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Archive for category International Politics

Clarity In The Murk

Jun 24

Posted by Kevin Murphy in International Politics | 1 Comment

David Cohen at the Brothers Judd (I offered to rechristen this place the Brothers Murphy when Sean asked about posting here, but he declined) does a nice job of summing up my view on Israel and the Palestinians:

“The point, of course, is that this sort of “context” is infinately reductive, with each side able to point to one earlier step of which they were the victim and which, had it not occurred, would have averted all the succeeding violence. In the west we still distinguish, perhaps naively, between people strapping bombs to themselves and seeking out civilians to murder, on the one hand, and military action, on the other. We also have noticed that, if the Palestinians simply wanted a state, they could have had one years ago. Unfortunately, they don’t simply want a state, they want a particular state and that state has different ideas.”

In my college days, various forums would address Israel and peace in the Middle East where the same few antagonists would repetitively engage that the infinitely reductive discourse about who started it first. That experience soured me on both participants, but more recent events have brought me the same clarity as Mr. Cohen. I suppose that makes me the stereotypical religious conservative who supports Israel, but so be it. What’s right is what’s right.

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All Hail The UN

May 11

Posted by Kevin Murphy in International Politics | No Comments

When I look at the UN, I see a completely corrupt embodiment of an important ideal. Others apparently see something different, they see a universal savior that is able to handle every need. They constantly sing the UN’s praises. I’m surprised I haven’t seen any green yard signs emblazoned with “UN Saves” in certain neighborhoods, although I have heard many a person claim that if a nation would just let the UN in, it would be saved. Religion comes in many flavors, some more tasty than others.

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The State of Diplomacy

May 5

Posted by Kevin Murphy in International Politics | 1 Comment

If insanity is doing the same thing but expecting different results, a lot of the world goes crazy over Israel. A bunch of diplomats who were unsuccessful in the past in getting the Palestinians to stop killing Israelis in return for their own country are upset that President Bush wants to do something different – namely recognizing reality. So the old boundaries, which do not take into account “facts on the ground” are out; negotiations over the right of Palestinian return are out since Israel could never agree; and bargaining with the current power structure of the Palestinians which has only the legitimacy of force, is composed of terrorists, and has never bargained in good faith, and which has never renounced the destruction of Israel as the ultimate goal is also out. What does this mean? 

Well, it means that the illusion of progress is over, and illusions die hard for those who believe them. It means that the Palestinians won’t get a state until they get serious about being a nation and not just an odd cross between victims and terrorists.

As for our state department, well, I’m not impressed. Someone I know worked at the state department. I noticed that they were reading Howard Zinn’s history of the US and was told that it was very popular there. I asked if they had heard of Walter Mead’s Special Providence. Nope. Never heard of it. On the one hand, you have a truly miserable book that’s all about how bad America is; on the other you have a book that offers a great deal of insight about America and diplomacy. Which is the popular book in the State Department? You got it, the miserable one.

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French Sophisticate

Mar 19

Posted by Kevin Murphy in International Politics | No Comments

Nidra Poller is thinking about moving. As a Jew in France, she’s considering leaving her once beloved adopted country and returning home:

That is what it boils down to. Things have gone from shouting “death to the Jews” to firebombing schools and synagogues, to persecution, attacks, even murder. We have Muslim rage in schools, hospitals, and courtrooms. Police headquarters are attacked, hospital personnel beaten, judges threatened. The Republic is under siege, and what are the French doing about it? They are trashing America.

This, it seems, is their new Maginot line: the sneer of hatred. Hand in hand with the government and the intellectual classes, the French media are channeling the national dismay over lost grandeur into contempt for America. Watch these suave Europeans, snickering to themselves because American soldiers are getting killed in Iraq. Is that (they sneer) any way to risk your life? Go on a crusade to fight incurable disease, cross in front of a moving car, smoke a cigarette. But fight to defend your own country? It’s indecent! 

For me, the monuments are crumbling. The glistening golden dome of Les Invalides. The châteaux and the triumphal arches, the obelisks, the bux om fountains, the wrought-iron balconies, the slightly tipsy 18th-century apartment buildings, the rivers winding through those darling towns and cities. How can so much beauty cover such deep cowardice? I lash myself to the mast and close my senses to the sirens, while my heart rings with pride for “the land of the free and the home of the brave.” 

We are not free in France. I know the difference. I come from a free country. A rough and ready, clumsy, slapped together, tacky country where people say wow and gosh and shop at Costco. A country so vast I haven’t the faintest idea where I would put myself. A homeland I would have liked to keep at a distance, visit with pleasure, and leave with relief. A native land I walked out on with belated adolescent insouciance. A foreign land where I was born because Europe vomited up my grandparents as it is now coughing up me and mine. 

Gosh. Wow. You’re always welcome here, Nidra. 

Come to Saint Louis. We have only two monuments — the Arch and Stan Musual’s Statue — and a past that, like France’s, was once pretty glorious, but it sure can feel like home.

Link via J Bowen at No Watermelons Allowed

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Spanish Surprise

Mar 16

Posted by Kevin Murphy in International Politics | No Comments

Western Europe’s recent history is not kind to Western Europe. Western Europe fiddled while Bosnia burned, and when they belatedly sent “peacekeepers” under the UN, their main accomplishment was to concentrate Bosnian-Muslim victims for the Bosnian-Serbs in “safe havens” where the Muslims were anything but safe. And why not? When European peacekeepers made any threatening moves, the Bosnian-Serbs would round a bunch up as hostages and UNPROFOR would give in. The might of Europe assembled under the banner of the UN was impotent in the face of a few thousand thugs. Innocents paid with their lives. There was no lack of justice in or favorable opinion of Europe’s efforts, just a lack of will. When the US supplied the will, the fighting soon stopped. 

World opinion, European opinion was in favor of the end of the Taliban and imposition of representative government in Afghanistan. Western Europe made financial commitments and through NATO troop commitments for what was near universally agreed to be “the good war” in the War on Terror. Despite the early promise, the will again has been missing from Afghanistan. The money didn’t flow; nor did the troops. There are more non-US and non-UK troops in Iraq (even if the Spanish pull out) than there are in Afghanistan, where NATO only secures Kabul. While Western Europe claims to have found the secret to living in peace, they won’t send but a tiny fraction of their armies to help Afganistan.

Now we turn to Spain. Al Qaida attacked Spain and Spain threw up its hands in a familiar “no mas, no mas” gesture. It may have been that the Socialists would have won anyway or that it was the governments handling of the investigation that lost the election, but the perception is that the attack put the Socialists in power. Make no mistake – terrorism won a round. And the message that terrorism works isn’t good for anyone but terrorists. Lone wackos and established terror groups like ETA and the IRA may be tempted to go for a spectacular attack. The problem isn’t so much the loss of Spain’s token force in Iraq, but Spain’s cooperation in all the other aspects on the war on terror.

I don’t want to paint too bleak a picture – Italy withstood a major attack on their soldiers in Iraq without backing down. Europe really is a great place in many ways – the best urban living in the world. But Western Europe seems to be facing its problems like a hospice patient — just trying to stay comfortable while waiting for death. And palliating your problems doesn’t make them go away.

And if anybody there is listening – you’re not dead yet. Get out of your comfort zone, the world needs you and all you have to offer. And if you want the US to listen when you tell us “now isn’t the time to fight”, that can’t be the only advice you ever give. We’ll listen to a comrade-in-arms, not a nagging scold.

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What the World Needs Now, Is Good Government

Feb 17

Posted by Kevin Murphy in International Politics | No Comments

Imagine me at the Miss America pageant (it’s easy if you try), and after making it through the swimsuit competition, we come to the question: “What is the biggest problem facing the world today?” I’d have my answer ready: bad government. Poverty, war, environmental destruction, most real suffering can be traced back to poor government. The sad thing is, good government isn’t a big mystery. It’s hard because it means overthrowing entrenched interests, and it requires practice, but it’s well worth it.

The United States became the sole superpower in large part because of our government. Representation and consent of the governed (AKA democracy), the rule of law and not men, private property, contract rights, and free markets, essential liberties (such as freedom of speech and religion) — these are all known and understood. The government that governs least governs best is a good rule of thumb toward regulation and regimentation, not the core functions of government.

What are rogue nations but those with particularly wretched governments – or government of the tyrant, by the tyrant, and for the tyrant. The countries that are the worst to live in are those with the worst governments. Poor countries are poor because their governments keep them poor through (at best) mismanagement and (at worst) deliberate rule for the ruler’s sake. Frankly, no government should be considered legitimate that doesn’t have the consent of it’s people in free and fair elections. The best way to decrease poverty, to reduce war, to reduce human suffering would be to improve government globally.

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I Think It Needs A Better Name

Feb 17

Posted by Kevin Murphy in International Politics | No Comments

Hoystory linked to Charles Krauthammer’s foreign policy speech to the American Enterprise Institute. I just love the sound of Krauthammer – the th is not pronounced as in “the”, but separately. The name sounds like it should have been the soubriquet of a French king (as in Louis the Krauthammer) or even Cardinal Richelieu. 

In his speech, Krauthammer breaks foriegn policy into four “schools” – not the same ones as Walter Russell Mead, but more conventional ones. But where some would name Neoconservative, Charles has “Democratic Globalism.”

“Yet they are the principal proponents today of what might be called democratic globalism, a foreign policy that defines the national interest not as power but as values, and that identifies one supreme value, what John Kennedy called “the success of liberty.” As President Bush put it in his speech at Whitehall last November: “The United States and Great Britain share a mission in the world beyond the balance of power or the simple pursuit of interest. We seek the advance of freedom and the peace that freedom brings.”

Beyond power. Beyond interest. Beyond interest defined as power. That is the credo of democratic globalism. Which explains its political appeal: America is a nation uniquely built not on blood, race or consanguinity, but on a proposition–to which its sacred honor has been pledged for two centuries. This American exceptionalism explains why non-Americans find this foreign policy so difficult to credit; why Blair has had more difficulty garnering support for it in his country; and why Europe, in particular, finds this kind of value-driven foreign policy hopelessly and irritatingly moralistic.

Democratic globalism sees as the engine of history not the will to power but the will to freedom. And while it has been attacked as a dreamy, idealistic innovation, its inspiration comes from the Truman Doctrine of 1947, the Kennedy inaugural of 1961, and Reagan’s “evil empire” speech of 1983. They all sought to recast a struggle for power between two geopolitical titans into a struggle between freedom and unfreedom, and yes, good and evil.”

It’s left as an excercise for the reader to determine which school Charles le Kraut Martel belongs to, but I’ll tell you that according to his formulation, I’ll stand up and be counted with the Democratic Globalists. Very good stuff from Mr. Krauthammer.

As long as I’m on foreign policy, it’s always struck me that it generally plays a small roll in Presidential elections when it is an area where the President has the most freedom. In domestic matters, Congress (and the courts) can easily stalemate the President’s programs, but not so in foreign affairs.

Real Crushing Of Dissent

Jul 9

Posted by Kevin Murphy in International Politics | No Comments

Here’s how the Iranian government is handling dissent: Threaten force against protestors, and when the protest leaders back down, abduct them. But remember, it’s only in America that dissent is crushed, and only by John Ashcroft.

Are Dictators Cracking Down?

Mar 27

Posted by Kevin Murphy in International Politics, Politics | No Comments

Robert Musil wonders how you can tell whether or not dictators have taken the opportunity of the campaign against Saddam to crack down on their dissidents. Don’t dictators do it all the time? Do dictators care whether we notice or not? Good questions.

Bush Apologized To Karzai for US Senate Treatment

Mar 11

Posted by Kevin Murphy in International Politics | No Comments

The Washington Post is reporting that George Bush called Afgan President Karzai to apologize for the way the Senate treated him. Apparently Karzai was miffed that instead of a private get together, the Senate Foreign Relations committee gave him the full hearing treatment. While I somehow managed to miss Karzai’s appearance, I have seen other hearings and generally I wish the person in the dock would give the Senators what for. The Senators resort to the Potter trick – they sit way up high behind a big impressive desk, and the interrogated get a little chair behind a table. The Senators like to thunder and fulminate, bully and intimidate, ask questions that are really speaches, and what ticks me off the most, they don’t bother to listen when it’s another Senator’s turn. So the person has to answer the same stupid stuff over and over, in a display of uncommon discourtesy. 

It has to weigh on Karzai, and Afganistan as a whole, that they are clients of the United States. For the Senate Foreign Relations Committee to put him through the ringer like that only reinforces the notion. Should Karzai be accountable? Sure, but would the Senate treat Jacques Chirac in the same manner? No, they’d be respectful, and polite, face-to-face anyway, as it should be. Once again, foreign affairs takes a back seat to domestic politics.

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