by David Steven | May 31, 2010 | Conflict and security
Waking up to the catastrophic news of Israel’s attack on the flotilla that was trying to break the blockade of Gaza, my snap reaction was that this event had the potential to trigger a chain of uncontrollable consequences. Nothing has since happened to reassure me that this was an early-morning overreaction.
Perhaps most worrying is the potential for friction between Israel and Turkey, countries that once enjoyed an unexpectedly good relationship (£2.5bn in bilateral trade in 2009). Turkey was the aid convoy’s main national sponsor, leading Israel’s unions to retaliate with a boycott of the country.
According to one Israeli union leader:
Turkey had been wiped off the workers unions’ travel maps. In a survey we conducted among the participants in the semi-annual union heads forum, we found that Israel’s workers’ unions have had enough of Turkey’s hostility toward Israel, which in the past had been characterized by verbal attacks by the country’s prime minister, but had now shifted to active attempts to harm Israel’s sovereignty. The tourism boycott is a weapon that will send a message to Ankara that words and deeds have consequences.
But Tel Aviv may now be the capital to discover that deeds have consequences that can go well beyond a boycott. The Turkish government is reported to be threatening to send more boats sailing towards Israel’s coast, but this time to give them a naval escort. That would put the two countries on track towards a very dangerous confrontation.
Bradley Burston, writing in Haaretz, is also worried:
Perhaps most ominously, in a stepwise, lemming-like march of folly in our relations with Ankara, a regional power of crucial importance and one which, if heeded, could have helped head off the First Gaza War, we have come dangerously close to effectively declaring a state of war with Turkey.
“This is going to be a very large incident, certainly with the Turks,” said Benjamin Ben-Eliezer, the cabinet minister with the most sensitive sense of Israel’s ties with the Muslim world.
Let’s hope the Turkish government continues to pursue its grievances with Israel through the international system, rather than putting the two countries’ navies on a collision course. Otherwise this grim year could get soon get much worse – yet again.
Update: Channel 4’s Faisal Islam points to NATO’s charter, presumably with Turkey in mind.
The Parties agree that an armed attack against one or more of them in Europe or North America shall be considered an attack against them all and consequently they agree that, if such an armed attack occurs, each of them, in exercise of the right of individual or collective self-defence…
An armed attack on one or more of the Parties is deemed to include an armed attack… on the forces, vessels, or aircraft of any of the Parties, when in or over these territories or any other area in Europe in which occupation forces of any of the Parties were stationed on the date when the Treaty entered into force or the Mediterranean Sea or the North Atlantic area north of the Tropic of Cancer.
Update II: NATO will meet on Tuesday at Turkey’s request. According to an unnamed diplomat:
NATO does not really have instruments with which to deal with the follow-up from this type of affair. Turkey has not invoked article five which envisages all allies coming to the aid of a member country that is the victim of an attack.
But, given that numerous Turkish citizens appear to figure among the casualties, it is understandable that (Ankara) triggers political dialogue with its partners.
Update III: One to watch is the Irish boat – MV Rachel Corrie (yes, that Rachel Corrie) which is yet to reach Israel:
Five are onboard the Irish-owned vessel, MV Rachel Corrie, and all are safe. The ship was one day behind the main flotilla and is still on its way to Gaza.
Among the passengers on the Rachel Corrie are Nobel Peace Laureate Mairead Maguire and former UN Assistant Secretary-General Denis Halliday.
Does it sail on towards a second confrontation? And if so, how will the Israelis react?
by Richard Gowan | May 31, 2010 | Cooperation and coherence, Global system, Latin America and the Caribbean, North America, UK
Sweet God, can Britain be trusted with anything these days?
Britain is facing a revolt against its rule of a group of Caribbean islands, amidst a gathering political and economic crisis in the country. The Foreign Office suspended parliamentary democracy in the Turks and Caicos Islands (TCI) last August after a group of visiting MPs uncovered evidence of widespread corruption in the territory, one of 14 colonial outposts for which the UK still has responsibility.
But an investigation by The Independent has found that the economic situation in the country has deteriorated sharply since then, and islanders are demanding a financial bailout of tens of millions of dollars. Problems facing the British-appointed governor, Gordon Wetherell, include:
- Debts of tens of millions of dollars, which have left the TCI government unable to pay its bills and trying to impose swingeing cuts;
- The collapse of one of the country’s leading locally owned banks, which wiped out the savings of thousands of depositors and businesses;
- Doubts over the future of a legal investigation set up last year to prosecute former ministers accused of taking bribes.
Now, this is bad. Happily, the genius of British politics offers a solution: David Laws.
(Spoiler alert: what follows is not entirely unserious in intent.)
Mr Laws has, readers will be aware, had to resign as Chief Secretary of the Treasury for reasons that need not (and, I think, should not) concern us. This is a pity, as everyone seems to agree that he is the only person alive capable of reducing the British budget deficit in a competent fashion. Since he resigned, pretty much all of Whitehall and Fleet Street has concluded that they’d like him back sharpish.
There is a simple and happy solution here. Governor Wetherell of Turks and Caicos, who also seems to be a perfectly decent fellow, should be moved to some more fiscally sound speck of our imperial residue. Mr Laws should take his place, with a mandate to fix TCI’s budget in short order. Everyone would agree that he has then paid his penance – and then some – so we could have him back in government pronto.
That would still leave us with BP on our roster on national shame, but whatever.
by Richard Gowan | May 29, 2010 | Cooperation and coherence, Economics and development, Europe and Central Asia, Global system, UK
Five years ago today, I had a chicken korma for dinner. I know this not because of quality of the curry (it was, as I recall, not bad) but because about half way through the meal I got a text message from a friend. This announced that the French had just voted “non” to the EU constitution. I had been working on the possibility of a British referendum on the constitution. This suddenly seemed rather irrelevant.
That French “non” arguably started a period of political drift in Europe that, in spite the protracted passage of the Lisbon Treaty, has never really ended. If you start talking about major reforms to the EU, it’s not long before someone says “but that will mean referendums!” And everyone knows that referendums mean trouble – not only because of the French experience but also because of the Dutch “nee” to the constitution that followed a few days later, and Ireland’s vote against Lisbon in 2008.
With the EU struggling to save the Euro – and almost every pundit in existence talking about the power-shift away from Europe – it’s tempting to look back and ask if things might be better if the French had said “oui” in May 2005. There’s an alternative universe in which the constitution came into force in 2006 or 2007, the new EU structures were tried and tested before the financial crisis struck and, as a result, European leaders still treat the Union as a stirring political project.
But, before you shed a tear for this EU that never was, it’s worth recognizing that there’s another alternative EU universe out there in which a French “oui” led to an even worse crisis than we have today. I explain how this could have happened in a short essay to mark the anniversary of the French vote:
A French Oui and Dutch Ja would not have marked the end of debates about the constitution. Instead, they would have signaled the start of a vicious referendum campaign in Britain that could have altered EU politics permanently.
Other countries also still had to vote on the constitution. The outcome looked very dicey in Denmark and the Czech Republic. But the political calculus was clear. If some smaller member states voted No while Britain said Yes, the constitution would get through in the end. If Britain voted No, a much more radical solution might be necessary.
Having spent much of 2004 and early 2005 chewing over polling data on British attitudes to the constitution, I am pretty sure it was on course to be rejected. The pro-constitution lobby included some awfully nice people – but they were just too nice to win. Some expected then Prime Minister Tony Blair to revitalise the campaign, but his grip on the country was waning.
If the then prime minister could not inspire the British to embrace the constitution, some politicians in France and Germany thought they could terrify them into doing so. By spring 2005, there was muttering about an “exit strategy” or, rather more credibly, a “Norwegian option” (leaving the EU but remaining in the European Economic Area) for Britain. This would have got a lot louder before a referendum.
Had Britain ended up teetering on the edge of a No vote in the spring or summer of 2006 – the likely poll dates – it would have been treated rather as Greece has been this year. It is easy to imagine a lot of talk about how German (or French, or Dutch) voters could not be expected to allow one trouble-making country to thwart their political dreams.
There would have been other strident voices in the mix. The Bush administration, yet to plunge into the grim torpor of its final years, might well have intervened vocally on behalf of its British allies. Warnings from Washington about Britain’s essential role in EU-US relations would have been counter-productive, reopening the wounds of Iraq and pushing France and Germany to form a united front as defenders of the constitution.
If Britain eventually rejected the constitution, it is unlikely that Tony Blair could have stayed in office, leaving Gordon Brown to take the reins of an exhausted Labour Party. Brown might have had to call an early election – with the Tories the guaranteed winners.
It would have been a sour victory. With Britain’s European status in doubt, the pound would have plummeted while City bankers looked for nice places to live near Frankfurt.
I can hear a few Euro-federalists muttering (if there are a few left) that what I’m describing here is not a crisis for Europe, just a crisis for Britain. And there definitely was and is a camp of people in Brussels who feel that the EU can only achieve its potential by sidelining the Brits – and lots of Brits would be happy to be sidelined. But the sort of fight I’m imaging here would have had unpredictable side-effects.
If, for example, France and Germany had shoved Britain out of the EU, a lot of other reasonably pro-British governments (I’m thinking of Denmark, Poland, etc.) would have been left deeply unhappy. I can imagine headlines about France imposing a “Diplomatic Terror” on the rest of the Union, with Jacques Chirac as a latter-day Robespierre. Cooperation on issues like the Balkans and Iran would have suffered.
It might not have been that nasty. Charles Grant of the Center for European Reform published a widely-read paper in March 2005 looking at ways to navigate out of the crisis that would follow a British “no”. Perhaps a “soft landing” could have been devised. But, given the sort of diplomatic hysteria we’ve witnessed over the Euro crisis, I wonder if the voices of reason would have triumphed over Britain.
On balance, I think that the French voters may have saved the EU from some very unpleasant blood-letting with that “non” back in 2005. I certainly wasn’t betting that the future would be bright for British EU analysts like me. The day after that vote, and that korma, I moved to the United States.
by Richard Gowan | May 28, 2010 | Conflict and security, Cooperation and coherence, Global system, Middle East and North Africa, North America
Yesterday, I blogged about Hillary Clinton’s speech on the U.S. National Security Strategy at Brookings. Since then, a good few pundits have popped up to knock the NSS, taking issue with its emphasis on international cooperation. Here’s Les Gelb:
As for Mr. Obama’s strategic desire to build cooperation with nations around the world and get international institutions effectively on Washington’s side, forget about it—at least in any short or medium term. Most nations don’t do a damn thing and aren’t prepared to sacrifice a penny to what they see as “an American cause.” No amount of American niceness and understanding will change that.
And here’s the rather more measured Will Inboden:
Much of the document is devoted to heralding worthy things like “engagement,” “cooperation,” and “partnerships.” These are all essential methods of foreign policy, of course, but they are more means rather than ends in themselves.
Since hearing Clinton speak, I’ve had the chance to talk to a number of serious U.S. foreign policy types – a lot of them committed fans of the UN and other multilateral, cooperative outfits. But it’s fair to say that most of them at least shared Inboden’s qualms – and more than one agreed with Gelb. The general view seems to be “international engagement’s great, but what are your intended outcomes?” Another frequent question is “OK, if we try cooperation, when will we know that it’s working?”
What if cooperation turned out to be working on an issue like Iran, well, today? Look at this story about the growing tensions between Moscow and Tehran:
In one of the worst rows between the two countries in decades, Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad on Wednesday admonished the Kremlin for bowing to what he said was U.S. pressure to agree to sanctions. Ahmadinejad bluntly warned President Dmitry Medvedev to be more cautious or risk being seen as an enemy of the Islamic Republic. The Kremlin told the Iranian president to refrain from “political demagoguery.”
When asked by a reporter about Ahmadinejad’s tirade, Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov said he viewed the comments as “emotional.” Underscoring Moscow’s growing impatience with Iran, Lavrov said that Russian leaders had tried repeatedly to resolve the dispute but that Tehran had failed to respond properly.
“To our great regret, during years — not just months — Iran’s response to these efforts has been unsatisfactory, mildly speaking,” Lavrov said at a briefing in Moscow.
There may be posturing here (of course there is, Ahmadinejad’s involved). But it does look as if the U.S. strategy of working closely with Russia on Iran is having some impact. As American diplomacy improves, Iran’s gets creaky. Does that guarantee our security? No. Does it suggest that U.S. advocacy of international cooperation might alter other powers’ strategic calculations? Yes. Perhaps we’ve all been too busy asking if international cooperation works in theory to spot that it’s working in practice.
by Richard Gowan | May 27, 2010 | Conflict and security, Cooperation and coherence, East Asia and Pacific, Economics and development, Europe and Central Asia, Global system, North America
Hillary Clinton just spoke on the new U.S. National Security Strategy at Brookings. Having been in the audience, the bits that stick in my mind are:
- Clinton defined the tensions inherent in globalization as creating a “race between the forces of integration and the forces of disintegration”, which is snappy;
- She spoke convincingly about the paradox that while the U.S. needs “strategic patience and persistence” in applying “indirect power” in cases like Iran, these virtues are hard to maintain in the high-speed information age;
- We want to shift from a “multi-polar world to a multi-partner world”.
Clinton spoke a lot about China. That’s not surprising as she’s just back from Asia. She also highlighted America’s commitments to Japan and South Korea – again, a sine qua non given current events in that part of the world.
She didn’t mention Brazil in her main speech, which one questioner assumed was a rebuke over Lula’s efforts to befriend the Iranians. But, rather gracefully, Clinton admitted that Brazil has a “theory of the case” when it comes to dealing with Iran – she even gave a fair summary of this theory, before saying she disagrees.
What was missing? Europe, big-time. NATO got two mentions in the main speech, and was raised in a follow-up question. Answering, the Secretary of State complained about the Alliance’s “sprawling” committees. The EU hardly featured at all.
UPDATE: read far better-informed commentaries on HC’s speech here.
FURTHER UPDATE: the speech transcript is here.
