Kurt Bassuener March 28th, 2008

The Bush administration could probably write a primer on how to lose friends and alienate people in the Islamic world. To that we can add a chapter of “how to make newly inaugurated democrats look bad – and have it adversely affect your interests,” with a pushy maneuver that a leader of Pakistan’s new democratic coalition, former Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif, called “ham handed.” The New York Times’ Jane Perlez gave an excellent account on Wednesday, and the Times editorializes on it today.

Deputy Secretary of State John Negroponte insisted on meeting Nawaz Sharif while Prime Minister Yousaf Raza Gillani was being inaugurated, despite being told that the day was an inopportune time for the U.S. to meet the government. Apparently, Negroponte’s schedule was so fixed that he couldn’t work around the government’s formation. The Pakistani press roundly pilloried the American move: one headline read “Hands Off Please, Uncle Sam,” and another journalist noted that “Here are the Americans…trying to dictate terms.”

But Negroponte and Assistant Secretary for South Asia Affairs Richard Boucher got a cool reception from Nawaz, who refused to give them “a commitment” on fighting terrorism, and questioned American methods that, in his view, had turned Pakistan into a “killing field”.

Naturally, the two also met with Pakistani President Pervez Musharraf, who has had the backing of the Bush administration since soon after September 11. The Bush administration was widely seen as having worked to engineer a rapprochement between Musharraf and the late Benazir Bhutto to give his government a more democratic veneer, at the expense of a truly democratic electoral test. When that electoral test came in the wake of Bhutto’s assassination, it swept Musharraf’s “king’s party” from power and brought secular-minded voters out in force.  Now Bhutto’s widower and her former rival Nawaz Sharif have forged a democratic coalition under the leadership of the well-regarded Gillani, who was jailed by Musharraf. He is already reversing some of the blatant abuses of the Musharraf era, such as the imprisonment of Chief Judge Iftikhar Chaudhry and nine of his colleagues. The parliament has a female speaker, Ms. Fahmida Mirza of Bhutto’s PPP.

All these developments are good news for Pakistan and are cause for celebration. But the Bush administration’s backing of Musharraf is not forgotten in Pakistan. One former member of Musharraf’s cabinet is quoted by Perlez “The people have spoken and rejected the religious parties, and at the same time they have rejected the people who will automatically nod to the United States.” Nawaz said the timing of the U.S. visit might be seen as Washington’s aim to remain “the political godfather behind Musharraf.” If American leverage is reduced with Islamabad on serious issues like the fight with Al Qaeda and the Taliban in Afghanistan, Washington only has itself to blame.

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Kurt Bassuener March 26th, 2008

On his current trip to Great Britain, French President Nicholas Sarkozy has called on Chinese authorities to engage in a dialogue with the Dalai Lama.  Prime Minister Gordon Brown, prepares to meet the Dalai Lama in May, and Sarkozy may follow suit, depending on how the situation in Tibet progresses.  The European Parliament’s President, Hans-Gert Poettering, invited the Dalai Lama to address the body and questioned the attendance of the Olympic opening ceremonies.  Former Czech President Vaclav Havel and five others in his Forum 2000 group suggest an even stronger response: 

Even as we write, it is clear that China’s rulers are trying to reassure the world that peace, quiet, and “harmony” have again prevailed in Tibet. We all know this kind of peace from what has happened in the past in Burma, Cuba, Belarus, and a few other countries – it is called the peace of the graveyard.

Merely urging the Chinese government to exercise the “utmost restraint” in dealing with the Tibetan people, as governments around the world are doing, is far too weak a response. The international community, beginning with the United Nations and followed by the European Union, ASEAN, and other international organizations, as well as individual countries, should use every means possible to step up pressure on the Chinese government to

• allow foreign media, as well as international fact-finding missions, into Tibet and adjoining provinces in order to enable objective investigations of what has been happening;
• release all those who only peacefully exercised their internationally guaranteed human rights, and guarantee that no one is subjected to torture and unfair trials;
• enter into a meaningful dialogue with the representatives of the Tibetan people.

Unless these conditions are fulfilled, the International Olympic Committee should seriously reconsider whether holding this summer’s Olympic Games in a country that includes a peaceful graveyard remains a good idea.

U.S. President George Bush also phoned Chinese leader Hu Jintao to “engage in substantive dialogue with the Dalai Lama’s representatives.”

The death toll of the wide Chinese crackdown in Tibetan-populated areas in western China is estimated by exile groups as well over 130.

As of now, there is little reason to hope that the violent repression will be softened by international criticism.  But China’s Olympic coming-out party, already dogged by jusitified criticism of its Darfur, Burma, and Zimbabwe policies, may well be less joyful and universally hailed than the Chinese Communist Party leadership had planned.

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admin March 26th, 2008

DPC is launching an occasional series of longer analytical articles under the title DPC Analyst. Senior Associate Iryna Chupryna has written the first in the series, Not Quite a Color Revolution in Armenia [PDF]. She looks at why protests against shortcomings in Armenia’s flawed February elections fizzled like those in Belarus in 2006 instead of turning into a revolution, like those in Ukraine in 2004.  Chupryna argues that muted criticism from the European Union and United States following the government’s violent crackdown on protestors may signal a dangerous tolerance for democratic backsliding in the post-Soviet space.

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Eric Witte March 19th, 2008

The BBC reports today that a new diamond processing plant is opening in Botswana, creating 3,000 jobs. Rough diamonds will no longer simply be shipped abroad to be cut, polished, marketed and sold. The welcome development is a reminder that efforts to regulate the international diamond trade must square the needs of places like Botswana with those of places where diamonds have brought nothing but ruin and despair.

“Blood diamonds” from other parts of Africa (and other continents), including Sierra Leone, Angola, and the Democratic Republic of Congo have fuelled conflict and spurred atrocities. Ongoing evidence in the war-crimes trial of former Liberian President Charles Taylor before the Special Court for Sierra Leone has featured fascinating and grisly details of how this worked in West Africa during the 1990s.* Diamond expert Ian Smillie of Partnership Africa Canada, the first prosecution witness called against Taylor, explained to the court in January that where geology is such that diamonds are spread far and wide by river systems (alluvial diamonds), basically anyone can become a diamond miner. Particularly in a country as desperately poor as Sierra Leone, this means that so-called “artisinal miners” are always tempted to flock to the diamond-rich areas of eastern Sierra Leone, shovels and sieves in hand. Smillie testified [PDF] that an authority wishing to keep the masses at bay has two options: employ a large security force, or conduct a reign of terror to scare them away. The Revolutionary United Front (RUF), backed by Taylor, pursued the latter option. Rape, mutilation and murder were means to control the diamond areas, and over the course of the war the diamond trade through Liberia became an increasingly important lifeline for the RUF.

Such open access to diamonds also makes accounting for the stones very difficult, and even after the war, Sierra Leone has been plagued by corruption in the diamond sector. While a small elite has prospered and there has been some incremental improvement in exportation of diamonds through official channels, most Sierra Leoneans have seen little or no benefit from the diamond trade in the past six years of peace.

By contrast, where geology is such that diamond reserves lie deep in the ground, heavy mining equipment is required to access the stones. There are no artisinal miners, and thus no rationale for terror. Centralized mining allows for much greater control of the stones, and accountability. This is the kind of diamond mining that takes place in such places as Botswana and South Africa.

Botswana, the world’s leading diamond producer, is among the best-governed countries in Africa.  Successive democratic governments have managed to harness the country’s diamond resources to spur development and formation of a sizeable middle class. This record has been sullied by recent efforts to kick indigenous San peoples (”Bushmen”) off of their traditional lands in the Central Kalahari Game Reserve, which some allege is a prelude to expanded diamond mining there. Despite this serious blemish on Botswana’s record, the broad pattern of responsible use of diamond wealth holds.

Efforts to regulate the international diamond trade through the Kimberley Process are burdened by the complication that it is difficult to tell with certainty where diamonds come from, so that conflict and non-conflict diamonds are easily co-mingled in such trading centers as London, Antwerp and Tel-Aviv. As Global Witness and Partnership Africa Canada stressed in a joint November 2007 note [PDF] to a plenary meeting of the Kimberley Process, gaps in the Kimberley Process and lax enforcement have allowed illicit trading to continue, and there is much more that member countries can do to implement proper controls.

While geology may seem to dictate that the people of Botswana and Sierra Leone have divergent interests when it comes to the diamond trade, reliable controls are in the interests of both. A truly functional Kimberley Process can ensure that growing consciousness of the “blood diamond” problem does not diminish the market for the lifeblood of Botswana’s economy, while helping to establish the accountability necessary for Sierra Leone to put its natural resources to work for its people.

*Full disclosure: I’m a former employee of the SCSL, and have since worked as an occasional consultant for the Open Society Justice Initiative on the charlestaylortrial.org website.

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Kurt Bassuener March 18th, 2008

OSCE Secretary General Marc Perrin de Brichambaut was interviewed in Dnevni Avaz, Bosnia and Herzegovina’s top-selling daily yesterday. In the charged atmosphere of the country’s politics, where the very survival of the state is now frequently questioned, it is easy to put a foot wrong, or worse. Brichambaut’s very visit to Dodik’s new office complex in Banja Luka helps undercut state institutions. But he then sprang head-first into the political minefield. First, he appeared to support the prospect of an independence referendum for the RS (unofficial translation circulating in BiH circles):

“In Republika Srpska, there are ever stronger voices calling for secession. What is your view on the issue?

The beauty of a democratic state lies in the possibility of its citizens to say what they think and decide which politician they trust, and in the way they decide. Sometimes, important decisions need to be verified with the citizens before they are taken.”

The whole international community concerned with Bosnia continues to reject an RS independence referendum, most recently in the declaration of the Peace Implementation Council, which met in Brussels less than a month ago, to which I believe the OSCE subscribed in full.

The interviewer then gave Brichambaut a chance to backtrack or clarify a statement which he should have known would come back to bite him, but he didn’t take the bait. He instead took the opportunity to dig the hole deeper.

“Does this mean that you support the secession of the RS?

I am completely neutral. It does not concern me. This is a decision that concerns the political process in a particular state. I can only say that, if this continues, there will be consequences outside BiH.

What consequences?

This is difficult to judge, but there will undoubtedly be consequences.”

One of those consequences should be Brichambaut’s departure or censure. At the very least, he should be compelled to recant and reaffirm his and the OSCE’s collective position on the territorial integrity of Bosnia and Herzegovina.

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Eric Witte March 18th, 2008

China’s crackdown on Tibet continues. The extent to which government forces are provoking or reacting to the attacks on Chinese-owned shops that have taken place in addition to the peaceful protests since March 10 is unclear. What is clear is that Chinese government reaction has been brutal. Troops continue to stream into Tibet and house-to-house searches are reportedly underway.  Meanwhile, today the Dalai Lama threatened to resign if anti-Chinese violence in Tibet continues, saying that violence in the name of Tibetan autonomy is “suicidal”.

As the protests have spread, not only to the bordering Chinese provinces of Gansu, Qinghai and Sichuan, but into other countries, Beijing is receiving the support of its neighbors. Moscow’s enthusiasm for brutality in squelching the demands of an oppressed minority is hardly shocking, but it is disappointing to see the world’s largest democracy, India, follow suit.  On Friday, India arrested Tibetan protestors seeking to march to Tibet. Indian Foreign Minister Pranab Mukherje assured parliament yesterday that this was all part of a longstanding policy of “non-interference” in Chinese affairs, but it sure looks a lot like complicity. Mukherje was similarly unimpressive when Burma’s regime was killing, beating and detaining monks last October, stating: “It is up to the Burmese people to struggle for democracy, it is their issue.”

In Nepal, an ongoing police crackdown on peaceful Tibetan protestors yesterday became so brutal that the local UN office has protested and the office of the UN High Commissioner for Human Rights is also investigating.  The beating and arresting of peaceful protestors is a major setback for Nepal’s own tentative democratic progress, coming as it does after the April 2006 restoration of its parliamentary government.

China may have less luck in containing outrage elsewhere. European Parliament President Hans-Gert Poettering has raised the prospect of politicians’ boycotting the opening ceremony of the Beijing Olympic Games that begin in August.  French Foreign Minister Bernard Kouchner today called that idea “interesting”.  If China’s violent repression of Tibet continues, it’s hard to see how such calls won’t escalate and expand. The mounting international debate over whether the Olympic Games should be boycotted in part, in whole, or not at all, is not a debate that China wanted to be engaged in just five months from the games.

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admin March 9th, 2008

DPC analysts assess the decisions by the Steering Board of the Peace Implementation Council, which met in Brussels on February 27, 2008. For the English text in PDF, click here. The Bosnian/Croatian/Serbian version can be found here.

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Eric Witte March 8th, 2008

Serbia’s government fell today.  This comes in the wake of Kosovo’s independence on February 17 and the subsequent burning of the unprotected US embassy, as well as mob attacks on the embassies and diplomatic missions of Slovenia, the UK, Germany, Croatia and Bosnia. It also comes amidst government incitement to intimidate civil society and pro-western liberals, and Prime Minister Vojislav Kostunica’s effort to spurn Serbia’s path to EU integration absent a full reversal of EU members’ recognition of independent Kosovo.  International media are struggling to understand the current crisis and how Serbia has come to the brink of another era of ultranationalist governance - this time under Kostunica, likely in alliance with the Radical Party.

Jovana Gec,

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writing for the Associated Press yesterday explained that Prime Minister Vojislav Kostunica had come “full circle”, turning into a politician very much like Milosevic, whom he succeeded as president of the Federal Republic of Yugoslavia in October 2000. Part of this assessment points to a shift in Kostunica’s personal and governing style since 2000 - moving away from his everyman reputation and adopting Milosevic’s more reclusive and authoritarian habits. While this much rings true, the notion emphasized through much of the article - and reflected in many western news accounts these days - that Kostunica’s embrace of nationalism is surprising, or even something new, ignores his consistent public record.

Vojislav Kostunica has not suddenly become a nationalist. Rather, the media - and most of the western diplomatic corps - are only now being forced to abandon their delusions that he was ever a “moderate”.

Before and since Kosovo’s independence on February 17, Kostunica has done his best to whip the masses into a nationalist frenzy with fiery rhetoric that would make Milosevic proud. But anyone caring to dig into the record would realize that during the 1990s Milosevic’s rhetoric and actions were not always enough to satisfy Kostunica’s nationalist fervor. Take for example, this interview from December 1994, during the war in Bosnia, when Kostunica was asked whether Bosnian Serb leader Radovan Karadzic had made any mistakes:

“I do not see anything which I would call a basic error…There was, truth to say, a mistake linked with the assessment that one could rely on the national positions and the national interests of the regime in Belgrade…and that the [Milosevic] regime was conducting a responsible national policy. He [Milosevic] is…a cynical, not a true, nationalist.” — Interview with NIN, December 2, 1994, cited in Norman Cigar, Vojislav Kostunica and Serbia’s Future, p. 17.

In other words, Karadzic had not made a mistake in leading the ongoing siege of Sarajevo and wholesale ethnic cleansing of eastern Bosnia and Herzegovina, among a series of other atrocities; rather Kostunica thought his mistake had been to overestimate the (already substantial) support that the Bosnian Serbs could count on from Milosevic in carrying out these crimes. In this same interview, Kostunica summed up by saying, “[…]the requests by the leadership of the Republika Srpska at this stage are directed toward an objective which for us is legitimate and not debatable.”

Leaving no doubt of his support for the Greater Serbia project, or his criticism of Milosevic in working towards this goal, shortly after the slaughter at Srebrenica in 1995, Kostunica explained:

“[Milosevic and] the so-called opposition in Serbia [share a limited perspective] based on the old, never corroborated myth that Serbia across the Drina is up for dispute, [that it is] Greater Serbia, while Serbia up to the Drina, if possible reduced in the North and South in its head and legs, is the true, allowable, Serbia. Of course, ever since Yugoslavia has been in existence, Serbia has been a single indivisible space on both sides of the Drina, and the Serbs here and over there are a single and the same people. Notwithstanding what foreigners and domestic peaceniks have thought and said, peace can be established more quickly by accepting this natural fact than by rejecting it.” — Interview with NIN, July 28, 1995, cited in Norman Cigar, Vojislav Kostunica and Serbia’s Future, p. 20. 

Kostunica’s disappointment in Milosevic extended to the latter’s support for the so-called Republika Sprska Krajina in Croatia, again because Kostunica felt Milosevic had failed to do enough to support the separatists working to implement the plan for a Greater Serbia in that part of the former Yugoslavia:

“[Milosevic is responsible for] the betrayal of the Republika Srpska Krajina…It is difficult to find an explanation for such a Pilate-like avoidance of moral and even legal obligations.” — Quoted in the periodical Argument, August 14, 1995, cited in Norman Cigar, Vojislav Kostunica and Serbia’s Future, p. 8. 

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In 2000 the opposition coalesced around Kostunica because his nationalist credentials allowed for creation of a much broader anti-Milosevic coalition than had the liberal, pro-western opposition centered on Zoran Djindjic. The strategy worked. Kostunica and such other anti-Milosevic nationalist leaders as Velimir Ilic, then the mayor of Cacak and today Kostunica’s infrastructure minister, expanded the opposition movement to critical mass. Many (and perhaps most) of the Serbs who took to the streets of Belgrade in October 2000 did so not because Milosevic had started wars in Croatia, Bosnia and Kosovo, but rather because he had lost them.

October 5, 2000 was only a partial revolution. Milosevic was toppled, and that was important, but there was not yet a commitment to liberal democracy - and Kostunica’s commitment to chauvinist nationalism remained. But because Kostunica had been anti-Milosevic, and because the scenes in Belgrade recalled the democratic revolutions across Central and Eastern Europe at the end of the Cold War, the media and western diplomatic community assiduously embraced Kostunica as a moderate and a democrat, lumping him together with such true democrats as Zoran Djindjic.

During the 1990s, the western media often had described Kostunica as a “nationalist”. The Associated Press did so on August 10, 1995 when it quoted him as saying, “Milosevic has sold out the Serbs.” (Link unavailable.) That it is now rediscovering Kostunica’s nationalism is a sign that it has come full circle, while Kostunica has remained much the same.

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Eric Witte March 6th, 2008

Thai officials today arrested notorious Russian arms trafficker Viktor Bout on a warrant from the United States, where he is charged for planned weapon sales to the FARC in Colombia.  Bout has been one of the most prolific arms merchants in recent years, doing business with warlords and tyrants, and fuelling wars in the Middle East, Balkans, Latin America, Asia, and throughout Africa. Allegedly, he has flown weapons to both the Northern Alliance and the Taliban in Afghanistan. With a dizzying array of front companies and airlines, he was even unwittingly subcontracted to fly supplies for the US in Iraq.

Douglas Farah, co-author of a book about Viktor Bout (”Merchant of Death“) wrote of Bout’s arrest today:

“As I have written before, much of what Bout did, under the current international law, is not illegal, although it is morally repugnant. It is heartening that the new charges involve specific charges of efforts to help the FARC, which is likely to be something that is far less nebulous to prove than breaking U.N. arms embargoes.

Thai officials say he could be brought back to the United States to stand trial. That would be a sight indeed.”

Other traffickers will surely take his place, weapons exporters will have an incentive to turn a blind eye, and such countries as Liechtenstein, the Cayman Islands and Singapore will continue to make establishment of multiple opaque shell companies and secret bank accounts all too easy for traders in illicit, well…anything.  Perhaps the arrest of Viktor Bout will bring needed attention to these and other elements of the international system that allow people of Bout’s ilk to profit on bloodshed and misery.

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Kurt Bassuener March 6th, 2008

Vanity Fair’s April 2008 issue includes a devastating story by investigative journalist David Rose, “The Gaza Bombshell,” which details the efforts of the Bush Administration to overturn the results of the January 2006 Palestinian election. International observers from the European Union judged that election, won by Hamas, to have been “open and well run,” and the process was widely judged the freest in the Arab Middle East. When violence between Fatah and Hamas looked like it could spin out of control roughly a year ago, Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas accepted Saudi mediation and formed a unity government with Hamas, which was not the result the US Administration desired. The Vanity Fair article reports that the Bush Administration then pressed Fatah’s main Gaza enforcer, Mohammed Dahlan, to remove Hamas from power by force. The article cites documents apparently from the State Department’s senior officer in Jerusalem, pressing Abbas to sideline Hamas and overturn the election result. The result was the bloodbath in June, in which Hamas apparently pre-empted a coup against their control in Gaza by all but wiping-out Fatah’s institutional presence in Gaza.

The report was in heavy rotation on Al Jazeera’s English service on Tuesday, leading the news updates throughout the day. It was timed perfectly for Secretary of State Condoleeza Rice’s visit to Egypt in the Bush Administration’s feeble attempt to restart the peace process. In her press conference, Rice did not deny the article’s contention that the US armed Fatah forces for their attempted seizure of power in Gaza. Nor did she openly confirm it. Rather, she said that Iran was arming Hamas, and that the Palestinian Authority should not be outgunned.

This effort to spark a Palestinian civil conflict in Gaza has only worsened the situation on the ground. A report released today by a coalition of humanitarian NGOs, titled “The Gaza Strip: A Humanitarian Implosion,” documents the human toll in Gaza as a result of an effective blockade by Israel, encouraged by the US, in what the report calls “a collective punishment against ordinary men, women, and children.” This harsh isolation has not brought to a halt the rocket attacks on southern Israel by a variety of militant groups in Hamas-controlled Gaza. And the

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terror attack committed just this evening in Jerusalem in a yeshiva cafeteria, in which at least 7 students were massacred and 35 wounded according to initial reports, will hardly calm the situation. Celebratory gunfire was heard from the Palestinian territories.

The Bush Administration’s belated peace effort, re-launched in Annapolis a few months ago, is going nowhere fast. Public revelation of the pressure and close coordination with Fatah will do nothing to bolster Mahmoud Abbas’s legitimacy among Palestinians, as he seeks to restart serious negotiations with Israel. The latest terror attack will hardly spur an already less-than-enthusiastic Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Olmert to negotiate seriously on settlements, Jerusalem, and the other stumbling blocks to Palestinian statehood.

A whole spectrum of factors were behind Hamas’s victory in the election that the Bush administration pressed on a reluctant Fatah-controlled Palestinian Authority. But most important of these was the perception of an unaccountable, ossified, and fundamentally corrupt Palestinian administration. Dissatisfaction with Arafat’s Fatah government was among the main drivers for the second intifada that began eight years ago and brought the peace process to an effective halt. Hamas was perfectly positioned to be the prime beneficiary of the febrile stew of dashed expectations, continued – even accelerated – Israeli settlement activity, and massive graft and abuse of power by Arafat and his Tunis crowd, who were not in the occupied territories for the first intifada in the late 1980s and early 1990s. How the Bush Administration didn’t see this coming beggars belief, but it has proven repeatedly that it sees what it wants to see.

The revelation of the Gaza effort and the overall push to overturn the results of a democratic election – albeit won by an organization accurately deemed terrorist by the US and EU for its support of suicide bombings and rocket attacks against Israeli civilians – further reduces the credibility of the “freedom agenda” in the Middle East, and the Arab world in particular. If one is promoting democracy, one has to accept the results – and develop creative ways to deal with unpleasant realities. Repugnant as it is, Hamas is now a democratically legitimized political force in Palestinian society – ironically thanks to US pressure. And due to subsequent efforts, it is now stronger than ever – and more implacable. But there is no solution to the conflict without engaging them. Crafting a constructive approach would involve some mix of treating Hamas as a duly elected government, easing the humanitarian situation in Gaza, and responding to very real Hamas terrorism by targeting only combatants.

Eric Witte and I concluded in an article we wrote for the European Voice after the Israeli bombardment of Lebanon in the summer of 2006 – a similar American-backed effort to try and break Iranian-backed Hezbollah – that the EU would have to pick up the slack for democracy support in the Mideast, since “any US assistance to beleaguered secular democrats in the Arab world has become politically radioactive. With American credibility in shreds, more responsibility now rests with other democracies.” It’s hard to believe that American credibility could have waned even further since then, but it has.

One hopes that the next occupant of the White House will undertake a stronger effort to achieve a peaceful solution to the Palestinian-Israeli conflict, which continues to poison the discourse throughout the region, and gives authoritarian regimes an easy and emotional diversion for their own unaccountable governance.

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