Carter on Gaza
I thought I should recommend Jimmy Carter’s op-ed on Gaza. But of course as everyone knows Carter is a raging, Jew-hating, Israel-bashing bigot. And ultimately this illustrates what I think is the inconvenient truth about US involvement in the Israeli-Arab conflict, namely that to do much good you need to be willing to take the hits. Near the end of my new TAP Online column I note the irony that Carter is the most-loathed of US Presidents among Israel hawks, but the Camp David accords he sponsored have done more to advance Israeli interests than anything any president’s done since Harry Truman recognized Israeli independence.
The issue is that peace is strongly in Israel’s best interests. But the most useful thing we can ever do to bring that about is offer a bit of a stiff arm and tough love to alter internal Israeli political incentives. But doing that earns you a lot of political enemies even if your work pays off.
70 Responses to “Carter on Gaza”
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January 8th, 2009 at 11:31 am
What WE (the US) could do to bring about peace would be to stop giving Israel $3,000,000,000 / yr to buy weapons WE make.
Its pretty hard to bomb Palestinians civilians when you don’t have bombs.
January 8th, 2009 at 11:33 am
How about the American national interest? An immediate and permanent cutoff of aid to Israel would be in our national interest.
January 8th, 2009 at 11:34 am
Shorter anticipated reactionary reaction: “Well, if it’s a war, it must be by definition necessary!”
January 8th, 2009 at 11:38 am
Yeah, Carter got a bad rap for pardoning the draft evaders, but that was the best thing he ever did for the military-industrial complex, because of Reagan’s back-lash.
But then again, how many more people are saved these days by paying attention to crash safety than peace? It seems that’s caused an obesity epidemic in cars, with SUV and other energy-guzzlers preferred over reasonable models. I hope Presidents Carter and Obama get back to the negotiating table. I’m sure Hillary is going to love to make world peace.
January 8th, 2009 at 11:40 am
I’m reasonably sure Israel didn’t want Carter’s help in 1979, and that they had their arms twisted, hard, in the Camp David Accords. I think the Yom Kippur War was *much* scarier than publically aknowledged, and Carter had pretty much the entirety of the US deep regime behind him in forcing Israel to take terms with Egypt.
January 8th, 2009 at 11:52 am
Unfortunately, Israel hawks in the United States are far more interested in using the issue as a political cudgel, enjoying war porn, and getting a warm feeling of supiority than they are in trifling issues like the security of Israel and the well-being of the people who live there.
Let’s never forget that it was the great “friends of Israel” that cheered so hard when Israel launched the disasterous Hezbollah War. With friends like these…
January 8th, 2009 at 12:24 pm
1. Mr. Yglesias repeats the big lie that fuckface Carter brokered a peace agreement between Egypt and Israel. He did nothing of the sort. He handed out bribes to the two parties to get them to behave themselves, which, by the way, we are still paying to to tune of 3 billion for Israel and 2.3 billion for Egypt.
2. I am in total agreement with Mr. JimboSlice and rmwarnick. Aid to Israel should be phased out so that they will no longer have to get the permission of the President of the United States to defend themselves.
January 8th, 2009 at 12:41 pm
You can tell Jimmy Carter is an Israel-hating bigot, because he used American money to (so far) permanently eliminate the single largest threat to Israel’s existence that it has ever faced, the danger of an invasion by Egypt.
Umm…that doesn’t make any sense.
January 8th, 2009 at 12:45 pm
When is it going to be okay to start talking about a one-state solution? I know we’re not allowed to make this self-evident point in polite society, but there’s just no reason for us to support a strictly ethnically-defined state, especially when it’s very existence as such depends on one group confining and holding power over another without any accountability.
I’m not saying it will be easy, but ultimately there is no other option than for Palestinians to be given full rights in the government of Israel, which after all rules their very existence. The only reason to oppose this is a misguided desire to maintain the ethnic purity of Israel. Why is this even controversial?
January 8th, 2009 at 12:55 pm
I don’t think that; however, I do think Carter is a weak-kneed, incoherent, clueless, cardigan-wearing fool who told the nation to wear thicker sweaters at the height of winter.
By the way, while we are talking about diplomats, why not Kissinger? At least he knew his art. Carter probably couldn’t tell who Klemens von Metternich is.
January 8th, 2009 at 1:00 pm
The issue is that peace is strongly in Israel’s best interests.
Wrong. The only issue is what is in the United States’ best interests.
January 8th, 2009 at 1:16 pm
Your mother probably told you the same thing.
January 8th, 2009 at 1:18 pm
By the way, while we are talking about diplomats, why not Kissinger? At least he knew his art.
Kissinger negotiated a deal to keep North Vietnam from invading South Vietnam.
Carter negotiated a deal to keep Egypt from invading Israel.
So…
How’s that going?
January 8th, 2009 at 1:24 pm
“told the nation to wear thicker sweaters at the height of winter”
Yeah, its stupid to wear sweaters in the winter! Fuck him and the nuclear sub he rode in on. I’m going outside without a coat. That’ll piss him off.
January 8th, 2009 at 1:53 pm
I don’t see why anyone would say that peace is in Israel’s best interests.
Peace would be devastating to Israel’s economy and society.
What they need is an effective state of cold war against powerless or distant enemies who pose no real threat but whom they can strike or rail against with impunity.
Face facts. The Israeli’s love where they are.
January 8th, 2009 at 1:57 pm
Say what you will about Carter, but it turns out that he was right about every damned thing. Reagan lead the nation into a delirium of self aggrandizement, a kind of narcotic state of grandiose self importance even while just about every key feature of American society or economy disintegrated under him.
January 8th, 2009 at 2:11 pm
Carter was pretty clueless about realpolitik. My grandfather, a retired professional diplomat, snickers every time he hears Carter being mentioned. The man was way. The man was way out of his depth in that world.
January 8th, 2009 at 2:21 pm
Possibly true, but sadly, the track record of the practioners and advocates of realpolitik has been less than spectacular.
The central flaw of realpolitik has been the endless failures to come to grips with the consequences of their actions.
Realpolitik for instance, demanded the replacement of Mossadegh with the Shah, the suppression of Latin American reform movements, the continuing escalation of the Vietnam war, etc.
What resulted from these endless manipulations – the playing of ‘Risk’ with human lives and whole nations?
Arguably, nothing good. South America grew more dystopic, indulged in orgies of pointless bloodletting. Vietnam turned into four star fiasco. The manipulation of muslims left no one to turn to but the Ayatollahs and Al Quaeda.
Realpolitik, as attractive as it is, must be consigned to the dustbin as a failure.
Carter’s approach was not so much naive as new. His thesis was simply this: Dysfunctional countries are not in the long term best interests of their people, or of the United States.
Good golly, miss molly, turned out on 9/11 that he’d been right all along.
January 8th, 2009 at 2:34 pm
I am not sure if the Mossadegh thing was just stupid arrogance. It certainly seemed to me that way. A proper way would have been to get oil and guarantees from him and install some sort of credible deterrence. I think you can hardly blame the personal stupidity of practitioners themselves on the inherent merits of Realpolitik. After all, Bismarck did fine with the concept. Stupid people, stupid results.
And I judge the realpolitik in regards to South America to be, on balance, a success. Have you forgotten about Liberation Theology? If it wasn’t for the papacy sending a hatchet man to the continent (a confidante of the present Pope, incidentally) to get rid of the raving lunatics it would have been impossible to keep the place under lids. As late as 1982 one South American country felt so bold as to take over British-occupied territory. Insane. And that was supposed to be an ally gov’t. Imagine if it was some lunatic populist government instead. Those fools needed to be kept under wraps and it worked out for the West.
And Vietnam was a JFK policy in case you forgot. Kissinger himself didn’t really believe all that crap about Vietnam.
January 8th, 2009 at 2:40 pm
Carter, like many others, claims Israel violated the tahdiya (lull) on Nov. 4 when it attacked one of Hamas’ “defensive” tunnels.
But, first, from the start of the tahdiya (June 19) to Nov. 4 there were 20 rockets and 18 mortars fired from Gaza.
And, second, as the ITIC reports (fuller description and links here), on Sept. 28 Israel
This, it appears, is what the “defensive” tunnel Israel attacked on Nov. 4 was to be used for.
January 8th, 2009 at 2:48 pm
Charles (#12) said: When is it going to be okay to start talking about a one-state solution?
We can talk about it all you want, but until the existing players have gone a few years without shooting at/blockading/stealing from each other, it’s pointless.
Then, there’s the socio-economic situation. Back in ‘48, the resident Jews and Arabs weren’t *that* far apart. Today, it’d be like slamming Berlin and Baghdad together.
The Lebanese have fewer issues between themselves, and they can *barely* hold it together.
January 8th, 2009 at 2:53 pm
Carter did get us hip-deep in this mess. Now not only are we seen as supporting the hated Israel, but we are seen as supporting the most hated Arab autocrat (Mubarak). Egypt has no incentive to help solve the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, because once that conflict is solved, Egypt is of no use to us, in a post-cold war world (Israel is of similarly little use to us strategically).
“By the way, while we are talking about diplomats, why not Kissinger?”
Kissinger lied to Israel to get it to take its hands off the throat of Egypt’s Third Army Group, telling the Israelis that the Russians would intervene if Israel didn’t let the Egyptian army off the hook.
January 8th, 2009 at 2:56 pm
The comparison of realpolitik to Risk is quite accurate.
The theory presumes that the defining force in the world is the control of nation-states over territory. Are the armies in Kamchatka blue, or green?
If the dictator in charge of the government in some country is “our guy,” the theory presumes, then our interests are being advanced there.
Sure, it worked well for Bismarck. That’s how the world actually worked back then.
But that’s not how it worked during the Cold War, nevermind in the modern era. It was this belief in “Great Game” efforts to install Our Guy as the motive force in foreign policy that led us to hire a bunch of Talibuddies to guard the back door at Tora Bora while there were 30,000 American troops garrisoning Kabul. It was the same failure that led us to assume that the war was won in Afghanistan, and launch a regime change war in Iraq.
January 8th, 2009 at 3:30 pm
Kissinger lied to Israel to get it to take its hands off the throat of Egypt’s Third Army Group, telling the Israelis that the Russians would intervene if Israel didn’t let the Egyptian army off the hook.
It worked. Anything else?
January 8th, 2009 at 3:33 pm
…until the existing players have gone a few years without shooting at/blockading/stealing from each other, it’s pointless.
Call me naive, but I think it’s the other way around. Once the Palestinians are included and empowered within the nation of Israel, there will no longer be any opportunity nor excuse to blockade and bomb any population of citizens within that state.
As it is, Israel has complete control over the lives and resources of the Palestinians, while simultaneously treating them as an ‘enemy nation’ when their leaders decide to drop bombs on dense civilian populations. Why do we pretend that this is anything other than gross injustice?
January 8th, 2009 at 3:47 pm
Once the Palestinians are included and empowered within the nation of Israel… you’ll have Lebanon on steroids.
Why do we pretend that this is anything other than gross injustice?
It is, but I don’t think a unified state is in the cards any time in the foreseeable future.
January 8th, 2009 at 4:01 pm
…I don’t think a unified state is in the cards any time in the foreseeable future.
You’re probably right, but it sure doesn’t help for the US government to actively support this ongoing injustice, despite large numbers of Americans wanting a more even-handed approach.
January 8th, 2009 at 4:13 pm
I had the pleasure of meeting Jimmy Carter personally. At a conference on his Presidency at my school, he explained exactly how hard it was to get the two sides to negotiate. He told a story he had never told anyone about how he literally got up in the faces of the two Presidents and told them he’d never speak to them again if they didn’t come to an agreement or something of that vein.
January 8th, 2009 at 4:20 pm
I trust the good golden word of that great American Patriot Alan Dershowitz. If only he could take Jimmy “The Virulent Jew-Hater” Carter’s place on the international stage. The filthy shvatz goyim Palestinians would accept their status as slaves of the Jews and all would be well. L’chaim!
January 8th, 2009 at 4:25 pm
By the way, come to think of it, realpolitik was astounding successful in South America. Pinochet, for one, was extraordinarily co-operative during the Falklands War and offered much valuable assistance.
January 8th, 2009 at 4:50 pm
“I don’t see why anyone would say that peace is in Israel’s best interests.”
Well, let’s see:
1) Peace would boost Israel’s tourism business.
2) Peace would reduce the threat to Israelis of violent death.
3) Peace would increase foreign direct investment in Israel.
4) Peace would increase Jewish immigration to Israel.
January 8th, 2009 at 4:54 pm
“It worked. Anything else?”
Yeah, it maintained the autocratic status quo in the Arab world’s most populous country. Had the Egyptians been faced with the humiliating picture of tens of thousands of their troops held prisoner, it would have probably led to a revolution in Egypt. In the 1970s, before the Islamic Brotherhood had much strength, that would have probably led to some sort of more-pluralistic regime in Egypt.
January 8th, 2009 at 5:00 pm
Bismarck did fine by Realpolitik? Well, a few observations. First, Bismarck was a genius, and its hardly warranted to measure the success of any methodology by its most brilliant practitioners. The run of results by ‘Non-Bismarks’ have been remarkably uninspiring.
Realpolitik working in South America? Hmmmm, theres’ a dubious proposition.
Well, as noted:
And I judge the realpolitik in regards to South America to be, on balance, a success. Have you forgotten about Liberation Theology? If it wasn’t for the papacy sending a hatchet man to the continent (a confidante of the present Pope, incidentally) to get rid of the raving lunatics it would have been impossible to keep the place under lids.
As opposed to a series of decaying and increasingly dysfunctional oligarchies which poorly served the population and resulted in economic and political backwardness. FAILURE.
As late as 1982 one South American country felt so bold as to take over British-occupied territory. Insane. And that was supposed to be an ally gov’t.
A product and practitioner of Realpolitik actually. The Argentine military junta was encouraged and supported by the United States as an ally against anti-communism and social reform. It embarked on a killing and torture spree that saw the death and disappearance of 20,000 Argentines as well as that poorly thought out invasion.
It’s probably the biggest reason why America is a synonym for dogshit in Argentine households and why the Argentines have a socialist government building bridges with other socialist governments.
Imagine if it was some lunatic populist government instead. Those fools needed to be kept under wraps and it worked out for the West.
Yeah, imagine if it had been a populist government. Unlikely to have randomly slaughtered 20,000 citizens, run the economy into the ground, and indulged in precipitate invasions and international terrorist operations.
As for Pinochet as a success of Realpolitik, you’re assuming that an Allende government or some successor would be happy with and tolerant of a militant Argentine Junta for a neighbor with a massive predilection for human rights abuse, slaughter of various sorts, and settling longstanding border disputes with sudden invasions? I beg to differ.
While it’s a historical fact that having regime which had women raped by dogs resulted in Chile supporting England over Argentina, it’s not actually clear that this was a successful application of realpolitik. Particularly when this same government ended up blowing up American citizens in the streets of Washington DC, and signing secret treaties to undertake international terrorist acts.
Nor do I see Chile’s economy or society having performed particularly well from the experience, and certainly the long term benefits of Pinochet to American-Chilean relations aren’t all that apparent.
January 8th, 2009 at 5:04 pm
Oh, and on the subject of Bismarck’s realpolitik, the consequence was the creation of a series of interlocking alliances on both sides that lead directly to WWI, and the resulting destruction of both Bismark’s germany and of the international order he forged. I’d have to say that in the long run, despite remarkable short term successes, Bismark’s realpolitik was something of a disaster.
And as I’ve noted, he was the most brilliant practitioner.
January 8th, 2009 at 5:18 pm
Meanwhile, what is Obama going to be doing?
Read it and weep:
UPDATE: Washington Institute Reports Bigger Role for Ross
http://www.ips.org/blog/jimlobe/?p=215
The matchless Nelson Report has updated the news about the prospective appointment of Dennis Ross as Special Envoy for Iran, and the update is even more concerning than the original report. Chris Nelson apparently got hold of an internal memo from the Washington Institute for Near East Policy (WINEP) in which its director, Robert Satloff, outlines Ross’ much-expanded job description. It reads as if Ross will be a sort of Middle East “czar”.
And you think Obama doesn’t plan a war with Iran?
Suckers.
January 8th, 2009 at 5:33 pm
having regime which had women raped by dogs
Not sure if that’s actually a historical fact. Sounds rather outlandish and fantastical.
In any case, it was pretty necessary to put a brake the pan-Latin Americanism that was going to become a threat to the West sooner or later. Latin American papers in 1982 unanimously claimed that America had violated the Monroe Doctrine! The fools! Didn’t they know it was a British Foreign Secretary who proposed the very doctrine? I always thought Augusto Pinochet did a rather swell job of putting the wind out of the pan-Latin Americanism, which was stupid in any case. The Latin American brotherhood was a pretty awful in general, coming out of some deranged ideas of Simon Bolivar, and it was an extraordinarily awful thing during the Cold War.
And realpolitik, by definition, is not concerned with the Chilean economy (even though Pinochet made it one of the wealthiest, if not the wealthiest states on the continent); it is about delivering the bacon for the practitioner’s home country. What does it concern America and Britain that Latin America is busy screwing itself? Nothing. As long as they deliver the economic and strategic goods, and don’t default on foreign loans again, I could care less who is doing what in third-rate tinpot republics.
Just as Metternich was very wary of pan-Germanism, so should modern diplomats beware of pan-Hispanicism. Especially as it is tinged with populism and socialism.
And whoever thought it was a good idea to have an Egyptian revolution: that wouldn’t be the first time, would it? When they ousted the king in the early 50’s the country just sank into a hole from which it never dug itself out. Revolutions in tinpot republics don’t solve problems; they exacerbate them.
January 8th, 2009 at 5:38 pm
Peace for Israel?
Well, it strikes me that peace leads to all sorts of intractable problems.
Peace with Syria means giving up the Golan Heights, to which Israel has no legitimate title apart from conquest, and conquest no longer confers legitimate title.
Any sort of peace in the West Bank also requires Israel to deal with 250,000 rebellious Israeli settlers, and also to wrestle with territorial and water rights issues, including expropriations.
More importantly, peace would be devastating to the Israeli economy. Like the United States, the Israeli economy is driven by its military. Israel spends eight to eleven billion a year on its war machine, which means its a major part of the economy, and in particular, its the progressive high tech part of the economy. A peace dividend would eliminate that expenditure… and the jobs that come with it, and the infrastructural investment and cutting edge jobs and industries which represent Israel’s subsidized competitive economic edge. Put it very simply, Israel cannot afford to be at peace with its neighbors. It needs war and the threat of war, existenial enemies to support the structure of its economy.
Peace will also probably reduce or eliminate the massive three to six billion dollar economic subsidy that Israel receives from America. That’s a pretty key flotation device for Israel’s economy. But at the same time, can it be justified? Israel’s hardly in the same category as Bangladesh or Angola in desperately needing foreign aid. It’s a rich developed country. Why should the American taxpayer subsidize an Israeli’s wealthy lifestyle while other desperate people are starving elsewhere? The only way it’s justified is because Israel is under threat. End that threat, end the money pipeline.
Y’see, Israel’s problem is that it’s a relatively tiny market, only about six or seven million people in all. It’s tough these days for tiny markets. The world is folding into large trading blocks – the European Common Market, the North American Free Trade Agreement, Latin America’s emerging common Market, Asia, etc. Israel isn’t a part of any of that, and so its industries have troubles – they don’t have a domestic market sufficient to justify economies of scale, their products, exports and imports have to be shipped large distances which impacts their cost and viability, and they’re vulnerable to barriers erected by large markets.
Israel is also handicapped in that it is surrounded by populace countries which in some areas, such as agriculture, compete with Israel, but due to the lower wealth and much lower income and wages in those countries, it has real difficulty competing with. It’s a devils problem all the way around – these countries are too poor to be a real market for Israel, but they’re just rich enough that they can become troublesome competitors, offering low wage alternatives to outcompete Israel.
And peace substantially erodes Israel’s competitive position. Suddenly, there’s no particular reason, with peace, to prefer Israel over neighbors, the region is happy and placid. There’s a lot more competition for tourism and foreign investment. And the competition is a lot cheaper.
The whole thing is that Israel’s economic viability in its current form is hardly a given. Israel’s economic position is fragile, and peace could be quite costly. At the very least, the Israeli’s might have to accept substantial dislocations – high unemployment, low or negative growth, perhaps inflationary pressures, and on the whole, a dramatically reduced standard of living.
There’s also a large question as to whether Israeli society as a whole, as captured and consumed as it is by militarism, has any place for peace. Remember this is a country which follows universal conscription – everyone does time in the Army. It’s a country where martial prowess and a history of martial victory is essential to the national character. It’s a country where extremes of right and left, atheists and lunatic fundamentalists, settlers and stay at homes, are united by only one common value – the military, and the necessity of the military. Will Israel fall apart if you take that out of the equation or reduce its importance? Of course not. Will it go through painful social dislocations? Goddammed right. Will it go through painful social dislocation in the middle of a wholesale economic crisis witha bad outcome? yeppers.
So….
Peace is a bad thing for Israel.
January 8th, 2009 at 5:56 pm
Those of you arguing with Stephen Myles are missing something: realpolitikers don’t give a fig for morality, freedom, and the well-being of people in far-off lands.
That’s what makes them realpolitikers.
January 8th, 2009 at 6:00 pm
having regime which had women raped by dogs
Not sure if that’s actually a historical fact. Sounds rather outlandish and fantastical.
More or less fantastical than gratuitously breaking a musicians hands before executing him? Torturing priests? Throwing bound prisoners out of helicopters? Pouring gasoline on a couple of Indian schoolchildren and lighting them up. Nope, not particularly outlandish and fantastical.
Feel free to attempt to disprove it, but if not, I think we’ll let it stand.
In any case, it was pretty necessary to put a brake the pan-Latin Americanism that was going to become a threat to the West sooner or later.
In what way was it going to become a threat to the west. I’m curious here. Sounds nice, but….
Latin American papers in 1982 unanimously claimed that America had violated the Monroe Doctrine! The fools! Didn’t they know it was a British Foreign Secretary who proposed the very doctrine?
The Monroe Doctrine, as I recall essentially stipulated that the independence and autonomy of the Latin American governments was to be recognized and defended by the United States.
Nowhere in the Doctrine is it suggested that the intention was to compromise the independence and autonomy of latin american governments by intervention of the united states. That was a later, unacknowledged development.
Although not terribly sophisticated, Latin American newspapers were pretty much correct in noting that the US was violating, and had over the previous several decades, repeatedly violated the Monroe Doctrine.
In the name of Realpolitik of course. But these violations had generally proven disastrous for local populations, and advantageous for a handful of American corporate interests… though not necessarily America itself.
I always thought Augusto Pinochet did a rather swell job of putting the wind out of the pan-Latin Americanism, which was stupid in any case.
Remarkably, it’s back.
And realpolitik, by definition, is not concerned with the Chilean economy (even though Pinochet made it one of the wealthiest, if not the wealthiest states on the continent);
Definitely sure if that’s not actually a historical fact. Given the record, it is rather outlandish and fantastical. Pinochet’s overall economic performance was uneven, occasionally disastrous, and generally sub-par. Chileans as a whole are poorer, the entrepreneurial class was nearly wiped out, and a handful of elite corruptly (including Pinochet itself as it turns out) got very rich.
it is about delivering the bacon for the practitioner’s home country. What does it concern America and Britain that Latin America is busy screwing itself? Nothing.
I suppose the corollary to that is that it was the United States busily screwing latin america.
As long as they deliver the economic and strategic goods, and don’t default on foreign loans again, I could care less who is doing what in third-rate tinpot republics.
Until the butchers we’re installing or propping up get turfed out, and the new bunch hate our guts… like Iran. Or until the butchers that we installed or propped up fall apart completely and the result is an impoverished, dysfunctional failed state of some sort… like Haiti.
Just as Metternich was very wary of pan-Germanism, so should modern diplomats beware of pan-Hispanicism. Especially as it is tinged with populism and socialism.
Interesting that you quote Metternich, given that his policies were ultimately failures on every possible level, and his efforts to block the forces of change resulted in the continuing humiliation and then the dissolution of the Austrian Empire.
Metternich in his own way was Brilliant, perhaps even a peer of Bismark, but he’s hardly a poster boy for the virtues and success of realpolitik.
And whoever thought it was a good idea to have an Egyptian revolution: that wouldn’t be the first time, would it? When they ousted the king in the early 50’s the country just sank into a hole from which it never dug itself out. Revolutions in tinpot republics don’t solve problems; they exacerbate them.
I agree that measured social change is preferable to violent revolution. But let’s face it, the Egyptian monarchy was corrupt, incompetent and dysfunctional. It ran an Egypt for a small elite and a lot of foreign interests. It was a failure, and its failure lead to Nasser.
Which explains why in fifty years, no Egyptian has seriously suggested that having the monarchy back would be a good idea.
I’m starting to think you’re having me on. I think you’re not really an advocate of Realpolitik but merely adopting the guise of a barking mad lunatic advancing dishonest and incompetent arguments to demonstrate how utterly hollow Realpolitik truly is. Well, so be it, I’m on to you, my friend.
January 8th, 2009 at 6:07 pm
Thank you Joe, I think that’s always been a feature of Realpolitik and Steven’s done a very good job of laying that out. But I think that the point that Steven and I are both driving towards in our own ways is that Realpolitik is a failure on its own terms. It’s consistently failed to produce results except in the narrowest and shortest terms, and often, over longer periods it’s had appalling blowback.
9/11 is the classic example of the long term failure of Realpolitik.
January 8th, 2009 at 6:34 pm
“By the way, while we are talking about diplomats, why not Kissinger?”
When I first read that, I burst into laughter. But I’m starting to see the light. It makes sense to have the world’s most notorious war criminal negotiating between the the two organizations committing the most war crimes. If you were negotiating between two mafia families, you’d want a mafia guy doing it, wouldn’t you? Israel, Hamas, and Kissinger have one thing in common: they love killing people. And Kissinger has killed more people than Israel and Hamas combined. They would obviously look up to him. The only problem I see is that any solution would obviously involve killing more people. But both sides see that as the goal, so that shouldn’t really be a problem.
January 8th, 2009 at 6:44 pm
The interesting thing about Kissinger that no one really pays attention to is that he negotiated the betrayal of South Vietnam.
There are some interesting transcripts that came out from the Peace Talks where the North Vietnamese are making it very clear that South Vietnam is sold, and Kissinger is simply begging that the NV wait for a decent interval before taking over.
Kissinger is the classic example of failed realpolitik.
January 8th, 2009 at 6:49 pm
Kissinger, by a wide margin in the diplomatic community, is considered the greatest American diplomat of the post-war period. There is a reason for that; he got things done; he made possible a US-China alignment against the Soviet Union.
The moralism of Americans when it comes to les affaires etrangeres is really quite disappointing and saddening.
January 8th, 2009 at 6:59 pm
And by the way, the consensus in the history departments is that the Congress of Vienna yielded a hundred years of relative peace between Great Powers. So successful were Metternich, that: “Prior to the opening of the Paris peace conference of 1918, the British Foreign Office commissioned a history of the Congress of Vienna to serve as an example to its own delegates of how to achieve an equally successful peace.” That is hardly a stinging indictment, is it? (of course, given the cluelessness of Wilson and venal stupidity of Clemenceau, they didn’t achieve anything close.)
Your view of Metternich as a failed statesmen, I venture, is now a minority opinion held at its peak by 19th century liberal historians, and not now shared by most intelligent historians.
January 8th, 2009 at 7:00 pm
(The enclosed quotation is from Wikipedia.)
January 8th, 2009 at 7:05 pm
“There is a reason for that; he got things done;”
He sure did. I count 4 million lives lost due to his efforts in Southeast Asia alone. If the purpose of negotiation is to kill people, he’s the greatest negotiator ever. And when it comes to installing really nasty dictators, nobody beats him. I mean Pinochet and Suharto in only a few years? Wow! Too bad his career ended before he could get Saddam in power. But he set the stage for that, at least.
January 8th, 2009 at 7:53 pm
Stephen Myles,
The Argentines may or may not have raped women with dogs. They certainly did, however, rape men with electric cattle prods. The men died, of course. And this was done by a purportedly Christian State, in the name of Aristotelian natural law. The best you can say for the Argentine junta is that a) they were more civilized than the Guatemalans, whose casualties were an order of magnitude greater, b) they were anti-liberal, even though their cure was much worse than the disease, and c) they did their best to seize the Malvinas Islands from your decadent country and its p*ssy prime minister Thatcher.
The Montoneros came close to success in the late ’60s, and would have established a truly socially just, Christian-Socialist state. They failed- mostly because they underestimated how brutal their enemies were, and South America returned to decades more of oligarchic domination. One of the many tragedies in the history of a tragic, and great, continent.
People who would defend the Cold War as it was fought in Latin America, are morally blind. As for liberation theology, while I think some of its theological premises are faulty, it was invaluable, and true, as a social and political doctrine.
January 8th, 2009 at 8:44 pm
The issue with Carter’s point is not that he wants peace. Most people want that. It is his push towards blindly forgiving everything. As if he says “well, lots of Israelis will suffer but that is a risk I am willing to take”. It seems like people in Israel don’t want to take that risk now. How is his point of view helping them?
Another issue is that his support of Hamas does not help Palestinians at all and it seems like he does not realize this important distinction.
January 8th, 2009 at 11:37 pm
“And by the way, the consensus in the history departments is that the Congress of Vienna yielded a hundred years of relative peace between Great Powers.”
Well… except for the Crimean War? The Prusso-Austrian War? The Franco-Prussian War? The Prusso-Danish War? Waves of uprisings in 1836 and 1848 which lead to the collapse of several states? The political uprisings that turned the Austrian Empire into the Austro-Hungarian Empire? The Greek uprising? The various Balkan wars? The political dislocations that created Italy and Germany? Let’s not even worry about the other conflicts involving European participants – the Spanish American War and the Japanese Russian War. the Boer War. The depredations against the Ottoman Empire, the the Scramble for Africa, European colonial adventures in China and Asia.
This obviously is a new version of ‘relative’ peace previously unknown.
“So successful were Metternich, that: “Prior to the opening of the Paris peace conference of 1918, the British Foreign Office commissioned a history of the Congress of Vienna to serve as an example to its own delegates of how to achieve an equally successful peace.” That is hardly a stinging indictment, is it?”
Considering how they applied that example, yes indeedy, it is a stinging indictment.
As for the difference between modern historians and their 19th century forebears, I think that’s a difference of perspective.
19th century historians looked closely at Metternich, looked around, and saw everything he’d worked for and believed in eroded away, his values, his ideas, his alliances and his beliefs all so much trash. In that respect they judged him a failure.
Indeed, Metternich ultimately proclaimed himself a failure. His choices stood against the tied of history. It was washed way by a chaotic succession of events, the unwillingness to accommodate change lead inexorably to violent erosions, a future that was random and without planning. The unsustainability of Metternich’s vision lead to endless wars, revolutions and revolts.
Metternich might have done better had he attempted to mount an institution or arrangement that had more capacity to accommodate change, rather than merely resist until component by component it was broken.
The twentieth century attempts at the League of Nations and the United Nations are eloquent testament to the failure of Metternich and his vision in the 20th.
As for the modern reappraisal of Metternich… well, these things go in and out of fashion. Metternich’s values of aristocracy and permanence are attractive in an America which is steadily developing one and losing the other.
January 8th, 2009 at 11:46 pm
On the subject of Chile and ‘rape by dogs’:
http://muse.jhu.edu/journals/radical_history_review/v079/79.1meade.html
Without Pedro Matta’s explanations, the visit to Villa Grimaldi and the other memory sites would have been far more superficial, even for someone with a fairly good knowledge of recent Chilean history. As a Latin American historian, teacher, and political activist, I for years have read about, taught, and protested against the antidemocratic Pinochet government. Although not an expert in Chilean history, I considered myself well informed. Pedro Matta’s tour of the memory sites, however, provided me with a far greater depth of understanding of the oppression meted out by the military regime. Few of the survivors of torture have Pedro Matta’s stamina [End Page 134] and ability to explain what happened to them, an experience he describes as “the depths of the abyss of the human condition.” 13 He attributes his resilience to the fact that Villa Grimaldi was actually the second locale at which he was detained. As Matta explains, although he spent several weeks in Villa Grimaldi, he came there after having been held for five days at an even more notorious place, Venda Sexy, so named for the inhumanly bizarre sex games a guard orchestrated there with her dogs and the prisoners. 14 According to Matta, because Venda Sexy had brought him to the brink of death and certain despair, he found Villa Grimaldi more tolerable. In addition, Matta is unique in his dedication to uncovering and preserving the historical record of abuse during the military regime.
Venda Sexy functioned as an “official” detention center with a regular “9-to-5″ workday schedule, and then the extracurricular torture began at night. One of the guards was a female carabinero (policeman) named Ingrid Olderock who was a dog trainer for the police. She used her particular talents to train a German shepherd dog to rape women. The police called the dog “Bellodilla,” which was the name of the head of the Chilean Communist Party. Olderock is alive and lives in Nunoa (a section of Santiago), where she is retired on a comfortable pension. For more on Venda Sexy see
January 9th, 2009 at 5:01 am
Quite unfortunately barbaric. I personally don’t condone torture, but tinpot dictators do seem to have a disturbing predilection for them and I am in no moral position to tell them to bugger off. Glass houses and stones and all that.
The relative peace I refer to, of course, exist in the sense that there was no huge strategic conflict played out on the battlefield except for Crimea, and that was sort of a sideshow because I mean…it was in Crimea, after all. That was a war more about the Ottoman Empire than Europe. No one, I think, tried to seriously challenge the status quo power structure through grand conflicts. The Franco-Prussian war, for example, was extraordinarily brief and resulted in only moderate casualties, and France, absent Alsace-Lorraine, remained largely intact.
I think I, above all, identify with the values of the Conservative Order. The revolutions of ‘48 were a dangerous spasm of violence that could have easily gone out of control and overthrown the major royal houses. A later statesmen, Lord Curzon, nearly prevailed in imposing some sort of order; his Polish-Russian line was as close as it ever got to ideal. That is the sort of pragmatic realpolitik I admired. And presciently (and relating to this topic), he was aghast at the Balfour Declaration; of course, his misgivings were more than proven by later events.
I think a real realpolitiker would look at the situation in the Levant, and conclude that the best course of action is to just ignore everybody. It is, after all, the periphery and hardly crucial to geopolitics; the most important thing about the region, oil, is secured by arms sales to the Saudis. The problem just gets worse every time the international community gets involved; on its own, it improves, for example in the unilateral withdrawal of settlers by Ariel Sharon. So really, Carter should just shut up and go home; I very much doubt that anyone in that part of the world takes him seriously anyways. What, “democracy monitor?” Save me the laughs.
January 9th, 2009 at 5:11 am
And Hector, whoever refers to the Falklands as Malvinas needs a brain transplant, or worse yet, a lobotomy.
Although there does seem to be no cure for venal, mean-spirited stupidity. And who’s talking “decadant” now? The great nation of Cristina Fernández de Kirchner, and the largest default in history? (December 2001) What sort of pathetic decadence does it take to brazenly not honour $222-billion worth of obligations?
January 9th, 2009 at 5:13 am
Let me repeat myself; the largest default in history. In entire history. A nice way to reach the Guinness Records if there ever was one.
January 9th, 2009 at 8:55 am
President Carter explains that Israel acts in bad faith because Hamas wants a ceasefire in both the West Bank and Gaza but Israel only wants to talk about Gaza.
Perhaps I am mistaken but there are no Hamas in the West Bank, there are no rockets fired into Israel from the West Bank, and there are no Israel incursions or bombings of the West Bank.
What would be the affect? Yes, to weaken another Palestinian organization that whatever its past and present flaws is not currently bringing death on those it was elected to represent.
Once again Hamas postures for world opinion with no genuine intent to act in the interests of the Palestinian people. And once again they succeed wildly in shifting blame onto Israel.
There is nothing even-handed or objective when it comes to the Carters in the middle east. Or frankly any part of the developing world where dictators wrap themselves in nationalism. I am sure they do not consciously think this but the effect of the Carters’ championship simply helps enable those most intent on disrupting peace.
Even Palestinian children understand this in the most bloody way:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uoi0TGyx_uA
January 9th, 2009 at 9:00 am
Quite unfortunately barbaric. I personally don’t condone torture, but tinpot dictators do seem to have a disturbing predilection for them and I am in no moral position to tell them to bugger off. Glass houses and stones and all that.
So, if I read you correctly here, you actually do condone torture, now that the United States is to be listed among those tinpot dictatorships? At least as far as torture is concerned.
I think though, that the larger point is that all too often Realpolitik facilitates torture. There’s all sorts of bad behaviours regimes may get up to – torture, assassination, terrorism, corruption, genocide, invasions.
Realpolitik dictates that all these things be ignored and/or condoned in favour of overriding national interests.
The trouble is that such a sociopathic view is unfortunately limited. A nation which tortures its own people is more inclined to torture foreigners, as the Pinochet government was prone to do. It’s more prepared to commit assassinations and terrorist actions outside its borders, as the Pinochet government did. Ultimately the lack of internal controls leads to escalating corruption and the emergence of Kleptocracy as we saw with Duvalier and Mobutu, which in turn makes a state entirely unreliable and increasingly dysfunctional in economic and trade terms. Extraterritorial aggression, while hardly the rule becomes a predictable symptom.
Ultimately, the paradox of realpolitik is that realpolitik assumes and is dependent upon the notion that states are rational actors, and yet the practice of realpolitik tends to erode that very principle.
The relative peace I refer to, of course, exist in the sense that there was no huge strategic conflict played out on the battlefield except for Crimea, and that was sort of a sideshow because I mean…it was in Crimea, after all. That was a war more about the Ottoman Empire than Europe. No one, I think, tried to seriously challenge the status quo power structure through grand conflicts. The Franco-Prussian war, for example, was extraordinarily brief and resulted in only moderate casualties, and France, absent Alsace-Lorraine, remained largely intact.
Historically, giant super strategic conflicts that rewrite the entire map are relatively rare. The truth is that if they went on all the time, there’d be nothing left. The Napoleanic Wars were a unique paroxysm. It wasn’t Europe’s normal default position.
If you were to look at the 18th century prior to the French Revolution, what you’d find would be the French and Indian Wars (as they’re called here) which featured a series of tussles between the European powers that fell short of the Napoleanic or twentieth century World Wars but which produced incremental realignments. 17th century, 16th century, 15th century more or less the same things. It’s more complicated than that of course, but I’m generalizing.
Your dismissal of the Franco-Prussian War seems profoundly ahistorical, given how definitively that war realigned Europe and arguably lead do the First World War. I think that philosophically you’re mixing apples and oranges. Yes, in terms of some conflicts the Franco-Prussian War was relatively brief, but in Realpolitik terms it was a pants shitting event.
I think I, above all, identify with the values of the Conservative Order.
What values would those be? Aristocracy? Torture? Political repression? Wealthy elites, mass poverty and economic dysfunction? Rape by dogs?
Or merely the childish affection for an illusory notion of permanence and stability.
The revolutions of ‘48 were a dangerous spasm of violence that could have easily gone out of control and overthrown the major royal houses.
You mean like the one in France? Setting that aside, I think that the revolutions and revolts of 48 were a clear symptom of how outdated and ineffective the major royal houses were. The Hohenzollerns (sic) were utterly rotted by that time. The only kind thing I have to say is that they were not Kleptocrats by modern standards.
January 9th, 2009 at 9:15 am
All well and good to mock Carter’s work as ‘democracy Monitor’, but at some point, your attitudes become tinged with racism. Is it really laughable to contemplate democracy among black or brown peoples? Are they incapable or undeserving?
Despite your fashionable cynicism, I’d have to say that Carter is on the right track, and that his efforts make a substantive difference.
January 9th, 2009 at 5:59 pm
We’ll be discussing the Israeli invasion of Gaza from perspectives on both sides of the divide Monday and Tuesday January 12 and 13 at 5 PM New York time on News Talk Online on Paltalk.com with Israel’s Consul General in New York Asaf Shariv and Hussein Ibish, executive director of the Foundation for Arab-American Leadership and senior fellow at the American Task Force on Palestine.
Please go to http://www.garybaumgarten.com and click on the Join The Chat Room button to speak with Shariv on Monday and Ibish on Tuesday.
Thanks,
Gary
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