Dani Rodrik with an Asian update of Robert Putnam’s theory about Italian democrary – what states are for, and why a monopoly of power is a good idea when it comes to governance structures.
“When the state does not enforce property rights… the Mafia–or, as happens in this case, the Taliban–will.”
Apparently, contrary to all the usual alligations, America seems to be far less colonilist than expected. Due to my sister’s imminent departure for the Afghan city of Herat I just checked the travel guidelines for said country. And surprisingly, four years after the fall of the Taliban, and three years after the NeoCon-Likud conspiracy theories became a household theory for the explanation of all kinds of wars with American participation, the Republic of Afghanistan’s travel regulations still require that no Israeli stamp be present in the passport of a person desiring a visum to enter the country. Seriously (in German).
Check out the Afghani Draft Constitution to read a paper that is hopelessly trying to balance the demands of an essentially tribally organised country with those of a concerned international community. Words do matter, and so do constitutions. But there’s no way 46 pages of good intentions can speed a development that will take decades at best. Believe me, none of the warlords is having trouble sleeping after reading it…
The four German soldiers who died in last week’s Kabul suicide attack, Jörg Baasch, Andrejas Beljo, Helmi Jimenez-Paradies, and Carsten Kühlmorgen – the 3rd, 4th, 5th, and 6th German soldiers to die in a (publicly known) sort-of combat situation after World War Two – were honoured today in a special ceremony at Cologne airport.
Earlier today, they were bid farewell by their comrades and Acting Commander ISAF, the Dutch Brigadier General Bertholee, at Camp Warehouse, Kabul. As any decent leader, he knew he had to adress the future while not forgetting about what happened –
“We can show our respect for the sacrifice that our comrades made in only one way. Continue our mission as well as we can; show determination; and make clear that we will not be intimidated. That will also help to overcome our grief.”
Not surprisingly, their work has seen a spark of interest in recent days. I suppose one thing the public could do is preserve this interest and remember that all those international troops are in Afghanistan not only to help an increasingly isolated Afghan central government survive against resurfacing warlords, but because we believe that our very personal security is enhanced by doing so.
They are some some of those who make people carry balloons instead of bombs. And they have a website that describes some aspects of their life – and sometimes their death – in Kabul.
What a weird day. A day so in-between. Between the announcement of the verdict and its execution. Between the certainty of war and the doubts about its justification.
Watching the media report about the imaginary ultimatum that Bush announced last night was even a bit surreal, especially given Ari Fleischer’s declaration that US forces might enter Iraq even earlier in case Saddam Hussein would clearly state he would not leave Iraq. What does he expect of the Iraqi dictator? A collect call to the White House?
More surreal things have been going on today. Some of the very same EU foreign ministers who met in Brussels to discuss the post-war humanitarian help for Iraq will fly to New York tonight to meet at the Security Council tomorrow in order to discuss the Weapon Inspectors’s disarmament schedule, even though the last weapon inspectors have been flown to Cyprus today. I have to say, this does strike me as slightly shizophrenic.
And it’s risky – imagine the Willing starting to fight during the meeting. Embarrassing doesnt even begin to describe the consequences. But that’s just what might happen if the US should feel the meeting is intended to corner it even further. And what else should it be good for? Oh wait, maybe the Iraq ambassador to the UN, Mohammed A. Aldouri, will use a statement about anthrax-alligations to scare the US forces even further that Iraq could indeed use whatever is left of whatever WMDs it once had. I really can’t see what this meeting is good for. Pictures of sulking foreign ministers in a powerless Security Council will not help anyone, least of all the United Nations. Thus, if war has not started by then, maybe tomorrow will be even more surreal than today.
Earlier, I listened to Tony Blair speak in the Commons. He wasn’t as good as usual, one could literally sense his lack of sleep. But his speech in itself was not all that important. The vote was. And as expected, the British government’s position was confirmed by the House – despite Robin Cook’s applauded resignation. In the end, the rebellion was bigger than last time, but smaller than feared – or hoped for – on either side – 139 Labour MPs dissented. Done. I bet Blair asked Bush to let him get some sleep and see his son before starting the war.
One of the good things of in-between days is that they are a great time to reflect about things. As today was the Iraq-War-In-Between-Day, I thought about the imminent war on Iraq.
My reflections were triggered by a chain email that my good friend Sabina sent me today. It included a link to a site with horrible, gruesome pictures of victims of war. You can find this link at the end of this post.
I am linking to the site because with yet another war looming over our heads and the American forces’ inclination to “shock and awe” their enemies, these pictures are an important reminder of the reality of warfare; of the fact that weapons, however intelligent, are intended to destroy and to kill. They are a stark reminder why there so many people oppposed to any military action, for whichever reason.
I am not one of them. In my opinion, there are instances in which war can be necessary despite the horrors it will inevitably inflict on everybody involved, innocent or guilty, old or young. Sometimes, only horror can end horror, if philosphically just or not. The allied invasion to end the nazi dictatorship in Europe is often cited to illustrate this. The US-led NATO attack on Serbian forces ethnically cleansing Kosovo, however ineffective it was or was not, is another. So what about Iraq?
To state that there are possible cases for war inspite of its horrors implies the necessity to explore any possibilty to avoid armed conflict. Not just to go the last mile of diplomacy, but far beyond. I know that this a problematic statement, given that much of what is going on these days is high-profile game theory, and, of course, sometimes threats have to be executed to remain credible.
A few hours ago, Tony Blair was laughed at in the House of Commons when he he made that point by comparing the current situation to the Munich conference of 1938, when the civilised world thought it had appeased Hitler, while all the effort really signalled that the great powers would not care enough to forcefully oppose him. The problem at hand is that both, Blair and those who laughed at him, are right – and wrong.
Of course, it is historically untenable to compare the question of disarmament/regime change in Iraq to Hitler’s aggressive, ideologically rooted expansionism. But, on the other hand, people still react to the incentives they face. And Saddam Hussein has only been forced into cooperation with UNMOVIC because of the credible threat of a war signalled by almost 300.000 US and British troops prepared to march towards Baghdad and use their Daisy Cutters on the way.
But however important the lessons of history are, they do not really tell us about the future. The latter is, indeed, unknown.
Regime change in Iraq is desirable. And I know that some argue that ‘real’ disarmament is only possible in conjunction with regime change. But given the recent rather positive record of Iraqi cooperation, I believe it was unwise to let the US military calendar determine the political agenda. Even if I accept the possibilty of war as last means, I do not believe that the Weapon Inspector process had arrived at that stage.
However much I agree that Iraq will be better off without the current regime – regardless of the world’s suspicion that the US administration is pursuing a secret agenda of its own – I do not believe that the risks of not fighting this war outweigh the risks of fighting it, especially if one thinks about the days after.
The latter aspect has two finer points. The first one is general – while I believe that it is entirely possible to come to a different conclusion, I don’t believe that violently removing Hussein will jump-start Iraqi democracy. The most promising element of the latter calculation is the demographic srtucture of the middle east: increased alphabetisation and education could indeed have important positive effects. But however young the region may be on average – this is a generational project and so far, no one has offered any convincing reason why ousting Saddam would result in a short cut to modernity for a society in which power is still structured by tribal affiliations, and in which distributional conflicts will in all likelihood result in severe ethnic clashes without strong, and thus likely violent, central control. Moreover, if Iraq is to remain in its current borders (as the US has promised Turkey, which is not too thrilled about the thought of an independent Kurdish state South of the territory inhabited by its own Kurdish minority a majority of which seemed to have at last accepted the idea of living in Turkey, according to one German ARD television correspondent in the area) one opressive regime will likely have to be replaced by another one. But in the end, all that is speculation.
The second finer point I am referring to is of specific nature. Even if I would agree that benevolent ‘colonialism’ and hierarchical modernisation is the right long-term policy, I do not believe that the current US administration is the one to lead the way. Look at Afghanistan. It may be less violent than during the Taliban-Nothern Alliance war, but outside of Kabul, it’s the Warlords’ territory again. Take this and the recent diplomatic record of the Bush administration and it will become very difficult to factually support their policy.
Thus, to cut a long story short, in my personal estimation, all this adds up to the conclusion that this war is not (yet?) necessary.
Even NYTimes columnist Thomas Friedman shares this view, but none the less supports the war for he believes in the Western Prometheus, arguing that it is a war of justified choice, albeit not one of necessity. Here, I can’t follow Mr Friedman. Why would anyone choose war if it is not necessary? Even the most adamant hawks would always claim that fighting Saddam is necessary to achieve their argument of the day.
Ironically, Mr Friedman makes this point in order to explain to the American public (and their government) why international support is so important in this case – when he is in fact explaining some of the reasons for the lack thereof. A large part of the global opposition to war believes exactly this – that the Bush administration has chosen a war – without ever really explaining why it is necessary to pay the price, most importantly, in blood.
I believe there’s a lot of moral clarity in this rule of thumb: As long as a war is not really, really necessary, don’t fight it.
And in case anyone is still undecided about the fundamental truth of these last words, check the link my friend Sabina sent me – but I have to warn you with a necessary disclaimer: if you click on this link, be prepared to be shocked to your core by pictures of death inflicted by war. Don’t click on the link if there are kids or any other people looking at your screen who won’t be able to deal with what they will see. I’m *not* kdding here.
I have to say, Goethe does sound much better in German. The only useful English translation of this eternally famous quote from Goethe’s Faust I Google had knowledge of is – The Eternally Female Draws Us Onward.
As with most translations, the one at hand is far from perfect, but it does give you rough idea of what Goethe is talking about: the eternal attraction-repulsion trap that evolution had in mind to make life difficult for men and women alike. As he was very much a guy, Goethe’s poetry tends to concentrate on the dynamics of the male’s attraction to the female.
While it will be hard to refute the theory that most men are attracted to most women, and despite Goethe’s allusions to the destructive, seemingly magic force this attraction can sometimes set free, there are luckily not too many cultures remaining in which it is commonly held that female seductive prowess is indeed some sort of witchcraft drawing innocent males onward into doom. It’s luckily been a while since the last autodafé in my home town.
Afghanistan is one of the unfortunate places where this kind of thought is still prevalent – apparently prevalent to an extent I would not have thought possible until I read the following story in a book about the “New Great Game” recently published by Lutz Kleveman (in German).
You may have heard about the death of Marjan, the blind lion in Kabul’s zoo, in January last year. But Kleveman tells a far more interesting story concerning the death of a lioness, who had died a year earlier under tragic circumstances.
A visit in Kabul’s Zoo was usually one of the rare occasions for non-lethal entertainment in the No-Fun Islamic Republic’s capital. But things became lethal even there on a tragic day in 2000 when a little boy jumped over the lions’ cage’s fence to pet Marjan, the one-eyed lion. And he did. The lion did not move until the boy attempted to pet a female. It was then that Marjan tore the poor toddler apart. A true tragedy – which was not yet over.
The next day, the boy’s mourning older brother, a Taleban soldier, visited the lions to take revenge. Using a grenade he tore the lioness apart. When later asked why he did not kill Marjan, he replied that the male was not responsible for his brother’s death.
It was the female’s insidious seductive prowess that drew his brother onward into doom.
A friend in need is a friend indeed. Leviathan certainly is not a friend of the Afghan people as recent reports of new fights in and around Kabul confirm.
So instead of trying to forge some sort of working government out of the state-of-nature-like inter-agency conflicts of competing warlords Leviathan apparently prefers competing with his friend Nicholo M. on who is best in curtailing civil liberties in the West. A state-of-the-extremely- scary-art example of the latter was exhibited last week in the New York Times, titled “Kafka in Tulia“.
I am not going ot summarise the article, I think it’s best if you read it yourself. Now if the West (and especially the US) want to underscore the theoretically sound claim that decent institutions of governance are prerequisite to economic and social development – and that the West is an example of those institutions – I think stories like the one above seem to make it necessary to reconsider the definition of “decent” in today’s politics.
