Avuncular American

The Sea in Between: Sarkozy’s Mediterranean Project

A Project Dear To The President’s Heart

On Monday’s July 14 Bastille Day in Paris, spectators will be treated to another grand military parade, one of the few such martial national day displays remaining in the democratic West.  The audience will include the leaders of the European Union member states as well as those from the (mostly Arab, but including Israel and Turkey) countries bordering the southern and eastern coasts of the Mediterranean.  They will be gathered in the French capital for one of the most important events in the early days of the French EU Presidency, the launch of the “Union Pour la Mediterranée (UPM)” or the Union for the Mediterranean.

In Arabic, the Mediterranean Sea is poetically called Al-Bahr Al-Abyad Al-Muttawasit, "the middle white sea.”  President Nicolas Sarkozy was a schoolboy when Algeria (where his father had served in the Foreign Legion) became independent, though he may have had occasion to hear the geopolitical adage taught to generations of French schoolchildren: “The Mediterranean separates France, like the Seine separates Paris.”  Algeria was an integral part of France, and then suddenly, it wasn’t.  A million European settlers left independent Algeria, and in the intervening 46 years, millions of Algerians have settled in France.  The Med is definitely a middle passage between North and South.

With his present and former family connections in Ottoman-era Greece (mother's family), Corsica (first wife) Spain (wife No. 2, Cecilia), and Italy (current wife Carla), it is perhaps not surprising that the Mediterranean has had a special place in Sarkozy’s heart, even before his election to the Elysée Palace in spring 2007.  And this has all the hallmarks of a personal project: in June 2007, Quai d’Orsay diplomats responded with quizzical looks when asked about the new president’s Mediterranean ambitions.  Even now, on the eve of the summit, the French Ministry of Foreign Affairs website gives much more space to the EU-Mediterranean Dialogue (an ongoing program) than to the Presidential UPM, which still has much to be defined (not the least of which, where will it be headquartered: Tunis on the southern shore, or Barcelona on the Spanish coast?).

Emotion-Laden North-South Relationships

The love/hate relationship between France and its former “colony” (the word was never used by the French, but the Algerians still pride themselves, sometimes even define themselves, by being at the forefront of the anti-colonialist drive from the Fifties through the Seventies) has in some ways been the bellwether of the Sarkozy Mediterranean proposal.  France and its policies are always treated with circumspection in Algeria, and few domestic points are gained in Algeria by seeming to kowtow to the former masters. (Though Algeria's ace political cartoonist Dilem has it right when he shows what Algeria's unemployed "hittistes" want out of the UPM: calm Mediterranean seas for their rafts, or preferably, French visas; emigration is still a big drain/safety valve).  At one point, it seemed that Algeria would scupper the whole deal.

In the end, Algerian President Bouteflika’s foot dragging on the Mediterranean project was overcome by careful French diplomacy, though not in the case of the one remaining holdout, Colonel (do we still call him that?) Kadhafi of Libya.  Despite blandishments (nuclear project, arms deals, wife No. 2 Cecilia as emissary-of-charm, week-long state visit to Paris last year), Kadhafi has condemned the Sarkozy Med Union.  Anyway, his life long ambition has been to unify (often literally, through mergers and sometimes with weapons) the Arab and African worlds that are Libya’s home turf.

Sarkozy’s ambitions for a French-led Mediterranean project were severely modified by Germany, which succeeded in EU-izing (opening up to non-Med EU countries what had previously been seen as a Mediterranean riparian state grouping) Sarkozy’s vision.  As former French foreign minister Hubert Vedrine said today on France-Inter radio, the test of the new Med Union will be whether it can create a co-secretariat to build on the high-level co-presidential (France and Egypt) kickoff summit, and not just become a subcommittee of the EU.  Egypt, with its concentric Arab, African, and Middle East (especially longstanding relations with Israel) circles, and its experienced diplomatic corps, is an inspired choice to help France get the new grouping off the ground.

Another “Machin” or An Essential Tool?

Vedrine, along with a number of right and left of center European and southern Mediterranean luminaries, signed an “open letter” to the leaders gathering in Paris this weekend, published in Thursday’s Le Monde.  Though the letter enthuses about the Med Union’s potential for peacemaking (all eyes will be on the body language between Israeli and Syrian leaders this weekend), Vedrine on the radio spoke to the more nuts-and-bolts projects for the Union.  One not so trivial matter: North-South cooperation on cleaning up what is essentially massive a salty lake, one that gets dumped on, literally, with every effluent man and industry can produce.  If nothing else, Union for the Mediterranean success in this one crisis area could make the nascent organization worth all the hoopla.  As one commentator put it, success in "small" practical matters counts, and cited the EU's beginnings as a post-WW II coal and steel cartel combining the victors and the vanquished.

In his definitive work on the fall of France in 1940 “To Lose a Battle,” British historian (of France and Algeria) Alistair Horne starts off with a vivid portrait of another Bastille Day parade, that of the victorious French Army in July 1919, the first such parade after the end of the carnage of World War One the previous November.  At the time, the consensus was that the French Army was the biggest and best in the world.  True, but we know what the inter war period did to its relative standing against the Wehrmacht.  There was no follow up to the big show.

For the EU and Mediterranean leaders lined up on the Champs Elysées for Monday’s parade, what comes after will be the true test of the fine new Union For The Mediterranean to be unveiled this coming weekend.  Those 40 plus leaders, if not backed up by painstaking staff work, may be present at the creation of another “machin” (probably best translated as “thingy” - Charles De Gaulle’s ironic description of the UN and like multilateral organizations, which have to struggle to avoid being labeled talking shops).

Haraka mush Baraka: The Dangers of Perpetual Movement

Machin vs. functional coalition: does Sarkozy himself have the wherewithal and patience to stick with his bright shiny idea in the long term?  Wherewithal: yes (once the Quai d’Orsay is convinced that this is a going concern, it will apply itself to making it work).  Patience: this is Sarko’s Achilles heel.  The man, once described by an observant Brit as a kind of Tigger, bounces around from idea to proposal to next inspiration, whether domestic or international.  Bitter Lemons also has misgivings about his "frenetic" pace, and has devoted several articles to the Mediterranean Union plan from Arab, Israeli, and Turkish viewpoints.

The Mediterranean is timeless, but action is urgent; Sarkozy is a man in a hurry, but he’ll need to down shift and focus in this forum which will juxtapose cultures with different notions of time.  After all, his Maghrebi counterparts know the meaning behind a traditional expression, "Haraka mush Baraka."  Movement - for movement's sake - does not equate with benediction.

Iraq and the "S" Word - Sovereignty

“The Iraqi demands are unacceptable to the Americans, and the American demands are unacceptable to the Iraqis, and the result is that we have reached an impasse,” the prime minister, Nuri Kamal al-Maliki, said during a meeting with journalists in Jordan. “The Iraqis will not consent to an agreement that infringes their sovereignty.”

Alissa J. Rubin, "Talks With U.S. on Security Pact Are at an Impasse, the Iraqi Prime Minister Says," New York Times 14 June 2008

In my experience in matters diplomatic, when the other sides deploys the "S" word, they've reached for their big guns.  Not that Iraq out-guns the United States in any sense of the term - but that is exactly when negotiators reach for the "S" word.  When the imbalance of power is such that the weaker party can only fall back on its cherished sovereignty, in the face of the other side that holds all the cards... except the ultimate one in diplomacy: "Are you messing with my sovereignty?"

This argument, of course, only works when the weaker party is dealing with a country that is sensitive to sovereignty matters.  A dictatorship might not care a hoot about a neighbor's sovereignty, especially if there are already hostile relations prevailing.  Democracies, however, are usually mindful of touching someone's sovereignty buttons.  The US usually cares, for example, when the country that raises the sovereignty defense possesses something that the US wants.

Sometimes nations will deploy the sovereignty defense over the silliest of issues: I recall a matter of a conference in Africa that was sure to founder on the shoals of disrespect for Nigerian sovereignty, were the US co-sponsors to dismiss the requirement for "hostesses in national dress" at the opening ceremony (said hostesses being the girlfriends, mistresses, daughters and nieces of ministers and other Big Men).  The Americans caved, and had to pay for the hostesses' nice outfits.  Sovereignty prevailed.

In the case of the current negotiations in Iraq, however, the stakes are anything but trivial.  And the leverage exerted by the US is considerable.  It's not just the 140,000 or so troops occupying the country; I refer you to veteran Iraq reporter Patrick Cockburn of London's The Independent, who was interviewed on June 12 on Democracy Now!  Said Cockburn:

Iraqi reserves, Iraqi money, is in the Federal Reserve Bank of New York.  It dates from 1990, when Saddam Hussein invaded Kuwait, and there are still sanctions against Iraq as a danger to the rest of the world. That money, about $50 billion, is in the bank. But there have been many court cases brought against it. It’s protected currently by a Presidential immunity. And what US negotiators in Baghdad have been implying to their Iraqi counterparts is that if they don’t cut a deal on American terms, then that Presidential immunity might lapse at the end of the year, and the Iraqis wouldn’t be able to get their hands on these massive reserves, which they need very badly.

$50 billion is serious leverage.

Cockburn, who has reported on this story extensively, has pointed out how the evolving (or stalled, according to al-Maliki) talks are not classic "Status of Forces Agreement" (SOFA) negotiations, over technical issues (APO postal delivery, PX privileges, duty-free Commissary imports - all those nice things that mark the American presence in places like Germany, Italy, or Japan), but talks whose outcome

... really will determine whether Iraq is an independent country or not. Or will it be a client state of the US?... the US negotiators were demanding initially fifty-eight bases. They’re not calling them permanent bases, though that’s exactly what they are. The bases might have, let’s say, an Iraqi soldier outside and a single strand of barbed wire, in which case the Iraqis will supposedly be in charge of their defense, so it won’t be an American base. But everybody knows that it is. Then there’s the question of immunity for American soldiers and Iraqi contractors, i.e. they won’t come under Iraqi law. And the US will also control airspace and have various other rights. Now, although Ryan Crocker and President Bush are saying Iraq under this new agreement will once again be a sovereign nation, most of the rights we associate with a sovereign nation will be in the possession of the US.

The always vigilant Helena Cobban ("Just World News") has much more detail on what's in the "SOFA" (and when all this got started), in her analysis of just-released National Security Archive documents.

Next time you hear PM al-Maliki use the word "sovereignty," consider the context, the stakes in these negotiations, and the relative leverage of the two parties.  As Cockburn says, Iraq since the early 1990's (no-fly zones, oil-for-food, sanctions) has experienced years of "diminished formal sovereignty."  They went from years of Saddam's sovereignty-within-constraints to - despite purple fingers - CPA "Orders" and now a SOFA-defined future.  No wonder they're a bit touchy about that "S" word.

War - If You Can Afford It

Aid groups say the crisis in Ethiopia was the worst since 1984, when a famine captured the world's attention and killed around one million people. The current drought, in a country where more than 80 per cent of its 79 million people live off the land, has been compounded by global food price rises. The famine comes as Ethiopian troops fight a bloody battle [in] Somalia, backing the government against Islamic insurgents.

The Telegraph (UK) 9 June 2008

On the face of it, there is absolutely no correlation between the Ethiopian famine and its intervention in neighboring Somalia.

Nor is there a link between the events in the Horn of Africa and the American invasion of Iraq and its aftermath.

Except for this: sustainability, and "affordability."  Just as a thoughtful observer might reflect "What the hell are the Ethiopians doing... occupying a neighboring country when they can't feed their own people?..." so too might that same question be asked of the United States in Iraq.  "What the hell are the Americans still doing in Iraq when _____?"  Here you get to fill in the blank:

• they allow huge swaths of their population to go without health care?
• bridges collapse, cities sink because "it's too expensive" to fix them?
• millions are evicted from their homes, and the financial system teeters?
• they allow the dollar to fall through the floor, and China owns what's left?

War, which leaders assure us they want to avoid at the very time that they are sharpening their swords, is an expensive matter.  In the case of Iraq, Nobel Prize winning economist Joseph Stiglitz puts it at 3 trillion dollars.  Ethiopia, which is waging its war in Somalia with the encouragement of the United States, is presumably getting aid from same, but there is an opportunity cost.  Money spent on military hardware is often in place of, not in addition to, spending on helping the Ethiopias of the world grow food.  And where does the money for US military aid really come from?  If the Bush Administration has run budget deficits since it came to office, which it has, then isn't much of government spending like a national credit card?  See reference to China, above.

Which brings me back to Iraq.  This Administration likes to outsource things that used to be the prerogative of governments.  Like the contracting out of security, infrastructure, even intelligence functions, in Iraq.  If you can't win their hearts and minds with your power or principles, you just open up your purse strings.  This is from "Buying Security in Baghdad" by Anna Badhken in last month's Salon.com:

[In a Baghdad neighborhood] ... the U.S. military here pays a monthly salary of approximately $300 to about 300 people, [Sgt. James] Braet says. Some of them work on the neighborhood council, and some of them are members of a pro-government Sunni militia called Sons of Iraq.

"I'd say 80 percent of these people we pay don't do anything," Braet said. "It's just free money"

"So, in other words, you are buying security," I say.  "Pretty much," he responds, and goes back to his steak.

I figure that if the population of Iraq is about 26 million, and if around 7 million of those are adult males (sorry, ladies, but you probably don't have to be paid not to kill), it would cost, at the rate of $300 x 7 million = $2.1 billion a month to buy peace in Iraq.  For some reason, this free-market (of sorts) approach to peace purchasing hasn't gotten sufficient attention.  It might have to do with scruples about noble causes.

$2 billion a month.  The US is currently spending about $12 billion per month in Iraq.  This money is not only "off budget" in the form of funding "supplementals," it's also "off shore."  It's money that the US has to "borrow" from China and Gulf oil investors who currently deign to buy US debt.  So, in one sweeping feat of Bushite outsourcing, I say let's NOT "cut out the middleman" - let's bring him in on the deal: outsource the occupation of Iraq to China.  China has few scruples about dealing with dodgy governments in its quest for raw materials for the Chinese industrial machine.  China might not quibble about human rights, freedom of the press, all those things that the US government spends lots of effort promoting.  China just wants whatever raw materials you possess, thank you.  Maybe they'll even get Iraq's huge oil reserves secured and sell us what they can't use.  With $10 billion saved every month, we might be able to afford some.

Iraq has oil; China needs oil.  The US needs out.  We can't afford Iraq.  They can.

Now, on Ethiopia's famine and Somalia dilemma: do they have anything that China can buy?

What the World Wants: An Obama Administration

Well, at least that's what Brussels' Radio Al Manar wants.  But it's not too much of an exaggeration to say that the American Presidential election - especially the candidacy of Senator Barack Obama - has stirred enormous overseas interest in the United States.  And, for once in the last seven and a half years, interest in a positive sense.  And it's not just the good people at Radio Al Manar.  Over the past several months of the primaries, it has been clear that a potential Obama presidency has caught the imaginations of right and left, in Europe and beyond.

Yesterday yours truly was the guest of Radio Al Manar, a private FM station with studios in the francophone Belgian cities of Brussels, Liege, and Charleroi.  Al Manar ("The Lighthouse," a reference to Alexandria's Pharos, one of the ancient Wonders of the World) broadcasts in French and in Arabic to a largely Moroccan-origin audience (both among the large Moroccan community in Belgium and back home via live audio streaming).  The venue was to have been a "debate" between a representative of Democrats Abroad Belgium (me) and someone from the Republicans; repeated efforts by station director Ahmed Bouda were met by frustration, though they still hope to get a francophone Republican to show up for a future show.  You have to wonder if the Republicans ever got any further than a Google search, where the keyword "al manar" will result in 697,000 hits, Number One of which is Al Manar TV in Lebanon, the Hizbullah station.  Definitely not our hosts of yesterday: Radio Al Manar in Brussels is located in the same building as the offices of Israel's El Al Airlines, and among their guests have been a host of Belgian government officials, an ecumenical group of religious leaders including Belgian rabbis, and a group of Israeli "refusenik" soldiers who object to service in the occupied Palestinian territories.

Anyway, having the mike to myself wasn't all that bad (Al Manar's site should have an MP3 link of the interview up in a few days).  Michel, the Congolese-Belgian interviewer, was extremely well-prepared, with a list of questions for me and the non-existent (but potential show up) Republican.  I took a pass on at least one question: the trial of Tarek Aziz, Saddam's former foreign minister ("an issue for Iraqi justice").  And in retrospect I wish I had been more proactive in delineating the differences between Democratic and Republican approaches to economic and social issues, especially health care.

Michel and the Al Manar audience were particularly interested in the promise shown by the Obama candidacy in the context of American society.  The son of an African immigrant running for President of the United States... very resonant to an audience whose members have also embraced their new Belgian home, and have begun to fill a number of elective offices.  The new openness of the American electorate to candidates like Obama and Clinton speaks volumes to an audience that itself represents the new diversity in European societies.

But the main focus of Al Manar, again reflecting the interests of its audience, was American foreign policy.  Given the spike in attention to Obama's June 4 speech in front of AIPAC (full text here), and especially his statement "Jerusalem will remain the capital of Israel, and it must remain undivided," I fully expected an onslaught of questions on his intentions vis-a-vis the Israel-Palestine peace process.  No, what was a more burning issue was America's moral standing in the world.  Continuing to preach to others about human rights, when Guantanamo and prison ships dominate the news.  Luckily, I had another Obama quote to deploy: "I will close Guantanamo. I will restore habeas corpus."

Given the timing - the eve of Senator Clinton's much-anticipated Saturday concession/congratulatory speech - my interviewers (technician Karim couldn't help asking questions during commercial or musical breaks; finally Michel let him ask one on-air) tried to draw me into the speculation fun.  Will his VP choice be Hillary Clinton?  How about John Edwards?  How about the significance of Caroline Kennedy helping to head the VP search committee?  My questioners were very well informed, and I mostly just rambled on about party unity.  In truth, I was extremely relieved that the interview had been rescheduled for June 6, since a week earlier I would have been forced to fall back on safe-but-boring talking points like "Democrats Abroad is not positioned to encourage or even discuss one candidate or another dropping out of the race..."

Fast forward to June 6, and I was able to move on, just as Hillary Clinton had done in a letter to her supporters: "On Saturday, I will extend my congratulations to Senator Obama and my support for his candidacy."  The DNC website had also adapted to the new reality.  Big picture of a smiling Obama, caption inviting readers to "Join Us and Help Elect Barack Obama," with a nice "Thank You, Hillary" picture just below.  Yes, Thank You, Hillary, for making my job easier - I was worried about seeming to be the last person on earth who didn't recognize the reality of the Democratic Candidate, Senator Barack Obama.

Ahmed, Michel, and Karim are rooting for him (Ahmed even wanted to send in a contribution, though I gently reminded him of the Obama website donation restrictions: "I am a United States citizen or a lawfully-admitted permanent resident").  They are rooting for him, and so is the rest of the world.  Now we Democrats just have to get our act together and convince Americans of the merits of a President Obama.

Women: Don't Do Peacekeeping Without Them

Lieutenant General Karlheinz Viereck is no-nonsense, and he is precise: "Just Do It," he says.  The "it" was the subject of his talk yesterday evening at the Belgian Royal High Institute for Defence (RHID): "Women Building Peace: Adding a gender perspective to enhance conflict management and operational effectiveness."

That might sound a bit "soft" or PC, but the General's message is simple: incorporating gender awareness in peace operations forces improves their effectiveness, and bolsters force protection.  General Viereck knows a thing or two on the subject: he commanded the 2006-2007 EUFOR mission in the Democratic Republic of the Congo, and is Commander of the Bundeswehr Operations Command.

Viereck believes in the top-down approach (he opines that this is already accepted in EU operations, but that NATO still has a way to go); his ideal daily command group meeting clears away many of the uniformed "operators" but retains key advisers in the political, legal, cultural - and gender - fields.  Setting the example at the top, gender awareness is a key element of training in his multinational model, should contributing nations not already include that in their own training program.

In the DRC, Viereck says that including women in patrols was an essential element in "opening up" and helping secure previously no-go slum areas to his troops.  Because Congolese women are often the target of men-with-guns, Viereck notes that it was essential for Europeans-in-uniform to earn their respect and gain the confidence of the women, who also hold the key to access to the community.  Just as intelligence is vital to any mission and its own security, Viereck says it should be a given to include gender advisers and focal points at all levels, in the field as well as headquarters.

Viereck is careful to note that while a gender component is essential in any multinational force, its makeup and activities must be modified according to local conditions.  What works in Congo may not in Afghanistan.  Chatting after his talk, I asked him about the UN's Indian "All Woman" unit (an excellent BBC documentary gave it the non-PC title, "All Girl Squad") in Liberia, which some say is changing the paradigm in peacekeeping operations.  Ever precise, Viereck said that while he had no personal experience with female-only units, the German Navy has found that "women-heavy" ships, where the female-male ratio is heavily weighted towards the former, had a better disciplinary record than simply having a scattering of women in a crew.

In field operations, Viereck would simply be happy to have additional numbers of women.  In Congo, he trained and then rotated women from clerical positions into field patrols, with positive results in intel-gathering and in the "hearts & minds" category.  He indicates that in the Bundeswehr, women constitute roughly 8.7% of the troops, with Germany's goal to double that to 15% (note: the US Army has some 14% active duty women).

General Viereck's "passionate" (as he likes to call it) advocacy for gender awareness makes him a credible proponent for what some might see as a nice-but-optional approach to operations in dangerous missions.  His testimony is a real-world confirmation of the operational effectiveness of the international community's intent.  This focus on gender was enshrined in the 2000 UN Security Council Resolution 1325, "a landmark document that addresses the impact of war on women and stresses the importance of women's participation in all aspects of United Nations peacekeeping operations," according to the UN Chronicle.

Women: don't try peacekeeping without them.

(Photo Source: UN Chronicle Online)

3MA - Three Sons of Africa

(photo source: Contre Jour)

As I write this, my newly-acquired "3MA" CD is playing in the background.  Last night we went to their concert in Brussels, and it was pure joy.  This marriage of oud (by Moroccan Driss El Maloumi), kora (Ballake Sissoko, from Mali), and valiha (Rajery, playing the bamboo zither of Madagascar) is "world music" of a natural classicism.  Played at the Flagey auditorium - the acoustically updated and wonderfully art deco original home of RTBF, francophone Belgium's broadcaster - "3MA" was a surefire crowd-pleaser.  And we have some particularly bright cultural diplomats to thank for introducing them outside of Africa.

Each of the three musicians is a "star" in his own right.   Rajery, the wiry Malgache with a golden voice to boot, is a self-taught musician who was trained as an accountant.  Too bad for the green-eye-shade crowd, but lucky for music lovers, Rajery has devoted himself to the valiha.  He started a 23-member orchestra for the instrument, a national festival in its honor, and has founded a music school for street children.  He's made four albums.  Oh yes - and he has only one hand.

Driss El Maloumi, the oud player, has a following of his own, and has collaborated with Catalan ancient music virtuoso Jordi Saval and Hesperion XXI, as well as other international artists from Francoise Atlan to Iran's Keyvan Chemirani.  Driss is the anchor of the trio, and something of a wit and a poet.  He leads an amusing scat piece the group calls "African Political Speeches," which is equally effective as political satire: "plenty of dissonance, and lots of false notes."

Mali's Ballake Sissoko hails from a musical griot family, and his father co-founded the Ensemble Instrumental du Mali.  Sissoko's evocation of his daughter, Kadiatou, is a perfect vehicle for the versatile kora, essentially a massive gourd with 21 strings.

This joyous amalgam of music from three corners of Africa is the fruit of a somewhat chance encounter at the Timitar Festival in Agadir Morocco in 2006.  Three French cultural center directors - in the respective capitals of the three musicians - helped nurture what would come to be called 3MA: Mali, Madagascar, Maroc.  Belgian producer Michel De Bock, of the label Contre-Jour, worries a little about the MA of Maroc not fitting into "the anglo saxon, where it's Morocco...  But once they hear the album or see a concert, they'll be sure to fall for them."

I certainly hope so, though a quick look at 3MA's tour schedule doesn't show any anglophone countries (though they have already played at several venues in anglophone Africa) in the near future.  And as a former diplomat who sometimes dabbled in cultural diplomacy, hats off to the French Cultural Centers of Bamako, Agadir, and Antananarivo for introducing us to this fusion of African music (the Ford Foundation has assisted through "Art Moves Africa").

The Ineluctable Reality of Borders

Those pesky external border posts - poof! ...they're gone

 One of the occupational hazards of being an avuncular blogger on the Brussels lecture circuit is that I now get a multiplicity of invitations to events.  Many of these are welcome, providing useful fodder for posts.  Some are eminently avoidable, such as a recent invitation to join a demonstration protesting the expulsion of undocumented immigrants ("illegal aliens," as we would say in the US).  I'll give that one a pass, because I don't agree that "Borders = Repression," as the organizers would have it.

Living in a member state - some say the "capital" - of the European Union, and one which is a proud member of the Schengen (unguarded border) Zone, it's easy to forget the function of border controls.  Now that the Euro and Schengen have been a reality for the better part of a decade, crossing from Belgium to France and back through Germany, Luxembourg, and the Netherlands can be accomplished without even showing your passport and without changing your currency.  In multinational border regions, such as the Maastricht-Aachen-Liege triangle or the Luxembourg-Lorraine-Trier-Belgian Ardennes area, commuters of several nationalities can and do live in one country, work in another, and shop in a third, all in the course of a single day.

For this benign corner of Europe, the nasty work of external land border controls has been "outsourced" or at least subcontracted to those Schengen members on the periphery (I stress land borders, since all countries are still responsible for monitoring international arrivals at their air and sea ports, as well as their coastlines).  But here's the rub: despite Schengen (or perhaps because of it), there is still a problem of undocumented immigrants in every EU country, and it presents a challenge to democratically elected governments.  Because there are parties - some of them also democratically elected - on the Flemish separatist extreme right who use the immigration issue as a wedge to gain votes and seats in the very assemblies for which they express contempt.  Which is my very long way of saying that Border Controls ≠ Repression.  They're just part of the landscape.

Uti possidetis and the importance of internal borders - especially in Belgium

According to Wikipedia, we are told that uti possidetis (Latin for "as you possess") is a concept in international law, and that "the term has historically been used to legally formalize territorial conquests."  Thanks to Dr. Christian Behrendt, writing in the Brussels daily Le Soir on April 30, we have an expert opinion (he's a professor of comparative constitutional law at the University of Liege) on why, in the next couple of days, defining internal borders will be of utmost importance as Belgium may face yet another existential confrontation between its "warring" Dutch-speaking and Francophone politicians.  "Warring" is of course figurative, but memories are still fresh of the 1970s, when the confrontations were also physical.

Dr. Behrendt explains why the brouhaha over the proposed splitting of a federal electoral district called "BHV" - currently comprising the officially bilingual but in reality largely francophone capital Brussels, with the officially Dutch-speaking (but often with francophone majorities living in their midst) towns of Halle and Vilvoorde - has to be "gotten right" this time around.  Without going into even more arcane Belgo-Belgian political trivia, suffice it to say that the Dutch-speaking Flemish majority has sufficient votes in the national parliament to push a split through, but that there are constitutional safeguards which allow the French-speaking minority to veto (or at least temporize) such a unilateral diktat.

The future of the recently-formed Leterme government (for those who are gluttons for punishment, my blog category "Brussels" has a series of background posts on the crisis which led - very painfully - to the formation of the current government - you'll have to scroll down a bit) may depend on a negotiated solution to the BHV issue.  And here's where we get to Professor Behrendt's uti possidetis, which he interprets as "you will own what you have owned."  For those in the Francophone capital and its surrounding districts, as well as the French-speaking heartland of Wallonia in the south of the country, the "borders" set by a split of the BHV electoral district could be used - by a future Dutch-speaking Flemish nationalist majority bent on independence for Flanders - to set in concrete a "linguistic border" that would cut off hundreds of thousands of French-speakers from their linguistic cousins.

Borders - they might be imperfect, but they're all you have

For Francophone interests in the - perhaps inevitable - split of BHV, the key is to negotiate a compromise that will give the Flemish parties a face-saving "victory," while extracting important concessions: the expansion of Brussels to include Francophone-majority communes on the periphery; the formal, institutional linkage between Brussels and Wallonia; the permanent safeguarding of linguistic rights in "border" zones?  All problematic, possibly unattainable.  But the stakes are extremely high: as Dr. Behrendt concludes, the solution to BHV could wind up as a key legal element in an eventual national "divorce settlement."  Today's drawing of a voting district boundary could become tomorrow's border between two countries, should the nationalists hold sway.

Anyone who thinks uti possidetis is just for the history books (who remembers "The Treaty of Tordesillas?") should read noted Africa expert Michela Wrong in The New Statesman, about the dangers of tampering with uti possidetis:

Africa as we know it is a recent invention. Quixotic and impractical, its colonial frontiers are poorly charted and easily challenged. Fear of the mayhem that would ensue if member states regarded existing boundaries as being up for debate prompted the Organisation of African Unity, in 1964, to embrace the doctrine of uti possidetis, that colonial borders should remain as they are. The Eritrea-Ethiopia debacle, which will be finalised next month [note: after she wrote this in October 2007, fighting resulted in the February 2008 UN withdrawal from the disputed border, and there have been sporadic clashes since], undermines that principle, weakening future attempts at peaceful arbitration. The message it sends is that "final and binding" frontier rulings are negotiable; and that while minnows must obey international law, large countries with friends abroad can defy it with impunity. There could be few more dangerous signals to send a fragile continent.

"Facts on the ground" are of paramount importance in the Israel-Palestine conflict, as planners of the "separation barrier" know only too well.  Today's line in the sand, though it may not have any footing in law, is still a boundary of control, and becomes a negotiating chip.

BHV is not going to cause a shooting war between rival Belgian parties, but the point is this: it is incumbent on the responsible members of Belgium's main democratic parties, Flemish and Francophone, to get BHV right, so that the lines drawn today will not become an even more intractable bone of contention should separatist nationalism reign in a not-too-distant future.

The Media Week That Was - Bread & Circuses

In the Sixties, when I was a kid, I developed an early sense of the absurd thanks, in part, to the short-lived TV news satire “That Was The Week That Was,” or, as the original BBC series was dubbed, “TW3.”  These were the days before Saturday Night Live (I could never stay up that late anyway), or today’s Daily Show and Colbert Report.  But viewers of these programs are among those best equipped to deal with the media news worldwide this week.  It was a doozie.  Consider the following:

•    In the US, legendary network news of record, CBS, explores outsourcing newsgathering to CNN.  This is the broadcast equivalent of The New York Times subcontracting its Op-Ed page to the Fifth Grade debate team in Mrs. Gilbert’s English class.  Edward R. Murrow’s ghost is aghast.
•    In France, the midday half hour France Inter radio news devoted 29.99 minutes to breathless coverage of the Olympic Torch being assaulted by Tibetan and human rights protesters in the street of Paris.  It was a team effort to broadcast this political theatre, but the laurels went to a sports announcer dragooned for this “news” event, and his segment of the coverage sounded more like the narration of a photo-finish horse race than a news report.
•    In the US, two live TV days were devoted to coverage of the testimony of General David Petraeus and Ambassador Ryan Crocker, testifying that the US was (a) staying the course; (b) returning on success; (c) accomplishing its mission; or (d) none/all of the above.  Their non-news was pre-empted two days later by President Bush announcing that his successor would have to deal with the entire Iraq mess.
•    Meanwhile, in France, with everyone properly transfixed by the Olympic torch, Parliament debated the deployment of an additional contingent of French troops to Afghanistan.  In any case, the debate was just for form; President Sarkozy was sending the troops, no matter what.
•    Also in France, there was a mini-scandal over what a junior minister said about her boss the minister, accusing the Minister of Environment of “cowardice” for his handling of a bill dealing with GMO crops.  For days, it was nearly impossible for the normally sentient French citizen to find out exactly what was in the bill; what appeared to be important was the controversy, not the underlying facts.

It’s dog-bites-man banal to state that the media often has its priorities totally cockeyed.  Well of course.  The Mainstream Media is often accused in the alternative blogosphere of toeing the Bush Administration (or Sarkozy government, or whoever) line.  That may be true in many instances.  Bread, circuses, and Olympic torches have been around for a few millennia, and the public’s ability to be distracted by moving images and bright colors, as opposed to dull text and important facts, has only increased with time.

Meanwhile, speaking of bread, you can’t have been awake without having heard that several countries, including Egypt, Haiti, and Senegal, have had riots over the skyrocketing price of basic foodstuffs.  By “basic,” I’m talking bread.  Wheat flour.  Rice.  Corn.  Corn – you mean that great “green” raw material for “bio”-ethanol?  Even the American head of the World Bank, former Bush Administration official Robert Zoellick (photo, courtesy World Bank), said this week that government subsidies to “burn” food crops for fuel are a recipe for disaster.  The one “silver lining” story out of this was outlined on French TV and radio by French Ambassador to Senegal Jean-Christophe Rufin (like his boss the Foreign Minister, a doctor, and formerly of Action Against Hunger, an NGO).  Rufin said that subsidized exports from the US and Europe had displaced locally grown crops in many developing countries, but that the current inflation in world food prices will encourage importing countries to again grow their own crops.  The problem is that this will take years.

I have a suggestion for the financial luminaries meeting in Washington this weekend.  End, immediately, subsidies for crops used in ethanol.  Overnight – well, quickly anyway – the corn and other grains destined for distillation into fuel for Humvees could be added to the declining world food reserves.  Ethanol prices might go up and the fuel become scarcer, but which is more important: rioting throughout the world and the specter of starvation, or feeding the West’s (read American) appetite for consience-cleansing “green” fuel?

It was a hell of a week for the news.  But you might have been mesmerized by a little flame...

Contacts With the Opposition II: Ireland, Good Friday, and Terror

Today is the tenth anniversary of the 1998 Good Friday Agreement, which has allowed Northern Ireland to regain a measure of peaceful coexistence, as well as a considerable economic rebirth.  On a visit to Belfast circa 1999, the change in atmosphere was already apparent; Belfast bloomed with construction sites, “boutique” hotels were catering to business travelers if not tourists, and I recall that Belfast had something like the UK’s highest concentration of Mercedes and BMWs.

But as the BBC’s Panorama program showed this week, all is not love and roses between the communities; some 47 “peace walls” separate the Protestant and Catholic communities in several Ulster cities.  Though former sworn enemies Martin McGuinness of the Sinn Fein Catholic nationalists and Ian Paisley of the Protestant unionists now cavort laughingly together at the Stormont regional assembly, so much so that they’ve been dubbed “The Chuckle Brothers,” things are not so cozy on the street, where sectarianism is very much alive and well.

Yesterday’s Terrorist Is Today’s Statesman

So though the Northern Irish peace is not perfect, it is unquestionably better than the alternative.  The same might be said of Bosnia in the years after the Dayton Agreement, though the country is still divided into ethnic enclaves.  People can at least go shopping in Sarajevo without being picked off by snipers.  And Kosovo, Europe’s newest state(let), which may need an international umbilical cord for the foreseeable future, has settled into a sort of modus vivendi among its warring factions.

If Martin McGuinness – former IRA commander and convicted under terrorism charges – can now share parliamentary power with his former enemy, what does that tell us about the nature of politics?  Examples of former “terrorists” graduating to statesman status abound: Israel’s Menachim Begin of Irgun/Stern Gang infamy, becoming a peace partner with Egypt’s Anwar Sadat; Nelson Mandela, though probably the world’s most respected former leader, was originally imprisoned as the leader of the “terrorist” ANC, and still has to be "waivered" into the United States for his link with anti-apartheid terrorism; and if the French Revolution hadn’t yet “invented” the term terrorism in the late 18th century, the colonial British had similar terms a few years earlier for their American Revolutionaries, whose guerrilla operations (the “Swamp Fox”) and privateering went beyond the bounds of conventional military etiquette.

Back to the Good Friday anniversary and Tony Blair’s Finest Hour.  Today’s BBC World Service radio program “Analysis” is an excellent 9 minute evocation of the true political courage and vision that was behind the British-Irish-American (former senator George Mitchell was a key intermediary during the talks) initiative that resulted in the Good Friday Agreement of April 10, 1998.  “Analysis” notes that Blair rightly judged that the men-with-guns had to be included in the process, which tended to sideline or at least diminish the role of moderate parties like the SDLP, the largely Catholic Social Democratic and Labour Party.

But Blair’s approach – if the men-with-guns are talking, they might be distracted from shooting – is singular in its audacity.  Governments, whether it is Bush’s with-us-or-against-us “hunt ‘em down in their caves” approach to Islamist extremism or Algeria’s “eradicateurs” set on destruction of the Islamist opposition, whether terrorists or simply activists or even elected officials, tend to paint a simplistic picture of radical opposition, often with predictably disastrous results.  Blair, at least in his Northern Ireland peacemaker role, took a chance and it has paid off over the last decade.

Overseas Democrats: Brand America On Their Minds

It's still going on (Sunday is platform day), but I'll give my impressions from my "local volunteer" participation yesterday at this weekend's "Europe, Middle East, Africa" (EMEA) Democrats Abroad Caucus in Brussels.  The caucus was a little different from those that we've seen on TV, in that the task was not to vote directly for either Barack Obama or Hillary Clinton by people-clumping in corners of the room.  Rather, it was to choose delegates to go to Vancouver's Democrats Abroad Global Convention, and thence to Denver for the Democratic Party Convention.  But voting there was, and (delegate) candidate speeches.

The one "voting with your feet" moment came early on, when people were asked to divide themselves into Obama and Clinton camps, to proceed with the voting process for delegates, based on February's Global Presidential Primary results.  Out of the several hundred Democrats gathered in the hotel's ballroom, maybe three dozen got up and caucused in the Clinton room (they were treated to something the Obama people didn't hear, a presentation by Clinton supporter and former UN Ambassador Richard Holbrooke, who was in town for the Brussels Forum, a wonk talk-fest).

I missed Holbrooke's talk (apparently he said that whatever happened, party unity will be essential), but did listen to a few of the Clinton delegate hopefuls expound on their candidate.   Unless I missed a ranter or two in my shuttling between Obama and Clinton supporters, none of the trash talk that Democrats are coming to associate with the primary campaign was evident among these overseas Democrats.  Each camp seemed to observe their mothers' rules: "if you don't have anything good to say about someone... ."

The Clinton camp, perhaps because of its smaller numbers, were a generally disciplined, quiet group, but did present a rather white, older, uniformity.  In contrast, the Obama camp was presented with a list of delegate-candidates that genuinely "looks like America," and would have no trouble ensuring gender, racial, age (there were student candidates, and those whose political activism started with the Adlai Stevenson campaign), and sexual orientation diversity.

The common denominator in the speeches was a passionately-held conviction that America needed to "repair, restore" itself after the deterioration on all fronts during the Bush years.  Given their expatriate lifestyle, these overseas Democrats were more conscious than most of the need to revamp Brand America through actions, not just talk.  Some, who might be characterized as more exile than expatriate,  explained that the Obama campaign inspired them to get involved in resurrecting a country of which they had begun to despair.

My overall impression: the Democratic caucus process is messy, confusing, inefficient, but also scrupulously fair and inclusive.  As Churchill said, "Democracy is the worst form of government except for all those others that have been tried."