Bread and Circuses

I have a concern about the upcoming Iran nuke deal that doesn't actually have anything to do about Iran's nuclear capability.

During a trip to the gym, I had the radio on, not really to listen to but to provide some non-engine background noise.  The program had a story on Iran and its people's reaction to the potential for lifted sanctions, and mentioned that the country's rulers hoped that improved economic conditions would make the population less unruly.  And I suddenly had second thoughts.

See, one of the big theories I studied in grad school was the democratic peace theory, oftentimes called the "Kantian peace" after early proponent Immanuel Kant.  The short version is that democracies are very unlikely to go to war with each other, so it'd be great if every nation in the world let people vote for their leaders.  A book I read about it focused on three elements to this theory: democracy itself, economic interdependence, and shared involvement in international organizations, as mutually-reinforcing principles that could bring about this type of peace.

It's a nice theory, and sounds appealing.  So in Iran's case, its leadership being willing to negotiate with world leaders over its nuclear program could lead to it cooperating more with the International Atomic Energy Agency and the like.  These organizations have their own rules and protocols, and by participating in them, Iran would theoretically learn more about how to run a democratic government.  At the same time, eased economic sanctions and increased foreign trade would create financial ties between Iran and other nations, or in other words a disincentive to threatening those ties through behavior that might convince countries to impose sanctions again.  And I suppose copies of the Declaration of Independence are being smuggled in along with that increased trade, as another nudge towards democracy.

The book I read - Triangulating Peace by Russett and Oneal, if you're interested - used a lot of statistics and regressions and all that numeric stuff to prove their point, and I'm not the one to examine that sort of thing, I much prefer a concrete example.  And we can look at history and see the inverse of the theory playing out, when post-WWI Germany had an economic crisis and rejected international governance as it discarded democracy in favor of authoritarianism.  The problem is that when I examine the world right now, I don't see a strong positive example.

Consider China.  The country prefers to be an exception to rules rather than conforming with the international community's expectations regarding things like water boundaries, but it's certainly abandoned communism and become one of America's most important trade partners, which helps to take the edge off the crises caused by the aforementioned disputed water boundaries.  But is this trade helping the country become more democratic?

Not to my knowledge.  The events in Tienanmen Square in 1989 have been so heavily suppressed that most Chinese don't know those pro-democracy rallies and subsequent crackdowns even happened.  Dissidents issue Charter 08 and get detained by the authorities, websites discussing it get shut down, and of course the media isn't allowed to mention the thing.  Hong Kong held protests against voting restrictions just last year, but it's a Special Administrative Region with a history of democracy.  There's been no "Chinese Spring," no mass demonstrations against corrupt and authoritarian leaders.  China's government still sucks, and its people aren't taking much action to change this.

Here's my concern - back in the days of the Cold War, we had two systems of government competing to see which could create the best society.  And towards the end, when things loosened up a bit, one of the contributing factors to the fall of the USSR was its citizens could see that communism had created a country that couldn't even feed itself, while the capitalist pig-dogs in America had Coca-Cola, denim jeans and awesome music.  This created outrage that was usefully destructive.

But today, thanks to global trade, every nation can get the material benefits of a First World, democratic society.  American fast food chains span the globe, our Apple gadgets are being built in China, and Hollywood churns out Michael Bay movies to liquefy audiences' brains through excessive explosions and incomprehensible cinematography.  So even if you live in a repressive regime like China, you've got lots of ways to take the edge off it.  You may not be able to vote or browse the internet freely, but you can catch the latest Transformers garbage on your phone-puter.  And isn't that easier than taking to the streets to protest the latest round of arrests?

We're exporting bread and circuses to non-democratic regimes, in other words.  They can enjoy the fruits of a free and open society, and their subjects have less incentive to make their own countries the same way.

So back to Iran.  If all goes well and the country begins to behave less like a rogue state and reaps the economic benefits of doing so, is it likely to cast off its theocratic regime and become a peace-loving, human rights-respecting democracy?  I hope so.  The major difference between Iran and China is that the former was a functioning democracy until we Americans screwed it up, while China went from an imperial system to an illiberal "republic" to Mao's deranged attempt at communism.  Even today Iran is sort of democratic, it just has a religious government making sure the Iranian electorate don't vote for the wrong people.  Meanwhile in China, the only places with a democratic heritage are the former foreign holdings of Hong Kong and Macau.

Iran knows better than China what a democracy should look like, so they should have an easier time bringing one about - which is not to say that convincing all those security forces and religious militias to bow to the will to the people will necessarily be easy.  It'd be great if the increased prosperity from lifted sanctions allowed Iran's middle class to expand and grow strong enough to challenge its priest-tyrants.  But that would take a lot of effort, and it's so much easier to sit back and watch a movie on your smartphone...

Peace Talks

So Syria's government has recently stated that it's ready for peace talks, though given today's air strikes against a rebel city, apparently al-Assad's regime is also ready for more war.  Or maybe Syria's dictator and his cronies are aware that it probably isn't time to negotiate.

Now it's been a while since my Conflict Resolution class, but here's what I remember about a key concept without having to dig up my old notes.  "Ripeness" is the notion that there's a certain time over the course of a conflict that the belligerents will be open to a negotiated solution to it.  Despite what it sounds like, it has nothing to do with whether the bodies are being properly disposed of.

At the start of a civil war, everybody's all pumped for fighting.  They're sick of each other, they think violence is their only option, and they think they can win a conflict - otherwise they wouldn't be fighting it in the first place.  Trying to intervene and get everyone to try a diplomatic solution is most likely going to be a wasted effort.  It's only after the sides have fought for a while, seen the real cost of war, gotten a feel for their opponent's capabilities, and run into some setbacks, that they might change their mind.  If one side is clearly winning a civil conflict, then they'll see no reason to negotiate with the losing side, and probably go on to win it.  But if the sides are stalemated and they realize that they can't get all - or even most - of what they want through force of arms alone, then they may be willing to come to the negotiating table.  In short, a conflict has to "ripen" for a bit before there's a good chance of peacefully resolving it.

Now, the Syrian civil war has been going on since 2011, it's killed 200,000 people, displaced over 10 million people, and has spilled over into neighboring countries.  But is it "ripe" for a peaceful resolution?

Since Thursday's statement from the al-Assad regime doesn't seem to be going anywhere or been taken seriously, the answer is probably "no."  This seems to be either an attempt at good PR by a dictatorial government willing to bomb hospitals, or an admission that the war isn't going well for al-Assad and that these theoretical peace talks would be the only way for him to keep his head and stay in power.  A sign of desperation in other words.

Even if al-Assad is willing to use words for once, there's little indication the other sides share this interest in negotiations.  ISIS has said, if I recall correctly, that the powers arranged against them would have to treat with them eventually, but this was presumably bravado and an attempt by ISIS to gain legitimacy.  As for the other rebels - well, let's not make the mistake of assuming that the rebels are a unified faction.  There's those legendary "moderate" Syrians resistance fighters that are backed by the US, and who may have little reason to give up with such a powerful ally on their side.  Then there are others who apparently are willing to listen to Iranian delegates and hold a truce, though since I can't find a follow-up on that story I'm not sure how well it went.

More importantly, for negotiations to be successful there has to be common ground, and all of these three factions have mutually-exclusive goals.  Bashar al-Assad wants to stay alive and his cronies want him to stay in power.  The rebels want him gone and someone new in charge.  And ISIS rejects the notion of modern Syria in favor of a religious state under their control.  I suppose the best you could offer would be to divide Syria up among the three of them, except, well, we don't like doing that in a post-colonial country like Syria.  People in the rest of the Middle East might start getting the wrong idea.  Much better to pretend that the lines in the sand mean something.

All this to say, al-Assad's words of peace sound hollow, and the fighting in Syria is probably going to continue.  Because from what else I remember from my conflict studies courses, this civil war in Syria has all the signs of a nasty, protracted conflict.  We've got easily-captured natural resources (oil) that can be used to fund the fighting.  We've got an array of outside actors backing the factions within the civil war - Iran and Russia are propping up al-Assad, the United States and some of its regional allies are (officially) backing the Syrian resistance, and then there are fundamentalist Muslims all over the world lending financial or material support to ISIS.  And we've got goals that are more profound than disputes over representation in government or resource allocation, but a conflict over what type of government is acceptable.

But just because the sides in the civil war may not be interested in a peaceful resolution doesn't mean that the fighting has to go on forever.  The United States is supposedly going to step up its support of the Syrian rebels, and Turkey has recently gotten off its duff to contribute, even if they seem more interested in fighting Kurds than ISIS.  Hopefully with this support, the "good guys" - or at least the guys who aren't loyal to a dictator or a religious fanatics - will be able to tip the balance and resolve the conflict the hard way.  

If they do it fast enough, there may be enough of Syria left to salvage when they're finished.