Volume III Issue I
the
CLAREMONT Journal of International Relations
Fall 2014
Editors-in-Chief
Molly Hickey PZ ’17 Forrest Fulgenzi PZ ‘17
Senior Editors
Kate Dolgenos PO ‘17 Sam Fox PZ ‘15 Colin Gamm PZ ’16 Yoel Garinkol PZ ‘16 Aaron Yang CM ‘17
Staff Editors
Amina Abdu PO ’18 Ethan Matlin PO ‘18 Carlisle Micallef PZ ‘18 Ross Steinberg PO ‘18
staff Publishers
Carlisle Micallef PZ ‘18 Ben Hackenberger PO ‘15
Design by
Jaya Williams PZ ‘14
www.claremontjir.com Dear Reader, The Claremont Journal of International Relations is a student-run publication that strives to promote discourse and engagement on world affairs. The organization is designed to promote a forum for students to exchange ideas and gain knowledge about the world around them, both through the publication of this journal and the hosting of events with scholars in the field. We hope to foster open discussion to bridge our academic studies with personal learning outside of the classroom. Each article in The Claremont Journal of International Relations reflects the opinion of its author(s) and does not represent The Claremont Journal of International Relations, its editors, its staff, or the Claremont Colleges. Sincerely, & Molly Hickey and Forrest Fulgenzi Co-Editors-in-Chief The Claremont Journal of International Relations If you have questions, comments, concerns, or would like to get involved, please contact claremontjir@gmail.com. Sponsored by the Pitzer College Student Senate
page 6 Gailyn Portelance | PO ‘15 Democracy and Development in Senegal: A Theoretical Discussion
page 12 Julian Rippy | PO ‘15 A Weapons-of-Mass-DestructionFree Zone in the Middle East and the Applicability of the Tlatelolco Model
IN
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Feby Boediarto | PZ ‘17 Gods & Humans of Nepal
page 30 Conner DB Roberts | PO ‘16
page 44
Of the Stateless: An Examination of the Karen People’s Struggle with Identity, Recognition and Violence on the Thai-Myanmar Border
Victor Chan | CM ‘16 The Odd Couple: On the Israeli-Jordanian Relationship
DEX page 54 Chance Kawar | PZ ‘17 La Marea Rosa: The Shift Towards Strong Leftist Leaders in Latin America
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Democracy and Development in Senegal: A Theoretical Discussion Gailyn Portelance | Pomona ‘15 Gailyn Portelance is a senior at Pomona College. She is an International Relations major from Seattle and is particularly interested in sub-Saharan African political and economic development. She is proficient in French and spent Fall 2013 in Dakar, Senegal. This November, she presented research on governance and growth in resource-poor African countries at the 2014 African Studies Association conference.
Senegal occupies a unique position within the history of West Africa and provides a counterintuitive example of development. The Republic of Senegal has been representative of democracy in Africa. It has played an important role in regional and international peacekeeping, and is seen as a model of stable governance. However despite these factors, Senegal is classified as a “lower middle income nation” and is a member of the UN list of least developed countries. In recent years, Senegal, in comparison to other lower middle income nations in Sub-Saharan Africa, has ranked low in various economic indicators, including real GDP per capita and annual GDP growth. In terms of social indicators, the nation has been behind in primary school enrollment, adult and youth literacy, and child
mortality, and is worse than other comparable nations in life expectancy rates and secondary school enrollment. Senegal provides an example of a democratic nation whose political structures have been unable to create robust economics or improve quality of life for its citizens. But what has stymied Senegal’s development path and put them in a bracket with some of the least developed countries in the world? Why has a democratic model not fully worked in Senegal? This paper will critically engage with development literature in order to explore possible explanations for the political and economic evolution of Senegal. After an overview of Senegalese history, the paper will assert that a structure of dependency and a “resource curse” have developed out
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7 of the nation’s colonial history and that the two intertwining theories can explain stagnant growth post-independence. It will then discuss culture and civic community theories, which both have roots in colonial history, though they seem to lend a smaller portion of influence on development. Finally, the paper will discuss internal governance structures and externally supported economic mechanisms that have slowed Senegal’s development. Together theories of post-colonialism, dependency, civil society, Neopatrimonial politics, and global economics create a provide a unique narrative in the study of development where, for Senegal, democracy does not necessarily mean development. Pre-colonial Senegalese society hosted political, economic, and sociocultural institutions that ranged from intermediate to high complexity. When France began its internal conquest of the Senegalese region in 1854, the region was divided into multiple pre-colonial states governed by aristocratic monarchies. It had established basic institutions of trade (such as the Moors of Trarza, who controlled the gum trade along the Senegalese river), feudal structures (including the ceddo nobility), slave structures, and at least nine prevalent ethnic groups who each held a small degree of power. The level of institutional complexities of colonized regions has historically led to either high or low levels of development post-colonization. Following this logic, pre-colonial territories that were the most economically advanced such as Senegal tend to be the least economically advanced postcolonial nations. This hypothesis seems to hold true in the Senegalese state today. After the land that is now Senegal was
brought under control of the French, the remainder of the nineteenth century was a period of tremendous restructuring of the ‘old order.’ In terms of political institutions, the French stripped the old monarchs of their titles, deposed any prospective rulers that were not aligned with French interests, and divided the realm into smaller administrative units that no longer coincided with pre-colonial boundaries.3 France established the Commandant, a French military leader who supervised the administrative units along with compliant Senegalese aristocratic leaders as his subordinates. This chain of command became the foundation of a strong centralized government and an autocratic state.4 This complete subversion of the native Senegalese within the administration of the new French colony created hierarchical bonds of dependence that became central to Senegalese-French economic and political relations during and post colonization. This dependency laid the foundation of a highly centralized and powerful state government that has come to define Senegalese politics ever since , and has had an adverse effect on the trajectory of Senegalese development. Economic institutions founded during the colonial era also play an important role in the development narrative. Most colonial trade, investment, and finance policies were aimed at molding the French empire in to an ‘autarchic block’ that was insulated from all foreign competition.5 By the 1930s, private French firms exercised a near monopoly over Senegalese trade, had a highly protected market, and produced consumer goods for the whole of French West Africa.6 By insulating the Senegalese market from foreign competition, the French created a
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8 satellite nation in which when inevitably cut loose from the protection of French trade, would be placed in an economically detrimental position. These economic and political institutions, characterized by a strong centralized bureaucracy, a strong executive, and a protected market, manifest themselves within contemporary Senegalese institutions. The ways in which colonization created a relationship of dependency based on natural resources are crucial in understanding slow Senegalese development post-independence. In 1960, soon after establishing a Republic, President Leopold Sedar Senghor chose to reinforce ties with France economically. A prime example of the two country’s economic ties comes from the peanut industry. President Senghor formed a state monopoly of peanut production while encouraging the investment of French capital.7 Senegal’s peanut industry describes Dependency Theory, where a center nation (often times a former colonizer) encourages development in the peripheral nation, but in fact only creates a relationship of exploitation between the satellite and the hegemon8. In this case, France invests money in Senegalese peanut production, the government of Senegal gets a large cash payment, and France gets inexpensive peanuts. However, instead of cultivating its own diverse agricultural or manufacturing industry, which would benefit the production chain and put money back into Senegal’s economy, there is an immense over-reliance on one export. It is important to think of economic development as a function of civil society and culture. Social Capital Theory stems from the idea that high levels of civic
community (measured by levels of equality and trust in government), lead to high levels of institutional performance and economic development.9 But Senegal’s history has been full of inequality: as late as 1904 slaves made up 30% of the total population, and even after abolition, some of the structure remained. Even though each new Senegalese constitution since independence has proclaimed the equality of all citizens, it is hard to eradicate historical biases.10 Additionally, inequalities in income are still widespread in Senegal. Social Capital Theory argues that social hierarchy can diminish trust in government and institutional effectiveness.11 In 1986, a survey of Senegalese attitudes towards the economic crisis at the time revealed that overall, citizens did not think that the government had the ability to resolve the crisis, were worried about the conditions of their country, and believed traditional and community ties were deteriorating as a result.12 Utilizing this theory as a framework, it is clear that a history of inequality has led to widespread mistrust in government and underdevelopment. Perhaps Senegal’s religious tenacity, though, could boost social capital and eventually economic performance. Senegal is one of the most religious nations in the world: approximately 94% of citizens follow Islam and 97% of the population says that religion is important. Religion then clearly plays a role in the political make up of the country; for Islam a prominent piece of society is the “Marabout.” The Marabout is a Muslim cleric that has historically either been a fully integrated member of the ruler’s court, performing both religious and political functions, or solely as a religious figure. The beliefs of these religious leaders helped colonizers
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9 foster a certain economic environment, and their role has continued post-independence. Senegalese politicians use their relationships with the marabout to gain support and win votes. The role of a religious leader who bridges the gap between politician and citizen seems to have important implications for economic development. Probably most vital in understanding Senegal’s development path is through looking at its internal and external political mechanisms. In terms of internal political institutions, there has been a history of a strong executive and political bureaucracy dating back to the establishment of the centralized government under colonialism and the Commandants. Immediately post-independence, the 1963 constitution strengthened the power of the executive and continues to manifest itself in Senegal’s recent history. Upon assuming office in 2000, President Abdoulaye Wade fired one minister that disagreed with him in order to send a message to the rest of the cabinet. The new constitution abolished the Senate in the beginning of his term, and was given the power to destroy the National Assembly, the one remaining chamber.13 Wade thus created an inherently exclusive political institution in terms of ideas and policy making that, although it has been established through a democratic process, has some characteristics of an autocracy. In addition to Senegalese political exclusivity, economic institutions have had similar elements. Property rights, one of the most important institutions in economic inclusivity, have been inadequate historically and still are today. While the Senegalese Code does enforce private property rights and the existence of a land registration system, the
application is somewhat neglected outside of urban areas.14 This could easily affect the economic incentives of farmers and agricultural workers in rural areas. Other aspects of the property rights system in Senegal are fairly weak. The judiciary has been inconsistent when ruling on property disputes, and enforcement of intellectual property rights are frail, without any government commitment to combat the problem.15 This further decreases incentives for citizens and foreign entrepreneurs to invent and battle for their own property. While these are only two examples of exclusive economic and political institutions, they have a large impact on internal incentives that could lead to economic development. A discussion of the internal workings of African state institutions provides a compelling argument for lack of Senegalese development. One of the foundational texts in support of democracy and development states that a secure democracy, with predictable rule of law11, leads to better quality of life and greater development.16 Neopatrimonalism, a theory that has come to describe the structure of many African states today, may explain underdevelopment in Senegal. Neopatrimonlalism describes a system of politics imbedded with patron-client relationships at every level of governance that drive the allocation of state resources and the implementation of policy. As Clapham writes: “Officials hold positions in bureaucratic organizations with powers which formally defined, but exercise those powers...as a form not of public service but of private property.”17 Looking at the origins of Neopatrimonialism in the context of Senegal, it is evident that pre-colonial patrimonial politics have remained a constant and perhaps led to
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10 underdevelopment. “Relationships with others likewise fall into the patrimonial pattern,” adds Clapham, “rather than the rational-legal one of subordinate and superior...rather than to perform an official function.”18 The patron-client relationships described in the theory undermine fluid politics and inherently lead to corruption, weak governance, and flawed economic institutions. Senegal has been hugely influenced by exterior economics as well. World Bank Structural Adjustment Programs (SAPs). One example of this was SAP II, which functioned between 1990 and 1994. The goal of the policy was to create conditions for sustainable economic growth through macroeconomic stabilization, the promotion of a dynamic and competitive private sector, and the promotion of employment.19 However, the government at the time was in no condition to support these market reforms, evidenced by the sharp drop in GDP per capita between 1990– 2000.20 The SAPs fundamentally supported good economic policy, however, Senegal’s governance was not dynamic enough to adequately install them. This is reinforced by the African Development Bank Group, in a statement that the unsatisfactory results of SAP II were due to an unstable sociopolitical environment, and “the government’s lack of political will.”21 The intensity of the restructuring program, as well as the government’s inability to support these new structural programs, gives the governance theory some explanatory power to the lack of development during this specified time period.
bedded structural factors. There does not seem to be one theory that can explain it all, although it seems that Senegal’s colonial path and subsequent dependency on France, pull more weight than other variables. The fact that any explanations can be found in all of the factors discussed emphasizes the complexity of development and highlights the flaws in broadsweeping development policies. Many of these factors are unique to Senegal, and one must look at nations on a caseby-case basis in order to address specific problems. Senegal is a unique case in development in that it critiques a widespread understanding that democracy will lead to development. As seen in this paper that is not necessarily the case, and in order to foster economic growth, social mobility, and good quality of life, we need solutions that transcend democratic structures.
To conclude, the lack of development in Senegal comes from the impact of many different intertwining outside and imFall 2014 | The Claremont Journal of International Relations
11 References African Development Bank Group. Operations Evaluations Department. SENEGAL EVALUATION OF THE STRUCTURAL ADJUSTMENT PROGRAMME II Project Performance Evaluation Report (PPER). OPEV, 2001. Web. Bates, Robert. Markets and States in Tropical Africa: The Political Basis of Agricultural Policies. Berkeley: U of California, 1981. Print. Clapham, Christopher. From: “Inside African Politcs.” Pierre Englebert and Kevin C. Dunn. Lynne Rienner Publishers: Boulder. 2013. Delgado, Christopher. The Political Economy of Senegal Under Structural Adjustment. New York: Praeger Publishers, 1991. Print. Evans, Peter, “Predatory, Developmental, and other Apparatuses: A Comparative Political Economy on the Third-World State,” Sociological Forum. Frank, Andre. “The Development of Underdevelopment.” Monthly Review. 18.4 (1966): n. page. Print. Gellar, Sheldon. Democracy in Senegal: Toquevillian Analysis in Africa. Gordonsville: Palgrave Macmillan, 2005. Print. “List of Least Developed Countries.” United Nations, 1 Jan. 2014. Web. 14 Oct. 2014. Mahoney, James. Colonialism and Postcolonial Development: Spanish America in Comparative Perspective. Caimbridge: Cambridge University Press, 2010. Print. Nossiter, Adam. “Senegal Court Says President Can Run Again.” New York Times 27 Jan 2012, n. pag. Web. 2 Apr. 2013. Olson, Mancur. “Dictatorship, Democracy, and Development.”American Political Science Review. (1993): 567-576. Print.
Statement. Washington D.C.: , 2011. Web. United States. Millennium Challenge Corporation. Republic of Senegal and Millennium Challenge Corporation: Transforming Senegal’s Economy. Washington D.C.: , 2005. Web. Weber, Max. “The Protestant Ethic and the Spirit of Capitalism.” World Development Indicators, The World Bank, Web. Endnotes 1“List of Least Developed Countries.” United Nations, 1 Jan. 2014. Web Oct. 2014 2 “World Development Indicators.” World Bank. 3 Gellar, Democracy In Senegal, 27-28, 30. 4 James, Colonialism and Postcolonial Development, 30. 5 Gellar, Democracy In Senegal, 31. 6 Gellar, Democracy In Senegal, 36. 7 Delgado, The Political Economy of Senegal, 128. 8 James, Colonialism and Postcolonial Development, 129. 9 Delgado, The Political Economy of Senegal, 120 10 Frank, Andre. “The Development of Underdevelopment.” Monthly Review. 18.4 (1966): n. page. Print. 11 Putnam, Robert. Making Democracy Work, Civic Traditions in Modern Italy. Princeton University Press, 1992. 12 Gellar, Democracy in Senegal, 142. 13 Frank, The Development of Underdevelopment. 14 Delgado, The Political Economy of Senegal, 171. 15 Senegal’s Voyage To Development. 16 U.S. Department of State, 2011 Investment Climate Statement. 17 U.S. Department of State, 2011 Investment Climate Statement. 18 Olson, Dictatorship, Democracy, and Development, 574. 19 Clapham, Christopher. From: “Inside African Politics.” Pierre Englebert and Kevin C. Dunn. 20 Clapham, Christopher, 132. 21 African Development Bank Group, Senegal Evaluation, 3. 22 African Development Bank Group, Senegal Evaluation, 22.
Putnam, Robert. Making Democracy Work, Civic Traditions in Modern Italy. Princeton University Press, 1992. Ross Michael. “The Oil Crisis: How Petroleum Wealth Shapes the Development of Nations.” Princeton University Press, 2012. Senegal Society and Culture Complete Report. Petaluma: World Trade Press, 2010. eBook. “Senegal’s Voyage to Development.” Economist. (2001): n. page. Print. U.S. Department of State. Bureau of Economic, Energy, and Business Affairs. 2011 Investment Climate
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12
A Weapons-of-Mass-DestructionFree Zone in the Midle East and The Applicability of the Tlatelolco Model Julian Rippy | Pomona ‘15 Julian Rippy is currently a senior studying International Relations and Mathematics at Pomona College. His research interests include international security, governance issues, conflict, and the Middle East. His past research has focused on Jordanian refugee policy and its impact on national security.
Introduction In September 2007, Israeli fighter-bombers struck a facility within Syria that Israeli and American intelligence suspected of being a covert reactor facility for the enrichment of uranium1. The attack came as a double surprise; the world was as much caught off guard by the Israeli action as it was by the realization that Syria, a signatory of the Non-Proliferation Treaty (NPT), had been constructing a reactor. Though the reactor was in such an early stage of construction that it did not yet need to be reported under NPT guidelines, the Israeli response to the reactor shows the incredibly high political and security tensions surrounding nuclear weapons and nuclear technology in the Middle East2 today. A region riven with
conflict, between Arabs and Israelis, Sunnis and Shi’as, Arabs and Kurds, Iran and the Gulf States, and, in Syria, great powers like Russia and the United States, the Middle East has a highly combustible security environment, and the presence of Weapons of Mass Destruction (WMD) in the region has long worried policymakers.
A region riven with conflict, between Arabs and Israelis, Sunnis and Shi’as, Arabs and Kurds, Iran and the Gulf States, and, in Syria, great powers like Russia and the United States, the Middle East has a highly combustible security environment, and the presence of Weapons of Mass Destruction (WMD) in the region has long worried policymakers.
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13 The question, then, for the United States, the United Nations, and the rest of the current system of global governance is what to do to keep WMD out of the Middle East in such a way that assuages the doubts and security concerns of the states within the region. The establishment of a Weapons of Mass Destruction Free Zone (WMDFZ) in the Middle East seems to be an attractive option and has been widely discussed in academia and by leaders in the Middle East. There are already realworld examples of WMDFZs, the oldest one in an inhabited area being the Treaty of Tlatelolco that made Latin America a Nuclear-Weapon-Free Zone (NWFZ) and later a WMDFZ. The utility of the Tlatelolco “model� to the Middle East, however, is severely limited by differences in the regional security situation and the political realties of the region today. WMDFZs: A Theoretical and Historical Background A NWFZ is a multilateral treaty, usually involving states in a certain geographic region of the world, in which sig natory states agree not to develop, maintain, or allow nuclear weaponry on their soil. A WMDFZ follows a similar logic, though it also includes other types of weaponry, like chemical and biological weapons. Both types of treaties feature enforcement mechanisms, including inspections of civilian nuclear sites and past sites of WMD production, often conducted by both a regional oversight organization created in the treaty and the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA). There are currently five treaties in place creating nuclear-weapon-free zones, including in Latin America, Central Asia, and Africa. NWFZs and WMDFZs limit regional arms races by stemming the spread of nuclear
weapons, decreasing the probability of regional nuclear war, providing member states with experience in multilateral cooperation on nuclear issues (which can lead to cooperation on civilian nuclear energy technology), relieving security tensions, limiting the agency of global powers in the region, and supporting an international framework that discourages the use and production of nuclear weapons worldwide and undercuts their legitimacy as a tool of foreign policy 3. NWFZs and WMDFZs, in creating regional organizations of states to enforce treaty provisions, create crucial structures of governance for regional security in a way that empowers regional states without relying on great powers or nuclear states for enforcement. Further, in a world where the great powers have the collective ability to destroy the world should they ever enter into direct armed conflict, non-nuclear states have an interest in ensuring their collective survival by stopping the proliferation of nuclear weapons and creating an international architecture to prevent their use and decrease their strategic viability. The Treaty of Tlatelolco A past NWFZ, later to become a WMDFZ, was established in Latin America by the Treaty of Tlatelolco. At the time of its signing (the 1960s), the Cold War was at its height and both superpowers were politically involved in Latin America, trying to spread their respective ideologies. For the United States, foreign policy in Latin America during the 1960s was characterized largely by military cooperation with the goal of fending off communist insurgencies and political parties4, and interventions by the American military and/ or intelligence communities in the domestic politics of Latin American states
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14 was common during this decade. During this time period, there was a common fear among American policymakers that Latin America as a whole was on the verge of violent leftist revolution5. Meanwhile, leftist and communist movements did sweep through the region, encouraged by the Soviet Union and COMINTERN, achieving their greatest success when Fidel Castro secured power in Cuba and fended off an ill-advised American attempt to dislodge him in the Bay of Pigs invasion. These tensions came to a head in the Cuban Missile Crisis, in which the Soviet Union sought, as retaliation for American ATLAS missiles in Turkey, to place nuclear missiles in communist Cuba. The tense standoff that resulted brought the world to the brink of destruction and sent a sobering wakeup call to states in the region and around the world: unless something was done, the superpowers would continue to place nuclear weapons within the sovereign territory of client states and allies, with significant risks to national security for the countries hosting the weapons and conceivably putting all of humanity in danger. Responding to this problem, policymakers in Latin America, working from a 1958 Costa Rican model, began to formulate a treaty to establish a regional NWFZ. The “first mover” in Latin America towards establishing a nuclear energy program was Argentina, who, like Pahlavi Iran and many other American Cold War allies, enlisted American technical assistance through the American Atoms for Peace program6. Brazil, traditionally Argentina’s rival, was to be next, and their technical progress, along with the large Brazilian domestic uranium supply, made their nuclear energy program an object of international concern. The new nuclear competition between two of the region’s
largest states raised Latin American fears of an arms race7. Meanwhile, after the traumatic events of the Cuban Missile Crisis, more and more Latin American states felt that the superpowers had too much power in regional affairs and feared that another country would soon be used for basing or testing nuclear weapons8. These fears led the President of Mexico, along with his counterparts in four other governments, to issue a missive urging the Latin American republics to forgo nuclear weapons and announcing that the countries that had issued the missive were prepared to sign a multilateral agreement banning nuclear weapons within their states9. This loose association, with United Nations support, developed into COPREDAL (the Preparatory Commission for Drawing up the Preliminary Draft of a Treaty on the Denuclearization of Latin America), an organization at whose first meeting a draft version of the Treaty of Tlatelolco was presented. Despite the tremendous pressure on Latin American states to address the problem of nuclear weapons in the region, the success of the Treaty of Tlatelolco was hardly preordained. Before that point there had been little precedent in international law dealing with nuclear weapons: indeed, one of the most lasting impacts of Tlatelolco was providing a legal definition of a nuclear weapon, something that had been absent prior to the creation of Tlatelolco’s draft treaty. Cuba refused to sign the treaty, demanding that the United States close the Guantanamo Bay naval base first, and in doing so discouraged vocal Soviet support for the initiative. Civil war and insurrection plagued countries throughout the region as pro-American and leftist groups battled for control of states within the region. Some observers in the region
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15 worried that major powers would not ratify the articles of the treaty that forbade them from moving nuclear weapons into the NWFZ. Fortunately, as the process of finalizing the treaty progressed even the wariest nuclear power, France (which still held colonial possessions in Guiana), acceded to the treaty and ratified it. The protections and oversight mechanisms that the Treaty of Tlatelolco put into place were unprecedented. They included the creation of an agency, OPANAL, to monitor compliance with the treaty within the NWFZ, regular IAEA inspections, and the ability of any signatory to request an inspection of a site on the sovereign soil of any other signatory10, at that time a radical submission of state sovereignty to collective security. The benefits of the treaty were far-reaching: it was the first treaty that restricted the use of nuclear weapons in a highly inhabited area (past treaties had concerned Antarctica, the seafloor, and outer space)11. Tlatelolco also succeeded in bringing in nuclear powers that, by agreeing to obey the directives of the treaty even on land they owned within the NWFZ, made a concrete and lasting commitment to disarmament, collective security, and peace in the region12. Tlatelolco also accepted member states as they were at the time of the negotiation, without much consideration as to whether state governments signing the treaty was legitimate. A (perhaps overly laudatory) United Nations report on NWFZs called Tlatelolco (and the treaties that followed it) “stepping stones to a world free of all nuclear weapons. They are a sophisticated means whereby the world can advance forward in common cause against the production, possession or deployment of a weapon… whose use would unquestionably violate international humanitarian
legal principles as it destroys millions of innocent civilian lives and property.”13 Tlatelolco, the same report noted, also made nuclear conflict in the future less likely by shrinking the deployment area for nuclear weapons, thus limiting their strategic usefulness. Further, the nuclear powers and especially the United States have a history of supporting NWFZs and have in the past provided technical assistance to the monitoring agencies that oversee the zones, possibly creating an area of constructive cooperation between the United States and states in the region. The Tlatelolco “model” for a WMDFZ, then, is to provide clear, definitive answers for its region on matters surrounding WMD that remain to be settled, to involve major powers from an early point to marshal international support for the effort, and to focus on constructing international institutions and generating consensus without much considering the trustworthiness and legitimacy of the governments negotiating and signing the treaty. Given the real and theoretical benefits of Tlatelolco, there seems to be a strong case for an analogous zone in the Middle East. In a zone marked by bitter conflict and still struggling with the imperialist legacy that, in the minds of many, lives on in the state of Israel, here is an opportunity for the region to provide security while also sending a message promoting peace throughout the world and striking a blow against the use of terrible, destructive weapons. A WMDFZ in the Middle East The history of the hypothetical Middle East WMDFZ has been full of good intentions and false starts. A NWFZ was proposed by the Shah of Iran in 1974,
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16 with Egyptian support, that would have created a universal NWFZ by fiat in the region14. This approach was resisted by Israel, which in 1980 announced support for one-on-one negotiations to create the zone, rather than relying on a regional approach, but the Israelis eventually dropped this opposition and the states of the Middle East unanimously agreed to pursue a NWFZ based on the Egyptian/Iranian blueprint. With the increased presence of chemical and biological WMD in the region, Hosni Mubarak suggested that a WMDFZ be established instead, which would remove the incentive for Israel to keep its nuclear weapons as a deterrent to other WMD. A supranational regional body, the Arms Control and Regional Security (ACRS) working group, was created to negotiate the final agreement much as COPREDAL was established prior to Tlatelolco15. At this point, the Middle Eastern WMDFZ seemed to be following the exact pattern as the Treaty of Tlatelolco. In ACRS meetings, however, negotiations fell apart, largely due to disagreements over when nuclear disarmament should occur: Egypt favored early nuclear disarmament, but Israel insisted that disarmament occur only after other regional arms-control regimes were in effect and a lasting peaceful solution to the Israeli-Palestinian/ Arab conflict was reached16. While this may sound like a minor discrepancy, resolving it was in fact foundational to any final agreement. Early nuclear disarmament without preconditions could possibly leave Israel still facing an ongoing Palestinian/Arab conflict without its nuclear deterrent, which Israel saw as crucial to its security in a region full of enemies. Israel’s solution, disarming later, after preconditions were met,
would have tied the creation of a WMDFZ to the solution of the Israeli/Palestinian conflict, but would have left Israel with a nuclear deterrent during the peace negotiations, a reality that surely would have influenced the process. The collapse of ACRS negotiations highlights just some of the vast challenges facing the effort to create a WMDFZ in the Middle East, and to make things worse, many of these challenges are interrelated in what Baumgart and Muller call “The Gordian Knot of Linkages”17. These unique problems imply that for the Middle East the Tlatelolco model is inadequate and the region will have to explore new frameworks in order to succeed in establishing a WMDFZ. When discussing a regional WMDFZ, it is prudent to identify which actors in the region have the financial and technical capability to begin domestically developing WMD. Israel, which is already believed to possess nuclear weapons, certainly qualifies. Iran, which during the Shah’s reign received nuclear assistance from the United States via the Atoms for Peace program18, has strong technical capabilities, and is already enriching uranium and building reactors for what it claims is a civilian nuclear program, is another. Also on the list are the Gulf States, particularly Saudi Arabia, which have the financial resources to create a nuclear weapon and are also gaining technical experience by starting civilian nuclear energy programs with foreign assistance. Iraq, a populous and important Arab state, would have at one point also been included on this list, but the current state failure and ongoing conflict in Iraq removes it from consideration. Syria faces similar problems, though the Assad govern-
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17 ment possesses and has used WMD by using chemical weapons against its own people. Nonstate actors in the region, most importantly terrorist organizations like Hezbollah in Lebanon, IS in Iraq and Syria, AQAP throughout the Arabian Peninsula, and Jahabat alNusra in Syria have limited resources to buy or develop WMD, but many have significant military capability and the ability to take and hold territory. Their presence necessitates heavy security for WMD materials and facilities in the region to prevent theft or sabotage by nonstate actors. The current state of nuclear technology and policy in the Middle East is somewhat encouraging. Of the states in the region, most seem to not be pursuing nuclear weapons programs. Governments in the region, looking to a future where oil and natural gas will be a less available and more expensive means of energy production, are increasingly turning to nuclear energy as a future solution. For example, Jordan plans to source 30% of its electricity from nuclear power by 2030 and is hiring Russian firms to build research and power reactors19, while the United Arab Emirates (UAE) plans to have completed four nuclear power reactors by 202020. Although there is certainly a spread of nuclear technology throughout the region, this does not seem to be a cause for concern, since the Arab states now beginning to employ nuclear technology are NPT signatories and have repeatedly stressed their support for a Middle Eastern NWFZ and WMDFZ as the cornerstone for lasting peace in the region. In fact, the United Arab Emirates, a nuclear newcomer that sources much of its nuclear fuel material and technology from
the United States under an agreement known as a 123 Agreement (named after the relevant section of the US Atomic Energy Act)21, has been called a model for countries looking to develop civilian nuclear programs for electricity production. The presence of actors in the region committed to civilian nuclear use and against proliferation of WMD is one of the region’s brightest hopes for long-term peace and the eventual establishment of a WMDFZ. While much of the previous writing in this paper so far has focused on the issue of nuclear weapons, it is worth remembering that in a WMDFZ, chemical and biological weapons are also banned. The situation regarding chemical and biological weapons, as the experience of the Syrian Civil War has shown, is perhaps even more complicated than the current regional disputes over nuclear weapons. Several states in the region, looking, in part, for a more economical way to counter the Israeli nuclear arsenal, have in the past pursued chemical and biological weapons programs, though Syria is at present the only country to have a confirmed stockpile of chemical or biological weapons. Nonstate terrorist organizations are also a regional concern when it comes to chemical and biological weapons, since many have determined that attacking their targets with nonconventional weapons is acceptable22. Israel itself has been opaque about its biological and chemical weapons capabilities (much as it has been with its nuclear program), but it possesses an advanced biotech industry, a strong scientific research base in chemistry and biology, publishes advanced research on defense against biological and chemical weapons, and
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18 has trained its air force pilots in deploying chemical and biological weapons in theater operations23. All of these factors suggest that Israel possesses not only chemical and biological weapons, but also delivery vehicles for these weapons. The Gulf States and Jordan are signatories to the Biological and Toxin Weapons Convention and the Chemical Weapons Convention, and Saudi Arabia has domestic laws that make the production, possession, or transport of chemical and biological weapons within the Kingdom illegal24. Iraq at one point had significant clandestine chemical and biological weapons programs, but after the Gulf War the majority of these programs appear to have ceased. In fact, in terms of chemical and biological weapons, Syria is the only other country in the region with a confirmed stockpile. Syria’s government has shown a frightening willingness to deploy its chemical weapons in its civil war, most famously in an attack on the town of Ghouta on August 21, 201325. Though the United Nations, the United States, Russia, and Syria came to an agreement to dismantle the Syrian government’s stockpile of nuclear weapons, evidence has surfaced that the Syrian government has launched other, more recent, chlorine gas attacks, and the Syrian government is now using its remaining stores of chemical weapons as a bargaining chip to ensure the survival of current chemical weapons production facilities26. This behavior is worrisome but also provides an opportunity for actors in the Middle East who favor a WMDFZ: if the international community and states in the region can agree to come together to oppose the Syrian government’s actions and declare the
use of chemical weapons in the region unacceptable, they could have a starting point from which to begin discussion of a Middle East WMDFZ. Even if this were to happen, however, there are still significant obstacles to establishing a regional WMDFZ. Challenges and Opportunities for a WMDFZ Perhaps the most apparent obstacle to the establishment of a Middle East WMDFZ (and one of the obstacles most discussed when considering a WMDFZ in the Middle East) is the fact that there is already a nuclear power in the region: Israel. Scholars and regional security analysts like Abbas Khadim blame Israel’s nuclear arsenal for what they describe as a burgeoning arms race in the Middle East, one that has drawn in Iran and prior to Syria’s civil war, had drawn Syria in too27. Khadim points out that Iran’s regime faces what it perceives to be an existential threat from the United States and Israel, and with massive military power arrayed against it, has reacted by flirting with acquiring deterrence capabilities like nuclear weapons. Israel, for its part, claims that its nuclear weapons are the only way to guarantee its survival against threats from terrorism (often operating with Iranian/Arab support)28, conventional weapons like Iran’s long-range ballistic missile program29, and the small size of Israel’s military, population, and economy in relation to its Arab neighbors30. Israel also faces unique political and security challenges: Israel only has formal peace agreements with one state in this research’s definition of the Middle East, Jordan31. Further, Israel lacks meaningful diplo-
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19 matic relations with many states in the region and many of these states (most notably Iran and Syria) refuse to recognize Israel’s right to exist and have publicly advocated for its destruction32. This makes confidence-building measures for a WMDFZ difficult to enact and strengthens the Israeli conviction that Israel’s nuclear arsenal is key to preserving its security. For Arabs and Iranians, however, past defeats in wars with Israel suggest that Israel’s conventional forces are better prepared than their adversaries to fight and, considering this, that Israel has no need for nuclear weapons as a deterrent. This means that for Arabs and Iranians, Israel’s nuclear “deterrent” is another tool supporting the unjust occupation of Palestinian land by Israelis. Further, extreme elements in Israel and the Arab world make finding compromise and creating peace elusive, further inflaming regional tensions and making regional peace as a precondition for a WMDFZ a distant possibility. Interwoven into the problem that Israel poses for a Middle Eastern WMDFZ is the complex overall security situation of the region. The Middle East has long been shot through with divisions: Arabs and Palestinians versus Israelis, Sunnis versus Shi’as, Kurds versus Arabs, local states versus colonial/neocolonial powers, etc. Starting in 2011, however, the rise of the Arab Spring movement upset the delicate security balance of the region, toppling autocratic governments and in the case of Syria sparking a civil war that continues to this day, compromising regional security. The balance of conventional weaponry in the region is another complicating factor: Israel, with its access to American military technology, strong domestic arms industry, and large military
budgets33, enjoys a significant military advantage in the technological and operational quality of its conventional forces34. Despite the superiority of its forces, however, Israel has faced military difficulties in recent years, most embarrassingly the IDF being driven out of Lebanon by Hezbollah. The strength of other militaries in the region varies widely, though the Arab/Persian states tend to be superior in terms of numbers of men and materiel35 and together, Israel’s adversaries in the region (including Egypt) vastly outnumber the small state’s military36. Hezbollah itself is indicative of another trend in the Middle East that harms regional security: the presence of armed nonstate actors like Hamas and Syrian rebel groups that have gained significant military power and have even taken on a governance role in the areas they control, usurping state functions. As demonstrated by the 2006 Lebanon war, these organizations have a great deal of military and political legitimacy and pose threats not just to powers fighting against them like Israel, but also to the states which “host” them. The presence of cruise and intermediate-range ballistic missiles in the region (which could also in theory be used as delivery vehicles for WMD), particularly in the Saudi37, Emirati38, and Syrian arsenals, is also a cause for Israeli concern since these missiles have the range to strike Israel. The Gulf states at least have stated that they will only arm their missiles with conventional payloads, but the fact remains that the balance of conventional forces in the Middle East encourages the current balance of power in the region, with Israel outmatching each other state individually but feeling outnumbered and endangered when looking at the region as a whole, causing both sides to feel insecure and possibly to search for deterrents like WMD.
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20 America’s role in the region also has serious implications for regional security dynamics and the future establishment of a WMDFZ in the Middle East. On the positive side, the United States is opposed to further nuclear proliferation in the Middle East and benefits from a stable balance of power from the region, meaning that it can reasonably be expected to deter its non-nuclear partners in the region, the Gulf states and Jordan (which lacks the resources, technical capability, and apparent political will to pursue weapons anyway39), from attempting to acquire nuclear weapons. The American government has also traditionally been a supporter of NWFZs and WMDFZs so long as they are not seen as violating other international conventions like the Law of the Sea40 (this was a sticking point during US ratification of Tlatelolco, and the final treaty allowed American nuclear weapons to pass through the Panama Canal.) However, the security status quo that the United States is interested in maintaining in the Middle East has in the past enshrined Israeli nuclear exceptionalism in the region and puts a great deal of diplomatic, economic, and even military pressure on Iran’s leaders. Here, at least, Tlatelolco offers some answers: the United States, along with the Soviet Union and the other nuclear powers at the time, including China, were allowed to observe the drafting of the treaty and ultimately to lodge objections to provisions in the treaty they felt were detrimental to their security and strategic interests41. The United States, as a guarantor of Israel’s security and a military ally of many Arab countries in the region (namely Jordan and Saudi Arabia), will certainly demand some degree of input as to the final makeup of the treaty, as will Russia, which also has salient security and eco-
nomic interests in the region. Tlatelolco serves as a guide and warning for the Middle East: the great powers must be included for any WMDFZ in the Middle East to be considered legitimate in the broader international community. The good news for policymakers, however, is that if negotiations were finally able to get underway, the United States and the P5+1 (Germany is the “+1” and has been involved in Iranian nuclear talks) would likely support the negotiations and any resulting treaty that adequately addressed their concerns. The Tlatelolco Model and Its Applicability There are reasons to think that the process that created the Treaty of Tlatelolco offers lessons for the Middle East today. On the surface, Latin America and the Middle East have some similarities. Both are regions familiar with colonial domination: Latin America by the Spanish and Portuguese (and later, the United States) and the Middle East by the Ottomans (and later the United Kingdom, France, and United States). The relations between the Middle East as a whole and the great powers of today, in which the United States arms and is allied with both Israel and states like Saudi Arabia that refuse to recognize Israel, are extremely complex and recall the patchwork of American anticommunist military support and intervention that characterized the regional political situation in Latin America during the Cold War. Ultimately, however, the Tlatelolco model is inapplicable to the contemporary Middle East. The approach (a broadly-supported, universally inclusive multilateral treaty with the support of the nuclear powers) of Tlatelolco was used in the 1990s ACRS
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21 negotiations, to little result, which, given that the security situation in the Middle East at present is in many ways less stable than in the 1990s, is unlikely to be effective if employed again. The first major difference between the challenges that face a Middle East WMDFZ and the challenges Tlatelolco faced is the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. In a way the Israeli-Palestinian conflict was the definitive issue that disproved the applicability of the Tlatelolco model to the region by derailing the ARCS negotiations. Up until that point said negotiations had largely been following the Latin American example. There was no equivalent conflict in Latin America at the time of Tlatelolco, except possibly the self-imposed exclusion of Cuba from the treaty. However, Cuba is still not a member of the treaty, and at any rate was never really a key party due to its diplomatic and economic isolation by the United States. The actor that most resembles Cuba in relation to the United States and other countries in the region is Iran, and no WMDFZ in the Middle East could be successful in containing WMD without Iranian participation, nor would Arab states be likely to support it. The Tlatelolco model offers no lessons for how to resolve WMDFZ negotiations in the presence of an enduring and divisive regional conflict or the place of such a conflict in the larger WMDFZ negotiations. Should it be a prerequisite to negotiations or part of negotiations? It certainly cannot be ignored. Israel cannot reasonably be expected to enter into confidence-building measures and mutual-enforcement agreements with states that refuse to recognize it and no trust-building measures or collective enforcement could be successful in the continued context of the festering wound that is the Israeli/Palestinian conflict.
Other armed conflict in the region also endangers the prospect of establishing a WMDFZ in a way that the Tlatelolco model does not address. The conflicts in Iraq and Syria, as well as the current uneasy distribution of power between Hezbollah and the Lebanese government, raise important questions about which governments should sign or negotiate the treaty. Assuming that Bashar al-Assad’s government survives the Syrian Civil War, can a government that has used chemical weapons against its own people and repeatedly and is currently jealously guarding its remaining stockpile of weapons be trusted to adhere to the provisions of a WMDFZ treaty? Given that Hezbollah controls significant portions of Lebanon, the legitimacy of the Lebanese government as well as its ability to effectively police its territory for WMD is doubtful. Likewise, the Shi’adominated government of Iraq, facing the creation of the Islamic State in the Sunni West and watching an increasingly autonomous Kurdistan rise within its borders, should certainly give negotiators pause. At first glance the Tlatelolco model offers a guideline: during the 1960s, the period in which the Treaty of Tlatelolco was negotiated, Latin American states faced rural and urban insurrections and insurgencies which challenged the legitimacy of states in the region. The attitude of Tlatelolco, however, seemed to be to ignore questions of legitimacy and push forward, with emphasis placed more on signing the treaty and getting its enforcement structures underway than on ensuring that the state parties to the treaty were legitimate. This model, however, was backed by the United States at the height of its Cold War power and the United States continued to intervene in Latin America to protect its interests, generally protecting the governments of its allies in the region. The Unit-
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22 ed States has proven unwilling or unable to intervene for this reason in the Middle East today, and indeed has allowed both Iraq and Syria to slip further and further into chaos. It is impossible to imagine the United States standing aside during the Cold War as a Latin American government it opposed gassed its own people, but it has done so today in the context of the Syrian Civil War. Without the backing of the superpower, the problem of state illegitimacy in the Middle East remains an incredibly pressing issue when considering whether regional governments are effective and trustworthy negotiating partners for a WMDFZ in the Middle East. Though the Tlatelolco model seems inapplicable to the specific situation in the Middle East at present, there are many aspects of the current security situation in the Middle East that are encouraging for the prospects of establishing a regional WMDFZ. To begin with, every country in the region is at least in theory committed to the establishment of a WMDFZ, and in the past WMDFZ negotiations involving
Without the backing of the superpower, the problem of state illegitimacy in the Middle East remains an incredibly pressing issue when considering whether regional governments are effective and trustworthy negotiating partners for a WMDFZ in the Middle East.
both regional states and major powers (the ARCS negotiations) occurred, which is a significant step in the right direction. The major powers, too, have in the past telegraphed their support for a regional WMDFZ and the establishment of a zone has been a key feature of the UN’s long-term vision for peace in the Middle
East. European countries, particularly the Nordic states, are heavily invested in the Middle Eastern WMDFZ process and have in the past committed diplomats and researchers towards making the zone a reality. The current WMD outlook in the region is also positive: given the breakthrough in Iranian-American negotiations in 2013, the only countries in the region “known” to possess operational WMD and delivery systems (quotes because Israel has deliberately remained opaque) are Israel and Syria, the latter of which has seen its WMD stockpile decimated by the international community after the Ghouta attacks. The justification, then, for Israel’s WMD deterrent grows less and less because with the United States acting as a security guarantor, a military that continues to outclass its regional opposition, and a WMDFZ member on its southeastern border (Egypt having signed the Pelindaba treaty), Israel’s WMD will increasingly be seen as a regional anomaly, decreasing the international support upon which Israel depends for its survival42. With strong international support, including that of the great powers and the UN, and a dwindling number of WMD in the region, all is not lost for a Middle Eastern WMDFZ as a tool of arms control in the region. Conclusion A WMDFZ provides clear benefits to the Middle East and should be viewed as a strong option for policymakers interested in a lasting and productive peace in the region. There is a great deal of will inside and outside of the region to make such a zone a reality, given the unstable security environment in much the Middle East. The trends in weapons acquisition, too, are leading towards this outcome, with
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23 most states in the region having halted and/or dismantled WMD programs they once pursued. The establishment of a WMDFZ in the Middle East, however, faces an uphill climb due to the complex security situation on the ground in the region. Past experience with WMDFZ can be a useful tool when designing the process of treaty ratification, but one of the most successful WMDFZ models in the world today, the Treaty of Tlatelolco, offers only some lessons as to how to proceed, and a similar model was a failure in the past. Tlatelolco’s handling of major-power cooperation and, to a degree, state legitimacy were effective in that they helped Latin American states quickly draft and sign the Treaty. This unfortunately may not be applicable to the Middle East because unlike in Cold War Latin America, questions of state legitimacy in the region can no longer count on a superpower (the United States) to provide answers, which creates tensions in the region and could undermine the treaty. Regional conflicts, particularly the Israeli/Palestinian conflict, also undermine the process, creating roadblocks to successful treaty negotiations in a way that goes beyond what the framers of Tlatelolco could have imagined
gotiations collapse again, beginning another period of regional disinterest and insecurity. If a WMDFZ is ultimately to succeed in the Middle East, it will have to create new frameworks to acknowledge the unique circumstances of the Middle East, as well as the increasing power of nonstate actors in the region.
This is certainly not to say that a WDMFZ in the Middle East is impossible. Any number of factors, including increased American engagement in the project, a breakthrough in the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, or even continued use of chemical weapons by Syria’s government could give the process a much-needed impetus. If a framework similar to the original ARCS is put into place, Tlatelolco can offer policymakers some lessons, but ultimately, the Tlatelolco model should be applied to the Middle East with caution given its past performance, lest treaty neThe Claremont Journal of International Relations | Fall 2014
24 References Baumgart, Claudia, and Harald Muller. “A Nuclear Weapons-Free Zone in the Middle East: A Pie in the Sky?” The Washington Quarterly 28, no. 1 (Winter 2004): 45–58. Cordesman, Anthony. Military Balance in the Middle East VI: Arab-Israeli Balance- Overview. Washington, D.C.: Center for the Strategic and International Studies, February 24, 1999. Dhanapala, Jayantha. Nuclear-Weapon-Free Zones – Challenges and Opportunities. Address. Uppsala, Sweden: United Nations, September 2, 2000. Epstein, William. “The Making of the Treaty of Tlatelolco.” Journal of the History of International Law 3 (2001): 153–79. Friedman, David. “Biological and Chemical Weapons Arms Control in the Middle East.” The Nonproliferation Review 19, no. 3 (2012): 401–41. Friedman, David. “Towards WMDFZ in the Middle East: Biological Confidence-Building Measures.” In Background Paper. Brussels: EU Non-Proliferation Consortium, 2012. Kadhim, Abbas. “The Future of Nuclear Weapons in the Middle East.” The Nonproliferation Review 13, no. 3 (2006): 581–89. Londoño, Ernesto, and Greg Miller. “U.S. Officials Say Syria Is Using Remaining Chemical Weapons Stockpile as Leverage.” The Washington Post, April 30, 2014. Martinez Cobo, J.R. “The Nuclear-weapon-free Zone in Latin America.” IAEA Bulletin, 1981. NNSA. 123 Agreements for Peaceful Cooperation. Treaties and Agreements. Washington, D.C.: National Nuclear Security Administration, n.d. NTI. Country Profiles. Data. Washington, D.C.: The Nuclear Threat Initiative, n.d. Ronfeldt, DF. Internal Security and Military Assistance to Latin America. Washington, D.C.: RAND Corporation, 1971. Sanger, David E., and Mark Mazzetti. “Israel Struck Syrian Nuclear Project, Analysts Say.” The New York Times, October 14, 2007. Schenker, David, and Simon Henderson. Jordan’s Energy Balancing Act. Policy Analysis. The Washington Institute, March 12, 2014. Serrano, Monica. Common Security in Latin America: The 1967 Treaty of Tlatelolco. University of London: Institute of Latin American Studies, 1992. Staff Reporting. “Syria Chemical Attack: What We Know.” BBC, September 24, 2013.
Uncredited. Mideast WMD-Free Zone Should Be Pursued Incrementally, Experts Say. Global Security Newswire. Washington, D.C.: The Nuclear Threat Initiative, December 2, 2011. Endnotes 1 Sanger and Mazzetti, “Israel Struck Syrian NuclearProject.” 2 The Middle East has a variety of geographic definitions, with some including the entire “Arab World” (including Egypt and the Islamic Maghreb in North Africa.) The Arab states of North Africa, however, are signatories to the treaty of Pelindaba, the treaty that made Africa a NWFZ (Morocco and Egypt are signatories, but have not yet ratified the treaty.) For the purposes of this research, then, the “Middle East” is the region bounded by Turkey and the Mediterranean Sea in the west and Iran and the Arab Gulf states in the East. 3 Serrano, Common Security, 9. 4 Ronfeldt, Internal Security, 1. 5 Ibid. 6 Serrano, Common Security, 13. 7 Epstein, “Treaty of Tlatelolco,” 158. 8 Ibid. 9 Epstein, “Treaty of Tlatelolco,” 159. 10 Epstein, “Treaty of Tlatelolco,” 162. 11 Martinez Cobo, “The Nuclear-weapon-free Zone,” 57. 12 Martinez Cobo, “The Nuclear-weapon-free Zone,” 58. 13 Dhanapala, Challenges and Opportunities, 2. 14 Baumgart and Muller, “A Pie in the Sky?,” 46. 15 Baumgart and Muller, “A Pie in the Sky?,” 47. 16 Baumgart and Muller, “A Pie in the Sky?,” 48. 17 Ibid. 18 Kadhim, “The Future,” 582. 19 Schenker and Henderson, Jordan’s Energy Balancing Act. 20 NTI, Country Profiles. 21 NNSA, 123 Agreements. 22 Friedman, “Biological and Chemical Weapons,” 409. 23 NTI, Country Profiles. 24 NTI, Country Profiles. 25 Staff Reporting, “Syria chemical attack.” 26 Londoño and Miller, “U.S. officials say.” 27 Kadhim, “The Future,” 581. 28 Baumgart and Muller, “A Pie in the Sky?,” 48. 29 Kadhim, “The Future,” 585. 30 Baumgart and Muller, “A Pie in the Sky?,” 48. 31 Friedman, “Towards WMDFZ,” 3. 32 Ibid. 33 Cordesman, Military Balance, 9. 34 Ibid. 35 Cordesman, Military Balance, 71. 36 Ibid. 37 NTI, Country Profiles. 38 NTI, Country Profiles. 39 Uncredited, “Mideast WMD-Free Zone.” 40 Serrano, Common Security, 70. 41 Epstein, “Treaty of Tlatelolco,” 162. 42 Cordesman, Military Balance, 13.
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Gods & Humans of Nepal Feby Boediarto| Pitzer ‘17 Much of Nepal exists today as a result of Westernization. The country functions as a unique example of a mixture of Western and Eastern values. Life in Nepal is alive. There is poverty, there is richness, there is beauty, and there is ugliness. One morning, one is confronted by a pungent smell coming from the Bagmati River, and the next, one is enamored by the Sirutar hills. It is a place where the senses are challenged everyday, from the sight of the beggars on the street to the sound of the ringing bells meant to wake up the Gods.
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Of The Stateless: An Examination of the Karen People’s Struggle with Identity, Recognition and Violence on the Thai-Myanmar Border Conner DB Roberts | Pomona ‘16 Conner Roberts grew up in a small town in the Pacific Northwest but has lived in Thailand, Japan, and India. His experiences in Asia, and elsewhere, have inspired his pursuit of Philosophy and International Relations. He is the author of the recently published book “Pass Us By: An Inquiry Into Those we Never Meet”, that is based on his philosophical speculations into the city of Seattle.
Introduction “The narrative on Burma has to be positive, our bad news stories are Iraq and Afghanistan,” said a Washington-based government official to Spectrum News not too long ago1. She was insightfully drawing attention to the current trend that Burma (officially renamed The Union of Myanmar in 1989, and further, The Republic of the Union of Myanmar in 20082) is the South East Asian story of “success”. Western news sources have been flooded with reports of a growing democracy since 2008’s new constitution, and a growing elected base of governing officials. As of 2012, 43 of them have been from Nobel Peace Laureate Aung San Suu Kyi’s National League for Democracy (NLD) political party3. It has all the makings of
a free market victory for democracy—the holy grail of capitalist prophesies. However, as soon as one reads news from east of +60 degrees Longitude the reader is presented with a much different story. This new presentation is one of ethnic turmoil, rapid industrialization, and a still massively oppressive government. It is true that ‘progress’ has been made, however the successes that have made international news are not a true illustrations of development on the ground. In particular, this paper will focus on the issues surrounding the Karen people who have lived in the hills bordering Thailand and Myanmar for centuries. The state where the majority of Karen now reside is the Kayin state (or, as this paper will refer
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31 to it, the Karen state) on Myanmar’s southwestern border. Their plight, in summary, is the remnants of centuries of oppression by the greater state of Burma and other large governing bodies seeking to control the Karen hills. Currently the Karen National Union has declared a ceasefire with the Myanmar military, lauded by the international media as a huge step forward towards fair treatment of Myanmar’s minority populations. Yet the military continues to forcefully displace residents, practice destructive logging and mining, use landmines, and even confiscate personal property, all under the blanket claim of “uniting Myanmar” into a “national culture” 45. Across the border, Thailand, has stopped accepting refugees fleeing the Myanmar military and plans to send residents of the 10 refugee camps back to Myanmar within the next five years.6 The Karen people must balance acceptance of the ruling body of Myanmar with their own objectives to achieve autonomy, maintain their cultural identity in the face of oppression, and secure a livelihood for future generations. This is an impossible task to request of anyone, yet it is the situation that exists. In the case of the Karen people, in relation to Myanmar’s political sphere, there has been movement towards national stability, although at what cost? As this paper will show, great loss in many aspects of life. This question is not a simple one and this paper does not make any lofty promises of providing a concise, clear, and concrete answer to it either. Rather this paper will work to highlight both the history of the Karen people as a vast ever-changing dynamic people as well as how this history
has led to the current situation. This brief account will cover early Karen relations with authority before the state lines were drawn. From there this paper will work to lay basic theoretical framework to help us understand how the Karen interact with each government, leading to a three-part break down of the Karen people’s current situation: the Land, the Body, and the Soul, focusing on territory disputes, human rights violations, and cultural identity respectively. The Karen people are at a crucial moment in their history, having to battle with issues of state given rights while still searching for their own solidarity. A historically stateless people who now—due to a multitude of factors—must use processes of statehood to remain distinguished from the state itself. An Extremely Brief History of Zomia This paper will focus on a non-state based historical and analytical perspective. Not ignoring much of the political history, rather this author is giving this open minded historical approach its rightfully deserved significance. That significance requires the use of a less than commonplace term for the area of the world that the Karen people inhabit: Zomia. Zomia is derived from a composite of two common words amongst the Sino-Tibetan branch of languages. James Scott, who has written extensively on this region, defines it as such: “Zo is a relational term meaning remote and hence carries the connotation of living in the hills; Mi means people.”7 Collectively it refers to the region of Southeast China, Myanmar, Thailand, and Parts of Laos and Vietnam “lying at altitudes from two hundred to
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32 three hundred meters above sea level to more than 4 thousand meters”8. Zomia is a rigorous terrain that forms a natural barrier between modern states and has challenged claims to govern for centuries. The tribes and people who settled in this region were by their nature a state-avoiding people. For much of the last millennium, the population of the hills has chosen to live away from state rule, away from the afflictions that can be associated with state governance—taxes, subjugation of minorities, or imposed historical hierarchy. “State-making projects” were isolated to valleys and locations of easy mobility. 9 Scott goes on to say that “we must therefore consider pre-colonial Burma as a flatland phenomenon, rarely venturing out of its irrigation adapted ecological niche.” This “niche” referring to a location suitable to both wet-rice cultivation and easy mobility of citizens. Outside of this area the state “runs out of political breath”10. As the lowland Burmese and Tai states took shape and gradually became more homogenous, the hill people developed techniques of swiddening—nomadism and utilization of quick rotation crops—in order to stay separate from the growing states. The people of the hills also split (although not definitively) into separate groups based on altitude and temporal distance. Early British sociologists realized this too, unable to accomplish their two goals of categorizing the people and drawing a standardized map. The hill people instead used “a map in which the unit of measurement is not distance but the time of travel is, in fact, far more in accord with vernacular practices than the more abstract, standardized concept of kilometers or miles.”11
With this said we see that as time pushed forward, “Burma”, in the sense of an effectively political entity, consisted largely of wet-rice core areas within a few days’ march from the court center12. Everyone else was seen as outside the system of rule in largely an ambiguous area of modern conceptions of borders. By rough calculations, Zomia minority populations are “at around 80 million to 100 million. Its peoples are fragmented into hundreds of ethnic identities and at least five language families…” defying any simple classification. Even amongst the Karen—who are now recognized as those living in the Karen state on the ThaiMyanmar border—“ no single trait such as religion, clothing, burial rituals, or even a shared intelligible language applies to all of them. Each of the sub-divisions of Karen also displays an amazing variety.” 13 This diversity makes it very hard to describe the people of the hills as a “tribe” in the general sense. Rather it would be more accurate to refer to the peoples as a collective mixture of various traditions and separate methods of living that have fused together over centuries of stateavoidance. There are of course ‘tribes’ in the lived experience of the hill peoples. “Self-identified Karen, Kachinm Hmong, and others have fought and died for identities that many believe have a deep continuous history,” says Scott, “such powerful identities are, in this respect, no less fictitious and constructed than most national identities in the modern world.” 14 As of the twentieth century the Karen have emerged with four separate political identities: “the mainstream Karen (Kayin), and the Karenni, Kayan (Padaung) and Pao (Taungthu). This diversity of Karen populations has
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33 always made delineating Karen rights and territories a particular difficulty (over 200,000 Karens also live in Thailand).” 15 All of which have been designated “Burmese” by the Myanmar state, and given little physical state space. The key aspect of this history is that crucial element of state-avoiding, a notion that extends that “the hills are not simply a space of political resistance but also a zone of cultural refusal”16. This concept lays the framework for the struggle for autonomy against state rule that is seen today. The Current State At this point, the romanticized picture of Zomia that Scott portrays in his history is quickly disappearing in the wake of statehood. Borders have been drawn, states renamed, and peoples hopelessly categorized—and recategorized17. In order claim the areas within the hills, both the Burmese and Thai governments have made it very clear where certain peoples belong. Either one is a part of the whole or is a dissident, a perpetual rebel, or a tribal person living a backwards life—there is no middle ground. “By the estimates of community leaders, at the beginning of the twenty-first century around 300,000 inhabitants of the Karen state alone had been displaced from their homes—some into urban areas, some into the hills and many more into neighbouring Thailand where over 100,000 refugees live in official camps.” 18 “Displacement” is a softened word for what could be referred to as “forceful removal or relocation” by the military. A product of the long running civil move-
ments and fighting between the military junta of Burma and the established Karen National Liberation Army (KNLA) which is a unit of the Karen National Union (KNU) established in 188119. It has been reported that “30% of the Karen population is displaced”20. Most of these people are “internally displaced” whereas some seek refuge across the border in one of 10 “refugee camps” Thailand21. Central to this notion of forced relocation with Myanmar is the military’s (and the new government’s) goal to forge “a ‘unified’ national entity under strong central control and with a particularly ‘Burman’ national character”22. The government, in order to achieve this goal, must suppress the Karen people into a new sense of identity. They achieve this by various methods: taking land rights, redefining culture, violence, forcing labor, restricting of citizenship and rights, an electoral veil, and the overall movement toward creating an image of unified progress23. One way this search for imagined unity has affected the Karen is that in 2011, “the military junta officially dissolved itself, opening the way for a democratic transition under the government of President Thein Sein, [a former general.]”24 This transition to democracy helps redefine the Myanmar identity not as a top down imposition but one of the people. A central policy of the new regime is to “attract foreign investment into the impoverished country,” which has the potential of making its way to the border regions through NGOs. Although this can only be said in speculation. In reality, the Karen have established a pseudo-autonomous government within their state. It has to be designated “pseu-
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34 do” in the sense that it exists only as a compulsory counter balance to full subjugation by the Myanmar state. The KNU is one such unit, but outside of the capital of Hpa-an, the presence of any government is little felt. As James Scott refers to it:
— Naw L— (female, 54), T— village, T’Nay Hsah Township, Hpa-an District/ Central Kayin State (Interviewed in June 2012)27
“Their political structures are, with extremely rare exceptions, imitative in the sense that while they may have the trappings and rhetoric of monarchy, they lack the substance: a tax-paying subject population or direct control over the constituent units, let alone a standing army.” 25
“Put vegetables in the basket, put the people in the muang (country)” —Thai Proverb28
Now that the KNU has power of the KNLA, they do little besides fight for the rights and territory of the Karen people. A governing state, that collects taxes and writes law, is out of the question as of now. Relocation to Thailand is also becoming less and less possible as camps fill up and restrictions are tightened26. The story of the current state is one volatile struggle—a struggle that predates the colonial Burmese state—and is just now coming into western focus as Myanmar opens its borders to information and business. The Karen people are not receiving the support, or even the amnesty, they believed they receive from the new government in 2011. Land is being taken, mines still haunt the hillsides, and the military’s presence is not one of security but of subjugation and capitalism. “Since [Tatmadaw] Battalion #549 came and based here, my properties are gone and no one has pity on me. One thing starts to belong to the battalion, then two things belong to the battalion. You go back to your plantation and they ask, ‘What kind of paper [land title] do you have? This is military land. It all belongs to the military.’”
A Rationalist Assertion
“Many of my relatives and friends left my village because they were afraid of forced labor and they were afraid to be killed by government’s soldiers” —Karen man 26 years old.29 There is an essential question that is required of anyone observing the interaction between the Karen people the surrounding states: What is gained or lost from this facilitated relationship? This of course is the plateau of rationalist inquiries—give me some positives and negatives and I will balance the spreadsheet, everyone will be happy. This assertion is too general. Even if the Karen achieve all they desire they will still be oppressed, their happiness is not determined by utilitarian calculus. However while making this rational assertion, amongst all that is irrational in Karen Zomia, more is made salient. What is gained from state association? The immediate factors that usually follow statehood and institutionalization are more equal education system, better health care, safety and security, and (in a democratic system) a voice in the national agenda. All of which provide a humanitarian benefit to the region. None of these
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35 are currently accomplished in the Karen state. Violence against the Karen people comes from the government, health care is almost entirely a NGO endeavor, and education—while provided—is highly biased towards the “Burman unity” ideal. “State schools in Karen areas, even where they are the majority of the population, is exclusively provided in the Burmese language and government offices provide no access to services in Karen languages.”30 In order to have Karen language classes, weekend school must be attended.31 Article 22 of the new constitution of Myanmar (enacted in 2008) states that The Union shall assist: (a) to develop language, literature, fine arts and culture of the National races; (b) to promote solidarity, mutual amity and respect and mutual assistance among the National races; (c) to promote socio-economic development including education, health, economy, transport and communication, so forth, of less-developed National races. 32 This appears to be a manifesto for a more equal future, hopeful citizens of the new Myanmar would agree. Take notice, though, to the last line of part (c), “… of less-developed National races.” In the constitution there already exists a natural bias towards the ruling Myanmar ethnicity. Not only does the state fail to act upon the goals expressed above, they also maintain their sense of superiority over peoples like the Karen. This inherently unequal goal is made clearer in articles 27 and 37: 27. The Union shall assist development, consolidation and preservation of Na-
tional culture. 37. The Union : (a) is the ultimate owner of all lands and all natural resources above and below the ground, above and beneath the water and in the atmosphere in the Union; [emphasis added]33 There is no grey area left for the Karen to argue against with this constitution. It is very clear that the state owns everything and that culture is a national project. “What is lost?” is no longer a question of particulars, but a complex rationalist debate. Better articulated: do I risk losing my identity for potential gains in systemized health care and education? One thing is clear, the Karen do not want to lose their “Karen-ness” and homeland—they have been fighting for it for over a century34. However they cannot express their voice (domestically or internationally) without a level of participation within the Myanmar court—A place made more open with the arrival of Myanmar’s Pseudo-democracy now in place however before any Karen, Shan or Wa can attain office they must organize politically, and there is no common political platform that all “national minority races” can join. Martin Smith adds, “There has been concern among ethnic opposition groups that, in the present deadlock, [other hill tribes] might seek to create their own divisions,”35. The “Myanmarification” of Zomia highlights the cusp of this rationalist assertion, which could be stated as the Paradox of Modern Nonstatehood: In order to exist outside of the state, one is required to have its own state-like structure. For the tribes of Zomia, state-like structure has been carefully avoided for centuries, and in modern history “the state” has been a
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36 structure that takes land, lays landmines, and forces a constitution upon them. The Karen people have been made into a nationally recognized “other”, only tangentially a part of the Myanmar whole. The losses that come to them are massive and most openly experienced in the context of the land of modern Zomia. The Land “They came and made rubber plantations. The company owner cooperated with the [Tatmadaw] General. They came to the villages and looked for the place where villagers have not done [anything with the land] yet, and then they said it is uncultivated land. Then they started [planting rubber trees]. Later, step-by-step, they started buying peoples’ lands...There are some villagers who lack knowledge, so they sold their land. Currently, there are only companies’ lands. It causes a problem for the villagers, even to find firewood.” — Situation update written by a Karen community member 201236 While the mountainous region of the Karen state is hard to access, it is also a resource rich area of Myanmar. It has vast areas of undeveloped land for agribusiness, rivers large enough to construct dams for energy, as well as forests of teak and other commodities37. The relatively unused nature of its resources makes for a very appealing location for Myanmar officials to begin industrial development. Such developments include logging, mining, large plantations (as mentioned in the above quotation), and “volunteer” labor camps38. As of 2011, 33 major coal deposits existed in and around the Karen state.39
On the Thai side of these mountains much of the region is a series of semi-developed villages, roughly connected to the greater nation. Population is not quite as spread out as on the Myanmar side, rather it is centered around border towns and ‘refugee’ camps. These hills represent the collision of two historical forces; a land largely unclaimed due to a nomadic or stateless people, and an established state that claims ownership to all within its borders40. The resulting tension (as previously alluded to) creates this culture of “displacement” that is observed today. With upwards of 30% of the Karen population displaced and more “relocated” to “peace camps” around military bases, an existence of subjugated land is the norm. A “Peace camp” is a relocated village, or community of people who were asked with force to live around a military base or industry area41. The military leverages this land by making establishing these project areas as zones of economic benefit, guaranteed safety (from the military), and secured land rights. As noted by the Karen Human Rights Group, “Villagers described explicit orders issued by military and civilian government officials for communities to relocate from targeted project areas, such as those to be developed for agri-business, infrastructure development or dams, and said that such orders were frequently accompanied by threats of violence for non-compliance.” 42 The active militarization of the late 20th century has been replaced by a period of implicit aggression and land take-over. This method of land grabbing, developing, and then moving people has only been possible because of the previously unrestricted land associated with the Kar-
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37 en hills—as well as other parts of Zomia. Methods to fight this are few and far between. On one hand, travel to and from Karen land has not been this safe in 65 years, on the other hand Karen leadership has no means to publicly denounced or question the military’s authority43. “Local communities lack knowledge of both details and impacts of projects and of the law, limiting their ability to negotiate or take action, and increasing their vulnerability to manipulation,” admits the KHRG article, which goes on to say, “Fear of violence is worsened by recent memories of violence and abuse related to decades of militarization, armed conflict and counter-insurgency.”44 Even if activists can actively oppose this method of take-over, the population as a whole is largely unaware of the resonance of their actions of giving away land. The Myanmar government has previously stated publicly that most of the land they have developed in the Karen state was “purchased” from local authorities or residents. Statistically this may be the case, however their coercion and unethical treatment of Karen has been carefully left unmentioned. An activist living in the capital of the Karen state had this to say about the potential loss of Karen land and identity: “In our community there are 150 houses, two temples and a pagoda. Most of us are related, if something happens we help each other. We have our ghosts and our stories – we don’t want to lose them.” The Karen identity is closely linked with the land, from escaping the state projects of the valleys to legends and traditions based on their centuries of movement through the mountains. “I’m a farmer, I went to the temple school. Now I’m learning how to
fight for our land and our future,” he says.45 The land and its borders are an important statement about what the creation of Myanmar means to both the people and the international community. “One of the paradoxes of the nation-state is that, for all its stress on the people as its basis, it will give up population but not land”46. The Body “In the past, soldiers planted landmines when they stayed here but people weren’t hit by them. I thought people travelled back and forth every day along this path, I went along it and I was hit by the landmine on the way home. … I was seven months pregnant. I didn’t know the reason why those people [my nephew and aunt] cried a lot because I thought the landmine blew up very far away. I was wrong because actually it hit my leg when I looked at my leg.” — Ma Nu—, (female, 33) Noh Kyaw village, Noh Kay village tract, T’Nay Hsah Township, Pa’an District (Interviewed April 2012)47 According to the KHRG’s 2012 report, the Karen state has the highest number of landmines still in place in the world. While the current Myanmar military is no longer placing new landmines, the Karen people inhabit a region where a trip to a nearby village could spell disaster. A reminder to outside observers that the Karen existence is still subject to violence, public health issues, and citizenship battles—is the state of the body. These landmines are remnants of a past period of “scorched earth” policy towards the Karen people. During this period in the early 20th century whole villages
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38 were burnt down and the disappearance of someone close was not an unfamiliar thing.48 The death toll of this ongoing fighting (which still persists in some regions) is unknown although the sociological effects have touched every single Karen who is alive today. The human loss is immense, tragic, and still very relevant to the situation of post 2011 Myanmar. While active military assault has ended in the Karen, state residents around the ironically named “peace camps” are subject to coercion into forced labor49. The personal sphere, the very bodies of the Karen people are—and have been—under risk of violence and abuse. This brings this paper back to the fundamental problem of the formation of a unified “Myanmar” under state rule. Even the Nobel Laureate Aang Sun Suu Kyi recognizes that in order to resolve strife they need to “find out the root, the cause of the conflict.” Which is not hard to see: “The systematic exploitation and dehumanization by successive Burmese governments”50 as summarized by The Economist. It is truly the exploitation that has inflicted the worst blow to Karen people. Creating an era of refuge and exile for those who sought to escape the violence, only to experience injury caused by the physical demands trekking across the hills of Zomia to Thailand: “The refugees who began to arrive in mid1996 had walked four to seven days in the monsoon rains and mud, through dense forest and over mountains while avoiding the Burmese military. On arrival, many of them had not eaten for days and were suffering from exhaustion, malnutrition, malaria, respiratory infections, and diarrhea.”51
Militia groups, armed units of pseudogovernance, which formed as early as the 1970s, have fought for the lofty goal of attaining an autonomous region and/ or statehood for the Karen people. These groups include the Christian dominated KNLA and the Democratic Karen Buddhist Army (DKBA), both of which fought together against the military junta, although each held different goals for the overall production of the Karen state52. Around 1995 the idea of complete autonomy slowly slipped further and further out of reach. Militias were largely defensive and rebellious in nature rather than revolutionary53 . As of 2012 a shaky ceasefire has been signed between the new government and the KNU54. The laying down of arms has been a huge selling point for the new government’s legitimacy. It has the effect of presenting a “peaceful” brand for the new economically open and “democratic” Myanmar. Of course a formal cease-fire does not stop all violence as reports ring in of continued fighting from rural areas of Karen resistance55. There seems to be less fighting, but perhaps more implicit oppression now exists in the form of forced labor and citizenship restriction. How far does this humanitarian success extend when the fighting has stopped but the issues caused by decades of conflict, endemic poverty, family breakdown and community displacement on a massive scale, still remain unaddressed? The population of Karen Zomia has shifted on a scale of over a half a million men and women over the past 15 years. Some people flooded into the Hpakhant jade mines within the Karen state, while others continued to cross over into Thai
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39 refugee camps56. This in itself has been the catalyst for an emergence of vast and escalating health problems within these communities. In such conditions, “intravenous drug abuse, prostitution and sexually transmitted infections (STIs) have been widespread, resulting in levels of mortality and family loss due to HIV/ AIDS, especially among young men and women”57. The figures for these deaths are rarely publically reported, but Smith in his report interviewed a local community leader who simply explained, “We just read the grave stones.” 58
to may not resemble the places they originally left behind (not to mention the sheer physical demands of starting fresh in a location potentially owned by the military).
All the while refugees and internally displaced residents are returning to their villages to find them occupied by the same unit of authority they sought to escape. “A key concern is the required paperwork which requires that every refugee is a Burmese citizen and that they own the land in Karen, Karenni and other areas to which they plan to return. But few ID cards have been issued,” and without ID representation—which a rare few Karen are born with59—they cannot reclaim their land. They return, “to find some villages have turned into economic concessions doled out to friends of the Burmese army and its proxy militias.”60
The Soul
After all of this, the Thai government does not even officially acknowledge the existence of “refugees”, in fact the numerous camps along the border are termed “temporary shelters for displaced persons fleeing from fighting”61. The term “refugee camp” is avoided publicly. The temporary aspect is something the Thai government is looking to keep its promise on in the coming years. The Thai government is slowly pushing the Karen and other people back into Myanmar, back into their “home”. The homes they return
The people who left “Burma” were maintaining their ideal of avoiding the state that governs with forced authority. Whether or not they would want to return to that oppression is unknown, but it can be said with a degree of certainty that when the Thai government forces the displaced Karen back, they will not be the same “Karen” who left.
This brings us to the seeming core of the situation affecting the Karen people, a loss of cultural identity and livelihood associated with both their land and their bodies. “After the lands were confiscated, [Tatmadaw] LIB #547, 548 and 549 forced Karen and Muslim villagers to leave their lands; the villagers had no land to carry out livelihoods to be able to have enough food for their families. When the monks allowed homeless and landless villagers to relocate to the N— Monastery, over 30 households relocated there, and numerous villagers relocated to other villages. A T—villager said, “We had to leave in our village. They stayed in the house. They did it in this way and they built their camp [in the village].” —Situation update written by a community member, T’Nay Hsah Township, Hpa-an District/ Central Kayin (Received in May 2012)62 What can be expected of people in this situation? Can it really be accepted that the norm (as of 2012) of the Karen people
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40 is to be displaced, relocated, oppressed and forced to disassociate with the land that their families have called lived on for centuries? The Karen identity is not as clearly defined as this paper seems to suggest, rather it is a shifting norm that is extremely complex in nature. To lose this “identity” as a people, is not as simple as “to have it or to have not”. It is an intricate immeasurable idea of what a people want to see themselves as. James Scott in his extensive research on the Karen state adds: “It does not appear that “Karenness” is necessarily an exclusive identity. In Thailand, at least, according to Charles Keyes, it is possible for someone to be “Karen” in a domestic setting… and “Thai” at the market, in politics, and in interaction with Thais.”63 This “Karenness” he speaks of is malleable, alterable, and—contrary to common interpretations of malleable things—fragile. He continues, “Ethnic identity itself provides the defining cultural characteristic of ethnic groups [in Zomia].”64 In other words, the very acknowledgement of identity forms characteristics that the identity exhibits. This is a fairly radical constructivist case, however, in moderation it helps an outsider understand the severity of the situation in Karen Zomia—The “Karenness” that fights against Myanmar was created from a multitude of unique stateless peoples, and the “Burmese” identity that Myanmar hopes to create will potentially overshadow the modern Karen. The 20th century represents a period of successive cultural loss in Zomia65. While no one will deny that Karen people have a culture—and a vibrant one at that— the military’s tactics and oppression sug-
gest a disregard towards Karen history, Karen tradition, and Karen statelessness. There appears to be a general attitude that stateless peoples are “peoples without history”, “as lacking the fundamental characteristic of civilization, namely historicity.”66 This insinuates that somehow only “written” history warrants acknowledgment as narrative identity, that apparently only written history can create a common identity amongst people. Thus by this path of logic, those who develop statehood must create the history and identity of these stateless people—landmines and land rights are only a footnote in the reclamation of this “Myanmar” national identity. This mode of thought, in reality, is a fallacy arising from a state (non-human) centric perspective on the history of Zomia. Scott continues, “How much history a people have, far from indicating their low stage of evolution, is always an active choice, one that positions them contrasting to their powerful text-based neighbors.”67. The Karen people have been exposed to written script since their first interactions with the lowland Burmese state centuries before, the lack of script within the Karen culture appears to have been an active choice to disassociate themselves with the state projects of the valley68. This, at first glance, is a reiteration of the age-old theme of marginalization of “tribes” or minorities within a society— and this paper indeed makes this point. At a more critical level, however, this is a crucial example of how the physical losses and struggles of the Karen people— both in Land and Body— directly impacts the culture that they have been fighting to save. Against an ideology that “statehood is better” and that “Myanmar” can and
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41 will apply to all within its political borders because the Karen people lack a political history69. Naturally the implicit policy written in article 27 of the Burmese constitution seeks to diminish the identity of the Karen People: “The Union shall assist development, consolidation and preservation of National culture.”70 “Myanmarfication”, as referred to by Dutch Anthropologist Gustaaf Houtman, is more than just a recreation of the imagined identity of the state but also an active policy of attributing statehood to a nonstate people. It is not merely writing on a page by political scientists or anthropologists, it is a progression of physical actions and decades of oppression. It leads to “peace camps”, mining projects, landmines, and confiscation of land, disease and restricted education. After the Collision… (Conclusion) “The current work is worse than before. Before, we were not rich but we could work with a pure heart, and we liked our work.” — Saw B— (male, 55), D-village, Shwegyin Township, Nyaunglebin District/ Eastern Bago Region (Interviewed in March 2011)
nalist assertion of what is left to gain in juxtaposition to what being lost. It is a safe position to hold, a rational choice essentially, although with so much being taken from the Karen at every turn—even in the wake of a new elected government—it is unrealistic for the rational approach to be considerate of those to who it pertains to most. During this collision of state and nonstate people, throughout a century of violence, and persisting into a modern day subtle oppression, the losses for the Karen people have been immense. They lose land to encroaching military camps and associated economic ventures; their livelihoods suffers because of violence, disease, and numerous instances of forced labor; and in the end, an intangible element of their diverse and vibrant culture—their identity as a people—is altered permanently. The future offers a very different path than Karen’s stateless past in the hilly refuge of Zomia.
71
It should to be noted that not all reports from the Karen state are negative. Recently activist groups in the Dawei region had taken strong (and public) opposition to a Thai owned mining operation that had established itself without local permission. In time, after the case had made its way all the way to Rangoon, the plant was shut down, marking a small victory for the Karen people.72 It remains difficult to hold onto the ratioThe Claremont Journal of International Relations | Fall 2014
42 References “Annual Report 2012: Myanmar.” Amnesty International, accessed 1 Dec. 2013. Carl Grundy-Warr, “Coexistent Borderlands And IntraState Conflicts In Mainland Southeast Asia.” Singapore Journal of Tropical Geography 14.1 (1994): 42-57. Claudio O. Delang, Living at the edge of Thai society: the Karen in the highlands of northern Thailand (London: Routledge Curzon, 2003) Nick Cheesman, “Seeing ‘Karen’ In The Union Of Myanmar.” Asian Ethnicity 3.2 (2002): 199-220. Phil Thorton, “Myanmar’s Lawless Land.” The Diplomat, accessed 17 Dec. 2013. Endnotes 1 Mark Fenn, “Life Gets Harder on Thai-Myanmar Border.” The Diplomat, accessed 17 Dec. 2013. 2 Gustaaf Houtman, Mental culture in Burmese crisis politics: Aung San Suu Kyi and the National League for Democracy (Tokyo: Tokyo University of Foreign Studies, Institute for the Study of Languages and Cultures of Asia and Africa, 1999.) 3 “Burma’s Aung San Suu Kyi makes parliamentary debut.” BBC News, BBC, 7 Sept. 2012, accessed 17 Dec. 2013. 4 Karen Human Rights Group. Losing Ground: Land conflicts and collective action in eastern Myanmar (KHRG: March, 2013), 10. 5 Myanmar Constitution. Art. 27 6 Martin Smith, Burma (Myanmar): the time for change (London: Minority Rights Group International, 2002), 24. 7 James C. Scott, The art of not being governed: an anarchist history of upland Southeast Asia. (New Haven: Yale University Press, 2009), 16. 8 ibid 9 Scott, The Art of Not Being Governed, 52. 10 Scott, The Art of Not Being Governed, 54. 11 Scott, The Art of Not Being Governed, 48. 12 Scott, The Art of Not Being Governed, 53. 13 Scott, The Art of Not Being Governed, 204. 14 Scott, The Art of Not Being Governed, 243. 15 Smith, Burma (Myanmar), 15. 16 Scott, The Art of Not Being Governed, 20. 17 Scott, The Art of Not Being Governed, 240. 18 Smith, Burma (Myanmar), 14. 19 Smith, Burma (Myanmar), 38. 20 Carl Grundy-Warr and Elaine Wong Siew Yin. “Geographies Of Displacement: The Karenni And The Shan Across The Myanmar-Thailand Border.” Singapore Journal of Tropical Geography 23.1 (2002), 96. 21 Smith, Burma (Myanmar), 34. 22 Grundy-Warr, “Geographies Of Displacement”, 97. 23 David I. Steinberg, Burma, the state of Myanmar (Washington, D.C.: Georgetown University Press, 2001), 54. 24 “A more open Myanmar.” New York Times – opinion,
accessed 12 Dec. 2013. 25 Scott, The Art of Not Being Governed, 22. 26 Alessio Fratticcioli, “Karen Refugees in Thailand.” (PhD Diss. Chulalongkorn University, 2012.), 19. 27 Karen Human Rights Group. Losing Ground, pg. 27 28 Scott, The Art of Not Being Governed, 41. 29 Fratticcioli, “Karen Refugees in Thailand”, 14. 30 “Myanmar/Burma : Karen.” Minority Rights Group International. Web. 31 Smith, Burma (Myanmar), 26. 32 Republic of the Union of Myanmar Constitution, 2008, Art. 22 33 Republic of the Union of Myanmar Constitution, 2008, Art. 27, 37 34 Smith, Burma (Myanmar), 20. 35 Smith, Burma (Myanmar), 33. 36 Karen Human Rights Group. Losing Ground, 7. 37 “Myanmar/Burma : Karen.” Minority Rights Group International. accessed 17 Dec. 2013. 38 Karen Human Rights Group. Losing Ground, 10. 39 S’Phan Shaung, “Dawei Residents Take Their Opposition To Mining To Rangoon.” Karen News, accessed 12 Dec. 2013. 40 Republic of the Union of Myanmar Constitution, 2008,Art. 37 41 Scott, The Art of Not Being Governed, 180. 42 Karen Human Rights Group. Losing Ground, 10 43 “Myanmar’s longest war.” The Economist, accessed 17 Dec. 2013, 44 Karen Human Rights Group. Losing Ground, 12 45 Fenn, “Life Gets Harder”. 46 Ruth McVey, “Separatism and the Paradoxes of the Nation-State in Perspective.” Armed Separatism in Southeast Asia (1984): 3-8. 47 Karen Human Rights Group. Uncertain Ground: Landmines in eastern Burma. (KHRG: May, 2012), 12. 48 Zoya Phan and Damien Lewis. Undaunted: my struggle for freedom and survival in Burma (New York: Free Press, 2010) 49 Smith, Burma (Myanmar), 23. 50 “Myanmar’s longest war.” The Economist. 51 John R. MacArthur, Sandra Dudley, and Holly Ann Williams. “Approaches To Facilitating Health Care Acceptance: A Case Example From Karenni Refugees.” NAPA Bulletin 21.1 (2001), 64. 52 Grundy-Warr, “Geographies Of Displacement”, 97. 53 Smith, Burma (Myanmar), 12. 54 “Myanmar’s longest war.” The Economist. 55 “Briefing: Myanmar’s ethnic problems.” IRINnews, accessed 15 Dec. 2013. <http://www.irinnews.org/ report/95195/briefing-myanmar-s-ethnic-problems>. 56 Smith, Burma (Myanmar), 22. 57 Ibid 58 Ibid 59 Scott, The Art of Not Being Governed, 164. 60 Fenn, “Life Gets Harder”. 61 Grundy-Warr, “Geographies Of Displacement”, 113. 62 Karen Human Rights Group. Losing Ground, 44 63 Scott, The Art of Not Being Governed, 241. 64 Scott, The Art of Not Being Governed, 241. 65 Scott, The Art of Not Being Governed, 239. 66 Scott, The Art of Not Being Governed, 237. 67 Scott, The Art of Not Being Governed, 237. 68 Scott, The Art of Not Being Governed, 250.
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43 69 Smith, Burma (Myanmar), 13. 70 Republic of the Union of Myanmar Constitution, 2008, Art, 27 71 Karen Human Rights Group. Losing Ground, 55 72 Shaung, S’Phan “Dawei Residents…” Karen News.
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44
The Odd-Couple: On the Israeli-Jordanian Relationship Victor Chan | Claremont McKenna â&#x20AC;&#x2DC;16 Victor is a junior at CMC who is majoring in economics and history. Born and raised in Hong Kong, his little brothers (ages 9 and 11) will tell you he likes to lecture them on Roman history, US-China relations, and spiritual practice.
Introduction The Israeli-Jordanian relationship is a highly complex and evolving manifestation defined by several fundamental pillars of security and foreign policy study. The two countries bear few apparent similarities, but closer inspection reveals a different conclusion. The Hashemite Kingdom and Israel have significantly overlapping strategic needs, relative historical backgrounds, and demographic quandaries that serve to unite the two nations. While Israel is isolated by regional players in Middle Eastern foreign policy, Jordan too has claimed the role of regional pariah several times in modern history. Both countries suffer from extensive domestic tension, as well as existential threats stemming from both inside
their territory and beyond their national borders. In addition, natural resources are scarce in both countries leading to a reliance on external nations for support. When analyzing Israel and Jordan in this light, the countries are more similar than initially assumed. However, the presence of such circumstances does not completely account for the strong ties Israel and Jordan possess. To gain a deeper understanding of this unspoken strategic alliance, a more comprehensive analysis of their unifying factors will have to be conducted. Through this study, the reader will be introduced to three fundamental questions that define the Israeli-Jordanian relationship. First, what are the underlying themes of both Jordanian and Israeli
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45 security policy? Second, how do these themes influence the relationship of the two countries and therefore necessitate a strategic alliance? And finally, based on said analysis, is such an alliance tenable for the future? In asking these questions, this paper seeks to achieve three aims: to understand why both nations place such emphasis on national security and maintenance of the status quo, address how this parallel strategic vision then intrinsically draws the countries to a closer relationship, and prove that the defining strategic and national features of both countries reinforce the necessity of an alliance, both for the present and future.
Both countries suffer from extensive domestic tension, as well as existential threats stemming from both inside their territory and beyond their national borders.
A Similar Narrative? To form a more nuanced understanding of the convoluted Israeli-Jordanian relationship, the reader must first inure themselves with both countries’ defining traits. Israel and Jordan place an extremely intense emphasis on national security. Israel’s security policy priority is more easily reflected on IDF expenditure and activity. Jordanian security principles are not as centered on the armed forces but place greater focus upon the Mukhabarat. In addition to this security emphasis, both countries have a strong element of foreignness that defines their national agenda. The Jewishness of Israel only serves to create friction between her and her neighbors. Similarly,
the underlying tension caused by Hashemite leadership over a non-Hashemite population threatens to be a constant source of domestic discontent, as well as potential for regional conflict. Compounded with their varying degrees of pariah-esque status, both countries also must deal with the ever-present Palestinian question. An understanding of these prevailing themes is crucial to recognizing the nature of the Israeli-Jordanian relationship. For both Israel and Jordan, security is the ultimate factor that influences decision making. Israel’s history has been fraught with strife as its neighbors have sought to “annihilate” the young nation from its very inception in 1948 to the present in the form of a nuclear Iran (Hirschfield). Similarly, as a fledgling monarchy trapped between the regional powers of Iraq and Egypt, Hashemite Jordan has had to face an almost ceaseless barrage of existential threats as well. To counter such threats, Israel and Jordan have actively maintained and improved the strength of their security forces. Israel has found itself surrounded by factions seeking to destabilize its already tenuous position. During the war of independence, “1% of the entire Jewish population” was killed in the conflict (Maoz, 4). This was not only a national catastrophe in the socio-political sphere, but also placed “the economy of the new state…in extremely bad shape” (Maoz, 4). The ensuing costs that this young nation would have to bear were very clearly foreshadowed, and so the invasion of May 14th, 1948 was but a prelude to the years of coming conflict. Understanding this and the constant threat Arab resentment posed to national interests necessi-
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46 tated David Ben-Gurion’s establishment of Israel’s national security conceptions. These conceptions (recognition that “the Arab world is fundamentally hostile towards Israel”, that “the international community is an unreliable ally” and that “Israel’s geography is a major constraint on its ability to fight”) still dictate Israeli foreign policy to this day (Maoz, 7). The continuous fundamental asymmetries between the Arab states and Israel have yet to alter since Ben-Gurion’s security edicts in the late 40s and early 50s. Correspondingly, IDF presence and security emphasis has only grown. Similarly, but perhaps on a more subtle level, the Hashemite Kingdom has ensured that security remains an overarching priority on the national agenda. As another ‘small state’ in the region, Jordan has been constantly caught between the regional machinations of greater powers. The ever-pervasive threat of a foreign nation has forced Jordan to persist with the semblance of a “desire to be all things to all men within the region as well as on the international stage” (Milton-Edwards, 95). However, such a policy can only succeed for so long, and in the case of 1970’s ‘White September’, the Hashemite Kingdom faced a reckoning where its “very survival…was at stake” (Milton-Edwards, 46). Only the initiative of a threatened monarchy and foreign aid saved Hashemite Jordan from collapse. Learning from these experiences, the Jordanian monarchy has used the opportunity of an expelled PLO to continue a process of “national consolidation” (Milton-Edwards, 50). Through this process the monarchy has reshaped the national identity to constantly remind the public of the traumatic events stemming from the post 67’ period, and rein-
forced the importance of security policy. Israel and Jordan’s monarchy also share a semblance of supposed illegitimacy in the region. Israel is the only Jewish state in the region and is surrounded by hostile neighbors. At the same time, the ruling Hashemite monarchy and political elite of Jordan have no geographic ties to the territory they control. They only reign because of their Sherifian lineage and more importantly, historical service as a “fifth column…aiding Britain” in World War I (Garfinkle, 16). While this is a more subtle distinction than security emphasis, further understanding how this analogous outcast mentality plays into their unspoken alliance is crucial. As a monarchy without local ties, Jordan’s Hashemite royalty faces pressure from both domestic forces and from regional neighbors at any given time. The diversity of peoples, “Circassians from the north, Christian and [Muslim] villagers, and…a large Bedouin element” pose an ever shifting equilibrium for the monarchy (Snow, 19). The variance of beliefs and social constructs present the framework for a critical balancing act necessary for national survival. The Hashemite minority leadership and its conservative Bedouin support must manage demographic shifts and strong cultural frictions. This already complex task is further compounded with the regional ambitions of greater powers that use supposed Hashemite illegitimacy as political leverage for discontent. In the civil war of 1970, the newly established Ba’athist Iraq “stationed 12,000 troops inside Jordan”, seeking to destabilize another Hashemite monarchy as they had overthrown their Hashemite rulers just twelve years previously (Milton-Ed-
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47 wards, 49). The lack of local legitimacy has always been an underlying cause for Hashemite concern. Perhaps on a more obvious level is the degree to which Israel is almost universally disliked by the Arab world. Since the first Aliyah and the Balfour Declaration, which sparked “[waves] of violence” throughout the region, Arab disapproval of Jewish presence has been felt (Friedman, 11). The War of Independence, War of Attrition, and Yom Kippur War are all examples of Arab desire to expel the lone Jewish state. This hatred has made itself known in a variety of different manners, all of which ultimately point to the general unfriendliness that Arab states predominantly hold against Israel. One of the greatest similarities between Israel and Jordan is their reliance on foreign aid. Left to survive on their own post-Balfour declaration, Israel formed strategic alliances with France, the United Kingdom, and eventually the United States to safeguard national survival. At the same time, Jordan’s deep historical relationship with the United Kingdom served as a guarantor of financial solvency, military capacity, and to some extent, cast the United Kingdom as a protector of last resort. Of the three aforementioned frameworks shared between Israel and Jordan, the depth of foreign backing may hold the greatest explanatory value for their current relationship. Jordan’s role as a nation with Western support has been a defining feature since its inception. The Hashemite Kingdom and Britain have been intertwined since the UK helped establish the fledgling nation, culminating in the “[formal recognition] of the Emirate of Transjordan” in 1922 by the League of Nations (Milton-
Edwards, 21). Under British and later American guidance, Jordan has maintained a military edge relative to other Arab nations in the form of the Arab Legion and the expertise garnered from joint military exercises with their Western allies. Furthermore, Jordan has multiple free trade agreements with the United States and is the beneficiary of over USD $13.1 billion in aid since 1951 (United). The support which Jordan relies on the United States and Britain cannot be ignored in the realm of foreign policy as it gives their sponsors the power to almost dictate some facets of national policy. However, Jordan’s continued sponsorship by foreign powers pales in comparison to Israel. Since 1945 the United States government has provided Israel “with USD $118 billion in bilateral assistance” (United). This has not only permitted Israel to continue developing its military capacity, but also provides crucial economic growth and is a demonstration of America’s significant “measure of consideration for Israel territorial and security needs” (Susser, 54). The threefold benefits of American aid come with consequences however. As with Jordan, relying on a foreign country inevitably ties Israel to the United States and all the constrictions that entails for security and foreign policy. Understanding that to some extent a foreign country controls the lifeblood of Israel is yet another similarity that the Hashemite Kingdom and Israel share. The Unifying Subtleties Analyzing and addressing the intuitive similarities is not enough to understand why Israel and Jordan have a special relationship. It will take a more nuanced
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48 eye for the observer to understand the key features that actually bring Jordan and Israel into a strategic alliance. In this section, the paper aims to introduce the necessities of the Israeli-Jordanian relationship through three distinct frameworks, all of which stem from the overlapping themes previously mentioned. First, both Israel and Jordan seek to preserve the status quo. Second, a unified effort to solve the question of Palestine is in their best interests. And third, that their shared Western-leaning principles form a basis for greater mutual trust. Israel and Jordan believe preserving the status quo is in their best interests. A recurring theme of Israeli security policy is embodied in the quote, ‘better the devil you know’. For Israeli strategists it is better to live in a world where the enemy is understood than to contend with unknown entities. In terms of the Jordanians, any regional ambitions they possessed were extinguished when King Abdullah was assassinated in 1951. From that point onward, a policy of domestic maintenance was generally preferred over any visions of a greater Transjordan. With status quo as the newly defined unanimous security objective, it is clear why Israel and Jordan are willing allies. With its internal concerns and territorial inadequacies, Jordan’s security policy has been to maintain the status quo as it balances a sensitive domestic equilibrium. Since the first King Abdullah’s acquisition of the East Bank and his ensuing assassination in 1951, the Hashemite monarchy has tried its best to not upset the regional balance of power. Perhaps the clearest example of this operational framework can be seen on display during the Six Day War that pitted the com-
bined Arab armies against Israel. During this conflict the Jordanian Armed Forces generally fought as if they intended to “bail out from the united battle against Israel” (Bligh, 53). And while Egyptian President Nasser successfully coerced King Hussein into this difficult situation, Jordan still “sought as low a profile as domestic politics permitted” (Garfinkle, 51). Here, Jordan was clearly uncomfortable with the prospect of regional power shifts. It is often argued that Hussein wanted no part in the War of 1967 despite the “domestic considerations… [which made it] extremely difficult… to resist Nasser” (Milton-Edwards, 43). Jordanian actions preluding the war, as well as the Jordanian military’s cohesion (or lack thereof) stands to support such a statement. Increasing “abuse” at the hands of Egypt and Syria in the name of Pan-Arabism, compounded with domestic concerns and “the treacherous machinations of inter-Arab political maneuvering” caused by Hussein’s political enemy Nasser, only further endeared the Hashemite monarchy to the status quo (Garfinkle, 52). Passive-aggressive Arab neighbors and domestic crises were the product of change while a relatively peaceful neighbor, Israel, was being left behind. To Jordan, a retained status quo, was and still is to their advantage. Israeli security policy also embraces the status quo because it allows for planning in a region where vast speed of change is the only constant. In addition, Israeli strategy is adverse to change because the status quo allows for formulaic response that typically places Israel at an advantage. If provoked, Israel’s standard reaction is to retaliate with devastating force, thereby remind the region of their military capacity. Similarly, this ingrained
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49 mindset of formulaic victory lends itself to status quo maintenance. Such a phenomenon is best observed in Israel’s role in the Jordan crisis of 1970. At this time, King Hussein launched an offensive against the PLO aimed to “reassert [his] authority over the entire kingdom” (Milton-Edwards, 48). The Jordanian military was on the verge of expelling PLO forces when Syrian troops deployed to support the PLO. At this stage the Jordanian military was fully committed, and the Syrian incursion, “instantly tilted [the balance] in favor of the Fedayeen” (Rubinovitz, 692). The status quo was on the verge of altering, and the possibility of “an almost certainly destabilizing Palestinian regime emerging in Amman” was very real (Rubinovitz, 695). To preserve the Hashemite Kingdom and by proxy, the consistency of the security policy formula, IAF Phantom jets flew “low over the Syrian armored forces” to suggest that “worse might come about if they did not return to Syria” (Rubinovitz, 699). Here too Israel maintained the status quo by protecting its Jordanian neighbor, not purely for the Hashemites’ sake, but to sustain the predictability of their surrounding environment The Palestinian question also naturally prods the Israeli and Jordanian leadership into closer proximity. To some extent, the Hashemite Kingdom and Israel are both arbitrarily constructed nations that must deal with the problem of a displaced populace. Their similar stance on the matter further explains the reasoning behind their special relationship. Israel instinctively does not support any Palestinian bid for power and wishes to continue holding all the cards in the matter. This reasoning is defined in the thought that Palestinian leadership is
generally “a subversive, agitating and disruptive factor” that threatens Israeli national interests (Klieman, 35). This long-term pathology is reflected in Israel’s short-term operations. Here, policy is correspondingly dictated by an overarching reaction to a beacon of Palestinian thought: that “Palestinian-ness by definition is in conflict with Israel’s very being” (Susser, 40). With such an active threat constantly looming, Israel is forced to be on perpetual alert. To further aggravate the already tenuous situation, the historic lack of trust between Palestine and Israel, as well as vocal hostility in the Middle East only intensifies conflict. With the Palestinian presence continuing to be a prevailing issue, Israel has sought to effectively answer the quandary with those who share the problem, namely Jordan. Initial reaction may be that Jordanian relations with the Palestinian population seem significantly better in comparison to Israel’s. But this is not the case as the Palestinian presence in the Hashemite Kingdom has been an ongoing source of domestic tension. The Jordanian monarchy draws its strength from the conservative Bedouin tribes in its southern and western regions. However the influx of Palestinian refugees has potentially shifted the traditional balance of power in their long-term demographic favor. The longevity of rule “through a mix of paternalism and armed force, co-opting a narrow circle of authoritarian loyalists, and manipulating tribal soldiers…loyal to a Sharifian monarch”; the hallmark of Hashemite control has come under question (Moraiwed, 7). Introducing a rapidlygrowing Palestinian populace changes the previously successful equation for Hashemite control. Though the refugee
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50 population is not the threat it was in 1970, the possibility is now always present. The initial dissimilarities between Jordanian and Israeli relations with Palestine are apparent, but more comprehensive scrutiny indicates otherwise. So too must Jordan be alert to the possibilities. Jordan and Israel are aligned in their growing concern with the Palestine question. As established, the prerequisite of foreign support is an essential facet of Israeli and Jordanian policy. Closer inspection reveals that it is not simply this inherent similarity that obligates an alliance. Instead, the influence of Western-leaning principles originating in Western support is the unifying factor between Israel and the Hashemite Kingdom. In a highly conservative pro-Arab regional climate, the Western principles of both Jordanian and Israeli leadership render natural inclinations towards each other inevitable. Jordan’s intimate relationship with the West is best embodied in King Abdullah’s relationship with British General John Bagot Glubb, and the benefits such a relationship provided for the Hashemite Kingdom. Upon his arrival in Transjordan, Glubb “immediately formed a close friendship with [King] Abdullah”, foreshadowing the unique relationship Jordan would establish with the United Kingdom (Snow, 22). Glubb’s first mission was to reform the antiquated national defense force. His ensuing radical transformation of the 850 man army to the Middle East’s most efficient Arab military was but one of the many successes in his long tenure as commander of the Arab Legion (Nowar, 45). Importantly, the more successful Glubb was, the “[firmer]” his relationship became with the royal family (Snow, 24). Trust
in Glubb as a representative of Britain grew to such an extent that he was no longer referred to as General Glubb, but as Glubb Pasha, a mark of respect. His ability to ultimately increase trust and the potential for normalization between Western and Hashemite mindsets may have been his greatest contribution to Jordan as this tendency to normalization is reflected in interactions between
Jordan’s intimate relationship with the West is best embodied in King Abdullah’s relationship with British General John Bagot Glubb, and the benefits such a relationship provided for the Hashemite Kingdom.
low-level Jordanian and Israeli officials. Furthermore, the guidance he provided maintained the “stability” of Jordan in many crises. (Snow, 28). By providing a charismatic image of Western ideology, Glubb Pasha increased the Hashemite monarchy’s inclination to such a mindset and willingness to normalize with foreign entities. Israel’s relationship with the West is deeply ingrained in its foreign policy. After the negative economic impact caused by the wars in 1967 and 1973, “Israel became highly dependent on the United States” (Freilich, 80). This was not only limited to the vast sums of financial backing that Israel sorely needed, but also was in regards to arms sales. The Israeli Air Force was a major recipient of military equipment that ensured its technological superiority. In fact by the War of Attrition, the “introduction [of IAF jets could effectively] remove the threat of war” thanks to the capabilities they pro-
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51 vided (Schlaim, 487). Focusing on the nuances of military capacity continuously reveals Israelâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s superiority in said regard. However, when inspecting the bigger picture it is discovered that such deals reveal a more important finding. Arms deals and financial aid was the product of a distinct American foreign policy choice: to ultimately support Israel over budding Pan-Arabism. While dealing with security policy is not always necessarily a zero sum game, in the specific Israeli relations, an unequivocal proclamation of alliance was necessary. Once again, a unifying theme originating in the national commonality of foreign aid comes to the fore. The isolated reluctance of Jordan to integrate Pan-Arabism, and the fact that Israel was Pan-Arabismâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s sole target further rationalize an exclusive Israeli-Jordanian understanding.
In the ever-changing Middle East, the presence of Jordanâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s Hashemite monarchy and the Jewish state of Israel appear to be two rare constants. The surrounding environment and its influencing factors continue to shift at the torrential rate of Middle East security and foreign policy. Despite this fact, the central themes of Israeli-Jordanian understanding continue to persist. The shared Palestinian question remains unanswered. The dependence on foreign aid and its corresponding influence will only continue. And their regional uniqueness, as a lone Jewish state and a small Western leaning monarchy, is unchanged. The consistency of these persistent themes indicates that the special relationship between Israel and Jordan will remain special.
Does This Bode Well? Based on the commonalities and underlying unifiers of Israel and the Hashemite Kingdom, this paper has sought to elucidate their special relationship. From these combined understandings we attempted to answer the initial questions fundamental to their relationship, and can now attempt to answer the question of whether this alliance is tenable in the long term. The overlapping themes of security emphasis, necessity of external support and the fact that both Jordan and Israel are relatively isolated communities serves to strengthen their bonds. In addition, the fundamentals of alliance are founded in a need for maintenance of security status quo, similar regard for the Palestinian question, as well as Western influence in both nations. The Claremont Journal of International Relations | Fall 2014
52 References Abu Nowar, Maan. The Development of Trans-Jordan: 1929-1939. Reading: Ithaca, 2006. Print. Bligh, Alexander. The Political Legacy of King Hussein. Brighton: Sussex Academic, 2002. Print. Friedman, Isaiah. British Pan-Arab Policy. New Brunswick: Transaction, 2010. Print. Freilich, Charles D. Zion’s Dilemmas. 1st ed. Vol. 1. Ithaca: Cornell UP, 2012. Print. Cornell Studies in Security Affairs. Garfinkle, Adam. Israel and Jordan in the Shadow of War. New York: St. Martin’s, 1992. Print. Handel, Michael I. “The Yom Kippur War and the Inevitablity of Surprise.” International Studies Quarterly 21.3 (1977): 461-502. Print. Klieman, Aaron S. Israel, Jordan, Palestine: The Search for a Durable Peace. Working paper no. 83. London: SAGE Publications, 1981. Print. Maoz, Zeev. Defending the Holy Land: A Critical Analysis of Israrel’s Security & Foreign Policy. Ann Arbor: University of Michigan, 2009. Print. Milton-Edwards, Beverly, and Peter Hinchcliffe. Jordan A Hashemite Legacy. London: Routledge, 2001. Print. Rubinovitz, Ziv. Blue and White ‘Black September’: Israel’s Role in the Jordan Crisis of 1970. Tech. London: Routledge, 2010. Print. Snow, Peter J. Hussein. 1st ed. Vol. 1. London: Barrie & Jenkins, 1972. Print. Susser, Asher. Israel, Jordan, and Palestine: The Two-State Imperative. Waltham: Brandeis UP,2012. Print. United States of America. Congressional Research Service. Washington D.C. Jordan: Background and U.S. Relations. By Jeremy M. Sharp. Library of Congress, 1 Apr. 2013. Web. 15 Dec. 2013. United States of America. Congressional Research Service. Washington D.C. Israel: Background and U.S. Relations. By Jeremy M. Sharp. Library of Congress, 11 Apr. 2013. Web. 15 Dec. 2013.
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La Marea Rosa: The Shift Towards Strong Leftist Leaders in Latin America Chance Kawar | Pitzer ‘17 Chance Kawar is currently a sophomore at Pitzer College where he is pursuing a major in Political Studies and a minor in Spanish. He is particularly interested in international affairs, and plans to study abroad in Ecuador during the coming academic year. Presently, Chance serves as the Sophomore class president and is an active member of the Pitzer College Student Senate. He is orginally from San Diego, California.
Introduction Over the course of the past two decades, many political scientists and economists have observed a dramatic shift to the left in Latin American politics. This finding comes in stark contrast to politics of the most of the 20th century, which seemed to favor more conservative regimes, often with the underlying support of the military, and in some cases the United States and other foreign governments. Beginning in the 1990s, however, many of these regimes began to lose steam. This movement towards leftism, which has come to be referred to as “La Marea Rosa” or “the Pink Tide”, can be attributed to a number of different social, economic, geographical, and cultural factors.
Perhaps one of the most interesting components of this movement is how it has resulted in the emergence of a range of leftist regimes that have each developed their own styles of governance and leadership. Dynamic politicians such as Rafael Correa of Ecuador, Evo Morales of Bolivia, and Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva of Brazil have been able to collectively forge a new era in Latin American politics based on a somewhat softer and more nuanced approach to traditional socialism. Many have asked the question as to how these leaders have had such success, and what their success means for the future of Latin America. In the following report, two specific cases will be examined to answer these questions and to provide insight and context into the much larger picture of how and
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55 why this movement to the left has taken place. The first case will be the regime of Hugo Chavez, who served as president of Venezuela until his death in 2013, at which point his Vice President, Nicolas Maduro, succeeded him. The second case will be the contiguous regimes of Nestor and Cristina Kirchner in Argentina, a power couple who have dominated Argentinian politics for the majority of twenty-first century. These leaders, who emerged at similar times, have noticeable similarities in their governing structures, yet are rooted in different historical and social contexts. Their styles of leadership, which have been respectively coined “Chavismo” and “Kirchnerismo”, have adopted nationalist sentiments and populist policy positions to create a unique identity within the political sphere of Latin America. The cases of both Chavez and the Kirchners’ are interesting in that they demonstrate how strong leaders can truly steer a nation in a new direction if they are capable of using the appropriate tools. Furthermore, each of these regimes has recently undergone significant changes and difficulties that highlight the fluctuating nature of politics in South America. These same challenges provide a unique opportunity to consider the future of the Pink Tide—how far-reaching and longlasting its impact will be in coming years. The following sections will delve into the stories behind these leaders, their respective rises to power in Venezuela and Argentina, and the way in which socio-economic policies sustained their rule. Case 1: Hugo Chavez and the Founding of “Chavismo” in Venezuela Hugo Chavez, born into poverty in rural Venezuela, attended military school as a
young man before embarking on a successful career in the Venezuelan military. During his military service, he was involved in the founding of several clandestine rebel cells aimed at organizing resistance against the right wing regimes who had held power in Caracas. He even went so far as to attempt to orchestrate a coup d’état against then-President Carlos Andrés Pérez, for which he was later jailed. His efforts during these secretive military schemes against the conservative regime was to advocate for a leftist cause that was not as extreme as that of the embattled Communist and Marxist rebels who had been fighting against the Venezuelan military. Ironically, despite his effort to topple the old regime in a coup, it was ultimately a democratic election that catapulted Hugo Chavez into power. In 1999, Chavez was able to run a successful bid for the presidency by putting together a coalition of support from various leftist parties, including MAS (Movement for Socialism), Patria Para Todos (Motherland for All), and the Venezuelan Communist Party. Chavez’s promise of “building a new republic” and taking power away from the old, corrupt upper class resonated with working class Venezuelans who had often been neglected in the political sphere. During the campaign, Chavez and his supporters portrayed him as a man of the people and crafted a populist ‘strongman’ image for him. He promised to implement extensive social and economic reforms, something which proved to be very popular, especially among the disenfranchised middle class, who had undergone a dramatic decrease in standard of living under the previous regimes. As president, Chavez made the enactment
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56 of socialist reforms a priority for his administration. He embraced policies such as land reform, wealth distribution, and economic workplace democratization. Chavez also made a big push to modernize the country by creating programs to tackle social issues such as illiteracy, child education, healthcare, housing, and poverty, resulting in varying degrees of limited success. During his time as president, Chavez faced serious charges of abuse of power, including corruption, human rights violations, and suppression of the media and freedom of speech. Perhaps one of the most defining parts of his legacy, however, has to do with his handling of the Venezuelan economy. Chavez was a big proponent of the extraction and production of Venezuelan fossil fuel resources, and many have noted that the Venezuelan economy has become overly dependent on this single commodity industry. While oil has proved to be a lucrative commodity in the short term, that lack of diversification has risky implications and has created a rather weak and unstable economic future for the country. When Hugo Chavez died in 2013, his Vice President, Nicolas Maduro, ascended to the presidency. Maduro does not have a military background like Chavez did, but instead was a prominent trade union leader before getting involved in politics. As president, he has enacted several key pieces of legislation, most notably the “Safe Homeland” program that created increases in police and military deployments in an attempt to crackdown on crime throughout the country. Earlier this year, however, he faced massive protests against the government by citizens who are frustrated with high levels of
crime, violence, inflation, and food scarcity. Maduro attempted to dismiss the protests as violent and disorderly mobs fueled by the wealthy elite class who want to remove him from power undemocratically. He has arrested many of the movement’s leaders and cracked down using the military, despite objections from human rights groups and international organizations. Although these protests have mostly subsided for the time being, there is no doubt that the present marks a crucial moment in for Venezuela and the Maduro government, and depends on how he continues to address the public’s concerns. Case 2: The Kirchner Dynasty and Neo“Peronism” in Argentina Nestor Kirchner grew up in Argentina with a comfortable middle-class upbringing as the son of two Europeans. As a young man he was a political activist involved in pro-Peron movements, and studied law at a prestigious Argentinian university where he met his wife, Christina Fernandez. He went on to have a successful career in local and provincial politics, serving as a mayor and a governor. The Kirchners were members of the Judicialist party, which was created in the legacy of former President Juan Peron. The Judcialist party has traditionally held a centrist ideology, staking out a moderate position between the perceived extremes of both communism and capitalism. However, after the passing of Peron, his followers were left to sort out this broad ideology. Carlos Menem served as president of Argentina from 1989 until he was forced out of office 10 years later. Although Menem was a member of the Judicialist Party, his style of governance
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57 favored right-wing policies, particularly economic neoliberalism. During his time in office, Menem faced significant problems related to extremely high levels of inflation, an economic recession, and widespread unemployment. He was able to mitigate inflation somewhat successfully with an increase in foreign direct investment, but these economic issues caused him to remain largely unpopular among the working class. By the end of the two terms of Menem, most Argentineans had had enough of right wing politics. It was around this time that the Kirchners would enter national politics, offering a new face to Peronism. Unlike Menem, Nestor Kirchner was elected president in 2003 on a progressive platform, and associated himself with the left wing of the Judicialist Party. As president, Kirchner took unprecedented—yet popular—steps to reform the Argentinean government through increased transparency and accountability. He began a process of dismantling the traditional “establishment” by retiring scores of military commanders and generals perceived as corrupt due to the Dirty War, and reconfiguring the Supreme Court to include more ideologically liberal justices. He aditionally reversed many of Menem’s neoliberal policies, while giving more power to unions and workers, instituting a new minimum wage, and renegotiating the nation’s large debts with the International Monetary Fund (IMF). Cristina Fernandez Kirchner, who successfully won her bid to replace her husband as the party nominee, was recently re-elected to a second term and has continued down this path of more left-wing and progressive politics. She takes care to meticulously craft her public image, and
often stylizes herself as the contemporary of the beloved former Argentinian first lady, Eva Peron. More recently, she has also pursued socially progressive policies, including pushing for increased access to birth control and the legalization of samesex marriage. Despite some criticism, she has proven herself to be a powerful and capable political force in her own right, and has skilfully maintained her position of power even after the death of her husband in 2010. Causal Factors and Future Implications of the Rise Leftist Regimes The two cases which have been examined are key examples of how leftist movements have swept dynamic and effective leaders into power. While one ought to be careful when painting with broad strokes, there are some apparent factors which allowed for the “Pink Tide” movement to take place. These factors are necessary to examine in order to have a fuller context for understanding the movement and the challenges it faces. In examining why the Pink Tide occurred, many people have observed that the timing of this phenomenon likely played a significant role in prompting the movement. Indeed, the end of the Cold War in the early 1990s marked a new direction for international politics; one in which countries were no longer pressured to choose a side in the polarized world of the Soviet Union and the United States. During the Cold War, leftist regimes in Latin America were often boxed into associating with and accepting radical policies and positions of the Soviet Union. The collapse of the USSR afforded leftist movements the opportunity to rebrand themselves as something softer and more palatable to the Latin American electorate. Further-
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58 more, they had more institutional credibility since they no longer could be dismissed as “puppet regimes” of the Soviet Union. It seems likely, in retrospect, that the collapse of the Soviet Union cleared the way for the establishment of a new wave of leftist regimes in Latin America. However the spark for this trend is seemingly linked to the increase in democratic processes in national elections. As more countries in the region gained access to vote in fair and free elections, millions of people who were frustrated by decades of inequality, poverty, and corruption, had the opportunity to voice their concerns at the poll. This was certainly the case for Argentina, who still had a bad taste in their mouth from the dictatorial “National Reorganization Process” and the right-wing tendencies of Carlos Menem. It was also the case for Venezuela who had been governed for many decades mostly by leaders of the right-wing Acción Democrática (Democratic Action Party), which was widely discredited for rampant corruption and high levels of poverty in the nation. Democracy offered Argentineans, Venezuelans, and other Latin Americans the opportunity to change course. Democracy, however, may prove to be a double edged sword for many of the leftist regimes in Latin America. Most of the current leaders were elected to high office by promising to make good on centuries’ old problems of poverty and inequality among the masses of their respective countries. Some Latin American leaders are struggling to do that, and are now realizing that many people aren’t satisfied with the progress that has heretofore been made, or in some cases view it as being too radical. In an age of social media web-
sites and dramatically increased access to news and information, the citizens of Latin American countries are undoubtedly more likely to hold politicians accountable to their promises and demand an end to blatant corruption and empty rhetoric. For a leader like Nicolas Maduro, who is attempting to fill the large shoes of his idolized predecessor, this problem is all too apparent. Many have wondered if he has the same charismatic persona that Chavez possessed in Venezuela, as he battles to discredit and quell the massive protests and fend off attacks from his opponents. The burden now rests on his shoulders to prove he can reenergize the national economy and continue to reduce poverty while providing the social benefits that many in the working class feel they deserve. It seems that this may prove to be a difficult task for Maduro, who will not be able to ride the tailcoats of his predecessor forever, and must hold together a broad coalition of support if he hopes to continue to receive electoral power. The same is true for Cristina Kirchner (to a somewhat lesser extent), who must honor the legacy of her husband and Peronism, while simultaneously preserving the legitimacy of her own presidency. She has faced serious questions regarding her treatment of the press and her tolerance toward opposition voices. Many have accused Ms. Kirchner of enacting laws that have been selectively used to suppress or antagonize media outlets that are unfriendly to her. A number of economic issues, such as accusations of “crony capitalism” and the problem of high inflation, have long plagued the country despite her repeated dismissal of such problems. In 2012, opposition to her handling of foreign currency exchange and question-
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59 able revenue collection agency practices culminated in a massive street protest is Buenos Aires. She will likely have to address these issues going forward if she wants to maintain credibility and success in future elections. Conclusion The problems which Latin America faces, as a whole, are undeniably challenging, mostly because they are rooted so deeply in the society and culture of the region. While there is not a “quick fix” to issues like poverty and inequality, Latin Americans should expect their political leaders to increase transparency, accountability, democracy, equality, and judicial fairness. The new millennium marks a pivotal moment in Latin America’s history. Leftist leaders like Chavez, Maduro, and the Kirchners have gained power through the will of the people, not by the desire of the traditional land-owning elite or the force of the military. They would be wise to continue to preserve the institution of democracy for future generations of Latin Americans.
should not be surprised if they begin forcing them out if and when they fail to be accountable to the needs of the people. It is difficult to predict what the future holds for Latin America, but one can be sure that this embrace of populist leftism in the region will not soon fade away. Working and middle class citizens have been disenfranchised and neglected by right-wing, neo-liberal, and often nondemocratic regimes for decades, and it would seem as though they are confident about taking the region in a radically new direction than that of the past century. The question remains, however, of how successful this new wave of leftist politicians and leaders will be in making positive economic, political, and social changes for the region in coming years.
For perhaps the first time in several hundred years of history, it would seem that the future of Latin America, both economically and politically speaking, lies in the hands of the average middle- and working-class citizens. Without a doubt, the most critical deduction one can make from ‘the Pink Tide’ of Latin American politics, is that emergence of democracy has had a resoundingly powerful and dramatic effect on the politics of the region. Especially in this increasingly globalized world, leaders have had to become more responsive to the sentiments of the public. In much the same way that Latin Americans voted in these leftist leaders in, one The Claremont Journal of International Relations | Fall 2014
60 References “Argentina under the Kirchners: Socialism for Foes, Capitalism for Friends.” The Economist. Buenos Aires, 25 Feb. 2010. Web. Baker, Andy. “The Latin American Left’s Mandate: FreeMarket Policies and Issue Voting in New Democracies.” World Politics 63.1 (2011): 43-77. ProQuest. Web. Brennan, James P. Peronism and Argentina. Wilmington, DE: SR, 1998. Print. Cannon, Barry. Hugo Chávez and the Bolivarian Revolution: Populism and Democracy in a Globalised Age. Manchester, UK: Manchester UP, 2009. Print. Castañeda, Jorge G. Utopia Unarmed: The Latin American Left after the Cold War. New York: Knopf, 1993. Print. Clairmont, Frederic F. “Hugo Chavez: The Fall and Rise.” Economic and Political Weekly 37.19 (2002): 1797-799. JSTOR. Web. Ciccariello-Maher, George, and Jeff St. Andrews. We Created Chávez: A People’s History of the Venezuelan Revolution. Durham, NC: Duke UP, 2013. Print. Sidicaro, Ricardo. “The Peronist Party and Kirchner Governments.” Nueva Sociedad: Democracia Y Politica En America Latina 234 (2011): 74-94. ProQuest. Web. “South America’s Leftward Sweep.” BBC News, London. 2 Mar. 2005: Web. Weyland, Kurt Gerhard., Raúl L. Madrid, and Wendy Hunter. Leftist Governments in Latin America: Successes and Shortcomings. Cambridge: Cambridge UP, 2010. Print. World Report 2012: Venezuela. Report. New York City: Human Rights Watch, 2012. Print. Wylde, Christopher. “Continuity or Change? Political Economics of Post-Crisis Argentina and the Nestor Kirchner Administration.” ICONOS: Revista De Ciencias Sociales 43 (2012): 109-33. Print.
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The Claremont Journal of International Relations | Fall 2014