An Ounce of Prevention

There's two theories concerning what happened in Ukraine last weekend.  One is that the Russian government, as per a tradition of destabilizing neighbors who dared to cross them by arming insurgents within their borders, gave high-end military hardware to idiots who proceeded to shoot down a civilian airliner after mistaking it for a legitimate target.  The other is that Flight 17 was loaded with exsanguinated corpses and shot down by the Ukrainian air force as part of a pretext for an invasion of Russia / after being mistaken for Putin's personal aircraft, all as part of a conspiracy involving Western journalists, the internet, and in fact every media source that isn't controlled by the Russian government.

The whole incident has been called a game-changer, but when the folks on TV use the words their referring to states' policy towards Russia.  I'd prefer it to be a game-changer in terms of changing the way the game is played entirely.

See, despite the phrase "international community," states aren't always good neighbors.  Sure, they occasionally give aid packages to each other, help find another country's lost plane, form neighborhood organizations that change what we think global governance can accomplish, or liberate their friends from their enemies.  But when it comes to civil conflict, the response is usually "could you keep it down, please?"  If the countries of the world were houses on a block, it'd be one with constant gunshots and screams coming from far too many homes, while the rest mostly crank up their sound systems and try to ignore it.

The issue is, as usual, sovereignty.  States are recognized as the ultimate legitimate authority within their borders, and only within those borders.  Therefore, any internal conflict is the problem of that particular state, and others have no "right" or obligation to interfere.  There's a couple of problems with this, though.  First, for a civil war to be going on in the first place, a state has by definition lost its monopoly over the legitimate use of force used within its borders, and is sufficiently weak that a rebel groups believes it stands a chance of overthrowing it.  Or in other words, civil wars happen in states that are least equipped to deal with them, yet their neighbors expect them to handle the problem.

Second, there's no guarantee that a civil war will stay confined to those neat little lines we've drawn on the globe.  Even in a "normal" civil conflict, and despite the aforementioned tenants of sovereignty, states like to meddle.  Russia supplying the separatists in Ukraine is nothing new, the issue of the past week is that this meddling cost an airplane full of noncombatants their lives.  Worse are situations like the one in the Middle East, where the ISIS group is committed to redrawing the map entirely.  It was able to establish itself in Syria during its ongoing civil war, and is now pushing against a neighboring failing state, and is influencing politics throughout the region.

The inevitable questions after looking at all this is: what if, rather than merely condemning the fighting in Syria, someone had decided to intervene and bring it to a conclusion years ago, before ISIS built its power base?  What if someone had helped Kiev's new government pacify its rebellious eastern provinces, and secure its country's borders so no Russian anti-air platforms could be fired by trigger-happy morons at civilian aircraft?

Ah, but the phrasing of the question provides the answer.  When we say "someone needs to do something," we rarely mean "I should do something."

If states are the ultimate authority within their borders, then there is no legitimate agent in the world to go around interceding in civil conflicts to keep things like Flight 17 from happening - at least, not without those states' invitation.  And who would such a do-gooder be, anyway?  The United States, a war-weary superpower with a host of domestic issues to deal with?  The European Union, which can't quite decide whether it wants to move beyond its component national identities?  Or what if it's China or Russia that decides to go about (in Russia's case, overtly) interfering in civil conflicts to resolve them?  Would less authoritarian parts of the world be happy with the results?

And even if the world decided that someone was authorized to go around using force to end civil wars before they spread further, would that agent want to?  Could they afford to?  Some of the factors behind the United States' non-intervention in Syria was the fact that we'd just spent a decade occupying two countries in what's looking like a failed attempt at spreading democracy, and that Syria's anti-air capacities were a couple of levels above those of the regimes we'd previously crushed - the conclusion was that intervening in Syria was likely to be even less pleasant than "fixing" Iraq and Afghanistan.  But even if our military was still in top form, and confident it could evade Syrian AA fire, would we have been willing to commit out forces to a potentially lengthy occupation and peacemaking process?  Or would we be willing to have those soldiers available in case of a crisis that impacted states we were directly interested in?

Maybe it won't always be like this, but we're at an awkward stage in our development as a global community where our humanitarian inclinations are up against national interest and political notions devised to empower kings, which leaves us knowing we ought to act without feeling that we're able to.  And so we get the current situation, where we sit and watch civil wars happen, and hope that they stay relatively civil so we don't have to send troops to prop up an ally when a conflict spills over national borders, or lose citizens to trigger-happy insurgents supplied by a borderline rogue state.  Like watching a neighbor's house burn down and praying that the sparks don't land on our yard.

Not Quite Textbook

It's been a while since my Conflict Resolution and Peace Studies course, so I may not be remembering things correctly, but the current situation between Israel and Palestine doesn't fit into the normal narrative for dispute settlements.  Obviously the fighting has intensified over the past few days, but earlier this week there was an attempt to calm things down, calls for a ceasefire to be negotiated by Egypt. 

Normally, calls for arbitration or ceasefires are the result of a stalemate.  The thinking is that the belligerents enter their conflict each expecting they will win, because why would you fight a war you think you'll lose?  Once the fighting has gone on for a bit, and everyone's true military capacities are exposed on the battlefield, then the combatants realize who is likely to win the war if it continues.  The losing side may call for a time-out in an attempt to save itself, and the winning side is unlikely to comply if it's winning decisively, because why would you negotiate a peace with your foe if you could just crush him?  It is only, therefore, when the fighting has gone on for a bit but both sides are stalemated that you see genuine attempts at negotiated ends to the fighting.  The opportunity for peace is said to be "ripe," the belligerents have accumulated some war weariness, and neither is confident that continuing to fight will pay off more than reaching a settlement.

That's not what happened earlier.  We had one side, the Israelis, dominant yet pushing the hardest for a ceasefire.  The Palestinians in Gaza had made no gains, but were doggedly refusing to budge until they got concessions even when all they can "offer" is days of being bombed.  Evidently my course literature didn't account for suicidal combatants.

But this isn't a simple two-sided conflict, and looking a little deeper makes things make more sense, if a disturbing sort of sense.

In this case, peace, or at least an end to the current fighting, isn't necessarily the main objective, or even a shared objective.  Hamas, the group controlling Gaza, has defined itself through its opposition to Israel, and has been willing to commit terrorist acts in its pursuit of a Palestinian state.  It has little to show for this beyond a role in perpetuating a cycle of violence, but Hamas has at least proven popular enough to be elected to Gaza's leadership.

The problem is that there is now an alternative, an Arab, Islamist, anti-Israeli group that has actually succeeded at taking territory - the Islamic State of Iraq and Syria.  The group has already used the Syrian civil war as a staging point for its expansion into Iraq, and there are worries that it might try and keep expanding into places like Jordan, if not further.  Hamas, in short, has competition.  How fortunate that someone kidnapped and murdered three Israeli teens, prompting a revenge killing that escalated into thrown stones, guerrilla warfare, and an Israeli offensive into Gaza?  It's certainly convenient that Hamas has a chance to get in the news and show Palestinians that it can still fight the good fight.

But it can't win the good fight, hence Hamas' dilemma.  For it to stay in power it needs to show that it can get results.  Since it can't do that through an outright victory, it must reject Israel's calls for a ceasefire and provoke more fighting, in hopes of making its inevitable defeat as uncomfortable as possible, bogging the Israelis down in urban warfare, provoking riots and bombings, launching the sort of underground attacks seen today, until the hassle of dealing with Hamas brings Israel to the negotiating table and allows Hamas to wring something, anything, out of them.  This is obviously a terrible spot to be in, hence Hamas' seemingly-insane attempt to get concessions before the Israeli offensive - I don't think anyone would look forward to getting blitzed by the IDF.

This tortured logic also puts Israel in a bind.  If they strike back too hard, and come out of this latest conflict too victorious, there's a chance that Hamas could fall and something worse could take its place, a group more fanatical and, so far, more successful.  At the same, Hamas is hardly a good neighbor, and being too generous with concessions and ceasefires runs the risk of encouraging them to provoke further conflict.  And Israel can't sidestep the issue and simply cease the current fighting without antagonizing elements of its own population that want vengeance/justice for the lives lost in the conflict's most recent iteration.

Perversely, this would really be a good time for the two sides to work together.  Israel could give Hamas opportunities to be seen leading the Palestinians, and hand over some slight concessions that Hamas could wave around during election season, proving that they can get results and Palestinians don't need to turn to ISIS.  This would also keep Hamas from causing too much trouble, as the more havoc they stir up, the less of a loss for Israel it would be if ISIS ended up taking over.  Unfortunately, if the two sides were able to find a common ground in this manner the Israeli-Palestinian conflict should have ended by now.

There are other outs, of course.  A lot of Israel's issues with Gaza only apply if it intends to allow Gaza to remain an independent territory after this conflict, and while they've insisted that its latest campaign is an "incursion" and not an invasion... well, look at it this way, you're being attacked from a neighboring territory and the government controlling it is either unable to stop it or in fact encouraging it.  Occupying Gaza to keep any sort of extremists, Hamas or ISIS or whatever, from running the place may start to look tempting.  The obvious downside is that this would antagonize the entire region and earn Israel criticism from its allies.


Another alternative would be for the people of Gaza to ditch Hamas but pick a non-violent party to replace it, one that wouldn't have to continue this conflict to shore up its legitimacy, but I think the Israeli occupation of Gaza is more likely than that.

What's So Great About America, Anyway?

I’m wary of the phrase “American exceptionalism.”  To consider my country is exceptional is fine and good, but it’s easy to twist that phrase into meaning that exceptions should be made for America, and that doesn’t end well.  We may be the world’s sole superpower, for the moment, but that doesn’t mean what it used to in 1991.  America can “go it alone” when it comes to international consensus over its foreign policy, but that means we get to pay for the consequences ourselves.  The world’s best military is great at destroying things, not so much at building lasting accomplishments.  Our vast resources don’t do us much good when our government can’t balance a budget or reach a consensus on what to do with them.  And so forth. 

Likewise, gushing about how awesome America is can lead one to conclude that it exists as the final chapter of some global narrative.  To describe the country as some shining city on a hill is one thing, to add an element of destiny is another.  Considering all the people that had to die for America to happen, and all the shameful chapters in our national history that led up to this point, if America has any divine mandate it is on behalf of a genocidal, Old Testament sort of deity at odds with the benevolent God most Americans say they worship.  More importantly, claiming that America represents the most that any nation can aspire to blinds us to what we can learn from other countries, or even to the possibility that we can improve ourselves.

Nevertheless, I still think America is an exceptional country, and it doesn't have anything to do with deserving special treatment or our holy destiny.

Whereas other, later colonies were founded on the backs of subjugated indigenous populations, providence saw fit to clear out America's natives with diseases, and the survivors were able to be pushed westward or onto reservations as more colonists arrived.  The result was a lot of land just ripe for the taking, especially attractive if you're coming from a continent where all the real estate was divvied up between a bunch of old, feudal families.  America, once those troublesome natives were swept from it, was a blank slate, a place where someone with no prospects in the old country could make something of himself, become a landowner, and rise to the local aristocracy based on his own efforts, not a family inheritance or passed-down title.

This may be as much to blame for America's conception of men and kings as all those Enlightenment scholars like Locke who are usually cited when discussing the Founding Fathers' ideology.  If Goodman Joseph can get off his boat in New England, work hard for a decade or two, and become a respected landowner with a prosperous farm and associated business, it might be harder to believe that the inhabitants of a distant palace are somehow inherently better than the rest of us.  You might start to think that maybe people are created more or less equal to each other, and their differences in station are due to circumstance and their actions more than anything else.

At any rate, the end result was America's reputation as the Land of Opportunity.  Now, this may not be as true these days as it was a few centuries ago.  America eventually developed an aristocracy of sorts, and has political and business dynasties such as the Kennedys and Bushes, the Rockefellers and Waltons.  The gap between the richest fraction of a percentage of the population and the rest of us is growing wider, and despite our "pull yourself up by your bootstraps" national myth it's a lot easier for a millionaire to become a billionaire than it is for a poor man to become rich.  The frontier is gone, jobs are getting harder to find, and we have a looming water shortage that will one day prove that America does in fact have a maximum sustainable population.  But the main thing is that Americans like to believe that, with the right opportunity, anyone could improve their lot and prosper, and those who are wealthy aren't necessarily "better" than the rest of us.  We can recognize the differences in income while still viewing each other as equal.

This is all important because it attracted so many people to come start a new life in America, and that I think is the most exceptional thing about America.  We're a nation of immigrants, with a strong British heritage but also representatives from every other country on the planet.  Granted, this process was not without friction, and whatever minority population characterized one generation tended to assimilate in time to voice their dismay at the next wave of foreign invaders.  But generally we recognize that anyone on the planet is a potential American, if they buy into our national values.  

In short, "American" is not an ethnicity, though it might be a suffix to one.  Anyone, from anywhere, can come in an become part of our country.  They can wholeheartedly embrace their new homeland, or adopt America's culture and values while retaining the parts of their old country that they want to bring with them as a ___-American, either works.  You can do this in other countries, of course, but you won't fit in as well.  It's a lot easier to become a French or Swedish citizen than it is to become French or Swedish, because those are national identities tied to specific ethnicities and histories.

This is special because it puts us ahead of the curve, in a way.  The basic international unit for the past century or so has been the nation-state, a political entity inhabited by a national entity.  The French live in France, the Swedes live in Sweden, and so on.  The problem is that the world is changing, and populations are moving about - blame globalization for shifting economic opportunities, and modern transportation for making it possible to chase them.  The result is friction, strife, fears of a country being taken over by its immigrants, reactionary xenophobic nationalism, and so on.

America doesn't have to deal with that - or at least, it isn't acceptable to openly admit as much.  When we rail about Central American immigrants, it's because they crossed the border illegally, not simply because there are now Mexicans living in our country.  Oh, there are efforts to enforce English as a national language through de jure legislation rather than de facto custom, and some alarm about immigrant enclaves that are refusing to assimilate into the local culture, but America isn't "threatened" by newcomers in the same way as other countries are.  Beyond being one of the architects of the current globalized world, we're well-situated to weather the turbulence of globalization.  So long as they buy into national values of equality and share our belief in opportunity, we're generally accepting of immigrants.

It's the whole e pluribus unum thing, how a diverse population when it comes to ethnicity, religion, and subculture can still belong to the same ideologically-based nation.  It's why the European Union is so interesting to watch, at least from the perspective as an international affairs-minded American - we can see our own history in it, as a collection of states take steps towards becoming something more.  Granted, a collection of English colonies with limited capacities had an easier time unifying than a continent's worth of nation-states that are or were great powers in their own right, and that's probably why a unified "European" identity isn't taking precedence over national identities yet.  But that may change.  I'm not advocating an "end to history," but I do think America can be considered the future, or at least a future, that other countries can follow.

Until that day, well... in a world with shifting populations, and where states' borders may not necessarily align with, or may even divide, national distributions, the fact that America has been able to build such a successful country that people keep wanting to be a part of, a country based on lofty ideals of equality and opportunity rather than an ethnic identity or totalitarian adherence to a religious or political doctrine, remains pretty exceptional.