Conference Call
If the question of an earlier period was ‘What is to be done?’ the slogan of contemporary politics is ‘Something must be done!’ This week something must be done about the Middle East apparently, with numerous calls for an international conference to resolve the ongoing crisis of Iraq, the Israel-Palestine conflict and the Iran nuclear stand-off.
Notable heavyweights lending themselves to this cause include Henry Kissinger and British PM, Tony Blair. Both used television interviews to publicly despair of the situation in Iraq; Blair declared the occupation ‘pretty much a disaster’ while Kissinger stated that he didn’t believe a military solution to the situation was possible. The alternative solution? According to Kissinger: “At some early point an international conference should be called that involves neighbors, perhaps the permanent members of the Security Council and countries that have a major interest in the outcome like India and Pakistan.” Blair also sought more involvement from Iran and Syria in stabilizing Iraq.
Such backsliding by the cheerleaders of the Iraq war is now commonplace. With no idea of how to extricate themselves from the situation, our leaders are seeking to drag in others to take the strain. Although Blair attempted to talk tough, declaring “If you [Iran and Syrian] are prepared to be part of the solution, there is a partnership available to you. But at the moment…you are behaving in such a way that makes such a partnership impossible,” this is pure bluster. A Syrian or Iranian dominated Iraq would once have been the worst case scenario for Bush et al; now it is their greatest hope.
If Kissinger had trouble thinking up a name for his international conference, Robert Skidelsky comes to his aid in The Guardian this week. “We need a new Congress of Berlin” he writes (not to be confused, incidentally, with the Berlin Conference; that misreading caused this editor to double-take), and in so doing reveals the theme underlying attempts to garner international cooperation on the issue. The Congress of Berlin, assembled by Kissinger’s inspiration Bismark, was tasked to resolve European tensions arising from the ascendance of Russia and the decline of the Ottoman Empire. Terms were essentially dictated to these weaker powers by an alliance of stronger states.
While others might be more careful about invoking an era of great power politics in their pronouncements, the logic is the same. While we might even invite members of the ‘axis of evil’ to rule Iraq, nobody has any faith in the ability of the Iraqis themselves to decide their own future. And therein lies the problem. The issues of the Middle East cannot be resolved through greater internationalization; such crises already result from the refusal of outside powers, regional or global, to allow people to determine their own politics. Using Iraq’s neighbors as proxy policemen, sending in more troops, or sending in United Nations, will not end the violence. No outside force can reconstruct an Iraq for the Iraqi people.
Finally, in case anybody thought that the admitted failure of the Iraq invasion might have caused a deeper questioning of the principles behind humanitarian intervention, they need only cast a brief eye over these two editorials from the last three days. First, The Guardian, vocal critic of the Iraq war that it is, calls for increasing ground troops in Afghanistan. Apparently the problem is that, thus far, the Western alliance has relied too heavily on air power. Meanwhile, the New York Times, calls for an expansion of the US army to over 500,000 men so that they better participate in peacekeeping and ‘unconventional wars’. We have argued many times on this blog that the overly narrow focus on both the Bush administration and the Iraq war would eventually prove counterproductive to those who seek an end to the military domination of the developing world. It seems like the mid-term defeat for the former project might pave the way for the resurgence of the latter.
Notable heavyweights lending themselves to this cause include Henry Kissinger and British PM, Tony Blair. Both used television interviews to publicly despair of the situation in Iraq; Blair declared the occupation ‘pretty much a disaster’ while Kissinger stated that he didn’t believe a military solution to the situation was possible. The alternative solution? According to Kissinger: “At some early point an international conference should be called that involves neighbors, perhaps the permanent members of the Security Council and countries that have a major interest in the outcome like India and Pakistan.” Blair also sought more involvement from Iran and Syria in stabilizing Iraq.
Such backsliding by the cheerleaders of the Iraq war is now commonplace. With no idea of how to extricate themselves from the situation, our leaders are seeking to drag in others to take the strain. Although Blair attempted to talk tough, declaring “If you [Iran and Syrian] are prepared to be part of the solution, there is a partnership available to you. But at the moment…you are behaving in such a way that makes such a partnership impossible,” this is pure bluster. A Syrian or Iranian dominated Iraq would once have been the worst case scenario for Bush et al; now it is their greatest hope.
If Kissinger had trouble thinking up a name for his international conference, Robert Skidelsky comes to his aid in The Guardian this week. “We need a new Congress of Berlin” he writes (not to be confused, incidentally, with the Berlin Conference; that misreading caused this editor to double-take), and in so doing reveals the theme underlying attempts to garner international cooperation on the issue. The Congress of Berlin, assembled by Kissinger’s inspiration Bismark, was tasked to resolve European tensions arising from the ascendance of Russia and the decline of the Ottoman Empire. Terms were essentially dictated to these weaker powers by an alliance of stronger states.
While others might be more careful about invoking an era of great power politics in their pronouncements, the logic is the same. While we might even invite members of the ‘axis of evil’ to rule Iraq, nobody has any faith in the ability of the Iraqis themselves to decide their own future. And therein lies the problem. The issues of the Middle East cannot be resolved through greater internationalization; such crises already result from the refusal of outside powers, regional or global, to allow people to determine their own politics. Using Iraq’s neighbors as proxy policemen, sending in more troops, or sending in United Nations, will not end the violence. No outside force can reconstruct an Iraq for the Iraqi people.
Finally, in case anybody thought that the admitted failure of the Iraq invasion might have caused a deeper questioning of the principles behind humanitarian intervention, they need only cast a brief eye over these two editorials from the last three days. First, The Guardian, vocal critic of the Iraq war that it is, calls for increasing ground troops in Afghanistan. Apparently the problem is that, thus far, the Western alliance has relied too heavily on air power. Meanwhile, the New York Times, calls for an expansion of the US army to over 500,000 men so that they better participate in peacekeeping and ‘unconventional wars’. We have argued many times on this blog that the overly narrow focus on both the Bush administration and the Iraq war would eventually prove counterproductive to those who seek an end to the military domination of the developing world. It seems like the mid-term defeat for the former project might pave the way for the resurgence of the latter.
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