Security, in the Caucasus and beyond....

Pravda, Panarmenian.net and Neuroticism

2011-12-26T09:59:00.005Z

Little more than two decades ago, there used to be a country called the Soviet Union, ruled by a Communist Party that had little tolerance for ideological deviance. The mouthpiece of that party was called ‘Pravda’, staffed by petty ministry-of-truth bureaucrats whose purpose it was to enforce the party’s monopoly on power and extol the virtues of Communism, if need be through denigrating slander, an art that was perfected during Stalin’s years. The Pravda mentality is, it seems, alive and well in Armenia, with two minor variations: the ideology to be defended is no longer Marxism-Leninism, but petty nationalism, and the mouthpiece is called ‘panarmenian.net’.

In a particularly vicious and chauvinistic piece on that web-based news outlet, a certain Marina Ananikyan takes issue with those citizens who dare question their own republic’s defence policy, who want to celebrate Azerbaijani culture (‘non-existent’, according to the author) on Armenian soil, or those who have dared question the wisdom of the decision by the French parliament to criminalise denial of the Armenian Genocide. After viciously attacking and ridiculing Armenia’s NGO sector, the author concludes that: “People capable of treason should be called to account.”

The mentality that allows one to classify the expression of an opinion, or the organization of days of culture, or the advocacy of human rights, or, in fact, the questioning of a foreign legislative act as ‘treason’ has always eluded me. And it is intimately linked to the completely skewed attitude towards statehood that pervades so many former Soviet societies. The state is there to be obeyed, to be served; as in Soviet times, and as in Leninist political parties, once policy has been established, it must be adhered to by all citizen-comrades. Any dissenting voice is immediately qualified as ‘treasonous’ and sent into the realm of dissidence. An echo of this attitude could also be heard in the confrontation between the governor of Syunik province and environmental activists protesting the expansion of copper mining, where after a few sinister threats, the activists (‘shrimps’) were basically called upon to shut up and serve their state.

I guess the choice here is between a jealous, neurotic state that demands obedience and crushes dissent wherever it sees it, or a self-confident, tolerant state that thrives on pluralism and debate, turning diversity of opinion into a strength. M. Ananikyan and panarmenian.net have clearly chosen the neurotic variant; their readers deserve better.

Back to the Future, Again?

2011-11-30T15:05:00.009Z

Is this how it feels before global calamity? The problem with historically transformative disasters – the two World Wars, the collapse of the Soviet Union – is that they are usually accompanied by a confluence of circumstance and agency that causes the situation to spiral beyond the control of political actors. Witness the dramatic acceleration of the Soviet Union’s hitherto gradual decline following the August 1991 coup. Or, in a more conventional vein, the deadly forces unleashed like a coiled spring by a few shots in Sarajevo, in August 1914.

Economic crises and financial crashes provide even more appropriate examples of what complexity theorists call this the ‘butterfly effect’: a minor event (‘the flaps of a butterfly’s wing’s in China’) is amplified through an unstable system out of all proportion (in the conventional narrative, into a hurricane). Joe Shmoe fails to pay the sub-prime mortgage on his woefully overvalued home in Duluth, Ohio, and Italy goes bust, with or without a few human blunders in between.

Today, we, in the supposedly victorious post-Cold War West, may be finding ourselves in a similar situation, where an unstable set-up could combine with political ineptitude to produce the most unintended results. The world (or, to be more exact, the Western) economy has been considerably weakened by the ongoing financial crisis, whose underlying systemic tensions and imbalances are still present in unmitigated form. The banks may have been saved, but only by transforming private into public debt, pulling down the weakest sovereigns in the process. Global trade still places China as the export manufacturing powerhouse it was before the crisis; efforts at encouraging domestic consumption there have been piecemeal, and the yuan is still undervalued. The financial system remains, for all intents and purposes, unreformed: it has been tweaked at the edges, but over the longer term, its capacity to produce systemic crises has neither been eliminated nor in fact mitigated. The Euro’s possible death-throes are an ominous sign that these imbalances are creating a tipping point, at the other end of which lies financial, economic and political chaos.

Any miscalculation would be disastrous at this point. At stake is not just a common currency, or a particular economic model. At stake is the very structure of security on the European continent, in Western Europe since World War Two, in the centre and the east since the fall of the Berlin Wall.

But what the myopic Eurosceptics in the conservative party and on the pages of the Daily Mail, The Daily Telegraph and the Spectator either do not realise (or do not want to realise), is that is isn’t simply Italian and Greek pensions, the Franco-German axis, European democracy or that is at stake with the failure of the common currency; it is the very idea, the very mode of thought that has made Western Europe the most peaceful region in the history of mankind over the past 60 years.

De-securitisation and a-security are central to this mode of thought: the idea that there are no longer security issues between European nations, and that threats are defined and tackled collectively, be they of a military, political, economic, societal or environmental nature. This is precisely what dampened the modern European curse of nationalism following World War Two, and it has become taken for granted to such a degree that we might actually end up inadvertently losing the very stability it has provided over the past decades. This has happened before: the crowds that cheered their armies into the meat-grinder that World War One was to become were blinded by the progress, prosperity and European hegemony of the years that came before. Those – like David Cameron - who see the possible fall of the Euro as an ‘opportunity’ are in no way less small-minded.

In fact, a plethora of anti-European market fundamentalists – among others Daniel Hannan, Norman Tebbitt and Janet Daley, and the larger part of the parliamentary Conservative Party – have made a point of populating the pages of the British press with a curious and incoherent mix of the euro-sceptic and germanophobic. As usual, they accuse Europe of a lack of democracy, nay, even of organising coups; the solution, they say, is not the democratisation of Europe’s institutions but a return of powers to Westminster. Staunch parliamentarians that they are, they suddenly discover the wonders of the not-so-parliamentary referendum. And, with a mindset stuck somewhere in 1945, they accuse Germany of trying to take over Europe, the implication being that the United Kingdom would have to play its traditional role of ‘balancer’, as in the good old 19^th century. For good measure, they also advise the PM not to trust ‘them frogs’, no doubt remembering the past glories of Trafalgar and Lord Nelson. Some people apparently don’t mind taking the term ‘conservative’ to its absurd, retrograde extremes.

Purposefully or not, all this finger-pointing serves to camouflage the one elephant in the room: the dismal failure of the Anglo-Saxon model of unfettered, minimally regulated capitalism in fulfilling the very promise of prosperity it has been dangling in front of the overwhelming majority of society for decades, but could only deliver at the cost of massive indebtedness. Contrast this with the success of the much more tightly regulated and consensual German economy – where employers, trade unions and the state co-ordinate instead of engaging in never-ending class warfare – and the inherent power relations that drive such narrow fake patriotic rhetoric become clear.

This is not about defending democracy; after all, none of these instant radical democrats are clamouring for referenda on that insultingly archaic and undemocratic institution much closer to home, the Corporation of London, or the austerity measures and cutbacks that have affected millions right here, in Britain. This is about transferring powers back to nation states, whose individual regulatory power will pale into insignificance when confronted with the might of transnational corporations and financial entities whose market capitalisations and turnovers can rival an individual country’s GDP. This is about diverting attention from local socio-economic failures through a primitive appeal to parochial nationalism. This is about divide, rule, and obfuscate, and certainly not people power.

The implication of this euro- and Germany-bashing is that Greece and Italy would have had a choice in the absence of intervention from Brussels to retain the ridiculously inept governments of Berlusconi and Papandreou. But the argument is flawed on two levels that go beyond the simple observation that both changes in government were approved and legitimised by elected parliaments. Firstly, ‘Europe’ was merely acting as an intermediary, transmitting the demands of the market to these nation-states; if anything, it is the market – sacrosanct to the Eurosceptics mentioned above - that is fundamentally undemocratic, and shifting power to nation-states wouldn't change that one jot. Quite on the contrary, on their own, outside an economic and political union, nation-states would be at the mercy of these markets to a far greater extent. Could the UK, Greece or Luxemburg take on wannabe (?) monopolists like Microsoft, extortive multinationals like Europe’s mobile telecoms operators, and professional gamblers in the financial sector on their own? Hardly. ‘Desist, or we’ll take our jobs elsewhere’ and ‘Regulate, and we’ll take our money elsewhere’ would become even more frequently heard refrains than they are today. Try to organise referenda against that.

Secondly, even if the flawed mechanisms behind the Euro are to blame for the imbalances affecting Southern Europe, the solution to these flaws is more, not less of a more democratised Europe; and this choice for Europe, democracy and the Euro goes beyond the simple logic of economic expediency. Shrinking the European project, or risking the latter through a collapse of the Euro would be the height of irresponsibility, precisely because of the ‘butterfly effect’ and its associated dangers described before. Abandon Europe, and all bets are off, security-wise. For the first time since World War Two, 'Europe' will not have tackled a major security challenge collectively. Once this logic of nationalist competition takes hold, once relationships are re-securitised, there is no knowing where it will end, as it spills over from the economic into other security sectors and affects issue-area after issue-area. What might be inconceivable today could become reality tomorrow: Mearsheimer’s back-to-the-future thesis might perform one of the most dramatic turnarounds in the history of social science.

Defending the Indefensible.

2011-10-17T11:36:00.003+01:00

One can only guess what led Mr. Benon Sevan - former under-secretary of the United Nations - into publicly attacking critics of the current regime in Armenia (“so-called pundits, rabble-rousers, including self-serving former government officials”) for trying to “bring about a regime change not through the ballot box but through encouraging a mob culture”. One could not fail to feel a measure of puzzled, slightly nauseated discomfort at his de-crying of the excessive negativity heard about the Republic in the Armenian media. Whatever the reason - fawning servility or accidental ignorance - the sight of someone of Mr. Sevan's stature defending the indefensible was not at all appetising.

“Of all the hundreds of negative reports, is not there at least a single positive development to report on? Contrary to the ongoing politically motivated negativism, there are indeed many successes and improvements achieved in Armenia which deserve to be congratulated and encouraged”, so goes the argument. No country has become democratic overnight, it is posited, and centuries of foreign occupation and seventy years of communist rule have apparently turned poor native Armenian brains into such incoherent goo that they are not able to comprehend the complicated ins-and-outs of electoral democracy and the rule of law. Counting ballots correctly is a very difficult task, it seems.

It is fair to ask whether there has been any society in history that has achieved progress through the kind of self-congratulatory censorship Mr. Sevan proposes. Armenians could, of course, fill the pages of their newspapers with stories of Armenia’s glorious victories and successes – Pravda-style – only to see a polity without critique and introspection inevitably end in Brezhnevite stagnation. Armenians could, naturally, pretend life in Armenia is fab while hundreds of thousands vote with their feet and seek their economic prosperity and political liberty in foreign lands. And Armenians could, as a matter of fact, close their eyes to the authoritarian excesses of Armenia’s leaders, excesses that, far from being the mysterious product of some centuries-old trauma, are the conscious efforts at usurpation by a corrupt elite whose insidious politics and organised criminality are inextricably intertwined.

But when Mr. Sevan directs critics of the current authorities towards the ballot-box, he leaves out the crucial fact that it is the heavy, sweaty hand of a this elite that rests on that box and does the “counting”. In the absence of elected government, it behoves outsiders to respect those who try to resist injustice and effect change, instead of siding with those who, over the past two decades, have turned this country into one gigantic money-making racket, based on government of some people, by some people and for some people.

Those who want a clearer view of the real dangers Armenia is sleep-walking into should urgently re-read Dr. Jirair Libaridian’s recent open letter on the current situation, one that offers a depressing but harshly realistic contrast to Mr. Sevan’s advocation of self-indulgent and entirely misplaced complacency.

Ten Years On

2011-09-13T18:41:00.005+01:00

Alongside marriage, the birth of a child, the death of a relative, 9-11 probably ranks as one of our lives’ starkest, clearest reminiscences. Emotions always help jog the memory; and no emotion does that better than raw terror, the one raw sentiment that these attacks were designed to instil with such chilling effectiveness. For some, that terror consisted of witnessing a world-changing atrocity live, on television; for others – with relatives in the towers, the Pentagon, the planes – that terror mixed with the much closer grief of personal loss.

Ten years on, the mastermind of these attacks is dead. By all accounts, Al Qaeda is a mere ghost of its former self, its most important operatives neutralised, many of its networks dismantled. But will, as Fukuyama asserted in this week’s Observer, the West’s challenge by extreme and violent Islamism be a mere blip on the radar compared to the importance of the rise of China, especially when viewed fifty years hence?

Yes, 9-11 was about the violent, extreme ideology of Jihadist Islamism. And, as Fukuyama contends, it is quite probable that particular mode of thought will fall by the wayside. That is, if our leaders have the foresight not to saw the seeds of terror in an ever-growing number of Islamic states. It was particularly chilling, in that context, to hear Tony Blair engage in an exercise of spectacular intellectual dishonesty by claiming the Iraq invasion made the world a safer place. The cherry on top was his advocating military action against Iran.

If hijacked 767s act as our terror, the driver of our fears and wars, don’t F22s, drones and hellfire missiles have the same effect on those expendable as ‘collateral damage’? This is not about good, old-fashioned Western self-flagellation, not about blaming ourselves for outrages like 9-11 and 7/7. Indeed, the vicious ideology behind these atrocities has a comprehensive totalitarian and obscurantist world-view, and the core carriers of that ideology would probably not stop before these goals are realised, no matter what. But ideologies only die once their core constituencies are isolated, once they are unable to create and maintain the decentralised networks of operatives and supporters that radiate outwards from them. Creating the conditions under which their ideological claims are validated by levelling one Islamic country after another can, to put it mildly, not be helpful, for the West at least. The terrorists, on the other hand, will be much obliged.

But 9-11 was not only about the emergence of global violent Islamism, in the narrow ideological sense. Fukuyama, it seems, is repeating the mistake he made in ‘The End of History’, by confounding the concrete manifestations of grand historical patterns with the patterns themselves. Terrorism – as has been so often pointed out – is a tactic, a specific method within a broader, ideologically driven strategy. And it is the change in tactics towards mega-terrorism that is far more important than the ideology driving that change. Various waves of terrorism have been informed by diverse ideologies – anarchism, nationalism, Islamism. But there is one thread running through all of them: their increasing violence, their wider geographic reach, and the resulting escalating body counts. It is in the nature of humans to produce extreme ideas. Al Qaeda showed a willingness and ability to kill thousands for these ideas; the extremists of the future – whatever their ideological substance - will have at their disposal means of destruction unimaginable to their predecessors as technology continues proliferating. Divorced from its substantive ideological aspect, abstracted into human history, 9-11 becomes a much scarier, much more defining event. If Al Qaeda is defeated, it will morph and reincarnate under a different banner, whose colours are entirely unknown today. You can count on it.

Millstones and Molotov Cocktails

2011-07-11T09:52:00.005+01:00

‘Greece is at an existential crossroads’: a statement that has been repeated over and over again in the international media, at European summits, and in the Vouli. On the streets and squares of Athens and throughout the country, that existential crossroads is not something remote and impersonal, something abstract and far-away. It concerns people’s own livelihoods, their personal existence, their very ability to feed their children. And when humans feel threatened so profoundly in their everyday lives, they tend not to ‘give a damn’ about the lofty (?) motivations that underlay the Euro, the supposed attractions of the European project, or the world’s interest in wider financial stability. They disavow the system. They revolt. Some do so using petrol bombs. Others do so through their voting patterns. Greece’s tortured political history suggests resistance could tend towards the former rather than the latter if Greece’s and Europe’s political leaders don’t tread very carefully. But there is yet hope for peaceful and profound change.

The problem goes beyond mere questions of constitutionality or economics; it emerges, above all, from Greece’s broken, post-dictatorship social contract, the very basis for its failed societal model of the past three decades. It is easy to forget in 2011 in how far the period of stability in post-dictatorship Greece has been the exception rather than the rule within the broader context of recent, twentieth-century history. Spain’s civil war – a cause célèbre throughout Europe in its day – has been written of extensively, and has in many ways overshadowed that other, perhaps equally cruel European civil conflict, in post-World War Two Greece. The resulting constitutional instability and internal turbulence reached their nadir only during the cruel-but-farcical Colonels’ Regime of 1967-1974; when Greece entered the EU in 1980 as the ‘Hellenic Republic’, the scars within its society hadn’t healed. Substantial portions of its population remained disenfranchised and excluded. The subsequent flow of European grants and subsidies provided a cure of sorts, but resulted in a social contract that was entirely distorted and ultimately untenable. In fact, it would perhaps have been better had Greece joined the European Union at a far later date.

Greek elites always saw the public sector as a tool of political patronage; Europe allowed them to expand this abuse, without moreover having to raise the domestic revenue that such an exercise in patronage would normally require. Andreas Papandreou (whose father Giorgios allegedly prophesied that he would run Greece asunder) at first hired left-wing Greeks in an understandable effort to correct their exclusion from the state in the decades following the Communists’ civil-war defeat; but things soon spiralled out of control, with successive socialist and conservative governments hiring sympathisers in turn, buying off public-sector workers with an ever-expanding list of (at times preposterous) benefits and wage rises. The private sector, meanwhile, was stifled under a mountain of rules and regulations, or smothered with productivity-reducing subsidies (Greece is 109^th in the World Bank’s ease-of-doing-business index): sector after sector was turned into a ‘closed shop’, where only a few select, licensed, and usually ‘connected’ individuals were allowed to ply their trade. In return, those left outside of the relative safety of public service or monopolised private sectors were allowed to treat the payment of taxes as contributions to a charity called the ‘Hellenic Republic’.

Without these generous grants and subsidies from Brussels, Greek society would have had to confront the state’s spiralling expenses and inadequate revenues far earlier, and in a far more piecemeal fashion than is the case today. And without the entirely politically motivated admission of Greece into the Euro, Greek society would have faced the higher interest payments on its debt, soon disallowing any publicly funded ‘generosity’ on the part of its irresponsible elites. Quite apart from the issue of inadequate oversight and the fiddling of numbers, it is these subsidies and grants themselves that created an imbalance in the Greek economy that allowed for the continuation of venality in all impunity. As it happened, these subsidies crammed the countless difficult decisions that could have been taken in stages, over decades without causing much social disruption into today, overwhelming the nation’s body politic and tearing its fabric apart.

Re-establishing social cohesion on a more sustainable basis won’t be easy. The kind of economic shock Greece is going through more often than not results in a shifting of the political landscape, but this doesn’t seem to have dawned on many of the existing political actors. The established political centre is, in essence, morally and politically bankrupt; both Pasok and the ND have lost a large chunk of their electorates, even as they continue business as usual by playing petty partisan politics on Greece’s economic half-corpse. Predictably, both the populist right and unreformed radical left are screaming their lungs out hysterically in an attempt to pilfer votes from their mainstream counterparts, in a way that insults the Greek electorate’s intelligence. Greece’s trade unions are fully living up to their reputation as the unduly romanticised representatives of vested public-sector interests. And ordinary Greeks are looking on in growing disgust, confusion, fear and anger.

This existential crossroads could take the country in either of two directions: political-economic oblivion, or renaissance. The basic choice is there for Greeks to make. While still relatively disorganised and ideologically incoherent, the ‘indignados’ movement could form the basis of the latter by spawning political movements that could challenge existing elites and claim a place in the country’s parliamentary politics. And Greek politics needs new blood, badly; given Greece’s still-vibrant and articulate civil society, and the utter rot of its political elites, such new blood should not be too difficult to come by. The end result could be a ‘fourth republic’, with a renegotiated constitutional bargain, and a competitive economy where social progress is based on substantial private-sector growth rather than the pilfering of state institutions and overdependence on EU aid. Insofar as one cannot rebuild state and society with a millstone around one’s neck, default – preferably managed and gradual - should also be an option, an option a far-from-blameless Europe would have to accept and support. Failure to rebuild would mean the Molotov cocktail and the brash populism of the extreme right and the left gaining the upper hand; taking that millstone off the Greeks’ necks would thus be a wise investment, far wiser in any case than the maladministered subsidies and grants that distorted the country’s economy in the first place.

Pathetic Indeed.

2011-06-28T08:01:00.010+01:00

The spectacle was as pathetic a replay of past scenes as one would expect. Great powers calling on two belligerent states to set aside their differences and sign a framework agreement. The belligerents themselves expressing cautious optimism going into the talks. And the talks themselves ending with a communiqué that, in essence, means absolutely nothing. The traditional blame-game concluded proceedings: Azerbaijan repeating its mantras on the injustices of occupation and rattling its sabres a little, Armenia crowing its undying adherence to the principle of national self-determination, and rattling its sabres right back. It would be comical if it weren’t so tragic.

The problem with these talks, and the Madrid principles, is a lack of political will on all sides, and not just the belligerents’. Armenia, deluding itself with the topographic advantage Karabakh affords it, is quite happy with the status quo, thank you, and would not settle for anything less than its protégé’s official recognition, minus perhaps a few occupied territories. Azerbaijan, drunk on oil and the illusion that wasteful defence spending and vocal bravado automatically equal strategic advantage, clings on to the irrational idea of subordinating a population that does not want to be subordinated, come what may.

The fact that both sides have not been able to square the black-and-white circle that is sovereignty (you cannot have a little bit of sovereignty over a territory just as you cannot be a little bit pregnant), is but part of the story. Moscow itself is playing a dishonest game: pretending to be an honest broker when the Kremlin knows that much of its leverage in the region is based on the divide-and-rule context provided by the Karabakh conflict. Both the United States and France increasingly see the South Caucasus as Russia’s back yard; Moscow made that forceful point back in 2008, in Georgia, and it seems to have been heard in Western capitals. None of the Great Powers care or agree enough, it seems, to collectively start turning the diplomatic thumbscrews that would be required at a minimum to shove Baku and Yerevan into line.

And so, you can be certain to expect more of the same in the future, crossing your fingers that it all doesn’t go pear-shaped when one of the sides decides it’s time to call in the generals: lame exhortations from Western capitals to get it over with, Russian diplomats pretending to be earnestly striving for a solution that would make them regionally superfluous, and locals pretending to be just this close to a durable peace. Meanwhile, officials and politicians on both sides will be able to tell the world with a straight face that they are striving for reconciliation while asserting at home that their peoples are ‘ethnically incompatible’, or that the others better relocate if they want their self-determination. Pathetic indeed.

Godfathers and Broomsticks

2010-12-02T12:33:00.008Z

In one of “The Godfather’s” iconic scenes, Don Vito Corleone tells his hot-headed and doomed son Sonny to never let anyone outside the family know what he’s thinking. Imagine Don Corleone’s panic if he one day found out that someone could actually read his mind, and you’ll have some idea of how the diplomats at the State Department must be feeling today, when virtually every Tom, Dick and Harry is able to read an unadulterated chunk of the world’s only superpower’s (and its allies’) innermost hopes and fears.

The implication made by the above comparison is not that diplomats are criminals, or that statecraft is criminality (although one prominent scholar of International Relations is known to have compared the early modern states to war-waging rackets). It is that the anarchic world is dangerous and unpredictable, a web of interconnected causalities that go beyond the control of one single power, with mayhem, war and death an always-present possibility. You poke that web, and kick that hornets’ nest at your own risk. The problem with Assange is not his intent – it lies in the potential unintended consequences that may flow from his actions.

This goes far beyond the death of an individual informant because of specific information found within these leaks. In many of the world’s regions – East Asia, the Middle East, the former Soviet Union – stability hangs by a thin thread. Peace negotiations are often conditioned by the necessity to keep ongoing bartering secret; they would otherwise remain at the mercy of radicals opposing even the slightest compromise, leaving moderate governments unable to sell solutions even before they have been negotiated. The absence of war also often hangs on the very discretion and deceit Assange rather grandiosely aims to abolish – on elements of inducement and deterrence whose effectiveness often hangs on the poker element within the global chess game: bluff.

Wikileaks has become the world’s ordinary citizens’ mind-reading machine. To some, it is a welcome way of humbling the powerful through acute embarrassment, one heaven-sent element of the technological revolution that has made the world a better and freer place by undermining the power of not just any state, but the world’s hegemonic superpower. To others, it is one of the Internet’s dangerous excesses, one that puts the very survival of the art of statecraft in danger: steering the ship of state in a perilous, anarchic world, where Don Corleone’s advice could be of regular use, requires an element of ‘discretion’. Diplomacy, traditionally understood, cannot function without it – as the inter-war idealists learned – much to their disappointment - decades ago.

Assange has taken on a huge moral responsibility – some would say carried out an act of folly – by stirring that which is intensely unpredictable. We often complain of the bungling ineffectiveness of statespeople; the structures they are confronted with are hardly manipulable and present them with surprise after surprise, often giving them the flair of sorcerer’s apprentices. Wikileaks adding to the complexity and risk by creating an information free-for-all is not going to prevent that sorcerer’s apprentice from performing his ill-fated tricks; it’ll just multiply the number of broomsticks that spring from them, without there being a master-sorcerer to put them back in place.

But nevertheless, it is difficult to see how Wikileaks could be legally faulted for this release of information without endangering that central value of Western liberal democracy - freedom of speech. Assange is not a US citizen – he has not committed an act of treason, unlike the person directly responsible for leaking these documents. Even with a US passport, however, as the ACLU has pointed out, his first-amendment rights as a third-party editor/journalist would remain beyond question. For all the dangers outlined above, the perils inherent to limiting a cornerstone of Western liberal democracy would be far greater. Freedom of speech is always liable to create complications - think of the Danish cartoons saga, or the Salman Rushdie episode - but it is up to the diplomats of Western democratic states to adapt to that fact, rather than abuse state power to repress or curtail a fundamental civil right. This happens to be one of the curses of not working for a dictatorship.

The Endgame in Iran?

2010-04-09T21:09:00.002+01:00

And so, the Middle East is nearing a strategic crossroads. Within the next eighteen months or so, the decisions taken by different actors will affect issues far beyond the area itself. And time is running out for such decisions. Last year’s discovery of a covert enrichment plant near Qum is probably only the tip of the iceberg; significantly, the IAEA recently openly accused Tehran of developing nuclear weapons, for the first time in its dealings with Iran. Many experts now estimate that the country is at most 1-2 years away from acquiring a functioning nuclear device. And, judging from the regime’s increasingly defiant tone, it has no intention whatsoever to depart from its stated policy of becoming a ‘nuclear nation’ – one that has mastered a sufficient share of civilian nuclear technology to put nuclear weapons well within its grasp.

As time runs out, and the Obama administration definitively gives up on its short-lived attempt at dialogue with Tehran, attention will again shift to the United Nations Security Council, starting with renewed Western attempts to impose sanctions on the Iranian regime in coming weeks and months. Proposals on the table include various restrictions on institutions and persons connected with the regime, and in particular, its core support base in the Revolutionary Guard. But significantly, recent statements have been shifting towards a whole-scale embargo on Iran’s oil industry – blocking Iranian imports of refined fuels (which it cannot produce itself) and technical supplies, and perhaps also blocking oil exports from Iran – with other producers making up for the shortfall.

A two-fold question arises, however. Firstly, whether such sanctions would be approved by all veto-wielding UNSC members – especially Russia and China. And, secondly, whether such sanctions would at all work. The historical evidence is stacked against both these aforementioned possibilities. Russia and China have a long track record of being reluctant in imposing sanctions on regimes deemed ‘rogue’ by the United States and the West. Both also have serious misgivings about the effectiveness of sanctions in general, and in Iran’s particular case – having described them as ‘counterproductive’ on numerous occasions. While no-one – including Moscow and Beijing – would be interested in the serious damage a nuclear Iran could cause to regional stability and the NPT, both these great powers do have interests in Iran that would be affected directly by a UNSC decision to that effect. Russia is a major trading partner; China has invested heavily in Iran’s oil industry in recent years.

Any imposition of sanctions would therefore involve considerable horse-trading, and, probable linkages with other issues that affect great power relations today – with Moscow and Beijing trying to extract Western concessions in matters not necessarily connected to Iran in return for cutting themselves in the flesh. This does not exclude the possibility of sanctions being ultimately pushed through at the right price. Russia’s position, in particular, has begun to shift in recent weeks, with the foreign ministry expressing ‘alarm’ at the prospect of a nuclear Iran, and Russian defence contractors delaying the delivery of the state-of-the-art S-300 anti-aircraft missile system to the Islamic Republic, ostensibly for ‘technical reasons’. Still, Moscow has made tough noises in the past, only to break with its Western counterparts – and China is maintaining its traditional line emphasising the importance of a negotiated settlement.

But even if tough sanctions came into force, their effect would be highly ambiguous: the historical track record of sanctions (be they of the smart or, if you will, ‘dumb’ variety) is highly dubious. Even in cases around the world where they have had the time to affect elites, economies and societies, they have usually not achieved their desired result in terms of changing regime behaviour. The luxury of time is certainly absent in the case of Iran, and the kind of sanctions that are currently being advocated might end up accelerating rather than stopping its nuclear programme. Past and current embargoes on dual-use technology may hamper Iran’s nuclear quest from the supply side – but, ultimately, its drivers on the demand side remain unaddressed: nuclear weapons, once acquired, are a watertight guarantee of regime security from external threat. This is, and will remain the primary driver of Iran’s nuclear ambitions in the foreseeable future, sanctions or no sanctions.

Some have clung on to the idea that an oil embargo would bring about the current regime’s downfall. Certainly, a whole-scale boycott of Iranian petroleum products would hurt Iran’s oil-dependent economy in an unprecedented way, undermining Iran’s ability to provide for its population. This line of thinking, however, makes three highly uncertain assumptions. Firstly, regime change would be dependent on the regime losing control; instead, an embargo may very well give its hardliners carte blanche for even bloodier repression than has been seen up to now in the name of ‘national security’. Secondly, the assumption is also that Iran would sit still and take such a development quietly. The odds are, however, of a response; there is certainly no lack of opportunities in that sense – Hamas and Hezbollah come to mind, but Iraq, Afghanistan and Hormuz are also definite possibilities should the regime be pressed into a corner.

The third assumption is that the regime would fall before it actually managed to obtain ‘the bomb’. But if anything, an oil embargo might increase the demand-side factor in Tehran’s nuclear quest - and North Korea has clearly shown how the dynamics of inter-state interaction change before and after nuclearisation. Before it, regime destabilisation remains an option; after it, it becomes a folly. Among the “international community’s” greatest contemporary nightmares are those of a destabilised North Korea and Pakistan. Iran probably knows a destabilised nuclear Iran would potentially strike equal fear into Western policymakers’ hearts, probably more so than a stable nuclear Iran - all the more reason to obtain the bomb quickly, for once you cross the nuclear threshold, the kinds of sanctions that actually engender regime change become irrational, providing ample opportunity for brinkmanship.

If one assumes sanctions to be either unattainable or ineffective, the choice becomes one between the two evils of nuclear deterrence and military action – and it is not a straightforward one to make. The views of nuclear deterrence as a regional stabiliser are controversial at best; they also come at the price of either abandoning the NPT to its fate as nukes proliferate freely in the region, or of the United States extending its nuclear umbrella, not to mention the incomparable consequences of potential deterrence failure. The military option, on the other hand, would carry with it the certainty of regional destabilisation, probably with global repercussions, and great uncertainty in terms of its chances for success. In the absence of good intelligence (a rare commodity indeed), military strikes would at best delay Iran’s nuclear capability.

But this is exactly what might make the military option a more rational (or less irrational) choice in combination with sanctions. If embargoes are perceived to take long time to work, a hit on Iran’s nuclear facilities might be seen as extending the possibility for sanctions to work, even if it only ends up delaying its nuclearisation. Considering the fact that Israel, as a ‘free agent’ might actually be both able and willing to carry out such strikes, it becomes clear to what extent this is a situation fraught with danger. And in view of all the certainties and potentialities involved, it seems the next few years will be undesirably interesting for all.

[This article is also due to be published in the upcoming issue of The Majalla]

On 8 March, throw away that red apple....

2010-03-02T13:53:00.001Z

At its inception, the Soviet empire included some of the most patriarchal societies on the Eurasian landmass – even by the already patriarchal standards of 1917. True to their Marxist teachings – which saw the patriarchal family as a microcosm of bourgeois oppression – the early Bolsheviks set upon many of the Central Asian and Caucasian traditions that had kept women in Tbilisi, Tashkent, Baku in bondage for centuries. The veil was torn up. Women received equal rights of divorce. Legally at least, they received at the very least the same level of control over mind and body that this totalitarian system allowed their male counterparts. They could opt for higher education, indeed, they were encouraged to. And abortions were legalized.

The picture was not unequivocally rosy throughout the history of the Soviet Union. Some of Stalin’s policies were particularly retrograde, both state and party remained bastions of male dominance throughout Soviet history, and, in the later Soviet period, many of the great ambitions of the early Bolsheviks became mired in the self-congratulatory stagnation of Brezhnevism. Nevertheless, there is no doubt that, in the Caucasus and Central Asia at least, seventy years of communist rule drastically transformed the power relationships between men and women on a very fundamental level. Where an illiterate Central Asian girl born at the beginning of the century could at pin her hopes for a not-too-bright future on her parents’ choice of a not-too-old and -gruff husband, women at the end of the Soviet experiment could fully expect to become part of their republic’s workforce and live a life of their choosing (again, within the confines of ‘Really Existing Socialism’). And while local patriarchal traditions did stay alive, at least it was official policy to discourage some of their more sinister utterances.

The fall of the Soviet Union was a disaster for gender equality throughout the collapsed empire – but especially in these above-mentioned hyper-patriarchal societies in the Caucasus and Central Asia. With the economic collapse, many women lost their ability to survive independently outside of marriage if they so chose to; others had the pressure of being the sole breadwinners for their families added to their household chores, which they had always been expected to perform even in Soviet times (attesting to the limits of the Soviet gender experiment). But, perhaps more importantly, with the revival of nationalist, old, forgotten and atavistic patriarchal traditions were embraced with gusto by the new authorities throughout the FSU. With official Marxism gone, nothing could counter-balance the revival of male chauvinism – that ever-present companion of bigoted nationalism - in places like Georgia, Armenia, Azerbaijan.

The cult of virginity returned, with a vengeance, as confirmed by sociological surveys throughout the Caucasian republics, where a solid majority of men would not marry a woman who has already ‘done it’ with another man [the opposite does, of course, not apply, for ‘boys will be boys’.]; such attitudes were, naturally, actively promoted by the local religious establishments, with many Georgian and Armenian priests and Azeri mullahs busily pontificating on the virtues of matrimony and the weaknesses of the ‘fair sex’. Those same surveys confirm a large majority in these republics believe women to be less intelligent than men, and therefore under the obligation to be obedient to their husbands. Domestic violence, a survey by Amnesty International tells us, is rife, with a quarter of women falling victim to it in Armenia. Girls born in Yerevan, Baku and Tbilisi today are expected to a far greater extent than before to be good housewives above all – the pressures to marry –and forget about a career- are on as soon as they turn eighteen. You go to university to find a husband: the clock has been well and truly turned back by a few decades.

The reappearance of ‘traditions’ has also meant a sudden return to grace of a supposedly ancient, but probably reconstructed – and certainly despicable – Armenian usage: that of the ‘Red Apples’. In short, on the morning after her first wedding night, the groom’s family is supposed to deliver a basked of red apples to the bride’s relatives – as a confirmation of their newlywed’s virginity. While the custom is certainly not ubiquitous (some Armenians would still take such a gesture as a rather vulgar insult) it has certainly seen a revival – as have, not surprisingly, hymen-repair operations throughout the region, where a few remote villages even continue the even more demeaning practice of hanging the bloodied bed-sheets out on public display during the morning after – just in case anyone missed the point made by the apples themselves. In an atmosphere of national chauvinism, challenges to this kind of atavism are few and far between; the few Armenian women who protested against the ‘red apple’ on international women’s day, in March 2009, were ridiculed by bystanders who saw them as eccentric threats to the ‘grandfatherly traditions’ (‘papakan adatner’ in Armenian) of the country, and, for good measure, compared them to drug addicts.

What’s more, international women’s day itself, instead of being what it was intended to – a celebration of or an impetus to emancipation, depending on what side of the women’s-lib divide your country is one – is distorted in all societies of the region into an affirmation of women’s subordinate position. ‘Sois belle et tais-toi’ – be pretty and keep quiet – could just as well be the motto of the day. Instead of concentrating on the numerous problems women face, the dominant themes are those of ‘female beauty’ and ‘motherhood’ – in fact, for a while in the 1990s, the Armenian government had abolished the observance of International Women’s Day in favour of a reconstructed ‘day of beauty and motherhood’ [sic], in April. While the sight of men buying flowers for their female counterparts is certainly not a disagreeable one at first sight, in this region, it serves to camouflage the inferior position of the female sex, where ‘manhood’ (‘tghamartkutyun’) still implies the dependence of women on male protection and tutelage. Independent women who make choices that fall outside these norms – do not marry, don’t have children, or simply don’t give up their career for God, husband and family – are seen as bad mothers, hysterics, weirdos, just as in the olden days in Europe.

The point of 8 March is to put an end to these distortions, which keep half of these societies’ populations – with all their ability and talent - in a social corset. It is ultimately up to Armenian, Georgian and Azeri women to free themselves from it – and regain the rights they enjoyed before their republics decided to go back a few decades, and more. Because, in the end, international women’s day has nothing to do with either beauty or motherhood – and everything with liberty and equality.

Aborting Afghanistan?

2009-12-03T15:42:00.002Z

Yesterday’s decision by the Obama administration to increase troop strengths by more than 30,000 could not be described as a surge; if anything, combined with the 18-month deadline for ‘Afghanising’ the military campaign, it in effect implies either the abandonment of the country to its fate over the longer term, or a misleading of public opinion over the complexities involved: believing one could create structures – military or political – in a state as weak as Afghanistan within that time-frame goes beyond optimism. At best, it is a tragic miscalculation; at worst, it is a desperate fib held up to appease electorates already disillusioned by eight years of hubris and insincerity. What will be required in the future will be a kind of leadership that the world has been without for many years, one that goes together with an ability to exact sacrifice and provide much-needed sincerity in a brave new world, and one whose lack in 2001-2008 lies at the root of the problems in Afghanistan today.

Few people now remember that in 2001, when the Taleban were overthrown, the Western military presence was minimal by any standard – rather wisely, much of the actual fighting in these months had been carried out by the forces of the Northern Alliance, aided by targeted aerial bombings and a small group of about 1,500 American special forces. But once that objective had been achieved, hubris quickly took over. Afghanistan was to be transformed, not merely into a viable, but also into a democratic state - and an army of civilian personnel was sent in to teach the Afghans how to govern themselves. Meanwhile, in 2002, Kabul’s plight steadily descended downwards on the list of priorities Western leaders – particularly in Washington – had set themselves in the aftermath of 9-11. Not surprisingly for an administration that was apt to proclaim missions accomplished at the end of their beginning, it was time for more pressing matters: Iraq.

I won’t go into the neo-conservative follies that ‘informed’ the Bush administration’s decision to stumble into Mesopotamia with all the fake pomposity that shock and awe could provide. What is important here and now, in the Afghanistan of 2009, is how Bush and Blair’s mendacity destroyed trust in political leadership when it mattered most (in times of war), how their strategic megalomania caused everyone to get the eye off the ball in Kabul – eventually leading to dramatic mission creep, and how their almost childishly ethnocentric assumption that ‘inside every Afghan/Iraqi there is an American waiting to pop out’ led to seriously underestimating the effort involved in building statehood from scratch in a place with a strong, historically grounded sense of cultural-religious specificity.

War takes leadership, the kind of leadership that is capable of exacting sacrifice and patience from one’s population; and in the era of ‘long wars’ that we live in today, that kind of leadership is called for over longer periods of time. This leadership is not based simply on the ability to ‘talk tough’: talking of a ‘war on terror’ and ‘evil’ might have made Bush seem ‘determined’ and ‘statesmanlike’ to some, in the end, as many have pointed out, it completely misrepresented a long-term and quite indeterminate struggle as a military action with definite starting- and end-points, inevitably leading to disillusionment. In addition, leadership is most certainly not found in the by now all-too transparent spin that underlay the doctored dossiers, designed to deceptively sway international and national public opinion. The images of Colin Powell misleading the UNSC, and of Tony Blair hoodwinking the Commons are now engrained in our collective memories, and will make things far more difficult for any future (or, in fact, present) leaders who’ll have to mobilise electorates in matters of national security that do not involve crying wolf – like Afghanistan, for instance.

War also takes strategic forethought – the strategic forethought that underlies the art of matching limited resources and military capabilities to complex problems that resist simple (and cheap) solutions. To in effect open a second front in Iraq while Afghanistan was not entirely pacified was already based on a fair amount of over-optimistic assumption; that it would then limit the human and material resources that could be assigned to the effort in Afghanistan was an almost-inevitable outcome. It is, naturally, quite useless to speculate now on what would have happened if the West had, from the very start, smothered Afghanistan in aid by spending even one quarter or one eighth of the amounts spent on invading Iraq there, rebuilding many more communities, eradicating much more of the drugs trade, providing much more infrastructure and employment for ordinary Afghans – who are now flocking to the relatively well-paid Taleban. Instead, we can now look in incredulous amazement at the way things actually turned out – the failure rebuild and stabilise Afghanistan on tight resources due to other, ‘more pressing’ commitments. In the era of budget airlines, it might have seemed alluring to attempt easy-State-building and easy-War; the end result were quagmire and mission creep – from 1,500 troops in 2001, to 70,000 in 2009, and counting.

Finally, war takes a certain amount of cultural humility – especially when it is combined with state/nation-building in a place as complicated as Afghanistan. The fetishisation of elections, and the employment of Western-centric models of statehood and good governance were bound to fail in a country with an entirely different and historically deeply rooted political culture, one based on tribal and religious loyalties that could not be realistically redirected towards a central government within the spate of a few years. The assumption that Afghans wanted democracy was fundamentally flawed; in a country where the Taleban, of all people, were initially perceived by many as a blessing after decades of chaos and civil war, it would perhaps have been productive to listen to the hopes and fears of ‘the locals’ instead of assuming their natural propensity for liberal government. One possible outcome would have been the realisation that Afghans, above all, wished for security, and that whether that security was provided by a democratic central government, local, traditional tribal or religious structures or, in fact, Beelzebub himself was immaterial, as long as it was provided. Instead, Western ‘experts’ took their Bosnian and Timorese templates to Kabul, and the end result was Karzai’s 2009 electoral farce.

It is clear that the stabilisation of Afghanistan is an objective of enormous strategic importance. It is situated between one aspiring and one actual nuclear power – the Pak in ‘AfPak’ – with whom its fortunes are tightly bound. Those who assume the Taleban could be persuaded not to give shelter to Al Qaeda in return for a withdrawal engage in wishful thinking; if anything, Pakistan’s hapless experience with appeasement in the SWAT valley would suggest a kind of radical revolutionism within that movement that does not bode well for the chances of such a compromise, most certainly in the event of a Taleban victory. Finally, defeat in the country would be of enormous symbolic importance in the struggle against Al Qaeda (& Co.), providing the network’s propagandists with apparent ‘divine sanction’ in the eyes of its sympathisers and potential adherents – in much the same way as the failure to capture Bin Laden has done in previous years. Leaving the country to its fate will have nasty consequences, possibly worldwide, probably regionally and most certainly for the Afghans themselves.

And so, the Obama administration faces a choice – and it is not simply one between staying the course and leaving. It is also one between providing frank and honest assessments on the one hand, and fudging the truth, on the other. While much of the damage has already been done through the previous years of dishonesty, neglect and overconfidence, it is not too late to learn from the past, reintroducing the elements of leadership, foresight and humility that were formerly so absent. If the Obama administration has – unwisely - decided to leave Afghanistan to its fate by 2011, it should say so openly. If it has decided to stay the course, it should be clear and honest about its objectives, without the fear of expressing the harsh truth that Afghanistan is too unpredictable and complex for deadlines. It should acknowledge the long timeframes and enormous means – human and material - required to achieve these complex and unpredictable objectives. And it should accept the need for thinking outside the Western-centric liberal-democratic box in the quest for stability in Afghanistan, going beyond the traditional models of the Westphalian state if need be. But whatever it does, spineless spin should no longer be an option.

Fiat Justitia, Pereat Armenia?

2009-10-12T00:53:00.005+01:00

In an essay published today in the Armenian Weekly, Prof. Theriault – a member of the faculty at Worcester College - accuses two diaspora Armenian political scientists, Asbed Kotchikian and David Davidian, of taking a ‘neutralist’ position on the protocols issue – and rejects the claimed ‘rationalism’ of their analyses. Much hinges on the meaning of rationality and irrationality within his paper. The author employs a rather broad conception of the term: rationality, he claims, is about “logic’ – it is, more specifically: a form of thought in which reasons are given in support of a claim”. He continues:

“…the numerous dissenting Armenian voices rejecting the protocols present rational arguments based on factual evidence for rejection. While one might challenge the logic and dispute the claimed facts, the fact that some rational people disagree with rejection of the protocols does not mean that those who reject them are irrational.”

Quite apart from the fact that Davidian does indeed challenge the logic of the opponents of the protocols – which, by Theriault’s own definition, would give him the right to call their arguments irrational – Prof. Theriault goes down the self-righteous track by, in effect, implying – however indirectly – that Davidian and Kotchikian, and all other ‘protocol supporters’ as traitors, because:

“For Armenians to acquiesce in this is not merely to betray the memories of those who died and those who survived. It is not merely to accept one of the great grand larcenies of history and the debilitating poverty that has resulted.”

Leaving aside this self-righteous moment, Theriault’s “analysis” contains two fundamental flaws: firstly, a breathtakingly leap-of-faith confidence in the power of justice and legitimacy in international politics, and, secondly, an inability to distinguish between rationality and reasonableness. Let’s look at these flaws in turn.

“We need look no further than Plato’s Republic and Gorgias to see advocacy of ethical principle over realpolitik by a thinker universally recognized as one of the most rational in human history. Of course, those who understand how social movements really work, how they succeed, will recognize this all-or-nothing strategy as quite practical…”

…he writes, then referring to the accomplishments of Mahatma Ghandi in India, and Martin Luther King in the United States, subsequently making the extraordinary statement that “moral legitimacy is a great force in geopolitics and is the reliable ally of the weak, oppressed, and marginalized.”

Prof. Theriault inevitably comes to overestimate the power of justice and legitimacy in international politics, for one simple reason (quite apart from relying on classical authors whose works were indeed ethereally ethical, but ultimately politically impractical) – he fails to make a distinction between the transnational and international realms. The former is the level of interpersonal relations, through state boundaries. The second is the world of Nietzsche’s “cold monsters” – the states. While arguably highly interrelated, these two worlds very arguably function according to different logics.

Simply put – one would have to change the way the international realm ticks for Prof. Theriault’s arguments to have any bearing on what happens between states. While there is a wholesale intellectual attempt with precisely that aim – Critical International Relations and Critical Security Studies – it has minimal effect on policymakers, even where Great Powers are concerned. Prof. Theriault should look at the fate of the United Kingdom’s ‘ethical foreign policy’ during the first years of Labour’s rule – it didn’t take long for its lofty declared ideals to bump into the harsh realities of international politics. Unless Armenia is able to change the rules of the international game – something even Great Powers would struggle to do - it will have to acquiesce in these rules, or risk losing out. The choice is stark, but clear.

It is telling that all examples given by Theriault come from social movements operating at the transnational, or even sub-national realms – the fact that Ghandi faced the rule-of-law British, and that Martin Luther King operated under the protection of the American constitution does not appear to weaken their relevance for the current inter-state processes between Ankara and Yerevan for the author. But these two personalities were leaders of ‘social movements’, within states. In the anarchic world of inter-state relations, there are no supreme courts, no constitutions, no policemen to protect you and provide ‘justice’ – or, more accurately, legality - when things go wrong; you – the state – are pretty much on your own. To paraphrase both Theriault and Stalin, “how many divisions does moral legitimacy have?”

Theriault’s second mistake is his conflation of rationality and reasonableness – always dangerous in the social sciences. Rationality is about matching means to ends – it is about optimizing resources given certain aims. Reasonableness refers to the choice of these aims. The greatest problem in the current debates surrounding the protocols is that both means and aims are contested. Quite simply, the proponents and opponents of the protocols have a different idea of the way the Armenian state should prioritise its aims: does historical justice come first, or do bread-and-butter concerns (survival in prosperity) matter more? Once you don’t agree on the aims of statehood, it is not difficult to disagree on the means as well. What might be ‘profitable’ or conform to the requirements of ‘raison d’état’ may very well be despicable from the point of view of ‘justice’. In the end, it is not simply about ‘logic’, but the aims you choose, the hierarchy within these aims and how well means and ends are matched up.

And here, the question becomes how reasonable – or in fact, ethical - it would be to burden the Republic of Armenia with the task of providing ‘justice’ in a world where even Great Powers are, as a rule, unwilling or unable to be guided primarily by ethics. Or how morally justifiable it would be to cling on to an attitude that, in effect, implies – ‘fiat justitia, pereat Armenia’: that there be justice, even if Armenia may perish.

The morality of the protocols’ proponents lies precisely in their rejection of such an attitude. They value statehood, and the fate of Armenia’s present and future citizens, over the requirements of restitution for the past, in the knowledge that a prosperous and self-confident state would be the best – and most rational - retort to the injustices of Genocide. In the end, isn’t that what Kant’s categorical imperative is about: that humans always remain the aim, and never become the means?

Beware the Grand Bargain.

2009-09-17T19:33:00.004+01:00

The protocols published by the Armenian, Turkish and Swiss foreign ministries on 31 August have provoked an outcry among both Armenian and Turkish nationalists. Both societies were caught entirely unawares – in fact, in the weeks running up the announcement, commentators on all sides were describing the Turkish-Armenian reconciliation process as all but moribund. After the initial shock, some of the criticisms levelled against the protocols were well-founded and –argued; others departed from trains of thought that bordered on the ludicrous and absurd. Among Devlet Bahceli and the sympathisers of the ultra-nationalist MHP, as well as elements of the more mainstream CHP, the narrative was one of ‘betrayal’ to the Turks’ ‘blood-brothers’, the Azeris. Among Armenian nationalists, in Armenia but especially in the Diaspora, accusations flew regarding a supposed betrayal of ‘Armenian historical rights’. On both extremes, the reactions were completely predictable in terms of their enduring, fossilised paranoia.

As things stand, it is clear that both the Turkish and Armenian governments took a substantial risk in trying to push the reconciliation agenda. Both the ethnic Azeri community in Turkey and the Azeri government have grown adept in recent years in exploiting the nationalist reflexes that still exist within Turkish society. And, in agreeing to the recognition of the current Turkish-Armenian border, and the setting up of a sub-commission dealing with the 1915 Genocide, Yerevan must have known it would be taking a calculated risk by endangering its relations with the Diaspora (or substantial parts thereof): while society in Armenia proper has shown an at best mixed reaction to the documents, the Diaspora – still dominated politically by the Dashnaks – has displayed an overwhelmingly negative attitude.

On their own, these risks seem daunting. Turkey’s policy towards the former Soviet Union has, in no small part, been based on its positioning as a crucial energy hub towards the Caucasus and Central Asia – something dependent in no small part on its “One Nation, Two States” alliance with Azerbaijan. And, since at least 1998, Armenia’s state ideology has propounded the idea of ‘One Nation, One Culture’ – defining the Republic of Armenia as the representative of all Armenians, including the Diaspora, on the international stage. The thus mobilised lobbying power of that Diaspora was part and parcel of Armenia’s foreign policy in previous years – and losing at least part of it would, no doubt, leave Armenia substantially weaker.

Focusing on the immediate risks taken by both actors, however, provides us with only part of the picture: these pitfalls are substantial, but so are the potential benefits. On other levels, and in other issue-areas, both Turkey and Armenia believe they stand to gain significantly in the case of a successful rapprochement. The Turkish government’s stance forms part of its broader ‘zero-problems’ domestic and foreign policies, which received added urgency following the 2008 Russo-Georgian war. Its policies towards the Caucasus and Central Asia are clearly threatened by potential instabilities, which would threaten energy routes and endanger its now excellent relations with Russia through the complex network of allegiances and alignments in the troublesome region. Armenia, on the other hand, is growing increasingly concerned at the sight of increasingly disadvantageous economic growth differentials; of the three states, Armenia’s economy has been hit the hardest by the global economic crisis. Yerevan’s more determined push for better relations with Turkey is, to a significant extent, predicated on an understanding that, left isolated, Armenia’s economy will likely continue to underperform its neighbours’ (as it has in recent years, particularly in relation to Azerbaijan), with significant strategic implications in the long term.

Turkey craves for stability in its immediate neighbourhood – apart from wanting to do away with one of the arguments that might stand in the way of its eventual EU membership, as well as seeking to avert a complication of its relationship with the United States through a possible recognition of the Armenian Genocide by Congress. Armenia, similarly, wants to reintegrate its isolated economy into the regional and global networks that provide for growth and prosperity – even if that doesn’t necessarily mean a reconsideration of its strategic relationship with Russia. What’s more, with Russian-Turkish relations ‘better than they have ever been’ (according to Vladimir Putin), a possible normalisation of Armenian relations with Turkey would not necessarily elicit the same kind of concern in Moscow as it might have had five years ago. Contrary to what some commentators have recently stated, an opening of the border between Turkey and Armenia would most probably not imply Armenia’s gravitation towards the West. Russia would be able to live with Turkish-Armenian reconciliation because of its strategically dominant position within the Armenian economy, and, besides, as anyone studying East Asian politics would know, political-military realignments do not necessary follow from the creation of economic linkages.

Moreover, unlike elsewhere, the Great Powers – the United States, Russia and, if one considers it a member of that exclusive club, the EU – now seem to be aligned on the dual issues of Turkish-Armenian and Azeri-Armenian relations. Contrary to expectations, the Minsk Group did not implode following the Russo-Georgian war of 2008; quite on the contrary, the United States and Russia seem to have made co-operation within that group part and parcel of the ‘reset’ in relations touted by Hilary Clinton earlier this year. If – and that is a big ‘if’ - that ‘reset’ does succeed and the Great Powers achieve a more deeply and broadly grounded form of strategic cooperation, this may end up seriously constraining the bargaining power of smaller regional players. It would be very difficult for either Armenia, or Azerbaijan, or (to a far lesser extent) Turkey to resist any imposed or ‘suggested’ solution based on a consensus between the ‘Great Powers’ – a consensus that, while still difficult to achieve, would encompass highly important issues like NATO expansion, missile defence, Iran, and energy routes out of Central Asia. With Karabakh and Armenia-Turkey interwoven with many of these issues, anyone seen as threatening such a hard-won grand bargain would soon find his options exhausted.

It's that rear-view mirror again.....

2009-09-03T11:18:00.001+01:00

Both Armenian and Turkish societies were hit by a bombshell this week, when their governments announced the full texts of two protocols on the normalisation of bilateral relations and the establishment of diplomatic links. In a nutshell, these two documents provide for the opening of borders and the exchange of diplomats within two months of them coming into force, after their ratification by the parliaments in Ankara and Yerevan. Among others, they provide for the mutual recognition of borders, the setting up of a series of commissions and sub-commissions tasked with resolving a whole range of issues, including those connected to the 1915 Genocide.

The announcement immediately provoked the ire of nationalist circles in both Armenia and the Diaspora. The ARF instantly accused the Armenian government of selling out ‘Armenian historical rights’, of endangering national security, and of thwarting recognition of the Armenian Genocide: the Armenian president, the party concluded, did not have the right to sign such an accord. Its lobbying arm in Washington, the ANCA, even went to Capitol Hill to denounce the protocols as ‘dangerous’. All of this could easily have been foreseen – the ARF lives and dies by the Armenian Cause, and the protocols infringe on the most fundamental tenets of their ideological utopia.

What is perhaps more disquieting for the ARF’s governing ‘Buro’, however, is the muted, even lame reaction the protocols received in Armenia. A widely advertised demonstration against the recent efforts at Turkish-Armenian rapprochement attracted barely one thousand people. More significantly, Armenia’s largest opposition group, the Armenian National Congress (HAK), reacted quite mutedly – and constructively – to the protocols. In a short statement, it called them a ‘giant leap’ in the normalisation of Turkish-Armenian relations. It expressed concern at the requirement for ratification, and called the historical commission on the Genocide ‘unacceptable’. In short, while it expressed serious - and well-grounded - reservations about the protocols on a tactical level, it implicitly welcomed the general strategy of seeking normalisation with Armenia’s largest immediate neighbour.

The contrast between the HAK and the ARF is quite striking. And it emerges from a fundamentally different approach to Armenian statehood in both organisations: the HAK’s leader, Levon Ter-Petrosyan, clearly saw Armenia as the state of and for its citizens rather than the standard-bearer of pan-Armenian nationalism during his presidency in 1991-1998. The ARF, meanwhile, continues to define the country, first and foremost, as the core of a future ‘Greater Armenia’, an instrument at the service of the at times quixotic aspirations of Armenians as a worldwide ethnos. The fact that normal relations between Ankara and Yerevan are required from the point of view of realpolitik is entirely lost in this line of thinking. But how exactly does putting a country at the service of a nationalist pipedream enhance the safety, wellbeing and prosperity of its citizens?

Accusing the Armenian government of ‘signing away’ Armenian rights by recognising the border between its state and its largest neighbour is completely absurd. It emerges from the dual delusions – held by many in the diaspora – that, firstly, a recognition of a genocide would automatically engender territorial claims by the Republic of Armenia on Turkey, and that, secondly, the treaty of Sevres is still in force, or could be argued to still be in force. Both assumptions are patent nonsense. To begin with, the Republic of Armenia did not exist in 1915-1917, when the Genocide was carried out, so any claims for compensation would have to be legally treated as claims by wronged citizens of the Ottoman Empire. As for the Sevres treaty – it was never ratified by anyone, superseded by Lausanne, cancelled out by recognitions of Turkey’s border by the Soviet Union (which, under the principle of uti possidetis, Armenia would have to honour). It is as dead as dead can be; even those who have made it their (at times lucrative) business to tell receptive diasporans otherwise know that to be the case. If the Armenian government is signing away anything by recognising the border, it is this Armenian version of the Sèvres syndrome.

Many Armenians in Armenia and Nagorno-Karabakh are tired of being put at the service of ideological utopias, be they communist or nationalist. What they want is what everyone wants – security and prosperity, for themselves and their children. It is the fact that both these public goods are amply provided for in Glendale, Beirut and Paris that allows many in our Diaspora to engage in nationalist machismo, dreamily demanding ‘Armenia from sea to sea’. Snug and secure in our respective host countries, we diasporans can afford to waste our efforts at trying to attain the unattainable; people in Armenia and Artsakh cannot, and will not. They lived 70 years pursuing a worker’s paradise and won’t waste the next generations limiting their options by trying to attain another pipedream, and that is their full right. These are the real reasons behind the tiny ARF demo and the muted HAK statement in Yerevan.

To paraphrase one Yerevan taxi driver, it is time to stop staring at the rear-view mirror and start looking at the road ahead.

Iranian Revolution, Part 2?

2009-06-18T10:41:00.003+01:00

There has been much excitement, especially in the Western media, about what has been going on in Iran over the past few weeks. Some commentators – concentrating mostly on the superficial similarities between the demonstrations then and now – have even gone so far as to compare events with the days that shook the world almost exactly 30 years ago, leading to Khomeini’s return to Iran and the establishment of the Islamic Republic. But such comparisons are far from justified: they simplify, and overestimate the differences between Ahmadi-Nejad and his opponents. Both are very much products of the current Iranian establishment – Musavi perhaps even more than the incumbent.

This is not a popular uprising – rather, it is a classical intra-elite affair, where different factions within the Iranian leadership use ‘the masses’ to improve their positions in a struggle for power. Let’s not forget that Musavi was prime minister during the heyday of the Islamic Republic, when Ayatollah Khomeini – the same Khomeini who issued the fatwa against Salman Rushdie – was supreme leader. One of his allies is none other than Mohsen Razai, a former commander of the Pasdaran – the Revolutionary guard – known for its ideological rigidity. Musavi is openly supported by former president Hashemi Rafsanjani – known for both his pragmatist (and self-enriching) tendencies within Iranian society, but still a pillar of Iran’s clerical establishment. A change from Ahmadi-Nejad to Musavi could perhaps modify the style and form of Iranian discourse (no more “wiping Israel of the map”), but it would not even dent the fundamental principle of the Islamic Republic – Velayat-e Faqih, Guardianship of the Jurisprudent, that uneasy combination of electoral democracy and theocracy. It would, moreover, still leave the most fundamental levers of power – control of the military and, especially the Revolutionary guard, and all security forces – safely in the hands of the supreme leader, Ayatollah Khamenei. At best, one could get a return to the Khatami era, where the freedom of movement of a reformist president was easily frustrated and limited by the ever-dominant conservatives in the Guardianship Council and the Assembly of Experts.

And as for the nuclear issue – while Musavi might perhaps be more susceptible to outside pressure (partly because of his more liberal take on Iran’s ramshackle economy), the conservatives within the security establishment would most likely ensure continuity there as well. As Al-Baradei correctly pointed out this week, Iran has very deep-seated motives to either obtain a nuclear bomb outright, or, at the very least, master the technology required to manufacture one at short notice. First and foremost come state and regime security – the contrast between Iraq and North Korea would indeed lead any government to see nuclearisation as the ultimate guarantee of survival. A quick look at the map also shows how Iran is surrounded by nuclear powers – Russia, Israel, Pakistan – two of whom obtained their nuclear capability outside the NPT. How could Iran realise its long-standing claim to regional power status without a nuclear arsenal?

What many – especially in the West – tend to forget is that the country’s nuclear programme was started in 1958 by the Shah, who thought imperial Iran wouldn’t be quite that imperial without ‘the bomb’. The Islamic Republic decided to restart the programme in the final years of the Iran-Iraq war – partly in response to lessons drawn from that war, partly, also, out of a long-held conviction that Iran – the Mellat-e Bozorg-e (Great Nation) – would have to find its place in the world. Iran’s nuclear propensities survived the Iranian revolution; and just like the Islamic Republic, they’ll most likely survive what comes next.

Obama follow-up

2009-06-08T10:49:00.004+01:00

Clinton: If Iran strikes Israel, expect retaliation
By Haaretz Service
Tags: Iran, Israel News, UN

United States Secretary of State Hillary Clinton said on Sunday that Iran must expect full retaliation from a "a battery of nuclear weapons countries" should it ever attack Israel. [...]

http://www.haaretz.com/hasen/spages/1090954.html

As I said in my previous post, extended nuclear deterrence could be Obama's plan B regarding Iran.....

Obama pushing the right buttons - but now what?

2009-06-05T12:27:00.011+01:00

As a rhetorical exercise, yesterday’s speech by the President of the United States could not fail to impress. On a discursive level at least, the winds of change emanating from the White House are palpable. Gone are the days when presidential speeches consisted of incoherently mumbled Manichean simplicities – “good versus evil”, “with us or against us”. The insight that the world – and, especially, the Middle East - is much more complicated is a good start; but much more will be needed if this US administration is to repair the years of malign neglect displayed by its predecessor towards the Middle East peace process. To undo the damage done to American soft power in the world at large, and the Islamic world in particular, words will have to be translated into action – and, in view of the inherent complexities and dilemmas contained within the objectives Obama has set himself, this will be a thankless task indeed.

As numerous pundits haven’t failed to point out, the Cairo speech was indeed based on a deep understanding of what irks the Muslim and Arab world today. Gazing back at their long-lost golden age, Islamic – and Arab – societies do have this sense of greatness lost, and a fear of globalisation-as-Westernisation. Those portions of the speech expressing respect for the immense cultural heritage of Islamic civilisation, and the West’s endebtedness towards it, were clearly aimed at tackling the wounded pride so useful to radical Islamists. The shift in rhetoric on Iran was equally dramatic – with a clear acknowledgment of the historical fears that have acted as the primary drivers of Iran’s anti-Western stance, and its decades-old quest for nuclear weapons. And, while acknowledging the "unbreakable" bond between the United States and Israel, president Obama did, in unprecedentedly frank language, criticise the building of settlements, by Zionist extremists, in the Occupied Territories. The sufferings and humiliations of the Palestinians were, again, acknowledged in ways that would have been unthinkable only a year ago, balanced by an admonition to radical groups like Hamas to disavow violence. This president’s commitment to a two-state solution (admittedly one of his predecessor’s rare positive legacies) was equally made crystal-clear. Issues like democratisation and women’s rights also figured prominently, balanced by a commitment to respecting the cultural specificity of Middle Eastern and Islamic societies. All-in-all, the speech combined America’s immense power with something that had been absent in recent years – humility, and the realisation that the US must speak softly in this world precisely because it carries a big stick.

But how is this ambitious programme going to be put into action? Words are not enough, and many gaping questions remain after the speech; the objectives set by this administration are a tangled web of potential contradictions and complex dilemmas that would have to be resolved successfully if good intentions are not to drown in that merciless swamp called the 'Middle East'.

What is this administration going to do about a nuclearised Iran? Acknowledging Tehran’s deeply-held motives for acquiring the bomb is one thing, dissuading them from their path is quite another. Bombing Iran seems to be off the table - at least for now; does this indicate Washington has reconciled itself with the possibility of a nuclear Iran, its declarations to the contrary notwithstanding? It might very well have to, as mastering nuclear technology seems to be one of Tehran's strategic imperatives, surrounded as it is by official and unofficial nuclear powers. If that is the case, what is Obama's plan B? Extended nuclear deterrence - providing a nuclear umbrella to its non-nuclear allies in the region? Certainly, this would be the only way to stop a regional nuclear arms race - but does the United States truly have the stomach to make such a wide-ranging commitment in this regional hornets' nest?

Obama's stated commitment to democracy is equally problematic. There has been much talk recently of the US taking on the role of ‘offshore balancer’ in the Middle East (once it withdraws from Iraq) by increasingly acting through its allies and proxies (as it currently does in much of East Asia) – but that would mean increased strategic reliance on these allies, most of whom are far from democratic; how does that combine with Obama’s stated commitment to democratisation and human rights? How exactly will this administration balance this universalist democratic commitment to cultural specificity? Will the Obama administration recognise democratically elected governments headed or dominated by radical groups like Hezbollah and Hamas – something strongly hinted at in the speech (“Hamas must take responsibility”)? Then there is the ever-present problem of modernisation-as-Westernisation; even if the United States does not impose its values as forcefully as before, it will, by default, remain the dominant cultural force in the processes of globalisation that affect all Middle Eastern societies, continuing to elicit reactions from traditionalists. While America as a Jeffersonian city-on-the-hill, with values you take or leave at your own behest, certainly represents progress over a United States that will ram 'freedom' down your throat, if need be, there are things even the Obama can't control.

Above all, however, there is that hornets' nest called Israel/Palestine. It is clear that Obama intends to take a more balanced approach to what is the region's longest-running conflict. This administration also seems to view the Middle East as an integrated security complex, whose different conflicts are intensely interrelated, necessitating an equally integrated approach. If you want peace in Israel/Palestine, you need to include Syria and Iran, alongside Israel and the Palestinians, in your calculations. This means either driving a wedge between the Damascus and Tehran (thus physically separating the Iranians from the Western Levant), something that has been tried unsuccessfully on many occasions, or coming to some kind of agreement that satisfies the Iranians, the Syrians, the Palestinians, the Israelis, and AIPAC. Already, there are voices in Congress criticising Obama's opposition to settlements; meanwhile, victories by Hezbollah in Lebanon and Ahmedi-Nejad in Iran may very well remind us that in the Middle East, the next crisis is always around the corner. In final analysis, it seems Obama will need all the luck he can get if his good intentions are not to drown in the quicksands of the Arabian desert.

Stereotype Wonderland, and the Rubbish-Bin of History

2009-05-17T19:01:00.008+01:00

One of the attractions of the Caucasus for anyone trying to make sense of security in the contemporary world is its marvellous complexity. South of the mountain chain, the three major ethnic groups bear cultures that at times display eerie similarities, even if they speak languages that are entirely unrelated. The emergence of Soviet Republics and nation-states has evened out the intricate, intermingled patchwork of ethnic settlement that characterised the Caucasus in the pre-modern period, and narrow nationalism has created and upheld an almost entirely fictional myth of historical-territorial homogeneity, one that does much to drive regional conflict. In Armenia, it is anathema today to admit that at the beginning of the 20^th century, the Azeris formed a plurality in the province of Erevan. Conversely, Azeris don’t like to be reminded of the fact that a majority of Nakhichevan’s population was Armenian at the beginning of the Soviet period, not to mention the demographics of Karabakh. Georgian nationalists, finally, bristle at the suggestion that ¾ of Tbilisi’s population was ethnic Armenian at the end of the 18^th century, or that the Azeri majority in Kvemo-Kartli might be anything except a result of foreign intrusion.

An idealised image has emerged of homogenous, nation-state like entities that were, supposedly, the forerunners of Armenia, Azerbaijan and Georgia. The real tragedy is that these ideas have translated into territorial identities that overlap to a great degree: with millennia of history to trudge over, each group takes a historical best-case scenario and translates it into a territorial idea that overlaps with the neighbour’s. To Georgian nationalists, their historical territory is Georgia under David the Builder, or perhaps even Queen Tamar – incorporating large tracts of today’s Armenia, Azerbaijan and Turkey. To Armenian nationalists, the historical ideal is that of pre-Christian, Artaxiad Armenia – reaching from the Southern shores of the Caspian, and deep into Eastern Anatolia. To Azeri nationalists, it seems any region ruled by a Turkic-Muslim khan at some point in the last few centuries qualifies as historical “Azerbaijan”. Especially when it comes to historical borderlands – like Javakheti and South Ossetia – the wonderful thing for nationalist historiographers is that they can never be wrong: pick the right period and you’ll find that this or that territory ‘belongs’ to the ‘right’ ethnic group – your own.

While a just tiny – and slightly deranged - minority in each of these states seriously considers restoring these territories, the way they have been integrated into the local historical narratives nevertheless serves to exacerbate conflict and distrust. In Georgia, the image schoolchildren often receive in their history lessons is that of the gradual decline of Tamar’s unified Georgian kingdom under constant Muslim attack, and large-scale immigration – in places like Ossetia and Javakheti. In Armenia, the main story is one of a thousand-year Turkic encroachment into historical territories following the fall of Ani, culminating in the 1915 Genocide. In Azerbaijan, Armenians are routinely depicted as foreign intruders into the Southern Caucasus, cunningly chipping away at Azeri lands by abusing their presumed hosts’ hospitality. With each nationalist narrative expanding historical territory to the maximum extent possible, the principal (and inevitable) lesson one gains from this is one of territorial loss at the hands of one’s neighbours.

Added to this paranoia-generating view of history, are the many stereotypes that infest all societies in the region. In short, Georgians see Armenians as cunning, uncouth, unreliable (pro-Russian!), materialist crooks, while Armenians hate them right back by describing them as lazy, pompous, unreliable (pro-Turkish!), ostentatious, rash good-for-nothings with a penchant for elaborate banquets and long toasts. To Armenians, Azeris are axe-wielding barbarian baby-killers from Mongolia whose only mission in life is to conquer Armenian lands, while to the Azeris, the Armenians are a bunch of lying psychopaths with an innate, sadistic fondness for terrorism and a masochistic obsession with supposedly invented Genocides. To each of the ethnic groups, the other is, moreover, absolutely uncultured. “They don’t have a culture of their own, they stole it [our music, our food, our poetry, our architecture...] from us” is something you hear everywhere in the Caucasus. Depressingly, what sounds as a grotesque caricature is, actually, far too close to the truth for comfort. These stereotypes appear and reappear in local discourse, over and over again, in different guises, refined and recycled by people of authority – politicians, “social scientists”, “historians”, “artists”. Only in a few (very few) enlightened places does it dawn on people that the similarities in their cultures – rather than being the result of cultural kleptomania on the others’ part – might be the result of centuries of symbiosis.

Where does all this bigotry come from? It is quite clear by now that the story of ‘ancient tribal hatreds’ doesn’t measure up, either in the Balkans or in the former Soviet Union. The nationalisms we see in the Caucasus today are a product of modernity; and part of the problem is that modernity was introduced into the Southern Caucasus, for the most part, by a totalitarian entity called the Soviet Union. As formerly agrarian societies industrialised and urbanised, Georgians, Azeris and Armenians were subjected to the vagaries – and contradictions – inherent in Soviet nationalities policy. And the Soviets, as is commonly known, had a very essentialised view of ethnicity; idiotic concepts like ‘national character’, ‘national psychology’, or even the particularly fascistoid ‘national gene-pool’ ("genofond") are still used in these societies today as reminders of a uni-dimensional, totalitarian mindset. Historiography and ethnography were – like any other ideological endeavour – state monopolies, and historians in various republics thus sought to construct orthodox histories that, on the one hand, conformed to Soviet ideology, and, on the other hand, reinforced their respective Republics’ claim to historical territory and an artificially distilled, processed and essentialised ‘national culture’.

The Soviet Union aimed at producing republican cultures that were ‘national in form, and socialist in content’; instead it produced national cultures that were totalitarian in form, and incompatible in content. As long as universalist Communism was the official state ideology, the long-term goal of constructing a ‘homo sovieticus’ did act as something of an integrating counter-balance to these narrow nationalist narratives. Exit the Soviet Union, and the result was an orgy of nationalist historical revisionism – still within that old Soviet totalitarian mindset, but with an even more exclusivist, chauvinist and parochial outlook. Why is one surprised, then, when Armenian politicians describe Armenians and Azeris as “genetically incompatible”, or when their Azeri counterparts coolly suggest the Armenian minority in Karabakh should just pack up and leave if it doesn’t want to be included in Azerbaijan? Or when regional historians produce histories that systematically maximise their own suffering, while minimising the pain of others? Or, most absurdly, even deny the very existence of the other side?

Ultimately, it is up to the Southern Caucasian societies to decide on whether to continue down that self-destructive path of mutual recrimination, consigning themselves to the status of small, miserable and endlessly bickering tribes. The alternative is to listen to those who advocate an alternative view that rejects a black and white vision of the region in favour of colour and complexity - and, luckily enough, those voices do exist in Georgia, Armenia and Azerbaijan. They should be encouraged by a West that has, in the name of 'national sensitivities', so far been much too tolerant of the garbage produced by some local 'historians', commentators and 'political scientists' pandering to the nationalist orthodoxies advocated by their respective regimes. Propaganda masquerading as history, and bigotry packaged as policy, should be confined to the rubbish-bin of history through relentless critique, and, where necessary, ridicule.

Killing the Messenger.....(2)

2009-05-06T18:05:00.006+01:00

As I said in the previous post on Harut Sassounian’s article, it would be rash and unfair to reject out of hand the recommendations made by the International Crisis Group in its recent report on the Armenian-Turkish rapprochement. The ICG is among those think-tanks with a proven track record in studying security and conflict in the Caucasus, and what this Brussels-based organisation says should be taken seriously instead of being approached with emotional bluster and an a priori reference to its Turkish connections. This does not imply, however, that the substance of its report is beyond criticism – far from it. For while the overall content of the report presents a positive contribution to the complex puzzle of Turkish-Armenian relations, it nevertheless displays deficiencies that cannot be ignored and must be substantively addressed.

Looking at the recommendations themselves (those to the Turkish and Armenian sides), one is struck by their apparent (? - see below) symmetry – they mirror each other almost perfectly. For every demand to the Turkish side, there is one for the Armenian side. The document proposes a series of practical steps aimed at increasing trust between both sides. It asks both governments to prepare public opinion for a normalisation and to cultivate pro-settlement constituencies in the other’s society. Turkey is asked not to penalise Armenia for third-party statements on the genocide; Armenia is requested to avoid statements and international actions that might inflame Turkish public opinion. While Turkey is urged to decouple the Karabakh issue from the normalisation process, Armenia is asked to work towards a resolution of the conflict, including a withdrawal from the occupied territories. Yerevan is also urged to recognise the Kars treaty, while Ankara is asked to do more to preserve the Armenian heritage on its territory, for instance, by co-operating with its neighbour in the preservation of Ani. Finally, both sides are urged start joint studies of their shared history (particularly around 1915), to open their archives, and modernise their textbooks.

The outrage felt by some Armenians of the more nationalist persuasion is quite understandable, and, in some cases, justifiable. It is understandable, because the ICG touches upon several sacred cows of Armenian nationalism – the inapplicability of the Kars treaty, the inviolability of the narratives surrounding the period between 1914 and 1923, the view of the buffer zone around Karabakh as untouchable ‘liberated’ Armenian territory, among others. However, the ICG is right in challenging and de-reifying such ethno-nationalist discourse from a purely political point of view that aims to practically engender a normalisation of Turkish-Armenian relations, and the howls of outrage expressed by Armenian nationalists of all stripes deserve to be ignored.

The Kars treaty is a valid treaty under international law, and Armenia, as a successor state of the Soviet Union, is legally bound by it; those who continue frantically waiving an earlier treaty that was never ratified by anyone and does not have any force of law are trapped in hopeless self-delusion. While the extermination of the Armenians by the Ottoman state is an undeniable fact, it is used by many of our nationalists to uphold a crudely essentialised stereotype of the evil, barbarian Turk versus the good, civilised Armenian that deserves to be discredited. And while the buffer zone around Mountainous Karabakh should be given up only at a very high price, it remains a legitimate bargaining chip in negotiations with Azerbaijan – in fact, the most important bargaining chip of all, one whose non-negotiability would seriously hamper the negotiations process and the establishment of a lasting, secure and just peace for Karabakh and its population.

However, there are three major shortcomings in its study that deserve criticism, not from a narrowly ethno-nationalist viewpoint, but from a more universalist perspective. Firstly, the ICG fails to forcefully call on Turkey to remove the one major impediment to a fruitful dialogue between the Armenian and Turkish societies and a deepening of the crucial process of self-reflection that would be necessary for a multi-faceted understanding by Turkish society of the Armenian genocide – article 301. Secondly, the study contradicts itself and disturbs its prima-facie even-handedness by calling on Yerevan to deliver something it cannot deliver on its own – progress in the Karabakh talks. And, thirdly, the study makes a mistake often made by think-tanks – including, contrary to its stated aims, the ICG – of completely disregarding the ethical aspects of its recommendations: in fact, in situations where guilt and responsibility are unevenly distributed, aiming for symmetry in one’s counsel may turn out to be fundamentally unjust, as it is in this case.

The ICG is right in calling for a dialogue on the Genocide between the Turkish and Armenian societies. Crucially, it rejects the idea of a bilateral ‘Genocide commission’ as impracticable and inevitably too politicised. The construction of new narratives is dependent, first and foremost, on the free transnational interaction of Turks and Armenians, including historians, political scientists, politicians, ordinary citizens. Contrary to what many would think, this does not automatically denote some kind of conspiracy aiming to scuttle the recognition of the Genocide in third countries. Rather, it denotes a view – expressed by Hrant Dink, among others – that the time has come for Armenians to engage directly with Turkish society. I had the honour of meeting the late Mr. Dink a few years ago, and he made the convincing point that Turkey had changed, that some people were prepared to talk and listen. While the recognition campaigns in third countries did play a role in raising the Armenian question outside and within Turkey, without such direct engagement and a major rethink of how the Genocide issue is handled, the Armenians’ ultimate aim – recognition by Turkish state and society – will remain an unattainable goal.

In that respect, the ICG’s failure to more forcefully call on Turkey to abolish 301, or at least end its applicability to the Armenian Genocide, remains a major, unacceptable omission. How are Turks and Armenians going to freely construct compatible narratives if those Turks who depart from nationalist orthodoxy are put through a criminal process – as were the initiators of the internet-based apology campaign? Ultimately, article 301 is a symptom of a deeper-seated problem – that of a nationalism that is based on the politics of ‘my-country-right-or-wrong’. How could there be true Armenian-Turkish reconciliation of those Turks that reject this approach so central to the historical reconciliations in contemporary Europe are persecuted and stigmatised, like Hrant Dink was in the final years of his life?

The second problematic demand by ICG is for Armenia to ‘produce’ progress in the Karabakh negotiations. Contrary to all demands made on Turkey – whose performance is dependent on Ankara alone - Yerevan is thus asked to deliver something it would not be able to produce on its own – save if it capitulated its positions here and now. The complexities of the Karabakh negotiations process should be well-known to ICG by now, and it does seem contradictory to ask Turkey to decouple the normalisation process from Baku, only to re-couple this issue through ICG’s demands on Armenia. While this may at first seem like a Solomonic solution to an admittedly difficult problem, it does strike one as a return to square one – the issue is still being coupled, not by Turkey, but by ICG. This recommendation should have remained in a separate report on the Karabakh conflict: the problem here is that ICG is, willingly or unwillingly, giving in to Turkish ethno-nationalism, the main (but not only) driver behind Ankara’s near-unconditional relationship with Azerbaijan, and its coupling of the Karabakh issue with its Armenian policies.

The third problem in ICG approach is one that is found within almost all policy-oriented think-tanks: an almost-complete absence of ethical considerations. ICG approaches the issue of Turkish-Armenian rapprochement primarily in practical terms; the central question asked is how one can maximise the chances of such a normalisation taking place by producing a report that is maximally balanced in its demands from both sides. ‘Justice’ does not seem to figure in the think-tank’s vocabulary; and this is not so much a question of malice or bias, rather, it is a result of the generally complete absence of ethical thought among most mainstream think-tanks (ICG’s claims notwithstanding). This, in turn, reflects the precarious position of ‘the ethical’ in the international system, where ‘justice’ is usually not among states’ and policymakers’ primary considerations. Politics is still very much a practical art, and save for a few critical theorists – mostly working in academia – both analysts and policymakers see ethics as an interesting sideshow to the blood, sweat and tears that that art is all too often based on.

So how should Armenians take the ICG’s recommendations? Surely, as the aggrieved party in what was – all of ICG’s cynical quotation marks and qualifications notwithstanding – the 20^th century’s first major genocide, they could not accept recommendations that do not differentiate between victim and perpetrator? Such a rejection, however, would be based on an entirely mistaken conception of international politics – which, all lofty intensions and declarations by Western states notwithstanding, is still based on the above-mentioned blood-sweat-tears triad. As Gordon Gekko in Oliver Stone’s Wall Street, Michael Douglas once advised a Wall Street novice to get a dog if he wanted a friend. If Armenia is to survive – no, thrive – in the unstable and dangerous 21st century, it would have to similarly understand that there is just as much justice in international politics (on which think-tank reports are after all based) as there is friendship on Wall Street.

Killing the Messenger.....

2009-04-28T15:12:00.008+01:00

The ICG report on Turkish-Armenian relations has elicited considerable comment from the Armenian press - including the diasporan press. Some of the criticisms have been to the point, directly engaging with the solutions offered in the document through rational argumentation and critique. Others, however, have utilised a technique well-known to wishful thinkers throughout history: if you don't like what you hear, kill the messenger. Rather than engaging with the proposals, these commentators have preferred to tarnish the professionalism of the ICG researchers by accusing them of, basically, working for the Turkish government and other vested interests.

One such example is the recent op-ed article by Harut Sassounian, entitled "Think Tank Report on Armenia: You Get What You Pay For". It starts by listing a whole slew of mainstream - and mostly quite respected - institutions, going from one-time hotbeds of neo-conservatism (like the American Enterprise Institute) to fairly moderate outfits like Brookings and the Council on Foreign Relations, that are accused of pro-Turkish bias. It then continues to enumerate the pro-Turkish and Turkish individuals that populate the ICG board and senior advisors, adding that the Turkish foreign ministry is one of the ICG's major donors.

The implication is, of course, that the ICG report was made-to-order. And, considering the fact that there are no Armenians or other individuals who might argue in Armenia's favour, Sassounian's article further implies that we can all sleep tight: any kind of proposal that would come out of this joke of a think-tank would have to be "outrageous" and "extremely detrimental to Armenia's interests." Somewhat conveniently, those suggestions that do not fit our narrowly conceived nationalist utopias are sent straight to the rubbish bin, without any further debate or contemplation. The certainties of yesteryear are preserved, and the struggle can continue.

For years, decades, we Armenians – especially those of us in the diaspora – have taken a rigid definition of the ‘Armenian Cause’ for granted. While there can be no doubt as to the characterisation of the 1915 events as Genocide, one particular, ethno-nationalist and territorial approach to its political and ethical consequences has been turned into a value in and of itself. A blatant lack of open discussion has led to an obfuscation of the different interpretations one could make of ‘justice’ in the Armenian case. Should the ‘Armenian Cause’ be material in nature, incorporating demands for restitution, or should it be merely a moral quest for truth? If it is material, would it indeed have to incorporate demands for territorial restitution, and, if it is not, could it limit itself to monetary compensation, or perhaps even symbolic gestures? And, if we do agree on the goal that should be set, what would be the best way of attaining it? Striving for recognition by third parties - as before? Direct engagement with Turkish society? Engagement with Ankara? War, massacre and conquest? What should be the role of the diaspora in this cause? And the role of the Republics of Armenia and Karabakh?

All these are questions that deserve answers going beyond the repetitions of empty and not-so-empty slogans that imbue us with a false sense of certainty. What is a matter for particular concern is the fact that these slogans, and the 'Armenian Cause', have not been adapted to the single-most important event in Armenian history since 1918 - the creation of the Republics of Armenia and Nagorno-Karabakh in 1991. "Pahanjatirutyun" - being consistent in our demands - has been used as a passe-partout argument suppressing any genuine debate on the matter. Those who have presented an alternative viewpoint - participating in TARC, or otherwise engaging directly with Turkish society - have often been marginalised as 'traitors'.

Too many of our commentators in the diaspora and Armenia proper have continued adhering to a world-view that turns Armenia - a weak and fragile state except perhaps in the minds of those who revel in wishful thinking - into a vehicle for a utopian nationalist ideology. Rather than striving for the security - that is, the well-being and prosperity - of its population, the Republic of Armenia has simply been seen by too many as a vehicle for our pie-in-the-sky demands - as I said, "Pahanjatirutyun" - even if they are but complete pipedreams and put the Republic at odds with what is still its largest direct neighbour.

Stateless peoples can afford their utopias – because, in the end, they don’t have a state to lose. They can afford to pursue goals that seem largely unattainable, because, in the absence of sovereign statehood, the ensuing conflict will largely remain outside the realm of inter-state politics. Borders cannot be blockaded, national armies cannot be defeated, capitals cannot be conquered: instead, oppressive states are faced with minority insurgent groups that are far more difficult to suppress than a well-defined, well-delineated neighbour - especially if these groups are in diaspora.

Once achieved, however, the independence and sovereignty that come with a minority’s exercise of its fundamental right to self-determination do not stand on their own. They are accompanied by the same kind of responsibility that comes with property: that of the bonus paterfamilias – the good housefather. Independence must be maintained, prosperity nurtured. In the end, nations that achieve statehood must have a fundamentally different attitude to those aspiring to it. They must see statehood as their ultimate common good, as their dominant collective cause. The survival and prosperity of the sovereign state must trump all other ideological considerations. ‘National causes’ – particularly ones aimed against neighbours – become a luxury, subject to power relationships and the ultimate Macchiavellian virtue of prudence.

In the 18 years since independence, the nationalists among us have failed to adapt their ideology to the requirements of a sovereign, independent, prosperous and genuinely pluralistic Republic of Armenia. Instead, they have continued defining its core principle – the ‘Armenian Cause’ – through a mindset of statelessness. They have continued to see Armenia as a springboard towards the realisation of a territorial utopia – by not only supporting Artsakh’s legitimate struggle for self-determination, but by also laying claim to territories in all of Armenia’s neighbours except Iran. They have continued to propagate the idea of an (ethno-)national ideology, despite of the notion’s totalitarian and fundamentally anti-democratic nature, precluding any form of debate and introspection.

And killing the messenger instead of debating the message is precisely one symptom of such rigidly absolutist thought. If you adhere to any of ICG's suggestions after the institution has been declared a Turkish stooge, you in effect adhere to Turkey's standpoint - debate closed. This is the clear implication of Mr. Sassounian's article.

For all his faults - and he had and still has many - Levon Ter-Petrossian was absolutely right when he declared in 1997:

“What do they mean by a national ideology? Only one thing which the whole nation should accept. A whole nation accepts one single ideology only in totalitarian systems, only in ideologized states. If there is democracy, no one can impose any ideology. Today, every ideology in Armenia is a national one to me, because each of them projects the best way of solving the national issues in itself. If a nation is forced to accept a national ideology, that is the end of democracy.”

The Moscow Declaration, and a few other issues....

2008-11-16T13:01:00.004Z

‘Much ado about nothing’ – that is how one could safely describe the declaration, signed in Moscow by presidents Sargsyan and Aliyev after talks hosted by Dimitri Medvedev. Reading the declaration itself, it is quite unclear why it provoked the reaction it has provoked in Yerevan, especially among the more radical elements of the opposition.

Some of the criticisms of the document have centred on the fact that it refers to ‘solutions based on principles of international law’, and that is somehow seen as detrimental to the Armenian position. But, really, international law can be interpreted in many different ways, and, moreover, includes the principle of national self-determination – as Serj Sargsyan rightly pointed out on his return to Yerevan. In fact, it there was an element of absurdity in the ways in which both presidents signed this declaration in Moscow, only to hold on to their well-known positions on returning to their respective capitals. The Azeri foreign ministry promptly rejected claims by Yerevan that the document had obliged it to forego any military solution to the conflict. Before long, we were at square one again. Nothing had changed, really.

It would perhaps be better to see this document as a face-saving exercise by the Kremlin. Rightly or wrongly, Medvedev may have thought a breakthrough possible during the meeting in Moscow – after this summer’s war, Russia’s image in the Southern Caucasus had to be skewed to that of a peacemaker again. When a breakthrough didn’t come, the Russians settled for an empty document to have at least something to show for their efforts. Diplomacy can sometimes be as simple as that.

The Minsk Group co-chairmen- whose work seems to have been remarkably unaffected by this summer’s dramatic events - tell the world both sides are close to an agreement. But they have been telling that same story for the past 5 years now. What they haven’t been able to do so far is answer the question as to how one squares a circle by reconciling Armenia’s absolute commitment to Karabakh’s independence to Azerbaijan’s equally uncompromising dedication to its territorial integrity. Both sides haven’t changed their rhetoric in that regard, and as long as that doesn’t change, I believe it’s safe to describe any optimism as completely unwarranted.

The only possible indication of chances for a future breakthrough came from the increasing focus by several of Armenia’s political groups on the prospect of a return of occupied territories around Nagorno Karabakh to Azerbaijan. The ARF, for instance, stated that it would not be able to remain within the coalition if any of the lands conquered by Armenian forces in 1992-1994 were to be returned as part of a future agreement. Several opposition groups also added their voices to the rejection of such an eventuality.

But what alternative do these political groups propose? “Payqar payqar minchev verj” – “Struggle till the end”? Will Armenians always be condemned to following those abusing their kneejerk reactions through these primitive nationalistic slogans, used and abused by an incoherent plethora of political groups and factions?

For too long, Armenia has been under the influence of those who see ‘national security’ in an underdeveloped, uni-dimensional way. When thinking about security, don’t only think about your actions – try to consider the reactions of those around you. Try to see the bigger picture. Holding on to most of the occupied territories might end up costing Armenia much more than any peace their return would engender.

On an entirely different subject – still related to security, broadly defined – Amnesty International published an entirely credible report (http://www.amnesty.org.uk/uploads/documents/doc_18971.pdf) on the abuse of women in the Republic of Armenia, where no less than 25% of women are the victims of physical domestic violence.

There are two ways in which this report can be read by Armenian society – either as a wake-up call, pointing to the need to address discrimination and gendered prejudice, or as an insult, an attack against the machismo and ‘cult-of-virginity’ prevalent in Armenian society, masquerading under the unassailable label of ‘national tradition’.

I would just like to point out that if everyone had stuck to their ‘national traditions’ from the very beginning, we’d all still be swinging from the trees today.

Some among us obviously still are.

After the Final Whistle

2008-09-10T10:42:00.006+01:00

The idea seemed quite simple when it was first floated by the Armenian president, Serj Sargsyan, in July. For all the historical hatred and political animosity, the beautiful game was one passion shared by people on both sides of the long-sealed Turkish-Armenian border. If the Turkish and Armenians teams were to play each other in a world cup qualifier, why couldn’t the occasion be used to bring the two peoples and states together, in a first step in the long road towards reconciliation? And so, the invitations went out, and the Armenian president invited his counterpart to a football match. That such an otherwise routine and commonplace action was labelled ‘historic’ fittingly illustrated the level of animosity between these two neighbours.

In the end, the visit itself was something of an anti-climax. Despite of Armenia lifting all visa restrictions on Turkish citizens, the visions of Turkic hordes descending on the Caucasian mountain state – Turkey’s fans are known for their fierce dedication to ‘the cause’ – did not materialise. The Turkish delegation included mostly diplomats and journalists, and numbered in the hundreds rather than the tens of thousands. Neither did the nightmares of egg- or tomato-throwing Armenian nationalists come true. Yes, there were Armenian demonstrators peacefully expressing their dismay at the visit on the streets of Yerevan. And yes, both the Turkish president and the Turkish anthem were booed before the game. But public demonstrations are a fundamental human right, as is, according to many, the booing and hissing of opponents’ anthems during soccer matches – something at which Turkish football fans apparently also excel. In practice, there was general consensus in Armenian society on the desirability of a normalisation of relations – with the country’s opposition even suspending its long-running protest actions so as to create a favourable atmosphere in the capital, and with the press remaining overwhelmingly supportive. All in all, the visit went as planned – leaving everyone with the question, after the final whistle: “Now what?”

The very fact of a Turkish head of state visiting Yerevan would have been unthinkable only a few months ago. Both Sargsyan’s invitation and Gül’s acceptance indicate a wish on both sides to normalise relations. For Turkey, this is about stabilising the Caucasus, where an escalation of conflict could have potentially costly consequences for the country. It is also about countering the very real possibility of the recognition, by the US Congress, of the Armenian Genocide in the coming months and years, with all the complications this would involve in its relations with the United States. An apparent rapprochement with Armenia could, in Ankara’s eyes at least, delay or even eliminate such an eventuality. Finally, with unrest stirring (again) in Kurdish-populated Eastern Turkey, an open border with Armenia would provide these socio-economically backward provinces with new opportunities for trade and tourism. Finally, last month’s dramatic events in Georgia have graphically illustrated in how far it is counter-productive to use one single and quite unstable route for the energy and transportation projects of the 21st century.

For Armenia, that same conflict has also vividly demonstrated its dependence on a weak and unstable state for its trade links with much of the outside world. Despite of all claims to the contrary, even outside of periods of acute conflict and instability, the Armenian population is paying a high price for the current situation. Elevated transportation costs make imported goods extremely costly, and severely stunt Armenia’s ability to export, resulting in significant trade imbalances that grossly distort the country’s (still fast-growing) economy. Closed borders also make the country less attractive to large foreign investors. Opening the border with its large Western neighbour would enable Yerevan to use the Turkish port of Trabzon in addition to Georgia’s Poti and Batumi, and would connect Armenia’s rail network directly to Europe, thus opening new markets and opportunities for Armenia’s producers and foreign investors, and easing price pressures on consumers, through dramatically reduced transportation costs and a generally more open and competitive economy.

Then why, you may ask, is this border still closed after 15 years – despite of an opening obviously benefiting both sides materially? While Armenia has called for the establishment of diplomatic relations and the opening of the border without preconditions, Turkey has put forward three prerequisites for a normalisation of relations:

• First, Armenia must abandon any territorial claims it may have in Eastern Turkey. Turkish diplomats and commentators argue, among others, that Armenia’s 1990 Declaration of Independence, which refers to the region as ‘Western Armenia’, and the country’s coat-of-arms, which includes Mount Ararat, both indicate territorial ambitions on official Yerevan’s part.

• Second, Armenia must abandon its campaign at having the 1915 Genocide recognised as such by the international community. In that regard, Turkey has proposed the setting up of an ‘impartial’ commission of historians to study the events of that tragic period in light of their conformity to the 1949 UN Genocide convention.

• Third, Armenia and Azerbaijan must come to an agreement on the thorny issue of Nagorno-Karabakh.

Of these three pre-conditions, the first two are relatively ‘manageable’ – either because they are the result of long-time misperceptions, or because, being of a largely symbolic or historic nature, they do not directly impact the immediate material interests of either party. Moreover, both the territorial and genocide issues are purely bilateral in nature – making their solutions dependent on the parties themselves, and, therefore, relatively less complicated to resolve. The success or failure of the current attempts at Turkish-Armenian rapprochement will largely depend on the third pre-condition – on how the parties decide to deal with the Nagorno-Karabakh issue. Of all three obstacles standing in the way of a normalisation, this is the most complex one, and if this most recent attempt at rapprochement fails, it will most likely be on this issue rather than the previous two. Firstly, the Karabakh question does impact on the interests of both parties in a very real and present manner – here, we are not talking symbols or history, but an extremely tangible situation, existing on the ground as we speak, affecting the lives of hundreds of thousands of people. Secondly, the Karabakh issue is not purely bilateral: both Armenia and Turkey will be subject to pressures from below, besides and above as they try to tackle this question, with their societies, allies and the great powers all having a vested interest in how exactly things are settled.

First, the most absurd pre-condition – that of tiny Armenia dropping presumed territorial claims against Turkey. The fact that the Armenian declaration of independence talks of ‘Western Armenia’ does not indicate a territorial claim – neither does Armenia’s very discreet use of Mount Ararat on its coat-of-arms. If the Armenian state stayed silent or made explicit claims in addition to these purely symbolic factors, yes, Turkey would have a right to be concerned – but no-one representing the Republic of Armenia in an official capacity has ever made such demands. Quite on the contrary, high-ranking Armenian officials have, at various times, clearly and unequivocally stated the absence of any territorial claims by Armenia in Eastern Turkey. In 2006, Armenia’s foreign minister at that time clearly affirmed Armenia’s acceptance of the validity of both the Kars and Moscow treaties delineating the current border between Turkey and Armenia. Just a month or so ago, in an interview with the Turkish ‘Radikal’ daily, the current president also clearly acknowledged the absence of any Armenian territorial claims in Eastern Turkey. These statements are being ignored by a surprising number of Turkish pundits and politicians – perhaps because they do not fit the established nationalist stereotypes that would allow them to continue ‘business as usual’ with their Eastern neighbour? Armenian officials would most probably see no problem in officially reaffirming their recognition of Turkey’s territorial integrity, despite of the reaction it would cause among the nationalist fringe.

On the second issue – that of the Genocide – both sides are actually not as far apart as it might seem at first sight, at least on the question of how to limit its effects on their bilateral relations. Of course, it is completely unrealistic to believe Turkey will recognise the Genocide any time soon, as it is unreasonable to assume Armenia will ever completely drop the Genocide issue from its foreign policy agenda. Both parties are subject to considerable pressures from below on that point – at this juncture, Turkish society would simply not accept a recognition by its government, and (contrary to what is often erroneously believed in Turkey), Armenian society (and not just the diaspora) could not countenance its state remaining silent on that matter. Moreover, it would be quite erroneous for anyone to expect the Armenian diaspora to give up its forceful quest for recognition – one of the pre-requisites for ‘managing’ this issue would be for Turkey to accept the Republic of Armenia has little, if any control over what American or French citizens of Armenian descent demand from their respective governments.

Provided all the caveats mentioned in the previous paragraph are taken into consideration, some kind of ‘modus vivendi’ could be found between the parties. Armenia has seriously replied to Turkey’s proposal to set up a commission of ‘impartial’ historians to study the matter by suggesting the creation of an inter-governmental commission tackling all issues of interest to the states after the establishment of diplomatic relations. It would not be surprising if discussion on the exact format of such a commission had been included in the secretive talks between Armenian and Turkish diplomats in Switzerland earlier this year. Another possibility would be for the issue to remain on Yerevan’s agenda, but less prominently so than in previous years, with Turkey silently scaling back its attempts at historical revision. In any case, the visit by Gül to Yerevan would have been unlikely if there hadn’t been at least the prospect of an agreement on how to manage this delicate issue – whether through a commission or through a decision to somehow “agree to disagree” in the future.

Turkey’s most complicated condition is the one relating to Nagorno-Karabakh. For this issue not to stand in the way of a Turkish-Armenian detente, either Turkey would have to de-couple its Armenia policies from Baku, or Armenia and Azerbaijan would somehow have to come to an agreement after years of tortuous and so far fruitless negotiations. While both outcomes are possible, they also face a variety of structural hurdles that limit the scope for action in both Ankara and Yerevan. As noted above, this is the only issue of substantive (rather than historic or symbolic) nature among the pre-conditions cited by Ankara for improved Armenian-Turkish relations. The conflict directly affects the lives of hundreds of thousands of people in the region – the Armenian inhabitants of Nagorno-Karabakh, and Azeri refugees and IDPs. It has a quite tangible effect on the security of Armenia, and Turkey’s closest ally, Azerbaijan; over the past 20 years, all sides have invested considerable material and diplomatic resources in trying to prevail in what they have rightly or wrongly seen as an issue of existential importance.

The conflict is, moreover, one where both sides are subject to pressures from a variety of quarters, making it by far the most complex issue standing in the way of a normalisation of relations. For a number of reasons, preserving the security of Karabakh’s Armenian inhabitants has been the central plank of Armenia’s foreign policy since independence. It would be utterly unrealistic to expect Yerevan to hand over the territory and its ethnic Armenian inhabitants ‘on a silver platter’ in return for economic favours: Armenia has so far been quite willing to pay the hefty economic price that comes with its insistence on Karabakh’s self-determination, which it sees as the only guarantee for the survival of that region’s ethnic Armenian population. On the other hand, Turkey’s powerful nationalists, and many in the nation’s military, see an unconditional commitment to Azerbaijan as an absolutely essential aspect of the country’s foreign policy. De-coupling Ankara’s policies towards Armenia from Azerbaijan would thus involve considerable domestic costs for any Turkish government – these would have to be overshadowed by the gains on the international and regional levels for such an eventuality to occur.

There are, however, solid arguments for such a de-coupling – especially after Georgia’s conflict with Russia. Turkey’s de-facto outsourcing of its Armenia policy to Baku has not achieved anything concrete in terms of making a resolution of the Karabakh conflict more feasible. Instead, it has reinforced existing stereotypes and insecurities, and has in effect excluded Turkey from the negotiations processes regarding the single most important frozen conflict in the region. Any advantages Baku might have received in terms of tilting the balance of power in its favour have been effectively neutralised by Russia’s strategic alliance with Armenia; and any hopes Azerbaijan might have had regarding a speedy Russian withdrawal from the Caucasus have now been dashed during the conflict in Georgia. Now that Ankara has woken up to the necessity of a comprehensive approach to security in the Caucasus – its Caucasus Stability Pact is a clear expression of this realisation – it might also feel that a more independent and pro-active approach is more conducive to constructing compromise solutions based on carefully constructed trust rather than the crude, largely ineffective pressure of closed borders.

Of course, the Karabakh conflict could also cease being an impediment to Turkish-Armenian relations by being resolved. Negotiations led by the OSCE Minsk Group have been continuing for almost 15 years, and, although the negotiators have been claiming for some time now that the parties are tantalisingly close to agreement – save for a few complex sticking points – such hopeful signs have previously been dashed on several occasions. Significantly, the talks have so far involved three co-chairs: France, the United States, and Russia. Although these three actors have been able to co-operate smoothly within the narrow confines of the Minsk Group, it is quite unclear whether this will remain the case in light of recent processes in the Caucasus. Russia’s foreign minister, Sergei Lavrov, has recently indicated Russia would be happy to see Armenia and Azerbaijan holding direct talks on the question of Nagorno-Karabakh, outside the Minsk Group’s formal aegis - an effort at sidelining Washington and Paris, or a sign of tangible progress? And, Turkey’s president has visited Baku in the wake of his historic football diplomacy in Yerevan – an indication of panic or, again, a hint at a possible speedy solution? It is impossible to know at this point.

What is certain, however, is that the Karabakh conflict represents the most complex of all three impediments standing in the way of normalised Turkish-Armenian relations. In tying the normalisation of relations to that conflict, Ankara has in effect joined its bilateral relations with Armenia to a nexus where the very material interests of numerous actors, foreign and domestic, intermingle with any political will Armenia and Turkey might have towards normalising their relations. Of course, Turkey may have come to the conclusion that a more independent and pro-active Caucasus policy would contribute more to security and peace in the region than threats and blockades – in that case, Armenian-Turkish relations could go from being a hostage to the Karabakh conflict to potentially contributing to a solution. Alternatively, Ankara might feel that an agreement between Baku, Stepanakert and Yerevan is imminent – eliminating Karabakh as an impediment to bilateral interaction. But otherwise, football diplomacy will risk being drowned out in the complications of the Karabakh conflict – yet another tragically lost opportunity in the long and winding road towards the reconciliation of two of the world’s most intractable foes.

Vulnerabilities Galore

2008-09-02T17:03:00.003+01:00

Much has been said and written about Russia's next steps in the geopolitical drama that is unfolding in its 'near abroad'. Let's look at three of the states that are mentioned most often as targets for destabilisation: Georgia (what remains of it), Azerbaijan and the Ukraine.

The current situation in Georgia gives Moscow plenty of opportunities to keep meddling in the country's internal affairs. Firstly, its “peacekeepers” are stationed in the immediate vicinity of the Tbilisi-Gori-Poti highway and railroad - the Southern Caucasus’ economic jugular vein. The Kremlin could invent any number of pretexts to cut off traffic on this route that is so crucial to the economic survival of not only Georgia, but all three Caucasian states. Armenia receives much of its strategic supplies (oil, wheat) through this all-important transportation corridor, and recent events have shown Russia to be quite indifferent to its ally’s fate when it comes to dealing with Tbilisi. Baku’s oil industry is also dependent on this route for technical supplies, and considering Azerbaijan’s thinly disguised pro-Western leanings, Russia would be even less reluctant to remind the wannabe ‘regional leader’ of its dependence on its goodwill. With such an important portion of the country’s transportation infrastructure at Moscow’s mercy, it could also become much more difficult for Tbilisi to attract the FDI it so urgently needs for rebuilding.

Secondly, rump Georgia contains two significant, geographically compact non-Georgian ethnic populations: the Azeris in the Marneuli district and the Armenians in Javakheti. While there have been tensions in the past, especially in Javakheti, these have so far been successfully addressed by the Saakashvili administration, sometimes in co-operation with Armenia and Azerbaijan – both of whom are not at all interested in allowing their ethnic kin to poison their respective relations with Tbilisi. Both populations have shown themselves loyal to the Georgian state during the recent crisis. There are, however, fears in Georgia that the Armenians of Javakheti in particular might be aroused by Russian undercover operatives. In the Caucasus, so laden with ethnic suspicions, all it would take to set a problematic province alight would be a well-scripted provocation, supplemented by rumour and innuendo, giving the Kremlin an opportunity to take the dismemberment of the Georgian state one step further. Incidentally, about two weeks before Saakashvili ordered the assault on Tskhinvali, the leaders of an Armenian nationalist group in the region were arrested in mysterious circumstances. Whether or not there was a connection between these two events remains to be seen.

On to Azerbaijan - of course, one obvious way in which the Kremlin could destabilise that country would be through a thawing of the frozen conflict over Nagorno Karabakh with Armenia. That would, however, require the latter’s co-operation, and would, moreover, be fraught with potentially dangerous and unforeseeable consequences for all parties. In its earlier ‘hot’ phase, the Karabakh conflict was the bloodiest in the former Soviet Union, causing over 30,000 deaths and over a million refugees on both sides. Although nothing can be ruled out considering the events of recent weeks, it is difficult to see how Moscow could be interested in a conflagration that may easily spiral out of its control.

However, other ethnic minorities offer alternative, and more controllable ways of creating headaches for Baku. Two, in particular, might be relevant – the Talysh, living in the South-East, and the Lezghin, in the North-East. While the Talysh live far from Russia’s borders with Azerbaijan, the Lezghin would be a particularly attractive target for provocation - because they have ethnic kin living in the Russian Northern Caucasian autonomous republic of Daghestan, just like the Ossetians in Georgia. Coincidentally or not, in July this year, a shadowy organisation claiming to represent the Lezghin in Azerbaijan called on outside intervention to end a ‘genocide’ by the authorities in Baku against that minority. Could this have been a warning shot from Moscow, coming, as it was, on the heels of a government-sponsored conference on Lezghin issues in the Russian capital? In any case, it fits nicely into Russia’s claim, forcefully voiced and applied during the current crisis in Georgia, to be the protector of the ‘small peoples’ of the Caucasus. Azeri (and Western) policymakers better take note.

Finally, the Ukraine – far larger than the other two states I have dealt with above, but also, extremely vulnerable, in three distinct ways. Most Western analysts centre on the Crimea as a potential future flashpoint, and, considering its mostly ethnic Russian population, its strategic importance as the host of Russia’s Black Sea fleet, and the fact that it was gifted to the Ukraine by the Russian SSR only in 1954, it seems reasonable to assume Moscow might target it for annexation. In recent months, there have already been irredentist noises in the Kremlin regarding the territory, and there are reports Russia has been – rather ominously - distributing passports as in Abkhazia and South Ossetia. The local population is quite decisively opposed to Kiev’s NATO ambitions, and it would not take much effort on Moscow’s part to engineer some kind of separatist reaction, if circumstances demanded.

On the other hand, Moscow might concentrate on exacerbating the East/West divide that has plagued the Ukraine since independence. Contrary to what has been seen in Georgia, there is no large majority in the Ukraine in favour of a pro-Western orientation. In fact, the country is split almost down the middle, with support for NATO increasing as one moves towards its Ukrainian-speaking Western part. In the East, people (both ethnic Ukrainians and Russians) speak Russian, and strongly identify with Russia as a natural, Slavic ally. The fact that opposition to NATO is geographically and linguistically distinct throughout the Ukraine – not just in the Crimea – could offer Russia yet another lever in its fight to keep the country, or a significant part of it, inside its sphere of influence.

Admittedly, this would potentially be a very costly and unpredictable path to take. However, this East/West divide is also visible throughout Ukrainian state structures – bringing us to the third way in which Moscow might try to keep the Ukraine pliant. Rather than taking the Georgian route and using separatism (in the East or in the Crimea), the Kremlin might try to engineer the downfall of the Ukraine’s currently pro-Western central government. In the absence of a national anti-Russian/pro-NATO consensus, it would not be too difficult to tip the balance of opinion in Moscow’s favour through any number of tricks – economic blackmail, propaganda, the funding of pro-Russian groups, bribing/cooptation of pro-Western lawmakers, etc... Once re-established, a pro-Russian Ukrainian government could then quickly re-align the country with Moscow, renewing the all-important treaty on the Russian naval bases in Sebastopol, ditching Kiev’s ambitions to join NATO, and repressing the pro-Western regions of the Ukraine with Russia’s approval. Considering the enormous problems associated with engineering and controlling separatism in a country as large as the Ukraine, this latter option may very well be the one the Kremlin decides to employ.

A Dignified Protest

2008-09-01T14:32:00.012+01:00

Today, Tbilisi ground to a halt as ordinary Georgians were given an opportunity to express their dismay at Russia's neo-imperial activities in their country. And I must say it was a dignified, and quite impressive performance, with young and old, of all ethnic groups, lining the roads in Tbilisi, Georgian flags in hand, marching and chanting in their millions, and fulfilling their civic duty by expressing loyalty to their endangered state. It was, quite clearly, an unforced, sincere outpouring of public emotion by people who are seeing their state torn to shreds as we speak.

For all its faults in relation to its foreign and security policies, one thing must be made clear: in stark contrast to Azerbaijan, Georgia had made considerable progress in recent years, both in terms of democracy and in terms of its treatment of minorities. While problems do remain, the Saakashvili government has made an honest effort at promoting a civic, inclusive form of nationalism, in preparation of the hoped-for reunification of the country. There is certainly reason to believe the Georgian government's accusations that Russia was prodding Abkhazia, and especially South Ossetia, to obstruct its wide-ranging offers of autonomy to both regions. The idea that Russia was ever a peace-keeper in the Caucasus is one that would make any unbiased observer laugh - over 15 years, it did everything in its power to obfuscate and obstruct. By skilfully playing into and amplifying the fears of both Ossetians and Abkhazians through semi-criminal local regimes, it basically eliminated any chances of these two entities ever reuniting with Georgia proper.

Similarly, Russian claims of 'Genocide' have the smell (stench?) of old-style KGB propaganda all over them. While firing on Tskhinvali with Katyushas was certainly unacceptable on Georgia's part, Russia's claims of 2,000 deaths and tens of thousands of refugees (all within the spate of 12 hours) were suspiciously over-the-top from the start. The crude, 24/7 attempt by Russia's media to create the impression of a major humanitarian catastrophe even managed to fool a few western commentators. Not surprisingly, however, once Russia's mission was accomplished, the same people who had reduced Grozny to pulp several times over without shedding so much as a tear quietly decreased the death count to a still elevated, but hardly genocidal 133. These hysterical claims of ethnic cleansing were all the more unbelievable because Georgia's policies of recent years have clearly been aimed at including both Ossetians and Abkhazians in the fabric of the Georgian state - tens of thousands of Ossetians live in Georgia proper up to this day, and remain largely undisturbed. Wouldn't Georgia have ethnically cleansed those Ossetians under its control before attempting a blitz-genocide in South Ossetia?

Forgotten Virtues: Prudence, Foresight and Non-Alignment in the Post-Soviet Space

2008-08-28T19:44:00.007+01:00

And so, things have come to a head in Georgia. For months, South Ossetia had been the scene of low-intensity warfare, with regular exchanges of fire from both sides blurring the precise points at which scuffles turned into battles, and battles into full-scale war. There is little doubt, however, that this confrontation was largely the result of a major miscalculation on Georgia’s part: its surprise attack on Tskhinvali, based on the vain hope that Russia would step back from the brink and defer to Tbilisi’s strong links with the West, could be described as one of the greatest blunders in modern international political history. The fact that the Russians and Ossetians had made numerous provocations in the weeks and months before the assault does not imply Sahakashvili was right to naively walk into the trap which they had ingeniously sprung. The Georgian president had clearly not read or understood his Thucydides – small nations with large enemies must know their place in the world.

One thing is clear, however: this conflict is about more than Georgia and South Ossetia. It is the first major confrontation, by proxy, between the West and a re-assertive Russia. As such, it is not just the result of miscalculations made in Tbilisi in 2008, but the logical conclusion to a series of mistakes and misperceptions in Western capitals – and in Washington, in particular. This is not just a tale of a small country bravely (but somewhat hopelessly) confronting a Great Power on its own – it is also the story of the amateurish, ideologised and bungling approach to international politics that has been the hallmark of the Bush administration since its coming to power. In the longer term, it is the result of a dangerous disregard for international law, and the application of double standards in conflicts throughout the world by the West – with Kosovo as only the most striking example. The West should have known that such law-bending was bound to blow up in its face in the longer term. And now it has – in Georgia.

The first miscalculation was intimately connected with the construction of the Baku-Tbilisi-Ceyhan pipeline, designed to circumvent Russia as the main conduit for Caspian oil to Europe and beyond. For this circumvention to be entirely effective, Georgia had to be coaxed from Russian influence towards a firm pro-Western and pro-NATO stance (admittedly, given Russia’s past behaviour, it didn’t need much coaxing). The Rose revolution which toppled the Shevardnadze regime was thus enthusiastically supported by the United States; it was perhaps no coincidence that it occurred at a time when neo-Conservatives – always ready to play geopolitics through regime change - were riding high in Washington after the ‘mission accomplished’ moment in Iraq.

The whole BTC project, however, was first conceived in the 1990s, at a time when Russia’s economic and military might was at low ebb - in fact, at a time when the very survival of the Russian state was in doubt. As such, policymakers in 2003 were working within a paradigm that was seriously outdated. In the 1990s, one could possibly ignore and pressure a weak, dependent Russia into allowing encroachments on what it has always seen as its natural sphere of influence: NATO expansion and Kosovo are remembered to this day in the Kremlin as the humiliating result of feebleness and loss of status, something never to be repeated – for instance, in Georgia.

By 2003, however, the Russian Federation was already changing from an impoverished former superpower to a 21st-century petro-power itching to reaffirm its great power status. If the United States wanted to play in its ‘near abroad’, this would not go unchallenged. This was compounded by the fact that the Kremlin had been taken over by Putin and the ‘siloviki’ – a close-knit clique of former KGB officers with a keen, very Russian sense of the geopolitical: Russia was a Great Power, and Great Powers need spheres of influence. Like it or not, this blatantly outdated, territorial notion of state power had always been deeply engrained in Russian strategic culture – and with petro-power at its disposal, Moscow could do it justice. BTC and Georgia came to be seen as a challenge to which Russia should and could respond – it would not be allowed to lose its ‘near abroad’ the way the Soviet Union had lost Eastern Europe as a prelude to the latter’s collapse. Of equal importance was the fact that control over Georgia would also imply control over Caspian oil and gas reserves. With much of Russia’s renewed regional and global clout based on its mineral wealth, its oil-conscious elite clearly saw the possibility of Moscow acting as gate-keeper to the Caucasus and Central Asia as an attractive prospect.

Thus, the current Russian leadership built on the policies it inherited from the supposedly ‘democratic’ Yeltsin era, which were, even then, when Russia was at its most ‘liberal’, designed to divide and rule the Caucasus. A number of ‘frozen conflicts’ had been artificially kept unresolved in Georgia through open Russian support for separatists entities – whose populations had been provided with Russian citizenship, presenting Moscow with a perfect excuse for intervention under the dubious cover of International Law in case of Georgian military action. For good measure, Russian involvement in peace-keeping operations provided a convenient additional trip-wire. Everything had been readied for a Russian incursion should the need arise. In view of this, the West’s perception that Russia would roll over and bolt once Georgia became a NATO member or candidate was quite surprising: if anything, the prospect of NATO membership, combined with its renewed oil wealth and the ready possibility of intervention must have increased Russia’s resolve for swift and decisive action. As long as Georgia was not under the protection of article 5 – and even the Membership Action Plan (MAP) rejected in April would not have granted that – intervention remained an absolutely rational option for Moscow.

The prospect of NATO membership combined with a second major Western miscalculation in pushing Georgia towards the brink: the recognition of Kosovo, and its detrimental effect on the principle of territorial integrity despite of all empty rationalisations by diplomats that it is ‘a special case’. The combination of these two factors put the Sahakashvili government under considerable pressure: on the one hand, NATO membership required a resolution to the unresolved internal conflicts, on the other hand, the longer these conflicts dragged on, the greater the chance of Kosovo repeating itself in the Caucasus. Russia’s upgrading of relations with both republics in response to the recognition of Kosovo deftly played into these fears. It seems, Georgia’s interests had been much less important to the West than making a point in the Balkans. Now, the country was faced with an unpalatable choice: it had to solve these territorial issues swiftly, or see its chances of becoming a NATO member diminish, with Kosovo acting as an admonition of what could happen to Abkhazia and South Ossetia in the long run. With the clock ticking, it made the tragic choice of solving those conflicts quickly – and militarily. To the Russians’ delightful glee.

In general, the Kosovo case shows how the unilateral bending of international rules and the application of double standards always ends up haunting those engaged in the bending and double-talk. Rightly or wrongly, Kosovo was never seen in Moscow in humanitarian terms, but through the perspective of realpolitik – the cynical abuse by the West of humanitarian standards as a ruse for removing a thorn in its side by violating the sacrosanct principle of state sovereignty. Humanitarian or not, Kosovo left open a huge grey area in International Law any great power could abuse to justify foreign intervention – it was now sufficient to cry ‘genocide’ in exactly the same way some in the West did in 1998-99 to excuse invading another country without UN approval. In circumventing the Security Council, NATO set a dangerous precedent, especially for smaller and weaker states like Georgia – unless one could suggest that NATO has a monopoly in determining what is and what is not a humanitarian catastrophe requiring intervention.

The second bending – some would say breaking – of international law came with the recognition of Kosovo’s independence. Western diplomats can parrot the ‘special case’ argument as often as they like – the simple fact is that such recognition without the prior agreement of Serbia was unprecedented under post-WWII international norms. Both the principles of ‘uti possidetis’, and the principle of territorial integrity were put aside, with Western states – again – acting as prosecutor, judge and executioner. For Putin and the siloviki, the question arose – if there is such a thing as sovereign equality, why should such powers be reserved for NATO members? Why couldn’t a great power do the same in its sphere of influence – by threatening to break up a country that was a constant thorn in its side? Again, in unilaterally recognising Kosovo the West irreparably weakened a principle that was primarily designed to protect smaller and weaker members of the international community – to Georgia’s painful detriment. And, after the initial irritation at seeing a previously unassailable (and highly regarded) principle of international law flouted, Russian minds started thinking – ‘if they can do it, why can’t we, as a Derzhava (Great Power)?’

It is quite clear that Russia has been drawing a red line in the sand for some time now – rejecting any attempts by NATO to expand into ‘its’ near abroad. To the West, this issue is one of enhancing energy security and expanding the democratic zone of peace. Russia, by contrast, perceives the matter in much more existential terms – it sees its long-term survival as a great power as depending on a buffer, a zone of exclusive strategic influence. Moscow may be quite wrong in this perception, but everything suggests it would be willing to go to extreme lengths in order to maintain this essential objective, including dismembering Georgia, and perhaps even the Ukraine, in reaction to their pro-Western strategic orientations. For all the benefits NATO expansion would bring, Western capitals should ask themselves whether their goals are worth infringing on interests which Russia sees as essential to its survival. The core interests of Great Powers are only ignored at great risk – and, quite frankly, neither Georgia nor the Ukraine are worth the global conflagration which their move towards NATO might cause, if they would in fact be able to survive such a move.

Instead of attempting the impossible and risking the inconceivable, the Western alliance should start talking to Russia in its own language – that of realpolitik. First, it should draw a red line in the sand itself, by making it clear to Russia that any aggression or harassment of an established NATO member would be dealt with collectively; Russia has so far shown itself prudent, in practice, vis-a-vis those countries that are subject to protection under article 5, which should not be allowed to lose its deterrent effect. Second, the Alliance should come to an understanding with Moscow regarding the status of the former Soviet Union as a ‘neutral’ buffer zone, desisting from expansion in return for the non-aligned status of these states, which would also have to be encouraged to develop foreign policies that are prudent and balanced, taking into account the interests of their larger northern neighbour. The recent Turkish proposal of a Caucasus Stability Pact, while fraught with difficulty, could point the way in that regard. Third, Russia and the West should come to a clear common understanding regarding the principles that govern the recognition of entities like Kosovo, South Ossetia, Abkhazia, Nagorno-Karabakh and Transdniestria, instead of basing such recognitions on narrow unilateralism and momentary expediency. The one conflict where co-operation between Western states and Russia actually did go relatively smoothly – in Nagorno-Karabakh – could serve as a model for the remainder.

What the West should not do is maintain the hypocrisy that Georgia (and the Ukraine) could gradually move towards NATO without Russia doing everything in its power to destabilise both while they are still in the ‘twilight zone’. In Europe, at least, the world is no longer unipolar. The days where the Alliance could creep eastwards unopposed while freely tinkering with International Law without considering the consequences at other times and in other places are definitively over.