytheistic Hinduism, and ‘pagan’ African animism/naturalism. Why open another potentially huge front by targeting Buddhist-Confucian states? It seems like a gigantic risk, especially if Japan and China read this as a religious assault on Confucianism and/or Buddhism (which seems to be the point, as AQ refers to the S Korean victims as ‘infidels.’)

The answer is likely that SK is a US ally, but this doesn’t seem like enough to explain 2 quick attacks and the infidel rhetoric. SK is an American ally, but it is hardly involved in the GWoT. Koreans know little about Islam, and there are less than 100 Muslims in the whole country. Given the NK menace, its forces can hardly deploy out-of-area anyway. Although it has a sizeable Christian population now, its deep religious roots are Buddhist-Confucian. And Buddhism and Confucianism are scarcely germane to  the fiery theistic conflicts that divide deep partisans of Judaism, Islam, Christianity and Hinduism.

I suppose we can only hope that AQ and radical Islam are foolish enough to declare war on all the world’s (non-Sunni) non-Muslims simultaneously.

A Simple Palestinian-Israeli Peace Deal

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The outlines of a peace deal between Israel and Palestine are well-known. Political obstacles notwithstanding, the sketch of the final status agreement, whenever it might happen, will include some measure of Israeli withdrawal from the West Bank (WB) and sovereignty for the Palestinian in the WB and Gaza – the occupied territories (OT).

This deal is necessary for Israel in the long run, because there are nearly four million Palestinians in Gaza (1.1 M) , the WB (1.6 M) , and Israel proper (1.1 M) to Israel’s six million Jews. They are angry, unreconciled, and outbirthing Jews. If Israel is to remain Jewish-majority and democratic, the Palestinians in the territories will have to be cut loose at some point Originally (in the 70s), the Israeli leadership hoped that the OT Palestinians would emigrate or simply demographically disappear, permitting an slow integration of the OT into Israel through settlement (as happened in the new territory taken in 1948). This simply has not happened. Instead, Palestinian numbers are increasing, nationalism and Islamism are strong, and the dominant political concern of Palestinians everywhere is statehood. 40+ years of occupation has not integrated the OT; if anything the Palestinians are angrier than ever and increasingly given to radical measures. Israel cannot simultaneously remain liberal-democratic, Jewish-majority, and pursue ‘greater Israel’ by annexing the OT. Only two choices of this trilemma are achievable.

The semi-fascistic outcome would be annexation and Jewish-majoritarianism by harsh means – permanent reduction of the Palestinians to something akin to blacks in apartheid South Africa or the Jim Crow South, forced ‘israelization’ (whatever that would mean), demographic constraints on the Palestinians akin to China’s one-child policy, coerced emigration, etc. This is the reality of a maximalist Zionist interpretation and would likely perpetuate conflict with neighbors, drive Israel deeper into pariah status by forfeiture of Israel’s liberal democratic moral superiority to its despotic neighbors, and severe it from the modern democratic capitalist world so many Israelis desperately want to join.

The second alternative would forfeit Israel’s Jewish identity in the so-called (post-apartheid) ‘South Africa solution’ – liberal democracy in greater Israel. The OT would be annexed into a ‘multicultural’ greater Israel, and its demographics would simply unfold naturally. The current Jewish-Palestinian ratio in this greater Israel would be 5:3, with fertility rates favoring the Palestinians. The likely outcome would be a dissolution of Israel’s particular Jewish character.

Neither the maximalist nor the multicultural outcomes are appealing to most Jews. Indeed, most Jewish opinion in the US and Israel wants some fair deal for the Palestinians and dislikes the current regime of occupation and unceasing Palestinian/Arab resentment. So here are the elements of a deal the left, center, and some on the right – in Israel, the US, and the OT – could live with:

1. Jerusalem would be an open city under some manner of international governance (on the model of Kosovo or East Timor). The issue is simply too emotional, and both sides insist on a zero-sum outcome – a unified Jerusalem as the capital of its state. Clearly impossible, an easier answer would be Tel Aviv as Israel’s capital, and Ramallah as the Palestinians’. Separate east and west Jerusalems as mutual capitals would encourage revanchism, emotional rhetoric, and terrorism. Better that both be denied the prize.

2. Most of the settlements, particularly the wild-cat outposts, in the WB would be withdrawn. The largest settlements (around the ‘three fingers’) could be retained in exchange for land-swaps elsewhere. But these swaps must not simply be empty Negev desert near Gaza or the south WB.

3. The Palestinians would surrender the right of return to Israel proper and would not be permitted to maintain a national army in the WB for at least 20 years. Israel’s primary military fear of Palestinian independence is an Arab army west of the Jordan river. NATO membership for Israel would also help to ease Israel’s security fears.

4. With these borders in place, a large, nearly impenetrable fence would be constructed monitored by professional peacekeepers with no stakes in the game (South Korea or Australia, e.g.). Given so many years of enmity, the best mid-term solution is ‘good fences make good neighbors.’ Both sides need a break from each other, and physical separation will give each time and space to find its own way. Afterwards, discussion of economic integration may begin, but to start, strict separation will allow temperatures to cool.

Other issues remain – a Gaza-WB access corridor, the rules for exploiting the WB aquifer, the inevitable economic aid to the poor Palestinian microstate. But these are far more practicable – a heavily guarded, enclosed bridge and a dedicated air corridor between Gaza and the WB, plus water rights for Israel in exchange for economic aid to the Palestinians. And the entire package could be slathered over with US aid to buy just about off everyone.

This basic deal solves the conflict through mutual denial, ironically the best possible way to appease hardliners on both sides. No one gets Jerusalem. The Israelis lose the settlements and the dream of greater Israel; the Palestinians lose the dream of return and their military, a central element of sovereignty.

To be sure, no one will like this arrangement. Particularly, conservatives on all sides will bewail the loss of religious claims, but these serve more to fire the conflict than resolve it. In the place of ‘victory,’ this division allows a cold peace – but better than none at all.

Is It Cheaper for the US to Lose in Iraq/Afghanistan?: Costs and Benefits of Hegemonic Retrenchment

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This was originally written in the fall of 2007, but it applies to Afghanistan today as well.

Douglas MacArthur famously suggested, ‘there is no substitute for victory.’ War involves high costs, and victory is to redeem those costs. In rationalist terms, war should pay. Victory implies that payoff, and states should invest in success to achieve it. The benefits need not be material, such as territory or resources; they may be ideological, ideational, or in prestige. Hegemons and great powers particularly place great stock in victory because of perceived credibility and stature threats.

But the populist logic of MacArthur’s statement misses the shifting ground of costs and benefits in wartime. Sunk costs in lives and treasure expand; perceived benefits may wither; perceived costs to defeat may decline. In the history of US foreign policy, the rise and closure of the Vietnam War illustrates these shifting sands of costs and benefits. The domestic costs of lives lost, money spent, inflation, and domestic unrest rose dramatically. The benefits of victory became increasingly ethereal; South Vietnam was clearly a weak ally with little to offer for increasing high American costs. Conversely, the costs of defeat sank as US foreign policy makers realized that Vietnam’s loss would not in fact knock over many dominoes. Australia, Indonesia, and Japan would not ‘finlandize.’ The USSR’s experience in Afghanistan is similar. At some point, it simply is cheaper to lose.

Now apply this model to the current Iraq War. The cost-benefit analysis is (probably) turning against US involvement:

1. The costs of victory are skyrocketing. Estimates of the war range from one to two trillion dollars. Claims of a ‘broken’ army feed fears of imperial overstretch. A steady stream of American casualties from an unwanted nation-building mission has deeply divided and soured American public opinion. America’s global reputation and legitimacy are at record lows.

2. The benefits of victory are increasingly insubstantial. Iraq is back in OPEC. Maliki and the Iraqi religious leadership are no accommodating more of Israel than other regional states. No MWD were found. Iraq will likely be a failed/quasi-state, hardly a reliable or durable ally in the war on terror. Long-term US bases there would be controversial and attacked constantly.

3. The costs of defeat are lower than the US leadership believes. None of Iraq’s neighbors wants Iraq to become an Qaeda sanctuary; it is unlikely to be another Afghanistan. Small cross-border raids with drones and gunships (as in Somalia or Pakistan) will be possible should al Qaeda persist. The US has no clear national interest in the outcome of the Sunni-Shia civil war. Regardless of the outcome, the regional American alliance network will not likely change. Where else can the gulf emirs, Israel, Egypt, etc. realistically go for support beyond the US?

Yet hegemonic states figure in credibility as a cost particular to their status. US prestige concerns likely lengthened the Vietnam war by several years through the Nixon administration, as Soviet fears prolonged the Afghan conflict through the Gorbachev presidency. Both Nixon and Gorbachev promised to end the war but took years to do so. The current Iraq War again suggests that the hegemons will carry punishing cost/benefit equations for prestige. The question I propose to investigate is at what point do the non-prestige costs overwhelm hoped-for, yet hard to calculate, credibility gain.

Al Qaeda as an NGO

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Research Note

1. Argument

Since 9/11, the United States has implicitly treated its terrorist opponents as if they were states. It has deployed traditional assets of hard power against countries such as Iraq and Afghanistan. President Bush speaks of a global ‘war’ on terror (GWoT) and listed only states in the ‘axis of evil.’ Yet terrorist groups themselves are structurally similar to nongovernmental organizations (NGOs). While they may receive state-sponsorship, they frequently are an organizational embodiment of indigenous social movements. Al Qaeda, Hamas, Hezbollah, and other Islamist groups emanate from the Islamic revival or wave since the 1970s, just as Greenpeace did from the environmental movement. That some of these NGOs or social movement organizations deploy violence distinguishes them tactically, but not structurally. Indeed at least one environmental NGO, the Earth Liberation Front, has slowly drifted into terrorism. Hence, warfighting counterterrorism strategies mischaracterize the opponent. This essay will first, map the structural similarities between terrorist organizations and NGOs through a comparison of Greenpeace and al Qaeda, and second, deduce counter-insurgency rather than warfighting policy implications for the GWoT.

As social movements arise – feminism, Islamism, Irish nationalism – they kick up non-state entities – NGOs – that agitate for new goals. Traditionally the literature on NGOs and social movements has implied that they are leftist or ‘progressive.’ From rising environmental concern emanates Greenpeace or the World Wild Life Fund; civil rights concerns generate the NAACP. Yet this logic does not preclude nationalist, religious, or ‘regressive’ social movements. Rising Irish nationalism in the environment of decolonization generated the IRA, as well as peaceful groups agitating for change. Similarly, an Islamic revival has gripped the Muslim world since the 1970s and created non-state, civil society groups to renew Muslim piety, some of which have reached to terrorism. That some, such as Hamas or Hezbollah, so blur the boundaries between NGO-style aid and charity work and terrorism, intellectually motivates my comparison of the two concepts.

2. Research

Several decades of research on social movements and NGOs has generated a general set of structural attributes of NGOs. For comparison, I choose Greenpeace, because it is a ‘classic,’ well-researched NGO case, and al Qaeda, because it is the best known terrorist group emanant from the Islamic revivalist movement. The following structured, focused comparison will be expanded in the full essay: Both are non-state and transnational. They are networked across borders through national chapters. These chapters have formal memberships, complete with selection criteria and bureaucratic jockeying over advancement, projects, and internal governance. National chapters are complemented by a wider but softer constituency of partially mobilizable sympathizers. Leadership is oligarchic and personalistic; charismatic founders tend to dominate, with limited circulation at the top. Both engage in fund-raising and recruitment within the relevant social movement. They are principled advocates; they seek deep ideational change in world politics. But the ‘deep politics’ of norm entrepreneurship is slow, and both are given to bouts of extraparliamentary direct action for immediate policy change. Neither seeks to enter traditional politics or morph into a political party. Both are media-savvy and engage extensively in public relations campaigns. They heavily use the non-nationalized, deterritorial space of the internet to organize, mobilize and fundraise at a global level for global change. Finally, like many NGOs, both share a general ideological disdain for US-led capitalist modernity.

3. Policy Implications/Results

The policy implications of this analysis, particularly for the current US WoT are significant. Islamism will continue to kick up groups like Al Qaeda or Hamas until the fervor behind the revival fades. As such, militarized strategies that target failed states are unlikely to reduce Islamic terrorism. Indeed, as the National Intelligence Estimates argue, the Iraq war has likely created more jihadists, because it plays to the most extreme variants of the Muslim revival. Warfighting counter-terrorism strategies significantly overrate the relevance of rickety, postcolonial states of the Middle East and Central Asia; they mischaracterize the opponent as a traditional state which can be reduced by traditional means.

If the opponent is primarily ideational – an inspirational social movement – channeled through violent NGOs, then a ‘hearts and minds’ strategy, complemented by containment and counterinsurgency, is likely a more efficacious approach. The model for future Western action in the GWoT would be not Iraq but the Malayan emergency of the 1950s. The norm entrepreneurship of Islamic radicals would be met by a contrasting, liberal campaign for hearts and minds. Where unsuccessful, Islamist regimes like Iran would face containment, and violent NGOs like al Qaeda would face counter-insurgency in fine-grained, patient, well-intelligenced, culturally-literate, small-footprint operations.

4. Method

The method is historical and cross-comparative. I will follow Alexander George’s prescription of structured, focused comparison. Along a series of generalized vectors, I will compare these two cases. The attributes listed above (section 2) are the general markers against which the two cases will be measured. The actual research will only involve reading. The relevant information is already in the public sphere. Because I wrote my dissertation on NGOs, I will likely circulate drafts among my NGO acquaintances; I will make a particular effort to solicit Greenpeace. I will also consult with associates from the CIA, homeland security, the military, and the other terrorism scholars in my professional network.

5. Literature/Contribution

This project contributes creatively to the international relations literatures on terrorism and social movements. To my knowledge, they have never been brought together before. Traditionally, social movement and NGO scholars focus on left-‘progressive’ groups like the anti-globalizers around the IMF and World Bank, or indigenous third world development groups. In Power in Movement, Sidney Tarrow noted that almost no one applies the tools of this work to rightist social movements. By contrast, the counterterrorism literature is dominated by Iraq, tactical considerations of how democracies should respond to terrorism, and state-sponsorship of terror. The structure of terrorist networks is simply taken for granted; they are like brigands or pirates or militias. But the operations of al Qaeda, Hamas and others suggest far greater sophistication.

So I believe I am creatively fusing two previously unaffiliated literatures. Applying our tools, as Tarrow suggests, to a conservative social movement and its emanant NGOs should yield theoretically interesting and policy-relevant results.

Movie Review: Terminator 3 – Ah-nuld Will Be Back…Again…And Again…

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Good news first: The latest installment in this beloved franchise is not lame. In fact, it is a pretty decent flick, if not really good. In the past few years, venerable franchises like Star Wars, Jurassic Park, the Matrix and Star Trek have embarrassed themselves. In returning to another late sequel of another much loved saga, viewers are wise to be cautious. But lovers of T2 won’t be crushed. Now let’s just hope that Mad Max 4 (?) and Indy 4 (2008) won’t be clunkers either.

Terminator 3: Rise of the Machines is the latest installment in the hugely popular Terminator series (T1, 1984; T2, 1991). The film’s very existence, however, is troublesome if you know the first two, because the second wraps up the story rather well. Like Godfather III, viewers may find this installment a bit unnecessary, and both are the ‘worst’ of their respective trilogies. T3 never really gets around the knotty problem of why T2 wasn’t the end of the road. But also like GIII, unfair comparison with its excellent predecessors should not undervalue the current effort.

T3 opens with John Connor (Nick Stahl), head of the future human resistance to the machines, living as an untraceable drifter (albeit one who never leaves southern California). Skynet, mankind’s machine opponent in the future, once more sends back a baddie Terminator to assassinate him (Kristanna Loken’s TX or Terminatrix), and the humans once again send an older model (Arnold Schwarzenegger’s T-101) to help him. This plot device, creative in the first movie, feels like a retread by now, so director Jonathan Mostow spruces things up by making the evil terminator ‘female’ (?) and giving her other targets besides Connor himself.

From there things quickly heat up as Schwarzenegger and Loken chase after Connor and one of his closest future lieutenants (Claire Danes’ Kate Brewster). The well-advertised action sequence with the crane truck occurs early in the movie (perhaps learning a lesson from Star Wars and Matrix Reloaded’s long expository tedium), and the action sequences after that are pretty serious stuff. The film purportedly cost $170 M, and as a summer action pic, it does not disappoint. F/X whiz Stan Winston was brought back again and does a great job recycling and reworking James Cameron’s (director of the first two) original visions of the Skynet machines.

The progress of the film’s narrative mirrors (rips off?) the second film. Once again the humans, assisted by Ah-nuld, are off to stop the nuclear armageddon of Judgment Day while under pursuit from a better terminator. The ending, however, is far more pessimistic than expected, (spoiler ahead) finding Connor and Brewster in an underground bunker to ride out the nuclear war. Indeed the most emotionally powerful scene of the film is the concluding image, from space, of ICBMs criss-crossing the atmosphere and the massive mushroom clouds of their impacts. That ending clearly sets up a sequel, and Schwarzenegger himself leaked on the Howard Stern Show last week, that he had agreed to T4 and T5, if he doesn’t run for office. Nonehtless, IMBD list T4 with a 2009 release date.

This is a solid film. As a summer action movie, it makes the grade of popcorn fun. The CGI is used to augment not replace real-life action, and it thankfully demurs from the contemporary trend of filming all action sequences as high-wire karate battles. There are no terminators on strings. In this ‘summer of sequels,’ it is better paced than the stop-start Matrix Reloaded, and the action and story are more ‘believable’ than the ridiculous X2, with its kung fu mutants so powerful that governments long ago would have eradicated them. And do I really need to tell you it is better than Legally Blonde or Charlie’s Angels 2?

As an installment in the franchise, it is also an achievement. It moves the story forward (where Star Wars I or Jurassic III barely do), and it creates tension and anticipation for the next chapter. It also pleasantly maintains the offbeat humor of T2, and clearly Mostow & co. studied the visuals and story of the predecessors to keep the films’ look synchronous. Mostow demonstrates real care, and it shows. I am hopeful however that an expanded DVD cut may improve its tie-in to the previous films.

There are several problems of course, including a plot-hole big enough to blast a terminator through. At the end of T2, the Cyberdyne plant (the company building the first machines) is destroyed, as are the materials of the terminators that warped back through time. In theory then, there should have been nothing left upon which Skynet would be built. But in T3, just 10 years later, Skynet is about to take over, and there is no mention of Cyberdyne. Huh? It is a shame that the military and Skynet scenes are so poorly fleshed out, because the erection of Skynet that T3 presumes radically de-values the action taken by the trio at the end of T2. Here is where a director’s cut may really help the continuing story.

This suggests another major change – in the series’ tone toward, for lack of a better word, predestination. Cameron, for all his love of machinery (Aliens, Titanic, The Abyss), has always had a humanist touch – directed action by committed humans can make a difference in the world. The mantra of the resistance in the earlier Terminator films was ‘there is no fate but what we make.’ In this film, Mostow drops that to stress that Judgment Day is ‘inevitable.’ Schwarzenegger’s robotic character even talks, a la Darth Vader, to John Connor about ‘your destiny.’ While perhaps necessary language to keep the story rolling for more sequels, it is a significant break with the tone and guarded optimism of Cameron’s work. In this one, humans are screwed, and there ain’t much we can do.

Perhaps the biggest issue fans will notice is the lack of Linda Hamilton as Sarah Connor, Edward Furlong as John, and Cameron in the director’s chair. There was great controversy over these changes, and many fans were deeply skeptical that without these returnees, the film would be little more than a cash-in on a popular icon or an effort to prop-up Schwarzenegger’s sagging appeal or gubernatorial ambitions. Why Cameron refused the sequel is a mystery. He has spoken not publicly on this. But without him, both Linda Hamilton and Michael Biehn (the good guy from T1) refused to return. And Furlong’s absence has been variously ascribed to drug issues and his prickly attitude. Judging by Stahl’s flaccid performance, he was much easier to direct about.

The replacements work relatively well. Hamilton’s character is disposed of with little ado, perhaps too little. Stahl does a passable job as John. He seems genuinely burdened by the weight of the possible future, but his dialogue is flat and unimaginative (“sometimes things happen that just can’t be prevented” – yawn). Danes doesn’t get to do much either besides scream and run, like Hamilton did in T1. So…maybe she’ll come back in the next one as a pumped-up super mom smoking Marlboro Reds? Yeah!

Loken, as the antagonist, gets much more to do, but like Robert Patrick (the bad T-1000 terminator in T2) she doesn’t get to say much. She clearly models her stone-faced performance on his and does well enough. But with so little dialogue and few expressive movements, we notice, perhaps more than is fair, her attractive physical appearance. She is a former fashion model, and it is just hard to find that as menacing as the T-1000.

This issue is perhaps the greatest ‘sell-out’ of T3 to the logic of Hollywood in respect to its predecessors. There is no narrative requirement for a female terminator – or male, to be fair. And the ‘terminatrix’ could have looked like Janet Reno or Oprah Winfrey. Instead it is painfully clear that Mostow chose Loken for her striking good looks. He wisely chose to retain his credibility by avoiding an easy, full frontal nude shot of her, but her selection nonetheless betrays a ‘Seven of Nine’-style sell out to the teenage boy demographic. This continues a disappointing Hollywood trend to recruit female talent from the modeling business rather than acting schools. Instead of skilled actresses, who are perhaps attractive as well, the method now is to recruit models and then hope they can act – think Natasha Henstridge, Denise Richards, Naomi Campbell.

The heart of the film of course is Schwarzenegger. His terminator this time has more to do and say, and the stiff, awkward robot jokes still work. This is clearly Schwarzenegger’s signature role, and it is good to see him back in form after such clunkers as The End of Days or Batman and Robin. And it simply must be said that, at 55, he looks astonishing. Too much of the film, however, rests on him this time around. In the other films, there were meaningful human characters with strong actor performances to supplement the big guy. Sarah could have done a decent job with John on her own, for example, in T2, and Hamilton added that sense in her portrayal. This time around you have the impression Connor and Brewster would die immediately without the governator to guide them. This focus on Schwarzenegger’s terminator character may please those for whom that is the big appeal of the series, but it clearly impoverishes the wider narrative that the humans’ characterizations and arcs are so limpid this time through.

Recommendation: Casual Viewers: If you have seen the other films and thought they were passable fun, you will probably enjoy this one. Just take it as more summer movie entertainment. It will help a lot to have seen the first films though (there is surprisingly little re-cap in this one), so if you need to, rent them before you go back. If you are totally new to the franchise and don’t generally care for the sustained action genre, you will be bored. Die Hard Fans: You will see it no matter what I say, but I think you will like it. Mostow tries hard to capture the spirit of the first two, some 19 years after T1, and he does a better job than we expected. The narrative mostly works, and the action scenes are as big and bold as you want them. And you will be psyched for the next one. 3.5/5 STARS.