Avuncular American

Belgium's Lost Year: Politics Cancels Governance

(Image source: Brussels Export)

This has happened more than once in the past 12 months: Belgium decides to have an existential crisis when we happen to be away.  But existential political crises are the norm in a country where there are seven parliaments, three languages, and borders that include a wonderful geopolitical construct sometimes called the donut.*

The current kerfuffle is, again, essentially over the future outlines of the "linguistic frontier," both on maps and in how decentralization is pushed to its limits, before the "country" is no more than a shell for the all important regions and communities (Dutch speaking Flemish in Flanders, French speaking Walloons in the south, Germanophones along the eastern border, and a mix of all of the above, plus lots of internationals, in Brussels).  Things came to a head on July 15, the deadline for an "institutional reform" (Belgian for separatism) package.  See Le Soir cartoonist and author of "Dessine-moi la Belgique" Pierre Kroll for his take on the impact of the deadline on the daily life of Belgians.

The recent proffered resignation of Prime Minister Yves Leterme is simply the latest manifestation of the seemingly limitless capacity of Belgian politicians to conduct themselves as if the only thing elected officials should do is play politics.  Things like economic impact, national image, care for the national brand - those are for sissies.  Brinkmanship is the name of the game, and Leterme's resignation (as of this writing, not yet accepted by the head of state, King Albert II) is almost a footnote.  He's still in place, running a caretaker ("affaires courantes") government, and the name most talked about as a replacement in a future (coalition, as always) government is... Yves Leterme ("Leterme II").

Economic, business, and labor leaders throw up their hands in frustration: "A wasted year," sighed Vincent Reuter, head of the Wallonia employers association.  Essentially, the country has had a full year of holdover caretaker governments or short-lived successors since elections in summer 2007.  Months ago Belgian economists hazarded guesses on the cost of the crisis, which has only been compounded since.  The reaction of the politicians?  Hold the economy hostage to the outcome of a redistricting proposal dear to the hearts of Flemish politicians, and anathema to the French speakers.

The redistricting of the Brussels Hal Vilvoorde (BHV) constituency is a vital issue, even though trying to explain it to anyone living outside of Belgium results in understandable yawns.  Vital only because it risks splitting Dutch speakers and Francophones in the only area - the capital and its hinterland - where they live in close proximity.  Francophones (and many interested observers) fear that such a split would only be a precursor to further Flemish moves to bring an end to Belgium as a country.

Rather than splitting BHV, some thoughtful citizens are circulating a petition to unite Brussels and its hinterland, known by its historic name of Brabant (which exists, of course, in Flemish and Walloon versions).   They point out that the greater Brussels represents 2 million people, 1/3 of Belgium's GDP, and "more NGOs, lobbyists, embassies and consulates than Washington DC."  The Greens - probably the only Belgian political grouping that truly coordinates between its French and Dutch speaking sections - had earlier tabled proposals along the same lines, noting the natural synergies that regionalization would bring to the capital area, in terms of transportation and economic development, not to mention the main beneficial side effect of restoring some sense of shared destiny.

But there are other centrifugal forces at play, and not just on the Flemish side.  There has always been a fringe "rattachist" element wanting to find refuge with France, but of late at least one serious politician has come out with a "Belgique française" scenario in case the Flemish carry matters to their logical, separatist, conclusion.  Last month there was brief attention in the international press to the idea of a "Brussels Corridor," floated every few decades when Bruxellois get antsy about being cut off from their French speaking cousins down the road in Waterloo.

*So what about the donut?  It's actually worse than that.  According to Wikipedia (be sure to look at the map):

Baarle-Hertog is noted for its complicated borders with Baarle-Nassau in the Netherlands. In total it consists of 24 separate pieces of land. Apart from the main piece (called Zondereigen) located north of the Belgian town of Merksplas, there are twenty Belgian exclaves in the Netherlands and three other pieces on the Dutch-Belgian border. There are also seven Dutch exclaves within the Belgian exclaves. Six of them are located in the largest one and a seventh in the second-largest one. An eighth Dutch exclave lies in Zondereigen.

The border is so complicated that there are some houses that are divided between the two countries. There was a time when according to Dutch laws restaurants had to close earlier. For some restaurants on the border it meant that the clients simply had to change their tables to the Belgian side.

Let's hope that this doesn't become the template for Belgian cartographers.

Europe: All Eyes On Ireland

A copy of the Agreement was posted to every household in Northern Ireland and the Irish Republic and put to referendums the following May, which gave them substantial support by 74% and 94% respectively.
BBC on the Good Friday Agreement Referendum, 22 May 1998

I remember seeing one of those copies at my cousins' home, on the coffee table and well-thumbed.  They had read it before voting.

I’m voting ‘no,' though I don’t know an awful lot about it.
Brendan Fairbrother, retired Dubliner, quoted in today's New York Times by Sarah Lyall.

It looks like Mr. Fairbrother hasn't studied the 287-page Lisbon Treaty, but I can't be sure.  For those Irish voters (or readers) who want a quick summary, today's Irish Independent provides "The Treaty Made Simple."

If Brendan Fairbrother can't manage 287 pages of, as Sarah Lyall writes, "vintage bureacratese," I can't really blame him.  Nor is it the fault of the Irish that their constitution requiring Yes/No plebiscites puts them in, as today's Guardian cheerfully calls it, Europe's "awkward squad" along with Denmark and other sometime naysayers.  That's the problem with referendums: reducing complex 287-page treaties to a yes or no response can elicit the "wrong" response.  "Wrong" as in "no."  What then?  As the NYT's Lyall reports, "French president, Nicolas Sarkozy, spoke ominously on Tuesday of a “Franco-German” response to a “no” vote."  Sarkozy, who early in his presidency made a big show over his role in "simplifying" the treaty, has a personal investment in its ratification.

A "Franco-German response?"  France tried to help the Irish win their independence in 1798, "The Year of the French" (great historical novel, by the way, by Thomas Flanagan).  That didn't go well, and the Irish had to wait another century-plus to rid themselves of the colonial British.  Germans have been buying up lots of vacation homes in Ireland in recent years, and Germany's designs on a newly-independent neutral Ireland in the '30s and '40s worried the Anglo-American alliance, but things never went too far.  The Irish have to vote - it's not optional.

It's this kind of talk, Monsieur Sarkozy, that gets Ireland's Irish up, so to speak.  As the Irish Independent's cheat sheet puts it on the cherished notion of Irish neutrality:

Q:What does the treaty do on the military front?

A:Over the last five decades Ireland has built an internationally respected reputation for UN peacekeeping, thanks in part to neutrality.
Fears have been expressed over military expansion in Europe and demands on countries to massively increase their defence budgets.
Under the Lisbon Treaty, foreign, security and defence decisions must be made unanimously.
Ireland's neutrality is protected but there is an obligation to aid and assist, in accordance with the UN, a state which is the victim of armed aggression.
The type of aid and assistance that is required is not specified, but it must not affect security and defence policies of states, including Ireland's neutrality.
Also, states are obliged to help each other after a terrorist attack, natural or man-made disaster.

Such step-by-step gingerly handling of the Neutrality Question may strike non-Irish readers as overly cautious in the post Cold War present.  Not so.  Neutrality, and supposed threats to it, is sacred to the Irish.  I recall that when the US Mission to NATO (of which I was then a part) organized a seminar in a Dublin suburb in the late '90s, there was a mini-hullabaloo over this "military alliance" coming to neutral Ireland.  That the conference was on NATO's expansion to the East (and not west to Ireland) mattered little.  It was their very presence on neutral soil that counted.

Referendums, like elections, are sometimes decided on issues that have nothing to do with the question at hand.  Are voters unhappy (or happy?) with the ruling coalition this month?  Has the president (or prime minister, or chancellor) been unpopular of late?  Do people want to get their revenge by opposing whatever the government is proposing?  How's the weather on referendum day?  The Guardian:

Europe's future, being decided today, may hinge on such happenstance as the Irish weather. An unlovely day could keep people at home. A low turnout will hurt the pro-European vote.

Today's weather forecast for Ireland is "intermittent clouds."  Will attitudes toward the European benefactor - the hand that helps feed the Celtic Tiger - be sunny today?

(Image Source: Traditional Lace Makers of Ireland)

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.

Living Like Europeans

Last week Paul Krugman wrote "Stranded in Suburbia" in the New York Times.  His dateline was Berlin, and he marveled at the sheer livability of many urban neighborhoods:

To see what I’m talking about, consider where I am at the moment: in a pleasant, middle-class neighborhood consisting mainly of four- or five-story apartment buildings, with easy access to public transit and plenty of local shopping.

It’s the kind of neighborhood in which people don’t have to drive a lot, but it’s also a kind of neighborhood that barely exists in America, even in big metropolitan areas. Greater Atlanta has roughly the same population as Greater Berlin — but Berlin is a city of trains, buses and bikes, while Atlanta is a city of cars, cars and cars.

Krugman laments that "many Americans [are] stranded in suburbia — utterly dependent on their cars, yet having a hard time affording gas."

(images: STIB Brussels Transport)

As expats familiar with both suburban American and urban European lifestyles, we can relate to Krugman's depiction of the dilemma.  We live in a leafy part of Brussels, in the kind of apartment building and neighborhood described by Krugman.  We have a car, and it is parked in the building's underground garage.  Unless we take a ride in the country (and even then, we can reach greenery by public transport), we only use the car to do major food shopping about once a week.  Everything else is by tram.  We can use the same ticket for Brussels' metro or bus systems, and for those train lines that cross the city.

This is not to gloat - far from it, since we do all this on a declining dollar - but to illustrate Krugman's point about the oil-induced reasons for Americans to change, the "strong incentives to start living like Europeans."  My fellow Americans... it's not that hard, "living like Europeans."  Once freed from the tyranny of the internal combustion engine, possibilities open up.

Last week a delegation of Brussels regional officials traveled to Malmo, Sweden, just across the water from Copenhagen, Denmark.  They saw Scandinavian examples that some would like to emulate, like urban planning that incorporates energy efficiency in building design, something which is now catching on in Brussels and elsewhere in Belgium and in Europe.  Though Brussels has a long way to go before it can resemble Malmo or Freiburg in Germany, it at least has a massive head start in its integrated public transport network.  And it didn't make the monumental mistake made by Los Angeles and other cities in ripping up their "quaint" tramway/trolley lines for "modern" freeways, like LA did in the fifties ("At its peak, the Pacific Electric Railway was huge: 1,150 miles of track covering four counties and 900 cars. 1944 marked the highest ridership: over 109 million passengers)."  Imagine the cost of recreating that.

No, living like Europeans doesn't mean abandoning the car, but it does mean embracing what's best in urban life, recognizing that it requires public investment, and is sustained by improvements to the infrastructure.  It is the opposite of the throwaway car culture.

Memorial Day Where It Counts

Ninety years ago, 368 Americans were buried in what was named Flanders Field Cemetery, one of the smallest of the overseas cemeteries run by the American Battle Monuments Commission.  We went there yesterday to help represent Democrats Abroad Belgium, whose wreath was placed at the foot of the white stone chapel in the center of the headstones.

We have been attending Memorial Day, Veterans Day, and other commemorations at ABMC cemeteries for years (I encourage you to visit their website and take a virtual tour).  Americans who have not had the honor of seeing these hallowed sites in person should be proud that their nation continues to take such good care of American soldiers, sailors, airmen, and Marines (and merchant marines) buried abroad.

My father survived World War II with only a couple of tiny shrapnel wounds, but his memories of harrowing battles in places like Guam, the Philippines, and Okinawa stayed with him until he passed away.  The soldiers buried in places like Flanders Field have only one surviving comrade, Frank Woodruff Buckles, the last American "doughboy."

Look at the picture.  American and Belgian flags at the foot of each cross or Star of David.  Every World War I and II American cemetery in the European Theater, whether in Belgium, France, Luxembourg, the Netherlands, England, Italy... or in Tunisia, for the dead of the 1942-43 North African campaign... have the same array of flags, usually placed by local people or overseas Americans who keep the memory alive.  Further afield, in Latin America and in the Pacific, other cemeteries unvisited by me continue the same tradition.

Private Harry Volz of Wisconsin, whose Flanders Field grave is pictured here, died on November 10, 1918.  Students of history will know that 24 hours later, on the "eleventh hour of the eleventh day of the eleventh month," Armistice was declared and the guns fell silent.  A day too late for Pvt. Volz...

Edward G. Lengel, Associate Professor at UVA and author of "To Conquer Hell: The Meuse-Argonne, 1918," knows something about remembrance, and wrote this in yesterday's Washington Post:

The Civil War and World War II seem to lend themselves to good storytelling, as long as one avoids the ugly, depressing bits. They appear to have clear beginnings and endings, with dramatic heroes and villains. They move. World War I, by contrast, with its images of trench warfare and mustard gas, is not so easy to manipulate in a marketable manner. Popular historians consequently avoid it. As one trade publisher recently told me, World War I has "poor entertainment value." Attempts to discuss it, even with avid students of military history, often end with the same comments that veterans heard back in 1919: "It's all too dreadful," and so on. So powerful is this perception that even genuinely exciting stories -- those of Medal of Honor winners Charles W. Whittlesey, Alvin C. York, John L. Barkley and Freddie Stowers -- are ignored.

We should step back and think for a moment about what this says about Americans as people. Do we honor our veterans for all their sacrifices, or do we care only if they can tell us a good story? And who, then, is guilty of ingratitude?

World War II marked the end of this noble tradition of interring American war dead where they fell.  No Korean War, Vietnam War, Iraq War gravestones for Americans on those Mekong or Mesopotamian battlefields.  Maybe, to borrow Dr. Lengel's phrase, those conflicts lacked "clear beginnings and endings, with dramatic heroes and villains."  I have no doubt that there are heroes, and we've been told plenty about the "villains," but those "clear beginnings and endings?"  It's all so murky, so wrapped up in controversy over contrived incidents and confused war aims.  The Iraq War's "poor entertainment value" has been reflected in box office flops - it's pretty "dreadful" too.

Listening to yesterday's speeches (Belgian Prime Minister Yves Leterme, himself from the World War I-ravaged town of Ypres-Ieper), gave a thoughtful speech in flawless English referring to the WW I foundations of transatlantic cooperation), I had the impression that there was a mite less triumphalism in the speeches by the official American representatives.  As if five years into another murky war without "clear beginnings and endings" have induced a certain realization that the endgame is unknown, and that the ending, while it certainly may not be clear, will be accomplished by a President other than the one who started it.

John Kerry asked, as a young Vietnam combat veteran who had turned against that divisive war: "How do you ask a man to be the last man to die for a mistake?"  Private Volz from Wisconsin, who 90 years ago in Flanders Field died a day before peace was declared, can rest in peace, as should the dead from Vietnam and Iraq, whatever we think of the merits of the wars in which they fell.  But before we ask a soldier to be the last one to die in Iraq, we had better clarify why we are still there, fighting for whom?

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.

Embedded in the White House: American Journalism Seen From Europe

(Photo source: White House Correspondents' Association)

Mutual self-debasement (though it’s not even necessary)

Last night’s annual celebrity bash presided over by a baton-waving George W. Bush (see the Washington Post’s appropriately chatty listing of who was seen in the audience) was another reminder that all is not quite right in the land of the free press.  Somehow this tradition (which started under Calvin Coolidge, who escaped from the White House just before the Crash of 1929) has evolved (degenerated?) into a yearly chance to live it up and show that “sure, most of us think this guy is the worst president since the office was invented, but we have to ingratiate ourselves with him for another few months, so that he remembers our names at press conferences.”  The President (all fourteen since Coolidge, that is) gets to show his humorous, human side, and agrees to gentle roasting (stress on gentle, ever since Stephen Colbert hit the quick in 2006).

At least the New York Times had the decency to pull the plug on its attendance: "These events can create a false perception that reporters and their sources are pals, and that perception could cloud our credibility," Times spokeswoman Diane McNulty wrote, quoted in Editor & Publisher. "It's not worth it."

Other views on the state of American journalism abound, and they are mostly of the concerned family member variety.  American organizations like the Committee of Concerned Journalists, the Project for Excellence in Journalism, and the Newspaper Association of America, among others, have sprung into action to help counter a prevailing view of the Mainstream Media (MSM) as clueless, if not compliant, faced with the onslaught of the Bush Administration.  The concerns are shared abroad, with Reporters Without Borders (RSF in the original French acronym) putting the US way down on its list of country reports on press freedom.

One especially lucid view of America from a concerned friend of the United States is that of Jean-Paul Marthoz, a veteran Belgian journalist, academic, and human rights campaigner.  Marthoz has just published his latest book (Editions GRIP and Enjeux Internationaux) “La Liberté Sinon Rien: Mes Amériques de Bastogne à Bagdad.”  I don’t think there is an English translation yet, but with his long history of connections with the US, Marthoz probably had Patrick Henry’s “Give me liberty or give me death” phrase in mind for his title.  The Bastogne of the subtitle is a reference to Marthoz' Ardennes childhood, when memories were still vivid of the defiant American defense of the town in the Battle of the Bulge against superior German forces.

But the America of Bastogne is far from the Baghdad of the Bush administration.  Marthoz, who places himself squarely in the “liberal” (in the American, somewhat left of center sense, not in the European free market libertarian definition) camp, has no time for either neocons or for extreme leftists.  He knows both North and South America well (“Mes Amériques”), and his book chronicles his years as a correspondent and Human Rights Watch official covering the Western Hemisphere.

The heyday of American journalism, and of democracy

The United States that Marthoz most admires is that of Jimmy Carter and Ted Kennedy, when the White House and Congress pressured Latin American dictatorships and - as survivors of human rights abuses told Marthoz - “saved lives.”  He recalls the kind of investigative journalism that inspired him as a young man, the kind that uncovered the true extent of Watergate, and that disseminated the facts from the Pentagon Papers.  A former Fulbright scholar in the US, he did his masters thesis on press freedom.  He likes to quote Senator J. William Fulbright’s dictum, which guides his life’s work:

To criticize one's country is to do it a service and pay it a compliment. It is a service because it may spur the country to do better than it is doing; it is a compliment because it evidences a belief that the country can do better than it is doing. Criticism, in short, is more than a right; it is an act of patriotism -- a higher form of patriotism, I believe, than the familiar rituals and national adulation.

Marthoz told a group of Democrats Abroad Belgium members last week that all was not lost despite the current atmosphere in the States, and the RSF rating of the United States might actually improve for a change, thanks to a Congressional “shield law” to protect journalists from having to reveal their sources.  He notes that the Pulitzer Prizes in 2008 rewarded civic commitment and investigative journalism, both in great need of revival in these times of the “unitary presidency.”

This impressive Belgian journalist – whose goal is “to restore complexity to the world,” the antithesis of the sound-bite oversimplification of “with-us-or-against-us” – deserves a wider audience in the country that welcomed him as a young Fulbrighter.  Perhaps some day a bright Public Affairs Officer at the American Embassy will see that Jean-Paul Marthoz would be an excellent bridge builder between Europe and the United States.  One who believes in a “renewed transatlantic relationship, built on a new foundation,” after the disastrous Bush era.  Maybe under the next president?

The Military GRIP on US Foreign Policy

Europe’s fixation on the American presidential race continues.  Yesterday’s conference on “US Foreign Policy After Bush” sponsored by the respected Brussels think tank GRIP (“Groupe de recherche et d’information sur la paix et la securite”) focused primarily on American security policy.  The panel was composed of academics and journalists from francophone Belgium’s left-leaning firmament, though the message was not terribly different from that heard in previous (conservative) European fora: though there are differences between the remaining candidates, in certain key areas, don’t expect the heavens to open even if Barack Obama is elected President.

In a series of slides, GRIP researchers presented graphs showing the ahistoric (when compared to the country’s first century and a half) levels of American military spending since the end of World War II.  In previous major US wars (the Civil War, First World War), US military spending spiked, and then resumed (low) pre-war levels.  As late as the 1920s, US defense budgets sunk as low as 0.7% of GDP.  World War II, morphing into the Cold War, which morphed into the Global War on Terror (GWOT), set a new paradigm, where official defense budgets have built a graphical mountain on the historical timeline.  Accounting for off-budget spending (the “supplemental” spending on Iraq and Afghanistan, as well as projected costs for war veteran medical care, etc.) would require an Al Gore-like “Inconvenient Truth” ladder, where spending would literally go off the charts.

My favorite slide summarizes how profitable defense spending has been – hence how difficult it will be for even a reform-minded president to change the course of the military juggernaut.  It’s a GRIP depiction of the AMEX Defense Index (DFI) over the period September 1996 to present.   It's worth noting that the good times really started rolling after the Clinton Administration's "Last Supper" at the Pentagon with defense industry chiefs in January 1993, when the military industrial complex was "right sized." With profitability like this, and with a defense industry spread over every Congressional District, it will indeed be difficult to steer the ship of state in a direction different to that of George W. Bush.

Today’s Guardian carries a excellent Simon Jenkins piece on a similar theme, “Despite Iraq, America's Love Affair With War Runs Deep.”

The one thing known by all three candidates for the presidency is that whoever wins must do something painful. He or she must negotiate the terms of an eventual retreat from Iraq, not with the Iraqi but with the American people. Even John McCain, who watched the retreat from Vietnam and swears he will "stay a hundred years in Iraq until peace, stability and democracy" are achieved, will eventually leave, if only under the lash of Congress.

Yet now is not the time to admit it. A war that is unpopular with 60-70% of Americans (depending on the question) is not politically sustainable, however stupefying the cost. But the modalities of its ending are unpredictable and possibly humiliating.  Both Hillary Clinton and Barack Obama may call for early withdrawal, at least of "combat troops". But the real paradox of Iraq is that McCain knows he must find a way of leaving, and Clinton and Obama know they must find a way of staying, if only for the time being. For all of them, getting from here to there crosses uncharted territory and none wants to glimpse the map.

But “getting from here to there,” as Jenkins notes, includes obligatory war rhetoric to show that no candidate is “soft on defense.”  This is mainly a challenge for the Democrats, since no one assumes that McCain is a softie.  So Hillary Clinton delivers a pre-Pennsylvania blast at Iran, saying that she would “totally obliterate” the country if it attacked Israel.  Even Barack Obama has to rattle the sabers, in what amounts to unilateralism aimed at Pakistan.

Despite warnings from past soldier-presidents (George Washington and Dwight Eisenhower) on the dangers of large standing armies and the “Military Industrial Complex,” changing the mindset that puts military might above all other indices of national health, wealth, and yes – power - is more than a daunting task.  GRIP’s presentation yesterday on American military spending in the Middle East from 1950 through 2006 is enough to cause despair - especially when you realize that most of the US money in military assistance programs is out of the same budget that funds American diplomacy, the State Department.  From whatever angle (percentage of overall US aid, percentage of US aid to the Middle East, etc.), the countless billions spent, given, or sold in terms of weapons in the most flammable part of the world is astounding.  Oh yes: Iran is number four on the list of US military assistance recipients.  Iran?  The HQ of the “Axis of Evil?”  The place where they call America “The Great Satan?”  Remember, the graph also includes the period before 1979, when the Shah's Iran was the Number One US arms recipient.

So what has more than a half century of arms-trading-in-the-tinderbox procured for the US?  Several wars, whether direct or proxy (see Osama bin Laden, the fallen angel of the anti-Soviet crusade in Afghanistan); several regime changes, whether pro or anti-American (see Mossadegh>Shah>Ayatollah for the progression in Iran; for Iraq, Saddam>Bremer>Allawi>Jaafari>Maliki>TBD?); and several million permanently displaced people (Palestinians and now Iraqis scattered over the Middle East, miserable and a source of instability for their reluctant hosts).

GRIP provided the graphs.  But will Americans elect someone who can read them?

Overseas Americans Look At US Economy

If this post seems Spartan, shorn of all my usual links, quotes, indents – all those little touches that make for fun blogging – it’s because I am afraid that all that effort will be for naught, given my recent “Beta test group” problems.  So I’ll keep this short and sweet.

True to their serious wonk natures, members of Brussels’ Democrats Abroad gathered last night, in the presence of reps from economic policy think tanks, to discuss the “dismal science” as it pertains to their home country.

The discussion was lively, though the subject is indeed dismal: one think tanker read off a series of indicators (jobs created, poverty thresholds cleared, budget surpluses, etc.), which set off in very sharp contrast the Clinton ‘90s from the Bush ‘00s.  On all the indices, it’s clear that the Bush years have been a disaster in terms of economic stewardship.

Several overseas Dems, suffering from the de facto devaluation of the US dollar, looked for some ray of hope from the experts.  Others, who had just received their “Economic Stimulus Payment Notices” from the IRS, felt that this squandering of happy money (ludicrous when translated into Euros) could have been targeted to provide some measure of relief for the millions of Americans losing their homes.

The experts had little succor to offer in return, and marveled at the willingness of Hillary Clinton and Barack Obama to take over the helm of state, given the holes below the waterline.  With record budget and trade deficits, astronomic national debt, and a hemorrhaging housing market, the resources to solve crucial needs in health care, critical infrastructure, and energy diversification will be in short supply.

And John McCain, whose interest in economics mirrors his knowledge of Sunni and Shia Islam, seems to have a one note song to all questions of national security: “Bomb, bomb, bomb, bomb-Iran...”  No sense that indebtedness to China and the Gulf nations, credit card funding of endless war in Iraq and Afghanistan, and dependence on foreign oil (and consequent enriching of foreign oil producers) – might too be matters of national (in)security.

So last night was a choir preaching to itself, convinced that – for reasons of economic self-interest, along with the broader goals of starting to bring back America’s reputation in the world – Election 2008 must be one of a sweeping Democratic victory.

Oh yes, and a question that us dollar-dummies should have asked last night: how many Wall Street mega-bonuses were awarded on selling the dollar short?  Surely the Gordon Gekko’s of 2008 know that when the Bush Administration repeats that it wants a “strong dollar” – but then does precisely nothing to strengthen it, and everything (chronic deficit spending, record-breaking national debt, a string of Federal Reserve interest rate cuts) to further its decline – surely the Wall Street whizzes know that it’s time to play in the Forex fields.  No wonder someone last night used “dollar” and “peso” interchangeably.

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."