Global Brief_Fall 2015 by Global Brief Magazine/Institute for 21st Century Questions

When to Act and When to Look the Other Way

EDITORS’ BRIEF

How the instinct that says that one cannot just do nothing before horror must be balanced against the quiet prudence of incrementalism – even minimalism.

COVER ILLUSTRATION: CARL WIENS

the theme of Aboriginal grand strategy – this time in the fraught aftermath of the recent summary report of Canada’s Truth and Reconciliation Commission. The University of Ottawa’s Peter Jones assesses the future of Track Two diplomacy in the wake of the recent Iran nuclear deal. And Fady Fadel of the American Business School of Paris and Cynthia Eid of the Université de Montréal study the state of Lebanon and ask whether that fragile country can continue to be largely exempt from the civil war in neighbouring Syria, and indeed the bloodshed in many parts of that region. (We are in the Lebanese Cabinet Room to observe Beirut’s rubbish crisis.) In Tête à Tête,GB discusses the Einsatzgruppen trial of WW2 and the crime of aggression with the aforementioned Benjamin Ferencz. GB also picks the strategic brain of India’s top geokrat, C. Raja Mohan, of the Indian Express paper and New Delhi’s Observer Research Foundation. In Query, the LSE’s Christopher Coker explains why the instrument of war remains a central part of international life in this early new century. Frédéric Charillon of the French Institut de Recherches Stratégiques de l’École militaire depicts the strategic path forward for Paris, London and Berlin – Europe’s leading middle-power capitals. In Nez à Nez, the aforementioned Michael Cotey Morgan is back with us, facing off against Wolfgang Krieger of the University of Marburg on the extent of the West’s obligations to Syria’s war refugees. In The Definition, GB examines the likely impact of the new Sustainable Development Goals on Africa (in particular). Osgoode Hall Law School’s Obiora Okafor, former IMF Africa hand François Boutin-Dufresne, and Cheikh Anta Diop University’s Abdoul Aziz Mbaye enlighten us. In Strategic Futures, GB Managing Editor Sam Sasan Shoamanesh, former US Arms Control and Disarmament Agency chief Thomas Graham Jr., and also Ephraim Kam of Tel-Aviv’s Institute for National Security Studies look at the future of the Middle East in the wake of the Iranian nuclear deal. In Situ reports come to us from TEC de MonterreyQueretaro’s Luis Escobedo in Lima, Peru, as well as from Socialist Party of Catalonia policy adviser David Lizoain in Madrid, Spain. George Elliott Clarke, Toronto’s poet laureate, continues to hold the pen in Epigram. He closes out our Fall 2015 book. Enjoy your Brief. | GB

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ichael Cotey Morgan perhaps said it best in GB’s inaugural issue in 2009 when he wrote that one of the great paradoxes of international affairs is the notion that a small war can sometimes issue in a larger, better peace, while a bad peace can issue in terrible war and bloodshed. And yet, surely, the better human instinct is to peace. All that about the path to hell and good intentions (and good people)… As the grand champion of modern international criminal justice Benjamin Ferencz tells us in this issue, the Holocaust in WW2 could not have been stopped with the mechanisms and instruments of international affairs available at the time. It could only have been stopped through even greater bloodshed – which is what indeed ensued (and not for the purpose of stopping the Holocaust, of course). Have our instruments become more efficient today? Even if there is greater efficacy in these instruments (far from apparent at this time of writing), can different countries and parties see them as serving a common cause? Note that, while leading Western universities have by now graduated hundreds of PhDs specializing in the Responsibility to Protect doctrine, the universities of the former Soviet space have probably not graduated a single one in this field. The Western graduates anchor their moral and strategic imagination in 1994 – year of the Rwandan genocide (why did we not do anything?). For the Russian (and Ukrainian and Belarusian alike), 1994 is – wait for it – Chechnya. Rwanda does not make the top five. To do or not to do – that is the question. And what to do, of course. Michael Byers of the University of British Columbia tops this issue in the One Pager position, arguing that, Russo-Western tensions notwithstanding, Arctic cooperation remains – for now – the dominant game for all Arctic states. In the lead Feature, John Kay of the Financial Times and Jesus College, Oxford, explains why our financial and fiscal crises are increasingly inevitable, and makes the case for deep simplification of the world’s financial sector. GB Editor-in-Chief Irvin Studin re-examines the still very relevant protective mission of Israel – now almost 70 years old – in respect of the Jews, and shows how sustaining this mission will become ever more difficult as the Jewish state continues to tick over well beyond the 60-year shelflife of most modern states. Douglas Sanderson of the University of Toronto’s Faculty of Law is back to reprise

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EDITOR-IN-CHIEF & PUBLISHER Irvin Studin

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D E PA R T M E N T S

MANAGING EDITOR Sam Sasan Shoamanesh ART DIRECTOR Louis Fishauf ASSOCIATE EDITOR Michael Barutciski ASSISTANT EDITOR Marie Lavoie

EDITORS’ BRIEF. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 1 ONE PAGER

Michael Byers | Arctic cooperation endures – for now. . . . . . . . . . . 5

SENIOR EDITOR & ASSISTANT PUBLISHER

Jaclyn Volkhammer

IN SITU

SENIOR EDITOR Milos Jankovic

Luis Escobedo | Peru’s racial preoccupations. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 6

JUNIOR EDITORS

David Lizoain | Spain after the Greek crisis . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 38

Patrick Baud, Navdeep Johal, Yves Guillaume A. Messy, Misha Munim,

TÊTE À TÊTE

Ryan Nichols, Zach Paikin

Benjamin Ferencz | Ending war as instrument . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 8

WEB DESIGN Dolce Publishing

C. Raja Mohan | Can New Delhi play beyond its region? . . . . . . . . 34

PRINTING RJM Print Group ADVISORY COUNCIL

Sam Mizrahi, Don Ferencz, André Beaulieu, Tim Coates, David Dewitt, Paul Evans, Drew Fagan, Dan Fata, Margaret MacMillan

QUERY Christopher Coker | Why is the world (still) at war? . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 12

Frédéric Charillon | Quel rôle pour les puissance moyennes?. . . . . . 52 IN THE CABINET ROOM Dusan Petricic | Lebanon and rubbish governance . . . . . . . . . . . . . 45

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THE DEFINITION

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Michael Cotey Morgan vs. Wolfgang Krieger War refugees and the rest of the world. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 56

“For Africa, the new Sustainable Development Goals…” . . . . . . . . 60 STRATEGIC FUTURES “After the Iran deal, the Middle East…”. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 62 EPIGRAM George Elliott Clarke Considering John Brown by W.E.B. Du Bois. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 64

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F E AT U RES

ON CRISES – MECHANICS AND RESOLUTION Why the financial sector must at last be tamed and simplified BY JOHN KAY

REFLECTIONS ON THE JEWISH QUESTION Why and how Israel will need to work hard to make it through this new century BY IRVIN STUDIN

ABORIGINAL GRAND STRATEGY How Canada will return to its historic past of co-equality among the races and cultures BY DOUGLAS SANDERSON

QUEL AVENIR POUR LE LIBAN? Le pays oscille entre un échiquier régional, un Printemps arabe non abouti et une résilience interne «miraculeuse» PAR FADY FADEL

TRACK TWO DIPLOMACY The Iran nuclear deal was Track One. But its roots are Track Two. So whither Track Two in this new century? BY PETER JONES

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Arctic Cooperation Endures – For Now

ONE PAGER

Why this remains the rational course for Arctic states BY MICHAEL BYERS

boycotted a meeting of a task force on black carbon in response to “Russia’s illegal occupation.” However, when announcing the boycott, Ottawa added: “Canada will continue to support the important work of the Arctic Council.” Canada did not boycott any further meetings. The Senior Arctic Officials continue to meet.The work of the task force on scientific cooperation, co-chaired by the US, Russia and Sweden, endures. Russia supports the US programme for its two-year chairmanship of the Arctic Council. Clearly, when analyzing the impact of a crisis on international relations, we should differentiate between different regions, issues and capabilities. For instance, the breakdown of NATO-Russia cooperation has little significance in the Arctic. Neither Finland nor Sweden is a member of NATO, and neither Canada nor the US allows the organization to operate in its northern regions. Similarly, as Robert Papp, the US Special Representative for the Arctic, said in July of this year, were it not for Russia’s actions elsewhere, its military activities in the Arctic would be easy to view “as legitimate buildups” aimed at search and rescue and security. The Arctic states themselves have decided to treat the region separately. As the New York Times reported, the Arctic Ocean fisheries agreement “appeared to signal a desire to not let the broader disputes derail cooperation in the Arctic.” Indeed, cooperation is the only rational way to address challenges such as search and rescue in a vast region with difficult weather. It also protects the position of the Arctic states as the dominant actors in the region. UNCLOS privileges the Arctic states by assigning all of the region’s continental shelves to them, and does so in a manner that non-Arctic states have to accept – because they benefit from the same provisions off their own coastlines. Consensus decision-making in the Arctic Council gives Russia the equivalent of a veto, preserving its influence even as its population and economy decline. The Arctic is an immense region, and while Russia dominates half of it geographically, it needs more than size to ensure its continued circumpolar relevance. Of course, future developments could cause cooperation to break down. A national leader fighting to stay in power could provoke an Arctic crisis to generate domestic support. An armed conflict between Russia and NATO in Ukraine would be difficult to contain. But for the moment, the Arctic is being treated separately. | GB

Michael Byers holds the Canada Research Chair in Global Politics and International Law at the University of British Columbia. He is the author of International Law and the Arctic.

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n 2014, it seemed that Arctic cooperation might break down after Russia’s annexation of Crimea. Military exercises between Russia and NATO states were suspended. Russian flights near the airspaces of NATO countries increased, as did NATO flights near Russian airspace. Russia moved troops northward and sanctions were adopted by the US, EU, Canada and Norway, including against Russian Arctic offshore oil. Yet search and rescue cooperation was unaffected. In December 2014, Russia requested US assistance when a South Korean trawler sank in the Bering Sea. In June 2015, Norway and Russia conducted a joint search and rescue exercise. A tabletop exercise involving all eight Arctic states is planned for this fall, followed by an operational exercise. Fisheries cooperation is ongoing. In October 2014, Norway and Russia agreed on quotas in the Barents Sea. Nine months later, Canada, Denmark, Norway, Russia and the US signed a fisheries agreement for the high seas ‘doughnut hole’ in the Arctic Ocean. Cooperation continues on the allocation of continental shelves beyond 200 nautical miles from shore, following a science-based process under the UN Convention on the Law of the Sea (UNCLOS). When Denmark filed an unexpectedly large submission in December 2014 that included the entire Lomonosov Ridge, Russia responded that it “was well aware of the Danish side’s plans” and would “continue to cooperate on this issue.” In August of this year, Russia filed a submission that did not include the entire Lomonosov Ridge. Canada is following the same process. In December 2013, it filed a submission concerning the continental shelf off Atlantic Canada. Although the Arctic Ocean portion of the submission was postponed – at the instruction of Prime Minister Stephen Harper, to allow scientists to collect data around the North Pole – the continued focus on data proves that Canada, too, remains committed to UNCLOS. As the trend toward less sea-ice continues, so too does cooperation on Arctic shipping. In 2014, the Russian Academy of Science’s Akademik Sergey Vavilov was used in Canada’s search for the lost ships of the 19th century Franklin expedition. Foreign cargo vessels continue to use Russia’s Northern Sea Route, and a new ‘Polar Code’ has just been adopted at the International Maritime Organization, supported by all Arctic states. At first, it seemed the Arctic Council might be caught up in the Ukraine crisis. In April 2014, Canada

Peru’s Racial Preoccupations

IN SITU

Can the major parties in next year’s election break the back of one of the country’s most stubborn afflictions? LUIS ESCOBEDO reports from Lima

P Luis Escobedo is Visiting Lecturer in the Department of International Relations and Humanities at the Monterrey Institute of Technology (ITESM), Campus Queretaro,

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Mexico.

eru is not usually associated with racism. But when we see that 75 percent of the 69,280 victims of the political conflict during the 1980s and 1990s, as reported by the Peruvian Truth and Reconciliation Commission, were indigenous people of Quechua, Aymara or Amazonian origins, one may legitimately wonder. The persistence and flourishing of racism in Peru are in fact a direct consequence of a national structure in which racist discourse and practices are perceived as normal and natural. If the theorist David Goldberg writes that the modern state is racial because it is “intimately involved in the reproduction of national identity, the national population, labour and security in and through the articulation of race, gender, and class[,]” then Peru is a racial state. Peruvian society and the Peruvian state and media participate in the manufacture of the nation following an ideal racial model: capitalist, urban, limeño (referring to Lima, the capital city), Western, Spanishspeaking and white. This model is acknowledged as ideal because it is believed to serve ‘progress.’ What is the Peruvian state’s understanding of ‘progress’? Answer: high scores on economic indicators in particular – GDP, trade balance, and central bank reserves – and on the Human Development Index (HDI) more generally. In the name of progress, Peruvians undergo coercive or consensual formation and transformation in order to become ideal citizens. Should they fail to do so, they are excluded, isolated, and even eliminated. In culturally diverse countries like Peru, this framework necessarily has racist implications. The next general election will take place in April of next year. Opinion polls show that Keiko Fujimori, Pedro Kuczynski and Alan Garcia already enjoy the support of more than half of the Peruvian population. Racially tainted incidents have plagued these and other potential candidates with little national discussion or reflection. Keiko Fujimori, the daughter of former president Alberto Fujimori (in office between 1990 and 2000, and convicted for human rights abuses) and leader of the centre-right Fuerza Popular (‘Popular Force’), currently leads the polls even though many questions remain unanswered in respect of the compulsory sterilization programme purportedly applied without women’s consent under her father’s regime. The victims of that programme were largely Quechua-speaking women from economically deprived rural areas. Of course, the Fujimoris are a Peruvian family of

Japanese origin. And yet not every racial or ethnic group in Peru is subject to the same social exclusion. Peruvians of Asian origin are, to be sure, the target of mockery and are generally excluded from advertisements related to aesthetic beauty. However, a 2007 study by psychologists in the Pontifical Catholic University of Peru (PUCP) found that Peruvians of Asian origin tended to be associated with politeness, honesty, trustworthiness, intelligence, competence, and general success. By contrast, the levity with which the sterilization programme is today viewed by many Peruvians suggests a latent tolerance of human rights violations against indigenous people (or poor people) in the name of progress. Kuczynski, the leader of the Peruanos Por El Kambio (Peruvians For Change) party, is an AmericanPeruvian dual citizen who supports free-trade agreements and mining interests. He is currently second in the polls. He has publicly stated that Andean people tend to flout rules and cheat on contracts, and opt for the nationalization of industries as a consequence of diminished cerebral oxygen counts in the highlands. The underlying message from Kuczynski is an abiding Peruvian skepticism about the value of the participation of andinos in political and economic decision-making (see the Feature article by Douglas Sanderson at p. 26). Garcia, the leader of centre-left Alianza Popular Revolucionaria Americana (American Popular Revolutionary Alliance), is legitimated largely by the amnesia of his compatriots. Peruvians seem to have forgotten about the 2009 political crisis during Garcia’s second presidency (2006 to 2011), as well as his tumultuous first presidency (1985 to 1990). In June 2009, faced with protests by indigenous people from the Amazon rainforest in opposition to oil development, Garcia declared a state of emergency and sent in the military. The death toll was 23 police officers – plus one missing – and 10 indigenous people. Three months before the incident, Garcia had suggested publicly that Peru was a sad and backward country because, as an Andean nation “where indigenous people still grew coca plants[,]” Peruvians are marked by “low racial and genetic” capacity. The current president, Ollanta Humala, has over the last year had to reckon with close to 600 social conflicts. These conflicts typically involve indigenous and farming communities. The most violent conflicts have taken place in the Peruvian Andes. Among these, the Tia Maria conflict has perhaps most prominently betrayed many of the racist undertones

PHOTOGRAPH: THE CANADIAN PRESS / AP / MARTIN MEJIA

are taken not from a list of medal winners, but from a roster of gunshot and lynching victims. Even as racism pervades the Peruvian state and Peruvian society, there are laws on the books to combat it. State institutions like the Ministry of Culture actively engage in projects and campaign against racism. For example, the Alerta Contra el Racismo (Alert Against Racism) campaign dis-

seminates academic and newspaper articles and runs a mobile phone application to report cases of racism. The media also play their part, occasionally exposing significant cases of racist discrimination in the exclusive clubs of Lima. Some members of civil society, too, have been energetic in the fight – for instance, in the campaign against racial segregation on Peruvian beaches. There is still much to be done. Racism in Peru is a complex phenomenon. It needs to be addressed systematically and over the long run. The state should start by making the fight against racism a national policy that pervades all public and private institutions, and radiates to the whole of society. This should go hand in hand with the development of an educational system that is respectful of Peru’s cultural diversity – not bringing Lima to the Andes or the Andes to Lima, but making these and other spaces equally valuable, while respecting their cultural differences (once again, see the Feature article by Douglas Sanderson at p. 26). This same educational system must begin to tell a better story about the definitions of ‘progress’ that would better serve all Peruvians in their great internal variety. More bluntly still, perhaps the election of a new government in Lima – starting with next year’s – should begin to turn more on the ability of national leadership candidates to change the systemic dynamics that allow racism to persist and flourish in Peru. If the world boycotted South African products during apartheid, should it not be at least cognizant of a theatre where racist ideology is just as injurious, even if less explicit? | GB

Farmers opposed to the Tia Maria open-pit mining project in their city clash with riot police in Cocachacra, Peru, May 2015.

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of Peruvian society. When the Mexican firm Southern Copper Corporation intended to start investing this year in the production of copper in the province of Islay, farming communities started a strike, claiming that copper production could damage an environment that was better suited to agriculture. When the violence escalated in March, President Humala declared a state of emergency in Islay. After the presidential decision, the conflict became increasingly racialized in the media and public discourses. For example, El Comercio and Correo, two high-circulation Peruvian newspapers, excluded news related to Tia Maria from their ‘Economia’ sections and instead included such news in the ‘Regiones’ and ‘Nacional’ sections, respectively. Some of the most common terms used by Correo in its ‘Nacional’ section were variations of the Spanish words for ‘crime,’ ‘wounded,’ ‘death’ or ‘dengue fever.’ In this way, Tia Maria was no longer represented or seen as an economic issue, but rather as an issue mostly associated with anything happening en provincial – away from the capital city and urban areas – and also with crime and disease. Images also matter. On one side in Tia Maria, we see agitated farmers, indigenous people, police and soldiers, surrounded by rocks, fire, blood, weapons, sticks, balaclavas and smoke. On the other side, we see calm and well-groomed individuals surrounded by microphones, chairs, tables, papers and glasses of water. The imagery makes clear that the first camp consists of the troublemakers, while the second has the peacemakers. A few weeks after the end of the 2013 Bolivarian Games, the cover of the gossip magazine ¡Hola! Peru featured seven Peruvian gold-medal winners. Of course, Peru had won 61 gold medals in the Games. All of the seven winners on the cover were white (some blonde), attractive young people, holding court in what appeared to be an exclusive club. The first and last names of the seven were written in such a way that readers could not know which face belonged to which name. But there was, to be sure, a noticeable pattern among the names: more than half were not Spanish or native-Peruvian last names, and the remaining Spanish last names were uncommon in Peru. Instead, the last names Fiol, Cuglievan, Cuba, Winder, Tudela, McFarlane and Zimmermann were used to fit the narrative and key themes of the magazine – fashion, beauty, gourmet and design – rather than to celebrate Peru’s achievements in the Games. Tia Maria, too, includes a set of last names and images that fit a particular narrative – although this time the narrative is crime, conflict and disease. Photographs of farmers, indigenous people, police and soldiers are labelled with Quechua, Aymara and very common Spanish last names: among others, Mamani, Quispe, Vilca, Herrera, Lopez, Apaza and Chura. These names

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The biggest step forward from the Nuremberg trials was the condemnation of aggressive war as the supreme international crime – because all of the other crimes are committed during war.

PHOTOGRAPH: COURTESY OF BENJAMIN FERENCZ

Ending War as Instrument One of the founding fathers of modern international criminal justice holds court with GB

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Conversation with BENJAMIN FERENCZ

GB: What was the Einsatzgruppen trial about at Nuremberg?

Benjamin Ferencz was the chief prosecutor of the Einsatzgruppen trial at Nuremberg. He is a lifetime advocate for the international rule of law and the establishment of an International Criminal Court.

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BF: During the course of WW2, the US army recognized my talent as a Harvard law graduate who had done research for a professor on a book about war crimes. I knew everything about war crimes, so they made me a private in the artillery. It was in that capacity that I landed on the beaches of Normandy. I fought in every battle until the final Battle of the Bulge. As we approached Germany, we began receiving reports of major crimes. President Roosevelt together with Stalin and Churchill announced that there were going to be war crimes trials. Of course, the US army knew nothing about war crimes trials. It knew about conduct unbecoming an officer and a gentleman, and about desertion, but it had never heard about crimes against humanity, or indeed about aggression as a crime. One day I was told to report to General Patton’s headquarters. I was sent to the judge advocate section, where I met a colonel who told me that my name had been forwarded to him from Washington, and that there had been an order to set up a war crimes branch. I believe that I was the first man in the US army to deal with war crimes. This was still a long time before the Einsatzgruppen came along. When the war ended, I went home. I did not want to have any part of Germany at all, as my assignment had involved going into the concentration camps as they were being liberated and collecting evidence before it was destroyed. We got to Buchenwald and then a whole stream of other camps as the army advanced. My job was to get into my jeep, head for the area, and find the tank commander in charge. I would say to the commander: “I need 10 men immediately. Surround the office. Nobody gets in or out without my permission.” We would go in and seize the documents that were there, including the death registers indicating how many transports had arrived and from where, how many people were killed, the reasons for the deaths, and so on. We assembled page after page of people who had been murdered. We found out, through the documentation, who was the commander of each camp, and who else worked there. The SS, for their part, were fleeing the camps, and the inmates were chasing after them – that is,

those inmates who could still move, including the many Russian and French prisoners. This was total chaos – disease, rats everywhere, dysentery, diarrhea. Get in, get your evidence, get out of there, and move on to the next camp. That was the atmosphere. That was the war. I did not know anything about the Einsatzgruppen, and had never heard of them. After the war, I received a telegram from the Pentagon. I went to Washington, where I was interviewed by a colonel by the name of Mickey Marcus, who later became famous because he was promoted to general. He eventually joined the Israeli army and was killed by a sentry because he did not know the password. Marcus wanted to hire me to go back to Germany. In Washington, I was intercepted by Colonel Telford Taylor (future professor of law at Columbia and also at Yeshiva University in New York). He had been assigned by Justice Robert Jackson and President Truman to head up a number of subsequent trials against a broad spectrum of German society to try to answer the question: why did all of these civilized people get involved in all of these mass murders? We ended up planning trials for the doctors who performed medical experiments, the industrialists who were working people to death, the lawyers and judges who were perverting the law by sentencing people to death, the diplomats who were lying all around the world about what Germany was doing, the SS – of course – and also for the generals who participated in these mass murders. In total, we planned 12 new trials. My first assignment – now back in Germany – was to collect evidence for these 12 trials, because if you have the suspects and you have no evidence, you have nothing. If you have the evidence and you do not have the suspects in custody, then you also have nothing. The job required me to know who the suspects were, organize about 50 researchers to go into the rarest German archives, the foreign ministry, the SS, the Gestapo, and so on, and to see what evidence we could extract to use in court to convict suspects of specific, known international crimes. One of my researchers came in and, holding a stack of big loose leaf folders, said: “Look what I found.” Those were the daily ‘Reports from the Eastern Front’ – a very innocuous appellation. The reports were daily chronicles sent from the front,

He had been assigned by Justice Robert Jackson and President Truman to head up a number of subsequent trials against a broad spectrum of German society to try to answer the question: why did all of these civilized people get involved in all of these mass murders?

back to Gestapo headquarters in Berlin. These dispatches were assembled and bound at headquarters. Ninety-nine copies were then circulated to various other branches of the German government. The daily reports detailed how many Jews had been murdered by the Einsatzgruppen – German death squads that went from city to city, and town to town, across the western part of the Soviet Union. The reports never used the word ‘murdered,’ but rather euphemisms like ‘eliminated,’ ‘disposed of,’ ‘evacuated,’ and ‘moved.’ Each daily report specified the name of the officer in charge, the place and time of the killings, the body count, and the names of those who transmitted and also received the report. I took a few of these reports and flew down from Berlin to Nuremberg. In Nuremberg, I said to Taylor that we had to put on a new trial. Taylor reluctantly agreed – as the Pentagon had already fixed the number of trials, budget and lawyers assigned – on the condition that I take responsibility for the conduct of this trial. So I became the chief prosecutor in what was called the Einsatzgruppen case. It was, in fact, the biggest murder trial in human history. I could prove and I charged 22 defendants, selected by me on the basis of their education and rank, with the murder in cold blood of more than a million people. I rested my case without calling a single witness, because witness testimony is fallible and I did not need fallible testimony. Instead, I had the best testimony available – top-secret contemporaneous documents (the daily reports from the eastern front). I convicted all of them. Thirteen of them were sentenced to death. That was my first case. I was 27 years old.

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GB: What was the mentality of the Einsatzgruppen perpetrators?

BF: Each of them said that he was working on the orders of superiors – that is, that if he had not done it, he would have been shot. Of course, that is absolute nonsense, because no German was required to commit an illegal act. He carried in his soldier’s book instructions to the effect that you obey legal orders and do not obey illegal orders. Then, of course, there was the alibi excuse: I was not even there; or I never heard of such a thing; or they kept it a secret from me. Let me note the defence of Doctor Otto Ohlendorf, SS general, in charge of Einsatzgruppe D. The reports indicated that Einsatzgruppe D had killed a total of 90,000 Jews. When confronted with the question, “Were 90,000 Jews killed under your com-

mand in this Einsatzgruppe?” Ohlendorf answered: “I don’t know.” “What do you mean you don’t know? It’s your report, isn’t it?” “Oh, yes, that’s my report.” But he also said, “The men sometimes exaggerated the body count.” What does that tell you? They were bragging about how many they had killed. So did they kill 60,000, 70,000, or perhaps 80,000? “That could be,” said Ohlendorf. And why did they kill all of these people? “It was self-defence,” said Ohlendorf. “Self-defence?” I replied. “Nobody attacked Germany. Germany attacked Poland and France and Belgium and Holland and Sweden and Denmark and the Soviet Union. Nobody attacked Germany. Where do you come off with self-defence?” “Well,” he said, “Hitler had more information than I had. He was the commander – the Fuehrer – and we were told and believed that we were going to be attacked by the Russians, and that in order to prevent that we were going to be the first to strike. That is why it was self-defence. I couldn’t challenge the Fuehrer. He had all of the information. Who was I to challenge him? If they were going to attack us, we had to defend the fatherland.” “Why did you kill all of the Jews?” “Everybody knows that the Jews supported the Bolsheviks. They were the communists from the First World War, so we had to eliminate them, too.” “Why did you kill their children?” “If we eliminated their parents, then they too would be enemies of Germany. For us it was essential to have a long-term peace, so it was necessary to eliminate them, too.” “And what about the gypsies? Why did you kill all of the gypsies?” “Nobody trusts the gypsies. Everybody knows that the gypsy will play both sides of the street. So you have to eliminate them, too – in the service of the long-range security of our country. This was all necessary and justifiable and in accordance with the law.” That defence was analyzed carefully by the three American judges in the case, led by Justice Michael Musmanno of Pittsburgh – a devout Italian Catholic who, after long deliberation, including about a week in a nearby monastery, came down with his decision. Musmanno said, in a very good and analytical lone decision, that the argument of putative self-defence, presumptive self-defence, or peremptory self-defence, is not valid. If Mr. Jones thinks that his neighbour across the street has got

a gun and is going to kill him, this does not justify him going across the street to kill Mr. Jones first, and also his wife and his children. The world would be total chaos if the peremptory self-defence argument were accepted as justification for mass murder. So there we have the mentality of the intellectual Dr. Ohlendorf – father of five children – who also purported to be more humane than his other comrades because, unlike other Einsatzgruppen commandos who simply took infants, threw them up into the air and used them for target practice, or otherwise took the infants and bashed their heads against trees to save ammunition, he never let his men engage in such practices. He would say: “I told them that they should allow the infant to remain with the mother, and then aim for the infant because the mother is hugging the infant to her chest. The bullet will pierce the baby and kill the mother at the same time. You save ammunition. It is quiet and is a better way to do it.” When asked whether he would do it again, Ohlendorf said yes. There was no remorse whatsoever. The moral of the story is that intelligent, normal people, in a time of war, can become murderers and animals. They can become mass murderers of children. I have seen them. Most of my defendants were educated people. These were not fools, bullies or wild men from the street. Sometimes I believed that they must be crazy maniacs. Not at all. They were people who, at a social event or party, would appear to be like anyone else. GB: Beyond the Einsatzgruppen trial, what are the lessons of the Nuremberg trials for today’s world?

PHOTOGRAPHS: COURTESY OF BENJAMIN FERENCZ

The moral of the story is that intelligent, normal people, in a time of war, can become murderers and animals. They can become mass murderers of children. I have seen them.

GB: Was there a way to have stopped the Holocaust militarily or politically back then? BF: There was no way to stop it. It had gone too far, and we did not have the mechanisms in place to stop it. The result was that the only way to stop it was to try to kill the people who were doing it – that is, to catch them or kill them. And that, of course, involved killing more people – many of whom had never harmed anybody. (continued) For the rest of the interview with Benjamin Ferencz,

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BF: The lessons that they hold today must be viewed from the vantage point of what things looked like back then, what has remained since, and where we as humanity currently stand. It soon became very clear, as WW2 began, that there were massive crimes being committed. The Hague rules did not apply at all because in times of combat the soldier’s concern is clearly to not be killed by killing the other guy first. There was a great hue and cry for justice to be done against people who were obviously mass murderers. How do you deal with that outcry for justice? After WW1, we had tried to set up a court to try the Kaiser for the crime of aggression. He attacked little Belgium and then France. Although the Germans had agreed to the Treaty of Versailles, which contained articles on such a trial, they ultimately balked and refused to do it. The Germans were ultimately allowed to try their own criminals. That turned out to be a farce, because they gave these criminals a

few light sentences or they immediately escaped. So the attempt after WW1 – a clear case of aggression against a peaceful country – did not work. There was a resulting determination to do something about this. The logical conclusion was to put alleged war criminals on trial, listen to their defence, and see whether they are guilty of committing atrocious crimes that have been condemned since biblical days; and if so, to hold them to account. At the same time, there was the idea of creating a UN that would lay down new rules for peaceful coexistence, the settlement of disputes, and the building up of a lawful and more social international order. These two things together – the rule of law, epitomized by the Nuremberg Military Tribunal, and also the UN Charter – were the hope for the future. Did Nuremberg deliver complete justice? Certainly not. Crimes were committed by millions of people. But this concept of bringing to justice at least the main perpetrators to show the world that certain acts are prohibited is fundamentally important. The biggest step forward from the Nuremberg trials was the condemnation of aggressive war as the supreme international crime – because all of the other crimes are committed during war. War breeds all of the other crimes, and the Nuremberg court said that because it is a supreme international crime, we will make aggressive war-making a crime. In the past, war-making had been legal even under the statute of the Versailles Treaty and the League of Nations; that is, warfare was legitimate, provided that you gave your opponents 30 days’ notice. We changed that, or tried to change it, saying: no more; from now on, no more. You cannot go to war. The UN Charter therefore begins with: “We the peoples of the United Nations determined to save succeeding generations from the scourge of war…”

visit the GB website at: www.globalbrief.ca

Why is the World (Still) at War?

QUERY

Five reasons for today’s missing peace (and peace of mind) BY CHRISTOPHER COKER

Christopher Coker is Professor of International Relations at the LSE. His new book

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is Future War.

WW2 poet said it best: The world is still at war because it is not yet ready for peace. From Aleppo to Kabul, from the Donbass to West Africa, the world is still at war – even if the great powers are for now generally quiet among themselves. Why is the world not yet ready for peace? Let me offer five general observations. The first is that war itself evolves, and that its evolutionary possibilities have not yet been fully realized (or exhausted). The world’s 25 richest states are trying to acquire, or have acquired, cyber-warfare capabilities (see Wesley Wark’s Feature article in the Spring/Summer 2015 issue of GB). Seventy-six states are building drones. This is called ‘cultural diffusion’ – copying what others do or invent. Second, different groups and factions today, from ISIS to Boko Haram, are fighting for their own version or vision of the good life. Americans have gone to war for the last century on the peculiar understanding – to quote George W. Bush in 2002 – that “moral truth is the same in every culture, in every time, and in every place.” But it really is not. The more than 30,000 jihadists who are fighting for ISIS in the Middle East put their religion first. The West Europeans who volunteered to fight for the Republic or Fascism in Spain in the 1930s put the cause before everything. So too, of course, did the Americans who fought in the Abraham Lincoln Brigade. Third, while the US often claims to be fighting for humanity, most people fight (and often die) for the tribe. People are hard-wired to be cooperative and competitive at the same time – seeking security in membership of a group, variously ethnic, religious or political. War is not, as some would have it, simply the product of the inability of men and women to see relationships with their fellow human beings. Indeed, war is all about relationships: it is about cyber ghettoes – virtual communities of hate that breed in cyberspace – and also about the young male jihadists and jihadi brides who go off to Syria to fight (and die) for ISIS. Death is a sacrament with the group. One must make one’s death, if possible, meaningful for others. Fourth, the world is at war because people live not just by ideas but also by emotions. Today’s conflicts are in many cases fuelled by resentment and anxiety. The countries at peace are the coun-

tries of hope – ones that do not need war because of the stories that they tell themselves. After all, if one genuinely believes that the 21st century will be Asian, Pacific, Chinese, or all of the above, then one is likely to feel at no particular risk (see the Tête à Tête interview with C. Raja Mohan at p. 34). By contrast, the countries of resentment fear that they do not own the future. Many of these include the countries of the Middle East, for which the Arab Spring has turned into the nightmare of an Arab Winter. In Russia, the government, at least, is struggling, in identity and strategic terms, to reckon with the loss of superpower status. And then there are the countries of anxiety: consider the West, which fears, variously in economic and military terms, the Asians, the Arabs and the Russians. This emotional mix is highly combustible. Indeed, in looking at today’s world, one cannot help but think of Dante’s claim that all crimes are committed out of love – that is, either excessive (lust), or insufficient (envy). This fractured world of fierce emotions is, on this logic, one in which some love God/the nation-state/the ethnic group too much and humanity too little. In other words, this is a world that is fighting not only for the good life, but also for the love of its fellow co-religionists or countrymen. In a recent book, The Worm at the Core, Sheldon Solomon, Jeff Greenberg and Tom Pyszczynski suggest that intimations of mortality are allayed by a sense of community and cultural belonging. And yet, as the authors suggest, people who have responded to death not only undergo a surge of appreciation for their own values, but are also far more likely to dislike the values of other cultures. The logic of war is thus set. The fifth point is about peace itself. It is what philosophers call a ‘contested concept.’ The Scottish political theorist Walter Bryce Gallie tells us that if one claims that a picture is painted in oil – rather than in watercolour – then the statement is manifestly either true or false. The statement can be validated by the observer. However, if one claims that the picture is a major work of art, then the observer may well disagree on what constitutes a work of art, and even more on whether that work has any peculiar value. To achieve universal agreement, Gallie contends, would require one of three things: creation of a new meaning for the phrase ‘work of

art’ – on which everyone could agree; acceptance by everyone, even if by force, of a single meaning; or a declaration to the effect that ‘work of art’ can refer to a number of different concepts – all employing the same name. The latter case, of course, would involve agreeing to disagree.

PHOTOGRAPH: THE CANADIAN PRESS / AP PHOTO

South Sudan President Salva Kiir and rebel leader Riek Machar shake hands at the end of talks in Arusha, Tanzania, after signing an agreement to reunify the ruling Sudan People’s Liberation Movement, January 2015.

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o what of ‘peace’ as a contested concept? Putting aside the first idea, what of the other two? To force everyone to accept one meaning has been tried: it is called imperialism. The Pax Romana and Pax Britannica were all very real, but they involved constant pacification. And making the world safe for democracy – the universal American project, or instinct – has not proved very popular either. When the US went to war in Iraq in 2003 there were demonstrations in hundreds of cities around in the world, in dozens of countries. What of the third principle – agreeing to disagree? This is where we really are today, and it is not always very satisfactory. When I visited Lebanon earlier this year (see the Feature article by Fady Fadel and Cynthia Eid at p. 40), I found a society that, for

all its dysfunction (see Cabinet Room at p. 45), has ostensibly been at peace with itself since the Taif peace agreement of 1989. But what is that peace? Is it exhaustion after many years of war, or merely the absence of fighting? Or does it mean more – including forgetting the conflict, or even forgiving those who fought it? What most people mean by peace is that they won, and the clear winner in Lebanon is Hezbollah. It follows that the peace that obtains there today will continue as long as Hezbollah finds it useful. But can we – returning to Gallie’s first idea – find a new meaning on which everyone can agree? This seems highly unlikely. Could we claim that a society is at peace when it has striking levels of social inequality (identified at this year’s Davos summit as the most likely source of conflict in the future)? Would a disarmed world be a just world if people could no longer fight for justice as they have in the past? Would we value a peace that meant only the renunciation of war? Could we be at peace with ourselves if we saw injustice in the world every day? Would we really have peace of mind? | GB

John Kay is Supernumerary Fellow in Economics at

Why the financial sector must at last be tamed and simplified

St. John’s College,

BY JOHN KAY

Oxford. His latest book is Other People’s Money – Master of the Universe or Servants of the People?

ON CRISES

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MECHANICS & RESOLUTION

inancial crises have their origins in human behaviour. They are not natural disasters like hurricanes or earthquakes – events that we cannot avoid and must simply learn to manage. Economic policies can increase or reduce their frequency and size, and have. The 19th century displayed a recurrent pattern of boom and bust, but in the early part of the 20th century, the amplitude of crises increased, culminating in the Wall Street crash and Great Depression. The period that followed, however, was one of historically unprecedented stability. That lasted until the 1970s and was followed by a steady rise in volatility, with debt crises first in Latin America and then in Asia, the ‘new economy’ bubble, and finally the global financial crisis of 2008. Although there were many signs of future instability for those who cared to look, it is hard to overstate the complacency that characterized the period from the bursting of the Internet bubble to the global financial crisis. The Nobel Prize-winning economist Robert Lucas told the annual meeting of the American Economic Association that the “central problem of depression prevention has been solved.” Another academic economist, Ben Bernanke, who had recently been appointed to the Board of Directors of the Federal Reserve System, popularized the phrase ‘the Great Moderation’ to describe a supposed new era of economic stability.

The critical development during this period was the growth in trade in asset-backed securities – especially mortgage-backed securities. A false belief in the security provided by such packaging stimulated demand for these assets and subsequently collateralized debt obligations between financial institutions. Far from understanding that the complexity of these instruments and the resulting interactions between financial institutions added to the fragility of financial structures, policy-makers congratulated themselves on the sophistication of modern risk management and the diversification of vastly enlarged balance sheets. The crisis began in the US, but immediately crossed the Atlantic – in large part because European banks were large purchasers of doubtful paper originating in America. But the next crisis was made in Europe. The Eurozone – an ambitious scheme to link the currencies of France with Germany and the countries closely bound into the German economy – had grown into a political project that included Spain (see the In Situ article by David Lizoain at p. 38), Italy, Portugal, and even Greece. The adoption of a common currency in 1999 by these countries (Greece followed in 2001) led to convergence of interest rates across the continent. Traders no longer discriminated between the euro liabilities of different Eurozone governments, believing that not only currency risks but the credit risks

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ILLUSTRATION: CARL WIENS

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that had once distinguished well-managed European economies from those with unstable public finances had been eliminated. Banks in Germany and France borrowed euros in the north of the continent to lend to southern Europe. By 2007, yields on Greek government bonds were barely higher than those on equivalent German bonds. Several states, including Greece, took advantage of what appeared inexhaustible supplies of credit at low rates. As European banks struggled with the global financial crisis, the quality of their assets was viewed more skeptically. Credit risks were appraised much more carefully, and interest rate differentials across the Eurozone widened again. Greek bonds appeared relatively less attractive as interest rates rose and the refinancing of Greek credit became more difficult. The country effectively defaulted on its debts in 2011. But Greece was not the Eurozone’s only problem. Ireland’s entire banking system had collapsed in 2008. A property bubble of extreme magnitude had burst in Spain. Other Eurozone members – Portugal, Italy and Cyprus – faced their own distinctive economic and political difficulties. All experienced spiralling debt service costs. With each mini-crisis, the scale and scope of European Central Bank intervention increased. In 2012, the new Governor of the European Central Bank, Mario Draghi, promised to do “whatever it takes” to preserve the Eurozone. Given the potential resources available to an institution empowered to print Europe’s money, that commitment stabilized the Eurozone crisis – for the time being. The proximate causes of these successive crises are very different – emerging market debt problems, the new-economy bubble, defaults on asset-backed se-

curities, political strains within the Eurozone. Yet the basic mechanism of all these crises is the same. They originate in some genuine change in the economic environment – the success of emerging economies, the development of the Internet, the adoption of a common currency across Europe. Early spotters of these trends make profits. A herd mentality among traders attracts more and more people and money into the asset class concerned. Asset mispricing becomes acute, but prices are going up and traders are mostly making money. But reality cannot be deferred forever. The mispricing is corrected, leaving investors and institutions with large losses. Central banks and governments intervene to protect the financial sector and to minimize the damage done to the non-financial economy. That cash and liquidity then provide the fuel for the next crisis in some different area of activity. Successive crises have tended to be of increasing severity. The booms are generally triggered by events external to the financial system. The busts may also appear to have extraneous causes – Russian default, a setback to US house prices, the collapse of Lehman Brothers. But these are triggers rather than explanations. The mechanisms of crisis are an intrinsic part of the modern financial system. It is not just that the modern financial system is prone to instability. Without the mechanics that produce recurrent crises, the financial system would not exist in the form in which it does today.

he primary objective of policymakers since the global financial crisis has been to secure the stability of the financial system. This objective has in turn been interpreted as assuring the stability of existing financial institutions. It has been argued that the means of achieving this is to require institutions to have greater reserves of both capital and liquidity. Regulators have identified ‘systemically important’ financial institutions that are to be the subject of special supervision and (implicit or explicit) government support. With crass hypocrisy, political leaders have set their public face against future bank rescues while reassuring markets that they do not mean what they say. President Obama could assert that the passage of Dodd-Frank meant “no more taxpayerfunded bailouts – period[,]” while his Treasury Secretary not only upheld the ‘Geithner doctrine’ – no significant financial institution would be allowed to fail – but also provided an extended defence of the doctrine in his memoirs. The European position is essentially the same – both in its substance and in its humbug. The bailout of the Portuguese bank Espirito Santo followed hard upon the announce-

not take place, or at least the scale at which they do take place should be substantially reduced. And that is how we should view the existing banking system. Inevitably, financial services regulation and regulators have been heavily criticized since the 2008 crisis. Regulators were ‘asleep at the wheel.’ The revisionist account of the events of that period asserts that the failures and frauds in the industry were not, as the public was mistakenly led to believe, the result of managerial incompetence and individual chicanery. Business failures were the consequence of a series of errors by governments: unwise encouragement of home ownership, loose monetary policies, and weak regulation. This description is essentially ridiculous, as each financial institution that failed did so because of identifiable and avoidable executive decisions and inadequate internal control and supervision. Nevertheless, there is an element of truth in it: there were serious policy errors. The exclusion of derivatives from the ambit of US regulation in 1999 is now almost universally recognized to have been

It is not just that the modern financial system is prone to instability. Without the mechanics that produce recurrent crises, the financial system would not exist in the form in which it does today. a mistake. Moreover, the changed structure of the finance industry from partnerships to limited liability corporations effectively transferred a degree of responsibility for risk management from firms themselves to regulators. The Basel calculations of capital adequacy became, in large part, a substitute for the prudential management of risk by banks themselves. Indeed, in the revisionist account of the crisis, banks blame regulators for their failure to impose more demanding requirements on them. And they have a point: bank executives were under pressure from their traders and shareholders to expand their balance sheets to the limits permissible by regulation. It is perhaps an exaggeration to say that the minimum standards of capital and behaviour prescribed by regulation were interpreted as maxima – but not a very great exaggeration. Still, to see policy errors as the source of the problem is to fail to understand either the economics or the politics. Perhaps it was an error to eschew regulation of credit default swaps – but what is it

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ment that the era of bailouts was at an end. Assuring the stability of existing institutions was exactly the right short-term response to the global financial crisis, and exactly the wrong long-term response. For the origins of the global financial crisis lay in the structure of the industry. To stabilize – indeed, to ossify – that structure, therefore, is not a means of avoiding future crises, but a way of making them inevitable. Systemic instability in the financial system is the result of the interdependencies inherent in an industry that deals mainly with itself. The growth in the scale of resources devoted to financial intermediation is not to any large degree – or, in most cases, at all – the result of any change in the needs of users of intermediary services. The growth of financial activity has come from a massive expansion in the packaging, repackaging and trading of existing assets. The scale of this activity, which contributes little to the non-financial economy, requires much more capital – not the small additional amounts required by the regulatory demands contained in Basel 3. But equity investors will not provide financial conglomerates with fresh capital on the scale necessary. Investors no longer trust the financial statements of banks or the people who run these banks. They have little confidence in the long-term profitability of these institutions, and fear that if banks do make profits both regulators and senior executives will have priorities other than distributions to shareholders. The solution that has instead been adopted is that central banks lend very large amounts of money to financial conglomerates at low rates in the hope that they will make sufficient profit from trading to rebuild their balance sheets. But the taxpayer cannot reasonably be asked to subsidize banks in this way – especially when a high proportion of these profits is creamed off to reward the traders concerned and the managers who ostensibly supervise them, allowing them to achieve levels of remuneration beyond the dreams of ordinary people. At the same time, bankers and their lobbyists claim that the provision of adequate equity capital for banks would drive down reported returns on equity capital to unattractive levels and inhibit the proper function of banks in lending to the real economy. If activities cannot raise sufficient equity to ensure that they are adequately capitalized, or earn satisfactory rates of return on that equity if they do, the lesson of market economics is clear: such activities should

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We need focussed financial businesses with a clear productive purpose and a management system, governance regime and capital structure that are appropriate for that purpose.

imagined a regulator would have done if such an exemption had not been implemented? After all, the banks that were brought down by these instruments were themselves regulated institutions. These failures of regulation were observed in almost all advanced countries. It is implausible that so many regulators had, simultaneously and independently, fallen ‘asleep at the wheel’: the catalepsy had a more systematic underlying cause. Among policy-makers in the UK and the US, there has been little political appetite for restraint on the financial services industry, and often considerable political opposition. Even if regulators had been inclined toward pre-emptive actions, and had known which measures to implement, they would not have enjoyed political support. They therefore had little or no incentive or inclination to act. If the ship’s owners will not allow the captain to move the wheel much, it hardly matters whether he is asleep at the wheel or awake on the bridge. He might as well retire to his cabin. Pre-emptive action by any regulator faces the dilemma that the costs and consequences of preventive action are real and measurable. However, if preventive action is successful, the costs of the damaging events that have been avoided, and indeed the very nature of these events themselves, will remain hypothetical. The public does not applaud the cautious captain who avoids the storm, but rather the heroic seaman who steers through the storm. Politicians and the public get the regulation they deserve. Some regulators were essentially placemen – put there by the industry and its political cronies to represent the interests of the businesses over which they exerted nominal oversight. But others were honest and committed: those regulators who were genuinely public servants attempting to do an honest job were, however, constantly aware that industry leaders had political connections as strong as theirs, and often stronger. ‘Light touch regulation’ was not the product of idle regulators, but of the demands of the industry transmitted through the political masters of the regulators. The finance sector of modern Western economies is too large. It absorbs a disproportionate share of the ablest graduates of our colleges and universities. Volumes of trading in financial markets have reached absurd levels – levels that have impeded rather than enhanced the quality of financial intermediation, and increased rather than diversified the risks to which the global economy is exposed. The capital resources needed to reconcile these trading volumes with economic stability have not been available; nor will they be. The scale of activities undertaken by traders within a modern investment bank is not viable without the implicit and explicit support provided by retail deposits and the taxpayer. The outcome is a structure characterized by tight coupling and interactive complexity, and the resulting instability has had damaging effects on the non-financial economy.

e need a finance sector to manage our payments, finance our housing stock, restore our infrastructure, fund our retirement, and support new business. But very little of the expertise that exists in the finance industry today relates to the facilitation of payments, the provision of housing, the management of large construction projects, the needs of the elderly, or the nurturing of small enterprise. The process of financial intermediation has become an end in itself. The expertise that is valued is the understanding of the activities of other financial intermediaries. That expertise is devoted not to the creation of new assets, but to the rearrangement of those that already exist. High salaries and bonuses are awarded not for fine appreciation of the needs of users of financial services, but for outwitting competing market participants. In the most extreme manifestation of a sector that has lost sight of its purposes, some of the finest mathematical and scientific minds on the planet are employed to devise algorithms for computerized trading in securities that exploit the weaknesses of other algorithms for computerized trading in securities. But finance is not a mathematical puzzle. It exists to serve households and businesses. Individuals and companies engaged in finance should have specific knowledge of at least some of the needs of these users of the financial system. We need focussed financial businesses with a clear productive purpose and a management system, governance regime and capital structure that are appropriate for that purpose. We should aim to restore and nourish the rich variety of institutions and organizational forms that existed in the finance sector before the 1980s. The most common criticism of this suggestion is that it would involve ‘turning the clock back.’ In one obvious sense, we cannot turn the clock back. Many of the unwise property loans made to indigent householders, to overleveraged developers, and on inflated values and imaginary earnings, can never be repaid. The losses made by borrowing euros in the north of the continent to lend, directly and indirectly, to governments in the south are largely irrecoverable. It suits both financial institutions and governments to pretend otherwise. But only a realistic clean-up of both public and private sector balance sheets can clear the way for future action. That action should target the structure of the industry. You should turn the clock back if it is telling you the wrong time – and in this case it is. There was wisdom in an older structure of industry and regulatory process that had evolved over decades, but was abandoned in a mixture of the ideological fervour of politicians and the personal ambition of financiers and deal-makers. | GB

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Why and how Israel will need to work hard to make it through this new century BY IRVIN STUDIN

Irvin Studin is Editor-in-Chief & Publisher of Global Brief.

he late great Fred Halliday, leading thinker on the Middle East and professor of international relations (most famously at the LSE), once apparently noted to a former classmate of mine that he did not foresee Israel surviving the entirety of the 21st century. By this he meant that, at some point over the coming decades, Israel’s enemies would at last be sufficiently coordinated and powerful to deal a death blow to the Jewish state. Whether Halliday’s predictions will bear out is far from obvious today as

REFLECTIONS ON

be an iron law of international relations – to wit, that over the last two centuries, the average duration of a given state has been about 60 years. More precisely, the average duration of a modern state’s constitutional-strategic order has been six decades. After the six decades, on average, a state dissolves, breaks apart, is destroyed by revolution, is annexed or invaded by an external enemy, or undergoes any number of other species of transformation that makes the successor constitutional-strategic order – the successor state – materially ‘new.’ Consider the former Soviet Union. It lasted just under 70 years before it yielded 15 new states. Ukraine, one of those Soviet successor states, lasted 23 years until the recent Ukrainian revolution issued in a state that, if it emerges from the Donbass war and avoids another revolution, will still be materially new in its constitutional-strategic order: newly decentralized, with special status for two regions, and with Crimea annexed by Russia. Bref, post-Soviet Ukraine lasted 23 years. How long will the post-Euromaidan Ukraine – the second Ukrainian republic, as it were – last? Answer: likely no more than 60 years, and very likely far fewer than 60 years, before it is transformed once again. Or consider Singapore, which turned 50 this year, having gained independence after being bounced from the failed Federation of Malaya in 1965. Will the current Singaporean city-state – the wealthiest per capita in Asia – survive past its sixth decade? Probably. But will it survive the entire century without meaningful strategic-constitutional transformation? This would seem far less probable, as I wrote in the Winter 2013 issue of GB, in an article entitled “Algorithm, Argument and Promiscuity.” How long has the modern Israeli state existed? At this time of writing, some 67 years, or almost seven decades – just shy of the amount of time the Soviet Union lasted. Does this mean that the end of Israel

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THE JEWISH QUESTION

one observes the broken order of the Middle East. The consequences for Israel’s survival of the rise of ISIS and also the recent agreement between the P5+1 and Iran on Tehran’s nuclear programme are unknown for the medium and long term alike (see Strategic Futures at p. 62). The same is true of the consequences for Israel of the Syrian civil war more broadly, the crumbling of the Iraqi state, the collapse of Libya and Yemen, the ever-growing weakness of the Lebanese state (see the Feature article by Fadel and Eid at p. 40), Turkey’s capricious politics and geopolitics, the moves of Saudi Arabia – cheap oil or not – in reaction to the Iran deal, and Egypt’s new military autocracy. We have not even mentioned Palestinian politics and, of course, Israel’s own internal turmoils – to which we turn later. What is more clear, however, is what appears to

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ILLUSTRATION: SARA TYSON

is nigh – whether that end comes in the form predicted by Halliday or through some other event or dynamic? Not necessarily, and perhaps not by any stretch. Canada, exceptionally, has lasted almost 150 years. (I have written about Canada’s great strategic good fortune in past issues of GB.) That Israel is now, exceptionally, stretching the limits of its expected duration only means that Israel’s continued existence will require exceptional luck and/or exceptional skill and leadership from its governors, who themselves will have to have emerged from an exceptional population. In this sense, Lee Kuan Yew, the late father of modern Singapore, was right when he said that for Singapore to survive over the long run, it needed to be exceptional – in its policy-making, in its politics, in its geopolitics, and in the mentality and industry of its people. The Singaporean analogy is perhaps not accidental, as the Singaporeans are in many ways Israelis in Asian clothes. After its expulsion from the Federation of Malaya (which itself

After six decades, on average, a state dissolves, breaks apart, is annexed or invaded by an external enemy, or undergoes any number of other transformations that makes the successor constitutionalstrategic order materially ‘new.’

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lasted 15 years), Singapore quietly turned to Israel for lessons on industrial policy, national security and national defence, including mandatory military service and even foreign policy, with Singaporean strategists privileging an abiding Israel-like promiscuity in international relations – maximizing friendships with both West and East, democratic and less democratic alike.

key starting point for understanding the prospects of Israeli survival this century would seem to be an assessment of whether the founding mission or imperative of the Jewish state is still relevant today, as Israel approaches 70 years – and if so, how this relevance can be preserved. For if the strategic (external) order of a country plays a critical role in that country’s endurance, so too does the constitu-

tional (internal) order – that is, the state endures to the extent that it continues to enjoy internal and external legitimacy. As soon as one or both of those two legitimacies is extinguished, the constitutionalstrategic logic of the state is broken, and a new, altered state emerges from the old one. Why was Israel founded? Answer: for Jewish political emancipation, yes, but more essentially still, to protect the Jews of Europe from slaughter – or at least from the immanent threat of slaughter. Herzl’s 1896 Der Judenstaat – Versuch einer modernen Lösung der Judenfrage (“An Attempt at a Modern Solution to the Jewish Question”) – may have been the decisive articulation of this mission in finally mobilizing action to create a Jewish state (in the event, in Ottoman Palestine), but Herzl’s arguments were anticipated a decade and a half earlier by the now less well-known RussianJewish Odessa doctor Lev Pinsker in Autoemanzipation – Mahnruf an seine Stammesgenossen von einem russischen Jude. The Russian-speaking Pinsker wrote anonymously, in German (to a Western readership), in furious reaction to the 1881 pogroms that followed the assassination of Russian Tsar Alexander II. Those pogroms saw scores of Jews maimed and murdered at a time when Pinsker himself, already very Russophilic, was doing everything possible to be very Russian. The pogroms, in Pinsker’s eyes, were the final expression of Russia’s rejection of even the assimilationist path for the Russian Jew – leave aside the far less assimilated majority of Ashkenazi Jews in the Pale of Settlement – and pointed to the need for Jewish political sovereignty and control in self-government. For Pinsker, self-government and a Jewish state (he was generally agnostic on the location of the state) were necessary to avoid the problem of never-ending pogroms – a disease that would revisit the Russian Empire several more times before its collapse yielded the Soviet Union (the successor state). What of Theodor Herzl the person, after whom cities and streets in today’s Israel are named, and who is generally considered the leading figure and key ideologue of modern Zionism? Herzl had never read Pinsker. And yet he came to the same conclusion in a different theatre – observing and writing about the show trial of French-Jewish officer Alfred Dreyfus – falsely accused and convicted in 1894 for treason against the French state. Of course, Herzl was a highly secular Viennese Jew who bathed intellectually in the Vienna of Karl Lueger, that city’s larger-than-life mayor and leading public anti-Semite – so much an anti-Semite that he found in Adolf Hitler, a denizen of Vienna in the later years of Lueger’s mayoralty, a staunch admirer. Herzl, while less agnostic on the location of the eventual Jewish state than Pinsker (Herzl favoured Israel, but floated other more improb-

citizens, but also of world Jewry more generally. The Jewish state, in other words, is not disinterested in the well-being of Jews in the diaspora – exactly the contrary. The diasporic Jew, while easily and proudly a citizen and national of any number of other countries, has the status of belonging to a people who are now politically organized, with territory (even if partially disputed), administration, and major achievements in science, commerce, culture, politics, jurisprudence and strategy. This, doubtless, has transformed the psychological posture, or mentality, of the Jew – no longer a historical victim and not inclined to suffer victimhood.

nd yet, as I started this piece by saying, Israel, having already exceeded the 60-year average existence of modern states, and given its difficult neighbourhood and contested internal order, may not last the entire century. If Israel does not last – through internal dissolution, collapse or erosion, or due to war, including very destructive war with 21st century technologies – then many thousands or millions of Jews could die again this century. These Jews would die mainly in Israel, but the death of the Jewish state would have heavy consequences for the wellbeing and prospects of Jews in the diaspora in all countries. Assimilationist or not, patriot or mercenary, the diasporic Jew – in France, the UK, Russia, Germany, Ukraine, Mexico or Argentina – now denuded of the psychological bulwark of a protective home, would be markedly weakened – not necessarily in immediate or near-term physical harm, but now far more vulnerable to the political winds and caprices of the day in his or her country. And so the relevance of Israel’s original mission of protection has arguably not changed at all. But how to deliver this original mission in this early new century and at the same time assure the continued existence of the Jewish state well beyond the threshold of exceptional duration? This is the central Jewish Question today. There would seem to be two broad dimensions of action related to addressing the Jewish Question today: the first relating to Israel’s internal order and arrangements; and the second relating to Israel’s external affairs in its near abroad – the Middle East – and key countries beyond the near abroad. Let me tackle the first dimension – the internal order – in

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able variants), nevertheless, like Pinsker, argued for a Jewish state the central, secular mission of which was Jewish self-protection through political strength and control. In other words, Pinsker anticipated Herzl, while Herzl anticipated Hitler’s Deutschland, which razed the Jewish population not only of Western and Central Europe, but also of the former Soviet Union (Pinsker territory) through the Einsatzgruppen massacres – stunning, algorithmic mass killings in pits that were ultimately causal in the German invention of concentration and extermination camps like Treblinka and Auschwitz-Birkenau (see the Tête à Tête interview with Benjamin Ferencz at p. 8). The Israel founded after the Jewish Holocaust, which claimed some six million Jewish lives, has seen many wars. However, the total number of Jews killed in these wars has not exceeded some 30,000 – that is, 30,000 over nearly 70 years. To be sure, these same wars have resulted in many non-Jewish deaths – perhaps some 100,000 – principally on the side of the adversaries of Israel. Many innocent non-combatants have died in these wars. We will return to these wars later, but the essential, unvarnished thrust of these figures remains that there has been no repetition or systematic threat of repetition of anti-Jewish pogroms or any industrial-scale holocaust against Jews since the founding of the modern state of Israel. This verity led another astute old classmate of mine – also a student of the late Professor Halliday – to suggest that Israel may be the only state in the world today in which Jews are killed specifically because they are Jews; that is, where Jews are killed qua Jews, or as Jews, as it were. This classmate spoke in the early 2000s, when the anti-Jewish spirits in some European countries like France and Hungary were less acute than today, but his argument, empirically speaking, is still borne out in the second decade of this new century: of the 15 or 16 million Jews in the world at present – some 6 million of which are in Israel – the number of Jews killed by political violence inside Israel is consistently higher than in the diaspora. This lends itself to the paradoxical axiom that the diasporic Jew generally lives in greater security, as a Jew, than does the Israeli Jew. Why is the axiom paradoxical? Answer: because Israel was created to keep the Jew safe. And yet what is less understood by many Jews and gentiles alike is that the diasporic Jew lives in great security – again, with some notable recent exceptions – and walks with his or her shoulders high precisely because the Jewish state exists. The diasporic Jew of today, unlike the ‘stateless’ or precarious Jew of Pinsker’s Russia or Herzl’s Europe, generally enjoys the legal and police protection of his or her own state, but also knows that he or she enjoys the psychic protection and prestige of the Israeli state – a state that has as its existential mandate not just the protection of Israeli

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What is less understood by many Jews and gentiles alike is that the diasporic Jew lives in great security, and walks with his or her shoulders high precisely because the Jewish state exists.

this piece, and return to Israel’s international relations in a future GB article. The legitimacy of Israel’s internal order, and the country’s ability to deliver the original Zionist mission more generally, are increasingly complicated, if not undermined, by two key dynamics: first, the tension between Israel’s secular political and legal structures (its constitution, for all intents and purposes) and a rising religious class – notably in the settlements; and second, the erosion of the Jewish demographic majority to a growing Arab population (part of it occupied). On the secular-religious front, Israel will have to continue to struggle not simply to have a largely secular politics supported by a largely secular population, but, as anticipated in the logic of political Zionism, to have a secular politics that accommodates and is porous to religious views and freedoms in firm recognition of the fact that without a substantial religious footprint Judaism, in spite of its cosmopolitan cultural richness, would over time lose its content and orientation. The Jew in Israel, in other words, must continue to be protected by a secular state, but a theological core must be allowed to flourish within this secular framework if the Jewish fact is not to lose its coherence over time. Having said this, the Israeli state was not, at its logical (winning) core, a religious or spiritual project, even if religious Zionism existed, as an ideology, side by side with the staunchly secular volleys of Pinsker and Herzl, and even if the more pious elements of Israeli society have been stimulated and have seen their political footprint grow since the Israeli victory in the Six Day War and the subsequent territorial occupations. (The secular strategists in Israel’s military saw these occupations as critical to the future defensibility of Israel – lack of Israeli strategic or territorial depth oblige – while religious Zionists came to interpret this advent of new land and the opportunity for new settlements as messianically inspired or foreordained.) As Herzl wrote in Der Judenstaat, Jewish vulnerability is not a social or religious question, but rather a purely political matter. As such, the Israeli Jew, pious or heathen, is a political creation – a citizen of a state the purposes of which remain primarily political. (See the David Ben-Gurion book, Qu’est-ce qu’être Juif?, in which Israel’s founding prime minister commissioned the views of 50 Jewish sages the world over, from the American jurist Felix Frankfurter to the Lubavitcher Rebbe Menachem Mendel Schneerson, to advise on the content of this political citizenship.) Of the relationship between Arab and Jew in Israel, let me start by disputing the widely held notion in today’s commentariat, and perhaps even in Israel and the broader Middle East, that the enmity between Arab and Jew is age-old. By degree, this is a patent fallacy – for the age-old juxtaposition that led to the creation of Israel was far more clearly between

Christian and Jew, not Arab and Jew. Pinsker, of course, railed at not being accepted into Russian Orthodox society, while the anti-Jewish temperament of Herzl’s period was exercised by the strength or weakness of what Wilhelm Marr, the 19th-century German pamphleteer who coined the term Antisemitismus (anti-semitism), called the germanisch-christlicher Geist (the German-Christian spirit). If the tension between Arab and Jew in Israel today is not a simple manifestion of the inevitable or innate continuity of such tension from pre-Zionist days, then the problem is far less deep than some pessimists would suggest. And yet it is perfectly clear that the superior threat of violence to the Jew in Israel today as compared with his diasporic analogues (and the threat to Arab from Jew) is very much an Arab-Jew issue, not a Christian-Jew issue. Can this Arab-Jewish tension be ameliorated? Without a doubt – but with the proviso that this amelioration cannot come at the expense of the central protective mission of the Israeli state vis-à-vis the Jew. In other words, Israel has no imperatives to political suicide in the service of bettering the relationship between Jew and Arab. The question, rather, is whether this better relationship can happen without edging toward any threshold of political suicide. The answer, again, is surely yes.

ow can this be done? Answer: transform the strategic losers of the Israeli Zionist project – the Palestinians – into coequals in governing the state. The English majority did this to the losing French minority (the losers in the British-French Seven Years’ War) in the creation and, over time, the governance of Canada – to the point where majorityminority relations in today’s Canadian federation are principally political questions, rather than ones of life and death, or war and peace. Canada, of course, must now, as a far more complex proposition, do the same with its Aboriginal population – strategic losers who must, in moral terms, be resuscitated into political co-equals in Canada’s political project (see my piece on this topic in GB’s Winter 2014 issue). The same equilibrium of majority-minority equilibrium obtains in today’s New Zealand between the English majority and the Maori minority, both of which are heavily and proudly invested in the success and continuity of that country. (Granted, unlike the French in Canada, the Maori were not defeated in war by the English, but rather fought the white man to a draw.) If the transformation of the Palestinians into co-equals in the governance of Israel is a moral imperative, it nonetheless cannot, as mentioned, threaten the existence of the Israeli state or otherwise

off exclusively for representatives of the majorityJewish province. To some, this may seem an inelegant and certainly imperfect outcome – particularly for the Palestinian population. And yet if the Jewish majority in Israel is properly willing and able to resuscitate the Palestinians in this new federal or, perhaps better still, confederal model, into effective co-equals in the state project, then this imperfection will have been significantly mitigated.

o be sure, the two-state model has been the dominant paradigm and popular narrative for the last several decades, so the idea of a new logic answering both the Jewish Question and indeed the Palestinian one is well outside the current imagination of Jew and Arab alike. New generations of Jews and Arabs will have to be re-educated and reprogrammed to reconsider their futures – and very soon. But if Jew and Arab, no longer occupying or occupied, are able to enjoy not only reasonable political co-equality but over time deep personal friendships within and across the two provinces (one remarks quickly how few deep and abiding friendships there are between Jew and Arab in

Why was Israel founded? Answer: for Jewish political emancipation, yes, but more essentially still, to protect the Jews of Europe from slaughter – or at least from the immanent threat of slaughter. today’s Israel, and indeed how little curiosity there is about ‘the other’), then the internal order in Israel will become characterized not only by the Arab walking with head held high, but by the Jew drinking his coffee and enjoying the Sabbath in far greater relaxation. Jew and Arab will both be invested in the survival and longevity of the state. Let us return, as promised, to Israel’s vexing external challenges, even under an improved, more just internal order, in a future essay. But let there be no doubt, still, that a new federal or confederal Israel would constitute a materially new state. And so this lends itself to the irony that in order to survive well beyond six or seven decades, Israel may have to transform itself into a largely new state that is able to parry the forces favouring its eventual elimination. | GB

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compromise its protective mission. This would seem to militate against allowing the Jewish demographic majority position to erode – something that is rapidly occurring, if it has not already occurred, if one counts the occupied territories of the West Bank and Gaza (not strictly occupied, but also not self-governing in the fullest possible sense). And here, then, is the wicked problem for Israel in its internal order in respect of the Palestinian population – a population enjoying far greater rights if Israeli citizens, but which is otherwise, on any reasonable discourse, justifiably in search of a better compact with the Jews: Israel must end the occupation not just for moral reasons (Israeli settlers, to the extent that they are not essential to the protective mandate, surely pour salt in the wounds of Palestinian strategic defeat), but in order to preserve its Jewish majority – a majority necessary to safeguard the protective mandate of the Jewish state; and yet the bet on a wholesale new Palestinian state existing alongside Israel, in the current spirit of the times, may well prove highly destabilizing, if not fatal, to the integrity of Israel’s protective mandate. If, for instance, that new Palestinian state, having acquired important land concessions from Israel, makes Israel far less defensible (or irreversibly indefensible), then this will have been a bad Israeli bet indeed. (As Michael Morgan argued in GB’s inaugural issue in 2009, a small war can sometimes lead to a better peace, while a bad peace may well issue in very large war.) To be sure, a new Palestinian state could be perfectly peaceful and even allied with Israel over time. Who knows, really? But for Israeli decisionmakers today, the patent uncertainty of such a beau risque makes a firm commitment to a new Palestinian state highly improbable, and the reluctance before such a commitment very reasonable. What, then, is the alternative to a new Palestinian state, post-occupation? It must be some species of federation or confederation under the aegis of the extant Israeli state. This is not a particularly novel idea, of course – even if it is largely absent in the political discourse on Israeli-Palestinian affairs today. But if Israeli strategists come to fancy that this federal or confederal model is a safer bet for preserving the central protective mandate of the Israeli state, then this future should presumably be favoured to the two-state solution. Indeed, a confederal model would begin to approximate an arrangement of reasonably co-equal governance, with one majority-Jewish province co-existing with one majority-Palestinian Arab province. We might imagine citizens of each of the two provinces, Jewish and Palestinian (nowhere occupied), enjoying fully the same civic rights and responsibilities, except that certain national strategic functions and privileges – relating to the defence and national security sectors – would be carved

ILLUSTRATION: NATE WILLIAMS

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How Canada will return to its historic past of co-equality among the races and cultures BY DOUGLAS SANDERSON

n a summer Tuesday in early June, Canada’s Truth and Reconciliation Commission (TRC) released a list of recommendations and a 300-page summary of the Commission’s final report. The Commission was established in 2008 as part of a settlement agreement to end litigation between former students of residential schools, the Canadian government and churches. The settlement agreement avoided the continuation of costly and often unsatisfying litigation – unsatisfying for the plaintiffs because legalities often left them with no remedies, and for the federal government and the churches that had to defend themselves against legal liability for actions that, to any common sense observer, seemed not only obviously tortious, but plainly criminal. The Commission’s report lays to rest any doubt that what happened in Canada was the implementation of a systematic, thorough and diabolical government policy to eradicate Indigenous people. The report minces few words: “For over a century, the central goals of Canada’s Aboriginal policy were to eliminate Aboriginal government; ignore Aboriginal rights; terminate the Treaties; and, through a process of assimilation, cause Aboriginal people to cease to exist as distinct legal, social, cultural, religious, and racial entities in Canada. The establishment and operation of the residential schools were a central element of this policy, which can best be described as ‘cultural genocide.’” Let us not shy away from what was done to Indigenous people. Beginning in some places in the 1830s, Canada-wide by the early 1900s, and lasting in some places through to the last decades of the 20th century, Indian, Métis and Inuit children were sent to schools at the age of five. Early iterations of the policy built schools on reservation communities, but this proved unsatisfactory to federal officials – including Canada’s first prime minister, John A. Macdonald, who in 1883 told Parliament that “[w]hen the school is on the reserve the child lives with its parents, who are savages; he is surrounded by savages, and though he may learn to read and write […] he is simply a savage who can read and write.” Clearly, formal education – the learning of reading and writing – was not the goal of the residential school system. Instead, the purpose of the residential school system was, in the words of federal deputy minister of Indian affairs, Duncan Campbell Scott, “to continue [the residential school system] until there

ABORIGINAL

GRAND STRATEGY AFTER RECONCILIATION

Douglas Sanderson is Associate Professor in the Faculty of Law, University of Toronto.

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is not a single Indian in Canada that has not been absorbed into the body politic.” To do this, children would need to be separated from their families where they could be properly taught to hate their cultures and their parents. And so the schools were built far from local communities. Siblings in the same schools were separated by ages, twins were purposefully sent to different schools, and once at residential school, many children did not return to their home communities for a decade or more. In this way, the ties that bind families together – the marking of births and deaths, the simple communion of sharing breakfast, the embrace of someone who loves you – were all denied to Indigenous children. In the absence of children, what would become of a community? Indigenous people know because for more than a century, their communities did not know the sound of children’s laughter. They came for the children at the age of five, and so Indigenous communities endured generations without children. When the children returned – now as teenagers – they did so having experienced unimaginable loneliness and despair. The TRC report quotes one survivor as saying that he was never comforted; no one was, ever. Children sat crying until they stopped. Affection was foreign. There was systemic physical and sexual abuse. Children were, in this way, taught to abuse others. In one Ontario school, evidence in a criminal trial revealed that residential school staff had constructed an electric chair. It is reported that school officials laughed as small brown legs shot rigid in the chair as electricity coursed through a child’s body – a child whose legs were too short to touch the floor. These repeated degradations did not destroy Aboriginal people as a collective, but individuals who endured the residential schools left dehumanized. Human beings learn to be parts of a family by being parts of a family. They learn to be brothers and sisters, parents and uncles, aunts and grandparents by existing in these relationships. Survivors of the residential schools learned none of this. The familial bonds of Indigenous families were torn asunder, and virtually nothing has been done to heal these wounds. Parents of my mother’s generation raised my generation without ever having had the experience of being parented, let alone being loved. They struggled, and my own generation, taking our cues from the generation that raised us, struggles again against pain and anger and humiliation that, while distant in time, are ever-present. Our family homes and communities are haunted by memories of unspeakable depravity and neglect. Is it any wonder that suicide rates and alcoholism in Indigenous

communities are among the highest in the world? And here we are. What happened to generations of Indigenous children was carried with them into adulthood, and the lessons learned in residential school were then passed to their children. It is often very difficult for settler Canadians to understand that the horrors outlined in the TRC report really took place, and still more difficult for settler Canadians to understand the causal links between what happened to my mother’s generation – and the many generations before hers – and what happens and will happen with existing and future generations. What the TRC report does is to make clear that the horror is not a nightmare, but rather a cold hard reality that Canadians must all face together. The first thing that must be understood – the first step in facing the reality of the residential school system – is to ensure that what happened is not relegated to the past; that is, to reckon with the fact that the effects of the residential school system have pushed through the generations. Settler Canadians must above all understand that, when it comes to residential schools, as William Faulkner once famously put it: “The past is never dead. It’s not even past.” In light of this, how are Canadians, as a nation, to assemble a response worthy of a just society? The courts’ solution thus far has been to provide survivors with relatively paltry financial disbursements, and to create the Truth and Reconciliation Commission. The Commission’s summary report is a step on the road to truth, and a still greater step will be made when the Commission releases its final report. But what of reconciliation?

he Commission advances 94 ‘calls to action’ – ranging from a mandatory course on Aboriginal people in law schools, reforms in the child welfare system, an apology by the Pope, and the teaching of a Canadian history to school children that hides neither the history nor legacy of residential schools, to the establishment of a National Council for Reconciliation to monitor the implementation of these calls to action. These are all laudable recommendations. Yet to read them in isolation, as most people will have done – if they will have read anything published by the TRC at all – misses the point of a just society’s response to the legacy of residential schools. What Canada must contend with – the most simple truth that must be accepted, and the fundamental basis with which to read the report’s calls to action – is that Indigenous people never needed to be civilized, because Indigenous cultures always were, and remain today, as valuable and as worthy as Anglophone or Francophone or any other culture of the world. The fundamental premise not only of

the residential schools, but of broader racist law and social policy, is that Indigenous culture is inferior to that of the settler peoples. As long as that attitude persists, reconciliation is impossible, and any image of a just Canadian society will remain a tired façade fronting for unspeakable crimes.

o accept Indigenous cultures as being equal to those of Anglo or Franco or to ‘settler culture’ more broadly is to do more than to deem Indigenous culture as one of Canada’s three original founding cultures – even if doing so is likely a necessary step to reconciliation. Something more – indeed a great deal more – is necessary, and the greatest clue what that more might constitute is to look back to the politics and policies of the aforementioned Duncan Campbell Scott. Scott was, as mentioned, Canada’s deputy minister of Indian affairs between 1913 and 1932. He was also a notable poet. He saw his role, and the role of the residential schools, in a clear and unambiguous light – to wit, to absorb Indigenous people into the body politic such that no Indians remain. Scott understood residential schools as being the means through which Indigenous children would be scraped clean of Indigenous culture. The lack of familial attachments would leave Indian children ready to be weaned into the broader political community, not as Indians – for the very notion of Indian identity was to be made abhorrent to residential school attendees – but as proto-citizens who could be lured off the reservation and turned into taxpayers, all the while purposefully freeing the lands of Indian occupiers and making possible progress and the unfettered development of industry. There is, however, a subversive interpretation of Scott’s ambitions, and one of which Scott himself would doubtless not approve. This subversive interpretation, if plausible, might allow us to give credit to Scott as the progenitor of a just path forward. Rather than reflexively casting out Scott’s ambitions, we might instead today ask: what would it mean for Indigenous people to play an equal role in the body politic of Canadian culture and identity? This is not the same as absorbing Indians into the body politic of Scott’s day, but instead involves integrating Indigenous people into the body politic in a way that we now know to be politically possible: a formal recognition of the equality of different political cultures, languages, geographies and demographics. So much of Canadian political culture is dedicated

to the idea of equality: the role of the Senate as a balance of provincial populations; the recognition of French and English as official languages; the fiscal federalism of transfer payments that seek to mitigate the economic disparities between rich and poor provinces; the presence and use of both French civil law and British common law; and the Charter of Rights and Freedoms that formalizes equality between the sexes. Unlike in Scott’s day, Canada’s current body politic is largely dedicated to implementing institutional equality of all kinds, and so integrating Indigenous peoples into this modern-day body politic is not to assimilate Indigenous people; it is, finally, to recognize the equality and dignity of Indigenous cultures, and further, to embrace the flourishing of those cultures and communities. In practical terms, to recognize the fundamental equality of Indigenous cultures is to accept some hard truths about political and economic power

The central goals of Canada’s Aboriginal policy were to eliminate Aboriginal government; ignore Aboriginal rights; terminate the Treaties; and cause Aboriginal people to cease to exist as distinct legal, social, cultural, religious, and racial entities.

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in Canada. To start, the equality of English and French languages is not abstract equality, though the federal government’s commitment to provision of services in both official languages is a species of abstract equality. Instead, the equality of French and English exists in a concrete geography: French Canadians have a territory in which they exercise linguistic, cultural and political dominance; and this dominance extends over nearly a quarter of the Canadian population, as well as over a territory that is over 15 percent of the colossal territorial base of Canada. To affirm the equality of Indigenous cultures will require that Indigenous culture, politics and languages exist in some place – that is, in a territory in which Indigenous governments and people can flourish. Of course, these places do exist – more or less. Reservations are enclaves of Indigenous culture and people. However, these are small outposts, purposely placed on the least valuable and productive lands, governed by Indian Act governments that have little in the way of law-making authority, and virtually no powers of taxation to raise the money

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What Canada must contend with is that Indigenous people never needed to be civilized because Indigenous cultures always were, and remain today, as valuable and as worthy as Anglophone or Francophone or any other culture of the world.

to build basic infrastructure or to provide the social services that non-Indigenous Canadians deem essential to their own communities: potable water, decent schools, and a child welfare system that does not abandon drug-addicted children to the self-care of an inner-city motel room. Settler Canadians need not fear the reallocation of jurisdiction over federal and provincial lands to Indigenous governments. Indeed, in looking at a map of Ontario one is struck by how little physical presence either federal or provincial government seems to extend over the northern two-thirds of the province: 24 communities do not even have a road connecting them to southern Ontario, or to any other community. In those communities, there are virtually no federal or provincial services vital to the health of southern communities: little effective policing, no schools beyond the primary grades (if there is a school at all), ageing water treatment plants, no library, nowhere to get a driver’s license or health card, let alone a hospital. And yet in stark contrast to the lack of government services, the federal and provincial governments go out of their way to exercise pervasive and even armed authority over these communities and their traditional territories: selling off mineral and timber rights for government coffers hundreds of kilometres to the south; prosecuting any First Nations person who has sufficient temerity or is cold enough to cut down some trees to build a home; determining the hunting and fishing regimes over territories that 99.99 percent of Ontarians will never see or think about; and distributing to Indigenous Canadians a share of the federal wealth in grudgingly small transfer payments that amount to about one-third of the benefits enjoyed by settler Canadians. If Indigenous communities were provided jurisdiction over these same matters in their own traditional territories (and where virtually no settler people now live), then Indigenous governments would be in a position to tax the extraction of resources and consequently finance the economic and social development of their own communities. In Ontario, provincial coffers are enriched by almost CDN $250 million annually from stumpage fees alone. This figure is not the value of the timber; it is what the province is paid by forestry companies for the right to cut timber. In British Columbia, the figure for forest stumpage fees is close to one billion dollars per year. One might rightly worry about the hole in provincial budgets that such a transfer of economic and legal jurisdiction might create. The answer to this fear is simply to integrate Indigenous governments into the existing system of federal transfer payments: to the extent that Indigenous governments would be enriched by taxing resource development, some fair portion of that GDP could be sent to Ottawa for redistribution to the provinces that have lost out. In

this way, we might also recognize that Indigenous governments and territories are, and always have been, subsidizing their southern settler neighbours.

he good news is that, in many ways, we are already on this path. The recent Tsilhqot’in decision in British Columbia paves the way for Aboriginal title to a land base that is coextensive not with the postage stamp-like territory of an Indian reservation (about 1,000 hectares for the Xeni Gwet’in communities who were the plaintiffs in Tsilhqot’in), but coextensive with the entire traditional territory of the First Nations group in question (1,750 square kilometres in Tsilhqot’in). The constitutional protections set out in section 35 of the Constitution Act, 1982, affirm existing Aboriginal and treaty rights, and there is still some hope that these rights may include the right to a broader set of governmental authorities than is currently recognized by the Indian Act. The call to recognize Indigenous languages as official languages, to teach these languages in public school, and to offer services in these languages, is already being made – notably in the pages of this magazine, and indeed by non-Aboriginal people who recognize the importance of language in defining and affirming culture, geography and history. Furthermore, section 35’s requirement that Aboriginal communities be consulted and accommodated when their rights are affected by government action creates a commercial environment in which Aboriginal consent is increasingly necessary. This in turn means that international investment in Canada’s resource sector will increasingly turn on the consent of Indigenous people and communities. This is not a new state of affairs for Canada, but rather a return to the old order – a return to a time when Indigenous and settler Canadians maintained a political détente, and both thrived in relative equality (see my Feature article, “Toward an Aboriginal Grand Strategy,” in the Summer 2013 issue of GB). Indigenous peoples will need to increasingly be brought into resource development projects as truly equal partners. The days of broken deals and promises made with fingers crossed are over. Now is the time that we must turn to one another and ask what it will take to get a deal done. In some places and at some times, no price will be high enough. Some deals may not go through. But that just is the price of dealing with others as equals – the cost of treating each other with equal respect and dignity. And this, if nothing else, is the lesson that we must learn from the Truth and Reconciliation report: Indigenous people never needed to be civilized, and my people’s culture is equal to yours, wherever you are from. | GB

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Can India Play Beyond its Region?

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On Indian strategic talent, ambitions and real capabilities GB sits down with New Delhi’s top analyst C. RAJA MOHAN C. Raja Mohan is consulting editor on

GB: What do the recent explosions in Tianjin, China mean for India’s view of development? Is there any particular Indian interpretation of those events?

foreign affairs for The Indian Express and a distinguished fellow at the Observer Research Foundation, New Delhi. His latest book is Modi’s World – Expanding India’s

RM: In general terms, the safety culture in China and India is clearly not as deep and advanced as in the West. Tianjin is a good lesson for improving safety in both countries. We always need clear regulations in respect of how chemicals are to be stored and moved. All of this will require far greater national attention and administrative competence across the board.

At the same time, the Indian state is also increasingly conscious of the fact that China’s remarkable economic growth has increased the gap between India and China in national power terms. After all, China’s economy is now more than four times larger than that of India. Dealing with the consequences of that gap is a major national undertaking. So to catch up with China is to cope with China’s new power. GB: How would India catch up to China in the context of a democratic and federal framework? What levers can you use?

Sphere of Influence.

GB: China is still well ahead of India in infrastructure coverage and quality. Is there general agreement on this in India? RM: No one quibbles with that. India has much catching up to do. Still, I think that Indian governments are emphasizing this catch-up imperative. They now have to find a framework in which investment can come and drive the building at the highest international standards.

We have, for too long, blamed democracy and federalism for our lack of progress. That cannot wash anymore. In a whole range of areas, better policies, even within the current framework, can produce the desired progress.

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GB: Is India, under the Modi government, conscientiously benchmarking against China – economically and strategically?

RM: The kind of progress that China has made over the last 30 years is clearly something that India wants to emulate. To a degree, most political leaders have seen that, within a generation, an Indian economic transformation is possible. What China has done is a great example and certainly tends to drive a lot of the Indian logic for accelerated economic change.

RM: We do not want to change our democratic system simply to catch up with China. So India will have to do what it does within its own framework. But India has, for too long, blamed democracy and federalism for the lack of progress. That cannot wash anymore. In a whole range of areas, better policies, even within the current framework, can produce the desired progress. GB: What about strategic talent? Does India today have enough strategic thinkers and practitioners, or is there a national deficit in this regard? RM: Ours is not a problem of intellectual talent, but rather of material capabilities. The rest will follow. If you consider the US at the turn of the 20th century, it did not have any talent of the kind that existed in Europe. But in a short period, the US was leading the world in strategic talent – on the strength, also, of superior material capabilities. For India, therefore, the priority is really to accelerate economic development in order to create the basic competencies. Intellectual talent, as I have mentioned, will follow. GB: But the diplomatic footprint of India remains very small, correct? RM: They are making an effort to change that – to expand the foreign service somewhat. The government is well aware of the problem. India was run for a long time – even under the British – with a very small bureaucracy. After independence, the focus on the bureaucracy and development diverted from the core competencies of the state. So around the core aspects of the state – diplomacy, defence, intelligence – there has already been a significant ramping up of our human resource capability.

in India. That has huge potential to change India’s overall capability.

RM: The key weakness is the absence of a domestic defence industry capability. For too long the focus was just in the public sector and the defence and research department, the Defence Research and Development Organization (DRDO). That policy has failed. The present government in Delhi is bringing the private sector in, and bringing in foreign direct investment. Together, these two factors could alter the way in which defence products will be produced

GB: If China is obviously a source of preoccupation for Delhi, how do things stand in respect of Pakistan?

PHOTOGRAPH: COURTESY OF C. RAJA MOHAN

RM: Pakistan remains a problem. That is one of the legacies of partition that India has to manage. But China’s influence and growth are going to create more problems for India in the region both on our own borders and in the rest of the subcontinent.

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GB: What are the big procurement challenges for the defence and security sector?

If you consider the US at the turn of the 20th century, it did not have any strategic talent of the kind that existed in Europe. But in a short period, the US was leading the world in such talent.

China’s presence is going to alter the way this region is going to look. All of this is happening at a time when the Western world is retreating from the region. By this I mean that there is a real possibility that the US will retrench from India’s western flank after the failures in Afghanistan and Iraq. That makes it even more important for Delhi and Washington to deepen their strategic partnership, improve regional consultation, and coordinate their policies in the Indo-Pacific region. GB: What is the biggest consequence of Chinese presence and influence for the South Asian region? RM: China is already our largest trading partner, and en route to becoming our biggest foreign investor. This will make the Chinese the main provider of new infrastructure. Beijing has been providing arms to Pakistan and other countries as well. Chinese national power is going to radiate across to all of us. Dealing with this power is going to loom very, very large for all of the capitals in the region.

We have to be more practical in dealing with Pakistan. The modest objectives should be to keep a measure of peace, regulate the relationship, and avoid a crisis – rather than oscillating between outreach for solutions and preparing for war.

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GB: The Modi government appears to have an interest in a meaningful role for India beyond the South Asian theatre. What is happening in respect of this ambition? RM: It remains very much in the atmosphere. There is, to begin with, much greater attention from Delhi to our region, and much greater political energy going into India’s regional policy. I think quite a bit of that will bear fruit. If we are thinking globally, then there is much to be done in the Indian Ocean, in the Gulf, and in Central Asia. In all of these theatres, there is new attention from the government. The so-called extended neighbourhood of India is beginning to loom larger in terms of priority areas like security cooperation and economic engagement. GB: How do you foresee the next five to 10 years in relations with Pakistan? RM: I am not expecting any historic breakthroughs 36

in the absence of structural change in Pakistan. And I do not foresee any structural change in Pakistan taking place – particularly in respect of the dominant role of the army in the country. For India, then, the Pakistan problem is one of management, not of finding a solution. The modest objectives should be to keep a measure of peace, regulate the relationship, and avoid a crisis – rather than getting into a very ambitious agenda that involves oscillating between outreach for solutions and preparing for war. We have to be more practical in dealing with talks with Pakistan. GB: How do you foresee India’s role in Afghanistan over the next five to 10 years? RM: India’s role will necessarily be modest – contrary to the general perception that we are somehow competing with Pakistan in Afghanistan. Unilateral competition with Pakistan has always been an exaggeration. Our geography does not afford us that luxury, as India does not have a physical border with Afghanistan. So we do not do any mischief there. India must tailor its policies to its geographic limitations, which means that we cannot play the lead role in Afghanistan, but only a secondary role. We will have to work with others in that theatre, just as we have done in many of our development activities during the period of American presence. Of course, that period is probably coming to an end. GB: But Pakistani presence in Afghanistan is not exaggerated, correct? RM: Exactly. We cannot stop it. Pakistan has a unique position in Afghanistan. It has an almost 2,500-kilometre open border with Afghanistan. That is Pakistan’s curse as well as its greatest advantage. GB: What is your view of the Iran nuclear deal (see Strategic Futures at p. 62)? RM: It is a very good deal. It is long overdue and I welcome Iran’s reintegration into the global mix. India has a lot of work to do with Iran, and this deal opens up space for India in the region. GB: What about India in the Middle East more broadly, given that region’s turmoil (see the Feature article by Fady Fadel and Cynthia Eid at p. 40)? RM: India enjoys a lot of goodwill in the region. We are not into democratic proselytization. What we need to do is to spend more time in the region, and engage it, with all of the key players – Iran, Israel, Turkey, Egypt, Iraq. Historically, India has had good relations with all of them. We need to intensify our level of engagement, reach out to

all sides, and be a positive actor in the region. GB: Do you foresee any possible Indian role in solving the Russia-Ukraine-West conflict? RM: No. We are not going to get involved. There is no question there. India is not going to make a difference in Eastern Europe.

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GB: Could India, as a neutral country that is respected in both Moscow and Kiev, not send peacekeepers to southeastern Ukraine? RM: This is not our issue, so I think there is no question of India sending troops to Eastern Europe. GB: How would you rate India-US relations under Modi? RM: Very good. They are progressing well, as Modi has really put fresh energy into Delhi’s relationship with Washington. Obama has responded. They are meeting again this fall. So expectations are high. GB: How is the relationship today between India and Russia? RM: It is pretty good. There is some concern that the economic side has not moved as far and as fast as it should. From the strategic side, there is a worry that the West is pushing Russia into China’s arms. That will clearly not be a good thing for us, so we would be happy to see a reconciliation between the US and Russia, and Europe and Russia – that is, for things to get back to some kind of an even keel. Otherwise, this dynamic will play into Beijing’s hands.

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GB: How is the relationship with Bangladesh?

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RM: India’s ties with Bangladesh have never been as good as they are today. The very warm political relationship between India’s political leadership and Sheikh Hasina, the current prime minister of Bangladesh, has been reinforced by the resolution earlier this year of the land boundary dispute, and also of the maritime issues in the Bay of Bengal. There is a new commitment in Delhi and Dhaka to build a genuine strategic partnership and to work together for the integration of the eastern subcontinent. GB: How about relations with Sri Lanka?

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RM: Unlike his predecessor, Modi is much better placed to deal with the pressures from Tamil Nadu in managing the complex ties with Sri Lanka. With a majority in the lower house of Parliament, Modi is not under pressure like Manmohan Singh to cede a veto to Tamil Nadu over Delhi’s Sri Lanka policy. Meanwhile, the ouster of proChina strongman Rajapakse in the presidential elections last January has also created a favourable situation for India in Colombo. | GB

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Spain After the Greek Crisis

IN SITU

Why the country is still trapped – institutionally, politically and economically DAVID LIZOAIN reports from Madrid

David Lizoain was a policy adviser to the former president of Catalonia, and is currently head of policy and research for the Socialist Party

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of Catalonia.

evelopments in Spain have to be read in light of what has taken place in Greece. Spain is the next big battleground in a broader political conflict unfolding at different rhythms across Europe in three dimensions: across a left-right axis; in terms of commitment to the European project; and also in terms of traditional actors versus newcomers. As Spain approaches its general election in December, the conservative Popular Party (PP) – the ruling party in Madrid – may be seen to represent, in European terms, the inevitable: status quo economic (austerity) policies that are feasible but thus far largely dismal in their results. The upstart Podemos peddles what may or may not be an opiate for the masses – a promise to end austerity immediately. This alternative generates some optimism, but might prove impossible in practice. The big question is whether the opposition Spanish Socialist Workers’ Party (PSOE) will be able to offer a political programme that walks the fine line between satisfying the desire for change and overpromising – only to later under-deliver. In ordinary times, the governing PP would not be expected to top the polls. Unemployment (over 20 percent) is worse than when the PP took over in 2011, and the party has spent years embroiled in a massive corruption scandal, with a former party treasurer alleging that its most senior leaders were all systematically on the take. President Mariano Rajoy’s approval rating sits at 16 percent. And yet the PP’s margin of victory over the PSOE in 2011 was so large (16 points) that it still has room to manoeuvre. The PSOE, for its part, has been struggling to overcome its record. Jose Luis Rodriguez Zapatero was in government when the financial crisis hit (see the Feature article by John Kay at p. 14), and he was the first to enact – albeit reluctantly – austerity measures. The current PP absolute majority in the Congress of Deputies is the direct consequence of voter frustration with the PSOE, from which the party has yet to fully recover: the year 2011 saw the rise of the indignados, as thousands of young people took to the squares in protest. The party has since opted for a new leader, the economist Pedro Sanchez, who is not deeply linked to the last PSOE government. The hope is that Sanchez represents sufficient renewal to meet the challenge posed by the two new parties (Podemos and Ciudadanos).

To further complicate matters, highly charged elections are being held early this fall in Catalonia. Catalonia has been roiled by a constitutional crisis since 2010, when the Spanish Constitutional Court delivered a restrictive interpretation of the Catalan Statute of Autonomy that abruptly halted Spain’s gradual process of federalization. A cycle of mobilizations has followed, with Catalan nationalists demanding a referendum on independence – something subsequently ruled out by the Spanish authorities. The main nationalist parties are now attempting to depict the fall elections as a veiled plebiscite on independence. The Catalan president and leader of the opposition are running on a combined ticket. In the event of victory, a hazy process of independence will ensue. But even before the votes have been counted, the sovereigntist leaders have already declared that they will consider a success that which would in most cases be considered a failure: if they obtain a majority of seats but not of votes, they will still claim victory – even though this result would not be sufficient for a unilateral declaration of independence. Regardless of who forms the new government, the challenges for Madrid will be enormous. It will have to deal with the continued demands for fiscal consolidations and a public debt that reached 97.7 percent of GDP at the end of 2014. It will need to address the inequalities and widespread uncertainty caused by the economic crisis – now in its seventh year. Some 30 percent of Spanish children are at risk of poverty – the second highest rate in the EU after Romania. Tens of thousands of families have been evicted from their homes. A majority of young people have considered emigrating to find work on account of the lack of opportunities. And, of course, Madrid will have to reckon with the growing issue of refugees (see the Nez à Nez debate between Michael Cotey Morgan and Wolfgang Krieger at p. 56). It will certainly need to seek allies in Europe – where Spain’s influence is at a historic low – if it seeks to change the overall architecture of the Eurozone. And it will need to address the territorial issue raised by Catalan separatism. The historical irony might be that the parties focussing on breaking Spain apart might be the trigger for the country’s renewal. Separatist pressure has prompted even the very conservative PP to recognize that some species of constitutional reform – a key PSOE

PHOTOGRAPH: THE CANADIAN PRESS / MIQUEL LLOP

The PP, for its part, is presenting itself as a champion of orthodoxy, contrasting its record with Syriza’s failure to right the ship in Athens. In the prologue to the December election, it will argue that Spain has now turned the corner, given that the country has of late been outperforming the other large Eurozone economies in growth – a trend that justifies the years of sacrifice. According to the party’s triumphalist rhetoric, it has fulfilled its responsibilities by applying to the letter the recipes for crisis management favoured in Brussels, Frankfurt and Berlin: austerity and structural reforms. In point of fact, however, the number of political actors contending for government has increased as the Spanish state’s perceived capacity to respond to the crisis has diminished. The PP, PSOE, Podemos and Ciudadanos all aspire to either form or condition the next government. And for the first time since the return of democracy to Spain, the possibility exists that a coalition government of some sort will be formed; an absolute majority looks highly unlikely. Responsibility for the future success or failure of Spain will therefore be distributed. Dealing with the economic crisis and its aftermath will remain the principal task of the new government, regardless of its colour. Only once the economic situation has been stabilized will the more complicated reforms required to restore legitimacy to Spanish institutions become possible: a revision of the constitution and, beyond that, a new deal in Europe. Normality for Spaniards has, to be sure, been interrupted, and the political order in place since Spain’s transition to democracy between 1975 and 1982 badly shaken. The Spain of today hardly resembles the Spain of the boom years that followed the introduction of the euro in 1999. The past, as it were, is a foreign country. | GB

A demonstration in Barcelona organized by Spain’s two biggest trade unions to highlight the high unemployment rate, demand the creation of jobs, and warn of the increase in poverty and inequality in Spain, May 2015.

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demand – will be required to address the territorial and national question in Spain. Opening the constitutional file opens up a host of possibilities in terms of revisiting the existing Spanish political settlement. On top of the separatist pressures, dissatisfaction with the state of the country’s affairs has also triggered a broader institutional crisis in Spain. Citizens – disgruntled by perceived political incompetence and corruption – have begun to consider alternatives to the traditional two-party system dominated by the PSOE and PP. The situation in Spain is symptomatic of a broader crisis of the EU-28, and especially of the Eurozone. European institutions have been unable to provide a sustainable response to the global economic crisis. Eurozone unemployment remains chronically high (over 11 percent). Continental elites lurch from summit to summit, applying one temporary fix after another. The developments in Greece over the summer have exposed the extent to which European unity and goodwill are breaking down across the union. And few countries are immune against angry electorates turning to new actors – frequently populist and/or nationalist parties – in search of solutions. Disruptive new political forces are everywhere in Europe today: in the UK, this space is occupied by the UKIP and the SNP; in France, by the Front National; in Scandinavia, by the parties of the far right. Italy has the Five Star movement, and Ireland an ascendant Sinn Fein. In Greece, there is Syriza and its recent splinter, Popular Unity. And in Spain, while Ciudadanos has managed to occupy a political niche as a centre-right party preaching a message of economic liberalism and political renewal, the much bigger story is the emergence of Podemos. Podemos, led by the media-savvy academic Pablo Iglesias, has deftly managed to channel the spirit of the indignados to the benefit of Iglesias’ own electoral vehicle. The party’s initial success stemmed from its rejection of a traditional left-right understanding of politics in favour of a new dichotomy between those ‘below’ (the people) and those ‘above’ (pejoratively referred to as the casta – the caste). However, over the course of the past few months the party has suffered three serious reversals. First, Podemos’ co-founder, Juan Carlos Monedero, was pushed out of the party in a tax scandal related to monies flowing to the movement primarily from the Venezuelan government, severely disrupting the party’s claim to purity. Second, Podemos underperformed during the regional elections held across Spain this past spring. Third, Pablo Iglesias bravely posited a domino theory for bringing an end to austerity in Europe: first Greece, then Spain. Instead, the performance of Syriza has demolished the thesis that Europe can be unilaterally changed by a highly-indebted debtor country on its periphery.

Le pays oscille entre un échiquier régional brûlant, un Printemps arabe non abouti et une résilience interne «miraculeuse» PAR FADY FADEL ET CYNTHIA EID

QUEL AVENIR POUR

LE LIBAN Fady Fadel est doyen de l’American Business School of Paris (ABSParis) et professeur titulaire en droit public et en sciences politiques. Cynthia Eid est conseillère en pédagogie universitaire et chargée de cours à l’Université

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de Montréal.

epuis le début du soulèvement populaire en Syrie en mars 2011, les observateurs regardent la situation au Liban avec intérêt, inquiétude et interrogation: allons-nous vers une extrapolation confessionnelle de la situation syrienne vers le Liban? Allons-nous assister à une confrontation chiite (alaouite)-sunnite au Liban reflétant schématiquement le conflit sanglant en Syrie entre les forces gouvernementales pro-alaouite et l’opposition armée sunnite? En effet, les années de tutelle syrienne exercée au Liban, depuis l’accord national de Taëf conclu en 1989 en Arabie Saoudite jusqu’en 2005, ont laissé des traces et des divisions au sein de la classe politique libanaise. L’administration publique du pays fonctionne au rythme de la corruption et du clientélisme politique; les partis politiques financés majoritairement par les puissances régionales vivent selon le bon vouloir des autorités régionales; et un système politique chaotique s’impose en l’absence d’une règle de droit public arbitrant les conflits. Bref, les protagonistes régionaux ont voulu depuis 1989 un

Les autorités ont érigé un mur de béton à Beyrouth pendant la crise des déchets (août 2015).

7 WIDE x 9.685 HIGH

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PHOTOGRAPHIE: LA PRESSE CANADIENNE / APA IMAGES / REX SHUTTERSTOCK

État libanais démembré et servant leurs intérêts. En guise d’exemple: le président libanais est élu au suffrage universel indirect (par les députés) après avoir été choisi de facto par le président syrien (Hafez al-Assad puis son fils Bachar al-Assad). Les gouvernements libanais ont été composés avec l’aval – et l’intervention – du commissaire syrien en charge du dossier libanais (Ghazi Kanaan puis Rustum Ghazaleh). Les nominations dans la haute fonction publique sont également tributaires de cette ingérence syrienne et du clientélisme politique libanais. Malgré le retrait de l’armée israélienne du LibanSud en 2000 et celui de l’armée syrienne en 2005, suite à l’assassinat de l’ancien premier ministre libanais Rafic Hariri le 14 février 2005 et du soulèvement populaire le 14 mars 2005, la situation politique au Liban est restée chaotique. Le Liban était la scène où se réglaient – ou non – les tensions et conflits régionaux entre les puissances sunnites d’un côté – l’Arabie Saoudite, l’Égypte, la Turquie – et les puissances alaouite et chiite de l’autre – l’Iran,

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Il est clair qu’épargner le Liban d’une guerre fratricide sanglante ne relève pas uniquement des protagonistes nationaux. Il s’agirait d’un consensus régional et international épargnant, jusqu’à présent, le Liban de la violence et la guerre civile.

la Syrie et l’Irak, sans oublier le spectre du conflit israélo-palestinien qui plane sur le pays du cèdre à tout moment. (À cet effet, il convient de noter que le Liban accueille près de 500 000 réfugiés palestiniens – à 90 pour cent sunnites – sur son territoire, où une partie de cette population est prise en otage par des extrémismes religieux dans la région et une autre partie implantée voire intégrée dans la communauté sunnite libanaise.) En l’absence d’une indépendance politique réelle et d’un système de droit public qui arbitre les conflits politiques internes, l’État libanais vivait au gré de l’humeur régionale. Ce paysage de la vie politique au Liban doit être rappelé afin de comprendre en quoi consiste le «miracle libanais» depuis mars 2011, date du soulèvement populaire syrien, et le risque d’enlisement de la situation politique à l’intérieur depuis bientôt deux ans. La dérive armée et sanglante de la révolution syrienne fin 2011 coïncida avec le retrait de l’armée américaine de l’Irak le 21 décembre 2011. Dans l’ouvrage de Gilles Vandal et Sami Aoun, Vaincre AlQaïda, force est de reconnaître que l’action améric-

aine a éradiqué Al-Qaïda en Irak. Or, ce mouvement terroriste et djihadiste fut ressuscité avec plus de violence et de dogmatisme après le retrait américain sous le leadership d’Abou Moussab al-Zarqaoui. La révolution syrienne n’a pas tardé à prendre des couleurs confessionnelles: la masse sunnite s’est soulevée contre le régime alaouite – allié des chiites en Irak et en Iran (voir Strategic Futures à la page 62). En utilisant la violence et les armes contre les manifestants, le régime syrien a induit petit à petit la révolution dans une confrontation avec l’armée et les milices alaouites. Les djihadistes irakiens d’Al-Qaïda virent ainsi la Syrie comme terre de djihad et de guerre sainte. Ils appelèrent d’autres djihadistes à venir en Syrie et défendre la oumma sunnite supposément massacrée par les mécréants alaouites. Il va sans dire qu’il se trouve au Liban des salafistes sunnites sensibles à l’appel du djihad et des extrémistes aveuglés par la haine des «mécréants» alaouites et chiites. Un des épisodes marquant de la guerre syrienne a eu lieu en mai 2013, avec l’entrée en lice officielle du Hezbollah et sa victoire dans le champ de bataille syrien de Qousseir aux côtés des forces du régime syrien contre les djihadistes d’Al-Qaïda. L’engagement du Hezbollah libanais en Syrie aux côtés des milices irakiennes et des forces du régime syrien a remis en cause la stabilité sécuritaire libanaise et la soi-disant neutralité libanaise par rapport à la révolution syrienne. En effet, le Hezbollah libanais est entré dans les structures politiques en 2005, à l’issue des élections législatives où il a récolté 14 députés sur 128. Il obtient dans le gouvernement un ministre membre du parti (Mohammad Fneich, nommé à l’Énergie) et deux ministres qui lui sont associés (Faouzi Salloukh aux Affaires étrangères et Trad Hamadé au Travail). Cette entrée politique du Hezbollah et son nouvel engagement dans le dialogue national et le consensus politique libanais étaient un gage de libanisation du Hezbollah, en vue de le détacher de sa tutelle irano-syrienne. En 2013, cette tutelle va cependant l’emporter sur la libanisation du Hezbollah: il entra en guerre contre les djihadistes afin de défendre le régime syrien et, au-delà, les intérêts iraniens. Le Hezbollah plongea dans la guerre syrienne malgré son adhésion à la Déclaration nationale de Baabda du 11 juin 2012, selon laquelle tous les partis libanais se sont engagés à «[s]e tenir à l’écart de la politique des axes et des conflits régionaux et internationaux et éviter les retombées des tensions et des crises régionales pour préserver les intérêts supérieurs du Liban, son unité nationale et la paix civile». Depuis, des djihadistes chiites du Hezbollah tués en Syrie sont inhumés au Liban tandis que d’autres djihadistes sunnites libanais tués en Syrie sont également enterrés au Liban. Ces protagonistes

sunnites et chiites se combattent en Syrie, gardant ainsi le Liban à l’écart des confrontations civiles. Il est clair qu’épargner le Liban d’une guerre fratricide sanglante ne relève pas uniquement des protagonistes nationaux (le Hezbollah chiite, le Courant sunnite du Futur, les Salafistes, les Druzes, les Chrétiens de Michel Aoun, Samir Geagea et Amine Gemayel). Il s’agirait d’un consensus régional et international épargnant, jusqu’à présent, le Liban de la violence et la guerre civile.

Le moindre faux pas ou provocation du Hezbollah chiite à l’endroit des forces sunnites – ou bien quelconque autre provocation – au Liban pourrait faire sauter en éclat le verrou de la paix civile au Liban. mandat des actuels députés. D’un côté, le pays est doté d’un parlement qui ne jouit pas du consensus national et de la légitimité populaire. D’autre part, son pouvoir législatif est mis à défaut puisqu’il ne pourra se réunir que pour élire le président de la République. Faute de consensus sur la nomination d’un nouveau chef de l’armée, le chef actuel a vu son mandat renouvelé à deux reprises par le gouvernement. Et puisque l’équilibre confessionnel exige la prise en compte des intérêts communautaires, le chef maronite de l’armée a vu le mandat de ses proches collaborateurs (des généraux sunnite, chiite et druze) se renouveler de facto. Il convient de noter que le gouvernement du Premier ministre sunnite Tammam Salam tentait jusqu’ici de conduire une politique de concordance et de compromis, ne mettant pas en péril les forces chiites libanaises ainsi que leurs alliés chrétiens (Hezbollah et le Courant patriotique libre). Cela dit, Salam réussit de moins en moins à réunir son cabinet. Entre autres, il est accusé de saboter «les droits des Chrétiens» en exerçant abusivement les

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n effet, la sécurité et la protection de 10 000 soldats casques bleus de maintien de la paix au Liban-Sud (majoritairement des Européens) et la situation géopolitique du Liban constituent des gardefous qui ont contribué jusqu’ici à écarter le conflit du territoire libanais. Par exemple, si les puissances occidentales déclaraient la guerre au régime al-Assad, il est probable qu’il y aurait des représailles contre les casques bleus européens vu qu’ils sont stationnés au Liban-Sud, région sous contrôle du Hezbollah. À ce calcul il faudrait évidemment ajouter la complexité apportée par l’apparente présence grandissante d’effectifs russes sur le territoire syrien. En concentrant les combats entre djihadistes (Hezbollah et Al-Qaïda-Daech) dans les montagnes libanaises et syriennes loin de la côte méditerranéenne, les protagonistes libanais veulent empêcher ces extrémistes de s’approcher de la côte libanaise (278 kilomètres), l’une des plus grandes au ProcheOrient. Il s’agit d’une situation semblable en Syrie, où la ville de Lattaquié et la côte méditerranéenne syrienne sont à l’écart des combats. La situation géopolitique de la côte méditerranéenne libanaise constitue donc aujourd’hui une zone de sécurité que les pays du nord de la Méditerranée veulent renforcer afin d’éviter deux fléaux – le premier étant de voir des djihadistes de Daech et/ou Al-Qaïda s’emparer du sud de la Méditerranée, et le second étant de se servir de cette côte pour contrôler une fuite massive des réfugiés syriens, irakiens et palestiniens vers le nord de la Méditerranée (voir le débat Nez à Nez à la page 56). Si aujourd’hui le Liban est parmi les seuls pays au Proche-Orient qui ne souffrent pas de guerre civile, il lui faudrait capitaliser sur ses atouts afin de consolider sa sécurité – cette dernière restant extrêmement fragile. Le moindre faux pas ou provocation du Hezbollah chiite à l’endroit des forces sunnites – ou bien quelconque autre provocation – au Liban pourrait faire sauter en éclats le verrou de la paix civile au Liban. Or, la situation politique intérieure reflète tous les maux institutionnels et administratifs libanais et l’incapacité de faire face aux échéances nationales, de petite et grande envergure. Pourquoi parlons-nous

d’échéances? Le Liban n’a plus de président de la République depuis mai 2014. Depuis l’indépendance en 1943, c’est la plus longue période pendant laquelle le pays du cèdre n’arrive pas à élire un président. La première magistrature du pays est aussi vacante. Les forces politiques libanaises n’arrivent pas à s’entendre sur le président à élire par les députés suite à l’expiration du mandat du Président M. Sleiman – elles lui ont préféré la vacance jusqu’à nouvel ordre. Le conseil des ministres exerce donc «collégialement» les pouvoirs du président, trahissant ainsi une autre problématique: une situation chaotique au sein du gouvernement, commandée par le confessionnalisme. Le mandat du parlement libanais arrivait à terme en mai 2013: faute d’élections législatives, les députés ont prorogé leur mandat à deux reprises, et peut-être une troisième fois prochainement. À défaut d’avoir organisé des élections législatives en 2013 et afin d’éviter les débats politiques et les tensions communautaires entre les diverses communautés et factions, le parlement a voté une loi prorogeant le

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Le système politique libanais est donc aujourd’hui bloqué, désuet, obsolète, mais il continue de servir les intérêts clientélistes des acteurs politiques. Pour les puissances régionales ayant d’autres priorités, la crise des déchets, ne fut-ce qu’un symptôme d’un mal plus grand, ne les intéresse pas.

pouvoirs du président «maronite» de la République (adoption de plus de 50 décrets présidentiels, convocation continue du conseil des ministres, etc.). Dans ce contexte national et institutionnel, force est de relever l’incapacité de la classe politique et du gouvernement au Liban à trouver des solutions face à la récente crise nationale de la collecte des déchets (voir Cabinet Room à la page 45). Le contrat de la Société Averda, en commande de l’entreprise Sukleen chargée du ramassage et de l’enfouissement des ordures, est arrivé à terme le 17 juillet 2015. Depuis, les déchets s’entassent à Beyrouth et dans le Gouvernorat du Mont-Liban. Le dossier des déchets et de leur traitement, avec des retombées financières considérables, a été encore une fois politisé (la Société Averda serait proche de la famille Hariri). Les acteurs politiques étant incapables de s’entendre et d’attribuer ce marché public à d’autres sociétés, les citoyens sont délaissés face à ce fléau. En effet, chaque fois qu’il y aurait une brèche d’entente entre les acteurs politiques sur un marché public, la prise de décision est bloquée, car d’autres acteurs constateraient qu’il y a de la corruption dans cette attribution de marché public ou bien qu’ils y sont écartés. Il en est de même concernant les avancements et les promotions dans la fonction publique civile et militaire. D’autres fléaux chroniques viennent s’ajouter à cette crise – par exemple, les coupures continues d’eau et d’électricité. Dans le contexte de ce vide institutionnel, un mouvement citoyen «apolitique» baptisé «Vous puez», en provenance d’associations écologiques, humanitaires et culturelles, s’est mobilisé à Beyrouth, réclamant la transparence dans l’attribution du marché public des déchets et la résolution d’une crise qui est devenue sanitaire. Des heurts ont eu lieu, le 22 août dernier, entre manifestants et forces de la police faisant des blessés civils. Or, c’est l’une des rares fois où un tel mouvement citoyen réclame le changement du régime libanais – régime de plus en plus incapable de faire face à des crises sociales, sanitaires, économique et encore moins politiques. La crise de déchets est donc le symptôme d’un système politique confessionnel libanais qui repose, en toutes choses, sur le consensus. Ce consensus, qui devait être politique au départ pour des questions nationales de premier ordre (guerre et paix, indépendance du Liban, système politique, etc.), est devenu le mot d’ordre pour les moindres mesures administratives qui devaient être adoptées en conseil des ministres. Inutile de trouver un responsable, car les acteurs politiques engagés dans le gouvernement et dans la vie politique libanaise cherchent à préserver ce système de blocage et à en tirer un maximum de profit, chacun à sa manière caractérisée par le clientélisme, le confessionnalisme, la corruption et le populisme. L’un des maux majeurs du pays est que les milices libanaises qui se sont entretuées durant

la guerre civile sont au commande du pouvoir du pays (Amal, Parti progressiste druze, Hezbollah, phalangistes, Hezbollah, etc.). Diriger un pays ou une administration publique comme on dirigeait les milices engendre le clientélisme, la corruption, l’absence de transparence, le blanchiment d’argent, les pots de vin, etc.

ace aux réclamations et slogans des manifestants et du mouvement citoyen «Vous puez», la classe politique et ses militants défendent le système politique confessionnel en reconnaissant qu’il est désuet, mais se demandent: quelle serait l’alternative? La situation politique et sociale au Liban est manifestement marquée par un vide et un chaos généralisé. Qu’est-ce qui empêcherait de passer de ce vide à un autre régime? Le système politique libanais repose effectivement sur les appartenances communautaires des acteurs politiques, ainsi que militaires, judiciaires et diplomatiques. Dans un contexte régional extrêmement tendu au niveau confessionnel, la masse cherche la protection derrière leur «zou’ama», dirigeants et seigneurs politiques (ou confessionnels). Soit cette masse profite de la corruption et du clientélisme, soit elle cherche l’identification communautaire entre elle et son leader politique (Nabih Berry et Hassan Nasrallah pour les Chiites, Saad Hariri pour les Sunnites, Walid Joumblatt pour les Druzes, Michel Aoun, Samir Geagea, Soleimane Frangié et Amin Gemayel pour les Chrétiens). En conséquence, le mouvement citoyen qui se veut apolitique et cherche à se détacher des appartenances communautaires, risque d’être étouffé par la masse qui cherche à rendre l’adversaire politique responsable du blocage du système, au lieu de mettre en cause le système lui-même. Les acteurs politiques n’ont pas ainsi besoin de défendre le système politique qui consacre leur emprise sur la vie politique, économique et sociale du pays. Leurs militaires et sympathisants confessionnels s’en chargent. Le système politique libanais est donc aujourd’hui bloqué, désuet, obsolète, mais il continue de servir les intérêts clientélistes des acteurs politiques. Pour les puissances régionales ayant d’autres priorités, la crise des déchets, ne fut-ce qu’un symptôme d’un mal plus grand, ne les intéresse pas. Dans ce contexte national et régional, le régime politique libanais ne verra pas prochainement de changement ou un printemps arabe. L’appartenance de la masse libanaise est ailleurs. Est-ce que l’arrivée d’une nouvelle classe politique saura convaincre la masse de se détacher de leur zou’ama et de prôner la renaissance politique au Liban? Peut-être oui, mais pas dans l’immédiat. | GB

IN THE CABINET ROOM

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ILLUSTRATION: DUSAN PETRICIC

Peter Jones is Associate Professor in the Graduate School of Public and International Affairs at the University of Ottawa. His latest book is Track Two Diplomacy: In Theory and Practice.

THE FUTURE OF

TRACK TWO DIPLOMACY

The Iran nuclear deal was Track One. But its roots are Track Two. So whither Track Two in this new century?

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BY PETER JONES

rack Two diplomacy exists quietly – on the margins of international affairs. The term ‘Track Two Diplomacy’ was coined by US diplomat Joseph Montville in the early 1980s, even if it had been around much earlier under different names. Though much mystery surrounds it, Track Two is in reality simply a method of bringing together influential people from different sides of a given conflict, on an unofficial basis, to talk about the issues and to jointly develop new ideas about how that conflict may be better managed or resolved. The field has not been without controversy – particularly on the part of some governments that have claimed that Track Two dialogues have overstepped their boundaries and intruded on official policy-making. Indeed, it may have been a mistake to include the word ‘diplomacy’ in the name, for this conveys that the process is somehow identical or tantamount to diplomatic activity. It is not. Diplomacy is reserved strictly for those who represent the state. People engaged in Track Two do not represent the state and should not try to. Indeed, perhaps because some of its proponents and practitioners have tried to claim too much for its successes, or tried to intrude into official diplomacy, there are those who regard much of what happens under the aegis of Track Two with great suspicion. Images are conjured up of ‘meddlesome amateurs’ getting in the way of the important work of diplomacy, and perhaps even confusing a situation by leading the other side to believe that the possibility of a changed position is present when it is not. As former US Secretary of State George Shultz put it in the foreword to my recent book on the subject, “Track Two diplomacy is something I heard of frequently during my years as Secretary of State. To be honest, I was often somewhat leery of it. I did not question the motives or the integrity of most who were engaged in it. Rather, my concern was that it would get in the way of our official diplomatic efforts and confuse others as to where the United States stood on various matters. More than once, I gave instructions to State Department officials to inform a foreign government in no uncertain terms that the US Government had nothing to do with this or that Track Two initiative and did not endorse it.” While Shultz went on, after leaving office, to develop a new appreciation of the nuances and potential uses of Track Two, his views while in office were not unusual. On the other hand, proponents of Track Two believe that it can help to break through the barriers that official diplomacy can sometimes place on talks. This

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ILLUSTRATION: GARY TAXALI

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sometimes means deliberately entering into a ‘grey area’ between what governments will talk about (and whom they will talk to), and what they often know must be discussed if a problem is to be addressed. One example is the infamous question of ‘talking with terrorists.’ Many governments, and especially Western ones, have firm policies against such communication. This view was perhaps best summed up by then British Prime Minister John Major in a response to a question in the House of Commons as to whether he would talk with the IRA while fighting was still underway: “If the implication of his remarks is that we should sit down and talk to Mr. Adams and the Provisional IRA, I can say only that it would turn my stomach, and those of most Honourable Members; we will not do it. […] I will not talk to people who murder indiscriminately.” In fact, Major’s government, recognizing the need to see whether there was any possibility of a negotiated settlement, had already initiated secret discussions through intermediaries. Various kinds of contacts, including Track Two contacts, had been underway since the 1970s. In his memoirs, Major justified the fact that he had authorized such talks even though his public position was contrary: “We were well aware of the unlikelihood of success, but we felt we had a responsibility […] to see if the leadership of the Provisionals, if offered fair and equal treatment, had the will and the ability to move away from terrorism.” This case is not unusual. Many governments say publicly that they will not talk to this or that group but do so quietly. Track Two is one of the mechanisms that makes this possible. The earliest contacts between influential Israelis and Palestinians were conducted in Track Two fora, when it was illegal under Israeli law for a citizen to meet anyone affiliated with the Palestine Liberation Organization. Indeed, the famous Oslo Process began as a Track Two dialogue, which evolved into an official discussion. Similarly, the earliest contacts between people associated with the apartheid government of South Africa and those affiliated with the banned African National Congress took place in Track Two settings, and these dialogues helped to open the way for the talks that ultimately resulted in a transition to majority rule in South Africa. In each case, by holding such discussions at arm’s length

from government, and holding them quietly, it was possible for stakeholders to explore whether there was a potential partner on the other side with whom discussions of an alternate future might be possible, and to begin to identify and map the terrain of compromise without publicly compromising on any positions of principle. There are many other examples of such discussions. Throughout the Cold War, high-level unofficial discussions took place among Americans, Soviets and people from other countries who were bound up in that lengthy conflict. These discussions were often run by groups such as Pugwash and the Dartmouth Conferences, and the ideas that they generated made their way into numerous arms control and other agreements during the Cold War. Indeed, Pugwash was awarded a share of the 1995 Nobel Peace Prize for its work in bringing together people from across the two sides of the Iron Curtain. At present, such dialogues have been going on for some time on between Indians and Pakistanis, Americans and Iranians (see Strategic Futures at p. 62), and among the various factions and groups in Afghanistan – to cite but a few examples. While much of what happens in these discussions is, by design, confidential, their results do sometimes quietly influence official diplomacy. This is typically done by means of the transfer of ideas, and sometimes of people, between Track Two and official diplomacy. In many cases, the influence of Track Two is as much about demonstrating that new ways of approaching problems are possible as it is about any specific problem-solving proposals or algorithms coming out of the discussions. This was very much the case in respect of the recently concluded nuclear deal between Iran and the P5+1. Track Two dialogues on the nuclear issue between Iranians and Westerners, including Americans, have been happening quietly for many years. While the specifics of the actual deal are clearly the product of the official negotiations, those familiar with the Track Two processes that went on over the years can see ideas and concepts that resonate with their experience. Perhaps more importantly, some of the specific individuals on both sides who were involved in the formal P5+1 talks – both at the table and in the respective capitals – had been involved earlier in some of the Track Two discussions. Did the Track Two dialogues cause the official deal to be negotiated? Probably not. Did they, however, help to set the stage such that, once the officials got to the table, they were sufficiently familiar with each other and with each other’s concerns to suggest that conclusive negotiations were possible? Most certainly. Even so, there are those who view Track Two with suspicion. Part of the problem in coming to grips with the field is that it is large, imprecise and unwieldy. There is no single model, understanding or even vernacular or vocabulary for Track Two. Different

scholars and practitioners have used terms such as ‘interactive conflict resolution,’ ‘controlled communication,’ ‘Track 1.5,’ ‘Track 3,’ and many others. Some of these dialogues are meant to bring together high-level people for quiet talks aimed at seeing whether official positions can be changed. Others seek to influence civil society – often as a means of creating pressure campaigns designed to bring about changes in policies or even in governments.

Did the Track Two dialogues cause the official deal to be negotiated? Probably not. Did they help to set the stage such that, once the officials got to the table, they were sufficiently familiar with each other and with each other’s concerns to suggest that conclusive negotiations were possible? Most certainly.

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n reviewing the history of Track Two, a nuanced approach must be taken in respect of when various kinds of Track Two can occur. Above all, one needs to define carefully the interplay between goals and methods. Some Track Two projects are aimed at bringing together those close to governments for a dialogue aimed at managing the conflict. Others aim to bring together civil society leaders to develop means to effect changes in the structures of power as a prelude to a transformation of the underlying conditions that the organizers and participants feel have brought about the conflict, or otherwise sustain it. There are many different kinds of Track Two in between. Unfortunately, the catch-all phrase ‘Track Two’ has come to be used to name a variety of dialogues that can be quite different. Assessing whether Track Two is appropriate for opening up a dialogue in any particular case or for any particular conflict thus has much to do with determining what kind of Track Two one is talking about, and what objectives the dialogue is meant to advance. (Criticisms of Track Two are often criticisms on the part of people who believe that the wrong kind of Track Two was run at an inappropriate moment.) If a situation requires a quiet dialogue between elites to try to defuse a pressing issue, it might be inappropriate to launch a Track Two intended to bring together civil society leaders to develop alternate models of governance, leading to a public campaign for change. Conversely, if the elites are wedded to the present conflict and unwilling to envisage or discuss the broader changes necessary to transform the situation, a Track Two involving them alone would likely yield few, if any, results in terms of developing new ideas that could resolve the issues. In the event, involving civil society leaders who are trying to stimulate far-reaching change might be exactly what is required. Regardless of what kind of Track Two is being discussed, and of who are the intended audiences, most Track Two dialogues tend, in practice, to share certain characteristics. They all emphasize small, informal dialogues – which the literature refers to as ‘Problem-Solving Workshops’ – between people from the various sides of a conflict. These dialogues are often facilitated by an impartial ‘Third Party.’ Though the dialogues are unofficial, it is generally expected

that the participants will be able to influence the development of thinking in their societies on the conflict. The dialogues are not meant to debate the current positions of the sides, but rather involve the participants stepping back from official positions to explore the underlying causes of the dispute in the hope of jointly developing alternative ideas. The dialogues are ongoing processes, rather than ‘oneoff’ workshops. And while not exactly secret, the dialogues are conducted quietly in order to create an atmosphere in which ‘outside-the-box’ thinking can flourish and participants are not afraid to propose and explore ideas that could not be entertained by an official process, or indeed ideas that might be repeated in the press. Such processes, if successful, can lead to a number of results. These include changed perceptions of the conflict and the ‘other’ – for example, a greater appreciation for the complexities, domestic politics and ‘red lines’ of the other side. New channels for communication may be opened between adversaries who had few other means of communicating. New options for future negotiation may be identified and developed. Finally, networks may be established by and for people who can work to change views in their own countries. As noted, a successful Track Two requires that the participants be able transfer the ideas developed in such meetings into the official sphere. This is more difficult than it may seem. Officials are instinctively wary of ideas coming from outside the bureaucracy – sometimes because Track Two can complicate their lives, and sometimes because they fear the loss of control over an issue. As such, Track Two projects aimed at influencing official policy often enlist as participants people who have connections to the official world (often retired senior officials). The objective is to have people at the table who have credibility in the official world and are familiar with how things are done there, but who have also the luxury of being able to think ‘outside the box’ as they are no longer officials themselves. If and when a Track Two process comes up with a new proposal or idea, such influential people have the credibility in official circles to gain the idea a hearing – even if there is evidently no guarantee of acceptance. Ideas developed in Track Two often enjoy the most traction when they happen to come along at those rare moments when ‘the system’ is looking for new approaches. This observation has led some to argue that Track Two dialogues launched before a moment is ‘ripe’ are wasted efforts. Those who view the field more subtly, however, understand that Track Two can work quietly in order to help create or stimulate such moments. This is done by demonstrating that new thinking or a broader imagination is possible, and developing cadres of credible people who advocate

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Officials are instinctively wary of ideas coming from outside the bureaucracy – sometimes because Track Two can complicate their lives, and sometimes because they fear the loss of control over an issue.

the consideration of new approaches. The creation of a sense that new directions are possible, and of a core group of proponents for such new thinking, is a fundamental component of what makes a moment ripe in the first place. To be sure, the reliance on ‘influential’ figures as participants in Track Two processes carries with it potential problems. First, there are not many of them to go around – that is, Track Two can be dominated by a small elite who are excessively similar in their thinking. Indeed, some argue that efforts should be made specifically to avoid overreliance on the ‘usual suspects’ in Track Two exercises in order to create a platform where really independent thinking can take place. This is frequently one of the key points of dispute between those who see Track Two as a means to manage a situation and those who believe that the purpose of such dialogues should be to transform the very logic of a conflict. This leads to the second problem – known in the Track Two world as the ‘Autonomy Dilemma.’ On the one hand, reliance on influential elites means that results can be more easily transferred to the official process, even if ‘outside-the-box’ thinking may be in short supply. On the other hand, gathering a really autonomous group with few connections to government can lead to more independent thinking, even if the ability of such processes to transfer their results is limited as the participants are not known or trusted by officials. There is no easy answer to the problem posed by the Autonomy Dilemma, other than for practitioners of Track Two to be aware of it and to constantly work to ensure that the discussions do not degenerate into an exchange of official positions. Another critical issue is funding. Though the sums involved are comparatively small, support for airfares and other meeting costs is required for Track Two processes to take place and endure. Traditionally, Track Two has been funded by major foundations and by some governments, such as the Scandinavians and the US. (Canada used to be a financial supporter of this type of dialogue; no longer.) This naturally sometimes leads to concerns that undue influence is being exerted. At the end of the day, however, the integrity of the Third Party (the individual or groups that convene the dialogue and act as moderator) depends on not accepting support if the funder demands conditions, and on being scrupulously open and honest about who is funding the exercise. It must be made clear to the funders by the Third Party that support will only be accepted if the process will be organized in ways that meet with the approval of the participants. Third Parties who act as agents of others quickly gain a reputation for untrustworthiness and are unable to continue. This is sometimes one of the most difficult things for critics of Track Two to grasp, but the process cannot work any other way. Bref, much

thought still needs to be given in the Track Two world as to how such dialogues are funded.

f course, Track Two is not magical, nor is it a panacea. Just because influential people from societies in conflict come together quietly for discussions does not mean that problems will be resolved. Moreover, if done insensitively, Track Two can exacerbate the problems that exist between groups in conflict. But if done sensitively and properly, Track Two dialogues can provide an opportunity for new thinking to flourish on difficult problems. They can also help to create cadres of individuals who have been through a process that causes them to rethink their perspectives on a conflict, and opens them up to contact with people from the ‘other side’ that would have been impossible by any other means. In situations of longstanding and deadly conflict, this can be very useful. And in the decade to come, we may well see that Track Two and cognate processes will have helped to lay the foundations for official attempts at resolving such impasses as the intensifying Russo-Western conflict, the conflict between the two Koreas (and prospects at reunification), renewed Sino-Japanese tensions (and any Sino-American tensions), ongoing Armenian-Azerbaijani pretensions to war over Nagorno-Karabakh, and a number of permutations of conflict among states and groups in the Middle East and elsewhere. In each of these cases, Track Two dialogues have been ongoing for some time. Looking ahead, governments, and those who are involved in international affairs more generally, will need to develop a more nuanced appreciation of what Track Two is and how it can be useful. Those engaged in Track Two must always retain a sense of perspective about their role. They are not ‘negotiating’ on behalf of anyone, and should not imagine that they are. They are, instead, stepping outside the norms of formal diplomatic processes to try to create new possibilities. Governments, for their part, need to learn to recognize – more than they sometimes do – the contributions that such dialogues can make, particularly in circumstances when a situation is deadlocked. The space and freedom required for ‘outside-the-box’ thinking are often very hard for governments to accept. Indeed, when vested interests specifically do not want to reach an accommodation with the other side, Track Two can seem threatening. There therefore exists a creative tension between Track Two and official diplomacy. This is natural. The art of the deal for both sides lies in recognizing when and how creative tensions may be turned to positive effect. | GB

Nation-building is in America’s DNA “‘Nation-building can only work when the people own it.’

Jeremi Suri argues that the United States has too often forgotten this truth over the course of its nation-building history— including the American Revolution and Reconstruction as well as efforts in the Philippines, Germany, Japan, and Vietnam. Suri draws lessons from all these efforts that are particularly valuable today.” —Anne-Marie Slaughter, Bert G. Kerstetter ’66 University Professor of Politics and International Affairs, Princeton University

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Quel rôle diplomatique pour les puissance moyennes européennes?

QUERY

Vers une réinvention stratégique à Londres, Paris et Berlin PAR FRÉDÉRIC CHARILLON

Frédéric Charillon est professeur des Universités en science politique et directeur de l’Institut de Recherches Stratégiques de l’École

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militaire (IRSEM).

quoi ressemblera la politique étrangère du futur? Les développements récents – guerre «hybride» en Ukraine, adversaires non étatiques au Sahel, enjeux nouveaux sur l’agenda international (par ex. climat, religion et tourisme), montrent que la pratique de la puissance et de l’influence doit procéder à une profonde mutation. La confrontation comme la coopération entre acteurs se jouent à la fois sur un terrain certes toujours physique (les conflits armés) mais également politique (les clubs et circuits internationaux d’influence), sociologique (l’adhésion des populations locales et des opinions) et symbolique (représentations, images, perceptions et storytelling dans les nouveaux médias). Paradoxalement, cette modernisation pourrait venir des «vieilles» puissances moyennes européennes que l’on croyait reléguées aux gloires passées, et ce pour une raison simple: c’est pour elles une question de survie. Le concept de «puissance moyenne» ne va pas de soi. Il trouve des usages différents au fil des travaux scientifiques: souvent utilisé à propos du Canada et de l’Australie, parfois pour des puissances régionales (Turquie, Afrique du Sud, Corée du Sud), parfois encore pour des grands émergents comme le Brésil ou l’Inde (voir l’entrevue Tête à Tête avec C. Raja Mohan à la page 34). Nous l’emploierons ici pour qualifier les trois grandes diplomaties européennes que sont la France, le Royaume-Uni et l’Allemagne. Et nous définirons comme une puissance moyenne celle qui sans pour autant pouvoir prétendre à la comparaison avec les plus grandes (États-Unis, Chine, Russie) conserve suffisamment de ressources pour exercer une influence à l’échelle globale – et non dans son seul environnement régional immédiat – sur un vaste ensemble d’enjeux. Deux de ces États sont des puissances nucléaires et membres permanents du Conseil de Sécurité des Nations Unies, au comportement international interventionniste. La troisième (l’Allemagne) exerce une autorité économique internationale reconnue, fondée sur un leadership monétaire et économique européen. Dotées de réseaux diplomatiques substantiels et reconnus comme performants, ces trois puissances européennes à la taille, aux trajectoires historiques et aux savoir-faire comparables, se trouvent confrontées à une série de défis communs en matière de politique étrangère: comment gérer leur relativisation sur la scène mondiale? Comment

s’adapter aux mutations de la pratique diplomatique et réinventer dans ce contexte l’initiative étatique? Trop petites désormais pour agir seules, mais trop importantes, influentes et compétentes pour se résigner à ne jouer qu’un rôle secondaire, comment comptent-elles assurer la réinvention de leur influence? Ces trois politiques étrangères se trouvent confrontées au défi conjoncturel d’une importante contrainte des moyens, d’une montée en puissance d’acteurs venus du Sud amenés à les dépasser en termes absolus (économie, armées, démographie, etc.), et plus structurellement, d’une société mondiale marquée par de nouveaux types de dialogue (diplomaties «de conférence », «de commission», «en réseau»), de supports (par ex. diplomatie «publique», «numérique») et d’acteurs (communautaires, associatifs, entrepreneuriaux, identitaires). Nous sommes loin du Congrès de Vienne et de la figure classique du diplomate, que Français, Britanniques et Allemands ont incarné à de nombreuses reprises. La France, le Royaume-Uni et l’Allemagne font pourtant partie des États qui ont le plus de chance de s’adapter à ces mutations, précisément parce que la relativisation de leur poids politique les contraint à explorer de nouvelles pistes, rendues praticables par leur système démocratique et libéral. Or, dans le monde à venir, c’est de ce degré d’ouverture vers la modernité diplomatique que dépendront trois paramètres essentiels: premièrement, l’aptitude d’une politique étrangère à être perçue comme légitime, c’est-à-dire à faire accepter la justesse de ses objectifs par la société mondiale; deuxièmement, sa capacité d’entraînement politique, c’est-à-dire la possibilité d’acquérir le soutien d’autres partenaires pour une opération ou un projet précis en constituant une coalition d’autres États autour de sa position, en parvenant à vendre sa politique étrangère à des soutiens potentiels ; et troisièmement, sa cohérence interne, au sens d’une convergence durable entre les différents acteurs de la décision vers le même objectif, soutenue par les différents niveaux bureaucratiques, construisant un consensus entre décideurs et opinion, sur le fameux «front domestique» de la «double-edged diplomacy» jadis théorisée par Robert Putnam. Par quoi passe la réussite de cette modernisation? D’abord par la capacité d’une politique étrangère à investir dans les enceintes multilatérales, en particulier

La chancelière allemande Angela Merkel a rencontré le président français François Hollande et le président ukrainien Petro Porochenko à Berlin afin de discuter de la crise ukrainienne (août 2015).

semblent se dessiner. Si la France a souvent joué, dans le discours, la carte des nouveaux multilatéralismes (encourageant la révision du fonctionnement des Nations-Unies, l’essor du G20, la refonte d’un dialogue euro-méditerranéen en 2008) et de certaines diplomaties sectorielles (attachant par exemple une grande importance aux sommets climatiques comme celui qui se tient à Paris en novembre-décembre 2015, ou aux questions culturelles, au point d’en faire une pierre d’achoppement du dialogue transatlantique), cette modernité proclamée reste modérée par une posture très classique et moins multilatérale sur les interventions militaires ou dans certains aspects de la pratique européenne, ou par un effort encore très récent dans les nouvelles diplomaties publiques et numériques. Le caractère récent de l’intégration pleine et entière de la diplomatie commerciale dans la diplomatie tout court (création en 2013, au ministère des Affaires étrangères, d’une Direction des entreprises et de l’économie mondiale) témoigne de l’effort entrepris aujourd’hui, mais aussi du retard à rattraper. Le Royaume-Uni, sous Tony Blair, fit d’abord figure de modèle de modernisation diplomatique, orchestrant un discours public sur l’éthique, et plus globalement un «rebranding» de l’image du pays dans le monde, avant de sombrer ensuite sur l’écueil irakien. Mais Londres garde une réelle avance dans

PHOTOGRAPHIE: LA PRESSE CANADIENNE / NURPHOTO / REX SHUTTERSTOCK

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dans les plus récentes, parfois les plus informelles, et où se jouent aujourd’hui les décisions politiques (G20, dialogues inter-régionaux, groupes de travail ad hoc – format dit «Normandie» sur l’Ukraine, P5+1 sur l’Iran). Investir dans ces enceintes implique de dégager les ressources humaines nécessaires à une présence substantielle dans les lieux prioritaires (à identifier par chacun des États concernés). Cela implique aussi de valoriser considérablement les carrières des agents qui se seront prêtés à cet exercice difficile. Un passage par le multilatéral «moderne» doit accélérer un parcours de diplomate, et non l’éloigner des grandes ambassades. Il convient d’investir également dans les diplomaties sectorielles, jusqu’aux plus techniques (par ex. environnement, eau, santé, technologie, gouvernance urbaine), en apparence loin de ce que l’on appelait autrefois la «grande diplomatie», mais dont les enjeux économiques, normatifs, sociétaux – et donc d’influence – sont énormes. Et il faut investir enfin dans les modes innovants d’expression et d’échange avec les segments d’opinion, c’est-à-dire dans les nouvelles formes de diplomatie, que l’on peut qualifier de publique, de numérique, «de proximité», en tout cas qui touchent les individus de la société mondiale, et non les seuls professionnels de la politique étrangère. Paris, Londres et Berlin sont-ils en passe de relever ce défi? Pour l’heure, des paysages contradictoires

Trop petites désormais pour agir seules, mais trop importantes, influentes et compétentes pour se résigner à ne jouer qu’un rôle secondaire, comment comptent-elles assurer la réinvention de leur influence?

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l’articulation entre diplomatie et think tanks (comme le montrent les Shangri-La et Manama Dialogue orchestrés par l’International Institute for Strategic Studies, ou encore le rayonnement international de la Chatham House). L’effort d’innovation de ses pratiques diplomatiques se développe: des enceintes telles que l’Arab Partnership Participation Fund depuis 2013, ou le MENA Conflict Pool, sur le Moyen-Orient, les entreprises diplomatiques numériques comme le «digital coverage», ou les «digital campaigns» pour sensibiliser et influencer, ont tenté de tirer toutes les leçons du Printemps arabe. L’Allemagne, qui affiche volontiers à l’international sa différence avec les puissances «classiques» française et britannique, investit davantage dans certains cercles multilatéraux (comme auprès de l’ASEAN à Jakarta), dans le rôle de ses grandes fondations (Ebert, Adenauer, etc.), à l’extérieur, grâce à des dotations enviables, ou désormais dans la diplomatie numérique facilitant l’expression citoyenne, y compris dans des pays sensibles. Mais le lien entre cette posture libérale et une politique d’influence ou de puissance demeure problématique dans le pays.

’autres pays ont exploré certaines de ces pistes, avant les trois États mentionnés ici. Le Canada et plusieurs pays scandinaves, sur la paix ou la sécurité humaine, ont développé des projets ambitieux qui leur ont conféré une reconnaissance internationale en la matière. Mais, sans leur faire offense, leur surface diplomatique n’était pas la même, notamment en l’absence d’un siège permanent aux Nations Unies (l’Allemagne évidemment ne jouissant non plus de cet atout), tandis que le volume de leur réseau diplomatique n’était pas non plus équivalent. Certains pays aux moyens financiers abondants, dans le Golfe notamment, ont été également parmi les premiers à miser sur les médias globaux (on pense naturellement au Qatar avec Al Jazeera), ou les investissements dans le secteur des loisirs (le Qatar encore). Mais le caractère non pluraliste des systèmes politiques de ces pays, par définition, change la portée de ces entreprises: il s’agit de contrôler un instrument et une image davantage que de se faire les chantres d’un esprit d’initiative dans le cadre d’une gouvernance mondiale dont on reconnaîtrait tous les acteurs jusqu’aux simples citoyens. Et là encore l’aspiration aux responsabilités globales, le poids politique et la présence dans les grandes structures des relations internationales ne sont pas les mêmes. Les Européens, forts de l’expérience collective de l’UE, ont les instruments nécessaires pour relever le triple défi du multilatéralisme, de l’expertise sectorielle et d’un lien nouveau entre diplomates et citoyens, qui dessinera les nouveaux rapports de force entre «anciens» et «modernes» dans le domaine de la politique étrangère. Sans les contraintes systémiques des pays non libéraux, sans non plus la difficulté à gérer une image très chargée, comme c’est le cas (très particulier) des États-Unis, ils ont l’opportunité de réinventer la politique étrangère, les modalités de l’influence et de la puissance – ou bien de disparaître. | GB

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NEZ À NEZ War Refugees and the Rest of the World The West has a duty to take in Syrian refugees/migrants. PROPOSITION:

MICHAEL MORGAN vs WOLFGANG KRIEGER MM (in favour): The stories grow more gruesome

Michael Cotey Morgan is Assistant Professor in the Department of History, University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. He is currently writing a book on the origins of the Helsinki Final Act.

Wolfgang Krieger is University Professor of Modern History and History of International Relations at the University of Marburg, Germany. His latest book is Services secrets – Une histoire, des

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pharaons à la CIA.

with every passing week. Whole families drown in the sea or suffocate in the back of a truck, while the lucky ones have to face down riot police and sleep outdoors without shelter or food. Those who have reached Europe, though they number in the hundreds of thousands, represent only a fraction of those whose lives have been thrown into chaos by the violence in Syria in recent years. Millions more remain trapped in places where civil order has collapsed (or been replaced by a fascistic death cult) or otherwise confined in burgeoning refugee camps in Turkey, Jordan and Lebanon (see the Feature article by Fady Fadel and Cynthia Eid at p. 40). The confluence of war, greed and indifference has created an integrated economy of human misery stretching from the English Channel to the Persian Gulf. There is no end in sight to the war in Syria, or indeed to the profound threats to international order itself in the Middle East (see Strategic Futures at p. 62). So long as these crises continue, the flow of refugees will too. According to the UN High Commissioner for Refugees, European governments have received well over half a million asylum applications since the beginning of the Syrian civil war. The crisis comes at a bad time for the continent. Ongoing economic problems, in Greece and elsewhere, have predictably fuelled an upsurge in xenophobia, even in countries through which most of the refugees travel only briefly. Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orban, for example, insists that his government has no duty to respond to the crisis because it has nothing to do with Hungary. Coils of barbed wire now make the point more eloquently than even the sharpest nationalist rhetoric. But with each boat that reaches a Greek or Italian beach, the question repeats itself, as inevitable as the ebb and flow of the tide: How should Europe – and the Western world more generally – react? In an ideal scenario, the refugees would return to their homelands, where peace has been restored and the work of reconstruction has begun. And yet, barring a dramatic turn of events in the Middle East,

this situation remains the purest fantasy. Despite what some politicians hope, the problem will not resolve itself as long as they continue to look away. Until the problems that caused the crisis in the first place are solved, only second-best solutions remain. Two initiatives immediately present themselves. First, Western countries – not just those in Europe, but also Canada, the US, Australia and others – should draft a joint plan to accept and integrate all of the migrants who have already arrived in Europe. They have already taken steps in this direction, but they fall short of a comprehensive solution. Second, and more importantly, Western governments must work to improve the living conditions of those refugees who remain in the Middle East. These governments should not, however, carry the financial burden alone, but rather should lean on wealthy countries in the region and beyond to pay their share and more. The rule of thumb might be: if a country is wealthy enough to host the Olympics or the World Cup, it is wealthy enough to contribute. This is the only response compatible with the humanitarian values to which Western governments have so loudly pledged themselves over the decades. It is also the only pragmatic response. The refugees will not stop coming, and they cannot go back. Many of them are well-educated and want nothing more than the chance to work and raise their families in peace. A truly visionary policy would therefore regard their arrival not as a threat – to European budgets or social cohesion – but as an opportunity, even at a time of economic dislocation.

WK (against): Our current debates here in Europe are steeped in illusions. While some think that we should welcome all refugees from Syria and Iraq, regardless of their numbers, others believe that we can keep them all out if only our governments had the guts to send them back. Neither variant is realistic. By issuing a blanket welcome we would cease being masters in our own home. The immediate reaction would be a massive right-wing political shift, given that there are solid majorities across Europe opposing free-for-all immigration. These voices are particularly pronounced in Eastern Europe, where people have, in recent history, seldom seen immigration from far-away African, Middle Eastern or Asian lands. Western Europeans, on the other hand, have been living with massive numbers of such immigrants since the 1950s. One need only look around the railway stations of London, Paris, Amsterdam, Hamburg, Frankfurt or Milan to see this reality. Still, in Western Europe, many people – not just neo-fascists and racists – are seriously concerned. Their concern is not rooted in the fact that most of the refugees look different, eat different food, and are

PHOTOGRAPH: THE CANADIAN PRESS / KOCA SULEJMANOVIC

where the current Muslim-versus-Muslim wars are taking place. Indeed, those wars are fuelled by these very same authorities and sponsors. This poses problems that we can no longer ignore. Finally, the call for a ‘European solution’ to the crisis is an illusion to the point of being absurd. The EU has been irrelevant or worse in resolving the Ukrainian crisis or in handling the Greek debt crisis – to say nothing about the upheavals in the Middle East (see the Query article by Frédéric Charillon at p. 52). It will be similarly irrelevant (or incompetent) in solving the current refugee crisis. Let us make no mistake: this work will need to be done by national, regional and local authorities, as well as by civil society organizations. We have no choice but to muddle through. But we must have a realistic perspective of the problems that lie ahead and mend our own ways. We should put the refugees to work and send their children to school. And by giving them all of the chances that a meritocratic society has to offer we must make them understand that we in turn expect loyalty and respect for our host societies.

MM: Lawyers can debate the precise obligations

Migrants wait at the Horgos 2 border crossing at the Serbia-Hungary border, after Hungary sealed the last gap in the barricade along its border with Serbia, September 2015.

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Muslims as such, but instead in the fact that France, the UK and the Benelux countries, in particular, already have serious problems with Islamist populations and their quiet supporters and outside wire-pullers. By admitting hundreds of thousands more Muslims, these problems are likely to get a lot worse. While refugees across the ages have brought with them their cultural baggage, the response from the ‘classical’ immigration societies has been to impose on them their own culture, including their languages. This work was mostly done by ‘integration agencies’ and institutions, such as the public school system, the army, the churches, the labour unions, and the large factories. Today, those agencies have either disappeared (like the military draft) or have been significantly diminished (like the unions and factories). Our public schools are steeped in ‘post-colonial,’ anti-liberal ideology, which holds that all of the world’s problems are the fault of Western societies or ‘liberalism’ or both. Given this pseudo-intellectual self-hatred, how are we to convince immigrants to adopt our culture? On religious issues, Muslim immigrants pose specific problems because they are often governed not by domestic national churches or religious leaders, but by authorities and sponsors in the Middle East,

that the relevant statutes and treaties impose on 57

governments, but the West’s response to the current situation depends at least as much on how we answer a more fundamental – and deceptively simple – question: Who are the refugees? If we describe them simply as Muslims, emphasizing one element of their identity over others, we risk descending into stereotypes. We frighten ourselves with images of foreign hordes threatening to overrun our countries with foreign customs and dubious political loyalties. Those who oppose accepting refugees often conjure these kinds of phantoms, as they did in the cases of the Irish in the 1840s, the Jews in the 1930s, the Hungarians in the 1950s, and the Vietnamese in the 1970s. A similar strain of dystopian paranoia animates Jean Raspail’s 1973 novel, The Camp of the Saints, in which unstoppable mass migration from the global south causes the collapse of Western civilization. But what if we describe the refugees differently: as human beings trying to escape terrible violence? Recognizing the human in them helps us to see our own humanity, and to understand

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Western governments should not carry the financial burden alone, but rather should lean on wealthy countries in the region to pay their share. If a country is wealthy enough to host the Olympics or the World Cup, it is wealthy enough to contribute.

our ethical duties more clearly. As Susan Sontag put it, we in the West “have the dubious privilege of being spectators, or of declining to be spectators, of other people’s pain.” Images of that pain bring our own relative comfort and good fortune into sharp relief. The photographs that have so strongly influenced the ongoing Western debate are powerful precisely because they bring us faceto-face with those who are suffering in appalling circumstances. They prevent us from denying reality, or wrapping it in abstractions about alien religions and cultures. When they see a picture of a drowned child, many parents automatically think of their own children. Photographs – and the emotions that they evoke – offer no substitute for rational argument, but they do reinforce it. Besides, if one insisted on accepting only those refugees who shared one’s culture, background, faith, language, and so on, no refugees would ever find shelter in any country. If one responded only to those crises that produced conveniently small numbers of refugees, no crisis would fit the bill.

The very concept of the refugee would become meaningless, as would the associated duties that Western countries freely took upon themselves decades ago. If the ongoing crisis – the largest since WW2 – does not qualify as an emergency, if it does not force us to take these duties seriously, what kind of crisis would?

WK: I agree that a “debate (of) the precise obligations that the relevant statutes and treaties impose on governments” is useless in the current situation. Such obligations and principles are thrown overboard when the first storm hits the ship. Think of the redistribution of national sovereign debt that is explicitly excluded by the treaties establishing the euro (see the Feature article by John Kay at p. 14). Neither Angela Merkel nor anyone else in the Eurozone had the guts to say: “Regardless of the Greek financial crisis, this is forbidden under the Maastricht treaty.” Now we are seeing the rules and joint decisions on asylum-seekers and other immigrants quite simply being ignored under the pressure of the crisis. So much for the rule of law at the EU level. And so much for the legitimacy and utility of Jean-Claude Juncker’s thousands of bureaucrats in Brussels. We need to focus on what I think will be the most important driver in our current and future national refugee policies – namely, democracy. We may make a thousand rules and promises today, but let us recognize that, in the end, these will be irrelevant because certain democratic processes will shape those societies that today accept significant numbers of refugees. To be sure, this is not about democratic majorities, because even in countries accepting the Syrian refugees in question there are clear majorities opposing the influx of vast numbers of migrants – especially Muslim migrants. Instead, this is about democratic processes by which minorities determine policies and impose their cultural values over time. Consider Israel, where government coalitions depend on tiny religious parties that, in turn, block policies that otherwise enjoy majority support in the population (see the Feature article by Irvin Studin at p. 20). Israel, a classical society of immigrants, has a majority secular population, but is sometimes powerless against its ultra-religious minorities. If you think that these are extreme cases, consider Samuel Huntington’s last book, Who are We? (2004), in which he draws up a long list of changes in US society, culture and even in US Supreme Court rulings following, first, the civil rights legislation in 1964 and 1965, and then the huge influx of Spanishspeaking migrants – legal and illegal – from Latin America. Most of those changes were opposed by clear majorities, though some more vocally than others. But in the end, American national identity

changed beyond recognition. Huntington was no racist or xenophobe. He simply examined the democratic processes by which national identities are made to change by determined minorities. Let me emphasize that I am not opposed to accepting Syrian and other refugees – including Muslims. However, I wish to call attention to the changes and challenges that manifestly lie ahead. It is not enough to invoke our Western values, human rights and all the rest of the nostrums. We already know these well. And those European countries that are currently accepting the biggest numbers are the same that did so in the past: remember the Hungarians in 1956, the Vietnamese after 1975, the Iranians after 1979, the Afghans, Yugoslavs, and all the many others. What we need today are masses of volunteers, lots of money, and hitherto untapped administrative skills. Above all, we need a clear, analytical mind that allows us to anticipate trouble and to get ready for a highly uncertain future in which, in the near term, we will have to absorb and integrate several million refugees. If we fail to think ahead, the refugees from Syria and elsewhere will be the first to suffer.

MM: Western countries may soon reach a consensus

By issuing a blanket welcome we would cease being masters in our own home. The immediate reaction would be a massive right-wing political shift, given that there are solid majorities across Europe opposing free-for-all immigration. while preserving a meaningful concept of national identity. Some doubt that it is possible to articulate any concept of national identity in Europe without tipping over into either xenophobia or meaningless platitudes. The ongoing debate in the UK about the notion of “British values” and their relationship to the education system illustrates the difficulties involved. But the biggest task, by far, is to address the problem that gave rise to the refugee crisis in the first place: the erosion of international order in the Middle East. The Western powers have demonstrated a remarkable capacity to stop tyrants and overthrow governments, but have proven woefully inadequate at building new governments in their stead. ISIS and its affiliates reject the bedrock principles of contemporary international order, and, as long as they hold power in parts of the region, humanitarian disaster will never be far away. (continued) To read the rest of this debate, visit the GB website

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to the effect that they have a moral responsibility to help the refugees, and grant them asylum in significant numbers. But even if skeptical politicians come around and place humanitarian imperatives ahead of nativist instincts, the most vexing political and conceptual problems will endure long after the immediate turmoil has passed. Given the current situation in the Middle East, it is likely that most of the refugees who reach Europe and North America will choose to stay. Over the long term, Western governments will have to help them move from the margins to the centre, and give them the chance to become full members of society. Integration is difficult in the best of circumstances – even in the case of well-educated economic immigrants who move to the West in search of professional opportunities. In the case of refugees from Syria, or other countries that have been devoured by war, the challenge is all the greater, and it is unclear whether Western governments have any idea how to tackle it. In an ideal scenario, perhaps, refugees and migrants (or at least their children and grandchildren) would enjoy similar educational results, professional success, and socio-economic standing as native-born citizens. Some countries get closer to this standard than others, but none fully meets it. In some cases – the banlieues of Paris, most notoriously – the situation is grim indeed. Several things are necessary, at a minimum, to give newcomers a chance to flourish and put down roots: the opportunity to gain full citizenship in a

reasonable period of time, programmes to learn the language of their new society, and access to good schools for their children. The deeper challenges of integration do not lend themselves to easy solutions, as they require wrestling with the slippery concepts of pluralism and identity. The US and Canada have it easier than Western Europe in this respect. They have longer traditions of welcoming and accommodating newcomers (even if there are numerous exceptions to this general openness), and immigration figures prominently in their national identities. In Western Europe, however, where identity has traditionally been anchored to narrower concepts of nationality, culture, language, and religion, the obstacles are greater, and the prospect of accepting refugees and migrants occasions commensurately greater anxiety. Although national identities have never been fixed, the task is not to sweep them away but rather to broaden them so that newcomers will, eventually, be able to feel fully French, German or Swedish. Of course, no one is quite sure how to do this

at: www.globalbrief.ca

THE DEFINITION “For Africa, the new Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs)… …represent a significant step forward, in

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The SDGs represent a significant step forward, in many respects, and a disappointment in some other respects. This is often the way in which that vast continent encounters international law and policy.

many respects, and a disappointment in some other respects. This is often the way in which that vast continent encounters international law and policy. For example, most Africans (and non-Africans too) will find SDG1, which aims in part to eradicate extreme poverty by 2030 (in 15 years) – “for all people everywhere, currently measured as people living on less than $1.25 a day” – to be quite heartening and significant. The almost radical leap forward will be the turn toward ending rather than just ameliorating poverty – however limited the relevant definition. Most Africans (and other peoples) will also identify strongly with another sub-objective of SDG1 – to wit, to reduce by 2030 “at least by half the proportion of men, women and children of all ages living in poverty in all its dimensions according to national definitions.” Many of the other SDGs will be similarly well received as ambitious and meaningful statements of global institutional intent which, if implemented, will greatly transform the world in which we live and bring great benefit to Africans and non-Africans alike. In this vein, let me note SDG2 on zero hunger, SDG4 on quality education, SDG5 on gender equality, SDG6 on clean water, and SDG16 on peace/justice and strong institutions. Yet aspects of the SDGs must give any discerning observer of the career of international development politics, policy and law – especially as it has related to the African continent – significant pause. For one, the failure yet again to include any meaningful mechanisms for holding the relevant actors accountable for delivering the resources, without which almost all of these ambitious goals cannot be achieved, is most disappointing – to say the least. That this occurred despite a laudable effort in the report of the UN Secretary-General that provided the main conceptual framework for the negotiation of the SDGs to push for such international accountability mechanisms is even more disappointing. Platitudes about the need for greater international partnerships, which have occupied the international development literature and airwaves for over half a century, cannot force the relevant states to deliver on their ambitious promises of providing capital, technology and human resources, and opening

their markets (especially in the agricultural sector) to the African (and other) countries that may need them. Of course, such platitudes about the need for accountability were perhaps, in the end, all that could be agreed upon among so many interested parties and stakeholders.” Obiora Okafor is the York Research Chair in International and Transnational Legal Studies at the Osgoode Hall Law School, York University, in Toronto. He also serves as the Chair of the UN Human Rights Council Advisory Committee.

…signifient d’abord la gestion de la croissance de la population. Avec des ressources financières et géographiques (eau, territoire, nourriture) limitées, une population en forte augmentation accentuera les crises sociales et empêchera une amélioration du niveau de vie per capita. Même une croissance hypothétique de l’aide internationale ne saura suivre les coûts économiques, sociaux et humanitaires d’une population en forte croissance. D’ici 2050, le quart de la population mondiale sera en Afrique, soit 2,5 des 10 milliards d’habitants que comptera la planète. Malgré tous les développements dont le continent a pu être témoin au cours de la dernière décennie, il reste que la croissance économique sera insuffisante pour subvenir aux besoins minimaux et aux aspirations d’une population africaine en forte augmentation. Tout développement dit «durable» devra tenter de remédier à cette problématique de long terme si on souhaite obtenir des résultats dans un avenir prévisible». François Boutin-Dufresne est Stratège, Économie et Marchés Mondiaux, chez Pavilion Global Markets, à Montréal. Il était auparavant économiste au département Afrique du Fonds Monétaire International à Washington, DC.

…will build on the important strides that the continent has made toward achieving the original Millennium Development Goals (MDGs), recently replaced by the SDGs. The continent is today host to some of the fastest growing economies in the world, with a burgeoning private sector that attracts investment from Asia, Europe and North America. Kenya, Nigeria, Ethiopia, the Democratic Republic of the Congo, Côte d’Ivoire, Rwanda and Mozambique are cases in point. Other

PHOTOGRAPH: THE CANADIAN PRESS / AP / MULUGETA AYENE

youth have better access to education – in Kenya, Burundi, Tanzania and Zambia – regrettably, millions of children across the continent continue to be denied access to this fundamental service, or are otherwise out of school working to sustain their families. This challenge is especially evident in Sub-Saharan Africa. Gender inequality and gender disparities in education and work present other challenges. These difficulties combined, if left unaddressed, will keep Africa down, preventing it from capitalizing on the great human potential, innovation and energy of the continent’s full population. We may not yet have reached African renewal, but the necessary journey to such renewal has certainly begun. An era in which the world pivots to Africa is possible, but its emergence starts with the actions of Africans themselves.” Abdoul Aziz Mbaye lectures at Cheikh Anta Diop University in Dakar, Senegal, and is a lawyer working at the International Criminal Court (ICC). The views expressed herein are the

UN Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon, centre, arrives for the opening of the Third International Conference on Financing for Development, held in Addis Ababa, Ethiopia, July 2015.

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countries like Senegal have embarked on ambitious nation-building projects to improve their economies, build key infrastructure, and sustainably prepare their nations for the opportunities and challenges of the 21st century. An increasing number of Africans today are enjoying higher standards of living. Poverty and maternal and child mortality rates have been on the decline in a number of African states. In Ghana, for instance, the percentage of undernourished people has dropped by 74 percent since the early 1990s, while Nigeria has substantially increased its food production to feed its 182 million-and-growing population. Similarly, the number of children who die before the age of five on the continent has been reduced by over 20 percent since over a decade ago. These are all promising signs, even if there are – to be sure – many gaps that remain. The continent’s greatest asset is its significant young population. Proper investment in this critical resource is vital to the continent’s future. While there has been progress in ensuring that African

author’s alone.

STRATEGIC FUTURES “After the Iran deal, the Middle East...

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…has been given a rare historic opportunity – one that gives hope to those

who long to see the region’s disposition to division and conflict transformed to a culture of multilateralism and peaceful coexistence. That opportunity should not be squandered. Foreign policy analysis is not an exact science. It would therefore be imprudent to profess to predict with certainty what the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action concluded this past July will hold for the region. We know what the agreement has achieved to date: it has demonstrated the triumph of diplomacy over hostility and war in managing the crisis over Iran’s nuclear programme. In the process, it has – to a certain degree – thawed Iran-US enmity after more than three decades of seemingly irreconcilable differences. This important development has in turn created a significant opportunity for not only relations between Tehran and Washington, but potentially for the region as a whole. The jury is still out how the agreement’s various elements will settle in practice and affect the region’s geopolitics. But at this very early stage in the game, there might be two very different ways of interpreting these elements. The first would be to judge the agreement, in isolation, as a strategic gain for Iran alone, and therefore a net loss for the country’s regional rivals. From this zero-sum perspective, the agreement is disruptive to the balance of power and a clear sign of Iranian ascendency and regional influence. The defensive instinct would, as a consequence, be to revert to a default posture involving antagonism, militarization, and the use of proxies to neutralize this enhanced threat, thereby increasing the prospects for further conflict in the region. Early signals suggest that this dynamic is already at play. To counter this first interpretation of the deal and the anxieties that it engenders, the US, Russia and the other architects of the Iran deal must guard against intensifying the region’s security dilemma through arms sales or outright support for new military adventures. Instead, the general push should be to continue to broker the region’s security arrangements and institutions through multilateralism. There is a second, preferred interpretation (and course of action) that is open to the region. Instead

of seeing threat, Middle Eastern states should view the agreement as a rare chance to alter the region’s conflict-ridden security landscape and address the long list of security issues facing the region in this early new century. In effect, when properly understood, the Iran deal has offered an opening for regional diplomacy, with the major actors at the table, to tackle thorny questions like the Syrian conflict, the rise of ISIS, tensions between Persian Gulf littoral states and, in time, a Middle East that is free of weapons of mass destruction. The adoption of mechanisms and trust-building measures that facilitate conflict resolution through dialogue and common security will be crucial to the sustainability of such efforts. Equally critical will be the support of the UN and, in particular, the P5+1. While fraught with challenges, this is precisely the approach that deserves attention and investment by Middle Eastern states and the international community. In past writings in GB, I have presented different scenarios for how the Middle East can move toward the establishment of a new regional security order. In the immediate term, the lowest-hanging fruit remains the creation of an annual regional summit for security dialogue among Middle Eastern states. A first such summit should be organized sooner rather than later, and a core agenda must surely be a credible, region-wide response to the threat posed by ISIS.” Sam Sasan Shoamanesh is the Vice-President of the Institute for 21st Century Questions and Managing Editor of Global Brief. The views expressed are the author’s alone.

…has seen the prospects of trade with Iran attracting interest from all four corners. Large German and French business delegations have already visited Tehran. Other European states, including Russia, as well as China, are all looking toward Iran and its relatively uncharted market for business and investment opportunities. This trend will continue unless the agreement is somehow derailed internally in Iran or by the US. American business, too, hopes to trade with Iran, but is holding back for now because of uncertainty in the US. The nuclear sanctions regime on Iran is history: it will either disappear immediately if the US rejects the agreement and the agreement falls apart as a result, or, if the US does remain a part of the agreement, it will disappear in phases over 10 years, pursuant to the agreement. The debate has been intense in the US, but this is a sound agreement that is very much in the interest of the US. There is no positive alternative to it, and President Obama has made a strong case that it is this agreement or no agreement. The agreement provides well-defined limits on Iran’s nuclear programme and establishes the basis for a transparency regime that will enable the Interna-

tional Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) to determine whether Iran’s programme is fully understood and exclusively peaceful. With a solution to the Iran nuclear issue in force, there will follow a considerable increase in global trade with Iran involving both East and West. It is too early to say what the short- and long-term political effects of the agreement will be in the Middle East and elsewhere. Many differences between Iran and the West will remain, but as a general historical rule, extensive trade ties, including significant tourist exchanges, serve to reduce the risk of military confrontation. And that is an auspicious outcome for not only the signatories of the agreement, but also for Iran’s immediate neighbours and neighbourhood.” Thomas Graham Jr., former Acting Director of the US Arms Control and Disarmament Agency and Special Representative of President Clinton for Arms Control, Non-Proliferation, and Disarmament, is the Executive Chairman of the Board at Lightbridge Corporation and the Board Chairman of CanAlaska Uranium Ltd.

…will continue to be unstable.

ILLUSTRATION: DESHI DENG

Ephraim Kam is a Senior Research Associate at the Institute for National Security Studies in Tel-Aviv. He formerly served as the

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To be sure, the Iranian nuclear deal includes some positive aspects. The Iranian nuclear programme will be stopped for 10 to 15 years, and some of its components will be rolled back, due to significant restrictions that will be imposed on Tehran’s nuclear activities during this period of time. Iran will be allowed to operate only about half of the centrifuges that it is currently operating. Its present stockpile of enriched uranium – enough for seven or eight bombs, if further enriched – will be reduced from 10,000 kilograms to 300 kilograms. And Iran will not be allowed to enrich uranium at a concentration of

20 percent, or to install advanced centrifuges. The components and purposes of the key nuclear sites in Arak and Fordow will change. These restrictions will make it difficult for Iran to break out to nuclear weapons in a few short weeks, as it may at this time of writing. Moreover, the nuclear programme will be subject to unprecedented supervision for many years. Nevertheless, these advantages are overshadowed by the negative aspects of the deal. The agreement recognizes Iran as a legitimate nuclear threshold state, leaving in its hands the infrastructure, knowledge and capability to decide whether and when to break out to a bomb. Iran has a long history of hiding and cheating in respect of its nuclear programme, and despite its formal commitment it may well decide to violate the agreement and try to acquire the bomb. More importantly, most of the restrictions will be lifted after 10 to 15 years. When this happens, Iran will be allowed to build a huge uranium enrichment programme, which will make it far easier for Iran to identify the optimal timing and to break out to a bomb. Moreover, the verification system, though it includes more intrusive supervision, is fraught with loopholes, which exposes it to cheating from Tehran. Finally, the removal of the sanctions will provide Iran with significant financial capabilities, which will enable it to advance its nuclear programme, to build up its conventional military capabilities, and to support its allies – including the Assad regime, the Iraqi Shiite militias, Hezbollah and Hamas, as well as its allies in Yemen and Bahrain.”

The agreement has thawed Iran-US enmity after more than three decades of seemingly irreconcilable differences. This has in turn created a significant opportunity for not only relations between Tehran and Washington, but potentially for the region as a whole.

Deputy Head of the Research Division, IDF Military Intelligence.

EPIGRAM

Considering John Brown by W.E.B. Du Bois

George Elliott Clarke

III.

Yes, Ol’ Cloudsplitter was twitchy as a guillotine;

Yes, he wanted to touch off Civil War – involuntary cannibalism –

felt called to loose psychotic, Old Testament, “God told me to” bloodshed.

and sought out ‘liberators’ as energetic as the guillotines Robespierre oversaw.

The man produced homely crimes; Caucasian historians eye him with cold Disgust

They prepared in well-equipped woods – under garlands of sun or moon

because he preached “Black” Liberation was prophecy as irrefutable as sunlight.

or lamplight. He had svelte pamphlets, a stout Bible.

So, John Brown earned repulsive Prestige: He canted against a Federal army

He could see through even starless trees. His shoes kept time:

as ridiculously as Don Quixote assaulted Spanish windmills.

Don em as the day dawns; doff em to bathe or to sleep.

He got cut down, right with his boys, because he couldn’t destroy everything

IV.

and kill everyone backing Slavery.

Yes, his was a private “firing upon,” but for republican purpose;

II.

his very sons wear sooty shirts, crimson in spots.

Still, his Harpers Ferry raid was nothing so vile as Frivolity.

Someone had to tender tinder and dynamite;

His failed onslaught was no Kindergarten travesty

it was he. He got dragged to the gallows

of corpses bitten into, gnawed, mauled, sprawled akimbo like toddlers’ crayons.

and hanged in the wind; now we drag ballads up

Brown saw Stagnation, Malaise; The refusal to advance Emancipation

for a man hanging close to Heaven.

is the E.J. Pratt Professor of Canadian Literature at the University of Toronto, and the Poet Laureate of Toronto. His newest book of poetry is Traverse, an autobiographical

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poem.

was, surely, he believed, Malice. His murders were not for Murder’s sake. While others could Slavery condone; John Brown wanted it long gone.

GEORGE ELLIOTT CLARKE [London (Ontario) 13 novembre mmxiv]