From time immemorial, persons who feel oppressed and/or ignored by the powerful have resisted those in authority. Such resistance often changed things, but only sometimes. Whether one considers the cause of the resisters to be virtuous depends on one’s values and one’s priorities.

In the United States, over the past half-century, there emerged a latent resistance to what was seen as oppression by “elites” who enacted changes in social practices offensive to certain religious groups and ignored rural populations and persons whose standards of living were declining. At first, resistance took the path of withdrawal from social involvement. Then it took a more political form, finally taking on the name of Tea Party.

The Tea Party began to have some electoral successes. But it was dispersed and without a clear strategy. Donald Trump saw the problem and his opportunity. He offered himself as a unifying leader of this rightwing “populism” and catapulted the movement into political power.

What Trump understood is that there was no conflict between leading a movement against the so-called Establishment and seeking power in the state via the Republican Party. On the contrary, the only way he could achieve his maleficent objectives was to combine the two.

The fact that he succeeded in the world’s strongest military power heartened like-minded groups all across the world, who proceeded to pursue similar paths with steadily increasing numbers of adherents.

Trump’s success is still to this day not understood by the majority of leaders of both U.S. mainstream parties who search for signs that he will become what they call “presidential.” That is to say, they want him to abandon his role as the leader of a movement and confine himself to being the president and leader of a political party.

They seize upon any small sign that he will do this. When he softens his rhetoric for a moment (as he did in his February 28 speech to Congress), they do not understand that this is precisely the deceptive tactic of a movement leader. Instead, they feel encouraged or hopeful. But he will never give up his role as movement leader because the moment that he did this he would lose real power.

In the past year, faced with the reality of Trump’s success, a counter-movement has emerged in the United States (and elsewhere) that has taken on the name of Resist. The participants understood that the only thing that can possibly contain and eventually defeat Trumpism is a social movement that stands for different values and different priorities. This is the “why” of Resist. What is more difficult is the “how” of Resist.

The Resist movement has grown with remarkable rapidity into something impressive enough that the mainstream press has begun to report its existence. This is the reason that Trump constantly inveighs against the press. Publicity nourishes a movement, and he is doing what he can do to crush the counter-movement.

The problem with Resist is that it is still at the stage where its many activities are dispersed and without a clear strategy or at least not a strategy they have yet adopted. Nor is there any unifying figure who is able at this point to do what Trump did with the Tea Party.

Resist has engaged in manifold different actions. They have held marches, challenged local congressional representatives in their public meetings, created sanctuaries for persons menaced with state-ordered expulsions, interfered with transport facilities, published denunciations, signed petitions, and created local collectivities that meet together both studying and deciding upon further local actions. Resist has been able to turn many ordinary persons into militants for the first time in their lives.

Resist however has a few dangers before it. More and more participants will be arrested and jailed. Being a militant is strenuous and after a while many people tire of it. And they need successes, little or big, to maintain their spirits. No one can guarantee that Resist will not fade away. It took the Tea Party decades before they got to where they are today. It may take Resist equally long.

What Resist as a movement needs to keep in mind is the fact that we are in the midst of a historic structural transition from the capitalist world-system in which we have lived for some 500 years to one of two successor systems — a non-capitalist system that preserves all of the worst features of capitalism (hierarchy, exploitation, and polarization) and its opposite, a system that is relatively democratic and egalitarian. I call this the struggle between the spirit of Davos and the spirit of Porto Alegre.

We are living in the chaotic, confusing situation of transition. This has two implications for our collective strategy. In the short run (say, up to three years), we must remember that we all live in the short run. We all wish to survive. We all need food and shelter. Any movement that hopes to flourish must help people survive by supporting anything that minimizes the pain of those who are suffering.

But in the middle run (say 20-40 years), minimizing the pain changes nothing. We need to concentrate on our struggle with those who represent the spirit of Davos. There is no compromise. There is no “reformed” version of capitalism that can be constructed.

So the “how” of Resist is clear. We need collectively more clarity about what is happening, more decisive moral choice, and more sagacious political strategies. This does not automatically come about. We have to construct the combination. We know that another world is possible, yes, but we must also be aware that it is not inevitable.

Immanuel Wallerstein, Senior Research Scholar at Yale University, is the author of The Decline of American Power: The U.S. in a Chaotic World (New Press).

Copyright ©2017 Immanuel Wallerstein — distributed by Agence Global

—————-
Released: 02 March 2017
Word Count: 935
—————-

For rights and permissions, contact:
rights@agenceglobal.com, 1.336.686.9002 or 1.212.731.0757

Agence Global is the exclusive syndication agency for Le Monde diplomatique, and The Washington Spectator, as well as expert commentary by Richard Bulliet, Rami G. Khouri, Vadim Nikitin, John Stoehr, and Immanuel Wallerstein.
—————-

BEIRUT — The destructive and almost irrational nature of decision-making by governments in the Middle East and abroad has been highlighted again this week by three developments that should cause us all to pause for a moment and ask how we have allowed our inhumanity to prevail in the business of war — while also generating a destructive sense of helplessness and worthlessness among hundreds of millions of ordinary people across Arab countries who increasingly conclude that their lives do not matter to anyone

The three developments are: 1) the announcement that Saudi Arabia would provide $10 billion to help rebuilt the widespread destruction in Yemen (which was largely caused by the Saudi decision to initiate a quite senseless war there nearly two years ago); 2) a report by Medecins Sans Frontieres/Doctors Without Borders (MSF) showing the catastrophic impact of the war on the city of Taiz; and, 3) the Donald Trump administration’s desire to raise the U.S. military budget to nearly $650 billion.

The juxtaposition of these three suggests a level of decision-making in assorted powerful countries that has long surpassed the point of uncaring disdain for human life, and now ventures into the criminally irresponsible. The MSF report is based on their continuous presence on the ground in Yemen serving the needs of citizens on both sides of the fighting. It clarifies the massive destruction and thousands of civilian casualties that result from the Saudi Arabia-initiated war, with the support of some Arab allies, assorted Yemeni groups fighting on the ground, and the United States and other foreign and Middle Eastern states offering technical assistance.

The thousands of dead and tens of thousands of injured Yemenis, alongside the significant destruction of civilian facilities, have generated millions of refugees and internally displaced people, leaving about 80 percent of Yemen’s population of 26 million in need of food or other basic needs. Nearly three million have been displaced, and the rate of child malnutrition is among the highest in the world, according to the UN.

In the meantime, Al-Qaeda continues to entrench itself in parts of the country, while thousands of disgruntled young men who see no hope or future for themselves surely must be thinking about joining radical militant groups like Islamic State (ISIS) or others. They ask: Why should they play by the global rules, if Arab and foreign powers and the warring Yemeni parties do not observe those same rules? They saw what happened to civilians in Homs, Aleppo, Gaza City, Tikrit, and other Arab cities, where millions of innocent civilians were displaced, hundreds of thousands were killed, entire urban quarters were razed to the ground, and no power in sight was willing or able to stop the atrocities.

It seems clear then that powerful and rich countries like Saudi Arabia, the United States, Iran, and others can continue to stoke the war in Yemen without any pressures of restraint now or political or legal accountability in the future. If the U.S. military budget is increased by another $50 billion, some of this will go to eradicating ISIS, as President Trump promises. So we should expect more Middle Eastern or Asian lands to soon resemble Yemen, and the world will watch with shock but political immobilization, as it does now in Yemen.

The succinct MSF report, entitled “Yemen: Healthcare under siege in Taiz,” clarifies how almost two years of continuous fighting have created a medical-humanitarian disaster in Yemen’s third largest city — and conditions still continue to deteriorate. (The report is available on the web at http://www.msf.org/en/article/yemen-healthcare-under-siege-taiz).

MSF operates on both sides of the frontlines in Taiz. What it reports is incalculably shocking: “An unacceptably high proportion of the war-wounded are women and children. The city, once Yemen’s cultural hub, has shrunk to a third of its pre-war population size. Yet it is still a densely populated urban war zone where 200,000 people live amidst constant heavy artillery shelling, daily air strikes and armed clashes (…) Shells are launched into and out of the city center while the movement of people and goods in and out is severely restricted and tightly controlled. None of the warring parties in Taiz show any respect for the protection of civilians. Our patients and their caregivers, on both sides of the frontlines around the city, have reported being injured by shelling while preparing lunch at home, wounded by airstrikes while walking to their fields, shot at by snipers while walking the streets outside their houses, and maimed by landmines while herding their livestock (…) Hospitals have been repeatedly hit by shelling and gunfire, one clinic has been hit by an airstrike, and ambulances have been shot at, confiscated or intruded on by armed men. Medical personnel have been shot at on their way to work, harassed, detained, threatened and forced to work at gunpoint (…) The general population is not only caught in the crossfire, but is frequently indiscriminately targeted.”

All the local and foreign warring parties are directly or indirectly involved in these destructive acts. MSF says it has treated over 55,000 war-wounded in Yemen, with over 10,700 of them from Taiz.

MSF is asking that International Humanitarian Law (IHL) be urgently applied to reduce or stop the “consistent pattern of injuring and killing of civilians by all belligerents,” and that all warring parties respect, “the protection and neutrality of medical structures and personnel, allow the wounded and sick to safely access to health care, and facilitate the delivery of medical and humanitarian aid.”

It seems far better to do this now than to mindlessly and criminally spend tens of billions of dollars on more wars and post-war assistance in shattered countries that should never have been shattered in the first place.

Rami G. Khouri is a senior fellow at the American University of Beirut and the Harvard Kennedy School, and can be followed on Twitter @ramikhouri

Copyright ©2017 Rami G. Khouri — distributed by Agence Global

—————-
Released: 28 February 2017
Word Count: 950
—————-

For rights and permissions, contact:
rights@agenceglobal.com, 1.336.686.9002 or 1.212.731.0757

Agence Global is the exclusive syndication agency for Le Monde diplomatique, and The Washington Spectator, as well as expert commentary by Richard Bulliet, Rami G. Khouri, Vadim Nikitin, John Stoehr, and Immanuel Wallerstein.
—————-

BEIRUT — It is always heartening to see some Western-based global institutions speak the truth about aspects of our turbulent and sometimes derelict conditions in Arab countries. This is the case with a report released in London Tuesday by Transparency International (TI), that said the “Islamic State” (ISIS) would only be defeated if the corrupt conditions that help it to thrive are addressed. This call significantly says responsibility for the conditions that created ISIS and others like it is shared among Arab and other Middle Eastern and Western countries, including the United States and UK.

Both aspects of this are noteworthy, especially as various Middle Eastern and foreign armies are attacking ISIS’ Raqqa and Mosul strongholds. The two bookends of the ISIS phenomenon and many others like it are that corruption is a major driver of terrorism, especially in the Middle East, and that Western governments are complicit in this and need to revise their policies, as do Arab states themselves.

The deeper point is TI’s call for Western and other foreign governments to stop using their taxpayers’ money to support authoritarian regimes that thrive on corruption. Katherine Dixon, director of Transparency International Defence and Security and co-author of the report, said, “This is not just about closing off the corrupt channels that enable the day-to-day operations of groups like ISIS, but rethinking relationships with the Mubaraks [in Egypt], Gaddafis [in Libya] and Malakis [in Iraq] of the future.”

This call coincides with new data compiled by the U.K. group Campaign Against Arms Trade (CAAT), quoted in the Guardian newspaper on Feb. 12, showing unusual British exuberance in selling arms to Arab states, including those involved in the catastrophic war in Yemen. The story notes: “In the years leading up to the Arab spring, the UK sold those countries £41.3m of small arms, £7m of ammunition and £34.3m of armored vehicles. In the five years following the events of 2011, these figures, compiled by CAAT, had risen sharply to an annual average of £58.9m, £14m and £59.6m respectively. In some cases sales skyrocketed. UK exports of small arms, ammunition and armored vehicles to the United Arab Emirates jumped from £18.3m to £93.2m, to Qatar from £2.3m to £33.4m, and to Egypt from £2.5m to £34.7m (….) The UK has continued to arm the Saudi regime, licensing about £3.3bn of weapons to the kingdom since the bombing of Yemen began in March 2015.”

Andrew Smith of CAAT echoed TI’s call for Western states to reconsider how their policies bolster non-democratic Arab states: “The 2011 uprisings should have caused countries like the UK to re-evaluate how they do business with the Middle East and North Africa, but they did no such thing. The arms sales have increased, even where the repression is getting worse.”

The TI report adds a new element to this argument, which is that ISIS and other groups like it will only be defeated if the underlying drivers of dysfunction, disparities, and indignity across many parts of the Arab world are tackled head on – meaning that both Arab and foreign governments must revise their policies. The TI report, entitled The Big Spin, says that ISIS exploited the widespread Arab popular resentment of corruption to radicalize and recruit people, offering the Islamic State as the antidote, even though it also practiced dishonest activities.

A related problem, TI acknowledged, is that foreign powers spend too much time focusing on radical religious ideologies, but completely ignore the material circumstances in which ISIS and other such groups thrive. So defeating ISIS in Raqqa and Mosul while corruption, government incompetence, and citizen despair continue to grow will only guarantee the birth of new groups even more dangerous than ISIS, Al-Qaeda and others like them.

The “material circumstances” that TI refers to have led to very difficult living conditions for several hundred million Arabs in the past few decades; this has been due to the ravages from the convergence of corrupt, often inept, elites that mismanage government services, a total lack of political rights for citizens, and no credible accountability of power — while high population growth continues apace, environmental conditions deteriorate widely, and foreign armies attack and colonize Arab lands at will. This entire grim picture has been heavily supported by Western governments or quietly accepted as an unfortunate dimension of the Orient — but never mind, they say in London, Washington and Paris, if those Arabs spend tens of billions of dollars to buy our weapons that are mostly used to further destabilize other Arab countries and spur refugee flows now measured in the millions.

The outcome is what we have seen across many Arab lands since the early 1990s, as disgruntled citizens turn desperate, and in turn destabilize their own and neighboring lands. TI concludes appropriately: “Corruption is a real security threat, more than just a means for elites to line their pockets. In the end corrupt governments by fueling public anger and undermining institutions, are the architects of their own security crises.”

Well said, old chaps.

Rami G. Khouri is a senior fellow at the American University of Beirut and the Harvard Kennedy School, and can be followed on Twitter @ramikhouri

Copyright ©2017 Rami G. Khouri — distributed by Agence Global

—————-
Released: 22 February 2017
Word Count: 832
—————-

For rights and permissions, contact:
rights@agenceglobal.com, 1.336.686.9002 or 1.212.731.0757

Agence Global is the exclusive syndication agency for Le Monde diplomatique, and The Washington Spectator, as well as expert commentary by Richard Bulliet, Rami G. Khouri, Vadim Nikitin, John Stoehr, and Immanuel Wallerstein.
—————-

BEIRUT — We should have a better idea in the coming 48 hours what the Trump administration really means by an unnamed senior White House official’s statement that Washington does not necessarily insist in a two-state solution as the outcome of Israeli-Palestinian peace negotiations — meaning adjacent, sovereign Palestinian and Israeli states living in peace. Then again, it might be that both the senior White House official and visiting Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu could both be indicted in courts in a few weeks, given the precarious situations these days before the law of both Netanyahu and some White House officials.

This does not take into account that both Netanyahu and Trump are candidates for the Global Prize in Flip-flopping Double-Speak. They have both said they are committed to certain principles, and then either reversed themselves or pursued policies that make application of those principles impossible to achieve, e.g., the illegality or legality of Jewish colonial-settlements, moving the U.S. embassy to Jerusalem, supporting a two-state solution. So we should be slow and cautious to react to the latest statement about the non-essential nature of a two-state solution. For the Americans and Israelis making these statements on the future of Palestine and Israel have repeatedly shown themselves to be ignorant, confused, untrustworthy, or simply hormone-bloated, mean, aging male politicians in increasingly dysfunctional democracies that ignore the primacy of the rule of law and the clear consensus of virtually the entire world.

Unnamed senior White House officials’ statements usually need to be taken with great caution, or else the speaker would have identified themselves to give their thoughts more clout. In this White House, that principle is at least doubled, given the erratic nature of political management we have seen in the past three weeks. So we should not react very strongly to this right now, other than to enjoy the show of two troubled and very entertaining politicians trying to save each other in the midst of swirling political waters all around them.

Yet, two dimensions of this situation may be significant. The first is how two foreign tough-guys assume that they can dictate or at least direct the future fate of Palestine. This has been a problem for the past 50 years, when Israel and the U.S. used their military and political muscle to try to impose the shape of a permanent peace agreement with Arab states and Palestinians. It has not worked and will not work, precisely for the reason mentioned by the White House ghost speaker, who said that the parties themselves have to negotiate the final shape of a peace settlement.

It is fascinating that the Israel-U.S. combine feels it can unilaterally lay out what it seeks or accepts in a permanent agreement, and in so doing to go against the entire consensus of the entire world and the entire body of international law and conventions during the entire past half-century (since the 1967 war). This is another sign of the presumptuous Israel-American sense of being able to lay down the law and the Palestinians have no option other than to accept. Yet the past 50 years — and the 70 years since 1948, and the 100 years since the 1917 Balfour Declaration that gave global diplomatic impetus to the Zionist desire to create a Jewish state in the land of Palestine that was some 95% Arab Palestinians then — indicate that Palestinians and Arabs will not roll over and accept humiliating sub-sovereign and sub-national status in the face of Israeli-American power that is regularly used against them. That the new American presidency seems to be repeating this combination of arrogance- and ignorance-driven mediation in Palestine-Israel is disheartening, but probably not lasting.

The other fascinating issue is the context in the U.S. in which all this plays out. A new Gallup poll shows that Americans overwhelmingly (71%) have a favorable image of Israel. This is not new, and it is fully understandable in view of how Israel and its friends and clients in the U.S. repeatedly portray it in public in positive terms, many of which align with America’s own historical mythology and throbbing foundational heartstrings.

Yet equally important here is that the across-the-board high admiration for Israel is slowly tapering off, as just 61% of Democrats and 63% of 18-29-year-old Americans have a favorable view of it. These are small but steady changes, and they are supported by the second point, which is the evidence from numerous other national polls that Americans want their government to be even-handed in promoting Israel-Palestine peace — which is very much in line with traditional American values. This is especially clear among young people and Democrats, including Jewish-Americans, which this new Gallup poll reflects only slightly because it only asked about views towards Israel, and not to both Israel and Palestine.

So we should wait and see whether this new American administration follows all the others before it in recognizing that a two-state solution that offers Israel and Palestine equal rights is the best way to resolve this long-running conflict.

Let us also hope that this is reflected in the policies of governments and not just their words. This seems to be the wish of the entire world, including Americans, other than perhaps a narrowing circle of extreme politicians in Washington who will make their voices heard again this week, while the rushing and rising waters of the stream of justice and equal rights for all people close in on them day by day.

Rami G. Khouri is a senior fellow at the American University of Beirut and the Harvard Kennedy School, and can be followed on Twitter @ramikhouri

Copyright ©2017 Rami G. Khouri — distributed by Agence Global

—————-
Released: 16 February 2017
Word Count: 909
—————-

For rights and permissions, contact:
rights@agenceglobal.com, 1.336.686.9002 or 1.212.731.0757

Agence Global is the exclusive syndication agency for Le Monde diplomatique, and The Washington Spectator, as well as expert commentary by Richard Bulliet, Rami G. Khouri, Vadim Nikitin, John Stoehr, and Immanuel Wallerstein.
—————-

One year ago, the French 2017 presidential elections seemed very assured. There were three parties that mattered: the center-right Les Républicains (LR), the center-left Socialists (PS), and the far-right Front National (FN). Since in France there are normally two rounds with only two candidates permitted in the second round, the key question always is which of the three will be eliminated in the first round.

It seemed sure at the time that the FN would be in the second round, incarnating anti-Establishment sentiment. It seemed equally sure that President François Hollande, were he to seek re-election, would lose badly. This meant that the LR candidate would be in the second round. This would be especially true if LR chose Alain Juppé and not former President Nicolas Sarkozy. Most people thought that Juppé was far more likely than Sarkozy to attract Socialist and centrist voters and thereby more likely to win the presidency.

Hence the general view a year ago was that the Establishment parties would prevail and that Juppé would win. How wrong these expectations turned out to be. If Trump’s election in the United States and Brexit’s victory in the UK were unexpected, they pale beside the current unexpected situation in France. There are six plausible candidates for the presidential elections, and all of them (yes, all of them) claim to be anti-Establishment. Furthermore, which two of the six will be in the second round is, as of today, anyone’s guess. Between now and April 23, 2017, the first round of the presidential elections, the electorate seems extremely volatile.

Here’s why. France’s complicated system is intended to favor the two main Establishment parties. It usually works. It presumes however that everyone is called upon to vote twice. This time, there have been four times to vote — first of all in two rounds in the primaries and then two times in the presidential elections. That means that a voter in the first round of the primaries had to anticipate the result in the third election (first round of the presidentials) to decide for whom to vote in the first round of the primaries. The result of this impossible task for the voters is that the results of the primaries could be very surprising, and indeed they were.

The LR primaries were the first, occurring on Nov. 20 and Nov. 27, 2016. In this primary of right and center-right voters, there were three main candidates. The two with seemingly strongest support were Sarkozy and Juppé. The third, and far behind in the polls, was François Fillon. Fillon campaigned as somewhat anti-Establishment, emphasizing the evil of financial misappropriations, of which Sarkozy was being charged and Juppé convicted in the past. He also was ultra-conservative on social issues, appealing to a Catholic vote.

Fillon surprised everyone. In the polls he had been running third with only about 10% of the voters. In the vote, he jumped about 30 points and came in first. His victory was so decisive that Sarkozy, who came in third, endorsed him (if only to hurt Juppé). And Fillon easily prevailed over Juppé in the second round two to one.

Next came the left primaries. Anticipating a humiliating defeat, Hollande withdrew from the race before the primary. His Prime Minister, Manuel Valls, immediately entered the race and was expected to win, at least in the first round. Valls stood as the Establishment candidate, supported by the right wing of the French left and quietly by Hollande.

Two former ministers of Hollande stood as left candidates against Valls. Arnaud Montebourg had resigned because of the austerity policies of Hollande. Benoît Hamon had been fired by Hollande because he opposed these policies within the cabinet. Both of them felt that Hollande and Valls had betrayed the left. It was expected that Montebourg would come in second to Valls, and perhaps might win in the second round.

None of this happened. Valls came in second, not first, in the first round and Hamon, not Montebourg, won. Hamon had refused to endorse the record of Hollande and Valls in their time in government, and insisted on discussing new future policies, offering one of importance. Suddenly, the left within the left primary seemed strong. Hamon picked up endorsements from many different left factions and was able to trounce Valls in the second round with almost 58% of the vote.

Two other persons are in the race. One is Emmanuel Macron, a former minister of Hollande who thought his policies were insufficiently pro-neoliberal, and formed his own party, En Marche!. Macron refused to enter the left primary. He stood on his program — very neoliberal in economic matters but at the same time very progressive on all social questions. The other person in the race is Jean-Luc Mélenchon, who has for years proposed himself as the left of the left. He calls his party “La France insoumise,” meaning those on the left who resist and will not allow themselves to be subjected. For this reason, he has rejected as not leftist all those who have served in Hollande’s government, even if they later resigned or were fired.

Macron assumes that his program would appeal to middle-class voters across the left-right spectrum. After the left primary, many Valls voters who were angry about Hamon’s leftist stance initially threatened to switch to Macron. Macron thereby seemed to pose a threat to Fillon in the first round of the presidentials. Mélenchon has no illusions that he could win this time but he is preparing the future. He is very unlikely to respond to Hamon’s call for left unity behind him.

Suddenly a new major development occurred. Fillon was exposed as having misrepresented himself as the paragon of financial honesty. He had put his wife and his two sons on the government payroll for what was asserted to be fictional work. This has not been unusual practice in France, but the amounts of money in this case were so large and the deed so contrary to the claims of Fillon’s candidacy that LR began a big discussion about a so-called Plan B — to replace Fillon with someone else.

It turned out that replacing Fillon would be still worse for LR than leaving him as the candidate. This was because there was no single candidate that was obvious. And the struggle to choose any one of them would tear apart LR. In addition, Fillon counter-attacked, apologizing for misdeeds, and asserting that he still could win. Plan B disappeared and Fillon remains the LR candidate. The question is how many voters did he lose for the first round of the presidential elections because of his transgressions.

So, as I said, everyone claims to be anti-Establishment. In reality, Fillon and Macron are close to playing that role. That leaves Hamon as the one with most credentials to represent a real change. But in order to win the first round of the presidentials he has to hold the Socialist party in line (so far he is doing that), attract Mélenchon’s voters, attract ecologist voters (so far he is doing this), and attract centrist voters. This is quite difficult.

So where are we? FN’s Marine Le Pen has received about 25% of the polls steadily for over a year. It seems she is at a plateau, but a high one. She is trying to appeal now to disillusioned Fillon supporters. Macron is rising in the polls. So is Hamon. Mélenchon isn’t budging. And, as the cartoonists are saying, Establishment is the others.

Should Hamon succeed, however, this will be a major worldwide event. It will be the first major race in recent years in Europe (or elsewhere for that matter) in which a left candidate, openly left, has won. This will reverse a worldwide trend of candidates and parties moving to the right.

As the economic turmoil continues to spread, the idea that one can win as a leftist may again become legitimate. It’s a bit equivalent to what might have happened had Bernie Sanders won the Democratic primary in the United States. But remember, this all depends on voters guessing now who will be the candidates in the second round of the presidentials. Assuming Le Pen gets 25%, that leaves 75% to be divided among five other candidates.

The first round of the presidentials are not until April 23, 2017. This is a fairly long time for voters to make a difficult decision. The polls show that intensity of support is thin, especially for Macron. That is why we can expect great volatility in the polls. There is no way to be sure who can get the probable 20% needed to be in the second round of the presidentials on May 7, 2017.

Immanuel Wallerstein, Senior Research Scholar at Yale University, is the author of The Decline of American Power: The U.S. in a Chaotic World (New Press).

Copyright ©2017 Immanuel Wallerstein — distributed by Agence Global

—————-
Released: 15 February 2017
Word Count: 1,449
—————-

For rights and permissions, contact:
rights@agenceglobal.com, 1.336.686.9002 or 1.212.731.0757

Agence Global is the exclusive syndication agency for Le Monde diplomatique, and The Washington Spectator, as well as expert commentary by Richard Bulliet, Rami G. Khouri, Vadim Nikitin, John Stoehr, and Immanuel Wallerstein.
—————-

BEIRUT — Monday was a rough day for moral clarity in the Middle East. We heard from the respected Amnesty International that up to 13,000 Syrian prisoners were tortured and hanged in a government jail. The American president promised to expand military spending significantly, just days after putting Iran “on notice” for test firing a missile that Iran was fully allowed to test fire. The executive and legislative branches of the Israeli government both approved Apartheid-like colonial policies to expand Jewish settlements on stolen Palestinian land. Yemeni rebels fired a missile at a military installation near the Saudi Arabian capital of Riyadh, marking a dangerous new escalation in that conflict.

These were only a few of the problematic developments across the Middle East that highlight one of the most serious threats that our region faces: the de-linking of one’s actions from any serious consequences because of those actions. Government leaders, opposition militant groups, foreign powers, and everyone else in between can do anything they want in the Middle East, without serious fear of accountability or retribution. So acts of cruelty, savagery, or even near-barbarism mostly go unpunished, regardless of the perpetrators or the victims. Only a few hapless minor criminals who do not have the protection of a major local or foreign patron get caught, tried, and sent to jail for a few years.

Our Arab region’s terrible de-coupling of political acts from both moral standards and legal constraints or consequences did not happen suddenly. In recent decades we have seen millions killed or exiled in Sudan, by Sudanese primarily; ferocious warfare in Syria and Iraq that includes barrel bombs, starvation sieges, and suicide attacks by governments and militant terrorists; drone attacks by the U.S. against Arab militants and civilians in several countries; Lebanon’s civil war atrocities from 1975-89; Israel’s non-stop colonization, sieges, and killing or imprisoning of Palestinians in large numbers since 1967 and before; the inhuman warfare in Yemen that includes attacks by Yemenis and by neighboring Arab Gulf powers, with the active association of the United States and Great Britain; and the examples go on and on.

This reflects a quarter-century of slow unraveling of established governance systems and state orders — mostly since the end of the Cold War around 1990. When the United States and Russia became less directly concerned with the Middle East, local structures of political order and mechanisms of “stability” slowly eroded. Local powers emerged and took control, often fighting each other to the death, as we witness today in Yemen, Libya, Syria, and Iraq, though similar tensions in other Arab countries persist at lower intensity levels.

Many have theorized about why this has happened mainly in the Arab world. This is an important discussion, if it can offer credible and verifiable insights into the root causes of why we have allowed our region to become a killing field for sectarian thugs, a shooting gallery for local warlords, and a proving range for foreign military salesmen.

Until we achieve a better understanding of those reasons for our descent into a political battlefield devoid of moral values or legal and political constraints, we must sadly admit that most Arab countries have no real significance to the rest of the world, with the exception of some who produce energy. And only somewho produce energy, not all of them; for we have seen now how the world gets on fine without full oil production from Libya, Syria, Yemen, and Iraq. So even oil and gas reserves do not guarantee you protection as an Arab country. Israel is able to protect itself and in any case can count fully on U.S. support in case of any real threats.

So, the Arab region has little or no strategic significance to anyone. It can burn to its heart’s content, it seems. I suspect this is because no Arab country has been able to achieve genuine full sovereignty, meaning effective domestic and foreign policies that lead to increased well-being, opportunity, security, and — most critically — international respect for its citizens. Some Arab states seek instant respect by throwing their military weight around, and they end up only spreading chaos and human misery to even more countries. Other Arab states seek instant respect by becoming active cogs in the global neo-liberal economic-entertainment order, by hosting golf tournaments or car races, or building the world’s biggest amusement parks or fried chicken fast food outlets. Others yet seek instant respect by offering their services as security partners and sub-contractors for global powers.

Monday’s news should remind us, sadly, that these and other desperate strategies do not work; they do not breed respect for Arab states, but rather decrease it. They cause the world to view us as utilitarian tools that can be picked up and abandoned in an instant. So when we start neglecting the needs and rights of half our low-income or marginalized people, concentrate state wealth in the hands of a few dozen families, and ultimately shoot and bomb each other, the world powers watch with bewilderment — or, as in Syria and Yemen, they join the fray and shoot away with abandon. The fact that our power elites do not seem to grasp this elementary reality is as troubling as their lack of ability to achieve genuine sovereignty and self-respect for Arab cultures and peoples that had achieved those feats several times in history.

Rami G. Khouri is a senior fellow at the American University of Beirut and the Harvard Kennedy School, and can be followed on Twitter @ramikhouri

Copyright ©2017 Rami G. Khouri — distributed by Agence Global

—————-
Released: 07 February 2017
Word Count: 892
—————-

For rights and permissions, contact:
rights@agenceglobal.com, 1.336.686.9002 or 1.212.731.0757

Agence Global is the exclusive syndication agency for Le Monde diplomatique, and The Washington Spectator, as well as expert commentary by Richard Bulliet, Rami G. Khouri, Vadim Nikitin, John Stoehr, and Immanuel Wallerstein.
—————-

BEIRUT — Never in my life, which has spanned the United States and the Arab world, have I experienced a moment such as the past week when ordinary Americans and ordinary Arabs share exactly the same sentiments of personal vulnerability and indignity and political anger. In the United States in the past week, I have seen the precise mirror image of the Arab world I have experienced my whole life — with one important difference. This should be a really valuable learning moment when Arabs and Americans, who value freedom and the dignity that comes with it, can overwhelm the ugly hatreds and ideological venom and lies that assorted special interest groups in both societies impose on the majority of people.

Millions of Americans have been reacting spontaneously to the Trump administration’s executive orders temporarily halting the admission of refugees and specifically refusing entry to individuals from seven Muslim-majority countries. Individual Americans have taken to the streets, the media, the political system, and the courts of law for many different reasons — they found the Trump measures unconstitutional, un-American, unethical, unfair, or un-anything else, including being harmful to economic growth and innovation — they instinctively felt in their hearts and minds the need to challenge their government through all available legitimate means.

They were outraged that their presidential system could wield power so whimsically and unilaterally, implementing measures that were deeply offensive to many citizens’ sense of decency in America. They also felt fearful for their and their children’s future. They saw the danger of how a small group of people, including members of a single family, could destroy social and economic policies that have been painstakingly built up for decades to assist middle class and low-income families, protect the environment, promote justice for all, and maintain an open, inclusive, and participatory political system — all the while enriching the wealth and power of a small minority at the peak of the political pyramid.

American citizens have experienced in one week what several hundred million Arab men and women have been experiencing for the past half century or so: power structures that are controlled by a small number of men, revolving around a single family, closely tied to corporate business interests, and taking decisions unilaterally with little interaction with or respect for the elected legislative branch of government, expertise in the scholarly and civil society worlds, or the domestic and international rule of law. It has been fascinating to watch many sectors of American society spontaneously and vigorously stand up and challenge the Trump decisions; these have included ordinary citizens in the streets, university professors and administrators, corporate presidents, human rights and lawyers’ organizations, journalists from all corners of the media world, government officials at the federal and local levels, and many others.

Ordinary Americans now should be able to appreciate what it felt like in January 2011, when hundreds of thousands of ordinary Arab men and women similarly took to the streets to challenge the unjust, heavy-handed ways of their long-serving, family-based, security-anchored leaderships. Several hundred million ordinary Americans — about the same number as their Arab counterparts in 2011 — have been glued to their television and computer screens, following every new development in this historic moment when millions of people spontaneously stand up and hold their moral ground as citizens who insist on protecting their rights as citizens.

We in the Arab world should be generous and merciful to our American brothers and sisters, and not say that this is a Facebook or Twitter movement in the United States – as many in the United States said about the Arab uprisings. Because Facebook, Twitter and the social media world have been mere instruments for sending messages, not major elements of substance or drivers of conscience. The real (and universal) story here is the courage and determination of individual men and women who stand up, openly confront their homegrown bigots and autocrats, and protect that beautiful and precious terrain where liberty, dignity, and equal opportunity converge in the everyday lives of individual people, and in their constitutions if they are lucky.

Arabs have not been so lucky. The single big difference between this American uprising and the Arab one six years ago to the week almost, is that Americans can use available means of political dissent and legal challenge and restraint that live in their political governance system. Arabs had and have no such avenues open to them, other than peaceful demonstrations in the street. Even there, tens of thousands of Arabs sit in jail today because they dared to take to the street and speak out against their governments’ harsh policies.

In the final analysis, though, these are not tales of acts in the street, but rather of impulses in the heart. The blood and the values that flow through Arab and American veins can now be seen to emanate from a single source of human dignity, vitality, decency, respect for the law that protects everyone equally, and the indomitable will to be free in one’s own home.

I stand in awe at Americans who work in so many ways to affirm their values when those values are threatened or curtailed; I stand in equal awe at Arabs who have tried without success for half a century to achieve the same goal, with no real political and legal tools at their disposal. Those tools will come to our lands one day soon, however, and not because they travel digitized routes of social media, but because our blood in our veins that seeks the fresh air of full citizen rights and the rule of law for all will burst out from our bodies, to overwhelm the autocrats, and flood the streets with goodness and decency.

I suspect Americans appreciate this a little more clearly this week.

Rami G. Khouri is a senior fellow at the American University of Beirut and the Harvard Kennedy School, and can be followed on Twitter @ramikhouri

Copyright ©2017 Rami G. Khouri — distributed by Agence Global

—————-
Released: 01 February 2017
Word Count: 960
—————-

For rights and permissions, contact:
rights@agenceglobal.com, 1.336.686.9002 or 1.212.731.0757

Agence Global is the exclusive syndication agency for Le Monde diplomatique, and The Washington Spectator, as well as expert commentary by Richard Bulliet, Rami G. Khouri, Vadim Nikitin, John Stoehr, and Immanuel Wallerstein.
—————-

BEIRUT — Despite all the negative gestures and statements he has made in the past 18 months, my personal and journalistic instinct is to see what U.S. President Donald Trump actually defines and implements as policies before judging him conclusively. That should take just a month or two at most, given the brisk pace of his bold actions and rhetoric. It is fair game, though, to react to what he is doing and saying these days in situations where any of us can offer insights based on experiences that he may not have had himself.

So I think we should all be very worried about the tone and direction of Trump’s apparent views on how the United States should pursue its relations with Egypt. I say this only on the basis of what the White House spokesman said Monday when he reported that Trump had spoken by phone with Egyptian President Abdel Fattah Sisi, and that the lead issue in their discussions was “efforts against terrorism and extremism.”

The White House and the Egyptian media both said that Trump praised Egypt’s efforts to fight terrorism, and promised to fully support Egypt in its economic and security plans. It is good news that one of the most important Arab countries and the world’s most powerful country both plan to cooperate in the critical battle against terrorism and extremism. It is imperative that Arab and global powers work closely together to defeat this serious and growing terror threat to all countries, by adopting strategies that could succeed.

Yet, Arab and American leaders (and Russian, British, French and other world leaders) who have tried this have yet to find those strategies that succeed. The main reason may be that they continue to refuse to acknowledge that sustained domestic autocracy devoid of citizen political rights, combined with socio-economic stagnation and growing disparities, actually generate the conditions that promote terrorism among Arab citizens who had never been inclined to this sort of criminality before.

It would be frightening news if Trump’s announcement means the United States plans to fully support Sisi’s current strategy to fight terror, because that strategy has failed to date on both the developmental and the security levels. Even more problematic — the lessons of modern Arab history indicate — is the proven reality that the total support of global powers to autocrats, dictators, or military men who rule Arab countries has been a recurring catastrophe for the our region for 65 years now.

This started when the Egyptian military in 1952 initiated the ugly legacy of soldiers seizing power and ruling with a devastating combination of heavy-handedness and incompetence. The good things some of them did ultimately were dwarfed and swamped by the negative consequences of unchecked military rule. The novelty of soldiers in power spread from Egypt to many other Arab countries after 1952. The results we see today include the weakened national skeletons of once promising countries like Iraq, Libya, Syria, Yemen, Sudan, Somalia, and others.

The new Trump administration should definitely support Egypt’s desire to fight terrorism, but it should do so while recognizing that the sustained combination of unquestioning American support and unchecked Arab military rulers has been one of the most important underlying causes of the country wrecks and security threats that we see across many Arab lands today, including Al-Qaeda and the “Islamic State.” Our own lived history suggests that Egypt’s current policy of using massive military tactics to suppress the small, home-grown terror movements that threaten it, while stifling the political freedoms of all citizens, is unlikely to succeed in the long run. Many other military-run, foreign-supported Arab states have tried the same things in recent decades, and now they are the world’s leading generators, trainers, and exporters of terrorism. Do foreign powers that understandably support Arab autocrats in the fight against terror simply ignore this reality of the past 65 years?

The real challenge here is for the Trump administration and Arab leaders to put away their egos and, in some cases, their political desperation, and think rationally and honestly about what happened from the 1950s until today in many Arab lands that routinely exhibit barbarism and cruelty. Heavy-handed local military responses to sustained citizen discontent and rights denials eventually prompt small groups of politically and economically ravaged individuals who see no hope for improvements in their lives to adopt violence, and then terrorism. More strong American support for Egypt’s stringent security policies and blanket prohibition of any meaningful opposition will almost certainly see this legacy confirmed and repeated — to the great detriment of all Egyptians and all of us, wherever we live.

Terrorism is not a structural or cultural certainty. It is a symptom of underlying distress and distortions that are the consequence of bad policies. Those bad policies include security-first approaches to reducing terrorism, rather than combining police and security operations with serious political reforms and socio-economic expansions. Trump and Sisi would seem to be the perfect candidates to adopt this more sensible, rational approach to the terror threat they must address. They may be signaling exactly the opposite, which would be a terrible tragedy for us all.

Rami G. Khouri is a senior fellow at the American University of Beirut and the Harvard Kennedy School, and can be followed on Twitter @ramikhouri

Copyright ©2017 Rami G. Khouri — distributed by Agence Global

—————-
Released: 24 January 2017
Word Count: 854
—————-

For rights and permissions, contact:
rights@agenceglobal.com, 1.336.686.9002 or 1.212.731.0757

Agence Global is the exclusive syndication agency for Le Monde diplomatique, and The Washington Spectator, as well as expert commentary by Richard Bulliet, Rami G. Khouri, Vadim Nikitin, John Stoehr, and Immanuel Wallerstein.
—————-

BEIRUT — We’ve just passed through quite an extraordinary period of international activity on how to resolve the Israel-Palestine conflict. The UN Security Council resolution declaring Israeli settlements as illegal under international law was followed by the United States forcefully speaking out against Israeli settlements that block the path to a permanent peace agreement. Then the French convened an international gathering of 70 states that reaffirmed the need for a two-state solution. The Vatican chipped in by recognizing a Palestine embassy at the Vatican.

This is fascinating for several reasons. It reflects an almost total international consensus on a two-state solution as the best outcome to aim for, which also assumes that Israeli settlement-colonies are illegal and need to be dismantled or swapped for land given to the Palestinians in exchange. It shows that the world is deeply preoccupied with the conflict and finding ways to resolve it, which totally rebuffs the common Israeli official view that our region has other priorities than Palestine. The forceful U.S. position expressed in its statements lacks any hint of other actions to try to force a change in Israeli settlements policy.

In this context, an opinion piece in the Washington Post last week by Dennis Ross and Stuart Eizenstat clarifies much about the broad attitudes of the U.S. government to this conflict, and in particular it helps us understand why the U.S. has been unable to achieve any significant progress in the Palestinian-Israeli negotiations it has mediated for almost 25 years now. The Jan. 12 op-ed entitled “Here’s what Plan B in the Middle East should look like,” is a shocking reminder of how structurally biased and dishonest American official attitudes to Palestinians continue to shape the stalemate we all suffer, in which the continued colonization of Palestinian lands by Israelis is a central dynamic.

The op-ed by two American ex-officials who had been deeply involved in the failed negotiations for many years seeks to perpetuate the core failures of past mediation in several dimensions. First is the illusion that the past quarter century has shattered many times, that step-by-step confidence-building measures can move both sides towards renewed trust that would help drive successful agreements for a permanent peace accord. This has been tried many times and has always failed.

Second, the proposal by Ross and Eizenstat explicitly allows the continued building of new settlements in areas near the border that they presume will become part of Israel under any peace agreement; they also accept the completion of the Israeli “security fence”, which much of the world knows as the Apartheid Wall. The idea that Israelis will relax if they can continue doing these things and move towards a full negotiated peace has been proven by modern history to be a fantasy — but the sort of fantasy that pro-Likud zealots in the United States and Israel have peddled for decades.

Third, and one reason why the United States has been a serial failure in mediating peace, is that the Ross-Eizenstat text subtly reinforces the long-standing American perception that Israel must have security before it can offer any “concessions,” while the Palestinians are viewed almost exclusively through the lens of extremists whose violence threatens the lives of Israelis. Nowhere in American eyes do the Israelis and Palestinian enjoy perfectly equal and simultaneous rights to statehood, security, and prosperity.

So the core elements of the Ross-Eizenstat plan calls for restoring trust and protecting Israel’s security, while “creating a more prosperous and less resentful and violence-prone Palestinian population.” References to the Palestinians center around improving their development prospects, reducing incentives for violence, improving access to jobs in Israel or basic services in Palestinian lands controlled by Israel’s occupation, and preserving effective counter-terrorism cooperation between Israeli and Palestinian security forces.

Here in a nutshell is a concise picture of why American mediation has failed for so long — because it has repeated the Israeli view that Palestinian violence is the core problem, while ignoring the fact that Israeli colonization and military force are the bigger and core cause of the violence that consumes both sides and has resulted in five times as many Palestinians as Israelis being killed in the past year or so.

Continuing Zionist colonization while perpetuating the colonized status of Palestinians who can be appeased with some day jobs in Israel and a few more water wells or power plants is not how a genuine, serious, and impartial mediator operates. It is rather the manner of the colonial accomplice.

No wonder there has been no breakthrough for peace, and an exasperated world, including the American president, now opts for forceful symbolic actions through the UN Security Council. What is a wonder is why in the world anyone could possibly take seriously the advice of ex-officials like Ross, Eizenstat, and others who step forward now to suggest how to resolve the dilemma they helped deepen and perpetuate.

Rami G. Khouri is a senior fellow at the American University of Beirut and the Harvard Kennedy School, and can be followed on Twitter @ramikhouri

Copyright ©2017 Rami G. Khouri — distributed by Agence Global

—————-
Released: 18 January 2017
Word Count: 810
—————-

For rights and permissions, contact:
rights@agenceglobal.com, 1.336.686.9002 or 1.212.731.0757

Agence Global is the exclusive syndication agency for Le Monde diplomatique, and The Washington Spectator, as well as expert commentary by Richard Bulliet, Rami G. Khouri, Vadim Nikitin, John Stoehr, and Immanuel Wallerstein.
—————-

Most politicians, journalists, and academic analysts describe the relations of China and the United States as one of hostile competition, especially in East Asia. I disagree. I believe that the top of both countries’ geopolitical agenda is reaching long-term accord with the other. The major bone of contention is which of the two prospective partners will be the top dog.

When Donald Trump says that he wants to make America great again, he is not in the least outside the general consensus of the United States. Using different words and different policy proposals, this futile ambition is shared by Hillary Clinton, Barack Obama, even Bernie Sanders, and of course the Republicans. It is shared as well by most ordinary citizens. Who is ready to say that the United States should settle for being number two?

When, in 1945, the United States had definitively defeated its great rival Germany, it was set to assume the role of hegemonic power in the world-system. The only obstacle was the military power of the Soviet Union. The way the United States dealt with this obstacle was to offer the Soviet Union the status of junior partner in the world-system. We refer to this tacit accord as the Yalta arrangements. Both sides denied that there was any deal, and both sides fully implemented it.

The United States dreams of reproducing a Yalta-like arrangement with China. China scoffs at this idea. It considers the days of U.S. hegemony as over, believing that the United States no longer has the economic strength to underpin such a status. It also believes that internal disunity renders the United States impotent in the geopolitical arena. On the contrary, China seeks to impose a Yalta-like arrangement in which the United States would be the junior partner. The closest analogy would be the post-1945 relationship of Great Britain with the United States.

China believes that slowly but surely its economic strength will be increasingly unstoppable in the coming decades. It believes that it can hurt the United States economic well-being far more than the reverse. In addition, it believes it will attract other Asians who resent having lived for at least the past two centuries in a world dominated politically and culturally by Europeans.

China’s analysis to be sure has two weak points. China may be overestimating the degree to which it can continue to dominate worldwide productive superiority. And it is haunted by the fear that the country might be pulled apart, as has happened often in Chinese history. A deal with the United States might minimize the impact of these dangers for China.

As for the United States, one day reality will sink in and a junior partner role might come to seem better than no deal at all. In this regard, Trump may speed up the process. He will bark, threaten, and insult, but he will not make America hegemonic again. In this sense, a Trump regime will disabuse more Americans than any sober version of the same ambition, such as that represented by Obama’s presidency.

In any case, the hidden dance between China and the United States — the unavowed search for partnership — will remain the principal geopolitical activity in the world-system for the coming decades. All eyes should be on it. One way or another, China and the United States will become partners.

Copyright ©2017 Immanuel Wallerstein — distributed by Agence Global

—————-
Released: 15 January 2017
Word Count: 555
—————-

For rights and permissions, contact:
rights@agenceglobal.com, 1.336.686.9002 or 1.212.731.0757

Agence Global is the exclusive syndication agency for Le Monde diplomatique, and The Washington Spectator, as well as expert commentary by Richard Bulliet, Rami G. Khouri, Vadim Nikitin, John Stoehr, and Immanuel Wallerstein.
—————-