Some pundits have compared the political turmoil in 2014 to the turmoil in 1914 that led to World War I. There are some interesting parallels, but historical analogies are both revealing and dangerous. The dangers of such analogies are that we overemphasize the similarities and ignore critical differences. The rising tensions in East and Southeast Asia occasioned by the rise of China have led some to compare the situation to the rise of Germany in the late 19th century. There are, however, many reasons to question the usefulness of the 1914 analogy in Asia.
The rocket attacks fired by Hamas on Israel are unquestionably unlawful under the laws of war: they are not precisely targeted and therefore place noncombatants in jeopardy. There is a question, however, about their lethality. Phan Nguyen has done a very detailed analysis of the deaths attributed to the rockets in the three conflicts against Israel: Operation Cast Lead (December 27, 2008–January 18, 2009), Operation Pillar of Defense (November 14, 2012–November 21, 2012), and the ongoing Operation Protective Edge (July 8, 2014–). In total, 27 Israelis have died from the rocket attacks. Nguyen also raises some very interesting points about how the attacks are characterized in the media. The analysis is quite thorough.
The Ukrainian government has launched several offensives to retake control of territory held by Russian-speaking separatists. One of its transport planes was shot down when it was at an altitude higher than the range of the shoulder-held antiaircraft missiles available to the separatists, raising the possibility that it was downed by a missile fired from Russia. The fighting in Ukraine has begun to intensify after a period of somewhat low-intensity. It is unclear what Russia plans to do if the Ukrainian government succeeds in putting down the rebellion.
Today was declared to be an international day of rage by the Popular Committees of Palestine, and protests were organized in many cities, primarily in Europe. The protests were against the Israeli actions in Gaza, and most of the protests were peaceful. Unfortunately, in Paris the protest took a very ugly turn as some of the protesters besieged a synagogue. A former student was in Paris and sent me a photo (below) of the protest there. Such actions should be condemned in the strongest terms possible. The conflict we are all witnessing is about land and power–it is not about religion. There are, in fact, some Jews who oppose the existence of the state of Israel; some of Israel’s strongest supporters are Christians.
The conflict, however, can be strongly opposed on the issue of land and power: as such, the targets of the protest should be either the current government of the state of Israel that is conducting the actions or the ruling party of Hamas that is responsible for the rockets being launched from Gaza. My own opposition to the conflict is that it is a brutal exercise of power that will accomplish nothing of value and will kill many innocent lives in the process. Since 1967, there have been similar conflicts between Israel and the Palestinian people:
1978-2000 Fighting between Israel and Hezbollah in Lebanon, which included a lengthy occupation of the southern part of Lebanon by Israel
1987–91: First Intifada
2000–2005: Second Intifada
December 2008, Operation Cast Lead
After 22 days of fighting, Israel and Hamas each declared separate unilateral ceasefires. Casualties of the Gaza War are disputed. According to Hamas, they included as many as 1,417 Palestinians including as many as 926 civilians. According to the Israeli Defense Forces, 1,166 Palestinians were killed, and 295 were non-combatants.
November 2012, Operation Pillar of Defense
Gaza officials said 133 Palestinians had been killed in the conflict of whom 79 were militants, 53 civilians and 1 was a policeman and estimated that 840 Palestinians were wounded. Hamas fired over 1,456 rockets at southern Israel, killing 6, including a pregnant woman, and injuring hundreds.
Despite all this violence, the two sides are no closer to an agreement and are in many respects much further apart. There is absolutely no reason to believe that the current violence will have a different outcome from these previous wars. At some point, a different strategy must be attempted. This war cannot be justified by any feasible policy objective.
As the fighting in Gaza continues, both sides accuse each other of reprehensible tactics. Both sides are taking actions that jeopardize the lives of civilians. The rockets used by Hamas cannot be precisely targeted and therefore pose a risk to civilians; fortunately, no Israelis have yet been killed by the rockets. Israel has more precisely guided weaponry and it takes very active steps to avoid civilian casualties. But the Gaza Strip is very densely populated, and it is impossible to target any building without posing a risk to civilians; at this point, more than 100 Palestinians have been killed. This asymmetry in deaths is striking, and it is a pattern that was true in previous conflicts between Israel and Hamas in Gaza. Unfortunately, the US media is mostly based in Israel, and reports of the deaths of Palestinians is not generally covered. It takes more effort to find out the damage done in the Gaza, but the effort is necessary to get an accurate view of the conflict.
Jessica Matthews has written a very good essay on the situation in Iraq which will appear in a forthcoming issue of the New York Review of Books. She analyzes many aspects of the current turmoil in Iraq, but she makes a very important point about how we should think about the Sunni-Shia divide in Iraq: that the divide is really political and not religious at all:
The story, which has seemed to be all about religion and military developments, is actually mostly about politics: access to government revenue and services, a say in decision-making, and a modicum of social justice. True, one side is Sunni and the other Shia, but this is not a theological conflict rooted in the seventh century. ISIS and its allies have triumphed because the Sunni populations of Mosul and Tikrit and Fallujah have welcomed and supported them—not because of ISIS’s disgusting behavior, but in spite of it. The Sunnis in these towns are more afraid of what their government may do to them than of what the Sunni militia might. They have had enough of years of being marginalized while suffering vicious repression, lawlessness, and rampant corruption at the hands of Iraq’s Shia-led government.
A college education is very expensive, but its cost has traditionally been considered as an investment: college-educated people have traditionally made more money than those without a degree. In recent years, however, some have begun to question the economic basis for the investment. The calculation remains sound, but the underlying logic has changed. The incomes of both college-educated and non-college-educated people are still diverging, but that’s because the incomes of non college-educated individuals have gone down sharply since 1991. Indeed, the average income of a college-educated person is roughly the same as it was in 1991.
Just as the invasion of Iraq in March 2003 damaged the image of the US in world affairs, Russia’s intervention in Ukraine has undermined Russia’s reputation in the world. The Pew Research Center has conducted a poll of how outsiders now view Russia, and the results show a dramatic drop in favorable opinions of Russia. For now, President Putin remains highly popular in Russia, but as economic sanctions bite into Russia’s economic growth, that support may drop as well. Unilateral interventions have heavy costs in the world, and it is often difficult to shake the image over time.
The rise of social media has uncovered all sorts of questions about how human beings communicate. Traditionally, the most effective means of communicating ideas has been through talking with each other. Talking is a very complex process, and it demands the development of important ancillary skills, such as reading body behavior. The ubiquity of electronic communication (such as this blog, or other forms such as email and texting) has reduced our reliance on these ancillary skills. The critical question is whether the loss of these other skills is going to ultimately affect our social development. I suspect that it will, and that loss, while incalculable, is possibly tragic.
The Stockholm International Peace Research Institute is one of the most highly regarded research organizations in the world. They publish a Global Firepower Index which takes 50 variables and makes a composite index measuring the military power of all the countries in the world. The list does not contain many surprises, but the index gives a great deal of depth to what analysts mean when they talk about the military power of a particular country.
The violence between Israel and Hamas in the Gaza Strip continues. Hamas has launched more than 200 missiles into Israeli territory and has disrupted life in Israel to a considerable extent. Fortunately, there have been no reported injuries from the rocket attacks–the missiles have a short range, they are unguided, and Israel has an anti-missile system (“Iron Dome”) that has shot many of the incoming missiles. Israel has relied on air strikes into Gaza and claims that it has only targeted known military sites. Unfortunately, the air strikes have killed many civilians, and the Washington Post has some extraordinary photos and videos of the havoc created by the air strikes. The tactics used by both sides are profoundly inconsistent with the laws of war.
Both Joko Widodo and Prabowo Subianto have claimed victory in Indonesia’s Presidential election. The unofficial vote gave the election to Widodo, but Subianto has contested that outcome. In this election, there was a relatively clear choice between the old and new guard in the world’s third largest democracy. Widodo is a certified outsider, although he has served as the governor of Jakarta, Indonesia’s largest city. Just nine years ago, he was a furniture salesman, and many young Indonesians strongly identify with him. Subianto is a former general and closely identified with the former dictatorship of Suharto. How Indonesia handles this controversy will be a stern test of its civic culture.
There are serious questions that are being raised about the health of democracy in the world. Such questions are not new, but since 2001 they have been asked more frequently and with greater urgency. Michael Ignatieff is a very perceptive political analysts who has written an essay in the New York Review of Books, that addresses the significance of the rise of authoritarianism in the world and how it challenges our ideas about liberal democracy.
The ubiquity of video cameras in the world has given us the opportunity to see things in war that were often unseen. The Washington Post has posted two videos, one of the effects of Israeli bomb strikes in the Gaza Strip and the other from the Israeli Defense Forces, that give us a sense of how the conflict between Israel and Hamas is being conducted. Warning: the video of the bomb effects in the Gaza Strip is graphic. What is clear from both videos is that there is no such thing as a “surgical” strike in an area as densely populated as the Gaza.
The outbreak of the Ebola Virus in West Africa continues to spread with a total of 844 cases including 518 deaths in the epidemic that began in February. The World Health Organization has begun strenuous efforts to contain the disease, but, while progress has been made in Guinea, the cases continue to rise in Sierra Leone and Liberia.
Buddhists in Sri Lanka have begun attacking Muslims in the country, paralleling the violence against the Muslim minority in Myanmar. The violence is being perpetrated by the Bodu Bala Sena (BBS) (Buddhist Power Force), an organization that was established in 2012. Sri Lanka is no stranger to ethnic and religious violence, and the United Nations is investigating the violence. Many believe that the BBS has the support of the Sri Lanka government, which is also resisting investigations into alleged atrocities against the Tamil community during the long civil war in the country.
Hamas has taken responsibility for firing more than 40 rockets into southern Israel from the Gaza Strip. Hamas asserts that the rocket fire is in response to Israeli attacks in Gaza that killed 6 Hamas members. There is no moral defense for firing indiscriminate weapons into civilian areas, no matter what the provocation. Fortunately, there are no reports of any deaths from the rockets. Israel has announced that it is mobilizing 1500 reservists and it is likely that there will be further violence in the Gaza. At this time, there does not appear to be any movement toward de-escalation.
Propaganda is an intrinsic part of world politics, and governments use many different tactics to communicate their basic ideology. In the 1930s, the Nazi Party in Germany used the photograph of the perfect “Aryan” child to reinforce their ideology of race superiority. Unbeknownst to the Nazis, the photograph they used was actually the photograph of a young Jewish child. No one knew at the time, but the parents knew the truth of the propaganda.
The Organisation for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD) has just published it forecast of global economic growth to 2060. It forecasts a slowing growth pattern from previous years, and growing stresses due to environmental degradation. In particular, its forecast on how that economic growth will be distributed is sobering:
With growth increasingly driven by knowledge and skills, growth in itself could keep generating rising tensions and inequalities. On current trends, earning inequality in the average OECD country may have risen by more than 30% in 2060 and would then face almost the same level of inequality as is seen in the United States today. Moreover, structural adjustment will continue, especially across firms within sectors (e.g. from low to high productivity and from polluting to less polluting firms) and in emerging economies, and the consequences for workers’ wellbeing will have to be managed. If left unaddressed, such increases in inequality and costs of adjustment could eventually backlash on stability and growth.
There has been another violent attack in Kenya, and, once again, there is confusion about who is responsible for nearly 30 deaths. Most analysts believe that Al-Shabab, an Islamist group from neighboring Somalia, is responsible for the attacks, but the government blames a local political group for the attack. The Kenyan government appears to be highly reluctant to admit that Al-Shabab can operate so freely in Kenya, and prefers to treat the matter as a domestic affairs. Al-Shabab insists that it is carrying out the attacks in retaliation for earlier Kenyan incursions into Somalia.
The US is “profoundly troubled” by reports that an American citizen, Tariq Khdair, was brutally beaten while in Israeli police custody in East Jerusalem. Khdair is a cousin of the Palestinian youth, who was recently abducted and burned alive in the West Bank. We will have to wait for complete information on the incident but a video taken of Khdair’s arrest is deeply unsettling. Whether Khdair was involved in violation of Israeli law so serious that he had to be brutally restrained remains to be seen. The photos of Khdair taken after the beating are horrific.
Wars have a deeply unsettling effect on the domestic politics of a nation. Such was the case for the US in World War I. We tend to forget how much things change because of the emotional demands of a war, but those changes were also clearly evident during the Vietnam War and the War on Terror after 11 September 2001. Rarely, however, are those changes totaled up when the costs of war are tallied.
I have been visiting with friends, celebrating the 4th of July holiday, so I have not been posting–my apologies. During this time, I’ve been trying to sort out the recent upsurge in violence in the Occupied Territories. The immediate source of the violence was the brutal kidnapping and murder of three Israeli teenagers, followed by the murder of a Palestinian youth. Much is not known about the circumstances of these savage acts, but the subsequent violent protests may spiral out of control. The larger context for this violence is the failure of the recent peace negotiations, and the sense that there are no prospects for change in the immediate future. We will have to keep an eye on events in the region for some time to figure out the true depths of the crisis.
Indonesia is in the final stages of its Presidential election, and the race has turned ugly at the end. Joko Widodo, 53, the populist governor of Jakarta, is running against Prabowo Subianto, 62, and the race pits a member of the old guard against a young populist. Mr. Joko has a comfortable lead in the polls so far, but this election is incredibly important to the future of Indonesia.
The Oxford Research Group has published an insightful analysis of the threat posed by Boko Haram to Nigeria. It is a nuanced piece that weaves together the north vs. south and Christian vs. Muslim dynamics of the crisis in Nigeria. Ultimately, the root cause of the violence is the question of who holds the power. In order to defuse the crisis in the Christian south (where most of Nigeria’s oil is located), the government diverted resources to buy off the violent group known as the Movement for the Emancipation of the Niger (MEND). The tactic worked, but the diversion of resources to the south alienated the primarily Muslim population of the northeast. According to the report: “Northern Nigeria is three times poorer than the mainly Christian south, and the northeastern heartland of Boko Haram is the poorest part of the north.” Once again, do not be misled by the religious overlay of the conflict: conflict is invariably over the issue of power.
The leader of the newly declared Islamic State (formerly ISIS), Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi, issued a videotaped message to all Muslims to defend the newly established Caliphate. In the message, he said:
“It is a state where the Arab and non-Arab, the white man and black man, the easterner and westerner are all brothers,” he said, trying to broaden his base beyond the Middle East. “Muslims, rush to your state. Yes, it is your state. Rush, because Syria is not for the Syrians, and Iraq is not for the Iraqis. The Earth is Allah’s.”
Al-Baghdadi’s movement has already attracted a number of people from the US and Europe, leading to increased security concerns as these individuals will have passports that will make it easier for them to re-enter countries and perhaps plan terrorist attacks.
Thousands marched in Hong Kong in favor of democracy in an annual demonstration marking the turnover of Hong Kong back to China in 1997. Demonstration supporters estimated the crowds at around 510,000 while the Chinese government estimated the crowd at 98,600. The demonstration comes as fears mount in Hong Kong that the democratic procedures and institutions implemented in the British agreement with China are being eroded. In that agreement, “China agreed to govern Hong Kong under the principle of ‘one country, two systems’, where the city would enjoy ‘a high degree of autonomy, except in foreign and defence affairs’ for 50 years.”
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