Diplomacy & Crisis News

On ne découvrira l'histoire des résistances à la presse de marché ni dans les manuels scolaires ni dans… les grands journaux. Avec ses personnages hauts en couleur et son ambition généreuse, cette tradition internationale de critique des médias fait courir depuis deux siècles le fil rouge d'une autre (...) / États-Unis, France, Audiovisuel, Capitalisme, Entreprise, État, Finance, Histoire, Information, Internet, Médias, Multinationales, Parti politique, Politique, Presse, Syndicalisme, Violence, Socialisme, Répression, Néolibéralisme, Corruption - 2016/04

Cette recension est issue de Politique étrangère (2/2016). Marc Hecker propose une analyse de l’ouvrage de Jean Birnbaum, Un Silence religieux. La Gauche face au djihadisme (Paris, Seuil, 2016, 240 pages).

Jean Birnbaum signe ici un essai stimulant. Un Silence religieux part d’un constat : la gauche ne parvient pas à saisir le phénomène djihadiste et refuse d’en admettre la dimension religieuse. Ce refus se traduit notamment par un raisonnement répété par nombre d’élus socialistes : l’État islamique n’est pas islamique et le djihadisme n’a rien à voir avec l’islam. Ce raisonnement, que Birnbaum qualifie de « rien-à-voirisme », est considéré par l’auteur comme contre-productif. Au lieu d’affirmer que le djihadisme est étranger à la religion, mieux vaudrait « admettre qu’il constitue la manifestation la plus récente, la plus spectaculaire et la plus sanglante de la guerre intime qui déchire l’islam. Car l’islam est en guerre avec lui-même ». En essayant maladroitement de combattre l’amalgame entre musulmans et terroristes, les responsables politiques contribueraient au contraire à « alimenter l’ignorance dont se nourrit l’islamisme », et abandonneraient les « esprits critiques qui tentent, parfois au péril de leur vie, de soustraire l’islam aux fanatiques ». Birnbaum rend un vibrant hommage à ces esprits critiques – Arkoun, Meddeb, Benzine, Djaït, Bidar, Sedik ou encore Benslama –, qui analysent les liens entre islam, islamisme et djihadisme.

La difficulté de la gauche à comprendre le djihadisme serait le reflet d’une incapacité plus profonde à saisir les phénomènes religieux. À l’appui de sa démonstration, l’auteur invoque l’histoire. Il consacre par exemple un chapitre éloquent à la guerre d’Algérie, dont la dimension religieuse a été largement éludée par les militants anticolonialistes. Au pire ne s’en apercevaient-ils pas, au mieux considéraient-ils la religiosité comme un résidu du passé, voué à disparaître après l’indépendance. La religion était au contraire, dit Birnbaum, « le cœur battant de la révolte ».

L’auteur ne s’appuie pas seulement sur l’histoire, mais aussi sur la philosophie politique. Il estime ainsi que la célèbre formule de Marx – « la religion est l’opium du peuple » – est souvent mal comprise, notamment par des responsables politiques de gauche. Loin de considérer la religion comme accessoire, l’auteur du Capital la tenait pour centrale : « La religion fut le grand sujet de Marx, le questionnement inaugural à partir duquel toute son œuvre s’est bâtie », affirme Birnbaum. Si la gauche faisait l’effort de relire Marx attentivement, elle comprendrait la puissance de la religion et serait peut-être plus apte à saisir la force de l’islamisme.

Certains politiciens d’extrême gauche – comme Chris Harman au Royaume-Uni – ont toutefois bien perçu la montée en puissance de l’intégrisme religieux, et prôné des alliances de circonstance avec les islamistes. Les masses opprimées du monde musulman ne constitueraient-elles pas un nouveau prolétariat, pouvant être détourné à terme de l’islamisme pour donner un second souffle au mouvement ouvrier ? Ce pari risqué a été perdu. L’islamisme continue de progresser, tandis que les mouvements d’extrême gauche ont été laminés. Et Birnbaum de constater : « L’islam constitue aujourd’hui l’unique idéal au nom duquel des masses d’hommes et de femmes sont capables de défier l’ordre mondial à travers les cinq continents. Mieux, ou pire : l’islam politique apparaît désormais comme la seule cause pour laquelle des milliers de jeunes sont prêts à braver la mort. » L’attrait du djihad en Syrie en est l’illustration la plus préoccupante.

Marc Hecker

S’abonner à Politique étrangère.

The World Health Organization (WHO) Representative for Haiti, Jean-Luc Poncelet today stressed that vaccines along with water chlorination programmes, and longer-term efforts to improve water and the overall health system are vital to fight the prevalence of cholera in the country.

A United Nations human rights expert today deplored the wave of ageist attacks in the wake of the United Kingdom’s referendum to leave the European Union, including calls for age ceilings for the exercise of the right to vote.

The United Nations humanitarian coordinator for Syria has expressed alarm over reports of deteriorating humanitarian conditions and urgent medical evacuation needs in the towns of Madaya, Foah, Zabadani and Kefraya, where more than 62,000 people are besieged.

The United Nations human rights office today condemned the killing of Kenyan human rights lawyer Willie Kimani, his client Josphat Mwenda, and their taxi driver, Joseph Muiruri, on 23 June, in a context of persistent allegations of extrajudicial killings by police forces.

United Nations Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon has condemned yesterday’s terrorist attacks in the cities of Jeddah, Qatif and Medina in Saudi Arabia.

The United Nations Food and Agricultural Organization (FAO) announced that floods across Ethiopia have severely impacted the recovery processes, particularly for livestock-dependent families, following more than 18 months of dry spells and poor rainfall induced by an El Niño drought phenomenon.

While significant progress has been made in providing assistance, the number of Syrian refugees living in poverty continues to rise in host countries in the region and access to basic services remains a critical challenge, a new United Nations report warned today.

Boris Johnson, Conservative Euroskeptic prominent leader of the Brexit campaign, was expected to replace David Cameron as prime minister after winning the referendum, but he was unceremoniously dumped by his colleagues. Like everyone else, he had no plan for what to do if he won. (The Guardian)

The roiling stock markets and the plunging value of sterling on the day after the United Kingdom’s vote to abandon the European Union are not necessarily the last word in assessing this historic event. These specific trends are short-term reactions, and first reactions rarely settle an issue. Yet it is hard to predict a positive outcome. If nothing else, the U.K. is likely to become less productive and relatively poorer over time because of the vote, with the working-class people who voted overwhelmingly to leave likely to suffer the worst from the consequences.

Beyond that, the contagion of exiting could spread to other countries with disgruntled populations, and Britain could feasibly face the double disruption of losing Scotland while leaving Europe. Conflict could be rekindled in Northern Ireland, where the 1998 peace agreement was premised in part on both parts of the island being in the EU. Meanwhile, both of the U.K.’s major parties have been split by the vote, both are undergoing leadership crises, and no one—not even the leading Brexit* campaigners—has a plan for what to do now that the referendum has actually passed.

The next question—or one of the many next questions that Europe and Britain now face—is how the EU will arrange the U.K.’s exit (if it in fact comes about). European leaders face at least two dilemmas. The first dilemma concerns timing. On the one hand, the Brexit vote cast many aspects of the continent’s economy into uncertainty, and with the European economy barely holding itself together eight years after the 2008 crisis (despite repeated announcements of breakthroughs), uncertainty is the last thing that the continent’s leaders want to see. Some European leaders thus hope to dissolve the relationship with Britain as quickly as possible. On the other hand, the ties holding Europe and Britain together at all levels have grown over the course of decades and are now numerous, complicated, and interwoven. It seems reasonable to assume that any effort to rush the unraveling of this relationship could also have dire consequences.

At the same time, European leaders must face their second dilemma, how severely to treat the U.K. A harsh, vindictive approach, even if satisfying to some, could be counterproductive if it undermines the fragile British and European economies. On the other hand, an accommodating approach might encourage other member states in the belief that they, too, could rewrite their rules of participation or even abandon the EU with a minimum of disruption, thus encouraging the EU’s further unraveling. In addition, the desire to nudge banks and corporations into relocating from London to Paris, Frankfurt, or elsewhere on the continent could also militate against accommodation.

It would be difficult for anyone to fashion an optimal approach among these cross-cutting pressures. All the more worrying is the fact (or, at least, my perception) that the EU has botched one decision after another over the past several years, which inspires little confidence in how it will handle this one. The EU has serious problems, which are rooted at two different levels: structure and policy.

At the structural level, many of the EU’s issues grow from the fact that the continent has integrated itself economically and socially but not politically. There is a disconnect between the unified continental economy and the disjointed system of national governments. Thus 19 of its members share a single currency, the euro, and a single monetary authority, but for years they engaged in separate and often contradictory fiscal policies. Those 19 all sell euro-denominated bonds, but the bonds carry different risks depending on the government issuing them. The continent has open borders internally but is forced to rely on bankrupt Greece to control the flow of refugees from the Middle East and allows Belgium—a country with a weak, underfunded central government and multiple police forces that barely cooperate—to become a haven for terrorists.

Decision making at the continental level lacks an efficient mechanism; it requires building a consensus among 28 (soon to be 27) member states. Major decisions must often be ratified by all 28 parliaments. Thus every member has a veto, and the member least interested in an outcome can set the terms of debate. The difficulty in making decisions may well explain the tendency of European institutions to focus on long-term integration projects of little interest to most people while devoting relatively little attention to day-to-day citizens’ concerns that require quicker solutions.

This situation could theoretically be resolved by establishing a single, continental democratically elected government, but that would require citizens who think of themselves as Europeans first, rather than as Britons, Germans, Poles, or Greeks, and the Brexit vote shows how far they are from that.** In the meantime, multiple “small” decisions are relegated to EU regulatory agencies, which seek to enforce uniform standards to facilitate free-flowing trade, fueling resentment in places like the U.K. that people’s lives are governed by faceless, unaccountable, foreign bureaucrats in Brussels.

At the policy level, European decision makers have made a mess of their response to the 2008 financial crisis. Their focus has been on enforcing austerity to bring budget deficits under control and prevent inflation. In this they have been guided above all by Germany, the continent’s largest and strongest economy and a country with paralyzing memories of its experience with inflation in the early 1920s. (One U.S. dollar, worth about 4 marks in 1914, was worth more than 4 trillion marks in November 1923.) Europe’s current economic problems, however, are the opposite of inflation.

The consequences of austerity have been real. The IMF has estimated that for every $1.00 that Europe saved through fiscal consolidation (spending cuts and tax increases) during the crisis, economic activity declined by a larger amount, a realization that has caused the IMF, but not the EU, to revise its policy approach. Because of austerity and tight money, Europe fell into a second recession in 2011–12, and its pace of recovery has actually been slower than it was in the 1930s.

It avoided a currency crisis in 2012 only because the European Central Bank unilaterally discarded its mandated inflation obsession and promised to buy the government bonds of countries that could not sell them elsewhere. (More recently, the ECB, an outlier in EU decision making since 2012, has established negative interest rates, paying private banks to borrow money if they will, in turn, lend the money out for productive investments, while charging a fee to let money sit idle in deposits.) The U.K., which quietly eased its austerity policy around 2013, has done better than many other European countries, but some analysts have highlighted the irony that Prime Minister Cameron, who led the political fight against Brexit, is largely responsible for the economic malaise that fueled much of the Brexit enthusiasm.

We shall be waiting anxiously to see how the EU responds to its newest crisis. Perhaps it will react by addressing some of its deeper problems. Indeed, past crises have served as catalysts for advances in integration. Jean Monnet, one of the founders of the European Project, once predicted that “Europe will be forged in crises, and will be the sum of the solutions adopted in those crises.” We trust that the EU’s actions will be rational rather than emotional, but then many expected that of the British voters as well. In any event, let’s hope that its performance is an improvement on the past.

*The term Brexit, or British exit, was modeled on the earlier term Grexit, or Greek exit. Brexit, however, has always been seen as a voluntary phenomenon, whereas the notion of Grexit grew from the idea that the EU might expel Greece for its perceived failures to abide by the organization’s rules.

**This lack of legitimate institutions at the continental level is often described as the “democracy deficit.”

The post Brexit: Will the EU Botch It Again? appeared first on Foreign Policy Blogs.

Depuis la fin des années 1990, les pratiques mémorielles explosent. L'Unesco se voit appelée en renfort pour donner son estampille, gage d'un appel d'air touristique. Mais cette vogue inquiète certains historiens, et pose toute une série de questions délicates. / Conflit, Culture, Éducation, (...) / Conflit, Culture, Éducation, Histoire, Idées, Tourisme, Violence, Environnement - 2015/03

En vertu de l'accord de Nouméa, signé en 1998, la Nouvelle- Calédonie devrait achever son processus de décolonisation en organisant d'ici 2018 un référendum d'autodétermination. Mais, comme l'indique le scrutin provincial de mai dernier, le dynamisme social et économique peine à trouver une traduction (...) / France Outre-mer, France, Démocratie, Démographie, Histoire, Inégalités, Jeunes, Parti politique, Nouvelle-Calédonie, Autodétermination des peuples, Peuples autochtones, Société civile, Indépendance, Décolonisation - 2014/07

Iranian Foreign Minister Mohammad Javad Zarif gestures as he talks with journalists from a balcony of the Palais Coburg hotel where the Iran nuclear talks meetings are being held in Vienna, Austria July 10, 2015. (REUTERS/Carlos Barria)

When an Iranian opposition group released information showing secret activity, including the construction of a uranium enrichment plant and a heavy-water reactor which could theoretically both be used to pursue the development of nuclear weapons, it sparked a thirteen-year standoff between the West and the Islamic Republic. After the allegations about Iran’s previously undeclared nuclear activities became public, the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) launched an investigation that concluded in 2003 that Iran had systematically failed to meet its obligations under the Non-Proliferation Treaty (NPT) to report those activities to the organization.

However, while the IAEA said that Iran had violated the NPT’s safeguards agreement, it neither reported evidence of links to a nuclear weapons program nor did Tehran withdraw from the NPT like North Korea had done in an earlier confrontation over illicit nuclear programs. Instead, the Iranian leadership insisted that Iran had discovered and extracted uranium domestically in pursuit of its legitimate right under the treaty to obtain nuclear energy for peaceful aims. The United Nations Security Council did not find this a convincing explanation and sanctions were imposed on Iran, which were extended in 2010. These had a crippling effect on the Iranian economy though they did not end the standoff.

The sanctions did lead to further talks which, after a change in administrations in Iran, eventually led to the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action (JCPOA) to ensure that Iran’s nuclear program would be exclusively peaceful during the period the agreement would be in force. By signing the deal, Iran “reaffirms that under no circumstances will Iran ever seek, develop, or acquire any nuclear weapons.”

The IAEA has been put in charge of the monitoring and reporting of Iran’s implementation of the JCPOA. The deal, among other elements, demanded that Iran restricted its sensitive nuclear activities to two nuclear plants and to civilian energy production levels, defined at 3.67% (before the JCPOA, Iran’s enrichment was on average 20%). The JCPOA additionally stipulated that nuclear research and development would take place only at Natanz and be limited for eight years, and that no enrichment would be permitted at Fordo for 15 years. Since January 2016, Iran has drastically reduced the number of centrifuges which can enrich fuel, and shipped tonnes of low-enriched uranium to Russia.

The deal struck a year ago has since realigned actors inside and out of the Middle Eastern region; this article examines the trends amongst both NATO members’ partners and rivals which might destabilize further the regional balance in the future.

Renewed Saudi-Iranian Energy Rivalry

Despite the skepticism and hostility with which the JCPOA agreement was greeted in both Western countries and inside Iran, it has so far held firm. Since this agreement reduces the chances of war between the Western powers and Tehran, its arrival was certainly applauded by NATO. But the agreement has also had an immediate impact on Iran’s standing in the Middle East and the wider international community, in ways which have not been as positive for international peace and security. This has played out particularly in the field of energy politics.

In May, Iran’s Tasnim news agency, which has strong links with the notorious Iranian Revolutionary Guards Corps (IRGC), reported Iranian Oil Minister Bijan Namdar Zanganeh claiming that, thanks to the lasting implementation of the nuclear deal, Iran’s capacity to produce and export crude and oil products has doubled in comparison with the pre-sanctions era. The agency also quoted a recent report by the International Energy Agency as saying Iran’s oil production had returned to the level of pre-sanctions era, reaching 3.56 million barrels a day in April, and added that Iran’s crude exports had increased to 2 million barrels a day, close to the pre-sanction level. The result has been a dramatic increase of Iranian oil available on the international market at a time when oil prices remain at rock bottom, which energy importers like Europe and China largely benefit from.

But the return of Iran to the oil market has also had negative consequences, sparking tensions with traditional Western allies like Israel and Saudi Arabia. When ministers from the Organization of the Petroleum Exporting Countries (OPEC) including Saudi Arabia, Qatar and Venezuela, together with other non-member oil producers such as Russia, met in Doha in April it had been expected that the first agreement to freeze production in fifteen years would soon drive up oil prices. But when Riyadh suddenly demanded that Tehran limit its oil production, Iran proved unwilling to squander the opportunity that returning to world markets afforded. As a result, the expected agreement stalled and any agreement was pushed back to June. Saudi Arabia’s continued rift with its rival in both OPEC and the Middle East in general has played a large role in torpedoing the old effectiveness of the producers’ cartel.

This is good economic news for Western energy importers, but it signals a renewed regional hostility between Sunni Saudi Arabia and Shia Iran which should concern NATO. The two powers are on opposing sides in two hot Middle Eastern proxy wars – in Yemen and in Syria. The civil war in Yemen is between a Saudi-led coalition and Zaidi Shia rebels known as Houthis, who overthrew the Yemeni government in cooperation with forces loyal to Yemen’s former dictator Ali Abdullah Saleh. The Saudis allege that the Houthis are Iranian pawns, saying that Tehran has supplied weapons, money and training to the Shia militia as part of a wider pattern of interference in the region via Shia proxies.

There are longstanding fears in Saudi and NATO that Iran has exploited turmoil between Sunni and Shia Muslims in Iraq, Syria, Lebanon, Bahrain and now Yemen to expand its regional influence. Now, with the expansion of Iranian capabilities following the ending of sanctions, there is some danger that a rattled Saudi Arabia will use its influence to nudge the United States and NATO towards intervention of one of these quarrels despite the relative improvement in relations between Tehran and the West.

Negative Implications for Syria

While Saudi Arabia is not a NATO member and US-Saudi relations have been cool under the administration of outgoing US president Barack Obama, there is one particular area of overlap between the concerns of the Alliance and those of the leading Sunni Gulf power. In Syria, Iran is backing an array of pro-regime militias and has encouraged its Lebanese ally Hezbollah to join in the fighting as well. A major objection to the JCPOA agreement from Riyadh (and Tel Aviv) was that the lifting of sanctions and unfreezing of Iranian assets would act as a boost for Iranian funding of overseas armed groups, especially in Syria. The United Nations Special Envoy for Syria, Staffan de Mistura, estimates the Islamic Republic spends $6 billion annually on backing Damascus.

NATO has become concerned about the situation in Syria due to the joint Iranian and Russian intervention. Late last year, Major General Qassem Soleimani, the commander of the Quds Force, the elite extra-territorial Special Forces arm of the IRGC, travelled to Moscow to solicit greater Russian involvement in the Syrian war. In September 2015, at a time of heightened Russian-NATO tensions in Europe and the Middle East, a Russian military intervention on behalf of the regime began to turn the tide in favor of Damascus. Iran and Moscow are now cooperating in Syria to restore the Assad regime’s control over the western parts of the country where most of the population lives.

NATO now faces a challenging situation whereby a resurgent Russia flexes its muscles in Eastern Europe and has drawn closer to Tehran over Syria, despite the friction this has caused with neighboring NATO member Turkey. This is not, however, a case of an Iranian-Russian bloc emerging to confront the West and its Arab allies. While Iran and Turkey have disagreed over their views on regional political developments in the last five years Turkish-Iranian relations are nowhere near as bitter as Saudi-Iranian ones. Since the January 16 “Implementation Day” of the JCPOA, Ankara has agreed to expand bilateral trade with Iran to $50 billion a year. It is maneuvering to become Iran’s first trading partner as a way to compensate for Russian sanctions.

Moscow-Tehran Relations and NATO

The signs are that Iran continues to see Moscow as a great power in the Middle East, and one which it can cooperate with on occasions to foil Western moves it deems anti-Iranian. Likewise, Moscow will work with Tehran on occasion. Despite participating in the sanctions regime, Moscow has continued to honor a nuclear deal struck with the Islamic Republic of Iran to construct a series of nuclear power plants at Bushehr in the south of the country. Moscow and Tehran both remain committed to rolling back Western influence in the Middle East and will work together on an ad hoc basis when it suits them both.

But despite their shared suspicions of the United States and NATO, Russia and Iran have had a long and contentious relationship. Just as the United States and European members of NATO have remained aloof  of Turkish and Saudi policy in Syria, Moscow has allowed the Western powers to enlist its help in curbing Iranian nuclear ambitions. Together with China, Russia was one of the nations which agreed to impose tough sanctions on Tehran to force it to the negotiating table. It has also helped ease the passage of the JCPOA by agreeing to recycle Iranian nuclear fuel in Russia, removing any justification for enrichment inside Iran. Moscow does not want Iran to acquire nuclear weapons while fearing that a nuclear agreement will lead to improved ties between Iran and the United States.

The return of Iran to the oil market has also disrupted Russian hopes for a price floor to be coordinated with OPEC producers thanks to Saudi-Iranian rivalry. Iran is pushing to find new ways to extract and export its vast natural-gas reserves, and has entered into preliminary talks with NATO-member Greece to provide a gateway for the Islamic Republic to supply fuel to European markets. Since the dispute between Russia and Ukraine disrupted gas supplies and sped up the EU’s bringing an antitrust case against the Russian gas giant, Russian energy exports to Europe have lost ground of which Iran is hoping to be a beneficiary. Tehran is also competing with Saudi Arabia and Russia in its energy exports to China; Beijing is the largest importer of crude from both Saudi Arabia and Iran.

Therefore, although the pair are happy to cooperate over Syria, whose regime was a longstanding ally of Iran’s dating back to the Iraq-Iran war and whose port of Tartus was the site of the only Russian military facility outside of the former Soviet Union, this was a coincidence of overlapping interests rather than a sign that Moscow and Tehran will draw closer together as Iran emerges from under the shadow of over a decade of crushing economic isolation from the global economy. Moscow does not want to be seen as affiliated with Iran by the mainly Sunni Arab world amidst the escalating Sunni-Shia conflict. Iran is wary of Moscow’s strong ties with Israel and its continued efforts to court anti-Iranian Arab states and longstanding disputes over the Caspian Sea continue to impede Russian-Iranian economic cooperation.

Relations between Russia and Iran will continue to be seen through a lens of shifting interests and alliances, in which they are neither quite friends nor enemies, but rivals. Moscow fears friendlier relations between Iran and the West following the JCPOA could, one day, allow former Soviet states in the Caucasus and Central Asia to export their petroleum to and through Iran, lessening their economic dependence on Russia. The possibility of improving Western-Iranian ties is therefore an alarming one to Russia at a time of deteriorating relations between itself and the West. It is therefore anxiously watching the progress towards reform of Tehran’s more liberal factions as these actors favor greater openness towards the West.

China and Iran

China is now Iran’s number one trading partner as a direct result of the sanctions regime imposed over Iranian nuclear activities, and this closer relationship has continued following the implementation of the JCPOA. In January, Chinese President Xi Jinping visited Iran and signed a long series of agreements on economic and technological cooperation with his Iranian counterpart Hassan Rouhani. Iran’s leaders have also announced they will cooperate with Beijing on its One Belt One Road initiative.

China and Iran do not share the history of mutual suspicion that divides Iran from Russia, which both have clashed with in the past. Moreover, the drawing together of Tehran and Beijing could ultimately threaten Russia’s economic interests in both China’s hydrocarbon market and Iran’s nuclear energy sector. China has agreed to construct two nuclear power plants in Iran and import Iranian oil on a long-term basis. Russia’s place in the Chinese oil market, which it turned to as an alternative following the Ukrainian crisis, could now be threatened while its monopoly position as the Islamic Republic’s nuclear supplier has been broken. Russian self-interest makes it very unlikely that a Beijing-Moscow-Tehran axis will emerge as a united front against the NATO powers, though all three will continue to cooperate together on an ad hoc basis, as Russia and Iran have in Syria.

Iran also acts as an important transport hub between China and Europe, part of a trading relationship dating back to the Iran-Iraq war, when a combination of the Islamic Revolution and the Cold War led Iran to purchase weapons from China instead of Russia or the reviled US. But with the end of sanctions and the tentative return of European states to rebuild their interrupted political and economic relations with Tehran, Chinese firms may find themselves facing increasing competition from outsiders, disturbing a cosy status quo which has been built up during the past decade or more. The visit of China’s president and the inducements he offers may be in part a gambit to pre-empt this, and one which Iran’s leadership seem to have accepted as a continued hedge against overdependence on the West. For now, Beijing is looking to deepen rather than limit its involvement in Iran, whose political elite seem happy to accept the Chinese overtures.

Conclusion

So far the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action has been a surprising success for Euro-Atlantic diplomacy against all odds. A year on, the tensions with Iran are lower and progress towards an Iranian nuclear weapon, however obliquely pursued, has been halted for now, while trade and transparency have given the two sides a chance to recalibrate their relationship.

However, the agreement should not be seen as a panacea for everything which ails Iranian-Western relations. Iran remains aligned with a threatening Russia in Syria, which has put sanctions on NATO member Turkey amidst a plunge in relations with other Alliance member states. Tehran has also stepped up its proxy conflicts and economic warfare with Saudi Arabia, a major US and NATO ally in the region. It is moving closer into the orbit of a more assertive China which has its own territorial disputes with key NATO member America and is looking to gather allies into its own competing institutions. One year after the nuclear deal was signed, it is clear that much remains to be done before relations between the Alliance and the Islamic Republic can truly be said to have been reset; what prevails now is more of an armistice.

This article originally appeared in Atlantic Voices and reappears here with kind permission.

The post One Year On: Iran and the World appeared first on Foreign Policy Blogs.

(Pete Souza / White House)

In June, Senator John McCain made a bold claim regarding the consequences of President Obama’s foreign policy decisions. He asserted that Obama’s policy on Iraq—specifically, his decision to remove U.S. troops at the end of 2011—was “directly responsible” for the carnage in Orlando, Florida.

McCain told reporters: “Barack Obama is directly responsible for it because when he pulled everybody out of Iraq, al-Qaeda went to Syria, became ISIS, and ISIS is what it is today thanks to Barack Obama’s failures—utter failures, by pulling everybody out of Iraq, thinking that conflicts end just because you leave. So the responsibility for it lies with President Barack Obama and his failed policies.

He repeated the charge several times at the behest of surprised reporters, who evidently wanted to give him a chance to moderate the claim. Soon afterward, he issued a statement that appeared to be moderated (changing his terminology from ISIS to ISIL in the process).

The new statement read: “I misspoke. I did not mean to imply that the President was personally responsible. I was referring to President Obama’s national security decisions, not the President himself. As I have said, President Obama’s decision to completely withdraw U.S. troops from Iraq in 2011 led to the rise of ISIL.”

It went on, arguing that “I and others have long warned that the failure of the President’s policy to deny ISIL safe haven would allow the terrorist organization to inspire, plan, direct or conduct attacks on the United States and Europe as they have done in Paris, Brussels, San Bernardino and now Orlando.”

How this differs in any meaningful way from the original statement frankly escapes me, but apparently both McCain and the White House were uninterested in pursuing the issue further and let it drop. Perhaps I am less forgiving than either of them, but the statement has stuck with me. I would like to examine this claim further. For one thing, I suspect that a lot of people will agree with it without devoting a much thought to the matter, so I think it is a mistake to let that slip by.

First of all, whatever one thinks of the link between Obama’s withdrawal order and the creation of ISIS, it is important to notice that the Islamic State had no direct contact with the Orlando attacker. The only connection is that the shooter appears to have been inspired by ISIS. The group does not need to control any territory  for that to happen. The shooter could as easily have said that he was inspired by the 19th-century abolitionist John Brown, and the fact that Brown has been dead for 157 years would not have prevented it. The efforts needed to counter shooting incidents like that in Orlando (or the one in Aurora, Colorado, for that matter) are unrelated to conflicts in the Middle East.

Second, McCain’s brief sequence of events stands out. That is, “…he pulled everybody out of Iraq, al-Qaeda [in Iraq] went to Syria, became ISIS, and ISIS is what it is today…” Is this the causal argument that McCain meant to present? Obama pulled the troops out of Iraq, so the enemy went to chaotic, war-torn Syria, where they became ISIS?

If we accept that going to Syria was a key element in the transformation of al-Qaeda in Iraq (AQI) into ISIS, how was that caused by Obama pulling troops out of Iraq? Did the creation of a vacuum in Iraq somehow blow them in the opposite direction? If U.S. troops had stayed in Iraq, would AQI then have been unable to go to Syria? If U.S. troops were still fighting them in Iraq, would that not have given them an even greater incentive to go to Syria? The causal relationship here is a bit confusing.

Finally, it is also necessary to mention—as many commentators already have—that the decision for the withdrawal was made by the Bush administration in 2008, in agreement with the Iraqi government. Of course, Condoleezza Rice stated subsequently that the Bush administration did not really mean it, which at first glance seems a curious kind of boast.

What she had in mind, naturally, was that the administration had hoped to negotiate some sort of small-scale, long-term U.S. military presence—short of war fighting—that might have bolstered the Iraqi military and perhaps served as a sort of deterrent. (We shall leave aside for now the fact that the introduction of a large-scale war-fighting force in 2003 did not deter a fight, but rather started one.) The fact is that the Obama administration was aware of this intention and attempted to do just that, but they and the Iraqis could not come to agreement.

The official reason for the failure to come to an agreement had to do with a technical issue: Which country would have legal jurisdiction over crimes committed by U.S. personnel in Iraq? Traditionally, U.S. agreements with host countries permit the United States to prosecute such crimes, but Iraq said no.

Although I cannot prove it, my suspicion is that the two sides could have overcome this impasse if they had really wanted to do so. It is quite possible that Obama was not interested in pressing hard for the privilege of staying in Iraq, but I believe the real obstacle was on the other side. After eight years of war, the U.S. military presence had become so toxic that no Iraqi politician wanted to be seen as favoring its continuation.

There were, to be sure, some Iraqi leaders who quietly confessed that a continued U.S. military presence would be useful, or even necessary, but they could not be brought to say so in public, much less vote for it in Parliament. Some American commentators have criticized the Obama administration for insisting on a public vote instead of simply doing what was necessary behind the scenes. But what would have happened in that case? The Iraqi public was not going to overlook that fact that troops were still there. The first time that something went wrong—and it would not take long for that to happen—the people who were unable to endorse a U.S. presence in public would start making statements like, “I didn’t ask them to stay. They just wouldn’t go.” Eventually the situation would be much as it is today, with two significant exceptions:

1. We would be in the middle of it.

2. The Shi’a would be shooting at us, too, because we wouldn’t leave

It is worth noting that even now, despite all the problems Iraq has had with ISIS over the past two years, no Iraqi leader has asked us to come back in with a full military presence.

What McCain has done is not unusual. Whenever a government chooses between two paths and the outcome is negative, people are quick to assume that the opposite choice would have brought complete success. Nonetheless, there is no sure way to know whether the opposite choice would have created a situation that was better, basically the same in all but the details, or even substantially worse.

The post John McCain Blames ISIS on Obama appeared first on Foreign Policy Blogs.

The United Nations human rights chief today deplored the terrorist bombing in Baghdad on Sunday that reportedly killed more than 150 people, calling on Iraqi authorities to do more to protect civilians as well as halt uncontrolled militias from continuing to take revenge on civilians fleeing towns recaptured from the Islamic State in Iraq and the Levant (ISIL/Da&#39esh).

Après un an de déconfiture, les dirigeants ukrainiens ont dû accepter de nouveaux accords à Minsk. Mais la perspective d'une solution politique durable, s'appuyant sur le respect des minorités et un dialogue avec Moscou, semble lointaine. / Europe, Russie, Ukraine, Conflit, Économie, Géopolitique, (...) / Europe, Russie, Ukraine, Conflit, Économie, Géopolitique, Politique, Relations internationales, Violence, Stratégie militaire - 2015/03

Karl Kraus (1874-1936) a laissé derrière lui une œuvre considérable, dont « Les Derniers Jours de l'humanité » constitue l'élément central. Consacrée aux horreurs de la première guerre mondiale, cette pièce frappe aujourd'hui par ses accents prophétiques. / Allemagne, Art, Conflit, Culture, Histoire, (...) / Allemagne, Art, Conflit, Culture, Histoire, Idées, Idéologie, Intellectuels, Littérature, Presse, Théâtre, Violence, Infoguerre, Corruption - 2014/11

Joost Hiltermann, Middle East & North Africa Program Director, discusses with Australia's ABC the difficulties that the Kurds will face if they pursue independence, starting with their divergent views on the creation of a Kurdish state.

Il 4 giugno scorso, capi di Stato e di governo della Comunità economica degli Stati dell’Africa occidentale (Ecowas) si sono riuniti a Dakar. In conformità con le attuali evoluzioni, l’ordine del giorno della 49esima conferenza dell’organizzazione si è caratterizzato per l’ampia presenza di questioni politiche, piuttosto che di problematiche legate allo sviluppo economico. Inoltre, più che sull’esame di situazioni nazionali di Paesi come il Burkina Faso, il Mali o la Guinea Bissau, le discussioni si sono concentrate su temi transnazionali come la lotta al terrorismo o ai conflitti tra gli allevatori, che costituiscono ormai delle nuove minacce per la sicurezza dell’Africa occidentale. Affrontare queste nuove sfide richiede una riforma radicale da parte dell’Ecowas.

The United Nations today condemned Israel for demolishing Palestinians&#39 homes and advancing plans to build new houses for Israeli settlers, amid the prospect of the two-state solution to the Middle East conflict already &#8220slipping away.&#8221