Global Brief #6

The Glendon School of Public and International Affairs | L'École des Affaires Publiques et Internationales de Glendon

www.globalbrief.ca

WINTER 2011

LE RETOUR DE DE LE RETOUR CHARLES DE GAULLE CHARLES DE AMINE JAOUI

GAULLE

INTELLIGENCE AMINE JAOUI AND SCI-TECH REVOLUTIONS INTELLIGENCE JOHN E. McLAUGHLIN

KANDAHAR

AND SCI-TECH

AND BOTTOM-UP

FIN DE RÉGIME REVOLUTIONS À PYONGYANG? JOHN E. GÉRARD HERVOUET

STATEBUILDING

McLAUGHLIN THE OLD-NEW ARAB WORLD FIN DE RÉGIME FIRAS AL-ATRAQCHI

BEN ROWSWELL

À PYONGYANG? LA ZONE EURO GÉRARD EN 2011 HERVOUET THOMAS KLAU FARHAD AMELI FABIAN ZULEEG LA GÉOPOLITIQUE

DU NORD MALI

WIKILEAKS ANAS ABDERRAHIM AND GOOD GOVERNANCE CRAIG SCOTT V S THE OLD-NEW DANIEL P. FATA

PAKISTAN:

ARAB WORLD

INDIA'S

EPIGRAM FIRAS AL-ATRAQCHI DOUGLAS GLOVER

NEXT MOVES

LA ZONE EURO RAMESH THAKUR

EN 2011 THOMAS KLAU FARHAD AMELI FABIAN ZULEEG

DEFINITION

WIKILEAKS AND GOOD GOVERNANCE CRAIG SCOTT

VS

DANIEL P. FATA EPIGRAM DOUGLAS GLOVER

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NATURE, SCIENCE & THE SPIRIT OF THE AGE

RELIGION

JOHN POLANYI SCIENCE AND NEW-CENTURY POLITICS

21ST CENTURY

GEOPOLITICS AND ABORIGINALS

ROBERTA JAMIESON

GÉRARD BOUCHARD R E L I G I O N , C U LT U R E E T N AT I O N ENDGAME FOR POLITICAL ISLAM CDN $7.99 | ISSN: 1920-6909

KATERINA DALACOURA

AND THE

STATE NOAM CHOMSKY G U Y B E N - P O R AT AND DA L E T U R N E R

So What’s a Geokrat?

EDITORS’ BRIEF

A 21st-century woman or man seeking to understand and discipline the world’s chaos, and still humble before the impossibility of the task

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COVER ILLUSTRATION: JOSE ORTEGA

the London School of Economics takes note of the recent revolutionary uprisings in the Arab world to wager that, in the aggregate, political Islam may well be a spent force. Ben Rowswell, past Director of the Kandahar Provincial Reconstruction Team, talks state-of-the-art state-building and the complexities of the very live Afghan case-study. And in our final Feature, strategic analyst Amine Jaoui brings Charles de Gaulle back to life, positing the renewed relevance not of gaullisme, but of de Gaulle’s brute gifts of leadership for today’s geopolitical games.

In Tête à Tête, GB sits down with top geokrat and Nobel Prize-winning scientist John Polanyi to discuss the future of science, technology and God. And Quebec intellectual Gérard Bouchard, co-author – with the philosopher Charles Taylor – of the influential Bouchard-Taylor report (and past co-chair of Quebec’s Consultation Commission on Accommodation Practices Related to Cultural Differences), talks ‘interculturalism,’ ‘reasonable accommodation,’ the future of Church-state separation, and also the fate of nations and nationalism. In Query, Andrew P.W. Bennett of Ottawa’s Augustine College waxes on the import and legitimacy of faith in politics, while Laval University’s Gérard Hervouet sees fin de règne for the North Korean regime (and state). Osgoode Hall Law School’s Craig Scott and Daniel P. Fata of the Cohen Group square off in Nez à Nez on the virtues of leaks and secrecy – Wikileaks oblige – in modern governance. In The Definition, we ask Chomsky and other top thinkers to reflect on the proper relationship between religion and politics. Another group of thinkers forecasts the health of the Eurozone in Strategic Futures. In Situ reports come to us from – of course – Cairo, by Firas Al-Atraqchi of the American University in Cairo; and on Al Qaeda in the Islamic Maghreb (AQIM) from northern Mali and the Sahel – nearly two years after the release from kidnap of Canadian diplomats Robert Fowler and Louis Guay – by Anas Abderrahim of Senegal’s Cheikh Anta Diop University. GB visits Mexico’s Cabinet Room to observe the reaction of the Calderon government to the revolts in Tunisia and Egypt. Douglas Glover sees us off with panache in Epigram.

GB proudly welcomes Lloyd Axworthy – former Canadian foreign affairs minister, Nobel Prize nominee and current President and Vice-Chancellor of the University of Winnipeg – as its newest Geo-Blogger at www.globalbrief.ca. Join us. And enjoy your Brief. | GB

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he 20th century saw men and women working tirelessly to ‘master’ the more essential or primary forces that have ruled the world since the dawn of human affairs: Nature, the spirits (‘animal spirits,’ or even geist) and, yes, God. In many cases, this attempted mastery – driven by revolutions in science, technology and thinking – was successful: homes and big cities became comfortable, self-contained and self-sustaining; individual tastes and corporate economic behaviour became measurable and predictable; and religion was stripped from the proper ambit of prosperous states. Public policy in general – and foreign policy in particular – reflected the times, becoming hyper-technical, emphasizing the observable (empirics) and creating demand for newer and newer forms of expertise – including a scientific class that had no need of things divine to explain Creation. And yet less rational beliefs in the divine and in the extraordinary persisted – at least in non-public spheres – and evidently continue to persist to this day.

The 21st century will not see humans tire. They will continue to innovate, compete and explore (from the self to the recesses of outer space). Only this century – surely – will see the said primary forces of existence return with a vengeance. Mankind will be put into its place, as it were. From changing climate (Nature) to new forms of tribalism, nationalism and socio-political expression (the spirits), to resurgent and morphed religiosity (God) in many parts of the globe, the challenge will be to negotiate the tension between the will to self-govern and the imperative of conceding to – although not necessarily worshipping – the greater elements of life that are manifestly beyond the control – and often ken – of humanity.

The geokrat can do this.

John E. McLaughlin, former Director of the CIA, starts things off in this Winter 2011 issue of GB by anticipating the scientific and technological revolutions of the next several decades, and assessing their impact on the craft of intelligence. In our first Feature, Canadian Aboriginal leader Roberta Jamieson mines indigenous wisdom and political philosophy to distill their multiple lessons for this new century’s international affairs. Former UN Assistant SecretaryGeneral Ramesh Thakur makes the case for a far more muscular Indian strategic posture vis-à-vis historic arch-rival Pakistan. Katerina Dalacoura of

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EDITOR-IN-CHIEF & PUBLISHER Irvin Studin

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WINTER 2011

D E PA R T M E N T S

MANAGING EDITOR Sam Sasan Shoamanesh ART DIRECTION Louis Fishauf Design ASSISTANT EDITORS

Michael Barutciski, Marie Lavoie JUNIOR EDITORS Francesca Basta,

Michelle Collins, Marie-Anitha Jaotody,

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

John E. McLaughlin | Sci-tech and the craft of intelligence. . . . . . . 5

Farheen Imtiaz, Mary Elizabeth Simovic, Bronwyn Walker SPECIAL PROJECTS Brian Desrosiers-Tam WEB MANAGER Aladin Alaily VIDEOGRAPHER Duncan Appleton

IN SITU

Firas Al-Atraqchi | Endgames in the old-new Arab world . . . . . . . 6 Anas Abderrahim | Sahel: le grand jeu? . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 22

WEB DESIGN Dolce Publishing PRINTING RJM Print Group

TÊTE À TÊTE

ADVISORY COUNCIL

John Polanyi | On science, politics and God . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 8

Kenneth McRoberts (Chair), André Beaulieu, Tim Coates, David Dewitt, Paul Evans, Drew Fagan, Dan Fata, Margaret MacMillan, Maria Panezi, Tom Quiggin

Gérard Bouchard | Sur les cultes, le multiculti et la raison d’État . . . 38 QUERY Andrew P.W. Bennett | What role for faith in politics?. . . . . . . . . . . . 20

Mailing Address Global Brief Magazine Glendon Hall, Room 301 Glendon Campus, York University 2275 Bayview Avenue Toronto, ON M4N 3M6, Canada Tel: 416-736-2100 ext. 88253 Fax: 416-487-6786 General Enquiries, Feedback & Suggestions globalbrief@glendon.yorku.ca Subscriptions globalbriefsubscriptions@glendon.yorku.ca

Gérard Hervouet | Fin de régime à Pyongyang? . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 30 IN THE CABINET ROOM Dusan Petricic | Mexico reacts to the Jasmine Revolution. . . . . . . . 47 NEZ À NEZ Craig Scott vs. Daniel P. Fata Is secrecy a necessary condition for good governance?. . . . . . . . . 54

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STRATEGIC FUTURES

«La zone euro se stabilisera-t-elle en 2011?» . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 62 EPIGRAM

Douglas Glover | Nature and the spirit of the age. . . . . . . . . . . . . 64

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Glendon School of Public and International Affairs The Glendon School is Canada’s first bilingual (English and French) graduate school of public and international affairs.

It combines a comprehensive bilingualism with a focus on both public and international affairs. Adopting a global perspective, the School explores the relationship between public institutions and their larger environment. Its purpose is to advance research on public and international affairs; provide a high-quality bilingual master’s programme; and offer innovative professional development programming.

L’École de Glendon est la première école bilingue d’affaires publiques et internationales au Canada. Établissement d’études supérieures unique en son genre, l’École est axée sur le bilinguisme anglais-français et spécialisée à la fois dans les affaires publiques et les affaires internationales. On y explore, dans une perspective mondiale, les relations entre les institutions publiques et le contexte général dans lequel elles fonctionnent. Le mandat principal de l’École consiste à faire progresser la recherche sur des questions d’affaires publiques et internationales, à offrir un programme de maîtrise bilingue de grande qualité ainsi qu’un programme de développement professionnel novateur.

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F E ATURE S

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NATURE, SPIRITUALITY & GEOPOLITICS Why some of the world’s major challenges may require advice from some of its most ancient peoples BY ROBERTA JAMIESON

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INDIA’S MOVES AND THE PAKISTANI PUZZLE Pakistan’s behaviour points increasingly to the need for an ever muscular Indian posture BY RAMESH THAKUR

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THE UNCERTAIN FUTURE OF POLITICAL ISLAM Having failed in the formal public space, Islam will increasingly become a private force BY KATERINA DALACOURA

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GRASSROOTS STATEBUILDING The Afghan theatre may be the incubator for the bottom-up creation of this new century’s newest states BY BEN ROWSWELL

CHARLES DE GAULLE ET L’ESPRIT DE NOTRE TEMPS Même en écartant le gaullisme, le général a toujours des leçons à offrir aux «géopoliticiens» PAR AMINE JAOUI

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Sci-Tech Revolutions and the Craft of Intelligence

ONE PAGER

Wikileaks, Jasmine Revolutions, and how to narrow the range of uncertainty in an ever uncertain world

BY JOHN E. McLAUGHLIN

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ILLUSTRATION: ISTOCKPHOTO

microchip that contained only 29,000 transistors in the 1980s now houses more than a billion – thereby powering many of today’s technological ‘miracles,’ from communications to precision weaponry.

The enhancements that these changes bring to intelligence capabilities are offset by myriad challenges. The most basic challenge is one of innovation, because the intelligence discipline must always strive to be a lap ahead, technologically – something much harder in an era when more and more sophisticated technology is commercially available, and when adversaries have easy access to it.

An important corollary is that today’s technology gives adversaries the potential to acquire new weapons more easily and rapidly. The advances in biology, for example, mean that the traditional barriers to non-state creation of biological weapons – strain availability, weaponization technology, and means of delivery – have fallen away.

Along with communications advances come problems of volume. Today’s intelligence officers run the risk of missing clues as they struggle to mine important nuggets buried in thousands of messages daily. If they are lucky enough to capture, say, a terrorist’s electronic media, they will probably have the digital equivalent of a small public library, and will need sophisticated algorithms to isolate the key data.

A related challenge calls for greater precision in many parts of the discipline, especially those operating in direct support of the military. Case in point: today’s B-2 bomber can simultaneously deliver 16 2,000-pound bombs with pinpoint accuracy on 16 different targets in one pass – making it mandatory that supporting intelligence be accurate to a degree of precision not imagined before in history.

In the end, intelligence is often about assessing and affecting power relationships in the world, so practitioners of the craft must be aware of how technology is redefining these relationships. When historians look back 100 years hence, some may call this the ‘age of asymmetry,’ because the central impact of modern technology has been to erode conventional means of exerting influence, putting greater power for good and evil – the power to persuade, to create and destroy – into the hands of smaller numbers of people. This may be the single most important thing for intelligence officers to keep in mind as they strive to ‘narrow the range of uncertainty’ in an increasingly uncertain world. | GB

John E. McLaughlin, formerly Deputy Director and Acting Director of the Central Intelligence Agency, is Distinguished Practitioner in Residence at the Paul H. Nitze School of Advanced International Studies (SAIS) of the Johns Hopkins University.

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etired General Brent Scowcroft, National Security Adviser to former US President George H.W. Bush, once remarked that the “role of intelligence is to narrow the range of uncertainty when difficult national security decisions have to be made.” By that standard, the job of intelligence is getting dramatically more difficult as international uncertainties multiply.

One of the underlying forces contributing to this state of affairs is a ‘revolution’ in science and technology. Technological advances throughout history have continually altered the landscape for this ancient craft. Something as basic as the invention of the wheel or gunpowder had an immediate impact on conflict and power projection, and therefore altered the focus of espionage.

But until the invention of the telegraph in the mid-19th century, the basic techniques of intelligence collection remained essentially unchanged from their description in the sixth century BC by Sun Tzu. Sun Tzu’s writings still provide the core precepts for the oldest part of the profession – the recruitment and handling of human spies.

Once adversaries were able to move information rapidly and invisibly through scientific means like the telegraph, the telephone and radios, intelligence officers were faced with new, scientifically-based challenges.These challenges grew exponentially during the 20th century, with unprecedented advances in physics, engineering, communications and photography.

In the 21st century, intelligence will be aided and challenged as never before by technological and scientific advances – advances distinguished by their accelerating pace, the growing synergy among disciplines, and the shrinking time between scientific discoveries and their application.

These trends are evident in fields like information technology, biology and nanotechnology. Computing power doubles every 18 months, and the world has gone from about 5,000 computers in the 1950s to an Internet (‘wired’) population of more than 1 billion people with access to more than 300 billion webpages.

In biology, something that might have earned a doctorate 10 years ago is now the work of technicians.

Undergirding much of the progress in these and other fields is the revolution in nanotechnology, where miniaturization has yet to reach the limits posed by the laws of physics. A metaphor for all of this is the miniaturization of electronic circuitry: a

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Endgames in the Old-New Arab World

IN SITU

Citizen-state relations in the region are fast changing. Is this Berlin in 1989? Or Tehran in 1979?

FIRAS AL-ATRAQCHI reports from Cairo, Egypt

T Firas Al-Atraqchi is an Associate Professor of Practice in the Department of Journalism and Mass Communication at the American

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University in Cairo.

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here is fear and loathing in the corridors of power in the Middle East, as unprecedented popular revolts in Egypt – the heart of the Arab world – threaten to inspire similar anti-government protests across the region – with repercussions that may redraw its geo-strategic map.

Jittery regional leaders have moved quickly to make political concessions and increase economic subsidies. In Yemen, after days of protests, President Ali Abdullah Saleh announced that he would not seek re-election in 2013, and said that he opposed hereditary rule. In Algeria, where the situation has been very tense since Tunisia’s Jasmine Revolution, President Abdelaziz Bouteflika promised to lift emergency laws in place since 1992. King Abdullah II of Jordan also moved quickly to head off trouble in the kingdom. He sacked the government that had been seen by many in the country as ineffective in dealing with the global recession, and unresponsive to the need to enhance civil liberties. Calls for democratic reform are likely to also be felt in Syria – a country ruled by a Baathist dictatorship since 1963.

There have been comparisons drawn between the revolution in Egypt and the fall of the Berlin Wall in 1989. The analogy holds that successful regime change brought about by popular revolt will have a cascading effect that will lead to the overthrow of other authoritarian governments in the region.

Of course, while the fall of the Berlin Wall disassembled communism as an ideology, ended the Cold War, and ushered in a an era of heightened international cooperation, the risks associated with Egypt’s revolution could, in fact, produce the opposite effect in the short-term.

The 1979 Iranian Revolution may well be the more appropriate parallel for the Egyptian uprising.

The overthrow of the US-backed Shah by a popular mass movement ultimately (and unexpectedly) led to anti-US mullahs seizing power in Tehran. Through the revolution, the Iranian masses effectively ended US foreign policy influence on Iran and redefined intra-Arab relations – particularly for neighbouring countries. The strategic volatility created by the revolution also played a key role in new regional wars, including the 1980-1988 Iran-Iraq war, the 1982 Israel-Lebanon war, and eventually the first Persian Gulf War of 1990-1991.

Washington today has defensible cause for con-

cern that, should the transition of government in Egypt from Mubarak to a new regime be forcible or conducted with undue haste, then any future government will have to appease the Muslim Brotherhood by including it and its policy agenda in a new, untested governing coalition. A politically more confident and assertive Brotherhood is likely to be sympathetic with its ideological offspring Hamas – Washington fears – and could influence a future government to oppose the blockade of Gaza – thereby wounding US and Israeli strategic positioning in the region. It could embolden the Islamist government in Sudan to roll back recent US-brokered political developments in the South, and increase the influence of extremist elements in Somalia. An Islamist-Nationalist ruling alliance in Egypt could see common ground with Iran – some fear – and consequently deny US aircraft carriers quick passage through the Suez Canal in the event of conflict in the Persian Gulf. This would isolate the countries of the Gulf Cooperation Council, which have relied on US bases and protection to thrive.

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hile Egyptian political pundits have accused the West of obsessing about the Brotherhood, and indeed exaggerating its influence (see the Feature article by Katerina Dalacoura on political Islam at p. 32) – pointing to the recent uprising as having evolved from proletarian social action to a popular revolution – there is no guarantee that the final composition of the next government will reflect the grassroots spirit that inspired it. In Iran, what started as a populist overthrow of the Shah in 1979 was hijacked by the mullahs and their followers within a few months.

The eight-year war that ensued with Iraq effectively sealed the rule by clergy in Tehran. And in Algeria, in 1992, free elections brought Islamists to power – catching the secular, Western-backed government and military by surprise, and leading to a decade of civil war.

The West – in particular, the US – has been painted into a difficult corner from which it must tread carefully to ensure that it does not, on the one hand, compromise the essential interests secured over the years by the Mubarak regime – to wit, sustaining the Egyptian-Israeli peace, counter-terrorism,

PHOTOGRAPH: THE CANADIAN PRESS / EMILIO MORENATTI

military’s relationship with the population. Since the end of WW2, and indeed from the time of their independence from colonial powers, it has been the military establishment that has held the keys to power in Arab states like Egypt, Iraq and Syria, as well as in Libya, Sudan and Yemen. Since the 1940s, the military has been the instrument of change in Arab state-citizen relations – largely enabling the establishment of police states that often brutally repress civil liberties, maintain iron-clad control of the media, dominate economic policies, and propagate single-party rule. And yet, in both Tunisia and Egypt, the army refused to fire on protesters.

In Egypt, the armed forces have to date remained largely neutral and autonomous – often acting as a buffer between pro- and anti-government protesters.

While this may change, it is in itself a likely harbinger of a tectonic change in state-citizen relations at the very core of the Arab world. The people are no longer afraid. But the species of governance that awaits them has yet to be divined. | GB

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and offsetting growing Iranian influence in the region – and that it does not, on the other hand, betray – and is not perceived as having betrayed – the Egyptian progressives and reformers who have been underwhelmed with the follow-through of the Obama administration in the aftermath of the US President’s famous Cairo speech of 2009.

In the ideal scheme of things, policy-makers in the US and Europe hope to see emerge in Cairo a Turkey-style convergence of secular and Islamic governance. Of course, significant socio-historical differences between Egypt and Turkey would seem to make such a development quite unlikely – thus making the future uncertain indeed.

This uncertainty is fuelled in some significant part by the fact that, by dismantling archaic forms of governance in which the ruler is considered to be beyond reproach, and in which economic policies are determined by self-preserving allies of the ruler among business elites, the protesters in Egypt and Tunisia have managed to redefine the

In the ideal scheme of things, policymakers in the US and Europe hope to see emerge in Cairo a Turkey-style convergence of secular and Islamic governance.

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PHOTOGRAPH: ZORAN MILICH

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On Science, Politics and God GB discusses the scientific method and new-century political science with one of the world’s great philosopher-chemists Conversation with JOHN POLANYI GB: Will the next 15 to 20 years in international science be the years of physics, chemistry, biology or mathematics?

JP: I think that most people would say that biology is central, but this is a concert that is being played around the world with all of the instruments contributing. Therefore, if you were to simply cut off progress in the others, then the biological sciences would wilt as well.

The bit of history that all scientists know is that, in the early 20th century, an informal survey was made by leading figures to establish where science was headed, and they collectively decided that science had come to an end; that is, that everything worth knowing was already known. Then came quantum mechanics; and then, of course, relativity. So you see how poor our predictive abilities are, and that is because our imaginations are feeble. So we constantly surprise ourselves.

GB: What are the intersections, in this new century, between the scientific world and what happens in the public space?

body of pundits in the scientific community – was asked to say which technologies were going to be the most vital to develop. This is just the sort of question that politics has to ask itself when looking in the direction of science. They came up with the answer that agriculture clearly was a vital area in which to do research; that synthetic gasoline was very important because we were going to run out of fuel; and also synthetic rubber because rubber was increasingly a vital material.

That was the extent of their list. Of course, within a very few years, new inventions of which they had never even conceived came online – first in basic science, and then in applied science. For instance, the Academy did not look at nuclear energy – to say nothing of nuclear weapons. Or jet engines. Or computers. Or satellites. And all of these things were brought online a very few years down the road.

So if you were to try – as we do – to control basic science on the basis of anticipated useful technologies, you do harm. And that is what we are doing in many cases, and in many countries.

John Polanyi is a Professor of Chemistry and Nobel Laureate at the University of Toronto, where his scientific work is on the molecular motions underlying chemical reaction.

GB: And the reverse – the relationship of the scientific community to the political class?

He has written extensively on science policy

JP: Scientists are only slowly realizing their responsibility in respect of public policy. They are doing this most in the US, where scientists do advise the political class to a considerable extent. In Canada, this is much less the case.

What is needed is a realization on the part of scientists, first of all, that they belong to a nongovernmental organization that is potentially very influential, and that they therefore have a heavy responsibility. The scientific community is an international one, whose members know each other well, and who, to some extent, trust and depend on one another. This is an important NGO, and it should exert itself much more than it does to pay a tithe on its professional privileges.

I was arguing a moment ago that the scientific community needs freedom to succeed. But with freedom comes a concomitant responsibility. We need to set aside a fraction of our time for the political space – we scientists who are competing like mad to perform at an international standard in science. We have to accept the obligation, and indeed the handicap, of paying attention to public

and the control of armaments.

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JP: There are two ways of reading this question.

One is the role of politics in guiding the progress of science and technology. And then there is the reverse dynamic: how science shapes public policy.

Let me treat each in turn.

The body politic represented by the bureaucracy would like to manage science to a high degree. In many countries, this bureaucratic intervention is in danger of damaging science by attempting to guide the ideas of science – basic science – whereas what you can more legitimately guide is the applications side of science; that is, the technology.

If you try to guide basic science toward beneficial applications, what you tend to do is get in the way of the element of surprise – the most important aspect of basic science. It is the essential characteristic of a discovery that it causes you to be surprised. If the bureaucracy says, “surprise me by doing such and such because I think that this will be useful,” what you actually do is replace the scientist’s ability to use imagination with the government’s own list of less imaginative priorities.

There is an example that is worth bearing in mind in this regard: in 1937, the National Academy of Science in the US – which is the reigning

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affairs. We must be more knowledgeable in this realm, and more vocal.

GB: In which countries, apart from the US, does the scientific community play a robust advisory role?

JP: After the US comes Britain, because the Royal Society, having been founded in 1660, has had a long time to realize that it is an NGO, and that it has to get together not just its membership, but the very best people that it can find to address the colossal problems that we are facing in the applied sector.

Obviously, there are risks in this regard because you have to go beyond your narrow professional expertise. You have to be willing to bring to bear your own values. How important is it to you, for instance, that people not starve in a distant place?

This sort of consideration factors into any advice that you give. You do not just give a table of numbers; you give a recommendation. In Britain, this is done quite well, given the size of the country. In the US, it is even better organized. In Canada, we are only beginning to tap our scientific talent so as to address questions of public policy.

Curiously, Soviet Russia did the same thing in the same field, from a different slant. Marxism had its implications for the denial of modern genetics. In both regimes, this resulted in a restriction of the freedom of scientists. This is understating it, for scientists were living in a state of terror. This is not the current state of things in China, but down the road they are going to realize that political reform will be key to the full flowering of Chinese science.

GB: Could one not argue, nonetheless, that the Soviet Union had terrific scientists?

JP: The Soviet Union would have had even more terrific scientists if it had been politically free. I used to go to international scientific meetings in the USSR. The first part of every Soviet scientific paper referred to “Our Leader and Teacher,” and

If you try to guide basic science toward beneficial applications, what you tend to do is get in the way of the element of surprise – the most important aspect of basic science.

GB: Do you see a migration in the nucleus of cutting-edge science and scientific culture toward Asia by the middle of this century?

GB: Do you see advanced science as a prerequisite for good governance or, conversely, good governance as a prerequisite for advanced science?

JP: The latter. The extreme examples would be the Nazi perversion of science, because their ideology foisted on scientists false notions of genetics.

how he, Stalin, had inspired the work in question.

We are all, of course, forced to tell some lies at the beginning of our papers; that is, we say that we are going to solve all of the world’s problems, and then go on and try to solve a much more delimited scientific problem. But Soviet scientists had to tell even more damaging lies at the beginning of every scientific paper, and that was a severe handicap.

GB: Do you believe today’s political leaders to be scientifically literate?

JP: Much more than in the past – largely due to the birth of scientific journalism. There are all sorts of avenues being used to try to make people around the world more scientifically literate. But this is still work in progress. It used to be a matter of pride among those who had a classical education to deny knowledge of science; that is, they hoped that they would be applauded for having the ‘right’ values.

That time has passed. Science today, I think, is being seen as a creative endeavour in common with other

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JP: Yes, I see it readily. In China, for instance, there has been a tremendous and deliberate spurt forward in the ambitions of the scientists and in the freedom of the scientists to tackle things for which the government does not necessarily see any specific reason. This, as mentioned, is critical to success. If the Asians – particularly the Chinese – are going to be players on the international scene, they ought to be contributing, whether or not governments can see the value of specific endeavours in basic science. The aim is not to be the best in China, but the best in the world. They have not achieved this yet. Their only Nobel Prize to date was given to somebody who is in prison – Liu Xiaobo.

I chide them with something that they do not wish to hear: that you cannot have the necessary international level of free and civilized behaviour in science if you construct a wall around thinking.

They have already encountered this contradiction in their economy, and they are also going to encounter it big-time in their science.

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creative endeavours. That is why I bridle when invited to predict what will be the major achievements of science in, say, 15 years or so. My rejoinder would be, “First, you tell me what is going to happen in literature, painting and music in 15 years.”

GB: What is still lacking in the literacy of our political class?

If you want to speak of religion among scientists, then the pervasive one is the religion of Albert Einstein, who said that he was an atheist, and yet declared that he was trying to read the mind of God.

JP: What is lacking is a clear understanding of the difference between basic and applied science. This is proving to be a very hard thing to get across. I am going to put it strongly, but not too strongly.

What the basic scientist is engaged in doing is coining new terms. That is why, when you have a new idea, you attach a new name to it; this goes on in every scientist’s laboratory. People are very careful about letting scientists introduce new terms, but new terms are necessary as genuinely new concepts are born.

We in basic science are, therefore, engaged in producing the language that will be used in the world of applied science to address the daunting problems that we have. But if you ask the people who are producing the vocabulary to tell you, first, what new words are going to appear in the next 15 years, and second, what new sentences the applied sciences are going to utter using those new words, this is an impossibility. The new vocabulary is capable of being composed into a mass of different important sentences, capable of changing the world.

Moreover, a new application does not come from a single advance in basic science. It occurs at the unforeseeable confluence of new developments in basic science. This is a crucial thing that we have to explain to people – that we need to give basic science the freedom to flourish; the freedom to surprise us.

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GB: Does scientific progress heal the world?

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JP: Science is a particular language. You can say appalling things in that language: the Nazis did, as have others. And you can say wonderful things in that language. And so it is absolutely necessary to have a language, but you need something additional in order to make sure that the language will be beneficent. That part of the calculation comes in at the applied science end, drawing on our values as a society. However, when you are developing language – at the basic science end – you cannot insist that people invent words that can only be used to say nice things.

GB: What do you think should be the relationship between science and spirituality? Or between science and religion in general?

JP: That is taking care of itself as history unfolds.

Scientists certainly believe that the world around them makes sense, and they proceed on that basis.

They have nothing except some inner well of faith to make them think so. It could well be that the world is not intended to make sense at all to the species to which we belong. Yet, we scientists are all willing to gamble our lives on the proposition that there is a comprehensible narrative. There is, clearly, a colossal element of faith in the sciences.

If you want to speak of religion among scientists, then the pervasive one is the religion of Albert Einstein, who said that he was an atheist, and yet declared that he was trying to read the mind of God. If we speak of religion as it concerns scriptural testaments and revelations of truth, then I see this as a waning force among scientists.

GB: Da Vinci or Gandhi? Who was the more important genius for humanity, and of whom would you like to see more in coming decades?

JP: Obviously, I want them both. The inventor is Da Vinci, but he burst the bounds of any particular field. He was an inventor in the most creative sense because he was also an artist of the first order, and therefore a basic scientist. And the other, Gandhi – the idealist – was willing to go beyond idealism because he was trying to be a politician at the same time. But they do represent different things, and we need both. When I used to travel in India in the 1960s – still the India of Mahatma Gandhi – I was conscious of the paradoxical fact that there was a great appetite in that country to learn about nuclear weapons, and indeed to possess weapons of mass destruction. The country of Mahatma Gandhi is today tempted at times to threaten pre-emptive war against its neighbour Pakistan. (See the Feature article by Ramesh Thakur on India-Pakistan dynamics and war at p. 24.)

Pakistan, for its part, threatens war right back.

So, clearly, Gandhi’s idealism was not itself sufficient to guarantee the well-being of the region.

GB: What should be the relationship between mankind and the physical environment in this new century?

JP: The globe has shrunk to the point that everything that we do impacts our ability to survive as a species. The environment as an autonomous entity is less and less present. Everyone with a basic education today understands this. If we can find a modus vivendi for the human species on Earth – even if in sub-optimal form – then that will be a tremendous triumph. We all pray for that. We will need also to work for it, in a new spirit of compromise. In this, the NGO that is science must play its part. | GB

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NATURE SPIRITUALITY& GEOPOLITICS INDIGENOUS WISDOM FOR THE NEW CENTURY

Roberta Jamieson is President and CEO of the National Aboriginal

Why some of the world’s major challenges may require advice from some of its most ancient peoples

BY ROBERTA JAMIESON

Achievement Foundation in Toronto, Ontario.

She was previously Ombudsman of Ontario for ten years, as well as Vice-President of the International Ombudsman Institute.

ow ironic, after centuries of concerted efforts by the ‘civilized societies’ of the Earth to extirpate, dispossess, disperse and assimilate indigenous peoples, that the survival of those very societies – perhaps even the survival of the planet and of humanity itself –

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might depend on the very indigenous knowledge that has been under attack.

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Exploring such a hypothesis may not be very high on formal political or academic agendas anywhere in the world. Are indigenous peoples still to be considered leftover dregs of human society – quaint souvenirs from a primitive past; the quarry of anthropologists, rather than of political or strategic analysts – or a distillation, in some sense, of the essence of human society?

Are they sometimes stigmatized – other times folklorized – stubborn remnants of a past gone forever, or, even with their various blemishes, the carriers of complex wisdom, world views and practices that can be revitalized and applied now and into the future, such that both the planet and humanity can continue in good health? Are they to be converted or proselytized to established religions and socio-political systems, or ought they to be recognized as offering an alternative, spiritual approach to relationships, politics, the environment and peace? And if they do indeed have something important to offer, is there anyone willing to listen?

Nature, spirituality and politics, while often seen in modern secular or Western public cultures as ‘separable’ or (analytically) discrete domains, are typically seen by indigenous peoples in Canada and in many other parts of the world as indistinguishable parts of an organic whole manifested in ‘daily life,’ as it were. Indigenous wisdom holds that humans are related to every

ILLUSTRATION: JOSE ORTEGA

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part of nature – not in abstract terms, but very personally: the Moon is our grandmother, because she is the leader of female life; the Earth is our Mother, because she provides for her children – which is why all of the creatures that rely upon the Earth as their Mother are our Brothers and Sisters. Everything in the Creation – deep interdependence oblige – is seen as having ‘spirit’ or life-force. Humans are known to contribute least to the Creation – a recognition that leads indigenous peoples to great humility, sincere respect and a genuine thankfulness for all of the aspects of nature that make it possible for life to continue, day after day.

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ature is also an integral part of indigenous politics. In many indigenous cultures, traditional councils are opened with lengthy thanksgiving prayers to set the context for the ensuing deliberations. As in nature, indigenous political philosophy holds that every person has a particular role to play, and each person is respected for his or her diversity and differences. Annual races are run to assist the sun to regain its strength after winter: there is no competition, strictly speaking – only each runner, from older men and women to young children, carrying a baton forward, with emphasis

Indigenous wisdom

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holds that humans are related to every part of nature, which is why all of the creatures that rely upon the Earth as their Mother are our Brothers and Sisters.

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placed on individual contribution to the collective.

This ethic sits in stark contrast with today’s dominant, highly competitive global intellectual and political cultures, in which abstraction from the natural world (in the way it is seen, imagined and treated) conduces to ‘presentism’ and myopia that displace humankind’s forward-looking obligations. Forests, for example, rather than being seen as a wonderful home that is essential for the survival – today and tomorrow – of the very life of the planet, become ‘natural resources,’ ‘products,’ the source of ‘employment and economic growth,’

and goods to meet the demands of the market.

Even ecologists seem to see forests, swamps, bogs, shorelines, meadows and streams through the ‘biosphere’ construct, where obscene destruction becomes the object of ‘ecological restoration,’ and where ‘sustainable development’ must be balanced against ‘economic benefits.’

Foreign vernacular is superimposed on concepts that are largely alien to indigenous mentalities and morality. Indigenous voices, speaking of relatives in the Creation – of a general interest in cooperating with nature, rather than controlling or taming it, or of responsibilities to future generations – cannot therefore anchor themselves in modern secular debates about ‘environment.’ This is why, so often, the only available venues or means for discussion of what is technically called ‘holistic ecosystem management’ exist in the context of highly contentious claims for traditional territories, demands for self-government and litigation to stop planned exploitation of resources that indigenous peoples consider to be contrary to their spiritual beliefs.

A major part of indigenous spirituality is a privileging of the future over the present. (Note Article 13(1) of the UN Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples: “Indigenous peoples have the right to revitalize, use, develop and transmit to future generations their histories, languages, oral traditions, philosophies, writing systems and literatures, and to designate and retain their own names for communities, places and persons.” Or Article 25, which reads: “Indigenous peoples have the right to maintain and strengthen their distinctive spiritual relationship with their traditionally owned or otherwise occupied and used lands, territories, waters and coastal seas and other resources and to uphold their responsibilities to future generations in this regard.”)

A basic instruction in indigenous culture is that the youth must listen to the experienced voices of those in the same generation as that of their grandparents and greatgrandparents. Children must be able to be heard in debates. Great respect must be shown to diverse opinions, and a way must be found to incorporate these views into decisions.

The superior democracy of consensus prevails over that of majority-versus-minority (see the Têteà-Tête interview on majority-minority relations and ‘interculturalism’ with Gérard Bouchard at p. 38).

Women have particular responsibilities in naming leaders, maintaining peace, and in intergenerational transmission of cultural knowledge. These are all political imperatives derived from spiritual

understandings; and yet they are all somewhat antithetical to most secular governance regimes and cultures internationally.

Indigenous cultures tend to be highly inclusive. A high priority is placed on compromise, consensusbuilding, unity and accommodation as key means of building better relationships for the future.

(There are, to be sure, mechanisms to resolve internal conflict if it arises, and to use the occasion as an opportunity to strengthen unity.)

Inclusiveness is also enhanced by relating to all people as family: “my brother, my grandmother, my cousin.” Conflict takes on a different tone when parties to the conflict see each other as family, with distinct responsibilities toward one another. Indeed, even when there are cases or incidents of criminal behaviour within indigenous communities, contrary to the Western legal approach of establishing guilt and exacting punishment, indigenous conflict resolution concentrates on reincorporating offenders into the community, remedying the loss of the victims, and restoring peace and harmony.

These same indigenous principles are applicable in an ‘inter-tribal’ or international context.

ART

TO COME

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Unbeknownst to today’s political actors, many indigenous political values greatly influenced the early development of concepts of democracy in the US. While the rebels in the Thirteen Colonies were opposed to the policies and actions of the British King, they had little experience in democratic practice. Thus, they met in Albany, New York, with leaders of the Iroquois Confederacy (originally the Mohawk, Oneida, Onondaga, Cayuga and Seneca Nations, but expanded over time to include dozens of other nations) to hear about such foreign concepts as a leader being the servant of the people, and of the right of the voices of the people to be heard in decision-making. Some concepts of ordinary Iroquois practice took centuries until they were finally adopted in modern statecraft: the full participation of women in decision-making, for instance, or, more recently, the adoption of the said concept of the rights of children. Other indigenous concepts await the superior political maturity of future generations: while the Iroquois use of a bicameral legislature was adopted by the US Constitution (the ‘Older Brothers’ and ‘Younger Brothers’ ‘houses’ became the Senate and House of Representatives, respectively), and the idea of joint committees incorporated into practice, reaching decisions by consensus rather than the blunt force of votes is still today considered impractical, and otherwise contrary to the general (growing) imperative of speed and efficiency. (Iroquois society to this day

uses consensus-based decision-making, rather than voting, for the selection of leaders.) Another example still awaiting future consideration: in many indigenous societies, it is women who are the owners of the family home and have exclusive decision-making in certain key areas, including the issuance of declarations of war.

In the case of Canada, the noted intellectual, John Ralston Saul, in his acclaimed book, A Fair Country: Telling Truths About Canada, notes how heavily Canada has been influenced and shaped by the values of the indigenous population, which not only welcomed the European settlers, but indeed showed to them how a free people could organize a democratic society (indeed, on a rugged continent) – something that was not to be found in Europe at that time. He lists, among these values, egalitarianism, an appropriate balance between individual and group, and a “penchant for negotiation over violence.”

Just as planners of democracy were able to embrace indigenous contributions three centuries ago because these contributions were relevant to their needs, today’s and tomorrow’s societies will find other indigenous contributions relevant to their own times. Case in point: on December 26th, 2004, the devastating tsunami in Southeast Asia killed more than 200,000 people. Report after report emerged, however, about indigenous groups that had escaped with very little loss.Their traditional knowledge, applied in contemporary circumstances, had prepared them to anticipate the ocean’s behaviour, and they went to higher ground before the waves hit. Anthropologists studied this phenomenon, and reported that in communities where Western encroachments had destroyed traditional life, the indigenous groups suffered the same losses as did the general population.

Or consider the application of the indigenous wisdom of ensuring that decision-making is sustainable. Many North American indigenous peoples have historically kept their minds focussed on the ‘seventh generation’ – the great-grandchildren of this generation’s great-grandchildren. Often, certain individuals or clans have been appointed to participate in discussions by consciously advocating for the interests of this ‘seventh generation.’

Decision-makers have been required to demonstrate that they had taken the ‘seventh generation’ into account. By thinking in terms of family relationships that embrace the future as well as the present, a

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discussion on sustainable development takes on a very different tone.

Or take the diplomacy of the Cree Nation: the Cree famously speak of a leader whose encampment was very close to another encampment of people (Blackfoot) with whom there had been sharp disputes. In fact, the leader’s father had been killed in one such dispute. There was great fear that the proximity of the two groups would result in renewed hostilities. The leader asked for a meeting. When the Blackfoot officials arrived in his tipi, among them was the man accused of killing the leader’s father.

After a ceremonial beginning, the leader began to weep. ‘My father is dead. I am without a father. Bring me four of my finest horses. Bring my best saddle.

I want them to be a gift to that man (indicating the man who had killed his father), and I ask him: “Will you be my father? I give you these gifts.”’ The gifts were accepted, and the two nations – Cree and Blackfoot – have lived in peace since that time.

The lesson here is that future-focussed diplomacy is based on using strength constructively, and on rebuilding relationships and restoring peace, rather than control or retribution.

tionship, rather than vanquishing a troublesome opponent; and thinking for the long-term, rather than for the moment.

If indigenous people have so much to offer, why are they not actively and publicly advocating for their age-old knowledge and instinct for the synthesis of spirituality, nature and politics – and indeed advising the world and its new-century leaders?

Answer: in the indigenous world, generally, and in Canada specifically, indigenous people are so focussed on their struggle for survival as peoples that they are distracted from thinking about how to make a better world. They dedicate much energy to decolonization – including, as it were, to decolonizing their own minds. Their ability to pass down their cultural values and practices is severely compromised. Their languages are threatened by extinction. An unacceptable percentage of their children are being raised outside of their culture by foster parents. Those children who remain with their parents and communities are too often educated by another culture’s curriculum – administered according to another culture’s values. Too many of their youth are incarcerated in numbers that far exceed their share of the population. (In Canada, too many of the parents are still unhealed from the intergenerational effects of boarding schools, and are unable to demonstrate to their children how to be parents.) Too many of their people die before the ripeness of age because of health issues.

The new, globalized century will require the peaceful embrace of diversity and systems of governance that are oriented toward coexistence, rather than the conquest of other peoples and the exploitation of nature.

There is little doubt that indigenous culture and wisdom and political philosophy can be instructive in fashioning these new-century paradigms, drawing from the fact that indigenous cultures and governance were, over the course of indigenous history, able to incorporate wide diversity into strong unity, and to show great appreciation for individuality in the context of enhancing the collective.

The UN is having a massive World Conference on Indigenous Peoples in 2014. It will be a historic opportunity for an exploration of the contribution that indigenous nature, spirituality and politics can make to tomorrow’s world. | GB

The lessons are: holistic

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thinking; seeking inclusion rather than exclusion; healing a troubled relationship, rather than vanquishing an opponent; thinking for the longterm, rather than for the moment.

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et us consider another example: in the said Iroquois Confederacy, which was established nearly a thousand years ago, there was one powerful person reputed to be the source of great evil, the cause of war. Those who sought peace went to him with a vision of a confederation in which many nations would live in peace. They asked this evil person whether he would be the head of this confederation; that is, to have the confederation hosted in his nation, where he would open all the meetings. Today, a thousand years later, a person bearing his title is still performing those responsibilities. Again, the lessons are: holistic thinking; seeking inclusion rather than exclusion; healing a troubled rela-

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What Role for Faith in 21st Century Politics?

QUERY

Religion, artificially divorced from the public sphere, makes for an impoverished politics at best, and an ignorant political class at worst BY ANDREW P.W. BENNETT

Andrew P.W. Bennett is Professor of Church History at Augustine College, a Christian, classical liberal arts post-secondary

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college in Ottawa.

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here is, in today’s politics, an unfortunate and frequent misappropriation of the idea of a ‘clash of civilizations’ – a turn of phrase and concept first developed by the late American political scientist and Carter-era security adviser Samuel Huntington – to raise the spectre of the nefarious influence of religious faith in politics.

Such a misappropriation betrays an ignorance of the role of religious faith in society, in politics and in the lives of many citizens on the part of officially and predominantly secular, humanist, political elites in Europe and in the Americas.

This obsession with a ‘clash of civilizations,’ when applied to the relations between the Islamic world and the secular Western world, is increasingly informing a growing distaste for any religious presence in politics or public life (see the Tête à Tête interview with Gérard Bouchard at p. 38 about the more specific case of Quebec’s distaste for the comingling of the religious and the political). The ignorance of the role of religious faith is reflected in two ways: first, through a misunderstanding of the role that religion plays in non-secular political cultures like that of Saudi Arabia, and in quasi-secular political cultures like that of Turkey – countries historically viewed as ‘other’ in Western European and AngloAmerican thinking; and second, through inadequate appreciation of the position of religious faith in the political life of these same secular, Western European and Anglo-American liberal democracies.

The en vogue pronouncements of Christopher Hitchens (including in his recent famous debate with Tony Blair in Toronto) and other so-called neo-atheists that point to violent campaigns undertaken in the name of religious faith throughout history as a principal illustration of how religious faith and violence are inextricably linked help to further entrench an ignorance of the positive role of religious faith in society in general, and in politics in particular. And yet, it is worth being reminded again and again that the greatest genocides and mass slaughters undertaken in history were committed in the 20th century in the name of secular ideologies, as witnessed by the purges of Stalin and the Khmer Rouge, the Nazi Holocaust, and the Rwandan and Armenian genocides. To paraphrase a popular American axiom: religion does not kill people; people kill people.

In a religious political culture like that of Saudi Arabia, where a religion – in this case, Islam – is intrinsic to the state’s identity, and where all political actions are informed by that faith, one finds a political culture that could not be more different to those of the liberal, secular West. Much has been written in the last quarter century on Wahhabi Islam and its role in shaping Saudi domestic and foreign policy; however, it can be argued that Western political leaders still have a general ignorance of this golden thread that weaves itself through, and indeed fundamentally defines, Saudi political culture. In order to properly engage Saudi Arabia in dialogue on a whole range of issues, from human rights to economic, foreign and defence policy, it behooves policy-makers in Europe and the Americas to confront their own presumptions that religion and politics cannot and should not mix. In other words, while not necessarily defending Saudi policies that are contrary to Western liberal democratic values – and avoiding the descent into ideological relativism – Western political actors must aim to stand in the shoes of the Kingdom’s Wahhabi elites, so as to better understand their actions, right or wrong.

While Turkey is officially a secular state, its politics have been marked by thwarted and frustrated attempts to advance the position of Islam in the public sphere. Ataturk’s rigid secular legacy – the preserve of Turkey’s dominant civic and political institutions: the military, the courts, the educational establishment and the Kemalist political parties – has been refashioned by the AKP government of Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan. With its Islamist roots, the AKP has steadily fought against the Kemalist sacred cows – including the ban on women wearing the headscarf in universities and other public buildings – so as to give Islam greater public presence. Against Turkish secular nationalists’ dire warnings of the coming of an Iranian-style theocracy, the liberal and democratic AKP has successfully enabled a more public expression of Islam in Turkish politics and society in general. Still, despite the AKP’s democratic credentials and its continued, dogged pursuit of EU membership, Turkey’s EU campaign continues to face stiff opposition from key member-states, such as France, Germany and Greece. While there are many challenges on the path to Turkey’s EU membership – including the status of

the so-called Turkish Republic of Northern Cyprus and religious freedom – the clear ‘elephant in the room’ of Turkish-EU relations is Islam.

The persistence of an ‘at-the-gates-of-Vienna’ mentality among the staunchly secular French and the Germans belies not only a fear of a massive influx of Turkish migrants into Europe, but also fear of the ‘other’ – of Islam. Does this play to the fears and misapprehensions arising from a ‘clash of civilizations’ world view? Indeed. Islam is a defining feature of Turkish culture, and now an increasingly important force within Turkish politics. However, a deep appreciation of the generally moderate and democratic character of Turkish Islam – shaped by the Sufi tradition – is perhaps what is lacking in European approaches to contemporary Turkey.

Furthermore, the almost fundamentalist secular culture of France and the post-Christian cultures of much of central Europe are stumbling blocks toward a much fuller and more nuanced appreciation for the role that religious faith can play in politics.

While framed by the laudable principles of liberty, equality, and fraternity, Western European political cultures have increasingly sought to constrain the free and equal expression of religion – certainly not in private, as this is deemed to be religious faith’s proper place – but publicly, where religious faith is wrongly seen as being exclusive, as making objective truth claims, and as being decidedly non-pluralist.

These countries, the political, judicial, and educational institutions and guiding liberal democratic values of which were shaped by Judeo-Christian beliefs, have forgotten their foundations. Indeed, in the service of a pluralist, relativist and secular faith, the Western European and, to a varying extent, Anglo-American political cultures have altogether sidelined religious faith from politics.

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ILLUSTRATION: MARK MATCHO

Most of the world’s great faiths have been lived out in public spaces: city squares, riverbanks and seashores, parks and grand buildings.

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his post-Enlightenment relegation of religious expression strictly to the private sphere of the home and the quasi-public sphere of the church, synagogue, temple and related charitable and benevolent institutions, is both unfortunate, short-sighted and – one might claim – unjust. Most of the world’s great faiths have been lived out in public spaces: city squares, riverbanks and seashores, parks and grand buildings. This is the case with Christianity, Islam and Hinduism, among others. The idea that an individual should park his or her religious faith at the door of the home and not express it in his or her public life – political or other – is a constraint that goes against the spirit – if not the letter – of free religious expression. As is the case with what many would construe as similar rights, this freedom of public and private religious expression is not absolute; violence against others in the name of religious faith cannot be tolerated. Yet, it is likewise wrong to construe,

as many secular humanists or neo-atheists might, that the profession of objective religious truth in the public sphere by a faithful believer is somehow inflicting intellectual violence against the other.

Enabling the expression of religious beliefs in public debates – in institutional fora, such as legislatures or around Cabinet tables, or in broader political discourse – needs to be accepted as legitimate once again in Western European and Anglo-American political cultures. The desire to suppress such expression or to belittle those who openly express their religious faith and apply it to political action is myopic, and again inhibits the ability to understand those political cultures where public expressions of religious faith are welcomed – if not, in fact, absolutely expected.

While the US, with its constitutional separation of church and state, has carved out the greatest space for religious expression in politics, it appears to stand alone. Public declarations of religious faith in American politics are not only accepted, but are, in a rather crass sense, politically necessary in order to gain political support from an electorate that remains broadly confessional in character. Increasingly, the opposite is true in countries like Canada and Australia, where public figures who publicly confess their faith, and emphasize that it informs their political action, are anathematized for having violated the purportedly official exclusion of religious faith from public life.

While one can argue that this violates freedom of religious expression, and indeed pulls back the cloak to reveal the ‘official secular religion,’ it is even more unfortunate in that it deprives public political discourse of the valuable lessons and insights of religious faith. The same Judeo-Christian values of justice, tolerance and human dignity that shaped the political cultures and institutions of Western liberal democracies, and that are now supported by similar values from other faith traditions, can have a place in the contemporary political discourse, enriching it with morality and rendering it more human.

Expressions of moderate religious faith should rightly be accorded their public place within 21st century politics, so that both international and domestic political discourse can be enriched by their perspectives – perspectives, it must be said, that lie at the core of human development. | GB

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Sahel: le grand jeu?

IN SITU

Une armée pour faire la guerre à tout-va?

ANAS ABDERRAHIM depuis le Nord Mali

D Anas Abderrahim est un diplomate palestinien qui a travaillé en Europe et en Afrique.

Il est actuellement chercheur à l’Université Cheikh Anta Diop de Dakar. L’auteur s’exprime à titre

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personnel.

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epuis plusieurs mois, le Nord Mali vit au rythme des prises d’otages spectaculaires, du brouhaha médiatique qui les accompagne et des interventions musclées de certaines troupes sous-régionales pour, dit-on, circonscrire la «menace terroriste». S’il est vrai que la sous-région connaît une multiplication des actes d’enlèvements et des prises d’otages, ainsi qu’une montée du banditisme et des trafics, les explications de ces phénomènes sont plus complexes que ne le suggèrent plusieurs analystes. Au fond, les problématiques soulevées par la situation du Nord Mali sont brouillées. Une des questions importantes porte sur la cristallisation de la tension sur le territoire malien alors que la plupart des prises d’otages ont lieu à l’extérieur. On ne peut aujourd’hui concevoir d’aborder ce problème sans en avoir une vision plus exhaustive. Quelles sont les particularités de cet espace géographique? Etant donné l’apparition de nouvelles rivalités, quels sont les enjeux qui animent les ambitions des puissances? Enfin, quelles sont les stratégies envisagées pour résoudre la crise dans la bande sahélo-saharienne?

Le couloir sahélo-saharien qui traverse l’Afrique d’est en ouest, de la Mauritanie au Soudan en passant par une partie des pays du Maghreb, correspond à un tiers du continent africain. Comme son nom l’indique, il est constitué de deux espaces géographiques interdépendants. Certains observateurs considèrent cette bande comme une zone de séparation, d’autres comme une zone tampon. En fait, tout laisse penser qu’il s’agit d’une zone intermédiaire, un couloir stratégique important dans le nouvel ordre régional, qui est à la fois un espace historique de passage des flux, une extension des anciennes routes de la soie, et un carrefour culturel pour les civilisations méditerranéennes, islamiques et africaines. La plupart des États qui composent cet ensemble géographique sont sous-administrés et vulnérables, disposant de peu de moyens pour un territoire immense. D’ailleurs la zone sahélosaharienne a toujours été une «zone grise» soumise aux rapports de forces entre les acteurs forts, les centres politiques stables, les cités et les civilisations influentes.

Le Nord Mali se trouve à l’épicentre de ce dispositif géostratégique, avec un immense espace difficile à contrôler: c’est une zone de 700 000 kilomètres carrés, comprenant plus de 5 000 kilomètres de frontières avec l’Algérie, la Mauritanie, le Niger et le Burkina Faso. En outre, le Nord Mali cumule de

nombreux facteurs d’instabilité tels que l’absence de l’État, des infrastructures et de l’armée qui avait quitté certains postes conformément aux accords d’Alger, sans oublier la crise sociale et économique.

En effet, les populations du Nord Mali (entre autres, Touaregs, Sonrais, Peuhls, Maures), bien qu’héritières d’une histoire et d’un legs culturel riche, sont aujourd’hui appauvries par une situation économique difficile et par le déclin des villes telles que Gao et Tombouctou. Longtemps oublié dans le processus du développement du pays, le Nord Mali a connu de nombreuses révoltes populaires contre l’autorité centrale. Ces défaillances politiques et économiques constituent un socle favorable au développement de la menace «salafiste» et au contrôle de ces régions par des bandes armées et trafiquants de tout genre. Ceux-ci exploitent cette vulnérabilité du Nord Mali dopée par une importante circulation financière, et recrutent facilement parmi la jeunesse désabusée par le chômage et la pauvreté.

AQMI (Al-Qaïda au Maghreb islamique) a pris forme au Mali et au Niger au moment où les reliquats des rébellions touarègues, des contrebandiers et mafieux opèrent une jonction avec les anciens du GSPC (Groupe Salafiste pour la Prédication et le Combat). Une sorte de pacte de non agression avec les populations locales semble alors entrer en vigueur.

AQMI ne s’en prend jamais aux tribus nomades qui profitent de la réinjection dans le marché de l’argent des rançons et de la contrebande. Aujourd’hui, AQMI compterait près de 200 à 300 combattants répartis en plusieurs «katibas» autonomes, dont l’encadrement est assuré par des anciens du GSPC. Afin de ne pas être repérés facilement, les groupes fonctionneraient en réseaux éclatés et seraient en constant déplacement. Bien qu’AQMI constitue une lourde menace pour la paix dans la bande sahélo-saharienne, il faut relativiser son poids réel sans toutefois le négliger. Car renforcé par le rôle excessif qu’on lui donne et l’impact médiatique des prises d’otages, AQMI a considérablement développé sa capacité de nuisance dans la bande sahélo-saharienne. Et ce couloir stratégique est devenu objet de la convoitise des grandes multinationales, des cartels et des pays puissants, qui visent son contrôle et l’exploitation de ses nombreuses richesses tels que le sel, l’or, le pétrole, le gaz, le fer, le phosphate, le cuivre, l’étain et l’uranium.

Depuis quelques années, on assiste effectivement à un enchevêtrement des enjeux, ainsi qu’à la réorganisation de la géopolitique des hydrocar-

bures et des matières premières. L’objectif serait de s’en assurer le contrôle et la conduite vers les zones de consommation que sont l’Asie, l’Europe et l’Amérique. Ainsi, la médiatisation occidentale qui présente le Nord Mali comme une zone tribale de désordres endémiques d’où proviendrait une inquiétante menace djihadiste, n’est pas dénuée d’arrière-pensées. Certes la situation de défaillance des États sahéliens est réelle, mais elle sert aussi de justificatif aux interventions de ces puissants acteurs dotés d’une forte capacité d’action. La menace terroriste serait alors en partie entretenue et amplifiée pour servir les intérêts d’acteurs rivaux qui se disputent le contrôle des richesses. Certaines puissances telles que la France, la Chine et les États-Unis se positionnent économiquement ou militairement dans le couloir stratégique sahélo-saharien afin de peser sur les équilibres géopolitiques et énergétiques régionaux. Mais il ne faut pas oublier le rôle des puissances régionales et en particulier l’Algérie, la Libye et le Maroc, dont les alliances et antagonismes sont importants pour la compréhension des tensions qui existent dans la bande sahélosaharienne. Tous les trois développent de subtils mécanismes diplomatiques, économiques et militaires Deux coopérants espagnols pour s’assurer une indétenus comme otages fluence sur ce couloir par Al-Qaïda au Maghreb stratégique. islamique (AQMI).

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PHOTOGRAPHIE: AFP PHOTO

Ce couloir stratégique est devenu objet de la convoitise des grandes multinationales, des cartels et des puissances, qui visent son contrôle et l’exploitation de ses nombreuses richesses tels que le sel, l’or, le pétrole, le gaz, le fer, le phosphate, le cuivre, l’étain et l’uranium.

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’est dans ce contexte particulier que s’est produit à Arlit, entre le 15 et 16 septembre 2010, un nouvel enlèvement, de sept employés des compagnies françaises Areva et Vinci. Depuis cet enlèvement, les événements semblént s’accélérer et diverses forces impliquées manoeuvrent sur le terrain contre AQMI. (Deux otages français enlevés début janvier 2011 par AQMI sont morts après un assaut des forces françaises en territoire malien contre les ravisseurs.) Ainsi, des initiatives sont menées au niveau régional, afin d’améliorer la coordination et la coopération des États sahélo-sahariens. Un quartier général a été mis en place à Tamanrasset et a vu l’organisation en septembre de la rencontre des États-majors des services de renseignement et de sécurité, ainsi que la réunion du Conseil des chefs d’État-major. Ces deux rencontres et la réunion d’Alger sur le renseignement ont été organisées afin d’intensifier la lutte contre les sources de financement et la mo-

bilité d’AQMI. Même si cette fébrilité marque une réelle mobilisation des États concernés par la lutte contre le terrorisme et le banditisme transfrontalier, elle reste désarticulée. Et l’intégration des pays du Maghreb, du Tchad et du Burkina Faso aux travaux des structures de coordination opérationnelle, demeure insuffisante.

Particulièrement impliquée, la France se déploie militairement avec l’aide de ses alliés dans une stratégie d’encerclement et de harcèlement d’AQMI. Ainsi, des éléments du COS (Commandement des Opérations Spéciales) seraient présents au Burkina Faso, un détachement de l’armée de l’air (officiellement 80 personnes) et des appareils de surveillance seraient positionnés au Niger, et des éléments appuient et forment les troupes mauritaniennes et nigériennes. Le Mali n’est pas avantagé par cette démarche qui confine les tensions sur son territoire, au risque que ce pays en paie le prix fort. Pourtant, le gouvernement malien réclame depuis des mois la régionalisation de la gestion de cette crise sécuritaire et la mutualisation des moyens. Il a autorisé les armées des pays frontaliers à combattre les groupes d’AQMI en leur octroyant un droit de poursuite. En outre, le Mali entreprend de sérieux efforts pour combler le vide militaire au Nord. Mais pour les Maliens, cette crise ne trouvera sa solution que si le défi sécuritaire est relevé en parallèle avec le défi du développement du Nord Mali.

En effet, il semble également que la seule réponse sécuritaire ne suffira pas à combattre efficacement la violence qui se nourrit de la crise régionale. Il est essentiel de combattre les véritables maux du Sahel, en mettant en place une stratégie maîtrisée du développement économique et social, combinée aux efforts sécuritaires. A défaut, le risque est grand que la région, déjà théâtre du grand jeu des puissances, s’expose davantage à l’insécurité, à la division des forces sociopolitiques et à l’exploitation sauvage des ressources naturelles. Afin d’éviter cela, la crise du Sahel pourrait devenir l’opportunité d’un changement profond, à condition qu’on se donne les moyens d’une concertation et d’une coordination renforcées entre les pays sahéliens et tous les pays du Maghreb. Les enjeux qui animent aujourd’hui le couloir stratégique sahélo-saharien nécessitent, en effet, une plus forte convergence des actions allant jusqu’à refonder les liens civilisationnels historiques entre le Maghreb, le monde arabo-musulman et les pays du Sahel. | GB

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PHOTOGRAPH: THE CANADIAN PRESS / ALTAF QADRI

Pakistan’s internal troubles and external behaviour point increasingly to the need for an ever muscular Indian posture

BY RAMESH THAKUR

INDIA’S MOVES AND

THE PAKISTANI PUZZLE Professor of Political Science at the University of Waterloo and former Senior Vice-Rector of United Nations University and UN Assistant Secretary-General. He will shortly be taking up a new position as Professor of International Relations at the Australian National University. His most recent book is The Responsibility to Protect: Norms, Laws and the Use of Force in International Politics.

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hen us President Barack Obama visited India in November of last year, he made a point of staying at one of the two luxury hotels that had been attacked by terrorists two years earlier. The Mumbai attacks of November 26th, 2008, for the first time brought home to a global television audience that India is a frontline state against international terrorism. The carnage was notable for its savagery, audacity, choice of targets and duration. The attacks marked a tipping point, and constitute India’s own 9/11. They spawned a new and frightening, frozen anger at a government that is all bark and no bite. Indians were more contemptuous of their own politicians than angry at Pakistan. Eventually, unvented rage could morph into rejection of democracy in India as limp and corrupt.

Outsiders advised India against war with Pakistan, but offered no realistic plan to destroy the infrastructure of terrorism infesting Pakistan. The world may hope for the best, but should be prepared for the worst. Rising demands for a more assertive regional posture by a nationalistic and increasingly impatient citizenry are the inevitable corollary of India’s sharply higher global profile.War clouds over the subcontinent will not dissipate because of three key factors: changes in the balance of considerations between no action and some military response

by India; India’s waning interest in a stable Pakistan; and the rogue tendencies of Pakistan’s notorious Inter-Services Intelligence (ISI). India’s preference is for the establishment of civilian supremacy over the army and intelligence in Pakistan and consolidation of the institutions of good governance. Failing this, of necessity, India will have to acquire the capability to attack and destroy terrorist infrastructure and operatives across the border. India, along with the international community, will also have to reconsider the balance of rewards and punishment for Pakistan for its contradictory roles in fighting versus fomenting terrorism.

Ramesh Thakur is

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Outsiders

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advised India against war with Pakistan, but offered no realistic plan to destroy the infrastructure of terrorism infesting Pakistan.

The world may hope for the best, but should be prepared for the worst.

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Terrorists have attacked India repeatedly with planning, training and financing based in Pakistan, whose military-intelligence-jihadist complex has been lethally effective in outsourcing terrorism as an instrument of state policy. India’s policy of offshoring the response by appealing to the nebulous ‘international community’ has been ineffectual.

The murderers of 9/11 came out of the mountainous caves of Afghanistan, where the Taliban regime – an after-creation of the US and Saudi-backed mujahideen against the Soviet-installed regime, as well as of Pakistan’s search for strategic depth against archenemy India – had nurtured them as a potent weapon against all infidels. India’s repeated warnings that the epicentre of international terrorism had shifted from the Middle East to Southwest Asia were dismissed as self-serving rants.

Pakistan has been triangulated historically by the three ‘As’: Allah, the army and America. Washington and NATO are most interested in cajoling Pakistan to fight the militants in the lawless border region with Afghanistan, and to secure their logistical supply route through Pakistan without the added complication of India-Pakistan rivalry. Russia has no leverage over Pakistan. China has a history of using Pakistan to trap India in a subcontinental straitjacket.

Outsiders’ neglect of India’s sensitivity could result in a double blow: a costly India-Pakistan war and the intensification of export-quality Islamist terrorism as Pakistan falls apart. For its part, Pakistan’s security elite could fall into the familiar trap of mistaking a democratic neighbour’s reluctance to go to war for weakness, while ignoring the history of democracies as ‘powerful pacifists’ once their peoples are roused and fully mobilized.

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ndia has a vested interest in a stable and prosperous Pakistan, just as all South Asians benefit from a vibrant India. The choice has often seemed to be between an intolerable status quo and the nightmare of a militantly Islamic, 185-million strong, nuclear-armed failed state at the strategic crossroads of South Asia, Central Asia and the Middle East. Born amid the mass killings of partition in 1947, Pakistan has never escaped the cycle of violence and volatility whence it emerged. It lies at the intersection of Islamic jihadism, international terrorism, nuclear proliferation, and the struggle between democratic forces and military dictatorship. This is why in Pakistan, the bad is at least the enemy of the worse.

India should solve its Kashmir problem based on self-interest. New Delhi shows a curious mixture of hubris, arrogance and disingenuousness – too clever by half – in denying that there is a problem.

The issue has gravely corroded India’s democratic, secular and humanist values and institutions, and hobbled its globalist aspirations. That said, the

core issue bedevilling India-Pakistan relations is not Kashmir, but rather the nature of the Pakistani state and its obsession with parity vis-à-vis India.

Pakistan was an artificial creation with two founding ideologies: ‘not India’ and homeland of the Muslims. Its primary validating ideology was negative: the Muslims of the subcontinent, whose destiny is to be rulers – not subjects – cannot be ruled by a Hindu-majority government. ‘Not India’ is an inadequate basis for building a state. The incompatibility thesis has proven true of Pakistan, but not India. The proportion of Muslims in India today is higher than the corresponding figure after partition. By contrast, the percentage of Hindus in Pakistan today is a fraction of the proportion in 1947.

The only glue binding the new country was religion. The ruling elite has traditionally viewed Pakistan as the custodian of all Islam – not just of the subcontinent’s Muslims. Many Pakistani Muslims believe that India was their patrimony from the Mughal Empire – stolen from them by the British, who bequeathed it to undeserving Hindus. This is why the leaders of the Lashkar-e-Taiba (LeT – ‘Army of the Pure’) and the Jaish-e-Muhammed (JEM – the soldiers of Muhammed) dream of unfurling the Islamic green flag in the Red Fort in Delhi, as well as in Tel Aviv and Jerusalem.

In 1971, Islam proved insufficiently strong to hold the country together. (See the Feature article on the failure of political Islam in the Middle East

by Katerina Dalacoura at p. 32.) That generation of the Pakistani elite neither accepted internal failures of governance as the primary cause of Bangladeshi secession, nor forgave India for being midwife to Bangladesh’s independence. The India threat validates the military’s size, power and influence; that is, the military dwarfs all other institutions, has ascendance over all civilian competitors and has its tentacles in virtually every aspect of Pakistan’s national affairs.

Traditionally, for Indians, the question is: What kind of Pakistan does India want? One that is on the brink of state collapse and failure, splintered into multiple centres of power, with large swathes of territory under the control of religious zealots and terrorists? Or, alternatively, a stable, democratic and economically powerful Pakistan, minus the influence of the three ‘Ms’: the military, militants and mullahs?

The answer is no longer straightforward. Previously, many said that having a nuclear Somalia for a neighbour would not be the end of India’s Pakistan problem, but rather the beginning of India’s woes. Yet, for over a decade, even as Pakistan has teetered on the brink of collapse and disintegration, and been reduced to a bit player, India has prospered and emerged as a global player. Prakash Shah, India’s former UN ambassador, describes the belief that Pakistan’s stability is essential for

India’s progress as one of several “flawed assumptions and myths of the 20th century on which our Pakistan policy is based.” G. Parthasarathy, former High Commissioner to Pakistan, rejects the claim that “a rising India cannot assert its rightful place in the comity of nations without good relations with Pakistan.” He believes that this is “factually incorrect,” and that this fallacious belief in turn “undermine[s] Indian diplomacy” with the unnecessary hyphenation of India’s prospects with those of Pakistan: “We can ‘rise’ in the world with or without Pakistan’s cooperation.”

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PHOTOGRAPH: AP PHOTO / PAKISTAN MINISTRY OF DEFENSE

Pakistan successfully test-fired a new version of its short-range nuclear-capable Hatf III Ghaznavi missile in

What, then, might be a way forward? First, Pakistan’s military must be brought under full civilian control.

This cannot be done until the government accepts the reality of Pakistan being the de facto headquarters of world terrorism. If the Balkans produce more politics than they can consume, Pakistan produces more terrorism than can be exported. Serial attacks might wound India, but Pakistan itself could be consumed by blowback before India is destroyed.

The standard of proof for protection from foreign attacks cannot be the same as in national

December 2006.

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slamabad’s record of double-dealing, deceit and denial of Pakistan-based attacks, in Afghanistan and India alike, has been based on four degrees of separation – between the government, the army, the ISI and terrorists – the plausibility of which is fading as it is exploited as a convenient alibi to escape accountability. That Pakistanis in general might harbour goodwill and friendships toward India is irrelevant if they have little say in making policy.

Indian Prime Minister Manmohan Singh – by instinct circumspect – has said that, “given the sophistication and military precision,” the Mumbai attacks “must have had the support of some official agencies in Pakistan.” The combination of training, selection and advance reconnaissance of targets, diversionary tactics, discipline, munitions, cryptographic communications, false IDs, and damage inflicted is more typically associated with special forces units than with terrorists.

At the heart of Pakistan’s emotional parity lies the ability to match India militarily. This could not have been done without alliance with the US to begin with, nor sustained subsequently without a de facto alliance with China – something that also allowed Pakistan to bring its own nuclear and missile programmes to fruition in 1998. Pakistan’s first nuclear weapon test was allegedly carried out for it on May 26th, 1990 by China.

With the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan, Pakistan’s three As converged. But yesterday’s anti-Soviet mujahideen in Afghanistan is today’s anti-Western jihadist everywhere. To Pakistan, control over Afghanistan – first through the mujahideen, and then via the Taliban – provided strategic depth against India, but also pitted it increasingly against Iran.

The Saudi connection led to a spurt of madrassas spewing hatred against Jew, Christian and Hindu with equal venom. The army harnessed Islamism against civilian political parties at home to maintain control over Afghanistan and against India.

After 9/11, Islamabad abandoned the Taliban and joined the US war on terror. Yet, on the critical issues of fighting Islamic terrorism and promoting democracy, progress has been minimal, and the

nightmare scenario of nuclear weapons coming under the control of Islamists has come ever closer to reality in Pakistan. According to respected US intelligence analyst Bruce Riedel, Pakistan today has the world’s fastest growing nuclear arsenal, as well as the most terrorists per square-mile. Indeed, classified cables published by Wikileaks include the revelation that, since 2007, the US has been engaged in unsuccessful efforts to remove from a Pakistani research reactor highly enriched uranium that could be diverted for use by terrorists in an illicit nuclear device.

US President Obama promised, but has failed to confront the core of Pakistani duplicity. If Pakistan successfully eliminates the threat of Islamists, its utility to Washington and the fear of the alternative would disappear. Pakistan would lose an asset after the US withdraws from Afghanistan. If it fails to show tangible progress, it will be punished.

So, Islamabad has played both ends against the middle. However, because of internal contradictions, slowly but surely, Pakistan has descended into the failing state syndrome where the Koran and Kalashnikov culture reign supreme.

Almost every incident of international terrorism, including 9/11 and the failed Times Square bombing in 2010, has had some significant link to Pakistan.

Against this backdrop, the 26/11 Mumbai attacks presented India with a policy dilemma of heads they win, tails we lose.

If India failed to respond effectively to the terrorist threat originating from over the horizon, it could be kept bleeding at a costfree policy of state-sponsored terrorism

by Pakistan. But if India did respond with robust military action, then that would allow Pakistan’s army to break from fighting the Islamist militants – fighting that deepens the army’s unpopularity – assert dominance over the civilian government, regain the support of the people as the custodian of national sovereignty, and internationalize the bilateral dispute.

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courts of law: ‘beyond reasonable doubt’ has a different connotation in the two contexts. British and American leaders have become progressively more plainspoken in pinning the responsibility for acts of international terrorism on Pakistanbased or -trained operatives. Still, official Pakistani spokesmen question the world’s double standards for silence over the ‘immense torture’ of innocent Kashmiris and the killings of children and women in Gaza, while exaggerating and raising a hue and cry over isolated incidents of terrorism, in India and elsewhere, with alleged links to Pakistan.

A second possible way forward – that of military and/or intelligence strikes on or in Pakistan – could be attempted if the establishment of civilian supremacy fails.

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second possible way forward – that of military and/or intelligence strikes on or in Pakistan – could be attempted if the establishment of civilian supremacy fails. The state of denial does not inspire confidence that Pakistan will depart significantly from its proven modus operandi of: initial denials; grudging acceptance in the face of incontrovertible evidence in due course; doing the absolute minimum necessary to absorb and deflect international pressure for action against the perpetrators; promises to stop future attacks; and then going back to business as usual.

India still has several options to explore before having to confront the need for some overt military or covert intelligence action. It could restrict commercial transport and tourist links with Pakistan; downgrade diplomatic relations; urge arms exporters not to sell armaments to Pakistan on pain of being blacklisted from bidding for lucrative Indian tenders; be more aggressive against Pakistan in international lending institutions; and press for escalating UN sanctions under anti-terrorism conventions and relevant Security Council resolutions. Like Ronald Reagan vis-à-vis the old Soviet Union, India could use its superior economic performance and potential to bankrupt a parity-obsessed Pakistan.

If these fail to yield demonstrable action and measurable progress within a reasonable timeframe, the

question of unilateral action will become inescapable.

Like the Americans firing missiles into Pakistan from unmanned drones, India could adopt the policy of taking the fight into neighbouring territory whence terrorism attacks originate. It could strike at the human leadership and material infrastructure of terrorism through surgical strikes and targeted assassinations. As India does not have such intelligence and military capabilities today, it could invest all means necessary to acquire them urgently. To be successful, the policy would have to be backed with the capability of escalation dominance: the enemy should know that any escalation from the limited strikes will bring even heavier punitive costs from a superior military force at every stage of the process.

For more than a decade, lacking a coherent vision or strategy on how to deal with the dilemma of quasiofficial complicity in cross-border terrorism, and with flat official denial, India has, at best, managed to cobble together a muddled ‘shaming campaign’ against Pakistan as it solicits international censure of terrorism-tolerant postures by Pakistan. At worst, it elicits contempt and pity in India, Pakistan and overseas for hand-wringing appeals to others to sort out the mess in its own neighbourhood.

Terrorism is used by Pakistan as a continuation of war by other, safer and less costly means. A rising, increasingly self-confident and newly assertive India will learn to fashion a robust response within a clear vision and a hard-nosed strategy of turning terrorism back into warfare that imposes heavier penalties and damage.

Pakistan’s contributions to the war on terror on its western front are of lesser import than its fuelling of terrorism on its eastern front. Yet, the rewards for the former exceed penalties for the latter. Much of the cumulative US $20 billion (and counting) in military aid has been directed by Pakistan at India – not the Taliban. Indians seem more able to grasp the moral hazard of continuing and increased international aid to Pakistan being tantamount to Islamabad reaping a growing terrorist dividend. As Tavleen Singh argued recently in a recent Indian Express column, in effect, “American money finances terrorism against India in the hope that this will persuade Pakistan’s generals to eliminate the terrorist groups that work against the United States.”

India and the US, acting together, must reverse the structure of incentives and penalties. Failure

by India to respond forcefully and effectively will embolden and inspire terrorist actors in Pakistan.

Their sympathizers-cum-supporters inside the military and intelligence agencies will conclude that the benefits of attacking high-value targets in India of political (Parliament), commercial (financial capital), cultural (Jewish centres), religious (Hindu temples and festivals) and symbolic (iconic hotels) significance far outweigh pinprick costs. Echoing

China Institute’s mission is to forge linkages between China-related initiatives and scholarship at the University of Alberta, to enhance and support new teaching and research activities between Canada and China, and to develop an enduring friendship and promote cultural, scientific, and business exchanges.

CIUA’s vision is to become renowned in China and internationally as a unique Canadian enterprise that stimulates outstanding China-related teaching and research initiatives and interdisciplinary collaboration with the University of Alberta. Spanning a wide range of disciplines, the Institute will encourage the participation of undergraduate and graduate students, postdoctoral fellows, staff, and faculty from the University of Alberta and Chinese institutions. The Institute will bridge university and community activities to encourage cultural understanding, and scientific and business ventures between the two nations.

www.china.ualberta.ca

china@ualberta.ca

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this argument in an article in the New York Times last fall, former US ambassador to Afghanistan Zalmay Khalilzad wrote that “Washington must offer Islamabad a stark choice between positive incentives and negative consequences.”

There is no national or international security crisis so grave that it cannot be made worse by going to war – with a full range of unpredictable and perverse consequences. The first is the risk of military defeat, for only the battlefield can test a country’s investment in weaponry, equipment, training and doctrine against the likely enemies. Short of that, there are the risks of political and social upheavals in one’s own country, including heightened Hindu-Muslim tensions in any war with Pakistan. There are the matching risks of the domestic and policy consequences in Pakistan, including the strengthening of the military vis-à-vis the government and civil society, a nationalistic unity behind the government as it faces the historic enemy, a decision to reinvest in, and even expand, covert and clandestine assets and operations against India with the help of Islamist militants, and an escalation to a nuclear exchange, with all the attendant dangers.

To walk away from the aggressive option in perpetuity is to give free rein to Pakistan to engage in serial provocations as a low-cost, moderate-value, long-term strategy. Given these costs, risks and constraints, India’s fourfold policy imperative is: to institute new and effective security measures to deter, prevent and defeat terrorist attacks on its soil; develop intelligence capability to detect and disrupt plans for terrorist strikes; create a credible yet deniable capability to pre-empt or retaliate against attacks from beyond its borders; and avoid having to go to war by convincing Pakistan (and Washington) – through military modernization, doctrines and deployments – of its ability and determination to do so.

The newly forged will of steel, the wellsprings of political courage, and the shedding of the shibboleths of a soft state could also be utilized to protect Muslims from being massacred in Gujarat, Christians from being terrorized in Orissa, and Hindus from being ethnically cleansed in Kashmir. Moreover, if Pakistan is complicit in cross-border terrorism in South Asia today, India was guilty of playing the same dangerous game in the past with respect to the Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam (LTTE) in Sri Lanka. All countries of the region should cooperate in ridding South Asia of the deadly virus of terrorism. This requires a united three-pronged approach of: robust and resolute action by the law enforcement agencies acting collaboratively to “disrupt, dismantle and defeat” terrorist plots and groups (to borrow President Obama’s language); efficient and credible criminal justice systems to hold them criminally accountable within the principles and institutions of the rule of law; and an urgent redress of group-based political grievances to reduce their motivation and also to cut off sympathy and support for certain terrorist groups from the community at large. | GB

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QUERY

Corées: Fin de régime à Pyongyang?

La rationalité stratégique du régime nord-coréen constitue un indicateur de sa vulnérabilité PAR GÉRARD HERVOUET

Gérard Hervouet est directeur du programme Paix et Sécurité Internationales à l’Institut québécois des hautes études internationales.

Il est aussi professeur titulaire au département de science politique de l’Université

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Laval à Québec.

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Dans le contexte de la mondialisation envahissante, l’évocation d’un éventuel conflit interétatique semble à la fois incongrue et obsolète. La reprise du vieux film en noir et blanc de la guerre des années 1950, dans une version en couleur avec effets spéciaux, se traduirait par des conséquences incommensurables. Les provocations nord-coréennes de ces derniers mois ont toutefois rappelé que les trajectoires de l’histoire demeuraient bien fragiles et pourraient vaciller vers un scénario déjà vu ou se décliner encore en variantes moins radicales.

Sans reprendre ici les multiples événements tragiques de l’année 2010, notons cependant que jamais, depuis l’armistice de 1953, le régime de Pyongyang n’avait été aussi loin dans le recours aux armes d’autrefois. Le torpillage d’un navire de la flotte sudcoréenne et les tirs d’artillerie sur l’île de Yeonpyeong s’inscrivent dans les grands classiques du conflit traditionnel. Dans la panoplie des armes des années 1950, un hiatus est toutefois apparu, celui du feu nucléaire dont dispose maintenant la Corée du Nord.

Dans ce contexte, rapidement esquissé, apparaissent de plus en plus clairement les stratégies d’un État qui entend lancer au reste du monde le message et le défi qu’il peut tout bousculer sans craindre les représailles de ses voisins trop soucieux de préserver le confort de leur modernité lucrative, mais bien vulnérable.

Géopolitiquement coincé entre de grands partenaires, le régime de Pyongyang dispose de peu de moyens. La menace nucléaire conforte toutefois son arme la plus précieuse: celle de la rationalité, du calcul et de la capacité de nuisance programmée. Depuis 2010, la Corée du Nord combine mieux que jamais stratégie et tactique en ciblant des objectifs sud-coréens peu susceptibles de provoquer l’irrémédiable, mais suffisants pour les ramener au simple niveau d’un débat contestant la limitation des eaux territoriales en Mer Jaune.

L‘attaque de l’île Yeonpyeong fut aussi précédée de l’invitation de plusieurs délégations américaines toutes convaincues à leur retour de la gravité de la menace nucléaire, mais également perturbées par le sentiment résigné qu’il convenait encore de négocier l’obtention de résultats improbables pour éviter le pire. De façon très habile, le régime de Pyongyang cible maintenant les fragilités du gouvernement sud-coréen, provoque la démission du ministre de la défense et crée un malaise dans l’armée de Séoul

moins certaine de pouvoir anticiper une prochaine attaque. Il humilie aussi le président Lee Myung-bak qui, en prenant ses fonctions en 2008, promettait plus de fermeté à l’endroit du Nord.

Que cherche la Corée du Nord? Au lecteur pressé, ou peu averti, on peut répondre: la survie. Et bien sûr l’argumentaire est infiniment plus complexe. Depuis la quête d’assistance économique et énergétique jusqu’à la reconnaissance de sa légitimité et d’un vrai traité de paix mettant fin au statut de l’armistice qui perdure depuis 1953, tout semble avoir été dit. La récurrence du chantage érigé en système diplomatique et l’outrance habituelle des discours peuvent banaliser une fois encore la situation actuelle.

En fait, le soin extrême apporté par Pyongyang pour mettre en place, ces derniers mois, des mises en scène efficaces devrait souligner que le régime a plus que jamais senti le danger de sa vulnérabilité. La portée mobilisatrice de la rhétorique belliqueuse ne semble plus avoir de prise sur une population beaucoup plus préoccupée par une inflation incontrôlable qui touche sa survie et sa dignité. Dans un geste inédit, le régime s’est excusé d’une réforme financière improvisée pénalisant surtout l’émergence d’un marché libre et les petits épargnants. Les alertes du Programme alimentaire mondial (PAM) se multiplient. Elles se heurtent aux clôtures de la Corée du Nord, mais aussi au refus de tous les acteurs régionaux, et autres, de devoir négocier pour intervenir directement. Malgré les rebuffades nord-coréennes à l’endroit de l’ONU, les sanctions aggravées par le Conseil de sécurité contribuent à épuiser une économie assistée au gré de la volonté du voisin chinois. Par ailleurs, le chapitre tragi-comique de la succession n’est rassurant pour personne, y compris pour les Nord-coréens eux-mêmes. L’immaturité du très jeune fils héritier, couronné général, comme la régence possible de la sœur et du beau frère, ne font que renforcer l’idée de l’accélération d’une fin de régime sur lequel devra veiller jusqu’au bout quelques vieux généraux loyaux.

La date de cette fin de règne n’est pas vraiment prévisible. Toutefois la dictature, le regard planté dans un horizon des cinq prochaines années, comprend certainement la précarité d’une marginalité volontaire.

En multipliant les gesticulations belliqueuses, le régime traduit cette inquiétude et, en aggravant la complexité de ses stratégies, il semble aussi prendre conscience que la Corée du Sud, mais aussi le Japon,

la Chine et les États-Unis évoluent très vite vers des stratégies postulant l’unification inévitable de la péninsule. Certainement déterminé dans son discours, mais assurément peu enclin à ouvrir un nouveau front en Asie orientale, le gouvernement américain favorise toutefois encore plus de coopération et de rapprochement entre ses deux grands alliés japonais et sud-coréen. La perspective d’une plus grande autonomie d’action laissée à Séoul – comme à Tokyo – brouillerait dangereusement les cartes et la cible première serait Pyongyang.

Que fait donc la Chine?

Question classique, mais toujours aussi difficile.

Depuis le torpillage du Cheonan, les autorités de Beijing ont quitté le mutisme adopté alors pour intervenir bilatéralement et multilatéralement afin de calmer la montée des tensions. Le répit observé dans la péninsule coréenne depuis les premiers jours de l’année 2011 semble bien lui être imputable. Depuis la fin de l’année 2009, les autorités chinoises ont considérablement augmenté l’assistance financière à Pyongyang afin d’atténuer les effets dévastateurs des «réformes économiques» de la dictature. L’attitude chinoise vérifie ainsi la thèse d’une fin de régime bien appréhendée par le grand voisin. Malgré les flottements de Beijing face aux politiques de surenchère de Pyongyang, le gouvernement chinois multiplie les déplacements de ses représentants et il semble avoir pris la mesure de l’inquiétude des dirigeants nord-coréens qui se bousculent dans la capitale chinoise, où l’on a vu par deux fois, en quatre mois, Kim Jong-Il lui-même.

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PHOTOGRAPHIE: LA PRESSE CANADIENNE / VINCENT YU

États-Unis ne semblent pas s’écarter de la politique de «patience stratégique» énoncée par la Secrétaire d’État Hillary Clinton. Les poids conjugués de Beijing et Washington peuvent-ils encore préserver un statu quo illusoire en épuisant leur crédibilité dans une nouvelle ronde de pourparlers à six? Rien n’est moins sûr. Pyongyang et Séoul, malgré leur dépendance à l’endroit de leurs grands tuteurs respectifs, se cabrent aujourd’hui dans une dynamique nouvelle où les autorités du Sud ont délibérément choisi de copier la stratégie de charme adoptée inlassablement par la Corée du Nord après chaque crise. Le Président Lee Myung-bak multiplie les manœuvres militaires, propose des négociations, mais définit la nouvelle stratégie du ministère de l’Unification. L’unification est désormais le concept dominant auquel doit se préparer la population sud-coréenne.

Depuis le début de ce conflit sans issue, l’année 2011 sera pour la première fois déterminante dans l’accélération de la cadence vers l’effondrement du régime de Pyongyang ou, au contraire, l’amorce de l’adoption par ce dernier d’une voie chinoise de développement économique fortement inspirée et appuyée par Beijing. Ce dernier scénario constitue à peu près la seule note d’optimisme que l’on puisse espérer à court terme. | GB

Au mois d’octobre 2010, à l’occasion du 65ème anniversaire du parti des travailleurs qui dirige le pays, des soldats nord-coréens défilent lors d’une gigantesque cérémonie militaire.

Que cherche la Corée du Nord? Au lecteur pressé, ou peu averti, on peut répondre: la survie.

Et bien sûr l’argumentaire est infiniment plus complexe.

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n cherchant à convaincre tous ses partenaires qu’elle continue à maîtriser la situation, la Chine est aux prises avec l’art difficile de ne pas perdre la face sans la faire perdre également aux autres États de la région. Dans les arcanes de la diplomatie en Asie, les grandes émotions historiques croisent parfois des comportements généralement assez pragmatiques. Dans les moments de tension, les plus grands dangers interviennent lors de l’interaction entre ces attitudes contradictoires pouvant alors déjouer la rationalité des intentions.

Dans le registre des certitudes, le gouvernement chinois ne peut ainsi, dans ce dossier, se permettre de miner sa crédibilité. La crainte d’un manque

de détermination dans les politiques régionales, toujours prioritaires, l’emporte sur toute autre considération; rappelons simplement ici que depuis le début des années 1950 la question coréenne est historiquement liée à celle de Taïwan.

Dans le contexte d’une volonté de rapprochement plus confiant entre la Chine et les États-Unis, la Corée du Nord figure très haut dans les irritants prioritaires. Alors que la Chine cautionne par nécessité les calculs toujours plus dangereux de Pyongyang, les

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Katerina Dalacoura is Lecturer in International Relations at the London School of Economics and Political Science. Her book, Islamist Terrorism and Democracy in the Middle East, will be published by Cambridge University Press in May 2011.

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he strength and vitality of political Islam in the Middle East have, until very recently, appeared incontrovertible. Political Islam is associated with powerful Middle Eastern regimes like the Iranian revolutionary government and the Saudi monarchy. The Turkish Justice and Development Party (AKP), which has been shaped by Islamist influences and has been in power since 2002, is thriving. Nearly 10 years after the attacks of 9/11, Al Qaeda still manages to grab the headlines across the globe. Hamas and Hezbollah are leaders of ‘resistance’ against Israel. And until the recent uprisings, Islamist movements like the Muslim Brotherhood in Egypt outshone secular groups in constituting the strongest opposition against authoritarian regimes. These movements take incumbent regimes to task for not being sufficiently ‘Islamic,’ and seek to capture power in order to reform society and expiate corruption.

However, this vibrant image hides a number of important weaknesses. In the recent protests that have rocked the Middle East, the Islamists, at this time of writing, do not appear to have played a central role. This is because, beneath the facade, political Islam has had its day. The reasons are twofold. First, political Islam has failed to put forward a political programme that would constitute a real alternative to existing ideologies. Its concentration on social and ethical issues – primarily concerning women and the protection of Islamic morals and values through censorship and control – are evidence of an inability to offer a political programme. Second, and partly as a result of the first failure, a trend is emerging in the Middle East toward the rise of an apolitical Islam. What this trend entails is the spread of a strong personal conservative religiosity, combined, however, with a general aversion to formal politics.

It is erroneous to view ‘political Islam,’ or ‘Islamism,’ as others prefer to call it, as an undifferentiated whole. Even within the Middle East – the Muslims of which constitute only a minority of the wider Islamic world – political Islam comprises a mind-boggling variety of entities, movements and ideologies. Islamist movements can pursue discrete social, political, cultural and military activities and functions. They are sometimes in control of government. In most cases, however, they are in opposition to secular regimes (the latter constituting the majority in the Middle East). Islam can be widely interpreted, and Islamist movements concomitantly range from extremist on the one hand to liberal on the other. In some infrequent cases, these movements use violent – even terrorist – tactics. For the most part, however, they adopt a moderate tone and non-violent methods in their struggle against incumbent regimes.

THE UNCERTAIN FUTURE OF

POLITICAL ISLAM As a philosophy of statecraft, political Islam has proved ill-equipped for the complexities of modern government.

With the recent Middle East insurrections, it may well become a spent force

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BY KATERINA DALACOURA

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ILLUSTRATION: KEITH NEGLEY

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till, there are among these movements some common elements that allow us to describe them, collectively, as ‘political Islam’ or ‘Islamism.’ They all adhere to the belief that ‘Islam is the solution,’ and that the ideal society is based on Sharia (Islamic) law.

Political Islam, as with all ideologies, is very much a modern phenomenon. This is because it rests on the belief that human beings have the power to mould society, and to promote society’s ideal form through engagement and struggle. The fact that political Islam purports to offer a blueprint for society means that it must not be conflated with Islam as religion.

But what is the actual content of this ideological programme? What would perfect Islamist society and polity look like? Despite their claim to be offering guidance on how to create the ideal society, Islamists have actually failed to deliver an alternative political programme. This is not a new critique of political Islam. The eminent French analyst, Olivier Roy, suggested it in the early 1990s. Since then, in the fullness of time, Roy has been vindicated.

Let us start with Islamist movements as opposition movements in the Arab core of the Middle East. The Muslim Brotherhood in Egypt, Jordan and Kuwait are all moderate organizations that operate within existing political systems in their respective societies. (By contrast, Tunisia’s Islamists have mostly been in prison or in exile since the early 1990s.) In Morocco, the Justice and Development Party has won parliamentary representation within a multi-party electoral system. These settings are politically discrete – with some, for example, being republican and others monarchical. Although they are all authoritarian to varying degrees, they also all allow for some political space within which Islamist opposition movements can function either in legality or quasi-legality, and indeed participate in politics.

The result, in many cases, is that we are given the opportunity to observe the ideas, policy proposals and solutions put forward by Islamist movements. It is clear that these movements and formations have concentrated – both in their discourse and activities – mostly on social and moral issues. These pertain to women and social mores, such as the segregation of the sexes, the banning of alcohol, and protecting society from ‘corruption’ and the defacing of Islamic values through the institution of controls, such as censorship. The more conservative among these Islamist movements also sometimes call for the reinstitution of the harsher Islamic punishments, including amputations and floggings. In a number of instances, they argue for restrictions to be imposed on non-Muslim minorities, with a view to enhancing the position of the dominant, Muslim majority.

One institutional innovation suggested by Islamist movements – for instance, in Egypt – is to place religious leaders or ‘wise men’ in positions of authority. They would then oversee the imposition of moral and social controls, and ensure that political institutions and laws adhere to Islamic principles. However, the establishment of such religious guardianship structures hardly constitutes a political programme. Islamists have not come up with innovative ideas for replacing the bulk of existing political structures or institutions. In terms of the economy, and despite rhetorical flourishes about social justice to the contrary, they are mostly content to retain the fundamentals of the capitalist system. Their solution to social inequities is to cushion the poorest sections of society through their many charity activities and social activism, which target the middle classes and the poor.

Would it be fair to say, in riposte to the above criticisms, that the reason for which Islamists have not developed a proper political programme is that they have not really had an opportunity to do so?

Despite the existence of some political openings, are the constraints of authoritarianism in which they have to date been operating not in fact overwhelming – thereby preventing them from developing new ideas and policies? (And might this change with the recent political uprisings in the Arab Middle East?)

Not really. For in cases where Islamists achieved power and had occasion to impose a political programme, we observe similar failures and limitations.

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he Islamic Republic of Iran is the major case-study of an Islamic political project being implemented. Following the overthrow of Mohammad Reza Shah Pahlavi, in 1979, by a wideranging coalition of social and political forces, comprising socialist and liberal elements, a hard-line Islamist faction emerged triumphant after defeating its allies and outmanoeuvring its challengers. Led by Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini, the new regime proceeded to establish an Islamic system. The first major legal act of Khomeini was to revoke the rights given to women under the Shah. In fact, the bulk of legal reform was in family law and social mores, as well as in respect of the penal code. It became apparent, in the new Constitution of 1979, as well as in the subsequent failed attempt to completely ‘Islamize’ Iran’s laws in following years, that Sharia law did not offer substantial detailed guidance on how to run a complex state and society. The reality in the Islamic Republic was that secular laws continued to exist and to constitute a material part of the legal corpus, with exceptions in family and penal law.

One area where Islamists have always scored

the rules of Islam, is, with few exceptions, becoming extremely widespread.

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slamist movements have paradoxically played into the hands of authoritarian governments.

Their concentration on a moral and social agenda has reinforced the trend toward personal religiosity – and away from political engagement.

Witness Egypt (before the current unrest): in the period from December 2009 to January 2010, the Muslim Brotherhood elected a new conservative leadership, marginalizing more pragmatic elements.

The conservatives argued that political engagement had been counterproductive, and that it should be replaced by more focus on religious, missionary activity to spread the Islamic message.

In Iran, the corruption, inefficiency and hypocrisy of the revolutionary regime, and the imposition of an Islamic system over more than 30 years, have together led not just to a preference for delinking

Political Islam has failed to put forward a political programme that would constitute a real alternative to existing ideologies. Its concentration on social and ethical issues are evidence of an inability to offer a political programme. religion and politics, but to a turn away from the religion of Islam altogether. As a result, Iran is, at present, the most profoundly secularized society in the Middle East.

Having discussed the relationship between growing personal religiosity-cum-conservatism (particularly in the Arab core of the region and in Turkey) and the region’s authoritarian governments, we might ask: what of Islamist terrorism?

Following the 9/11 attacks, the Bush administration suggested that there existed a close connection between Middle East politics and Western security.

More specifically, it argued that the phenomenon of Islamist terrorism had roots in the lack of democracy in the Middle East. According to this narrative, repression and political exclusion drove Islamist movements to take up terrorist tactics, as they had no alternative to achieve their aims through peaceful political action, and because they were brutalized by torture and imprisonment.

There were, of course, many problems with this view. A careful analysis of the history and development of Islamist movements in the Middle East reveals that the decision to opt for terrorist tactics is

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points over their opponents is corruption – a theme now taken up, par excellence, by the protesters of recent weeks, albeit not under the aegis of Islamism.

Their message has concentrated on this scourge of Middle East politics. The promise that pious men would be more ethical and upright than their nonpious counterparts has wide appeal and credence.

But ensuring moral edification hardly constitutes a political programme. It rests largely on reform of individual behaviour, and is often about one’s own conscience. Having said this, moral edification is not a sufficient guard against corruption. The only thing that works against it is putting in place checks and balances, and structures of transparency and accountability. The Islamic Republic of Iran is proof of this fact: corruption has increased, rather than diminished, in the three-plus decades since the Revolution.

What about the other apparent Islamist success story – the AKP in Turkey? The AKP won an outright majority in the 2002 elections, and an even greater one in 2007. It has presided over a thriving economy, and over an increasingly assertive and wide-ranging foreign policy. However, the AKP reaped the economic successes of an IMF-led programme that was implemented following Turkey’s 2001 financial crisis; that is, before it came to power. The AKP must be given credit for staying within the IMF parameters and for managing the economy well; still, the AKP was not in itself the cause of Turkey’s economic well-being over the last few years. In its second term in office, the AKP has concentrated on loosening restrictions on the veil, and – informally – on other issues of social reform. What it has not done is propose an alternative ideology of government. In fact, the electoral success of the AKP has been contingent on the fact that it accepted the secularist framework of the Turkish state, and indeed moved away from Islam as a political programme. The leader of the AKP, Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan, himself suggested that his aim was not the creation of an Islamic state, because the Koran did not offer guidance on how to run a state – only on how the rulers ought to act. The party moved away from calling itself ‘Islamist’ or even ‘Muslim democrat’ to the more neutral appellation of a ‘conservative democratic party’.

What do the failures of political Islam indicate for the relationship between religion and politics in the Middle East of the 21st century (see The Definition at p. 60)? Political Islam remains popular, and may yet have a role to play in the evolution and future of the current set of political crises in the region.

Nevertheless, the growing realization that political Islam offers no genuine and practical political alternative reinforces a growing trend towards a personal, conservative religiosity that is apolitical. The figure of the conservative, pious man and – even more often – woman, who veils and is generally modestly dressed, prays and otherwise rigorously implements

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not, for the most part, determined by reasons of political exclusion and repression (or, indeed, by socio-economic causes), but is due to instrumental and strategic considerations made by the leadership of particular Islamist movements. (See the Feature piece by Tom Quiggin on terrorism as politics by other means in the Fall 2010 issue of GB.) In policy terms, insofar as it was ever implemented, the US policy of democracy promotion in the Middle East reached its peak by 2005, and went downhill after that point. The Obama administration has not done away with democracy promotion, but has toned down its rhetorical flourishes and suffused it with greater realism – including in its management of the recent uprisings in the region.

With reference to Western interests and policy, the possible connection between a more de-politicized Islam and terrorism is difficult, at this stage, to determine. The trend toward personal conservative religiosity may well add to the pool of candidates for terrorist operations. Such individuals appear to be easy prey for those plotting terrorist attacks, because they are obedient and respectful toward hierarchy and authority. However, the trend toward personal religiosity, insofar as it prevents individuals from joining larger groups and coordinating with others, could also lead to an overall reduction of terrorist activity by changing its very nature. One possible outcome of such a trend would be an increase in instances of ‘lone wolf’ attacks, such as the one that occurred in Stockholm in early December 2010. Such attacks tend to be botched operations, with small numbers of casualties and limited destructive impact.

The most important, albeit uncomfortable, conclusion of the above analysis may be that, for the foreseeable future, there is no unilinear, straightforward relationship between Middle East politics and Western counter-terrorism efforts. We know only that the politics will likely be less religious, the individuals more religious, and that a host of internal and external factors (including the momentous changes in Tunisia and the mass protests in Egypt and other Arab states) will make for a hard-topredict near future for this difficult region.

Have recent developments in Tunisia, Egypt, Yemen and elsewhere signified a shift toward greater political engagement? Possibly so – but two points are to be made here. First, the Middle East is, quite evidently, a bigger geopolitical theatre than these countries alone. It is comprised of very different societies and states, each of which may respond differently to these challenges.

Secondly, although the overthrow of existing regimes may well lead to a re-engagement in political activity, such a future scenario is by no means manifest. Taking part in street protests and venting frustration are not evidence that a people is ready to engage in political processes that demand that a citizenry participates in political activities and civil society in the long-term. At the moment, the jury is out with respect to the prospects of real political reform in the Middle East. But it does appear likely that, insofar as such reform will take place, the Islamists will play second fiddle in it. | GB

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TÊTE À TÊTE

Sur les cultes, le multiculti et la raison d’État GB parle de l’avenir des nations et des sociétés hétérogènes avec le sociologue et historien GÉRARD BOUCHARD

Gérard Bouchard, sociologue et historien, enseigne à l’Université du Québec à

GB: Quelles sont les recommandations de la Commission Bouchard-Taylor (que vous avez pilotée de concert avec le grand philosophe montréalais Charles Taylor) au Québec sur les accommodements raisonnables qui seraient transposables dans d’autres juridictions développées et multiethniques?

néanmoins à des accommodements. Encore une fois, parce que cela tient tout simplement de la courtoisie élémentaire et du bon sens.

Bouchard: Les conceptions que nous avons proposées sont articulées autour de la réalité québécoise et sont d’abord destinées à la réalité québécoise. Mais la plupart de ces recommandations, qui ont trait à la pratique des accommodements raisonnables, peuvent s’appliquer dans la plupart des nations démocratiques, quelles que soient les philosophies particulières qui prévalent dans ces pays (je parle surtout de pays démocratiques parce que dans les pays non démocratiques, on a évidemment affaire à une autre logique). L’idée des accommodements raisonnables relève en définitive du bon sens et d’une courtoisie élémentaire à laquelle sont tenus les membres de la société hôte envers les immigrants qu’ils invitent chez eux. Prenons l’exemple d’une cafétéria publique: il est courant d’offrir des menus différents pour les végétariens; pour quelle raison ne ferait-on pas la même chose pour accommoder des Musulmans ou des Juifs en offrant des menus halal ou kasher? Quelles seraient les bonnes raisons qui justifieraient de ne pas le faire? Cela tient encore une fois à la courtoisie entre des gens de cultures différentes. Bien sûr, cette courtoisie doit être limitée, elle doit être gérée avec discipline, et c’est pourquoi il faut assortir la pratique des accommodements raisonnables d’un certain nombre de critères et de balises.

L’idée essentielle, c’est que les accommodements raisonnables ne doivent pas empiéter sur les droits d’autres personnes, qu’ils ne doivent pas constituer un fardeau (administratif, financier, etc.) excessif pour la vie de l’organisation, de l’entreprise ou d’une institution quelconque. Ce sont des critères qui s’appliquent de façon assez universelle. En Amérique du Nord, la pratique des accommodements a été introduite par les tribunaux et elle fait donc l’objet d’une définition juridique. Mais dans d’autres sociétés, ces pratiques d’accommodement ne sont pas forcément encadrées par le droit formel ou par les tribunaux. La France, par exemple, est assez hostile à l’idée d’incorporer dans son droit ce genre de disposition, mais on constate dans la vie quotidienne des institutions que l’on recourt

Bouchard: Bien sûr. C’est d’ailleurs une règle fondamentale des accommodements raisonnables: la réciprocité. C’est une véritable négociation, ce n’est pas une pratique unilatérale. Tout cela repose sur l’existence d’un élément d’incompatibilité entre deux cultures et la volonté pour deux parties concernées de trouver un équilibre, un compromis; chacun doit faire son bout de chemin.

GB: Est-ce-que le fardeau de la courtoisie est partagé entre minorité et majorité?

Chicoutimi. Depuis quelques années, ses travaux portent principalement sur les imaginaires collectifs, notamment les

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mythes nationaux.

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GB: Quelles sont les balises, voire les «lignes rouges», de cet accommodement, de ces négociations entre majorité et minorité dans le contexte des sociétés démocratiques?

Bouchard: C’est une question centrale qui est à l’origine d’une inquiétude parmi les citoyens. Plusieurs d’entre eux croient que cette négociation est complètement ouverte et qu’elle peut dériver vers des formules inacceptables, contraires aux valeurs fondamentales de la société hôte. Évidemment, il faut s’assurer que les accommodements ne vont pas jusque-là, qu’il y a des limites à respecter. La négociation doit être de bonne foi et bien encadrée.

Par exemple, à l’école, il n’est pas question de porter atteinte à la loi sur l’instruction publique. Dans d’autres domaines, il n’est pas question de changer une loi (à moins qu’après réflexion on s’aperçoive qu’elle est de toute évidence abusive). De même, on ne peut pas aller contre des dispositions des chartes légales ou constitutionnelles. Tout cela pose des limites à l’exercice de la négociation. Il en va de même avec les valeurs fondamentales d’une société. Au Québec, la valeur d’égalité homme-femme est un sujet hypersensible et il est certain qu’une demande d’accommodement qui porte atteinte à cette norme a très peu de chance d’être accordée, et avec raison.

GB: Y a-t-il des exemples, à l’échelle globale, de tentatives d’accommodement raisonnable qui ont échoué?

Bouchard: Il y a des cas de demande d’accommodement qui sont vraiment complexes et très dif-

ficiles à traiter. Parfois, la décision pourrait aller aussi bien d’un côté comme de l’autre.

On devine que ces demandes sont de nature à susciter la controverse et du mécontentement dans la population. Les cas-limites posent toujours problème, quelle que soit la règle considérée. Quand on est à la frontière, c’est très problématique. Pensez à la dignité de la vie humaine, là aussi il y a des cas-limites. Dans le cas d’une personne très âgée qui en est au dernier stade de la maladie d’Alzheimer et qui a perdu toute ses facultés intellectuelles, eston encore en présence d’une personne? Est-ce que les critères ne deviennent pas un peu flous?

Ce sont des cas-limites et il est normal que les consensus soient difficiles à atteindre. En matière d’accommodement, il y a aussi des cas-limites. Cela ne veut pas dire que le principe des accommodements est

Les accommodements

PHOTOGRAPHIE: PAUL CIMON

mauvais, il y a simplement parfois des situations extrêmement complexes. Au Québec, nous avons eu il y a quelques années cette querelle du port du kirpan à l’école; c’est une question sur laquelle les tribunaux eux-mêmes étaient divisés; on comprend que la population se soit montrée perplexe. Une situation semblable, mettant encore en cause le kirpan, vient tout juste de se présenter à Québec alors que des représentants de la religion sikhe se sont vus interdire l’accès à l’Assemblée nationale parce qu’ils refusaient de retirer leur kirpan. Les agents de sécurité ont estimé qu’il s’agissait d’une

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raisonnables ne doivent pas empiéter sur les droits d’autres personnes, qu’ils ne doivent pas constituer un fardeau (administratif, financier) excessif pour la vie de l’organisation, de l’entreprise ou d’une institution quelconque.

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On parle d’interculturalisme dans les nations où la diversité est vécue et pensée à travers le prisme de la dualité; il y a une perception très forte selon laquelle la nation est formée d’une culture majoritaire et de cultures minoritaires.

arme; ils auraient pu tout aussi bien considérer qu’il s’agissait d’un symbole religieux.

vis-à-vis de la laïcité est différente de celle prévalant en France ou dans d’autres pays?

GB: Qu’est-ce que cet «interculturalisme» dont vous parlez dans le rapport Bouchard-Taylor?

Bouchard: Un mot d’abord sur la situation en France. À première vue, si on s’en remet au débat public, la France serait plus laïque que le Québec ou bien d’autres sociétés. Plusieurs pensent ici que le Québec devrait suivre l’exemple de la France, c’està-dire réduire dans l’espace public et interdire dans les institutions de l’État la manifestation de signes religieux. Mais il faut introduire ici des nuances importantes; la situation de la France est beaucoup plus compliquée. Au Québec, par exemple, les écoles privées religieuses sont financées à hauteur de 60 pour cent par le gouvernement, alors qu’en France, c’est autour de 80 pour cent. Tous les édifices religieux en France sont la propriété de l’État, qui est responsable de leur entretien. Autrement dit, c’est l’État qui paie pour la réparation des églises.

Alors, peut-on dire que la France est plus laïque que le Québec? Sous certains rapports, on pourrait affirmer le contraire.

Il faut cependant signaler quelque chose de particulier au Québec, à savoir le rapport difficile que les francophones ont développé vis-à-vis de la religion, vis-à-vis de l’Église catholique, et plus précisément du clergé. C’est un héritage de notre histoire. Il y a ici un sentiment extrêmement fort que l’Église a abusé de son pouvoir, qu’elle a opprimé les fidèles, tout particulièrement les femmes, en les obligeant à avoir plus d’enfants qu’elles ne l’auraient voulu, en les astreignant à une soumission par rapport à l’homme, et ainsi de suite. Le mouvement féministe a beaucoup lutté pour l’émancipation de la femme, pour l’affranchir de ces contraintes. Tout cela a nourri une mémoire douloureuse, un peu agressive même, à l’endroit de la religion catholique et, par extension, à l’endroit des religions ou du religieux.

Ce sentiment négatif, il n’y a pas à s’en surprendre, a créé une disposition défavorable face aux demandes d’accommodement. Je crois qu’il trouve un écho aussi dans l’opposition aux signes religieux dans les institutions de l’État.

Bouchard: Ce qui distingue fondamentalement l’interculturalisme des autres modèles de prise en charge de la diversité ethnoculturelle, c’est qu’au sein d’une société très diversifiée, on doit favoriser les interactions, les rapprochements, les initiatives intercommunautaires, de façon à favoriser des éléments d’une culture commune (valeurs, appartenance, solidarité) et à prévenir la fragmentation.

En général, on parle d’interculturalisme dans les nations où la diversité est vécue et pensée à travers le prisme de la dualité; il y a donc une perception très forte selon laquelle la nation est formée d’une culture majoritaire et de cultures minoritaires.

L’objectif général, le défi de l’interculturalisme, c’est d’articuler ce rapport en s’assurant qu’il ne se transforme pas en ligne de tension et de conflit.

Si on prend l’exemple du Canada anglais, on est dans un univers différent. Le premier postulat du multiculturalisme canadien, c’est qu’il n’y a pas de culture officielle ou de culture majoritaire au Canada. Là, on est dans un univers où la diversité est pensée de façon très différente; la nation devient un ensemble d’individus et de groupes ayant les mêmes droits protégés par la Charte canadienne des droits et libertés. Au Québec, c’est différent. On y observe une conscience vive de la diversité, mais aussi un sentiment très fort qu’il existe une culture majoritaire – la culture francophone. Dans ce cas, la fragmentation et les divisions sont d’autant plus à craindre que cette culture majoritaire, francophone, est elle-même une minorité qui se sent fragile. D’où l’accent mis sur les rapprochements, les interactions et la formation d’un dénominateur symbolique commun, source d’unité, de cohésion.

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GB: Existe-t-il une différence concrète entre la manière dont les accommodements se font ou devraient se faire entre majorité et minorité dans le contexte national ou ethnique, et entre majorité et minorité dans le contexte religieux?

Bouchard: La question ne se pose pas de cette façon au Québec où pratiquement toutes les demandes sont motivées par une question religieuse: la permission de porter le foulard musulman, la permission d’avoir un menu hallal, la permission de modifier l’horaire d’un examen pour pouvoir participer à une fête religieuse, etc. Les seules demandes pour motifs non religieux que je connais traitent du recours à des services d’interprète, à l’hôpital par exemple.

GB: Est ce que la philosophie politique du Québec 40

GB: Est-ce-que le principe de la séparation entre État et Église sera toujours réaliste pour les sociétés complexes de ce nouveau siècle?

Bouchard: Il est très important de s’entendre sur ce que l’on veut dire par cette notion de laïcité.

Le débat public présentement colporte plusieurs définitions. En fait, si on entend par laïcité la séparation du pouvoir de l’Église comme institution de celui de l’État, il est clair que la laïcité doit être maintenue. Les religions ne doivent pas empiéter sur les prérogatives de l’État, lequel relève de la citoyenneté. Ces deux sphères ne doivent pas être confondues. Mais c’est une question différente que

de se demander dans quelle mesure la religion doit être visible dans l’espace public? Pour ma part, je crois que la religion peut se manifester dans les institutions de l’État sans compromettre la séparation des pouvoirs dont je viens de parler (voir l’article Query d’Andrew P.W. Bennett à la page 20). Le fait, par exemple, qu’une femme musulmane fonctionnaire porte le foulard à son travail, à mon avis, ne remet nullement en cause la séparation formelle du pouvoir entre l’Église et l’État. Cette personne peut fait son travail comme n’importe quelle autre, sauf qu’elle affiche une appartenance religieuse dans l’exercice de sa fonction. Il importe de distinguer soigneusement ces deux ordres de choses.

En somme, il faut être très attentif à maintenir la séparation formelle des pouvoirs entre les religions et l’État, mais il faut être flexible quant à l’expression des appartenances religieuses dans la vie publique et dans les institutions de l’État. Cela dit, je pense qu’il y a des cas où l’interdiction de signes religieux dans ces institutions est justifiée, notamment dans les fonctions auxquelles sont attachés des pouvoirs de coercition (Charles Taylor et moi nous sommes expliqués là-dessus dans le Rapport de la Commission que nous avons co-présidée).

GB: Peut-on comprendre la politique moderne sans une certaine conception de Dieu?

Bouchard: Ma réponse est oui. Il y a plusieurs façons de comprendre la politique ou l’univers moderne. Certaines s’inspirent d’une conception de Dieu ou d’une conception religieuse, d’autres se nourrissent de philosophies humanistes, donc athéistes, qui n’ont pas besoin du recours à Dieu, ou à une croyance religieuse. C’est un héritage important de l’évolution de l’Occident depuis deux ou trois siècles. Il faut absolument, dans les sociétés démocratiques comme les nôtres, organiser la vie publique de telle façon que tous les citoyens soient sur un pied d’égalité. L’État doit donc rester neutre par rapport à toutes les conceptions de l’univers ou de la vie, que ces conceptions soient inspirées de la nature ou d’un principe spirituel ou d’un principe religieux (voir l’article Feature de Roberta Jamieson à la page 14). Il doit aussi s’engager à ce que ces conceptions soient protégées, comme le veut la liberté de conscience des citoyens.

Bouchard: Nos leaders politiques ressemblent beaucoup à la société dont ils émanent. Ils évoluent en phase avec cette société et, de ce point de vue, tout le monde me semble avoir fait pas mal de progrès depuis 10 ou 20 ans. La diversité religieuse

GB: Quel est l’avenir de l’idée de «nation» dans ce nouveau siècle?

Bouchard: C’est une immense question. Avec la montée de la mondialisation, nombre d’observateurs ont cru que la nation allait d’abord s’affaiblir et puis éventuellement disparaître. Ce qu’on a découvert avec surprise, c’est que la mondialisation a fourni du carburant qui a relancé la nation en stimulant les identités nationales et les solidarités ethniques.

Les sentiments d’appartenance ont connu une renaissance en même temps que l’émergence de la mondialisation; c’est une forme de réaction contre la menace d’aliénation qui accompagne la mondialisation. Il y a quelque chose d’important à retenir de tout cela, c’est que l’individu a besoin d’un sentiment d’appartenance dans lequel il trouve une certaine familiarité, une certaine solidarité, des repères qui confèrent une sécurité symbolique aussi.

Or c’est surtout la nation qui jusqu’ici a été la source et le cadre de ces références. Plusieurs citoyens s’y sentent plus à l’aise, moins impuissants que dans les vastes horizons ouverts par la mondialisation.

L’essor parallèle du néolibéralisme a empiré les choses, et plusieurs s’inquiètent pour le filet social des sociétés. La nation peut offrir une défense contre cette menace. C’est le seul recours qui reste. C’est pour cette raison, je crois, que l’État-nation va survivre encore un bon bout de temps: comme mur de protection des citoyens et des communautés contre des forces qui semblent leur échapper.

Au Québec, les écoles privées religieuses sont financées à hauteur de 60 pour cent par le gouvernement, alors qu’en France, c’est autour de 80 pour cent. Tous les édifices religieux en France sont la propriété de l’État qui est responsable de leur entretien.

GB: Quel est l’avenir du religieux dans ce futur que vous projetez pour la nation?

Bouchard: C’est imprévisible, mais je ne vois pas de bonne raison de penser que le religieux va décliner de façon continue. Il va sûrement se maintenir dans la vie privée des citoyens. Il va peut-être moins s’exprimer dans la vie publique, mais même cela reste à voir. Malgré quelques siècles de sécularisation, le religieux demeure une dimension fondamentale de la condition humaine (c’est un athée qui vous le dit). | GB

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GB: Est-ce-que les leaders politiques actuels, aussi bien internationaux que canadiens, sont suffisamment instruits par rapport à la religion?

existait certes auparavant, mais sous des formes plus simples. Au Québec, comme dans l’ensemble du Canada, il y avait diverses religions chrétiennes qui faisaient plutôt bon ménage (si l’on excepte les nombreux épisodes d’antisémitisme). Ce qui a compliqué la situation, c’est la présence croissante de nouvelles religions qui sont devenues plus visibles et qui s’affirment dans notre société, en particulier la religion sikhe et la religion musulmane. Le contexte est toutefois plus favorable qu’en Europe dans la mesure où les expressions de fondamentalisme ou d’intégrisme sont beaucoup moins présentes chez nous.

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The Afghan theatre may be the incubator for the bottom-up creation of this new century’s newest states

BY BEN ROWSWELL

GRASSROOTS

STATEBUILDING LESSONS FROM KANDAHAR Ben Rowswell was Director of the Kandahar Provincial Reconstruction

ILLUSTRATION: DAN PAGE

temporary results, and can often exacerbate the problem by generating new recruits.

Outright annexation of lawless territories by other states has quite rightly been eliminated from the list of morally acceptable options.

And Afghanistan in the 1990s demonstrated what happens when the international community gives into the temptation to simply let a state collapse.

Rather than hope for statebuilding to go away, we should think of it as a permanent feature of international politics – at least one that will be with us as long as we face the threat of fragile states. Some states may contribute more than others, but ultimately all who depend on a stable world order will depend on continued efforts to shore up and rebuild these states.

If statebuilding will play a prominent role in international security efforts for the foreseeable future, the US and its allies should prepare for it. As it turns out, NATO has introduced a promising new approach to statebuilding in the same province that forced it back up to the top of the international security agenda – Kandahar. Lessons learned in that most unstable of Afghan provinces, combined with vast military and civilian resources, have led to a model that offers more general, important lessons for future efforts to manage fragile states. The new model might be called ‘grassroots statebuilding.’

Team until July 2010. He is currently a Visiting Scholar at the Center on Democracy, Development and the Rule of Law at Stanford University.

The opinions expressed in this article are his alone, and do not reflect the views of the Canadian government.

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en years ago, a new US President took office promising to put an end to American involvement in statebuilding. His principal foreign policy adviser, Condoleezza Rice, was famously quoted during the 2000 election campaign as dismissing the painstaking work of strengthening weak governments abroad, saying: “We don’t need to have the 82nd Airborne escorting kids to kindergarten.”

The Bush administration’s early disdain for statebuilding was understandable, for it is a lengthy and costly endeavour with a mixed record of success. Few countries would engage in statebuilding if they could avoid it.

Unfortunately, the ensuing decade demonstrated that it cannot be avoided. Today, the same army division cited by Rice is deployed, as part of the largest statebuilding enterprise of our times, in the Afghan province of Kandahar. The attacks of 9/11, planned in that same province, demonstrated the enduring threat that fragile states pose to international peace and security. As long as that threat endures, the US and its allies will be in the statebuilding business.

Experience has proved that there are no viable alternatives to the slow and messy process of building states where they have collapsed. Narrow counter-terrorism missions to kill violent extremists bring no more than

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C

anada assumed responsibility for Kandahar province in 2005 as part of the effort to extend NATO’s reach throughout Afghanistan. Canada’s military quickly found itself engaged in the toughest combat that it had faced in two generations.

It was not simply the strength of the Taliban resurgence that caught the Canadians by surprise, but also the glacial pace at which institution-building at the national level trickled down to the population in Afghanistan’s second largest city and its environs.

Some ministries succeeded more than others, but, in general, the Afghan people saw far too little actual change in their daily lives. If statebuilding is about connecting the government to the population, then

Ordinary Kandaharis were the focus of grassroots statebuilding efforts designed to deliver tangible results in the lives of the

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local population.

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the heavy focus on strengthening Afghan institutions was not bearing fruit.

Over the course of 2008 and 2009, Canada instigated two changes that shifted the focus to the population in Kandahar. The first was to concentrate its statebuilding efforts at the provincial level – dedicating 50 percent of its development assistance to Kandahar, and deploying an unprecedented number of civilian employees into the conflict-ridden province. The ambitions of the mission were narrowed to six priorities – all designed to equip the government to provide for its citizens in the areas of security, basic services and humanitarian assistance. The programmes to implement these priorities were designed in a way that would deliver tangible results in the lives of Afghans.

The UN and other donors were worried that this would undermine efforts to create a strong central government, but if the population saw little of that government outside of Kabul, what good would it do?

The second change was to restructure the military mission around a population-centric approach

to counterinsurgency. To apply the central tenet of modern counterinsurgency – protecting the population – NATO troops in Kandahar needed to live with that population on a sustained basis. They moved out of large, protected bases and established a presence at the level of individual communities.

Taken together, these changes greatly expanded the contact that all international representatives could have with the people of Kandahar. As political officers and aid workers joined civil affairs soldiers in these communities, engaging with a wide range of Kandaharis on a daily basis, they began to develop a more holistic understanding of how the collective effort of the panoply of development, reconstruction, stabilization, governance and peace-building programmes played out in the life of individual Afghans.

These changes brought a new focus to the plethora of strategic plans designed in Kabul and NATO capitals by bringing them back to the intended beneficiary – the Afghan citizen. While some national-level programmes clearly did have an impact, far too many remained well-intentioned plans the implementation of which had been held up by a thousand different unanticipated challenges.

Working day in and day out with Afghans allowed NATO civilians to bring government authorities right into these communities, and to design solutions to the problems that they found.

However, it took the tremendous resources that the US began to invest in southern Afghanistan in 2009 to translate these changes of direction into a new approach to statebuilding. President Obama’s decision to commit an additional 50,000 troops and billions of dollars in development assistance to Afghanistan targeted Kandahar and neighbouring Helmand, in particular. Over the course of 2009 and early 2010, some 10,000 additional US troops were deployed to Kandahar – more than tripling the Canadian contingent. USAID launched hundreds of millions of dollars in new assistance programmes, and dozens of US government civilians joined the scores of Canadian civilians already on the ground.

This was to be much more than a quantitative change in the effort. With new US resources, NATO backed a counterinsurgency strategy that went far beyond narrow counter-terrorist tactics to undermine the Taliban. The goal was to restore the legitimacy of the Afghan government in the eyes of the population. In a remarkable turn, the full weight of NATO’s involvement in Afghanistan was devoted to the objective of improving governance. US Generals McCrystal and Petraeus fundamentally reorganized the mission to achieve this goal.

The new strategy has been operationalized in Kandahar in a plan called Hamkari – Pashto and Dari for ‘Cooperation.’ It is led by Kandahar Governor Tooryalai Wesa, in full partnership with NATO

forces and the Canadian/US Provincial Reconstruction Team serving as the secretariat for Governor Wesa’s leadership.

Hamkari has been called a ‘governance-led operation,’ because it subordinates all military and civilian efforts of NATO countries in Kandahar to the overall goal of connecting the government to the population. What makes Hamkari unique is that it structures the international effort from the bottom up. The capacity of institutions being built from the top down in Kabul means little if they do not affect the lives of individual Afghans. So, Hamkari established a cycle of engagement between Kandaharis and their government representatives to forge a connection that had not yet materialized.

The cycle begins and ends with the population.

A continual process, it consists of three phases:

1. Listen to the population Hamkari uses a grievance-based methodology. This means that the starting point for the process is not the needs of the government, but rather the needs of individual Afghans at the level of their communities. The bigger NATO footprint allows for a much broader and systematic engagement with the population. US and Canadian soldiers and civilians now live and work throughout the key populated areas of Kandahar, seeking to understand how Afghans view the situation confronting them, the principal problems, and what they believe the solutions to be. They work in support of Afghan government representatives, bringing them to these districts to meet with the population and to listen to their needs.

2. Help the government respond Identifying the population’s needs will serve no purpose if the international community rushes in to address them.

The key is to equip the government to respond, and to ensure that it gets the associated credit to the extent possible. The profusion of initiatives to improve security, open health clinics, rebuild schools and create jobs is compiled into district-level plans that allow government officials to set priorities and coordinate delivery.

3. Let the population judge the results

The ideas behind a grassroots approach to statebuilding are not novel. Counterinsurgency doctrine holds that the population must be the ‘centre of gravity’ of the mission. And aid professionals have long

T

he novel element of grassroots statebuilding is the manner in which these ideas are implemented. Hamkari is implemented at the level of government closest to the population – at the district level. The six districts with the largest population each have a District Stabilization Team (DST) composed of civilian personnel attached to the NATO company responsible for military operations. The team helps the principal government representative – the District Leader – to expand his efforts to listen to the population. The District Leader’s own networks are complemented by reaching out to marginalized or even hostile elements of the population. Councils of community and tribal leaders are made as representative as possible to provide a balanced view of the people’s grievances.

A rigorous planning process then matches the grievances identified with any available government programmes that can be drawn down to the district level. Often, the principal obstacle is the lack of ministry representatives to deliver programmes – either because the positions are vacant or because incumbents are reluctant to leave the safety of Kandahar City. The DST identifies where existing programmes can be applied, and helps the District Leader reach up to higher levels of government to respond to the grievances brought forward.

With hundreds of millions of dollars’ worth of programmes underway in Kandahar, the government does have the means to deliver on some of its commitments. But it must do more than deliver: it must also demonstrate to the population that it is delivering. A strategic communications campaign helps the government to publicize progress, and gives profile to the Governor and other leaders. This involves building up independent media that can be objective and credible conduits to the population, then systematically putting up the Governor, the Mayor of Kandahar City and the District Leaders before the microphones to explain what they are doing to address the needs of their constituents.

Finally, the population gets an opportunity to judge the performance of the government. They do so through regular shuras, or councils composed of key community representatives. The shuras of key districts engage regularly with the Governor to provide the population’s views on how the campaign

Rather than hope for statebuilding to go away, we should think of it as a permanent feature of international politics – at least one that will be with us as long as we face the threat of fragile states.

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Not all needs can be met, and not all plans can be implemented successfully. If they are to buy into this process, Afghans must be given the opportunity to voice their opinions on how well the government is doing. If it is not performing to their standard, then they must be able to hold it to account. Those same government leaders who listen to their grievances and coordinate response must face the music.

recognized that development occurs more quickly and more sustainably when programmes are ‘owned’ at the local level. The most successful development programme in Afghanistan – the National Solidarity Program – incorporates this into its design of community councils, which determine their own needs and draw down funds to address them.

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is proceeding, and to give feedback to improve the government’s performance. The Governor travels systematically to the principal districts, ensuring that he can engage with communities in each an average of once per two months.

In some sense, the ongoing conversation is more important than the actual content in connecting a government to its citizens. To citizens of a country that has not had a functioning state for more than a generation, the act of speaking out and having those in power respond is an important first step to establishing confidence.

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To citizens of a country that has not had a functioning state for more than a generation, the act of speaking out and having those in power respond is an important first step to establishing confidence.

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andahar is a deeply troubled province at the heart of the insurgency. It remains beset by violence, plagued by issues of corruption and by the pervasive influence of powerbrokers. The uncertainty over the longevity of NATO’s presence also raises legitimate questions about the long-term outcome of progress to date.

But there does appear to be progress – significant news in itself after years of misery in Kandahar. The goal set by Governor Wesa was to make the government of Afghanistan more present, representative and responsive in Kandahar. That modest objective is likely to be met, as the full range of government programmes supported by NATO comes online.

Quick-impact projects have brought thousands of temporary jobs, and development projects like the rehabilitation of the Dahla Dam irrigation system are leading to longer-term employment opportunities.

The most notorious jail in the country at Sarpoza has become one of its best run. The press is free from government interference – giving Kandaharis credible sources of information on events in their province. That press is even running positive stories about the performance of the Afghan National Police for the first time in years.

Is the government better connected to the population after all this effort? Will this translate into reduced violence and a respite for the war-weary Kandaharis? The jury is still out. Still, Kandahar has already produced some lessons for statebuilding efforts elsewhere.

One lesson that leaps out is that the population must be at the very centre of the statebuilding effort.

Over the years, the international community has learned that success does not lie with the adoption of liberal democratic ideology itself (see the Feature article by Katerina Dalacoura at p. 32), or by backing the right leader. Institutions matter. But, ultimately, institutions matter because of what they deliver for the people. In other words, institutions are means, not ends. Statebuilding efforts must look beyond government institutions to the actual impact that

they are having on the population.

This focus on the population also addresses one of the central hurdles to effective statebuilding: the deep cultural differences between a country like Afghanistan and the West. Western governments may have views about which institutions – from large, centralized ministries to an all-powerful presidency – would best address Afghan needs. Those institutions may serve the interests of government officials, but if the population sees them as a foreign imposition, then those institutions will not enjoy the legitimacy that they need to be effective. By continually listening to the population and addressing their concerns, statebuilding can create institutions that are better suited to the local culture.

The first task of statebuilders must therefore be to engage the people of the country recovering from conflict. For local communities to buy into the new political order – exemplified by Afghanistan’s post-Taliban government – they must believe that government is not only capable of listening, but also willing to listen, to them; not at the level of abstraction imagined from the national level – where millions of citizens’ individual needs are aggregated – but rather at the level of individual communities with their varied and particular concerns. By engaging Kandaharis in their communities, international representatives on the ground developed a better understanding of Afghan needs and aspirations.

A second lesson is that the best level at which to coordinate government and international efforts may not be in capital cities, where politicians, senior officials, generals and ambassadors wrestle with the challenges of building national institutions. Indeed, if the focus is on the population, then perhaps programmes are better coordinated at the level at which they impact communities. Bringing the range of programmes together at the district level, where their combined impact on individual Afghans can be observed, increases the chances that programmes have consequences in reality – and not just in wellintentioned plans.

A final lesson must be that if the mission is to focus on the population, then international personnel must live as close to the population as possible. As US Secretary of State Clinton recognized, governments will need to deploy large numbers of civilians into conflict environments if the US and its allies are to do a better job of statebuilding. This must include all of the training and language skills that civilians need to do the job effectively.

The international community will continue to be drawn into the messy process of building states for as long as it takes to invent a more practical alternative. As statebuilding is a fundamentally political exercise, it is subject to the same fundamental rule: that all politics is local. The most durable solutions are those that address needs from the bottom up. | GB

IN THE CABINET ROOM

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ILLUSTRATION: DUSAN PETRICIC

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Il avait, au premier chef, le talent de placer ses analyses et ses décisions dans le canevas plus vaste de l’histoire.

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ILLUSTRATION: PHILIP BURKE

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Même en écartant le gaullisme, le général a toujours des leçons à offrir aux «géopoliticiens» de ce nouveau siècle PAR AMINE JAOUI

« L’incertitude marque notre époque ».

’était en 1932. Charles de Gaulle débutait ainsi Le Fil de l’Epée, celui de ses livres que l’on devrait le plus s’empresser de relire aujourd’hui.

L’essentiel de la pensée politique de Charles de Gaulle, notamment son approche de la chose publique et des équilibres du monde, se cristallisa dans le tumulte des années 1930. Ensuite, après la phase héroïque de la guerre et l’épopée de la France Libre, commença son action purement politique. Dans les années 1940, 1950 et 1960, il dut affronter un monde en mutation accélérée. C’était l’époque de la guerre froide, de la course à l’armement nucléaire, et l’Europe se reconstruisait dans la nostalgie d’une suprématie perdue. Les empires coloniaux se délitaient. Les nations nouvellement indépendantes essayaient de se construire et devaient souvent payer le prix de luttes longues et violentes qui avaient mené à leur liberté et avaient parfois disloqué leurs sociétés.

La tâche principale du général de Gaulle en 1945, ou en 1960, c’était d’abord d’essayer de diriger une société française brisée par la défaite de 1940, cherchant sa nouvelle place dans le monde, gérant avec difficulté la perte de ses colonies et finalement aux prises avec les profonds changements sociaux qui culminèrent en mai 1968. Il fallait créer et expliquer un avenir à partir de l’incertitude.

Quatre-vingts ans plus tard, l’incertitude marque à nouveau notre époque.

Au-delà de la crise économique actuelle, du déplacement de la production de richesse vers l’Asie et des insurrections révolutionnaires au Moyen-Orient, les dislocations sont encore plus profondes. La technologie n’est désormais plus le privilège de quelques nations puissantes d’Europe et d’Amérique: savoir et technique s’étendent au reste du globe, favorisant de plus en plus les peuples qui pourront combiner taille et technologie. Des décennies de migrations mettent à mal les identités et créent des tensions au sein même de nations qui se sentent en déclin. Le système international (entre autres, ONU, FMI, OMC) peine non seulement à apporter des réponses, mais souvent même à enclencher le dialogue sur les sujets qui comptent.

Et prises dans ces angoisses, il y a des populations désemparées, car elles sentent que les solutions sont transnationales et rarement locales et que les réponses (et tactiques) des professionnels de la politique ne font que prolonger l’épreuve.

Chez les puissances qui émergent, si l’avenir est prometteur, il n’est pas encore assez clair: la confiance en soi est certes de retour en Chine, en Inde ou au Brésil.

CHARLES DE GAULLE ET L’ESPRIT DE NOTRE TEMPS Amine Jaoui est conseiller en stratégie économique et politique auprès d’un gouvernement du Moyen-Orient.

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Photo Š V. Tony Hauser

Mais ces pays n’ont pas encore trouvé les constructions sociales et institutionnelles de la maturité, ni leur position dans le jeu international.

Le résultat est la multiplication de chocs, à la fois nationaux et internationaux, dans un monde anxieux, désespérément à la recherche de repères, et de leadership.

Incertitude des puissants d’hier, celle des puissants de demain, et puis celle de ceux qui, entre les deux, voient le monde changer et aimeraient savoir à quels puissants et à quels modèles rattacher leur intérêts et leur avenir: les choses changent trop vite pour se passer de leaders à la mesure des dangers. Des leaders donc, voilà le besoin, plutôt que des idéologies.

Leaders nationaux, locaux, associatifs, etc. Bref le réseau complexe de femmes et d’hommes de bonne volonté qui, alors même que les idées nouvelles émergent avec peine, peut aider à guider le navire.

D’où la tentation du retour – intellectuel – au général de Gaulle. Il peut sembler insolite de revisiter en ce début de 21e siècle celui que François Mitterrand et d’autres critiques voyaient comme un homme du 19e siècle. Mais méfions-nous des apparences.

Et essayons cet exercice intellectuel: détachons de Gaulle du gaullisme, son proto-héritage intellectuel et politique franco-français avec son cortège de récupérations électorales. Voyons plutôt en lui ce qui pourrait le plus intéresser notre époque, bien au-delà du cas français: une approche de l’action publique, une méthode plus qu’une idéologie, une forme de discours plus qu’un discours. Voyons en lui le praticien. Sans en faire de l’exercice un recensement naïf de leçons.

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PHOTOGRAPHIE: WIKIMEDIA COMMONS

1942

Dans le débat qui ne cesse de faire rage jusqu’à ce jour – faut-il commencer par le développement de l’économie ou bien par celui d’institutions démocratiques efficaces – de Gaulle aurait choisi son camp.

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ransparait alors, dans le déroulé de son action, de ses discours et de ses écrits, un homme public puissant de pragmatisme qui réussit, à plusieurs reprises, de Londres à l’Algérie, à domestiquer des situations désespérées.

Un homme dont l’action fut toujours conduite par une «raison droite et ferme», pour reprendre les mots du philosophe Jacques Maritain sur de Gaulle. Raison droite et ferme qui lui permit de remettre la France dans le concert des vainqueurs, en 1945, malgré les réalités de la défaite.

Ce tour de force magistral, à lui seul, justifierait sa place au panthéon des politiques qui ont réussi l’impossible. Un monde en proie aux dislocations géopolitiques et économiques gagnerait donc à regarder du côté de chez de Gaulle.

Il est fascinant d’essayer de déterminer, à la lumière de son action et sans anachronisme, certains des leviers qu’aurait utilisés de Gaulle pour appréhender les remous de notre époque. Quatre, notamment, s’imposent à l’esprit.

D’abord la connaissance et le respect de l’Histoire.

De Gaulle était profondément historien. Fils de professeur d’histoire, il enseigna lui-même l’histoire à l’école militaire de Saint-Cyr et fut aussi l’auteur de livres d’histoire. La France et son Armée, en 1938, est un livre d’histoire militaire et politique de très haute tenue, oeuvre d’un historien confiant en sa plume et embrassant d’un souffle des siècles d’histoire de France. Les Mémoires d’Espoir, rédigé 32 ans plus tard, débute d’ailleurs par un développement historique.

Ses fameuses conférences de presse au palais de l’Elysée étaient souvent parsemées de panoramas historiques.

De Gaulle avait, au premier chef, le talent de placer ses analyses et ses décisions dans le canevas plus vaste de l’histoire. Et cela ne fut pas toujours compris.

On lui reprocha souvent, par exemple, de parler de Russie soviétique, plutôt que d’URSS. Certains, comme Jean-François Revel, y virent une incapacité à saisir le présent. Quand en réalité, il s’agissait du prisme habituel qui permettait à de Gaulle de distiller les éléments premiers de l’histoire et de la géopolitique pour mieux poser son analyse. Pour lui, il y avait d’abord l’histoire millénaire du peuple russe, et puis l’addition contingente de l’idéologie communiste.

L’un était là pour toujours, l’autre pouvait un jour disparaître. L’histoire longue dominait, dans son esprit, les péripéties, quand bien même la péripétie serait l’URSS. Ce n’était pas aveuglement, mais recul.

C’est grâce à ce recul que parfois de Gaulle a semblé prophétiser des événements lointains, telle la réunification allemande (si peu évidente quand il en parlait dans les années 1960). Il refusait la dictature de l’immédiat en rappelant la permanence d’un peuple allemand uni par l’histoire et la culture.

C’est par ce recul historique qu’il justifia également son refus de l’adhésion du Royaume-Uni au Marché Commun européen en 1963 (à tort ou à raison), ou qu’il comprit la nécessité de reconnaître la Chine communiste en 1964, bien avant les États-Unis de Nixon. Et il parlait, déjà, de l’Europe «de l’Atlantique à l’Oural», dont nous nous rapprochons aujourd’hui.

Ce retour aux éléments premiers de l’histoire, c’est un peu son bon sens à lui, «une espèce de bon sens supérieur», écrivait Claude Guy, son aide de camp, «extraordinairement simple dans son expression, énorme dans son pouvoir d’affirmation, absolu et pour ainsi dire choquant, aussi intolérable aux narines du premier venu qu’un concentré de parfumerie».

Alors, qu’en est-il de ce bon sens historique en 2011? Regardons simplement l’Irak, l’Afghanistan et le Pakistan: une meilleure analyse historique n’auraitelle pas permis d’éviter des catastrophes? Peut-on comprendre l’Iran et ses ambitions sans connaître son histoire, bien avant la révolution islamique de 1979, en remontant à Mossadegh, à la révolution constitutionnelle de 1906. Et il faudrait d’ailleurs remonter plus loin. L’histoire du 19e siècle nous apprendrait beaucoup sur les motivations des dirigeants chinois

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1965

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De Gaulle fut un maître inégalé de la communication. Sa force était d’aller au coeur des arguments sans simplifier le discours.

Il savait prendre son public pour des adultes.

Il expliquait.

Il était logique.

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d’aujourd’hui, par exemple. Le chaos géopolitique d’aujourd’hui ne pourra pas être intellectuellement dominé sans la rigueur de l’analyse historique. Et elle ne semble pas en abondance autour de nous. Cela semble académique? Une préoccupation pour centres de recherche et revues de réflexion? Et si c’était, au contraire, la voie la plus pragmatique. Non pas celle de l’historien professionnel, mais du décideur, face aux événements, et au besoin de références.

Là où la pratique de Charles de Gaulle devient encore plus intéressante, c’est lorsqu’elle pivote subitement: connaître l’histoire, certes; mais aussi savoir abandonner le passé. Le paradoxe n’est qu’en surface.

De Gaulle fut un homme de rupture qui ne souffrait pas le statu quo. Rien ne l’exprime en termes plus typiquement gaulliens – et caustiques – que cette déclaration de 1960: «Il est tout à fait naturel que l’on ressente la nostalgie de ce qui était l’Empire, tout comme on peut regretter la douceur des lampes à huile, la splendeur de la marine à voile, le charme du temps des équipages. Mais quoi? Il n’y a pas de politique qui vaille en dehors des réalités».

Et les réalités bien comprises dictent souvent des changements brutaux. De Gaulle géra la fin de la présence française en Algérie, menant là une politique contraire à son milieu et à son éducation.

Il réconcilia la France et l’Allemagne. Il décolonisa l’Afrique. Le vieil homme des années 1960, dont certains ne voulaient retenir que la rhétorique supposée grandiloquente, était en fait d’une extraordinaire flexibilité d’esprit. Si son cœur aurait voulu garder l’Algérie dans le giron de la France, il avait compris que c’était démographiquement, économiquement et historiquement une absurdité. Et qu’il fallait donc abandonner les illusions de «l’Algérie de papa», comme il disait.

Dans le contexte international d’aujourd’hui, où est la force intellectuelle et de volonté qui affirmera que le système d’hier ne fonctionne plus? Qu’un conseil de sécurité de l’ONU bâti sur les vestiges de 1945 ne remplira bientôt plus sa fonction. Que le FMI et la Banque mondiale devront un jour refléter les équilibres économiques du 21e siècle. Qu’il faudra repenser la résolution des conflits, les accords de sécurité collective, l’aide au développement, la régulation des migrations internationales, le rapport des religions aux institutions démocratiques (voir la section Definition à la page 60). Nous entrons, à toute vitesse, dans un temps de ruptures. Les plaques bougent, et les systèmes changent souvent avec un temps de retard. Mais il faudra toute la force de leaders politiques, économiques et de pensée qui sauront embrasser les changements et expliquer aux peuples qu’il ne faut pas avoir peur (et surtout pas des autres), mais reconstruire un avenir. Ce que de Gaulle su faire en 1944 à la libération du territoire français puis après 1958 en relançant les investisse-

ments dans l’éducation et la recherche, ou en utilisant l’Europe pour moderniser l’agriculture française.

Mais le changement, chez de Gaulle, passait par le primat des institutions. L’un de ses combats constants fut de réformer les institutions pour assurer la stabilité, condition de la mise en oeuvre de toute politique. Dès la fin de la Deuxième guerre mondiale, puis lors du Discours de Bayeux en 1946 proposant une architecture constitutionnelle nouvelle, puis lors de son retour au pouvoir en 1958, ce fut les institutions d’abord.

Le 4 septembre 1958, il présentait son projet de constitution aux électeurs, place de la République à Paris: «Ce qui, pour les pouvoirs publics, est désormais primordial», dit-il, «c’est leur efficacité et leur continuité. Nous vivons en un temps où des forces gigantesques sont en train de transformer le monde. Sous peine de devenir un peuple dédaigné et périmé, il nous faut, dans les domaines scientifique, économique et social, évoluer rapidement. […] Il y a là des faits qui dominent notre existence nationale et doivent, par conséquent, commander nos institutions».

Définir les institutions qu’il faut, c’est la condition de l’évolution, de la reconstruction et du développement, et non pas les dividendes du succès économique d’une nation…

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ans le débat qui ne cesse de faire rage jusqu’à ce jour – faut-il commencer par le développement de l’économie ou bien par celui d’institutions démocratiques efficaces – de Gaulle aurait facilement choisi son camp.

Son héritage le plus durable, c’est la Constitution de 1958 qui donne à la France une solidité institutionnelle qu’elle n’avait jamais connue. C’est la Constitution de la Cinquième République qui permit à l’action publique de se déployer dans les années 1960 et 1970 pour rebâtir et moderniser l’économie française.

Alors, en 2011, quand tant de nations essayent d’émerger de décennies de mal-développement, il est utile de rappeler que ce débat économie-institutions n’est pas nouveau, que la réponse a été suggérée par l’expérience et que peu de leaders au 20e siècle furent aussi obstinés que de Gaulle dans la certitude que des institutions claires, flexibles, garantissant les libertés individuelles autant que l’efficacité de l’État, sont la clef de voûte de toute réforme. Quand il s’agissait des institutions, de Gaulle était encore moins enclin à l’idéologie que sur d’autres sujets.

Seule comptait la réalité changeante, les «choses étant ce qu’elles sont », pour reprendre une de ses expressions favorites.

C’est par les institutions que l’on peut atteindre PHOTOGRAPHIE: WIKIMEDIA COMMONS

À PARAÎTRE EN SEPTEMBRE CHAIRE RAOUL-DANDURAND L’Observatoire sur le Moyen-Orient et l’Afrique du Nord de la Chaire Raoul-Dandurand en études stratégiques présente :

G.I contre Jihad Le match nul

PIERRE-ALAIN CLÉMENT La confrontation entre George W. Bush et Oussama ben Laden s’est terminée sur un prévisible match nul. L’auteur expose les raisons de cet échec mutuel en démontrant que les stratégies des deux combattants ne pouvaient qu’exacerber les tensions.

■

Éditions des Presses de l’Université du Québec, collection Enjeux contemporains www.puq.ca

Pour des informations sur nos publications :

chaire.strat@uqam.ca • Tél: 514-987-6781

www.dandurand.uqam.ca

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la stabilité dans un système mondial en mutation.

Institutions nationales ou internationales, c’est sur cela que devrait se concentrer l’action, y compris en ces temps de crise économique. Réformer la gouvernance avant le contingent. S’il y une leçon à retenir de Charles de Gaulle, c’est bien celle-là.

Mais encore faut-il savoir communiquer le changement. De Gaulle fut un maître inégalé de la communication. Sa force était d’aller au coeur des arguments sans simplifier le discours. Il savait prendre son public pour des adultes. Il expliquait. Il était logique. Relisez l’appel du 18 juin. Aucune incantation. Aucune fioriture.

Une logique simple, implacable: la guerre sera gagnée car elle sera mondiale et les ressources de l’Amérique aideront à emporter la victoire. Il faut donc résister.

Comme l’écrit Régis Debray, les discours prononcés par de Gaulle durant la guerre «ne sont pas des vaticinations, des envolées sur l’avenir de la France et de la liberté. Ce sont à la fois des relevés de position et des ordres de mission». D’où leur portée. Certains des premiers ralliés à la France Libre, ce «coup de bluff qui a marché», disait de Gaulle, ont plus tard avoué avoir été convaincus non par le souffle rhétorique du général, mais par la force de sa logique. À notre époque de slogans calibrés au millimètre par les consultants politiques, il serait sage de repenser à cet usage droit et ferme des mots. Expliquer, mais respecter. Développer, mais dans la brièveté (les discours du général de Gaulle n’étaient jamais longs).

Précision et concision.

De Gaulle, malgré son style qui sentait parfois sa formation latine, n’était pas un orateur antique.

C’était un communicant moderne, qui sut apprivoiser la télévision, au prix de quelques efforts, qui s’aida des conseils de comédiens. Mais il sut ne pas devenir un esclave de la technique et garder la maîtrise de son verbe.

L’histoire récente a rappelé l’efficacité d’une communication politique nourrie de substance. Quand Barack Obama est à son meilleur, il réussit par le retour du narratif, et non par les slogans. Le discours redevient alors une arme du politique. Développer des arguments, une pensée, une histoire, a potentiellement plus de puissance que les sound bites des chaines câblées. Et les populations ont la patience d’écouter un discours qui leur explique une réalité confuse. Alors relisez de Gaulle, ces discours lancés dans le feu de l’action, lors de la tentative de putsch de 1961, par exemple, quand il parla du quarteron de généraux en retraite qui tentait un pronunciamento militaire. Ou les nombreux discours qui détaillaient l’évolution de sa politique sur l’autodétermination de l’Algérie. Le vieux général a encore des choses à dire.

Il faut certes savoir éviter le ridicule de vouloir appliquer les leçons des hommes que l’on dit grands.

Mais s’il est présomptueux de vouloir écrire comme Tolstoï, il serait dommage de ne pas l’avoir lu. Il en est de même de la conduite des affaires de ce 21e siècle. | GB

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NEZ À NEZ Wikileaks and the Need-to-Know Basis Secrecy is a necessary condition for good governance PROPOSITION:

CRAIG SCOTT vs DANIEL P. FATA

Craig Scott (against): Granted, for some purposes,

Craig Scott is Professor of Law, Osgoode Hall Law School, and Director of the Nathanson Centre on Transnational Human Rights, Crime and Security at York University in Toronto.

Daniel P. Fata is Vice-President at the Cohen Group in Washington, DC. He served as the US Deputy Assistant Secretary of Defence for Europe and NATO Policy from

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2005 to 2008.

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and for a certain period of time in relation to each purpose, some government institutions are more likely to govern well if there is confidentiality of certain types of information. However, we could just as well consider an alternative proposition, for which I would presumably have been asked to be on the ‘Yes’ side, and you on the ‘No’ side: Transparency is a necessary condition for good governance. The point is that, for good governance, both secrecy and transparency are necessary and, as such, any one of the above propositions is false if it can be read as if it excludes the necessity of the other. It seems to me, therefore, that consideration of the relationship between secrecy and governance requires nuance and equilibrium.

We ought to consider the relative importance of each value (secrecy or transparency) and of its opposite, and the corresponding relative priority accorded to one value over the other when making policy or legal rules about who can access what information when. The test of whether secrecy is a necessary condition has to be contextualized – according to the kind of institution, the kind of issue area at play, the kind of information in question, and indeed the nature and extent of the harms caused or feared were the information to be released.

Everything boils down to the truth of a different general claim: secrecy is not generally necessary, but rather necessary only when that necessity can be demonstrated in a specific governing context.

In the demonstration exercise just mentioned, transparency has the upper hand. In other words, for a variety of reasons, transparency should be the baseline presumption of modern democratic governance, and the burden should lie with those who would substitute secrecy as the governing norm.

We should probably either use the term ‘good governance’ (in the debating proposition) in its broadest possible sense to mean ‘governing well’ or, alternatively, stipulate that the accretion of principles (rule of law and eradication of corruption, among others) associated with ‘good governance’

discourse can be extended to the realm of international or global affairs.

In respect of the Wikileaks saga that, along with the recent upheaval in the Arab Middle East, was surely a key driver of our debating proposition, three sets of questions are of great interest – and in each case, it seems that Wikileaks-generated answers will be a good thing – both in moral terms and also for international governance (at least in the mediumterm): What actors were involved in the June 2009 coup d’état in Honduras, and what was each actor’s precise role? What were the lines of command from, and extent of knowledge of, senior military and government officials in Sri Lanka in respect of the methods of warfare used – despite civilian presence – on the battlefield in the last months of the war between the Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam (LTTE) and the Sri Lankan state in 2009? Finally, what were, and remain, the known conditions within Afghanistan detention and interrogation facilities to which the Canadian government has been transferring prisoners taken in theatre since 2006, and is there any evidence from US sources that Canada was knowingly sending prisoners to face a substantial risk of torture – partly in order to be able to benefit from intelligence extracted from these prisoners

by Afghanistan authorities? For every one of these three questions, the getting-at-the-truth-of-thematter is being actively undermined by mixtures of obfuscation, legalistic manoeuvring, outright lying and general dissembling by the governments in question. This is a bad thing for governance, as secrecy policy, law and practice, in each of these cases, together facilitate a lack of accountability.

Daniel P. Fata (for): As a former US executive branch policy-maker, I am familiar with, and in many cases relied on, ‘secrecy’ – ‘protection of classified information,’ as it were – in order to understand and debate relevant issues, and ultimately to make policy recommendations to my superiors on issues of national security. The functioning of government oftentimes requires ‘secrecy’ and reduced or limited transparency in order to allow for the proper development of policy options and the implementation of policy decisions. Many governments adhere to this same essential premise – at almost all levels. (There may indeed be a few models of local or state-level government that posit complete transparency.)

The question is not whether the public has a need to know, but rather whether the public has a need to know right now? The world is evidently filled with data that is easily accessible via the Internet. Much

For a variety of reasons, transparency should be the baseline presumption of modern democratic governance, and the burden should lie on those who would substitute secrecy as the governing norm.

ILLUSTRATION: JOHN S. DYKES

not reveal is how the information captured in the classified documents was subsequently discussed, debated, discounted, considered and, ultimately, employed for action – or, indeed, non-action. What the world sees, therefore, is ‘sausage-making’ at only its ingredient-mixing stage. I am not so convinced that the public wants to know all of the inner workings of government policy-making at every step of the way. And evidently, if the public had a vote or say on every government issue at all stages of relevant policy development or decision-making, nothing

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of this data is repetitious, unsubstantiated and, in the end, useless for purposes of robust policymaking. However, there is enough information out there that is valuable and does provide a glimpse into the workings of government. One of the major problems with Wikileaks is that much of the information does not paint the entire picture of the issue or decision-making considerations and processes at play. In most cases, Wikileaks provides slide frames from a pictorial series. Some frames are clearly more complete than others. But what Wikileaks does

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would ever be accomplished.

Under US law, any citizen, journalist or entity can file a Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) petition to request classified US government documents. The executive branch can deny the request on national security and a few other grounds. Nonetheless, there remains a legal and proper provision for Americans to make their government more transparent. What has happened over the past few decades is that, knowing that internal memos and documents can be subject to FOIA petitions, more conversations within government take place without written records, and in person. The Wikileaks release will likely reinforce already bad, system-wide tendencies to not put information down on paper – thus, paradoxically, increasing ‘secrecy.’ This is not to mention the risk to the well-being of US federal government employees, servicemen and women and taxpayers whose names were revealed in the Wikileaks documents.

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CS: You mention the rationale with the widest

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consensus for secrecy – namely the risk to individuals. We might think of Zimbabwean Prime Minister Morgan Tsvangirai, now facing a treason investigation after Wikileaks conveniently dropped in President Mugabe’s lap a cable that suggests that Tsvangirai had privately told US officials that sanctions against Zimbabwe should continue. I find especially interesting your point that timing is key; that there is a danger in not seeing the proverbial policy ‘sausage’ for its ingredients when information comes out in bits and pieces – and that the greater the chances of premature transparency, the greater the incentives for oral communications to replace written records.

Timing, in the form of delayed release of information, is the central mechanism used in democracies to justify extensive secrecy – by virtue of laws that sequester documents deemed sensitive in archives until specified time periods have passed.

Transparency is vindicated – but only in the fullness of time; that is, when the archives eventually open. For example, today we discover (as reported recently by Haaretz) that the UK ambassador to Israel reported to London in 1980 that Israel, in his view, would use nuclear weapons in any generalized war with Arab states, rather than accept to lose the war. One cannot help but ask: had this information emerged into the public domain 30 or even 20 or 15 years ago, what exactly would have been the harm to the world in having access to a high-level, informed view that Israel had nuclear weapons (contrary to Israel’s ongoing refusal to formally confirm such possession) and apparently countenanced this specific scenario for their use?

We would be better off if nuclear realities in the Middle East were – at the time the UK government

was receiving this information – readily on the table, and not under the table. We are also all better off now that it is known, via Wikileaks cables, that at least some leaders of Arab Middle Eastern countries actively want Israel to attack Iran to forestall Iran’s development of a nuclear weapon.

Indeed, we are a better informed global public for the combination of delayed archival release by most states and the current Wikileaks information. Even as mere ingredients for the metaphorical sausage you mention, both information types and sources have some potential to generate greater focus of more minds, stimulate productive debate and engage a wider pool of intellectual resources feeding into solution-seeking.

Of course, the biggest problem with time-based trade-offs for extensive secrecy is the absence of clear exceptions for documents that may be evidence of legal wrongdoing: for instance, the said coup in Honduras, recent war crimes in Sri Lanka, or detainee transfer to risk of torture by Canada in Afghanistan. All of these cases dealt not only with matters of political controversy or morality, but also with questions of fundamental legality.

Granted, Wikileaks releasing a river of information so that streams of wrongdoing can be detected – or possibly be detected – is a rather blunt instrument for purposes of detecting legal wrongdoing. Still, we need leaking as a transparency practice, and we need effective institutionalized mechanisms for encouraging such leaking – or at least for protecting those brave enough to do it.

DF: There absolutely should be transparency in democratic government. This is essential to maintaining freedoms and rights, and for ensuring that no one individual is above the law. Accountability matters, and transparency is necessary for accountability. In no way am I suggesting that legal wrongdoing should be hidden from the public, covered up or otherwise obfuscated until a statute of limitations has expired. Citizens of a country do indeed have a right to know how their government functions. As mentioned, however, citizens do not necessarily have a need to know ‘right now’ or in ‘real-time’ about all of the inner workings of government – including and perhaps especially at the highest levels of domestic governance, diplomatic statecraft and national security. Too much information is not necessarily a good thing – particularly if it incomplete and cannot be judged in context.

In the case of the US, its legislative systems work generally well, and always in the recognition that Congress takes very seriously its responsibilities for conducting oversight of the executive branch of government. Every day that Congress is in session, numerous oversight hearings are held in both the House and the Senate. Most are public hearings, and

CS: Does excessive transparency, as you suggest, seriously undermine good governance by driving

written records out of government communications?

Your example suggests that even robust freedom of information legislation has had the effect of driving some government communications into oral or perhaps other informal avenues – so as to preclude a paper trail susceptible to freedom of information petitions. I presume that it is already the case that much of the most secretive traffic within government does not actually go through even ‘Secret – No Foreigners’ embassy cable traffic – largely due to a longstanding concern with leaks (if only because of the huge distribution lists that one sees even on Secret cables). I wonder whether there is not some serious ‘good governance’ onus on government and officials to create encrypted communication and record-keeping systems (such as the ones that bypass regular diplomatic traffic) for that which is truly believed to merit full secrecy.

Having said this, I really do see the force of your point that it is possibly quite destructive of good governance if officials are afraid to be frank; that is, if such frankness may subject them to public attention,

What Wikileaks does not reveal is how the information captured in the classified documents was subsequently discussed, debated, discounted, considered and, ultimately, employed for action – or, indeed, non-action. and possibly also vilification – even without there being anything resembling wrongdoing. I also recognize that it would be too bloody-minded to reply to this concern by saying that (a) officials have a duty not to make arguments or take decisions in private that they are not prepared to have defended in public; and (b) officials have a corresponding professional duty to use written communications and record systems precisely for there to be accountability. In this regard, it is instructive how Lord Chancellor Straw decided in 2009 to veto the release of documents on UK Cabinet decision-making around the decision to go to war against Iraq in 2003 – even though UK legislation appears to have a presumption that Cabinet documents are disclosable. Here is one passage in Straw’s reasoning: “Serious and controversial decisions must be taken with free, frank – even blunt – deliberation between colleagues. Dialogue must be fearless.

Ministers must have the confidence to challenge each other in private. They must ensure that decisions have been properly thought through, sounding out all possibilities before committing themselves

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most have executive branch witnesses testify. Members of Congress and their staff are very well versed on the issues of the day, and are very probing. When issues are too sensitive to be discussed in a public setting, the hearing goes into ‘closed’ or ‘executive’ session, such that comments and discussion can be made in confidence. Quite frequently, closed sessions result in Members of Congress – often the chairman of a committee – sending a letter to a Cabinet secretary requesting additional information on an issue discussed during a hearing or, on occasion, asking for the Cabinet secretary to testify in person before the committee to personally explain an issue.

The fact that this dialogue occurs, and that mechanisms exist for the executive branch to be held accountable to Congress – that is, to the elected representatives of the American people – suggests that enough of, and indeed the most appropriate, people are ‘in the loop,’ and are monitoring and questioning the functions of the executive branch of government. These people are also crying foul when something appears to be awry. The number of Congressional hearings that took place in the lead-up to, and then during, the recent Iraq War was astounding. Issues like interrogations, Abu Ghraib, and whether Saddam Hussein did or did not have nuclear weapons, were all on the table for the world to see – and in most of their ugliness. Some of the information was reported or released in real-time, while some was hidden from public view for a few months or years; but brought to the surface this information was, and by various means. (Iran-Contra is another important example of questionable activities undertaken by the executive branch being exposed to the public, and then fully investigated and addressed by the legislative branch; while not in real-time, at least shortly thereafter.)

It should be noted that an absolute minority of individuals volunteer to actively protect the democratic way of life, democratic liberties and economic livelihoods. In doing their jobs, these volunteers – soldiers, diplomats, policemen, aid workers – put their lives on the line, and expect to be protected to the maximum possible degree. In other words, there is a general duty to protect them as they do their jobs in the service of the general citizenry. I am therefore not sure that information as sensitive as the names of funders of terrorist finance networks, the locations of war criminals in hiding, and the ways in which military forces are being blown up by enemy roadside bombs needs to be revealed and shared with the general public in real-time – and perhaps particularly so because of the speed with which such information travels the globe and can get into the hands of foes.

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Timing, in the form of delayed release of information, is the central mechanism used in democracies to justify extensive secrecy – by virtue of laws that sequester documents deemed sensitive in archives until specified time periods have passed.

to a course of action. They must not feel inhibited from advancing opinions that may be unpopular or controversial. They must not be deflected from expressing dissent by the fear that they may be held personally to account for views that are later cast aside. Discussions of this nature will not, however, take place without a private space in which thoughts can be voiced without fear of reprisal, or publicity.

Cabinet provides this space. If there cannot be frank discussion of the most important matters of Government policy at Cabinet, it may not occur at all. Cabinet decision-making could increasingly be driven into more informal channels, with attendant dangers of lack of rigour, lack of proper accountability, and lack of proper recording of decisions.”

Straw argues that this reasoning is especially pertinent “when the issues at hand are of the greatest sensitivity” – in order to make the case, as UK legislation requires, that his veto in the Iraqwar-decision context is exceptional. On its face, his reasoning would seem to apply generally – even if the tenor of the UK legislation is that Cabinet confidentiality should generally give way to the public interest in knowing about the reasons for momentous decisions and decision-making processes. What this quotation reveals is something of a clash between the transparency-leaning policy in the UK legislation and the secrecy-leaning rationale of an executive actor. This is a good defence of what I understand to be your own position.

Would you be willing to develop your own thinking on the danger of certain kinds of transparency driving decision-making to informal channels and – as you nicely put it – ironically creating a new problem of unaccountable (by virtue of being undocumented) secrecy? Would you acknowledge that there is a point at which the argument about the danger of informality degenerates into a threat from government to engage in bad governance practices (say, face-toface communications and unrecorded decisions) as a way to fend off efforts to hold up government decision-making to the tests of rationality and basic morality that only transparency can provide?

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DF: I acknowledge that too much informality may

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lead to bad governance practices and bad decisionmaking. The more that government officials feel less secure about the confidentiality of things put on paper during the policy deliberation process, the less likely it is that reasoned policy can and will be developed. Such insecurity will certainly result in smaller and smaller groups being part of policy deciding-making processes, and will often keep in the dark those who are tasked with carrying out the policy on the ground or in practice.

This, in turn, means that policy execution has great potential to be mishandled – either because there

are few written details on what influenced the final policy decision, or because there are differences of opinion among executive agencies on what the policy decision in question actually means for particular agencies. This complicates the oversight role of the legislative branch, due to the degree of ambiguity about the original intent of the specific policy decision. And, finally, as mentioned in an earlier intervention, this insecurity puts those who have to execute the policy on the ground at great risk – in every conceivable sense of the word.

It seems clear, post-Wikileaks, that US diplomats will likely be more reluctant to put sensitive information in cables from their posts overseas about the internal dynamics and personalities of host countries for fear that such information will be leaked and revealed. This will have a detrimental effect on policy-making because the ‘context’ in a foreign government’s behaviour will not be well communicated to policy-makers. Sure, such information can be conveyed in person or via teleconference, but then only a small group of high-level policy-makers will be privy to it, and the desk officers and action officers – who are the day-to-day experts on a particular country – will likely be left in the dark.

Wikileaks will also, in turn, make foreign interlocutors less likely to share information with US diplomats for fear that what they say in confidence may end up in a leaked cable. This will doubtless deny US diplomats and government officials the ability to properly understand what is going on within a country.

We might conclude by noting that, in respect of the US, the Founding Fathers created a country of representative democracy – not direct democracy – in order that the requisite expertise be applied to the development of policies in the best interests of the American people. The Founding Fathers, while also believing in transparency and respect for the rule of the law, expected the American people to cede some direct control to the experts or ‘representatives.’ Experts need their tools in order to do their job. These tools tend to come in the form of confidential information that eventually transforms into confidential deliberations, and ultimately into confidential decision-making processes – but with public announcements and public oversight.

We ought to recognize that good public policy takes time to develop and to execute, and is never the sole domain or responsibility of just one party or actor. We ought to, most certainly, strengthen legislative oversight functions as a first step to improving transparency in government. But let us not overreact and demand too much transparency in the functioning of our executive branches. As the saying goes: be careful what you ask for; you just may get it. | GB

If you had a friend going through some tough times, how would you help?

Last year, we gave our friend Chad

» We’ll call him

Chad

»

12 million dollars.

chad canada Would you just give your friend money or would you be

more creative?

The mainstream discussion about Canada’s relationship to Africa is how much money we should give. Is that creative?

Of course we also trade with Chad and other African nations, but: Canada imports goods worth just $3,000 from Chad each year.

How can we be more creative, realizing better trade relationships?

Canada’s top export to 12 African countries is used clothing.

How can we be more creative to not undermine the local textile industry?

Ewb.ca/creativeconnections

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Creativity requires connections. What if the people, universities, government, and businesses of Canada unleashed not just our money, but also our creativity, for a friend like Chad?

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THE DEFINITION “The relationship between religion and politics in this new century should be… … based on the following: religion is a personal matter; politics is a public concern.

They should be divorced, as firmly as possible.”

Noam Chomsky is an Institute Professor and Professor Emeritus of Linguistics at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology.

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… one of mutual respect, with a

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realistic expectation that conflict is likely to disrupt existing agreements and arrangements. Ideally, for a secular Israeli, the separation of ‘church and state’ would underscore the separation of religion and politics, and protect the freedoms of all Israelis. This was the view of Herzl, the early Zionist visionary who, after emphasizing his respect for religion, stated that any effort by religious functionaries to participate in the running of the state must be prevented. “The rabbis should be kept in the synagogues,” he declared, “just as the army should be kept in the barracks.” In practice, as Zionist leaders have quickly learned, this separation was all but impossible. Like elsewhere, religion and politics continuously interacted and produced a series of conflicts and compromises between the religious and the secular that never settled the main arguments in Israel.

Indeed, religion holds a problematic position in political life, as its values and rules claim a superior position over those of democratic procedure and the individual freedom to choose. Religion is essentially non-compromising when religious leaders claim to speak in the name of divinity and their followers – sometimes violating the rules of democratic procedure and the values of democratic tolerance.

The threat of religious fundamentalism seems a good reason to reinstate church-state separation, and to relegate religion to the private realm – where it would have authority only over those who choose to follow, but have no stake in the running of political affairs. A non-political religion, however, is an illusion that can hardly be sustained. The decline of religious authority, as leading scholars have noted, is often separated from the role that it continues to play in individual lives (see the Query article by Andrew P.W. Bennett at p. 20). Individuals, for different

reasons, continue to hang on to their religious faith or to religious rituals and practices that they hold meaningful. Sometimes, these beliefs and practices remain a private, non-political and non-conflictual matter. Other times, religious beliefs and identities spill into the public realm and political life as they shape the values, interests and demands of individuals and groups. Consequently, the liberal claim to ‘neutrality’ in the public sphere is rejected when questions of education, medical treatment and family life are politicized again and again.

Secularists and others committed to democracy and liberal freedoms have to, on the one hand, be prepared to defend their values and protect not only their rights, but also those of others – especially minorities – against religious infringement. On the other hand, secularists must be open to critically examining their own biases, as well as to the sensitivities of religious groups and individuals. In this ILLUSTRATION: GARY TAXALI

... understood in a different way – if we think of the songs, prayers and ceremonies that embrace Indigenous ‘spiritual connections to their homelands’ as constituting a ‘religion.’ For Indigenous peoples, spirituality lies at the foundation of one’s existence, and one’s religion is a way of institutionalizing (politicizing, as it were) one’s spiritual beliefs. Indigenous peoples know only too well the devastation that European religions have wreaked in their societies and communities. For the over 350 million Indigenous peoples worldwide, politics is not about the relationships between religions; rather, politics lies prior to religion, and begins with the recognition that we – meaning all of us – share a world steeped in awe-inspiring, complex relations. How Indigenous peoples have come to understand and live in accordance with these relations constitutes a legitimate human way of being in the world. In other words, for Indigenous peoples, political relationships are spiritual relationships: we are only a small part of Creation, and our moral and political behaviour ought to be guided by this fundamental fact of our existence.”

Dale Turner, a citizen of Temagami First Nation in Ontario, Canada, teaches Indigenous politics at Dartmouth College in Hanover, New Hampshire.

… in a serene and perfect world,

Said T. Jawad is the former Chief of Staff to the President of Afghanistan and former Afghan Ambassdor to Washington.

He is currently a Diplomat in Residence at the Kennedy School

Guy Ben-Porat is a senior lecturer in the Department of

of Government at Harvard University, and Chief Executive

Public Policy and Administration at Ben-Gurion University,

Officer of Capitalize LLC, a strategic consulting firm.

Israel. His forthcoming book is called Between State and Synagogue: The Secularization of Modern Israel

For the rest of this answer and others, visit the

(Cambridge University Press).

GB website at: www.globalbrief.ca

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critical examination, some secularists might realize that their liberal openness falls short of what they claim to hold and, possibly, that they share with (some) religious actors certain common democratic goals that are worth fighting for.

Religion concerns and demands are likely to remain part of politics and political life, and no simple solution is likely to resolve all disagreements between the religious and the secular. The old idea of church-state separation is unlikely to provide the answer for contemporary dilemmas.

A generous, open-minded, yet determined effort to protect liberal values and secular politics must rise to the challenge.”

complete severance and separation, as politics often contradicts the core religious values of forgiveness and repentance, while most religions limit individual rights and freedoms.

In the imperfect and volatile real world of today, it is no longer sustainable to maintain the status quo, where, on the one hand, politics without morality has been responsible for genocide, war and the destruction of our living space and environment, and where, on the other hand, man’s dubious interpretation of religious texts has for centuries contributed to fanaticism, hatred, discrimination and much bloodshed in the name of the divine.

Politics and religion must complement each other, while respecting each other’s exclusive domains, in order to address the plight of humanity as a whole by providing for justice, equitable or at least improved distribution of scarce and basic resources – and by preaching and practicing equality, civility, unity, social cohesion, mutual respect and compassion.”

Secularists might realize that their liberal openness falls short of what they claim to hold, and that they share with some religious actors certain common democratic goals worth fighting for.

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STRATEGIC FUTURES

La zone euro se stabilisera-t-elle en 2011?

En haut: Des manifestants à Dublin protestent contre les mesures d’austerité en

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décembre 2010.

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«Oui, si les leaders européens font preuve de courage politique et mettent en oeuvre leurs promesses d’avancées substantielles vers la création d’une véritable union économique européenne. L’année 2010 a montré que l’union monétaire européenne ne sera viable que si elle est basée sur une intégration économique plus poussée nécessitant à son tour davantage d’intégration politique. Les pays de la zone euro doivent mettre en commun une partie de leur pouvoir budgétaire, soit en faisant de Bruxelles l’autorité de contrôle suprême, soit en créant un budget européen suffisamment fort – la première option étant actuellement celle que favorisent presque tous les États membres. Il est essentiel par ailleurs de doter l’Union européenne d’un mécanisme de gestion de crise fort doublé d’une gouvernance politique ambitieuse permettant d’harmoniser suffisamment les politiques budgétaires, mais aussi macroéconomiques, y compris certaines politiques fiscales et sociales – condition sine qua non à terme pour légitimer les transferts de ressources en cas de crise. L’année 2011 sera celle de la stabilisation si la volonté politique européenne réussit à créer ce nouveau cadre de gouvernance.

Les violents débats qui ont agité l’Union euro-

péenne en 2010, avec une Allemagne quittant son rôle de moteur européen pour devenir un pays freinant les avancées politiques, ont démontré que la création d’une union économique sera tout sauf facile. C’est du reste une des ironies de l’histoire européenne récente que la crise la plus sévère frappant la construction européenne depuis des décennies ait éclaté précisément dans un des seuls domaines politiques auxquels le Traité de Lisbonne n’apporte pratiquement aucune réforme et aucune avancée d’intégration. Quand Lisbonne est entré en vigueur, l’immense majorité des observateurs et des politiciens pensait que le nouveau cadre juridique et politique de l’Union européenne était fixé pour des années, voire des décennies. En très peu de mois, la crise de l’euro a dynamité cette illusion. L’Union européenne reste de nos jours un ensemble qui n’a certes pas encore trouvé les équilibres politique et constitutionnel souhaités, mais tout laisse penser que sa survie et sa prospérité dans le monde des grandes puissances compétitives ne pourront être durablement assurées en dehors de la convergence des souverainetés étatiques».

Thomas Klau est chef du bureau de Paris du Conseil européen des relations étrangères. Il a rédigé avec François Godement un rapport récent: Au-delà de Maastricht – un nouveau pacte pour la zone euro.

«Sous le titre évocateur, «2011: les incertitudes d’un monde en convalescence», Adrien de Tricornot écrit dans le Monde Economie du 17 janvier, que «l’année 2011 se présente sous de délicats auspices. La reprise reste incertaine et molle dans les PHOTOGRAPHIE: BARBARA LINDBERG / REX FEATURES

pays développés, et soumise à de forts risques».

L’organisme d’assurance-crédit français, la COFACE, distribue comme chaque année ses bons et mauvais points. Elle reste prudemment optimiste en ce qui concerne la zone euro: si les bons élèves de la classe comme le Luxembourg, la Suède, la Suisse et la Norvège obtiennent la note très prisée de A1 (l’échelle décroissante de notation risques-pays de la COFACE est la suivante: A1, A2, A3, A4, B, C, D), l’Allemagne et la France ne sont plus qu’à un niveau A2 avec une surveillance positive, le Royaume-Uni et l’Italie, quant à eux, se trouvant en plus mauvaise posture avec une appréciation A3. D’autres pays de la zone euro s’enfoncent dans un état beaucoup plus préoccupant (le Portugal et l’Espagne avec A3 et surveillance négative, la Grèce et l’Irlande avec A4).

La zone de turbulences n’étant pas derrière nous, les pays confrontés à une crise de liquidités sont en quête de soutien. Soutien interne à l’Europe d’abord: ce n’est pas un hasard si les ministres des finances de la zone euro réunis à Bruxelles étudient les moyens de renforcement du fonds de sauvetage des pays en crise. Willem Buiter, économiste en chef de Citigroup, vient même de déclarer aux Echos qu’il fallait porter le Fonds de sauvetage européen à 2 000 milliards d’euros. Les pays de la zone euro pourront-ils réunir une telle somme? Compte tenu du peu de latitude des chefs d’État et de gouvernement et les échéances électorales, rien n’est moins sûr. La solidarité financière entre pays européens sera ainsi mise à rude épreuve. Il faudra pourtant trouver les fonds nécessaires. L’Europe ne peut se payer le luxe d’une faillite d’État.

Il faudra ainsi fatalement se tourner vers les soutiens externes, mais lesquels? Les États-Unis englués dans les méandres de leur propre crise, dont l’issue est aussi incertaine que celle de la zone euro, est incapable d’une quelconque intervention à ce titre. Il reste alors la Chine et l’Inde, mais à quel prix? L’Europe devra-t-elle hypothéquer son avenir déjà bien incertain en livrant de plus en plus ses «secrets de fabrication» – sa technologie – à la Chine pour espérer obtenir une aide précieuse de l’empire du Milieu? Sur la base de ces faits, les perspectives pour l’année 2011 ne semblent guère encourageantes pour la stabilité de la zone euro et ne seront en tout cas pas un long fleuve tranquille».

Farhad Ameli est professeur de droit à la Sorbonne et Sciences Po, Paris. Il est également associé principal d’un

“Despite the tentative global recovery that took hold in 2010, last year turned out to be a difficult one for the Eurozone. After much pressure from the markets, in the end, not only did the Eurozone (together with the IMF) have to bail out Greece in May – followed by Ireland in November – the economic crisis clearly highlighted the deficien-

Fabian Zuleeg is Chief Economist at the European Policy

Il est essentiel par ailleurs de doter l’Union européenne d’un mécanisme de gestion de crise fort doublé d’une gouvernance politique ambitieuse permettant d’harmoniser suffisamment les politiques budgétaires, mais aussi macroéconomiques, y compris certaines politiques fiscales et sociales.

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cabinet d’avocats (BEA) basé à Paris.

cies of Europe’s Economic and Monetary Union (EMU): an inability to prevent member states from pursuing unsustainable policies and the incompleteness of the ‘economic union’ element of EMU. To address the underlying causes of the crisis, the EU has started a reform process of its economic governance, while at the same time the countries at the centre of the crisis – Greece, Ireland, but also Portugal and Spain – have introduced economic reforms and fiscal consolidation measures. While markets remained jittery, the situation seemed to have calmed somewhat at the beginning of 2011: both Spain and Portugal managed to sell a significant number of bonds at auction – albeit with increased spreads – thereby increasing the cost of financing their debt. Will this seeming calm in the markets persist? And what are the ongoing challenges for the Eurozone in 2011?

Predicting the movement of the markets is almost impossible. While there are serious concerns over the long-term economic prospects for Portugal, these apply to a much lesser extent for Spain. It seems clear that recent market developments are not necessarily driven by a realistic assessment of the underlying risks, but also that speculation and herd mentality play a role. This makes the situation very volatile, with a high risk that the Eurozone will see another attack on the sovereign debt of one of its members – most likely centred on Portugal.

But even if the markets remain calm in 2011, the Eurozone has not yet done enough to deal with the long-term causes of the crisis. The reform programmes and fiscal consolidation measures in the individual member-states are necessary, and should produce some long-term results. The proposals for improved economic governance and a crisis mechanism at the European level should also help if they are implemented in a timely way.

However, more needs to be done to deal with the increasing divergence between Eurozone members. This divergence was at the heart of the Euro crisis, with the weaker economies falling behind in terms of competitiveness, productivity and growth, and with significant current account imbalances. The situation is being aggravated by the crisis: while some countries are having a strong recovery – for example, Germany, which grew by 3.6 percent in 2010 – the weaker economies are falling further behind.

If there is no decisive move to address these fundamental imbalances – for instance, through an acceleration of European support for investments into future growth – it is likely that these imbalances will continue to grow. While the markets might stabilize in the short-run, the long-term outlook of the Eurozone would be worrying.”

Centre in Brussels.

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EPIGRAM

Nature and the Spirit of the Age Closing reflections on primary forces in this new political century

BY DOUGLAS GLOVER

Douglas Glover is a Governor-General’s Award-winning novelist and short story writer.

His last book was The Enamoured Knight, a study of Cervantes and

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Don Quixote.

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Nature is inevitable: spirit is not. Spirit is purposeof our lives in the West. It infuriates the Christian ful, possibly free, and, if not free, at least it knows conservatives and the Imams even as they bow to it is not free, a burning ember borne along on the it every time that they dial their cell phones. And impetuous flood. between the extremes of liberal reason and religious History is the chronicle of the man struggling to doctrine – both having nearly reached their expiration evade the vast pointlessness of matter, natural law dates – the poor individual human can no longer and Fate. As Hegel saw it, History is man’s progress find words to describe the sense of his own unique, toward Spirit, toward the unity of all knowledge; not unrepeatable and infinite value. exactly the unio mystico of the Christian mystics or What is the good life (not, sorry, quality of life)? the spiritual extinction of the eastern philosophies, What of honour, duty, hospitality, mercy and love? but something like that (vaguely echoed in the telos Why can we no longer speak meaningfully of such of globalization). things? Once we conceived of ourselves But the triumph of spirit today seems as constructed in a god’s image, and set paradoxically spiritless. The Christian God up over Nature as minor deities. Now, of has been dead, or at least moribund, since course, our innermost impulses derive the mid-19th century, when Nietzsche from the leftover reptile in us – the limbic pronounced the obsequies. Liberal political brain – and scientists can track generosity philosophy has progressively eliminated and love by the ebb and flow of serotonin spirit from state and statecraft. Science showers. Where is the unique and absoGeorge W. F. Hegel has eliminated spirit from matter. And lute value in that? (When I am dead, just economics has eliminated spirit from the market. render me into dog food.)

Spirit seems to linger in the vociferous, but often Is even the disinterested pursuit of knowledge derided religious rearguard actions of so-called fundisinterested? That we have confused spirit with damentalist movements (they seem to exist in every domination is an underlying assumption of environreligion). But even the phrase ‘human spirit’ used in mentalists who emit a faint air of Schadenfreude as conversation is a marker for the naïve and passé. they jet from conference to conference. Sometimes, And humanism, without spirit, is derided as just it seems that all that we have left between the twin another system of oppression. No longer can we wax systems of Nature and Culture – the latter being the romantically elegiac about the residuum of immatevast virtual apparatus of markets, bureaucracies and rial essence that we feel to be part of our existence. social hierarchies originally designed to help us to The old arguments from spirit that every hudominate Nature, and that now dominate us (our man life is infinitely valuable has led to planetary second nature) – is the negative capacity to protest. crowding, the exhaustion of resources, the advent of I am not that. And I am not that. Spirit resides in government-sanctioned abortion, assisted suicide, the individual saying I do not know exactly what I and various forms of medical rationing (when poor am, but I am not that. people cannot pay for health care, that is a form This is meagre forage, except for the happy few of rationing). Spirit has turned on spirit, per force, who somehow find themselves at the top end of because species survival depends on it. In the end, the scale. For them, the sense of domination and our human desire to separate ourselves from nature triumph fills their hearts with an old-fashioned has had the paradoxical effect of proving that we sense of self and freedom of the will. Blessed are the are nothing but nature. billionaires, for they can still afford to have spirit.

Pope Benedict recently endorsed the use of conYet, one senses a convergence of vectors, a brewing doms to inhibit the spread of HIV – a classic case of climax, and another immense turning of the wheel. modern, secular, science-based, utilitarian calculaThe Protestant Reformation is an example of a tion trumping the traditional spirit-based mode of vast social expression of a general feeling of protest thought. Even the Pope has acquiesced, yes, to the (I am not that) after centuries of domination by the Spirit of the Age – the general feeling, the sense of old mythologies. Is it possible that something simiFatedness, as it were, that all decisions as to life and lar will follow hard upon the heels of our current death and so-called quality of life should be based miasma? Another mass expression of the universal on material conditions, costs (markets), statistics I-am-not-that – the mysterious, faint penetralium and general outcomes. We bow to this every day of the human spirit? | GB

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