The last time I saw Neo…

The New Neo Posted on by

…she was traveling.

Actually, for the entire past month I’ve been traveling far more than is my usual practice—so often I’ve practically lost count.

But this is the largest of my trips so far. Where am I? There’s a hint in the title of this post. Another hint is the time-stamp—why am I uploading this in what appears to be the wee hours of the morning?

Because, in fact, although it’s indeed morning here, the hours aren’t so very wee. Yes, gentle readers, your intrepid world-traveler and reporter extraordinaire, neo-neocon, is in Paris, the belly of the beast. Although Paris is more like Beauty, despite the fact that rain and clouds are predicted for much of my stay.

After a fairly rapid plane journey (and can somebody please tell me why it takes only a tiny bit longer to cross the six-hour time difference from the Eastern US to France than it takes to cross the continental US, which gives you a mere three-hour difference?) I reached the crowded Charles de Gaulle airport early in the morning on Sunday.

The initial theme of my Paris stay has been: stairs.

As we disembarked from the plane, it was announced that, to get to the main terminal, “you’re going to need to be able to climb a couple of stairs.” That didn’t daunt me, despite an extra-heavy carry-on—I can do stairs. But this turned out to be a full two and a half flights, up all the way rather than down. Call me a spoiled American if you wish (and the French might undoubtedly wish), but I wonder why it is that—despite France’s trailblazing history (“The first escalator installed for public use was at the Paris Exposition of 1900”), this century-old miracle doesn’t seem to have arrived yet to De Gaulle.

And then there’s the elevator, another relatively ancient invention. The one in the lovely and well-situated apartment where I’m staying (a friend’s kind hospitality) has a single flaw—it was broken when I arrived. Thus, the stair theme continued as I followed the sweating (and no doubt cursing, had I been able to understand French and/or read his mind) concierge up a full seven (count ’em, sept) flights of stairs, he hauling my far-too-heavy suitcase and I lugging my far-too-heavy carry-on (blame the computer and all its accoutrements) behind.

I’ve only been here a day, and I’ve already had a good meal with convivial company, so don’t think I’m complaining. I’m not. And the elevator has now been repaired—a model of efficiency, relatively speaking. Efficient and energy-saving, also, are the hallway and stairway lights that are on timers, and helpfully turn themselves off when they decree I’ve had time enough to do whatever it is I might have been doing—such as climb the stairs faster—plunging me into darkness until I figure out where the tiny glowing light switch is.

My computer works, and it optimistically assumes I want to search Google in French (“Bienvenue dans Firefox 1.0, le nouveau navigateur facile é  utiliser de Mozilla”) and to emigrate (“Do you want to miss your chance to live and work in the USA?”). I’ve successfully negotiated the Metro, although not without stopping several people for help. I managed to work my customary magical spell on gadgetry by unaccountably sending the cellphone I was kindly given into “lock” mode (I knew this because a picture of a key appeared on its screen and I could neither make nor receive calls for a while; the instructions to unlock it were—d’accord!—in French).

A wonderful anomaly—this one not without some charm—is the key. I’ve taken the liberty of photographing it next to an American quarter for scale:

My stay has been great so far (about twenty-four hours), and exciting. So, why am I here? Funny you should ask. I plan, of course, to sightsee (and maybe even shop), but it’s a working vacation: I’m doing some interviewing and plan to be writing. Details to emerge later.

We may suffer harsh winters, but at least we have this

The New Neo Posted on by

It’s autumn in New England. No surprise there. And calendar-worthy fall scenes are a dime a dozen here–have camera, point, and shoot.

But not always. All too often, my own photos turn out to be pedestrian shots of brightly-colored leaves, pretty but nondescript. The colors are never quite as intense as reality, the three-dimensional effect and the light filtering through the foliage not enough like the real thing.

Which is as it should be, I suppose. The real thing is what gets us outside, into that fresh and crisp autumn air–minus the smell of burning leaves, madeleine-like memory of my youth.

Ah, but fortunately, I have friends who are much better photographers than I. Plus they have better cameras, but that’s not really their secret. A photographer has to have a certain “eye,” and patience, and the ability to “see” what will be in the frame.

So here, without further ado, I present some of my favorites from this year’s fall photos taken by a friend:

And then this one, taken at a party at the house of another friend who’s fortunate to live on a bay and have this view of sunset:

Which segues to this, as the sun sinks even lower and disappears for another day:

Not a bad place to be on a beautiful autumn eve.

Wars, civil and/or religious: Part III (nationalism and Iraq)

The New Neo Posted on by

The Thirty Years War of 1618-1648 was the last major religious war in Europe, and it was a lulu.

I challenge anyone who’s not already a student of European history to wade through that Wikipedia article linked above–it’s dense with brain-fogging facts. The gist of the story seems to be that the war was a religious one (Catholic vs. Protestant) but, like most religious wars, it was also a jockeying for power and territory based on regional and other differences. The war could almost be said to have been a mini-World War, because it encompassed so much of Western Europe before it was over, and caused such widespread death and devastation.

The War was ended by the Peace of Westphalia, which was:

…instrumental in laying the foundations for what are even today considered the basic tenets of the sovereign nation-state. Aside from establishing fixed territorial boundaries for many of the countries involved in the ordeal (as well as for the newer ones created afterwards), the Peace of Westphalia changed the relationship of subjects to their rulers. In earlier times, people had tended to have overlapping political and religious loyalties. Now, it was agreed that the citizenry of a respective nation were subjected first and foremost to the laws and whims of their own respective government rather than to those of neighboring powers, be they religious or secular.

So what we have here is a long-term and devastating religious war that splintered Europe for a while but ultimately ended up building the foundations for modern nationalism, an allegiance that transcends religious and ethnic differences and unites the residents of a certain geographical area in a perception of relative unity. Of course, nations often have a predominant (or even state) religious identity, and often consist mainly of a particular ethnic group, but they are virtually always some sort of amalgam, and the most successful nations manage to transcend those internal divisions.

Nationalism, however–even in Europe–is a relatively recent phenomenon, solidifying mostly in the nineteenth century. Before that–in the immortal words of Massachusetts Congressman Tip O’Neill, who said it in a very different context–all politics was local.

How does nationalism relate to the current crisis in Iraq, and to the rest of the Arab world? One aspect of the current struggle is that a certain hefty percentage of the Iraqi population–although we don’t know how large a group this is–sees its allegiance as religious rather than national. Saddam exacerbated these divisions by favoring Sunnis and persecuting Shiites, and the early post-war atmosphere perpetuated this pattern, with Sunni-on-Shiite violence predominating. For a while, the calming words of the Shiite cleric Sistani stayed the hand of Shiite retribution, but that’s no longer the case, and we do see a cycle of violence and a struggle for power occurring.

This could be countered by nationalism, which is trying to dominate factionalism. That’s why the debate as to whether federalism could be a solution in Iraq is such an important one. Federalism is a tool to deal with the unification of a group made of disparate elements: e pluribus unum, after all.

How do nations get born? Some are lucky–they share a language and, more importantly, a sense of being a nation. Nationality doesn’t rest on any one characteristic, but is more of a perception: “Many students of nationalism are eventually led to the (almost tautological) conclusion that people belong to a certain nation if they feel that they belong to it.”

Nationalism a uniting force that can be countered by two opposing principles: a fracturing one and a pan-uniting one. The first is the fracturing force of regionalism, religious and ethnic and political differences; factors that can splinter an entity that might otherwise be poised to unify or that already was unified under a strongman or outside force (the breakup of Yugoslavia is a good example of the latter, likewise the USSR).

The second principle countering nationalism, the pan-uniting one, exists through allegiances that transcend even that of the nation, and dictate loyalty to a more international group.

Thus, one of the linchpins of anti-Semitism has always been a perception of Jews as an extra-national force of global reach (and evil designs, of course). Another example is one I remember from my youth, when some people objected to the Presidential aspirations of the Catholic JFK because they didn’t “want the Pope running the US.”

Pan-Arabism, or even unification of the entire umma, has always been a dream for some in the Arab and/or Muslim world. Even Saddam was originally a pan-Arabist, and although he retreated from that overt stance quite early on, he apparently never quite gave up his aspirations to be the dominant power in the Arab world. And of course Iran, likewise, wishes to establish a new pan-Islamic Caliphate under Shiite rather than Sunni rule.

So, paradoxically, some of the conflict in Iraq is of the divisive (or local) variety: various home-grown groups jockeying for position, power, and revenge, while some of it is fueled by the unifying, pan-Muslim vision, which relies on foreign powers such as Iran to stir the pot, feeds into the local groups, and is likewise broken down along Sunni-Shia lines. The countering force to both would be nationalism, federal or otherwise, of a type that respects differences and allows each faction its say and its rights.

The war in Iraq was supposed to help usher in such an era. Some never thought it would be easy (I count myself among them). Some, no doubt, underestimated the difficulties that lay ahead. As I’ve written before, dictatorships offer one solution to the dilemma–they can impose nationalism with a strong and tyrannical will, and the ruthless power to back it up, but at great human cost. The other way–the way that’s being tried in Iraq–can lead to chaos and civil war, which has other costs.

The United States is somewhat unique–and definitely fortunate–in being a nation whose greatest unifying force (other than geography) is a shared set of ideals and principles, and with a Constitution that aims to establish and protect (relatively successfully, so far, despite the “Bushhitler” proclamations) the rights granted therein.

Our postwar occupations of West Germany and Japan managed, somehow, to counter the forces of anarchy there and allow stable nations to re-establish themselves. The key word might be “re-establish;” both countries had a strong sense of nationality prior to the war (in each case, probably too strong, a fact which helped lead to their aggressiveness in World War II). Both nations had also experienced the devastion of a prolonged world war and utter defeat.

Current opinion is divided on how strong Iraq’s sense of nationhood is: whether it was artificially imposed by the somewhat arbitrary division of the Ottoman Empire post-World War I, and then artificially continued by Saddam’s dictatorship–or whether is draws on a strong sense of togetherness based on an ancient and proud history. In dispute, as well, is whether Western notions of human rights can be grafted onto it.

One thing is for certain: there are many strong forces trying to dictate otherwise, who are not interested in a unified Iraq with a strong constitution that guarantees the human rights of all its inhabitants.

Wars, civil and/or religious: Part II (religious war)

The New Neo Posted on by

We in the modern west have grown unused to the concept of religious war. In fact, the very term seems un-PC, like the word “crusade.” Wars of religion have come to be regarded as mere screens for other motivators: socioeconomic inequalities, political power struggles, racial differences.

It’s probably true that few, if any, religious wars have ever been purely religious. But we cannot and should not ignore the force of religious differences as one potent motivator, both in the past and today, for wars. And please, don’t subscribe to the notion that religion is therefore the root of all evil and all war; it most decidedly is not. But ideas have consequences, and religions are ideas with both consequences and legs.

I don’t know about you, but I was the one snoozing at my desk when we took up subjects like the Thirty Years’ War in European History during my junior year of high school. Catholics at war with Protestants? What? The Huguenots? Who? In my community, the Protestants and the Catholics were on good terms (although, come to think of it, there were virtually no Protestants where I grew up–it was all Italian, all the time), and the idea of a religious war between them was preposterous.

This was, of course, shortly before the resumption of The Troubles in Northern Ireland, in which the reality of war between Protestants and Catholics was restored. But this seemed a local skirmish that had less to do with differences of worship and more to do with what group would hold the reins of political power.

The split between Sunni and Shiite was even more remote. But it clearly has also had political as well as ideological/religious elements: the Shiite felt disempowered since 938 (!!) by the disappearance of the Twelfth Iman and the ascension to power of Sunni clerics for the next–well, for the next millennium, until the (Sunni) caliphate fell at the end of the Ottoman Empire. The ascendance of the Ayatollah Khomeini to the reins of Shiite dictatorship in Iran was, among other things, a turning point for the Shiite in terms of regaining power in the heretofore Sunni-dominated Muslim world.

Sunnis, on the other hand, experienced the loss of the Ottoman Caliphate as a nearly mortal blow, and have been struggling for a replacement ever since. Thus, the rise of various fundamentalist Sunni movements such as the Muslim Brotherhood in Egypt, which was part of the inspiration for al Qaeda. In a post-9/11 explanatory tape, Bin Laden himself cited the end of the Ottoman Empire as a catastrophe for which 9/11 was meant to be payback.

So, there are two religious conflicts going on in the Muslim world: a longstanding intra-religious one (Sunni/Shiite) that goes back to the tenth century and has heated up with the fall of the Caliphate, and a longstanding inter-religious war that goes back even further, but has recently been heated up with the fall of the Caliphate as well because that fall has been attributed to Western influence. Furthermore, both strains are outraged at what is seen as the decadence of the Western world, an influence felt more and more by Muslims due to the pace of modern life and communications, as well as actual hot wars in places such as Iraq, and the presence of the non-Muslim state of Israel on a tiny sliver of land that had been in Ottoman hands for centuries.

So, the conflict is nothing new; it just seemed quiescent for a while, and that calm was illusory. The relative “stability” afforded by Saddam Hussein’s regime was the opposition his Sunni-led (although Shiite-majority) state provided to Iran’s power. Those who criticized our invasion of Iraq on the realpolitik grounds that it would upset that particular balance may have been correct, although it’s too soon to tell how things will ultimately play out.

(By the way, it’s interesting that many of the same people on the Left who criticized the Iraq invasion on those grounds also criticized–ex-post-facto, as best I can determine–the realpolitik of our support for Saddam against Iran during the Iraq/Iran war of the 80s. Of course, consistency was never one of the Left’s strong suits. But I digress.)

These forces in the Muslim world may be destined to battle it out, as they have for a long time. The difference is that today their battle affects us directly. In some ways it really doesn’t matter to us whether Sunni or Shiite win, because the danger comes (as it often does) from the extremists and jihadis on both sides, and it’s hard to judge whose are worse.

For the Sunnis, those extremists have been concentrated mostly in the form of terrorists, who tend to operate extra-nationally, across many states, and without being at the helm of one (ever since the fall of the Taliban, that is, when they lost the stronghold of state-sponsored Sunni terrorism, Afghanistan). Shiite extremism, on the other hand, has for decades been centered in a state, Iran, which has sponsored terrorists such as the Shiite Hezbollah, and which clearly has present-day nuclear aspirations.

Saddam was an anomaly, in a way. He was a Sunni in charge of a Shiite state, and he persecuted and murdered a large number of the latter, whom he feared. He was a vicious dictator in the mold of secular leaders such as Stalin (whom he revered and emulated), but he was not above using religion for his own purposes. He constituted a threat to the region during the Gulf War, was in violation of countless UN resolutions, and was thought by the entire world community prior to the US invasion of Iraq to have nuclear and chemical weapons, which would have posed a danger to his neighbors–and to the west, if he’d sold them to terrorists. Saddam was both a tyrant and a loose cannon, and it seemed to many to have been a reasonable roll of the dice at the time to take him out.

Like it or not (and most of us don’t like it), ever since the late 70s, with the ascendancy of the Ayatollahs’ theocracy in Iran (and perhaps even before), we have been intimately and inextricably engaged in the intra- and inter-religious wars going on in the Muslim world. The current Iraq crisis is one chapter in those wars. It won’t be the last, nor is it likely to be the worst. And yes, indeed, those wars are both religous and political, as religious wars have always been.

[If I maintain the energy and inclination, tomorrow may feature Part III, on Europe’s religious Protestant/Catholic wars. Or there may be another part, on the rise of nationalism, and what makes a nation a nation. Or none of the above. We’ll see.]

Wars, civil and/or religious: Part I (civil war–nothing civil about it)

The New Neo Posted on by

The thread on Iraqi federalism inspired a debate in the comments section about whether Iraq is facing a civil war or a religious war, or neither, or both.

Perhaps it’s just a question of semantics. We could (and no doubt will) quibble over each and every word in the alternate definitions: “civil,” “religious,” and “war.” But I think we can all agree that the sectarian, religious, and ethnic violence there is greater than desired, and that it’s difficult to see how it will end in the near future.*

So, how can we get perspective on what’s happening in Iraq right now? One thing that’s occurring represents a common phenomenon–as I wrote in this post on Russia and this one on North Korea–which is that, when dictatorships are removed, we face the spectre of chaos and dueling for position between rival factions now released from previous supression.

Dictatorships not only can make the trains run on time (although neither the USSR nor North Korea were/are famous for that), they put a firm lid of tyranny on the simmering tensions of ethnic and religious and other strife, and create an illusion of harmony. Then, when that lid is removed, the pot boils over. In addition–and especially if dictatorships are in power for a long time–they stir up the desire for revenge for old grievances perpetrated by the regime itself.

In Iraq, the pot is boiling, or at least simmering. The split seems to be along Sunni-Shiite lines, which indicates a religious war. But it’s not quite that simple (I’ll deal in greater depth with this question, and discuss religious wars in general, in Part II, tomorrow).

The Sunni-Shiite split occurred almost at the beginning of Islam, and Iraq is far from the only place it’s being played out. To simplify: Shiites dominate Iran, and Sunnis are more numerous in most Arab states (although not in Iraq, where Shiites constitute about two-thirds to the Sunni one-third). But the division is far from clear, and tribes, which also dominate the region, can be quite mixed, as Saudi Prince Turki has observed:

“…in most of Iraq the links and interlinks of Sunni and Shiites go far beyond the efforts to drive them apart,” Prince Turki said.

Many Iraqi tribes and clans contain both Sunnis and Shiites, and there are many Sunni-Shiite intermarriages, he noted, and the tribal and clan and personal links cross sectarian lines.

“In practical terms, how could such a civil war happen?” he asked. “It is practically impossible to divide Iraq into sectarian regions. It would mean mass emigration and ethnic cleansing, and a lot of killing between families and tribal groupings.

But that’s often true of areas where civil wars erupt. In fact, it’s one of the great tragedies of civil war itself. One has only to look at our own bloody Civil War, in which brother literally fought brother, and members of the same graduating class at West Point were generals on either side of the divide, to see how very possible it is.

To give one more example, the Tutsis and Hutus involved in the terrible genocide in Rwanda (mostly Hutus killing Tutsis, but moderate Hutus were also at risk) were commonly presented as sharply delineated ethnic groups. But in actuality this was far from the case:

Many researchers point out that both groups speak the same language, have a history of intermarriage and share many cultural characteristics. Traditionally, the differences between the two groups were occupational rather than ethnic…Tutsi can often be physically distinguished as taller than Hutu, but according to the vice president of the National Assembly Laurent Nkongoli, frequently “[y]ou can’t tell us apart, we can’t tell us apart.”

So one thing we can safely say is that the divisions in such wars are murky, and that family ties and long-term interactions don’t preclude the explosion of bitter and terrible violence.

Another thing we can say is that civil wars are exceedingly common, even though the majority of them receive far less publicity than the present conflict in Iraq. Take a look at this fascinating article by Monica Duffy Toft, associate professor of Pulic Policy at Harvard’s Kennedy School.

Toft discusses whether the present conflict in Iraq qualifies as a civil war. Short answer: yes, it meets all the criteria, which are: (1) dispute over whom will govern; (2) [at least] two groups of organized combatants; (3) the state one of the combatants; (4) at least 1,000 battle deaths per year on average; (5) ratio of total deaths at least 95 percent to 5 percent for the two sides; (6) fought within the boundaries of an internationally recognized state.

But what’s most fascinating about Toft’s article–at least to me–is its conclusion, which is simply a list of all the civil wars that have darkened the world since 1940.

To save you the trouble of following the link, I hereby reproduce that list. You may get tired of scrolling down, but please bear with me:

Afghanistan I Civil War: Mujahideen, Taliban 1978 2001

Algeria I War of Independence 1954 1962

Algeria II Opposition to Bella 1963 1963

Algeria III Fundamentalists 1992 .

Angola I War of Independence 1961 1974

Angola IIa Angolan Civil War 1975 1994

Angola IIb UNITA Warfare 1998 2002

Argentina Coup 1955 1955

Azerbaijan/USSR Nagorno-Karabakh 1988 1994

Bangladesh Chittagong Hill 1972 1997

Bolivia I Popular Revolt 1946 1946

Bolivia II Bolivian Revolution 1952 1952

Brazzaville Ia Elections 1993 1993

Brazzaville Ib Factional Warfare 1997 1997

Burma I Communist Revolt 1948 1989

Burma II Karens 1948 .

Burma III Shan 1959 .

Burma IV Kachins 1960 1994

Burundi Ia Hutu Coup Attempt 1965 1965

Burundi Ib Hutu Rebellion 1972 1972

Burundi Ic Hutu/Tutsi 1988 1988

Burundi Id Hutu/Tutsi 1991 1991

Burundi Ie Hutu/Tutsi 1993 2003

Cambodia Ia Khmer Rouge 1970 1975

Cambodia Ib Viet Intervention 1978 1991

Cameroon War of Independence 1955 1960

Chad FROLINAT 1965 1997

Chile Army Revolt 1973 1973

China I Com Rev: Final Phase 1945 1949

China III Cultural Revolution 1966 1969

China IIa Tibet 1950 1951

China IIb Tibet 1954 1959

Colombia I La Violencia 1948 1958

Colombia II FARC 1964 .

Costa Rica Civil War 1948 1948

Cuba Cuban Revolution 1956 1959

Cyprus Ia Greek/Turk Clashes 1963 1964

Cyprus Ib Coup/Turk Invasion 1974 1974

Domin Republic Dominican Civil War 1965 1966

Egypt Free Officers’ Coup 1952 1952

El Salvador FMLN/FDR 1979 1992

Ethiopia I Eritrea 1961 1993

Ethiopia II Tigray 1975 1991

Ethiopia III Ogaden 1977 1978

Georgia I South Ossetia 1990 1992

Georgia II Abkhazia 1992 1993

Greece Greek Civil War 1944 1949

Guatemala I Coup 1954 1954

Guatemala II Guatemalan Civil War 1960 1996

GuineaBissau I War of Independence 1963 1974

GuineaBissau II Coup 1998 1999

India II Hyderabad 1948 1948

India III Naga Revolt 1956 1997

India IV Sikh Insurrection 1982 1993

India Ia Part/Kash/In-Pak War 1946 1949

India Ib Kashmir 1965 1965

India Ic Kashmir 1988 .

Indonesia I War of Independence 1945 1949

Indonesia III Acheh Revolt 1953 1959

Indonesia IV PRRI Revolt 1958 1961

Indonesia V PKI Coup Attempt 1965 1966

Indonesia VI East Timor 1975 1999

Iran I Kurds/Mahabad 1946 1946

Iran IIa Iranian Revolution 1978 1979

Iran IIb NCR/Mojahedin 1981 1982

Iraq I Army Revolt 1958 1958

Iraq II Mosul Revolt 1959 1959

Iraq IIIa Kurds 1961 1970

Iraq IIIb Kurds 1974 1975

Iraq IIIc Kurds 1980 1991

Iraq IV Shi’ite Insurrection 1991 1993

Israel/Palest Unrest/War of Indep 1945 1949

Jordan Palestinians 1970 1971

Kenya I Mau Mau 1952 1956

Korea Korean War 1950 1953

Laos Pathet Lao 1959 1973

Lebanon Ia First Civil War 1958 1958

Lebanon Ib Second Leb Civ War 1975 1990

Liberia NPFL 1989 1997

Madagascar MDRM/Independence 1947 1948

Malaysia Malayan Emergency 1948 1960

Moldova Trans-Dniester Slavs 1991 1997

Morocco I War of Independence 1952 1956

Morocco II Western Sahara 1975 1991

Mozambique I War of Independence 1964 1975

Mozambique II RENAMO 1976 1992

Namibia War of Independence 1966 1990

Nicaragua Rev/Contra Insurgen 1978 1990

Nigeria I Biafra 1967 1970

Nigeria II Maitatsine 1980 1984

Pakistan I Bangladesh 1971 1971

Pakistan II Baluchi Rebellion 1973 1977

Paraguay Coup Attempt 1947 1947

Peru Shining Path 1980 1999

Philippines I Huks 1946 1954

Philippines II NPA Insurgency 1969 .

Philippines IIIa Moro Rebellion 1972 1996

Philippines IIIb Moro Rebellion 2000 .

Romania Romanian Revolution 1989 1989

Russia Ia First Chechen War 1994 1996

Russia Ib Second Chechen War 1999 .

Rwanda Ia First Tutsi Invasion 1963 1964

Rwanda Ib Tutsi Invasion/Genoc 1990 1994

Sierra Leone RUF 1991 2002

Somalia Clan Warfare 1988 .

South Africa Bl/Whit, Bl/Bl 1983 1994

South Korea Yosu Sunch’on Revolt 1948 1948

Sri Lanka II Tamil Insurgency 1983 .

Sri Lanka Ia JVP I 1971 1971

Sri Lanka Ib JVP II 1987 1989

Sudan Ia Anya Nya 1955 1972

Sudan Ib SPLM 1983 2005

Syria Sunni v. Alawites 1979 1982

Tajikistan Tajik Civil War 1992 1997

Tunisia War of Independence 1952 1956

Turkey Kurds 1984 .

USSR I Ukraine 1942 1950

USSR II Lithuania 1944 1952

Uganda I Buganda 1966 1966

Uganda II War in the Bush 1980 1986

Vietnam I French-Indochina War 1946 1954

Vietnam II Vietnam War 1957 1975

Yemen Southern Revolt 1994 1994

Yemen North I Coup 1948 1948

Yemen North II N. Yemeni Civil War 1962 1970

Yemen South S. Yemeni Civil War 1986 1986

Yugoslavia I Croatian Secession 1991 1995

Yugoslavia II Bosnian Civil War 1992 1995

Yugoslavia III Kosovo 1998 1999

Zaire/Congo I Katanga/Stanleyville 1960 1965

Zaire/Congo II Post-Mobutu 1996 .

Zimbabwe Front for Lib of Zim 1972 1979

You probably have noted quite a few things. First, the list is incredibly long. Second, these are virtually all third-world countries. Third, many of them have had not just one, but a long series of civil wars. Fourth, Iraq has had six previous civil wars since 1940.

The present one would be the seventh. And yes, it’s happening on our watch. But the forces that are represented there are the forces that have been long brewing in Iraq. Similar forces are brewing in many unsettled third-world countries (and sometimes it seems that most third-world countries are unsettled).

In addition, some of these civil wars on the list are also proxy international wars, in which foreign powers ally with one segment or other to try to influence matters to the benefit of that foreign power. There’s an argument to be made that the present war in Iraq is at least partly just such a proxy war between the US and Iran, just as the Vietnamese war represented (as did so many civil wars of that era) a struggle between Communism and the US.

[Tomorrow, Part II: religious wars]

*[Another thing we can quibble about is whether the present violence in Iraq should have been foreseen, and what (if anything) could have been done to nip it in the bud. I’ve put this question in a footnate to try to avoid derailing the thread into an argument about these old and oft-debated questions. For myself, I think the shortness and ease of the original, official war was clearly illusory; I fully expected a longer-drawn-out war at the beginning, with violence of the street-to-street variety. And, for the record, I think many errors of judgment were made (and continue to be made) in terms of clamping down more harshly on elements such as Sadr, back when he was first consolidating power; the perception of impending anarchy gripped the nation from the first postwar days. And yet I’ve never seen alternatives (more troops, etc., or even leaving Saddam in power) as simple solutions–they create their own, alternative, problems.]

Using Korean refugees as leverage on China? It’s a thought, anyway

The New Neo Posted on by

The current crisis in North Korea shines a harsh light on all the usual solutions and finds them wanting.

Sanctions? As the world-weary and resigned Allahpundit writes: Symbolic sanctions are a perfect non-solution to an unsolvable problem.

Yes, the UN Security Council acted with surprising alacrity; but no, the sanctions lack the economic pressure that China and South Korea could bring to bear, as well as enforcement measures–for example, it makes searching North Korean ships for banned material discretionary rather than obligatory.

As this editorial in the Australian cogently states: That this pusillanimous policy is seen as a sign that the UN is determined to get tough with North Korea demonstrates how little the world has come to expect from the Security Council.

“The Security Council.” One of those names that has become Orwellian, doing the opposite of what it purports. No real security to be found there-.

So what’s left? With main player China uncooperative in knocking off Kim Jong-il, and no one wanting to anger the North Koreans or to destablize the region through military action, are we back to the Fifties, as Dennis Byrne writes? Is the MADness of Mutually Assured Destruction our only hope?

And would Kim even be amenable to the arguments of MAD, considering that it’s based on leaders having some sort of regard for the continuing existence of the people of their own nations? One wonders just how mad Kim Jong-il is–because, despite its name, MAD is based on the premise that leaders are at least somewhat rational.

John O’Sullivan, writing in the Chicago Sun-Times, has a different idea. He finds all the current “solutions” wanting, but suggests a possible way to force the Chinese to “turn the Chinese key in the lock.”

Take a look. The short version of his premise is that Korean refugees to China are routinely returned to be worked to death in their land of origin, a Chinese policy that constitutes a violation of UN human rights treaties China itself has signed.

So what, you say, and rightly so. What good do those treaties do anyway? O’Sullivan thinks, however, that there’s a chance that something worthwhile can come of them:

There is a large and growing left-right coalition of Korean Americans, traditional human rights groups and evangelical churches. They were the political forces behind the North Korean Human Rights Act passed two years ago by Congress…They will now be raising the issue of North Korean refugees in Washington, on TV, in churches, in rallies and on the Internet.

North Korean refugees will eventually become a bipartisan political issue on the scale of the plight of Soviet Jews in the 1970s. Just as that issue produced the Jackson-Vanik amendment, forcing the Soviets to choose between allowing their emigration or losing access to the U.S. market, so the plight of North Korean refugees will eventually present China with a similar choice. And trade with America is vastly larger and more important to a fast-growing capitalist China than it was to a stagnant and impoverished Soviet Union.

O’Sullivan realizes, of course, that China could retaliate by “selling its U.S. bonds and provoking a fiscal crisis and a trade war simultaneously.” But he concludes that China’s interests lie in installing a regime in North Korea that isn’t so much of a loose cannon as the present one, and this pressure might just help it to realize that. America’s interests, of course, lie in that direction as well. It’s a scenario in which everybody would win except Kim Jong-il.

O’Sullivan concludes:

…if Beijing were to make a few telephone calls to its favorite generals in Pyongyang, suggesting they would benefit from his overthrow and the gradual liberalization of his regime, it could advance its own interests and seek some reward from Washington, Tokyo and the U.N. for being an international good neighbor.

A consummation devoutly to be wished.

So, how realistic is this option? And how dangerous? Not very, and somewhat. But then, consider those alternatives…

Dean calls me out

The New Neo Posted on by

Dean Esmay has publicly called me out. And when Dean calls me out, that means I need to step up to the plate. And take a swing.

And stop making stupid puns, and instead predict who’s going to win the Mets-Cards National League Championship Series, as Dean has requested.

Dean predicts the Mets. And last night they tied up the series, so perhaps he’s right. But I have a confession to make: I haven’t a clue, because I haven’t followed baseball for two years.

How can that be? After all, aren’t I a baseball fan? Yes indeed, I am, as you can see by this post of mine, which Dean may have recalled when he issued his challenge. I learned to love the game when my son insisted on playing it and I was forced to watch it and learn its rules and lore–the beauty of a team sport that highlights individual moments: waiting, tension, drama, and then the sudden explosion of action. The oxymoronic but satisfying fact that baseball is the most quantifiable and statistics-bound of all sports, and yet at the same time the most graceful.

The arc of the home run swing. The satisfying thwack of a wooden bat hitting the ball in just the right spot at just the right time–even though if you or I were standing in the batter’s box we’d hardly even see it, but merely hear it whiz by and then pop! into the catcher’s glove. The slide that kicks up the dust. The swipe of the tag. The astounding, bounding leap to catch the ball that would otherwise go into the stands.

I definitely did my time as a baseball aficionado. From the 70s onward I was that saddest of sacks, the Red Sox fan, spring and summer elation turning to fall dejection with the same regularity as the leaves’ transformation from green to orange to brown to fallen.

How can that be, when I’m a native New Yorker, and the Red Sox’s nemesis was always the Yankees? It’s true that I grew up in New York in the Yankees’ classic heyday, but they held no interest for me. I didn’t like them for precisely the same reason most people rooted for them, which was that they were perennial winners. To me, that was no fun. There was no drama, no pathos.

I wanted a rags-to-riches story, not a riches-to-greater-riches to ever-more-boring-riches one. And I got it in my twenties when I moved to Boston and found the Red Sox.

It was love at first sight, and I kept my vigil till that fabled fall of 2004, when the impossible happened and the Red Sox won the World Series, handily. All of Boston–and most of New England north of that epic Yankees/Sox dividing line of Hartford–breathed a sigh (or shouted a shout) of blessed relief.

Ever since then, I haven’t really followed the game. And I never really followed the National League at all (shh! don’t tell Dean!)

So the Mets and the Cards don’t mean a whole lot to me, I’m afraid. But I know who I’d be rooting for, if I were rooting. It would be the Mets, because they’re the underdogs. And I’m a sucker for underdogs.

Iraq: federalism and/or bust?

The New Neo Posted on by

The Iraqi Parliament has passed a law allowing for the establishment of federal regions in Iraq.

This isn’t the sort of thing that makes good sound bites or titillating headlines. Its real effect on the course of history in Iraq remains to be seen, but speculation is rife. Is it good for the US? Or for Iran? Or, for that matter, for the principal country involved, Iraq? Will it lead to fragmentation and Balkanization of the region, with three countries at odds: a Kurdish one, a Sunni one, and a possibly Iran-dominated Shiite one? Or will it lead to a unified country with autonomous but integrated and functioning parts?

After all, the US itself is a republic. Our central government has become so strong that we sometimes forget how relatively weak it was at the beginning, and how powerful the separate state identities. After all, it was only a century and a half ago (and less than a century at the time I was born) that we fought an exceptionally bloody and costly civil war to decide–among other things–just this very question of the autonomy of various regions with opposed points of view.

Wretchard writes:

One ought to distinguish between an Iraq in three warring pieces and an Iraq of three federal pieces. I am by no means persuaded that a federation is dead. And the main reason is oil. The Kurds need to ship their oil to markets and this will be difficult, if not impossible without coming to some sort of arrangement with the Sunnis and Shi’a. The Sunnis for their part need to get a share of revenue from the Shi’a and the Kurds. Without some federal government structure through which they can negotiate their differences, little can be achieved.

Wretchard goes on to state in his own comments section (for some reason I could not make the link work; his is the fourth comment in the thread) that Iraq was always known to be headed for some form of federalism because of the relative balance in the three sections of the country. I recall reading as much, myself, almost from the start: that the natural form the Iraqi state would take would have to be federalist.

This 2004 document, for example, written by Dawn Brancati and appearing in the Spring 2004 issue of the Washington Quarterly, is a lengthy and academic discussion (which I’ve only briefly and partially skimmed) that argues the benefits–and in fact, the necessity–of federalism for Iraq. This is a much shorter version of the same argument: that a too-strongly centralized government in Iraq would be likely to point the way to a new tyranny, and that federalism wouldn’t necessarily fracture the country but could unite in the only viable way: loosely.

Federalism is the way our own country dealt with the knotty problem of unifying disparate and sometimes clashing elements. Of course, Iraq is far from being the US after the American Revolution. For one thing, it has a far bloodier and more traumatic history. For another, it lacks the US’s natural protection from neighboring countries with a huge agenda. For still another, it is divided much more along religious lines.

Under Saddam, Iraq was a country with a Shiite majority ruled by tyrannical members of the Sunni minority. After the fall of Saddam and without federalism, it would likely be run by the majority Shiites if people voted along religious lines, possibly under the strong and tyrannical influence of Iran. With federalism, it may break into three factions, one of them run by the majority Shiites, possibly under the strong and tyrannical influence of Iran, but needing to cooperate with the others to get things done. Which is better, which is worse?

If you bother to read the comments in Wretchard’s thread on the subject, you’ll find arguments on both sides. This could be another disastrous step in the process of bloody civil war. Or it could be part of a long-drawn out journey towards a more stable and functional Iraq. I don’t know; Wretchard says he doesn’t know, and of course no one knows, although someone will be proven right some day with the hindsight of 20/20 vision.

Daniel Pearl’s killer: all the perfumes of Arabia

The New Neo Posted on by

Remember Daniel Pearl? His kidnapping and brutal murder in the winter of 2002 sent shock waves throughout this country, back in a time when we were still relatively shockable.

The still shots released of Pearl during his captivity reinforced the idea that somehow we knew him, even though we didn’t. He looked so intensely and immensely likeable–friendly, intelligent, humorous–and the reports of friends, colleagues, and family painted a picture that only accentuated that impression.

Pearl met his death by beheading. The manner of his death seemed especially cruel, medieval, and barbaric–and it was, and it was meant to be. That shocked us further. It meant that even though many of us thought at the time that we knew this enemy, it turned out that we really didn’t know this enemy. Not yet.

Well, we know more now. Beheadings became relatively commonplace, and videos were often part of the brutal PR game, the marriage of ancient bloodthirstiness with modern media savvy. Who would have thought that beheadings would be used as a recruitment tool? But it’s no longer any sort of surprise.

The manner of death matters. Pearl suffered greatly, and it massively increased the suffering of his family to know how he died, and to know that millions around the globe were watching it with glee and rejoicing.

But in another sense it hardly mattered: Pearl would have been just as dead, just as lost to his family, if he’d been given a relatively humane lethal injection.

And now it turns out that there’s another way in which the manner of Pearl’s death may end up mattering: the video made by the killers, in which only the hands of the murderer were seen, appears to have led to the identification of the man who actually wielded the blade.

Khalid Sheikh Mohammed, captured in Pakistan in March of 2003, was apparently not content to merely mastermind death in this case; it seems he wanted a direct hands-on experience. Here are some of KSM’s exploits. It’s been known for quite a while that KSM was involved in the Pearl kidnapping, but an analysis of his hands while in captivity and a comparison to those in the beheading video has implicated him as the actual murderer.

KSM, who is a Pakistani-Kuwaiti national, was originally held and interrogated in a prison or prisons of unknown and disputed location, with CIA involvement. His interrogation may or may not have involved physically coercive techniques such as waterboarding. But we can be pretty sure it involved some sort of stress, if only psychological. KSM supposedly confessed to Pearl’s murder, “admitting without remorse that he personally severed Pearl’s head and telling interrogators he had to switch knives after the first one ‘got dull.'”

“Without remorse;” no Lady Macbeth, he. Although KSM’s hands are far more blood-stained, he’s not looking for the perfumes of Arabia to sweeten them.

And now he makes his home in Guantanamo. That much is certain. In fact, last night–before I’d read the piece about KSM’s implication in Pearl’s beheading–I heard on the news that the International Red Cross had visited him recently there.

KSM now gets three square meals a day and a chance to communicate with his relatives. And soon, perhaps, he’ll even get a chance to face charges in a military tribunal, now that Congress has allowed such trials to be held.

I’m looking forward to KSM facing justice, and I agree that a military tribunal is the way to go. KSM is not an ordinary criminal, but a war criminal, and must be treated as such. It was true at Nuremberg, and it’s true now.

Such remedies are flawed, but they’re the best we have here on earth. What would real justice for KSM be? We must leave that to the great beyond. KSM, no doubt, believes it will be heaven and the seventy-two virgins. Others believe otherwise. I frankly state I do not know. But earthly justice can’t come soon enough.

[I’ve written before, at length, here , about the complex question of torture–or even milder forms of coercion–for terrorists.]

Clearing out the closets

The New Neo Posted on by

Just now I’ve been trying on clothes in preparation for a very exciting trip I’m planning to take in about nine days (more about that when the time comes; I like to retain my aura as a woman of mystery).

Ever since I’ve been blogging, and probably for a long time before, I’ve yearned to become more organized and streamlined in my life. That means, for example, that those file cabinets brimming with old papers-and the haphazard piles of same that surround them–need to be reduced by a factor of approximately 75% (although, of course, if I did that, I would be sure to keep my old report cards so I could properly illustrate posts such as this).

Likewise the clothes–oh, those clothes! Although I’m not a totally fashion-obsessed woman, I do try to look at least passably au courant (although not while blogging; pajamas would probably be an improvement over what I habitually wear while blogging).

When traveling, I’m always trying to simplify and take as little as possible. Yeah, right, say those who’ve seen my suitcases, stuffed to the gills with things I might need for this or that contingency or the sudden snow squall in July. But I’m trying, I’m trying.

Trying on, that is. And all those clothes that looked so decent last year or the year before (or, in some cases, ten years ago) don’t quite cut it now. And speaking of “cut it,” out went the last remnants of the shoulder-padded linebacker look–what were we thinking of?

Yes indeed, I’m just a brainwashed slave of fashion. Plus, my closet seems to hold clothes in three closely related but differing sizes. It’s the range I’ve covered throughout most of my life, except for those very skinny ballet years. My clothes from last year are all too large–ordinarily not a bad phenomenon–but this poses a dilemma. Should I assume that this relative slenderness is my new and stable state, and have them altered to fit? Or will that sort of hubris cause an immediate weight gain, in much the same way that leaving an umbrella at home invariably precipitates a rainy day?

Clearing out the excess not only frees up space, it frees the spirit as well. And yet it’s so easy to put off the chore of going through it all and reducing the clutter, the piled-up detritus of the years. Instead, other things always seem more pressing. Doing what absolutely needs to be done: work, food, brushing one’s teeth. Reading, reading, reading. Having an actual social life, among real people. Going outside on a beautiful day. Writing today’s post.