Wednesday, March 08, 2006
Is the Continent willing to fight for anything, besides a welfare check?
BY LEON DE WINTER Tuesday, March 7, 2006 12:01 a.m. EST
After two years of disastrous dialogue, and more of the same in recent days, we can conclude that no diplomatic initiative can stop Iran from getting the bomb. The International Atomic Energy Agency meets again this week to discuss the mullahs' nuclear ambitions, while Russia floats a plan to get Iran to enrich uranium on its soil. But before we got to this point, we had the Europeans in the starring role. The foreign ministers of the leading European Union countries--Britain, France and Germany--did try for years to persuade Iran to give up its nuclear ambitions, most recently at Friday's meeting in Vienna that ended up in yet another failure. But Iran knew all along that this threesome, formally the "Troika," had no real negotiating authority and would never resort to serious measures.
And yet Britain's Jack Straw, France's Philippe Douste-Blazy (and his predecessor, Dominique de Villepin) and Germany's Joschka Fischer (and his successor, Frank-Walter Steinmeier) talked on, clinging to a postmodern European belief in a world where any conflict can be resolved with enough reason and mutual understanding. The Troika offered the mullahs economic carrots and alternative sources of nuclear power--as if energy had anything to do with it--while Iran did what any football team does when it's ahead: It played for time. This it used very well to push ahead with its clandestine nuclear program.
Did the Troika know that Iran knew that Europe was weak? Of course. Europe's posturing was empty from the start. The only weapon that the EU was willing to consider, as a last result, was an economic boycott that would harm Europe's commercial interests more than Iran's.
The mullahs also knew that the Troika couldn't back up its threat of an economic boycott with the threat of military action. If the EU couldn't muster the will to fight in its own backyard in the Balkans without America leading the way, it surely wouldn't put any lives at risk beyond the frontiers of the Continent.
By contrast, Iran, ostensibly a democracy but in reality a religious tyranny, possesses a character trait that is almost nonexistent in modern Europe: Iranians, almost exclusively Shiite, are willing to suffer. This quality is deeply rooted in their religion. Ashura, one of the central Shiite rituals that marks the death of Imam Hussain at the Battle of Karbala in 680, celebrates flagellation, blood, pain. As Steven Vincent, the remarkable American journalist who tragically was murdered last August in Iraq, observed in his book "In the Red Zone": "Eight-foot long white silk flags depicting crossed sword, the blades oozing with blood . . . pictures of severed hands, severed heads, . . a fountain in front of Meshed Ali spraying geysers of blood-red liquid. . . . bloody swords flashing over the heads of milling crowds . . . men with blood-soaked bandages wrapped around their heads to stanch the bleeding from self-inflicted wounds . . . endless posters of the slaughtered innocents. This is an orgy of death imagery, I thought."
Can Europe grasp this commitment to voluntary suffering? For casualties to be acceptable on the battlefield, people need collective ideals and values that transform their society into a sacred entity. In European eyes, Shiites have ritualized this to the point of absurdity, with most Westerners finding it bizarre.
After the horrors of World War II, Western Europe turned to new ideals of radical pacifism and post-nationalism. The Continent had been devastated by war twice in three decades. In the 1950s, the desire to avoid more war led it to a new ideology, permeating society and politics, that viewed national interests and cultural traditions as relative. As a result, people started to believe that peaceful coexistence with communist Eastern Europe was better than emphasizing the differences between East and West.
The largest demonstration ever in my own country, the Netherlands, was held in 1983 against the stationing of U.S. cruise missiles on Dutch soil. Anti-American sentiments were popular then as well, since America was a country that was prepared to oppose the Soviets with force, while the demonstrators categorically rejected any use of violence in favor of other means. What these means were remained vague for most people, but that was unimportant as long as the central issue was the growing threat of war implied by the stationing of U.S. missiles.
Little has changed in recent decades. Europe became wealthier and more convinced of its idea that world peace can be achieved by talk alone. Even the West European countries in the American-led coalition in Iraq, apart from the British, are only participating symbolically in order not to offend their main ally. In the Netherlands, the authorities speak of "peace missions" when discussing Dutch military involvement in Iraq and Afghanistan, avoiding terms like "war" and "violence."
If the threat were limited to the Middle East, the European reluctance to act now that Iran has de facto begun developing nuclear weapons might be almost understandable. But it is clear that the Iranian theocracy has set its sights far beyond its region. The rhetoric of the Iranian regime has been clear for years. As with Germany in the 1930s, anti-Semitism plays a key role in modern Iranian politics. If Iran succeeds, its nuclear weapons will be controlled by people who believe that they should bring the End of Days closer--a notion not dissimilar to Hitler's apocalyptic visions. An Iranian bomb threatens the very existence of Western civilization.
But what does Western civilization mean in and to Europe? In the European welfare state, the system ensures that each individual can rely on maximum social security. Without doubt, the welfare state is the ultimate achievement of European civilization. But it did not come without a philosophy: the welfare state gave birth to a postmodern cultural relativism that underpins the tolerant, liberal, pacifistic and secular European societies of today.
Only the Earth is still a planet on which opposing forces collide. The welfare state, based on its provision of social services and the participation of reasonably acting civilians, is unable to respond to globalization or mass immigration. Its structures work as long as the system is closed. But because of vast changes in demographics and economics, the welfare state has become too expensive. All over Europe its fundaments are cracking.
This crisis is serious enough. The European political establishment is too preoccupied with its internal problems to even contemplate problems beyond its shores. Its philosophy holds that "soft power" alone can be brought to bear in any conflict between power blocs or ideologies or civilizations. That explains Europe's inability or unwillingness to defend the freedom of speech in one of the smallest EU member states, Denmark, during the Cartoon War. That's why there is near silence in Europe about the daily anti-Semitic provocations from Iran, which says that it'll hit Jews worldwide if Israel tries to destroy the Iranian nuclear program.
The EU does not know why it should ever sacrifice its sons in military conflict. What sacred values are worth defending at such a high cost? The EU isn't prepared to enter a conflict with Iran, with all its potentially devastating human casualties and economic hardships.
So for years the Troika continued talking, maintaining the illusion that Tehran was playing by the rules as equal partners and denying the reality that the Mullahs will gain great economic and military leverage over Europe in the very near future.
Europe could have suppressed the Iranian threat if it had convinced the mullahs two years ago that it was willing to contemplate military options. Only Europe lacks core values that it holds sacrosanct and that it's willing to defend at the highest cost. It will continue to operate on the diplomatic field and cling to soft power even though this is the path of certain defeat when confronted with power players burning with geopolitical and religious ambitions.
Thanks to European illusions about soft power, the free world has two options left on Iran: disaster or catastrophe. America and Israel will bleed for Europe's lack of conviction.
Mr. de Winter is a Dutch novelist and adjunct fellow at the Hudson Institute.
BY LEON DE WINTER Tuesday, March 7, 2006 12:01 a.m. EST
After two years of disastrous dialogue, and more of the same in recent days, we can conclude that no diplomatic initiative can stop Iran from getting the bomb. The International Atomic Energy Agency meets again this week to discuss the mullahs' nuclear ambitions, while Russia floats a plan to get Iran to enrich uranium on its soil. But before we got to this point, we had the Europeans in the starring role. The foreign ministers of the leading European Union countries--Britain, France and Germany--did try for years to persuade Iran to give up its nuclear ambitions, most recently at Friday's meeting in Vienna that ended up in yet another failure. But Iran knew all along that this threesome, formally the "Troika," had no real negotiating authority and would never resort to serious measures.
And yet Britain's Jack Straw, France's Philippe Douste-Blazy (and his predecessor, Dominique de Villepin) and Germany's Joschka Fischer (and his successor, Frank-Walter Steinmeier) talked on, clinging to a postmodern European belief in a world where any conflict can be resolved with enough reason and mutual understanding. The Troika offered the mullahs economic carrots and alternative sources of nuclear power--as if energy had anything to do with it--while Iran did what any football team does when it's ahead: It played for time. This it used very well to push ahead with its clandestine nuclear program.
Did the Troika know that Iran knew that Europe was weak? Of course. Europe's posturing was empty from the start. The only weapon that the EU was willing to consider, as a last result, was an economic boycott that would harm Europe's commercial interests more than Iran's.
The mullahs also knew that the Troika couldn't back up its threat of an economic boycott with the threat of military action. If the EU couldn't muster the will to fight in its own backyard in the Balkans without America leading the way, it surely wouldn't put any lives at risk beyond the frontiers of the Continent.
By contrast, Iran, ostensibly a democracy but in reality a religious tyranny, possesses a character trait that is almost nonexistent in modern Europe: Iranians, almost exclusively Shiite, are willing to suffer. This quality is deeply rooted in their religion. Ashura, one of the central Shiite rituals that marks the death of Imam Hussain at the Battle of Karbala in 680, celebrates flagellation, blood, pain. As Steven Vincent, the remarkable American journalist who tragically was murdered last August in Iraq, observed in his book "In the Red Zone": "Eight-foot long white silk flags depicting crossed sword, the blades oozing with blood . . . pictures of severed hands, severed heads, . . a fountain in front of Meshed Ali spraying geysers of blood-red liquid. . . . bloody swords flashing over the heads of milling crowds . . . men with blood-soaked bandages wrapped around their heads to stanch the bleeding from self-inflicted wounds . . . endless posters of the slaughtered innocents. This is an orgy of death imagery, I thought."
Can Europe grasp this commitment to voluntary suffering? For casualties to be acceptable on the battlefield, people need collective ideals and values that transform their society into a sacred entity. In European eyes, Shiites have ritualized this to the point of absurdity, with most Westerners finding it bizarre.
After the horrors of World War II, Western Europe turned to new ideals of radical pacifism and post-nationalism. The Continent had been devastated by war twice in three decades. In the 1950s, the desire to avoid more war led it to a new ideology, permeating society and politics, that viewed national interests and cultural traditions as relative. As a result, people started to believe that peaceful coexistence with communist Eastern Europe was better than emphasizing the differences between East and West.
The largest demonstration ever in my own country, the Netherlands, was held in 1983 against the stationing of U.S. cruise missiles on Dutch soil. Anti-American sentiments were popular then as well, since America was a country that was prepared to oppose the Soviets with force, while the demonstrators categorically rejected any use of violence in favor of other means. What these means were remained vague for most people, but that was unimportant as long as the central issue was the growing threat of war implied by the stationing of U.S. missiles.
Little has changed in recent decades. Europe became wealthier and more convinced of its idea that world peace can be achieved by talk alone. Even the West European countries in the American-led coalition in Iraq, apart from the British, are only participating symbolically in order not to offend their main ally. In the Netherlands, the authorities speak of "peace missions" when discussing Dutch military involvement in Iraq and Afghanistan, avoiding terms like "war" and "violence."
If the threat were limited to the Middle East, the European reluctance to act now that Iran has de facto begun developing nuclear weapons might be almost understandable. But it is clear that the Iranian theocracy has set its sights far beyond its region. The rhetoric of the Iranian regime has been clear for years. As with Germany in the 1930s, anti-Semitism plays a key role in modern Iranian politics. If Iran succeeds, its nuclear weapons will be controlled by people who believe that they should bring the End of Days closer--a notion not dissimilar to Hitler's apocalyptic visions. An Iranian bomb threatens the very existence of Western civilization.
But what does Western civilization mean in and to Europe? In the European welfare state, the system ensures that each individual can rely on maximum social security. Without doubt, the welfare state is the ultimate achievement of European civilization. But it did not come without a philosophy: the welfare state gave birth to a postmodern cultural relativism that underpins the tolerant, liberal, pacifistic and secular European societies of today.
Only the Earth is still a planet on which opposing forces collide. The welfare state, based on its provision of social services and the participation of reasonably acting civilians, is unable to respond to globalization or mass immigration. Its structures work as long as the system is closed. But because of vast changes in demographics and economics, the welfare state has become too expensive. All over Europe its fundaments are cracking.
This crisis is serious enough. The European political establishment is too preoccupied with its internal problems to even contemplate problems beyond its shores. Its philosophy holds that "soft power" alone can be brought to bear in any conflict between power blocs or ideologies or civilizations. That explains Europe's inability or unwillingness to defend the freedom of speech in one of the smallest EU member states, Denmark, during the Cartoon War. That's why there is near silence in Europe about the daily anti-Semitic provocations from Iran, which says that it'll hit Jews worldwide if Israel tries to destroy the Iranian nuclear program.
The EU does not know why it should ever sacrifice its sons in military conflict. What sacred values are worth defending at such a high cost? The EU isn't prepared to enter a conflict with Iran, with all its potentially devastating human casualties and economic hardships.
So for years the Troika continued talking, maintaining the illusion that Tehran was playing by the rules as equal partners and denying the reality that the Mullahs will gain great economic and military leverage over Europe in the very near future.
Europe could have suppressed the Iranian threat if it had convinced the mullahs two years ago that it was willing to contemplate military options. Only Europe lacks core values that it holds sacrosanct and that it's willing to defend at the highest cost. It will continue to operate on the diplomatic field and cling to soft power even though this is the path of certain defeat when confronted with power players burning with geopolitical and religious ambitions.
Thanks to European illusions about soft power, the free world has two options left on Iran: disaster or catastrophe. America and Israel will bleed for Europe's lack of conviction.
Mr. de Winter is a Dutch novelist and adjunct fellow at the Hudson Institute.
Monday, March 06, 2006
Rocks and RipplesPlaying it smart in the Middle East.
Fear in the U.S. of Russian nukes made strange bedfellows during the Cold War, like our relationship with the shah of Iran, Franco, Somoza, and Pinochet. The logic was that such strongmen, unlike Communist thugs, would evolve eventually into constitutional governments, or, unlike elected socialists, they could at least be trusted not to turn their countries into satellites of the Soviet Union.
We paid a price for such realpolitik when the Berlin Wall fell. Few gave us the deserved thanks for bankrupting the Soviet empire, but we did get plenty of the blame for the mess left behind by third-world dictatorships.
Now Middle East autocracies use the same "it's either us or them" blackmail. They hope to survive the tide of democratization by showing off their antiterrorist plumage. The problem is that the defeat of terrorism — like that of global Communism — ultimately rests with promoting freedom, not authoritarianism.
Decades of supporting right-wing authoritarians did nothing to ameliorate a dysfunctional Middle East. Perhaps support for democratic reform will usher in Hamas in Palestine, the Muslim Brotherhood in Egypt, something worse than Gen. Musharraf in Pakistan, and a shaky post-Saddam Hussein government in violence-torn Iraq, but what else is the United States to do?
About what we are doing now: We should keep supporting the process, but not necessarily the result; much less should we subsidize elected anti-Americans. The key is to keep a low profile and promote consensual government, but without bullying or grand moral pronouncements when the odious are elected.
We should praise the relatively free voting that ushered in Hamas, insist that they institutionalize the process that brought them to power, but under no circumstances give such terrorists any American money as long as they pledge to destroy Israel.
Allowing the autocratic Mr. Mubarak to go his own way without any more American largess may well empower the Muslim Brotherhood. Fine. Let the zealots talk all they want about bringing corruption-free government to Egypt at last, and hatred of the United States too. In response, America need only quietly explain that we no longer subsidize dictators — or terrorists who are elected to power through principled American support for democratic elections. I'm sure that after all the invective subsides, the Egyptians can sort out both our logic and idealism.
The key is consistency — and subtlety in expression. That way we avoid the unsustainable paradox that Americans are dying for democracy in the Sunni Triangle while subsidizing its antithesis in Cairo. And by the same token, we need not tour the Middle East demonizing Hamas; that will certainly not result in ostracism of that terrorist organization by "moderates," but it will give rise to the opinion that we behave hypocritically when the Arab street votes in someone we don't like.
After Afghanistan and Iraq, how silly to keep giving aid to the dictatorship in Egypt, either from the ossified idea that our bribe money stops it from starting a war with Israel (a war it would promptly lose), or that the alternative is the terrifying, all-powerful Muslim Brotherhood.
All we are doing instead is fueling all sorts of pathetic mythologies: that the United States opposes the will of the Arab people, or that our pressure alone stops the heroic Egyptian legions from marching into Tel Aviv, or that our support ipso facto stops incompetent Islamic radicals from bringing efficient, modern, and honest government to Egypt.
In a larger sense, the United States, after the necessary and much caricatured task of removing the Taliban and Saddam Hussein, may find its power enhanced by allowing others to suffer the consequences of their own stupid decisions. Already Hamas is asking the hated West for money — and sputtering that its charter of eternal war against the Jews, well, kinda, sorta means a truce for a while rather than a collision with the IDF.
The United States is finding the same results with the Iranian nuclear negotiations. Europe wanted multilateralism — they got it, and they won humiliation from the Iranians, with the possibility of nuclear weapons apparently now resting in the hands of the Russians, who sold the mullahs much of their nuclear hardware in the first place. Ever so slowly, after the French riots, the bombings in London and Madrid, and the Danish cartoons, the Europeans are learning that for all their anti-American triangulating, nice talk to the Iranians, and money given to Palestinian terrorists, they have won only contempt from the Middle East.
The result? They are coming back around to the United States, in a way that would be impossible had we sent dozens of envoys to London and Paris begging to restore the old Atlantic partnership. Gerhard Schroeder, after all, not George Bush, is now a paid lackey for a post-Soviet state-owned oil company, and Jacques Chirac is blathering in his dotage about using French nukes. The legacy of that sad pair of bystanders is only appeasement, cheap anti-Americanism, and oil deals with Saddam, while the United States has altered the very dynamic of the Middle East.
Iraq, of course, presents an entirely different sort of challenge. But even here, for all the recent furor, Ambassador Zalmay Khalilzad's statements that the United States will not in perpetuity subsidize sectarian bickering in lieu of the formation of a coalition government will have a positive effect. We are putting the Iraqi security forces at the forefront, apprising the new government that $300-400 billion in military and civilian outlay may be winding down, and emphasizing force protection of our own troops.
In effect, we are saying that, in a perfect world, we would give Iraq ten years of unlimited American military and civilian aid, but in the messy real landscape of an expensive war against terrorism, four or five since 2003 might just have to do. The reality will be that the new government may soon be more forceful in setting its house in order — a far better scenario than if the Americans lecturing that we must stay until the Iraqis grow up, meet our standards, and can take care of themselves.
These opportunities are not a reaction against the purported unilateralism and preemption that took us to the Middle East in 2001-3, but rather a logical result of just such determination. We have such options precisely because an Assad no longer thinks an American statesman will wait obsequiously on his tarmac. Saudi financiers don't think any more that they can finance killers with impunity. And after the fate of Saddam Hussein, it is no longer possible for Pakistan's Dr. Khan, Libya's Khadafi, or Iran's Ahmadinejihad to count on the benign neglect of their nuclear trafficking.
Long-overdue rocks have been thrown into the stagnant lake of the Middle East, and now we must, with patience, carefully let the ripples of aeration do their work.
Fear in the U.S. of Russian nukes made strange bedfellows during the Cold War, like our relationship with the shah of Iran, Franco, Somoza, and Pinochet. The logic was that such strongmen, unlike Communist thugs, would evolve eventually into constitutional governments, or, unlike elected socialists, they could at least be trusted not to turn their countries into satellites of the Soviet Union.
We paid a price for such realpolitik when the Berlin Wall fell. Few gave us the deserved thanks for bankrupting the Soviet empire, but we did get plenty of the blame for the mess left behind by third-world dictatorships.
Now Middle East autocracies use the same "it's either us or them" blackmail. They hope to survive the tide of democratization by showing off their antiterrorist plumage. The problem is that the defeat of terrorism — like that of global Communism — ultimately rests with promoting freedom, not authoritarianism.
Decades of supporting right-wing authoritarians did nothing to ameliorate a dysfunctional Middle East. Perhaps support for democratic reform will usher in Hamas in Palestine, the Muslim Brotherhood in Egypt, something worse than Gen. Musharraf in Pakistan, and a shaky post-Saddam Hussein government in violence-torn Iraq, but what else is the United States to do?
About what we are doing now: We should keep supporting the process, but not necessarily the result; much less should we subsidize elected anti-Americans. The key is to keep a low profile and promote consensual government, but without bullying or grand moral pronouncements when the odious are elected.
We should praise the relatively free voting that ushered in Hamas, insist that they institutionalize the process that brought them to power, but under no circumstances give such terrorists any American money as long as they pledge to destroy Israel.
Allowing the autocratic Mr. Mubarak to go his own way without any more American largess may well empower the Muslim Brotherhood. Fine. Let the zealots talk all they want about bringing corruption-free government to Egypt at last, and hatred of the United States too. In response, America need only quietly explain that we no longer subsidize dictators — or terrorists who are elected to power through principled American support for democratic elections. I'm sure that after all the invective subsides, the Egyptians can sort out both our logic and idealism.
The key is consistency — and subtlety in expression. That way we avoid the unsustainable paradox that Americans are dying for democracy in the Sunni Triangle while subsidizing its antithesis in Cairo. And by the same token, we need not tour the Middle East demonizing Hamas; that will certainly not result in ostracism of that terrorist organization by "moderates," but it will give rise to the opinion that we behave hypocritically when the Arab street votes in someone we don't like.
After Afghanistan and Iraq, how silly to keep giving aid to the dictatorship in Egypt, either from the ossified idea that our bribe money stops it from starting a war with Israel (a war it would promptly lose), or that the alternative is the terrifying, all-powerful Muslim Brotherhood.
All we are doing instead is fueling all sorts of pathetic mythologies: that the United States opposes the will of the Arab people, or that our pressure alone stops the heroic Egyptian legions from marching into Tel Aviv, or that our support ipso facto stops incompetent Islamic radicals from bringing efficient, modern, and honest government to Egypt.
In a larger sense, the United States, after the necessary and much caricatured task of removing the Taliban and Saddam Hussein, may find its power enhanced by allowing others to suffer the consequences of their own stupid decisions. Already Hamas is asking the hated West for money — and sputtering that its charter of eternal war against the Jews, well, kinda, sorta means a truce for a while rather than a collision with the IDF.
The United States is finding the same results with the Iranian nuclear negotiations. Europe wanted multilateralism — they got it, and they won humiliation from the Iranians, with the possibility of nuclear weapons apparently now resting in the hands of the Russians, who sold the mullahs much of their nuclear hardware in the first place. Ever so slowly, after the French riots, the bombings in London and Madrid, and the Danish cartoons, the Europeans are learning that for all their anti-American triangulating, nice talk to the Iranians, and money given to Palestinian terrorists, they have won only contempt from the Middle East.
The result? They are coming back around to the United States, in a way that would be impossible had we sent dozens of envoys to London and Paris begging to restore the old Atlantic partnership. Gerhard Schroeder, after all, not George Bush, is now a paid lackey for a post-Soviet state-owned oil company, and Jacques Chirac is blathering in his dotage about using French nukes. The legacy of that sad pair of bystanders is only appeasement, cheap anti-Americanism, and oil deals with Saddam, while the United States has altered the very dynamic of the Middle East.
Iraq, of course, presents an entirely different sort of challenge. But even here, for all the recent furor, Ambassador Zalmay Khalilzad's statements that the United States will not in perpetuity subsidize sectarian bickering in lieu of the formation of a coalition government will have a positive effect. We are putting the Iraqi security forces at the forefront, apprising the new government that $300-400 billion in military and civilian outlay may be winding down, and emphasizing force protection of our own troops.
In effect, we are saying that, in a perfect world, we would give Iraq ten years of unlimited American military and civilian aid, but in the messy real landscape of an expensive war against terrorism, four or five since 2003 might just have to do. The reality will be that the new government may soon be more forceful in setting its house in order — a far better scenario than if the Americans lecturing that we must stay until the Iraqis grow up, meet our standards, and can take care of themselves.
These opportunities are not a reaction against the purported unilateralism and preemption that took us to the Middle East in 2001-3, but rather a logical result of just such determination. We have such options precisely because an Assad no longer thinks an American statesman will wait obsequiously on his tarmac. Saudi financiers don't think any more that they can finance killers with impunity. And after the fate of Saddam Hussein, it is no longer possible for Pakistan's Dr. Khan, Libya's Khadafi, or Iran's Ahmadinejihad to count on the benign neglect of their nuclear trafficking.
Long-overdue rocks have been thrown into the stagnant lake of the Middle East, and now we must, with patience, carefully let the ripples of aeration do their work.
