One World, Many Peaces

New Museum of Tolerance in Jerusalem Triggers its Opposites, Calling Notion's Validity into Question

Construction of the new Museum of Tolerance in Jerusalem hasn’t even started yet, but already people are protesting because its site lies on an 11th-century cemetery turned parking lot. Prominent Muslim professors and professionals from around the world and Palestinian families whose ancestors lie there have formally protested against the building to the United Nation. The Israeli state and the Los Angeles-based Simon Wiesenthal Center, a Jewish rights organization, plan to go ahead with the Museum despite the serious setbacks it has suffered so far.

World-renowned architect Frank Gehry recently withdrew from the project, citing over-commitments rather than politics as motive, the New York Times reports. Among the foremost supporters of the project are Rabbi Marvin Hier, the dean and founder of the Simon Wiesenthal Center, and the Israeli government. Among its high-profile protestors are Adnan Husseini, the Palestinian Authority governor of Jerusalem, Israeli peace activist Ahmad Natour and Rashid Khalidi, a professor of Arab studies at Columbia University.
 
Conflict resolution scholars like Mark Howard Ross have not been shy to point out the abuses of historical sites and artifacts by the Israeli government and its foreign supporters, used to justify Jewish primacy over locations. According to the Simon Wiesenthal Center, the Museum of Tolerance is intended to confront issues like “global anti-Semitism, extremism, hate, human dignity and responsibility, and promoting unity and respect among Jews and people of all faiths.” No mention is made of the Palestinian population in and around Israel, oppressed let alone tolerated by the state.
 
Ironically, the Museum has a dual name of Center for Human Dignity, which must mean only for peoples of certain descent and not those of the deceased of the Mamilla Cemetery (Ma’man Allah in Arabic), making the building itself betray what it stands for. In the end, the controversy calls into question the validity of the principle of tolerance as the basis of policy because it does not require understanding, acceptance nor accommodations of others, but merely distanced if benign acknowledgment. You can tolerate a pest, someone unwanted, but toleration's underlying indifference paves the way for externmination once pests become threats preceisely because they were just tolerated. Creating the future with a museum that is a current event for such reasons is a perilous enterprise despite, or because of, the critical engagement it interpolates. 

Ending the Nuclear Standoff with Iran: Five Steps to Constructive Relations

In case you haven’t noticed, world power efforts to contain and diffuse Iran’s nuclear plans aren’t working and haven’t been for years. Even when limited progress was made, it has always been one step forward, two steps back— or more. But then again, that depends on what you mean by “progress” in the first place: for the US and its allies, as close to nuclear negligibility Iran can get; for Iran’s UN Security Council allies like China and Russia, as close to nuclear weapons capabilities as possible.

In other words, the nuclear standoff is just that, a standoff, and so what the parties involved (as well as the world) needs now are new legs to stand on. Here are five pragmatic steps that can be taken today that would lead to more constructive relations with Iran:
 
Step One: Initiate Direct Dialogue. One of the most detrimental Bush legacies vis-à-vis Iran is his refusal to talk to Iranian (or North Korean, or Iraqi) counterparts under any conditions. Obama pledged to open a direct line between Washington and Tehran, but like many of his pledges it has yet to materialize. Secretary of State Hillary Clinton is in the best position to lead the drive towards direct dialogue, without which any other steps seem futile.

Step Two: Distinguish Positions from Interests. To make immediate headway, professional negotiators often make the distinction between positions and interests. The standard example is two sisters who want to make juice and pulp pie from apples, respectively: their position is control over the apple, making compromise impossible; but by focusing on their interests, juice and pie, a settlement can be reached. Iran does not want nuclear capabilities for nuclear capabilities sake; it wants the energy, medical and yes (in)security that comes with nuclear capabilities. World powers just don’t want Iran to be able to fire a nuclear missile anywhere near them or their allies. Find ways to address interests, and positions will likely address themselves.

Step Three: Increase Incentives. For the past decade or so, world powers (individually and collectively through the UN Security Council) have imposed sanction upon sanction each time Iran has stepped up its enrichment or acquisition of nuclear material. Few diplomats if any have proposed, and none has effected, incentives for not stepping up and for stepping down. This gross negligence is usually knowingly done under the “posture” (ironically now the US’ official name for it) of not giving in to demands. Call it dangling a carrot or whatever you will, incentives and positive reinforcement work, and not using them doesn’t, as we know all too well.

Step Four: Decrease Sanctions. If incentives are successful, sanctions will become outdated and irrelevant; if the incentives fail, then they need to be renegotiated. In either case, the incremental decreasing of sanctions can be even more powerful than their imposition, and especially more so than their ratcheting up.

Step Five: Establish Mutually Beneficial Partnerships. With the preceding steps already taken, the icing on the cake so to speak would be the formation of partnerships that would continually measure, monitor and manage the interests at stake so as to avoid flaring up the positions. Doing so could take the form of regional energy, medical and security bodies in the Middle East that could form branches of global organizations that do the same. More likely, it would take the shape of bilateral or multilateral agreements and institutions. Either case would be a current event that would lead to a future where nuclear standoffs like this one are less likely. 

‘Pay-for-Peace’ Fund of $500 Million Created by Western Powers and Afghanistan, Another Peacemaking Move Ignored by US Media

In yet another surprising yet ignored turn in the Afghan shift from war to peacemaking, Western powers beyond NATO and the Afghan government have agreed to establish a $500 million fund to incentivize Taliban disarmament and reintegration. The agreement was reached and the announcement made at the London conference of 70-nations but has received almost no coverage in the US and piecemeal elsewhere. This blatant failure of the news media, whether pressured to do so by government or based on its own war bias, comes at a pivotal moment that could decide the fate of US soldiers there and natives alike.

Incongruously, the fund comes in the wake of the ‘troop surge’ urged by NATO commander General McChrystal and agreed to by President Obama. While McChrysta has spoken in favor of seeking peace with the Taliban (as previously reported on One World, Many Peaces), President Obama and chief diplomat Hillary Clinton have yet to make a pronouncement on the peacemaking efforts, including during Obama’s State of the Union address last week. We wonder what NATO Secretary-General Anders Fogh Rasmussen had in mind in saying: “Much attention is on the new reconciliation and reintegration effort initiated by the Afghan government. Questions were raised if we are bribing the Taliban just to get peace.”

The strongest supporter of the pay-for-peace fund is US-ally Saudi Arabia, which has a special relationship with the Taliban since it was one of the few countries to recognize its regime in Afghanistan before it was ousted in 2001. The purpose of the fund is to try to convince rank-and-file Taliban members to give up the fight in exchange for cash and land in quantities the Taliban cannot guarantee. However, as Georgetown University's Christine Fair, who has analyzed Taliban suicide attacks in Afghanistan for the U.N., notes: “You also need political incentives to bring them into the picture,” not a current event in sight, especially in the future the US media is creating.

Major Change in Afghanistan Strategy Hardly Makes US News, Shift from War to Peacemaking

In major world news that has received very little attention within the US, Afghanistan President Karzai is preparing to pitch and execute a new peacemaking plan with the Taliban in his country. In an abrupt about face that comes in the wake of Yemen’s similar peacemaking plans with Al Qaeda, Karzai announced on BBC over the weekend that he is prepared to make disarmament deals with the Taliban. This just weeks after President Obama promised more troops for and military action in Afghanistan, to the great dismay of many citizens and commentators. Is this a split in policy?

The top NATO military commander for Iraq and Afghanistan, General McChrystal, seemed uneasy in his doublespeak about the shift in Afghan policy towards more peacemaking as it relates to the US troop buildup towards more warfare. In McChrystal’s own words, and keep in mind that he initiated the successful call for a troop surge:

As a soldier, my personal feeling is that there's been enough fighting. I believe that a political solution to all conflicts is the inevitable outcome. And it's the right outcome. I think any Afghans can play a role if they focus on the future, and not the past.

He was responding to a question regarding Taliban in government in saying “any Afghans.” President Obama has not even mentioned the efforts President Karzai has made in recent days to gather support for his peacemaking plans at the 70-party international conference in London Thursday, undermining both of their authorities, to say nothing of the Nobel Peace Prize committee. The US Undersecretary of State went as far as to say the troop surge and reconciliation were complimentary, dumbfounding peace experts.

In stark contrast to General McCrystal, President Karzai seems resolute in his pursuance of peace, if unsure as to how his allies and current foes will react. He even went so far as to call for “peace at any price,” a doctrine that has proven dangerous to hold fast historically. “We trust them [the Taliban] because we are in a relationship together,” he added. Secretary of State Hillary Clinton went silent on the matter, and even the BBC changed the title of its report to Karzai being “moot” about peace prospects a day after the video interview was released.

British Prime Minister Gordon Brown championed the idea of reconciliation with Taliban, saying  the Afghan government can “bring over some people previously associated with the Taliban by the renunciation of violence, this would be of value to the peace process.” We would expect that such momentous changes, which if successful could bring home American soldiers and increase the lifespan of Afghanis considerably, would be heralded by domestic media. They have not been in the least.

American news channels as well as news distributors such as AP and Reuters have missed this major shift in policy on the part of the Afghan leadership, to the extent that it is hard to imagine that they did not purposefully ignore it, or were censored by the powers that be domestically. Instead, we have news about warlords being appointed, bombs going off and troops being rallied, making Iraq and Afghanistan wars indistinguishable insofar as news reporting about them is concerned. President Karzai’s new peacemaking approach to the Taliban would quicken the safe return of American soldiers and lead towards a better future for Afghanistan, but as far as US news is concerned it seems hardly a current event worth mentioning.

Counterterrorism Beyond 'Crackdown' and Cowboys: New Approaches to Peace with Al Qaeda

Caught between the pressing backlash of its citizens if the U.S. gets directly involved, and their existing if so far passive support for Al Qaeda, Yemeni leaders have proposed a counterterrorism effort beyond the prevailing 'crackdown' and 'cowboy' approaches. "Dialogue is the best way ... even with al-Qaeda, if they set aside their weapons and return to reason," said President Ali Abdullah Saleh over the weekend, worrying US officials who contend that this approach encourages empty promises on the part of terrorists based on an overconfidence of security officers.

 

Keep in mind, however, that Said Ali al-Shihri is a former Guantanamo detainee released by the US in 2007 who is now an Al Qaeda leader in Yemen. Although one may wonder if he is another double (or triple) agent who will also turn against the CIA, one cannot dispute that the US detainment system in this case was no more effective than what they worry the Yemeni dialogue and disarmament system will or has produce. Given that President Saleh's announcements comes just days after the US and UK promised to double their funding without military intervention, one may also have reason to wonder if Yemen is being used as a laboratory for a new way to deal with terrorism worldwide.

 

Will the 'crackdown' and 'cowboy' model of counterterrorism be replaced with dialogue and disarmament incentives, and if so can they be effective?  Within George W. Bush's 'war on terror', the only way to make peace with Al Qaeda and other terrorist groups was to defeat them, which given the till-death assumption, meant extermination. The analogy often made is with cowboys in the wild west. Obama disavowed the term 'war on terror' while continuing to wage it along exactly the same lines, as evidence by troop increases in Afghanistan. But in a milestone speech which has received little attention, he has also given signs of an alternative approach based on multilingualism and cross-cultural understanding.

 

 

 

 

The Yemeni government is generally considered to be ineffective outside the capital region of Sunaa, and has an alliance in place with hard-line Islamists including Sheik Abdul-Majid al-Zindani, who could turn out to be peacemakers instead of the irrational radicals they have been cast as in the West. Mediator Ali Saif Hassan, who runs a Yemeni group that mediates between the government and opposition, explains that "it is difficult to draw the line between who is a fundamentalist and who is al-Qaida. It's a spectrum." This is a far cry from the "with us or against us" mentality that has dominated the discourse on all sides, and reason to believe that counterterrorism will become a more effective and humane current event than the one which has created the future that is our present. 

Top US Diplomat Stresses Economic and Social Development, and International Dialogue, for 2010

In a landmark speech yesterday, top US diplomat Hillary Clinton as Secretary of State stressed the importance of economic and social development globally as the surest way to end terrorism and ensure the cooperation of states in achieving common goals. Speaking at the Peterson Institute for International Economics, Clinton called development a "strategic, economic and moral imperative" for the US, bold terms seldom heard with such vigor since John F. Kennedy launched the Peace Corps almost a half century ago. Then, today, her renewed Middle East diplomatic efforts were announced, having told reporters that  "we're starting this new year with that level of commitment and we're going to follow through and hopefully we can see this as a positive year in this long process."

 

Unfortunately for Clinton and US foreign affairs generally, President Obama is stealing nearly all of their thunder, inadvertently (or purposefully?) belittling their initiatives almost to the point of ineffectiveness, and certainly to the point of being sidestepped in the media. More coordination and cooperation between the two former rivals would benefit the US and the world. Yet, despite the ongoing financial and economic crises, the U.S. aid budget increased nine percent in 2010 to over fifty billion dollars. However, what we view as the world's most pressing short-term and long-term problem, that one billion people worldwide are hungry, was not directly addressed by Clinton in her aid speech. She did have the following to say: "We cannot be assured" of promoting a safer world "when one-third of humankind live in conditions that offer them little chance of building better lives for themselves or their children."

 

On the Middle East diplomatic front, the rhetoric was even more diluted and the plans even more convoluted. What became clear is that in the coming weeks, another flurry of meetings will take place in Washington and European capitals based on a series of letters of intent on the parts of Palestinians and Israelis. But the fundamental point of contention, whether the pre-1967 war borders or Israel's occupation of their insides since will be the basis for territorial peace agreements, has not been resolved. Meanwile the contested West Bank continues to be settled by Israeli extremists. All in all, throwing more money at economic and social development globally without detailing how they will solve the hunger and other pressing problems, and encouraging dialogue when it will apparently only be used express disagreement are hopeful but not audacious current events creating a more peaceful 2010. 

Westerners Seek Terrorism Training in Defection as US-UK Retreat in Face of Al Qaeda Offensive in Yemen: Losing the 'War on Terror', Well

How is the 'war on terror' President Obama disavowed in name shaping early 2010? For starters, we are painfully learning the lesson that being bold with cash in counter-terrorism is counterproductive compared to being effective on the ground. As the Anglo-American retreat from their embassies in Yemen makes clear, they are barely able to do the former in their current financial condition, and totally unable to do the latter in key battleground areas. In case there is any doubt about whether or not the closing of the Yemen embassies constitutes a retreat, consider the definition of the word in its military sense: "the forced or strategic withdrawal before an enemy, or a withdrawal from action; the act of withdrawing, as into safety."

 

"We're not going to take any chances" was the euphemism used by White House counterterrorism chief John Brennan. We applaud his apparent concern for the embassy workers, but deplore his cowardice. The fact of the matter is that Al Qaeda has been on the offensive in Yemen for over a year, with the ineffective government acting as a welcoming open door. Over the weekend, General David Petraeus overstepped his military jurisdiction over Iraq and Afghanistan to announce the U.S. will more than double its $67 million counterterrorism 2009 aid to Yemen in 2010. This is called "upselling" in business, and terrorist-- whom we agree must to be brought to justice and incapacitated as such-- are doing an exceptional job at helping the US and UK in this regards, with the retreat as a sure sign. Journalists ought to stop covering Al Qaeda like ideological puppets and start covering the organization as the major force with the upper hand in a global war with fronts everywhere.

 

Meanwhile, The Washington Post reports that "Pakistani police say they plan to ask a court to charge five Americans arrested in early December with terrorism, and will seek life imprisonment sentences against them. The young Muslim men, who are from the Washington, D.C., area, were captured in the eastern Pakistani city of Sargodha. The case spurred fears that Westerners are traveling to Pakistan to join militant groups." Again, in case there is any doubt as to whether this constitutes defection, consider its military sense as "to desert a cause, country, etc., especially in order to adopt another." If global counterterrorism efforts are doing one thing well, it's losing.

 

The problem losing the 'war on terror' in these two ways (retreating and defecting) raises, beyond the news-reported obvious, is that no one is winning, not even the terrorists and especially not counterterrorism supporters. Unless, of course, the US is purposefully trying to destabilize the two strategically located countries in order to control them afterwards, a risky 20th century move with few 21st century rewards if so. In any case, retreating from two key terrorist targets, the Yemen embassies, will only encourage them to attack domestic and/or civilian ones. Losing the 'war on terror' by defection and retreat thus creates a snowball effect that will roll the world into avalanches as an avoidable current event creating a detestable future.

Hot Off the Press-- 2009: The Year in Review from One World, Many Peaces with Antony Adolf

 

 

What was 2009 all about — or was but you didn’t hear about it? How will 2010 and beyond take shape? 2009: The Year in Review is One World, Many Peaces’ answer. Antony Adolf, author of Peace: A World History, shares the stories he covered throughout the year as “Current Events Creating the Future” — Ours.

Includes three new essays by Antony Adolf published together for the first time:

•Buyers and Buy-Nots: The New Economics of Poverty and Affluence
•Post-Islamophobia: How Cultural Integration Can Prevent Terrorism and Build Peace
•A Missile Shield by Any Other Name: Is Obama's Global Military Strategy Taking Shape in Eastern Europe?

One World, Many Peaces: The Blog and Podcast will start anew on January 5. Thank you for a great year and have a safe and happy New Year!

 

The Future of International Relations and Global Negotiations: Lessons from Copenhagen

What was at stake in Copenhagen was not only the ecological future of our planet, but in many ways the future of how nation-states will and will not find ways to meet their needs, seek compromise and achieve common goals. The contentious round of climate change negotiations at Copenhagen, which have resulted in a "better than nothing" treaty, are a strong indication of how topic-based negotiations on a global level may take place in the 21st century. For better and worse. Is this one step away or closer to a world government?

Even though the conference took place under the auspices of the UNFCC (United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change), hardly anyone-- participants or media pundits-- have mentioned the United Nations in its regards. Whether or not this more than hints that the U.N. may be very close to expiration date, as a standing-forum the U.N. shares many of the shortcomings of its League of Nations predecessor. Task-focused, results- oriented meetings like Copenhagen may be new wave of international relations, making it a laboratory for how unequal participants can (or cannot) reach a multilateral agreement instead of the bilateral agreements that have dominated world affairs since the 1990s. Ironically, the conference's sponsors include BMW and Honda.

Imagine if, after working out the major procedural kinks and staying vigilant to other ones, the Copenhagen process was used to address issues like world hunger, the global economy, disarmament, regional security and so on. Such ad-hoc, topical conventions could be compared to the Hague Conferences of the early 20th century, which were at least partially effective. They would not by definition constitute a world government, but if doing so is more effective, does it really matter? Perhaps the Copenhagen paradigm is the future and we are the current events creating it.

 

For more on the Copenhagen conference, visit their official site.

For more on the UNFCC, visit their official site.

Beware the Rise of Regionalism: The Decade in Review, Part Two

The past ten years have seen a staggering rise in what is now being called, rather benignly, regionalism: groups of geographically proximate countries that unite in an organization or agreement to pursue common goals. Sounds nice, doesn’t it? It is in one way, but in another regionalism is exactly what George Orwell warns us of in 1984. He turned out to be quite accurate in his depiction of totalitarian communism, how feasible is it for his nightmare to come true in our waking dreams?

 

 
Much more so than not, I would argue. Just weeks ago Asian nations agreed to extend the existing ASEAN organization (Association of Southeast Asian Nations) of ten nations into a much larger powerhouse including China. They are self-consciously taking as their model the European Union (EU) which has been operating on ever larger scales for decades. What these two organizations have in common is that their most basic goals are economic, with foreign policy and internal governance important too, but secondary. Of course, security trumps all at least in name.

 

 

In South America, the Organization of American States (OAS) of 35 chartered member-states has as its slogan "democracy for peace, security and development," more than hinting at its origins as a U.S.-instigated group aimed at stemming communist influence in the region during the Cold War. I guess the OAS won, except for Venezuela. Two regional organizations that have not fared so well in being ineffective are the African Union (AU) and the Arab League. The AU, unlike the EU and ASEAN, set out to be a political organization first and an economic and security one second. It hasn't worked. The Arab League's sole purpose was to destroy Israel, and that hasn’t worked either.

 

The only comparable arrangement in North America is the North American Free Trade Agreement between the U.S., Canada and Mexico, which does form the economic kernel that has lead to success in other cases of regionalism. So far, all these organizations (except the Arab League at first) have been too preoccupied with internal squabbles to think of actively targeting their rivals. As current events, these regional bodies which have taken an ever larger part of the world stage may in the future take it over, and run alongside rather than against the multipolar paradigm we encountered last Thursday.

 

This decade's closing in three short weeks gives occaision to reflect upon it as well that which is about to open. In honor of this arbitrariness, One World, Many Peaces will run a four-part weekly series on Thursdays, "The Decade in Review," to offer provocative closing and opening. thoughts