French students should go back to class to learn some economics
THE SIGHT OF MILLIONS of Frenchmen, predominantly young, demonstrating in deep sympathy and solidarity with themselves, is one that will cause amusement and satisfaction on the English side of the Channel. Everyone enjoys the troubles of his neighbours. And at least our public service strikers just stay away from work, and spend the day peacefully performing the rites of their religion, DIY, and not making a terrible nuisance of themselves. In fact, many of them are probably less of a public nuisance if they stay at home than if they go to work.
Of course, demonstrating in huge numbers is what the French do from time to time. We should never forget that to break a shop window for the good of humanity is one of the greatest pleasures known to Man. Trying to topple governments by shouting insults is also great fun.
We like to think of France as having a deplorably statist and centrally controlled economy, while the French like to think of Britain as a land of savage liberalism (in French parlance, the two words are as inseparable as Siamese twins), divided unequally between plutocrats and beggars. In fact, the two countries differ far less than is often supposed. While it is true that there remain some differences despite Gordon Browns best efforts, the British labour market is still more flexible than the French the similarities grow daily more striking (as it were).
The ultimate cause of the demonstrations and strikes in the two countries is the same: the State has made promises that it is increasingly unable to keep. It has pursued policies that were bound in the end to produce not just cracks but fissures that could no longer be papered over. The main difference is that while Dominque de Villepin is tentatively dragging France, albeit kicking and screaming, and with every likelihood of failure, in the right direction, Mr Brown is still stuck on the royal road to disaster, for which the British people, but not of course Mr Brown, will ultimately pay very dearly. When the crash comes, the social dislocation in Britain will make French disaffection seem positively genteel.
Whether they know it or not, the people on the streets in France were demonstrating to keep the youth of the banlieues who recently so amused the world for an entire fortnight with their arsonist antics exactly where they are, namely hopeless, unemployed and feeling betrayed. For unless the French labour market is liberalised, they will never find employment and therefore integration into French society. You have only to speak to a few small businessmen or artisans in France the petits bourgeois so vehemently despised by the snobbish intellectuals to find out why this should be so. The French labour regulations make employment of untried persons completely uneconomic for them.
It is often pointed out that French unemployment under the age of 26 is the highest in Europe, running at about 25 per cent. Moreover, in the banlieues it is 50 per cent. These banlieues are homes to millions of people, disproportionately young. It follows does it not? that there must be a considerable section of the young population in which unemployment is less than a quarter, actually much less. One would hardly have to be de Tocqueville to guess in which section of the young population the unemployment was less: the section from which the demonstrators, or at least their leaders and agents provocateurs, are drawn. In an increasingly desperate situation, the demonstrators are so afraid of the future that they want to hang on to their privileges and job security by hook or by crook, even if it means that the youth of the banlieues will eventually have to be kept in order by the Compagnies Républicaines de Sécurité, the much-feared riot police, the CRS. There is nothing idealistic or generous about the demonstrators, just as there wasnt in 1968.
There are of course deeper but intangible problems that are even more difficult to solve than the inflexibility of the labour market. If you speak to small businessmen in France, they will tell you that the young in any case do not want to do the kind of work of which there is no shortage. At a time of such high unemployment, artisans have no one willing to be trained by them, even if they are willing to take the risk by taking them on. This is even though such artisans are so overwhelmed by work that a carpenter, for example, is booked up for more than a year in advance and can charge almost anything he likes.
We have no reason to condescend to the French, however, for the British are in fundamentally the same boat, with a few extra problems of our own. The vast and fraudulent expansion of tertiary education, which leaves students indebted for their own useless education, is merely a means by which the Government disguises youth unemployment and keeps young people off the streets. Contrary to government propaganda, unemployment is not low in Britain: but it is now called sickness.
Our economy is corruptly creating public service jobs endless co-ordinators of facilitation and facilitators of co-ordination but not many in the private sector, the only true measure of economic health and growth. Any fool can create public sector jobs, and Mr Brown has done so: but not even the most brilliant man can make them economically productive in the long term.
The British economy has all the brilliance of a fish rotting by moonlight, and eventually to change the metaphor slightly the bill will come in. And since so large a proportion of the population is now dependent, wholly or partly, on the State, the bill will be a large one, not only in financial terms but in social terms as well. We will need our very own CRS.
It cant be said either that we wont deserve what we get. It is we, after all, who have listened to the urgings of demagogic confidence tricksters, and believed their promises of irreconcilable goods. We should have paid attention instead to the wise words of Benjamin Franklin that apply as much to economics as to politics. He who gives up freedom for security, he said, will end up with neither.
Much feared? The CRS (and their Gendarmerie counterprt the Gerndarmes mobiles) are a superbly disciplined troop who can stand for hours under a rain of projectiles without retaliating until they are ordered to. All while they see their comardes fall wounded, sometimes severely. And the last time a CRS got too far and killed a demonstrator was decades ago.
Even during the massive 1968 riots there were zero dead. But of course this didn't impede the demonstrators to shout "CRS SS", but if the CRS had really been like SS none of those cowardly momaboys of 1968 would have gone to a demonstration.
#2
It is often pointed out that French unemployment under the age of 26 is the highest in Europe, running at about 25 per cent.
Crazy is doing the same thing over and over again and expecting a different result. When is the concept of socialism ever going to be buried along with the concept of monarchy or slavery?
#3
When is the concept of socialism ever going to be buried along with the concept of monarchy or slavery?
Given that one of the biggest supporters of terrorism and militant Islam (but I repeat myself) is a kingdom in which slavery is illegal only in the sense of "don't get caught", I suspect socialism will be with us forever.
Posted by: Robert Crawford ||
03/30/2006 7:39 Comments ||
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#4
Yup, RC, let us not forget that Saudi Arabia was the last nation on earth to abolish slavery waaaaaaay back in 1962.
Debating tips from blogger "The Futurist" -- not new, but worth a look anyway
There are two superpowers in the world today. The United States of America, and anti-Americanism. Anti-Americanism is very powerful, as it is the sordid glue that holds the UN, fifth-column Americans, Euro-socialists, the world's fashion elite, and terrorists together. It is the invisible force that forces the US to withstand massive double standards that have been there for so long that they are taken for granted.
Interestingly, with the exception of terrorists, such individuals go to great lengths to conceal their anti-Americanism, pretending to stand for 'nonviolence', 'peace', 'equality', the 'world community', etc. This begs the question of why they don't feel comfortable with declaring their dislike for the US. . . . In any case, having a strong dislike for America, yet not having the integrity to be honest about one's true feelings, makes such a person easy to defeat through skillful debate.
There are many ways to do this. Two examples are below.
Option 1 :
While many who say this are merely fashion-parroting sheep rather than committed anti-Americans, if someone you believe to be a genuine anti-American says they oppose the Iraq War because "there were no WMDs" or "Bush lied about WMDs", then you can merely ask :
"So if WMDs were found, would you support the war?"
They can either answer "no", to which you can say "So why do you obsess over WMDs if you still would have opposed it anyway? That appears rather phony on your part."
Or they can answer "yes", to which you can ask them "But Iran and North Korea are openly admitting to the pursuit of nuclear weapons, and are threatening to use them. By your logic, invading them is fully justified, is it not?"
They have thus revealed that they merely avoid taking difficult decisions, in order to criticize from hindsight and mask their anti-Americanism in pseudowisdom. Either way, they are trapped. This is so simple, yet very effective. In reality, they oppose any action by the US because they oppose the very ideals of the US. Yet, they are too ashamed to admit it, and so hide behind phony guises.
Option 2 :
If you are the one who wants to initiate the debate, you can openly declare that "I feel that America, despite many flaws, has done more to benefit humanity than any other nation existing in the world today." If your opponent is a secretive anti-American, they may react with sputtering outrage (blowing their cover). They will point out various acts of evil that America has done (some true, some imagined), but it will become apparent that they are judging America to some utopian standard, rather than in relation to other countries existing in the world today. To this you can merely reply :
"Which country do you feel has done more for humanity than the US?"
or
"If an Asteroid were on a collision course with the Earth (never mind which country's instruments detected the asteroid), which country would be expected to take the lead in an effort to destroy or deflect the asteroid?"
In either case, the anti-American will be cornered, and seek to change the subject, or become visibly annoyed.
Expose their anti-Americanism, and you will gain a greater understanding of this shadowy second superpower. . . .
Posted by: Mike ||
03/30/2006 12:13 ||
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#1
I've never heard it put quite this way - The United States of America, and anti-Americanism - but it really does sum it up well, doesn't it.
What's different now, than in the past is that their is another player on the field, radical Islam. They have to decide if they want to embrace Islam in their fight against America. It's so self-destructive, but by what I've been seeing in the last month or two, they seem to be ready to embrace radical Islam. Not really surprising since they've been willing to embrace blood thirsty dictators for the last century.
But embracing Islam is a bit different in that they will have to do a complete turnabout in what they claim to stand for and make changes in their own life - including tolerating the intolerance of their very own lifestyles. This will be interesting to watch.
#3
Just as an aside, I predict that we will see moderate Muslims fight with us in the war against the return to barbarity.
When?
Posted by: Robert Crawford ||
03/30/2006 13:57 Comments ||
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#4
Just as an aside, I predict that we will see moderate Muslims fight with us in the war against the return to barbarity.
--2b
When?
--Robert Crawford
The elected Iraqi government, its police and army and citizenry, for starters.
Posted by: Mike ||
03/30/2006 14:05 Comments ||
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#5
Oh gosh, I wish you hadn't asked me that, because it is such a long train of thought that gets me there and I don't have time to write the whole long mental process.
I'll try to give it in a nutshell. I think that there has been a tectonic shift that has occurred in the last two months for those who felt it was chic to be anti-American. Now they have to decide between radical Islam, the new leader of the anti-American superpower and freedom. And it won't in some far off place but in their own neighborhoods in Boston or Bakersville that they have to choose to accept the change. This will include all of those "I'm Chic Because I'm Anti-American" BDS type folks here in the western world, but also the educated Muslims in Iran, Iraq, Turkey and other semi-civilized countries.
I guess I'm seeing this shape up as a conflict between tyranny and freedom and I suspect that billions in the Muslim world will eventually come down on the side of choosing to find ways to dilute their own religion in exchange for ridding themselves of tyranny. If we are lucky, we may see it in Iraq.
Look at it this way, I heard Alan Colmes (of Hannity and Colmes) defending Yale's decision to enroll the Taliban butcher. Yet I've heard the Muslim women who escaped from Afghanistan denouncing it.
Don't get me wrong - I'm not going to the issue of Muslims inability to reconcile their faith to life in the western world. But I think the western world will soon, after a few more "incidents" demand that from them. And it will probably get bloody before that happens. But I predict that events will make it come about that we won't tolerate the sedition of those who come here and then vote/murder/incite to remove our freedoms - whether they are Muslims, Christians, Jews Atheists, or tree worshipers.
I believe that billions in the Muslim world would be willing to dilute their faith in exchange for freedom both here in the US and in their native lands.
I just think there are as many stupid people here in the US (americans) who are no different than the stupid people who Sadr riles up. Look at Cynthia McKinney. Are her constituents any less stupid? And I think there are many smart people in the Muslim world - like Iraq the Model, etc, etc.
This is going to be a global war of freedom v/s tyranny - and the sides won't be Americans v/s Iran or Christians v/s Muslims ... but it will be those who want freedom v/s those who will bow to tyranny.
Or those that left (aka immigrated to America) and the left-behind (no balls or desire to leave). The left-behind often hold a grudge, especially when those that left them turn out to be very successful.
#7
I would have agreed with you 2b had I not recently read the Koran. What a sorry piece of work. It filled not just with hatred, but with direct incitements to violence and domination (especially against us Pagans -- you Christians and Jews get to be dhimmis, we just get the sword). Any orthodox (alternatively, fundamentalist or mainsteam) Muslim is thus necessarily an ememy.
But there are millions of secular Muslims, liberal Muslims, and heterodox Muslims (Alevis, Sufis, Ismailis, Ahmadis, etc.) But they have lost the battle for the core of the faith. And when push comes to shove, who will they side with? I'm not at all sure.
#8
pagan, I actually agree with you. It's the battle of tolerance and collective good v/s power attained by the use blame, hate, revenge and brutal force.
That said, I think there is a similar battle going on in the Muslim world, but they are a couple of centuries behind us and as you say, their religion undermines their efforts to achieve it.
But most everyone yearns to be free. I think Americans and other westerners will come around to agreeing, after more bloodshed, that we simply cannot allow immigrants, who do not adhere to our beliefs, to come here and undermine what we have by turning our courts, our democracy and ways of tolerance against us. I think you will see the battle shaping up along those lines in the months and years to come. It will be global.
But we have to remember that much of the battle is going to be amongst ourselves, right here at home. There is a good portion of our own citizens, our media, our educational institutions and our congress that works to undermine these very freedoms as well. These are our neighbors, friends and family. We do ourselves a disservice if we don't recognize that the battle lines are no longer country v/s country, or along religious lines, but a battle between those willing to fight for freedom and those who will submit to tyranny.
I guess as much as things change, they stay the same.
#9
I've thought a lot about anti-Amercanism and what causes it. As the article illustrates, it's fundamentally irrational.
I have recently concluded that at root its a manifestation of 'blame the Other' thinking. In the same way the Arabs avoid their own problems by blaming the Jews, often in bizzare conspiracies, many in this world avoid facing up to their own failings by blaming America.
#10
I think that what it boils down to, is that for the mythical moderate muslims to be able to learn how to get along well with others, is that they are going to have to admit quite plainly that "As far as bibles go, the Koran kinda sucks".
#11
Well said, 2b -- and I certainly hope that you are right. I suspect that the "cartoon war" turned a lot of minds, and I hope that more than a few of those were Muslim ones.
I just read a book called Defenders of Reason in Islam: Mutazilism from Medieval Schoool to Modern Symbol. The Mutazilas were Muslim rationalists and liberals --- unfortunately they are all but extinct. One of them, an Egyptian professor named Abu Zayd, was officially declared a Kafir by an Egyptian high court in 1995. They didn't kill him, but they did force his wife to divorce him. (And we give how much money every year to Egypt?)
#12
I think the hatred of the anti-Americaqns, the UN, fifth-column Americans, Euro-socialists, the world's fashion elite, and terrorists together, is quite rational.
America is modernity. America's creative destruction is destroying the world the anti-Americans grew up in and love. In the last century the Americans saw to the destruction of the European empires, Nazi Germany and the Soviet Union. Modernity, as created by the Americans has changed every traditional culture in the world such that they will never be the same. And the change is not stopping. They are correct, the only way to stop the change is to destroy America. It is unfortunate for them that they cannot succeed.
#13
Pagan - thanks, right you are about those cartoons. I feel sorry for that cartoonist. Minding his own business, drawing his little cartoons and then suddenly he is suddenly thrust into a pivotal moment in history.
America's creative destruction is destroying the world the anti-Americans grew up in and love.
Which world is that Nimble? The one that gave rise to the Nazi's and other despots murdering billions? The one that created potato famines and starving peasants? Where most children died before reaching adulthood?
Ah, the good ol days. Fact is they were never all that good. But its fun to pretend that it's all America's fault that the best of times still don't exist.
A long time ago, before George W. Bush was elected, and before Condi was an internationally recognised nickname, someone who knew Condoleezza Rice in one of her previous incarnations told me that the thing to remember about her is that she is definitely not a token, but that because people assume she is a token, they always underestimate her. A black woman Republican! From Alabama! Who speaks Russian! Of course shes overrated, they say until they wake up one morning and discover shes taken their job, or been promoted over their heads, or got the Presidents ear first. Its happened over and over again on Condis road to where she is today which is to say, to one of the most important jobs in the world.
When she was national security adviser, many did call her opportunistic, or worse. She was thought not up to the job of negotiating compromises between the administrations two alpha males, Colin Powell and Donald Rumsfeld. As a result, the US wound up having policies and programmes in Iraq which were sometimes in direct conflict with one another. She was thought to be too close to her mentors in George Bush Snrs administration, some of whom were famously fond of the status quo. She was thought too cautious, too timid, too afraid of the consequences of military action to be taken seriously.
Once again, she was underestimated. Now that she is Secretary of State and by all accounts the Presidents main foreign policy adviser, trumping not only her replacement as national security adviser but Rumsfeld himself, and obviously Powell too. What used to look like a tendency to bend whichever way the wind was blowing suddenly looks like flexibility, diplomacy and statesmanship. Since Condi took over at the State Department, relations with Europe have improved. Britain, France and Germany have been brought into the negotiations over Irans nuclear weapons. The military strategy in Iraq has changed to put Iraqi police and the new Iraqi military on the front-line instead of US and British troops. Maybe not all of that was her idea, but shes managed to get the credit, no mean feat in Washington.
Above all, Condi has now embraced the Presidents democracy advocacy project. Shell probably do a bit of that in Britain this week, since she tends to do it wherever she goes, talking about the benefits of elections and the rule of law everywhere from South America to Eastern Europe to East Asia (never forgetting to mention that childhood in segregated Birmingham). Once again, dont make the mistake of believing she is doing so for the sake of any crusading ideology or utopianism. She has simply judged that at present the only pragmatic approach to the world, especially in the Middle East, is to talk a lot about democracy and to push it wherever possible. She has concluded that the United States has more stable relationships with countries which, as she often puts it, share our values. Hence new money for radio and television broadcasts in Iran, or friendly noises about more liberal Arab countries such as Dubai, or comments about how Indonesia could serve as a model for other Islamic nations.
Dont expect rigid application of principle. This is not a woman who is going to dump the Saudis because they wont let women drive, or who will stop talking to the Russians because they nationalise a few television channels. Dont expect shell necessarily keep it up either, if conditions change or if the world is altered once again by an event on the scale of 9/11. If it comes to that, this is not a woman who will be picky about who enters her coalition of the willing either. Call it hypocrisy or call it, well, pragmatism. Its not that she doesnt mean what she says, its just that she understands everything has its limits. And dont underestimate how far it will get her.
In the end, of course, Condi insists upon absolute behavioural consistency from only one person herself. Once, a couple of years back, Condi came to lunch at the Washington Post. What was said was off the record, but it hardly mattered; Condi, at least in my very limited experience, almost never says anything off the record that she wouldnt say on the record anyway. In any case, what was most interesting about this particular meeting was not what she said, but the fact that while seated in a room where some 15 people were happily eating two courses plus dessert, Condi herself ate nothing at all. She swept in with her entourage, took a seat in the middle of the table, refused everything but water and answered questions for an hour. Then she got up, shook hands and swept out again.
Ice princess isnt quite the word for this ex-figure-skating, ex-piano-playing, ex-academic star, since shes invariably amicable, even cheerful, and always upbeat. But to ordinary mortals, that level of self-control not even a piece of bread, for goodness sake is intimidating. As, of course, it was intended to be.
On the 29 March 2006: In May 2005, the president of the Palestinian National Authority (PNA), Mahmoud Abbas, visited India, after discussions with the Pakistani president, General Parvez Musharraf. Despite the late Yasser Arafats attempts to play a good friend of India and balance relations with Pakistan, the Palestinians have not always been able to take away the Islamic element from their state relations in this region, and consequently, they have been closer to Pakistan.
But such things are not usually one-sided, the Israelis have found a more natural alliance with India, relations picked up in the late-Seventies, dipped in the Eighties, were rescued by P.V.Narasimha Rao in the Nineties, and have grown solid and deep in subsequent years. The best testimony to our relations with Israel, military-strategic relations, with a very strong component of defence acquisitions, is that neither side wants to talk about it very much. Within the forces, they are among our most valued allies, their assistance to us in the time of our need, especially the May 1999 Kargil War, has been extraordinary. Because of the very sensitive nature of relations, little more can be said about it.
But despite knowing this background, Mahmoud Abbas, the PNA president, was astonishingly frank in his discussions with the Indian leadership, which we had reason to focus in one of our commentaries of that time ( The Hamas connection, 31 May 2005). What Abbas disclosed was fairly shocking, the Hamas, behind the Intifida and suicide bombings in Israel, was training the Jaish-e-Mohammad, the notorious Pakistani terror group operating in Jammu and Kashmir and elsewhere. The reason for the training was both to update Jaish cadres in military fighting after the Jaishs centres in Afghanistan were wound up following the ouster of the Taliban regime, and second, the group and its Pakistani military patrons wanted a Palestinian-type Intifida in J and K.
Acting on the intelligence passed on by Abbas, our own agencies went to work, identifying the possible Jaish cadres trained by Hamas, and so on, and there was also some visible toughening of the governments stand against Pakistani terrorism. The reason for picking Jaish and not Lashkar-e-Toiba, the more active terror group in J and K, was because of its links to the Saudi royal family, while the Hamas has connections with opponents of the Saudi royalty, including the Al-Qaeda. But personally for Musharraf to countenance the Hamas-Jaish connection is still strange, because the Jaish-Al-Qaeda combination had made two unsuccessful attempts on his life in December 2003-January 2004. Yet, perhaps, with the larger goal of wresting J and K from India, Musharraf was willing to overlook this rather touchy, personal connection.
However, the strangest aspect was the PNA president, Abbas, ratting against the Hamas, and yet, it is not so strange, he and Hamas have opposed each other, and since January this year, when Hamas won a landslide victory, his position has grown even more shaky. But it was beyond Hamas, as officials on our side understood, Abbas was trying to get the PNA closer to the US, and India was becoming a good bet in that direction. This was in May last year, two months before the 18 July Indo-US civilian nuclear agreement was signed, but it was fairly clear India was well on its way to having a special relationship with the United States. And Abbas wanted to be at hand to extract some advantage from it.
So much so he was willing to turn over some of the Hamas dirt, and he was also risking relations with Pakistan in doing so. But in international politics, none of this should surprise, there are, as diplomats like to say over and over again, no permanent friends, only permanent interests. Of course, subsequent to the publishing of the commentary, Palestinian diplomats posted here denied that the PNA president had disclosed anything about the Hamas-Jaish connection, such disclaimers are routine, and anyhow it looked the Pakistanis were more outraged by the leak than anybody else. But we stood by our report then, and we have no reason to change our stand now, but unfortunately, the Indian government seems preparing to amend our position with regard to the terrorist Hamas that has come to power in the Palestinian territories.
As we have published the relevant intelligence today ( India may recognise Hamas government, 29 March 2006), the government is testing the waters to follow the Russians in recognising the terrorists who are running the Palestinian Authority now. The elections which brought them to power were indisputably fair, but neither is Hamas willing to give up its terrorism against Israel, an all-weather friend of India, and there is the Hamas-Jaish connection that we can hardly shut our eyes to.
It is not clear what great compulsion we have to rush and recognise the Hamas government, Russia sees the need to fill in in the Middle East and recover its old Cold War role now that the US is weakened in Iraq, and as a great power, the Russians have played these games for decades. But we are not in that league, we have no roadmap for Middle East peace and for our own role in the region, and it is downright dangerous to interfere in the Israeli-Palestinian dispute when we have our own tinderbox in J and K. What if somebody in the region demands a similar role in our J and K dispute with Pakistan? As such, Musharraf never passes up an opportunity to liken J and K to the Palestinian dispute, and here, we are giving him tinder-dry fodder.
But the funny thing is, nobody has asked for our recognition, certainly not the Hamas terrorists. Early this month, a Hamas cabinet minister was feted by Pakistani terror groups, including the Jaish, in Peshawar in the North West Frontier Province. The Hamas-Jaish terror link continues, and outrageously, the government pushes for recognising the Hamas terror regime.
A senior foreign office official who was sent to sound out the Israelis got an earful. The Israelis shot him so many questions he had no answers to them. Hamas wants to destroy the Israeli state, and they are training the Jaish for terrorism and Intifida in J and K. Should we close our eyes to all this, and extend a friendship hand to them? If we cannot, why are we doing it? You know it, bad old vote bank politics. The government believes it can win over the Muslim voters from the Samajwadi Party and other appeasers.
This is sick.
This is communalising our foreign policy.
Posted by: john ||
03/30/2006 09:28 ||
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Recent History Suggests That the Prospects Aren't Good
Now that the U.N. Security Council has agreed on a statement demanding that Iran restrict its nuclear program, the United States and its allies are doubtless considering tougher measures, including sanctions, to force Iran's compliance. The experience of sanctions imposed on Iraq (and on other countries), which I helped engineer and maintain as a British diplomat at the Security Council, offers some lessons.
First, no sanctions regime is effective unless its objective is widely shared, especially by the neighbors of the targeted state. On Iraq, even though the United States and Britain managed, through strenuous diplomatic effort, to gain Security Council approval of sanctions, there was considerable evasion of the sanctions by Iraq's neighbors and others, for whom their economic welfare was more important that the goal of disarming Iraq. Even if China and Russia do not block any sanctions resolution on Iran, no resolution will be effective unless they and other states choose to enforce the sanctions.
Second, oil sanctions are a double-edged sword. In the latter years of the 12-year sanctions regime on Iraq, Saddam Hussein often threatened to stop Iraq's oil exports in order to deter the United States and Britain from imposing measures in the Security Council to thwart his sanctions-busting techniques. Then as now, the gap between global oil demand and supply was so small that even the threat of stopping Iraq's exports caused damaging spikes in global oil prices. Any attempt to block or limit Iran's oil exports would surely have similar effects.
Third, even the most aggressive sanctions regimes, such as comprehensive economic sanctions, tend not to achieve their desired effects. While they were in effect, sanctions on Iraq prevented it from rearming -- despite the claims of the U.S. and British governments before the 2003 invasion. But the sanctions did not force Iraq to comply fully with the United Nations' weapons inspectors. It finally took the threat of invasion for Iraq to cooperate with the inspectors in the months before the war.
Instead, comprehensive sanctions caused considerable human suffering in Iraq and, thanks to the control over food rationing that the oil-for-food program placed in the regime's hands, they not-so arguably helped reinforce Hussein's rule. This mistake must not be repeated.
Fourth, any sanctions regime requires a long-term, patient and detailed effort to succeed. Sanctions on Slobodan Milosevic's Yugoslavia were effective partly because the United States and the European Union devoted considerable resources to targeting Milosevic's illegal financial holdings. Although there was lots of rhetoric, and American ships patrolled the Persian Gulf, sanctions enforcement on Iraq was sporadic, as the United States and its allies allowed Iraq's neighbors, particularly Jordan and Turkey, to import oil illegally. It's hard to believe that support for sanctions against Iran, even if they were imposed, would endure for very long.
Sanctions on Libya, imposed in 1992 after the bombing of Pan Am Flight 103 over Lockerbie, Scotland, were more effective in part because they were more limited. The U.N. ban on arms sales and air travel to Libya was seen as measured and commensurate pressure on Moammar Gaddafi to comply with the Security Council's demand that two Libyan agents accused of planning the bombing be handed over for trial. Even then, it took many years before Libya complied. Here there is a lesson that sanctions, when supported politically and patiently applied, can eventually work. Perhaps here there is scope for something that could work with Iran: a package of travel bans and financial measures targeting Iranian leaders. Targeted sanctions are, after the Iraq experience, now the fashion.
But there is one big reason why any U.S. effort to obtain sanctions against Iran is unlikely to be effective. All U.N. sanctions in the past have been imposed on governments that have done something seriously wrong -- such as invading other countries (Iraq) or brazenly hosting terrorist organizations (the Taliban). The claim that Iran might be developing a nuclear bomb hardly meets this standard, particularly because Pakistan and India got away with it (and with U.S. sympathy) and because U.S. intelligence assertions on weapons of mass destruction are, thanks to the Iraq experience, thoroughly disbelieved. Unless Iran is silly enough to do something such as testing a bomb (which is not very likely?), there will probably not be sufficient international support for punitive measures.
All of these reasons suggest that sanctions, as a policy option, are far from straightforward. Without troublemaking from Iran (which perhaps the United States is hoping for), they are unlikely to be agreed to under the current circumstances, and even if they are, they will succeed only if they are very carefully designed, targeted and supported by long-term and diligent diplomacy to shore up support.
The writer is a former diplomat who served in Britain's delegation to the United Nations from 1998 to 2002. He is now director of Independent Diplomat, a nonprofit diplomatic advisory group.
#7
Yee gods, the simple idiots we are forced to have serving us...
What do you want for God's sake! A 20kt nuke going off over Tel Aviv? A 200 kt nuke going off 200 miles up and 20 miles offshore of Washington, DC?
Would that be enough for you?
How about a 20kt nuke going off above Camp Fallujah?
How about a 200kt nuke going off in New York Harbor onboard a freighter docked at sea level?
What would be enough to convince some of you self-righteous zealots of foreign policy that an Iran armed with nuclear weapons represents a clear and present danger to the national security of the United States of America?
What? Tell me - or STFU and deal with the bastards the way anyone with any brains in their skull would deal with them if they want to keep those brains in their skull
We are not finished with Abdul Rahman, yet -- the Afghan who was being tried on the capital crime of converting to Christianity, until international pressure got him released -- for the very reason that the Afghans are not finished with him yet.
As readers may know imperfectly from the usual selective coverage in the media, the "problem" was not with one crazy Shariah judge in Kabul. There have been large demonstrations (riots according to an eyewitness in Mazar) in several Afghan cities; and across the country, prominent imams, whom we had counted as "moderates" in the sense that they had themselves previously been gaoled or persecuted by the Taliban, have been delivering incendiary sermons, demanding that their followers find Mr Rahman and kill him. "Kill" may be a slight understatement, since I gather most specify the sort of torture he should first endure.
That this is no minor issue, nor taken lightly abroad, may be surmised from reports that both the Italian and Australian prime ministers threatened to remove their troops from Afghanistan if Mr Rahman was not released. They, and other leaders of countries with troops in Afghanistan (Canada, for instance) made clear to President Hamid Karzai, in a semi-public way so as also to apprise their own electorates, that they could not possibly continue to sacrifice the lives of their soldiers, to defend a regime in which people are executed for being Christian. Or for any other allegiance of religion or conscience.
Whatever its value to build pressure, such a threat is foolish. We forget that we are in Afghanistan only secondarily to create a democratic constitutional order. This is a means only, towards the primary end of eliminating Afghanistan as a refuge and staging area for international terrorism. The same end could be achieved, hypothetically, by other means. I don't have the stomach to list them. But according at least to the "Bush doctrine", it would be a lot easier, and ultimately less costly in blood and money, if the country could be made responsibly self-governing.
It is difficult to achieve responsibility in politics, even in the West. Those who argue that, given the violence and fanaticism we are encountering, we should get out of such countries as Afghanistan and Iraq, and leave them to their squalid fate, take an extremely irresponsible position. They must first explain what their alternative would be, to eliminate these countries as hatcheries of terror. They must consider the consequences of leaving elected, pro-Western governments, to be overthrown by ruthless psychopaths. They must justify abandoning the huge numbers of innocents who will be butchered and massacred when our troops withdraw -- including everyone who trusted us. And contemplate the effect this spectacle will have on our remaining allies.
"Cut and run" is the opposite of a moral position. But neither is it a practical position. The bargain it offers, even to us, is less pain now, for more pain later -- as Afghanistan and Iraq shift back from being importers to exporters of jihadis.
Yet among those willing enough, for the moment, to send troops and keep shooting, there is the alternative irresponsibility -- which consists in underestimating the size of the task. You have not won a war until your enemy ceases to be your enemy. And by this standard, we are a long way from victory.
The case of Abdul Rahman, like the organized Danish cartoon apoplexy (still continuing in some parts of the world, where Muslim demagogues are still using it to whoop up anti-Western hysteria), brings us face to face with Islamic doctrines inimical to the survival of our civilization. And here, I wish I could say "Islamist", but the unpleasant truth is, Islamic doctrines. For the Shariah principles in question are shared by all four of the Sunni schools of jurisprudence (Maliki, Hanbali, Hanafi, and Shafi'i), plus the Shia school. There is no "sixth school" that recognizes religious and civic freedom, in any way that resembles what these expressions mean in the West.
All five of the actual schools or traditions take a view of idolatry, that entirely removes the possibility of freedom of expression in public life. Moreover, all take a view of apostasy that presents a palpable threat to the life and liberty of every non-Muslim, and excommunicated Muslim. And such doctrines as "jihad" (when interpreted as perpetual holy war against all infidels), and "razzia" (permission to raid and plunder our infidel communities) are not such as can be assimilated with Western jurisprudence.
We cannot pretend for long, the way President Bush has been doing (albeit from humane and sound tactical motives to begin with), that the Shariah is compatible with freedom and democracy. The systems of government we advocate, or by necessity impose, must explicitly provide civil protection to non-Muslims and Muslims alike, against Shariah courts and their rulings. I have come to realize there is no alternative to this.
A multi-volume chronology and reference guide set detailing three years of the Mexican Drug War between 2010 and 2012.
Rantburg.com and borderlandbeat.com correspondent and author Chris Covert presents his first non-fiction work detailing
the drug and gang related violence in Mexico.
Chris gives us Mexican press dispatches of drug and gang war violence
over three years, presented in a multi volume set intended to chronicle the death, violence and mayhem which has
dominated Mexico for six years.
Rantburg was assembled from recycled algorithms in the United States of America. No
trees were destroyed in the production of this weblog. We did hurt some, though. Sorry.
