One Flew Over the Sparrow's Nest

Le Moineau on Lebanon and USA strategic gaming.

Intriguing.

"Le Moineau" (the Sparrow") landed in August on Blogger.com.

I found him through a somewhat condescending comment by Juan Cole in his as always well-"Informed Comment" blog on the Middle East. It reads:

Is a serious diplomatic engagement with Iran Washington's next step[?] Well, I shouldn't have thought so. But the aftermath of wars is a time when the unexpected happens.

I followed the link. And found an unusual blog. It is written in the style of a learned scholar (international relations), mixed with elements of style of an administrative policy adviser. The articles are numbered and carry mentions like: "first draft" or "working draft". That is what a civil servant would do, in order to cover himself and his directors against the dangers of, for instance, congressional inquiries. I did so myself, when I worked for the Dutch Government.
But the Sparrow doesn't position himself as an insider. Here is his profile:

Le Moineau

Le Moineau is a concerned citizen who follows international relations keenly and tries to piece together confusing world events using a simple mental model and readily available resources. The articles are a reflection of such an analysis and try to bring some strategic sense to the actions of nations playing the 'great game'.

"Great Game" offers a cue (Wikipedia):

The Great Game is a term, usually attributed to Arthur Conolly, used to describe the rivalry and strategic conflict between the British Empire and the Tsarist Russian Empire for supremacy in Central Asia. The term was later popularized by British novelist Rudyard Kipling in his work, Kim.

Le Moineau is clearly somebody who knows his classics and loves to derive his analyses from a wider historic and strategic framework.

It is no wonder, therefore, that he likes Henry Kissinger, the (still) living embodiment of classic realist international power policies.

And, it must be said, a historic-strategic approach to what happens at this moment in the Middle East produces interesting, and often surprising, insights. Their usefulness is undisputed. They have the invaluable merit to shatter current illusions about the practicability of "regime change" or "value change", "state building" or "community building" from the outside.

The difference between Le Moineau and William Kristol is best illustrated by this:
The last one urged Bush at the outset of the Israeli Lebanon war "to go immediately to Jerusalem" in order to proclaim "the New Middle East" and attack Iran, whereas the former one urges Bush to go immediately to Tehran, in order to "engage" seriously in a strategic alliance and secure the "American energy [oil] compound" against Russia (the great game resurrected, HR!).

The difference is striking, geographically.
But the likeness ("immediately"), too.

Wanting, hoping, imagining that something like engaging in a nuclear war, or in a "renversement des alliances", has to be done "immediately", is very often a warning signal that we have to do with a reductionist "believer".
A reductionist, for he does not acknowledge a possible relevance of analytic instruments outside of his scope. A believer, for he thinks that the stone of wisdom has been for once and for all time been given to mankind by Kristol Senior or Kissinger.

Wit William Kristol, we dealt here, here and here, recently.

To deal with Le Moineau is more agreeable, for sure, for his approach is intelligent, independent and far more realistic. You may join his dreams. It feels like when, as a history student in Amsterdam (1967), I prepared a paper about the role of the "run to Baghdad" between Germany, France, Russia and the UK as a runner-up to the First World War. It was all about diplomatic and small military manoeuvers around the controlling of sea-routes, railway-lines and cynical alliances with local rulers or local rebellions. How France and the UK sabotaged the German railway-line to Baghdad, supporting a Kurdish guerilla round Diyarbakir (1910). How the Russians supported the forerunners of the Muslim Brotherhood in Cairo against the British. Lovely and easy. Like a chessboard.

But the "great game" was also a "Devil's Game".

The cynical "divide-et-impera" policies, as practiced by the British, but also by French, Russians and Germans, led to alliances with evil rulers (the Wahhabi Saudis) and secret societies like the Muslim Brotherhood, with their own, hidden, agenda. In 2005, Robert Dreyfuss of the American Empire Project, wrote a book about the devilish consequences of international power policies as a "game" concept, i.e. not taking into account, that humans are no chesspieces, but that they are liable to be frustrated and that frustrated people are not necessarily less intelligent and wicked as you are. Subtitle: "How the United States helped unleash Fundamentalist Islam". (Amazon Reference)
The Brotherhood, set up at the end of the nineteenth century, was a freemason-like structure, also in its relation to religion. For decades, its policy was: If you cannot beat them, join them. The Brotherhood elites, seeing that, as a middle class, they were unable to get their legitimate share of power, exploited religion (Islam, but it could have been any other religion, and in some cases it has in effect been Christianism) to get a mass following. During a long period and in different shapes in different countries, they allied themselves with any (imperialist) power, that could bring them nearer to control over the state. Until the eighties, this failed every time, for their only power basis were parts of the poor masses, who were in the end not willing or able to carry them to Government. That changed, when (oil) money permitted the establishment of networks of "Islamic Banking". Somehow, the Islamic interdiction of capital-interest was circumvened successfully (Islam can be modernized, if you really want it!) and the Brotherhood-like elites got a huge leverage on power.
Thus, the elites got more and more independent of their mass followings. They can buy them now.
And it permitted global terrorism on a Bin Laden scale.

Le Moineau, however, is constructing his diplomatic manoeuvers, as if history has halted just before November 1956, when Americans and Russians stopped imperiously the Anglo-French war with Israel against Nasser over the Suez Canal.

Then, the Americans did the right thing, assessing the new reality of an independent and irremovable national entity ("cannot be bombed away"). A wisdom, that lamentably was absent when the US condoned the recent Israeli attack on Lebanon.

But Le Moineau thinks, that this NeoCon folly is "marginalized" now, in Washington, as he repeats over and over again. As a rare specimen of a cynic-realistic optimist, he fantasises, that Condi Rice is preparing a US disengagement from Israel, that would have to separate itself from its nuclear bombs. And that Bush is secretly furthering the Iranian nuclear bomb-making, in order to make Israel do that!

As if he is Lawrence of Arabia, in a broad swoop, he also finds some ulterior imperialist designs for the US in the Middle East. An alliance with Iran, could give the US a controlling position over China's and Europe's oil supply. (For his statements about the benefits of an US control of the Middle East oil exports to Europe, see his post Marhsall Plan, Anyone? dated August 7.)

This is a nice example of the Sparrow's handicap. Under the 1947 Marshall Plan, the US financed an "oil tap" for Europe, i.e. a pipeline that runs from the Arabian peninsula to a South Libanese port, passing through the Golan Heights, Syria and Jordan. As a matter of fact, it never had a chance to function. It has been closed for half a century. The benefit of returning the Golan Heights to Syria, would be that this oil outlet would come under US control, so that the US would control again, as during the Marshall Plan aera, Europe's oil provision.
As if 2006 Europe is the same as devastated postwar Europe of 1948!

Concluding: A sparrow cannot fly as an eagle.

But it can make nice nests. In the margin.

Mark Mazower: Europe should use its leverage to lean on Israel

Historian Mark Mazower is a professor at Columbia University and at a College in the UK. He is the author of a History of 20th century Europe ("The Dark Continent") and of a captivating history (1400-1950) of multicultural Salonika (Thessaloniki, Greece).

In today's FT.com his call for a new, more active European role in the Middle East: Europe should use its leverage to lean on Israel, that ends with (numbering and bolds are mine):

"What would a more ambitious European stance on the Middle East look like?

1. Beyond the current Lebanon crisis, it would prioritise the need for an Israel/Palestine settlement and would seek to convert its economic power into diplomatic clout. With its massive humanitarian aid to the Palestinians, the EU already has considerable leverage there.
   
2. In addition, its significant trade relationship with Israel should allow it to lean much harder on Israeli governments than it – or anyone else – has done for a long time. This requires urgent institutional reform within the Union itself, in particular overcoming the traditional rivalries between the Council of Ministers and the Commission that still stymie the emergence of a common foreign and security policy.

What, though, is the alternative? Stripped of its rhetoric, US policy currently holds political and economic development in the Arab world hostage to a peace settlement with Israel without ever putting sufficient pressure on its ally to effect this.
If Europe does not recognise its own pressing need to change this dynamic, the alternative is likely to be instability, regional repression and economic stagnation on its doorstep for the indefinite future."

Indeed: The failure of the American-Israeli intervention in Lebanon, designed as a further step to create a "New Middle East", is, after the failed occupation of Iraq, the failed "democratization" diplomacy aimed at Egypt, Saudi Arabia and Lebanon, and after the failing efforts to isolate Iran and Syria, a not-to-be-missed opening for Europe to step in.
No more as a divided and subordinated reserve of allies, but as a responsible and powerful bloc that protects the vital interests of its inhabitants.
For the Europeans, there is much more and much longer at stake, than for the USA.
It is all happening on our doorsteps. And it will last much longer for us, than for the Americans. Deep into the coming after-oil aera.
That is why the August 2 Los Angeles speech of Tony Blair ("value change" replaces "regime change") is so hollow. Blair pleaded the same solutions as Marzower does, but he takes no responsability for building the necessary European bloc. And no concrete proposal for common action is to be found in his speech.
And what to say about the French? Their option boils down to a "classic" French imperialist restoration of the Lebanon inter-community balance, with the Maronites in the role of, let us say, the Iraqian Sunnis before 2003. "Disarming" the Shiites is an impossibility and is rejected, even by their most rabiate Lebanese enemies, the Druzes and their leader Walid Jumblatt.
The French got the room to play that role, only because it presents to the Americans another way (the Israelian having temporarily failed) to possibly isolate the Shiites.
The most daring European proposal, I heard of, was Daniel Cohn-Bendit's idea of sending former German minister Fischer as an European envoy to the region, in order to "secure the borders of Israel". As Dany knows, a secure border has to be secure for both sides of it, to be really secure. That means....: "leaning on Israel" in order to get secure borders for Egypt, Jordan, Syria, Lebanon and ... Palestine. A huge task. An effort that needs a seamless cooperation of the EU and its allies (Turkey, for instance).
As this condition is far from existing, friend Joschka has apparently said "no" to the invitation.
But there is still some room for less spectacular moves in the good direction.
A first step could be a strong mandate for the Middle East to Xavier Solana, EU external policy coordinator. Another one, would be a common EU command over the UN forces in Southern Lebanon. No French "Alleingang".

I wonder, if somebody is going to do something with Mazower's plea.

(Crossposted from "At Home in Europe")

Neocon-inspired Israeli proxy war is bad, not only for the Arabs, but even more for Israel-Tony Karon.

Desperately looking for a comprehensive insight into the apparent contradictions and paradoxes of the ongoing bundle of conflicts in the Middle East, I first discovered in Ha'aretz, today (30/7), Ze'ef Schiff's analysis of Israelian misjudgment and failure, including an insight into the role of the Bush administration in using Israel as a proxy against Iran.
Very worthwile, for Schiff is not a peacenik at all, but a staunch supporter of the use of military force. (See below: link).
And then, tonight, Tony Karon's ultimate analysis of what is happening. The article, copied below, appeared yesterday on his website ("Rootless Cosmopolitan") and resumes the content of two recent articles he wrote for TIME.com, the web-based edition of TIME/CNN. But in this text he developes his diagnostics into a masterpiece of insight. It is published below.
Tony Karon came to the US from South Africa, and his perceptions are influenced by the downfall of the Apartheid Regime he experienced. He is of Jewish descent and certainly no enemy of Israel.
Please, read his brilliant analysis. The first lines are below. For the remaining article, please go to my blog "At Home in Europe".

Rootless Cosmopolitan : "Is Israel Fighting a Proxy War for Washington?
by Tony Caron, USA.

Hizballah leader Sheikh Hassan Nasrallah said a curious thing Saturday: Israel has recognized reality and is ready for a cease-fire in Lebanon, Nasrallah claimed, but it is the U.S. that insists that it fight on.
And if you read the analysis of Ze’ev Schiff, the dean of Israeli military correspondents and an enthusiastic advocate of the military campaign against Hizballah, there’s a remarkable confirmation of Nasrallah’s analysis.

Schiff writes: (in Ha'aretz, 29/7/06, hr):

U.S. Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice is the figure leading the strategy of changing the situation in Lebanon, not Prime Minister Ehud Olmert or Defense Minister Amir Peretz. She has so far managed to withstand international pressure in favor of a cease-fire, even though this will allow Hezbollah to retain its status as a militia armed by Iran and Syria.

As such, she needs military cards, and unfortunately Israel has not succeeded to date in providing her with any. Besides bringing Hezbollah and Lebanon under fire, all of Israel’s military cards at this stage are in the form of two Lebanese villages near the border that have been captured by the IDF. [...]

Lost in the Hypes - Gaza

Few people think about the continuing Israeli invasion in Gaza and its incursions into the West Bank. Understandable.
All eyes are on Lebanon and on the US.But on a daily basis, people are killed, wounded, starved and deprived of medicaments in the Gaza strip. (97 people killed only yesterday in Gaza, source: Haaretz: “97 fatalities in Gaza, but all eyes are on Lebanon”)
Imagine the outrage in the world, if the Lebanon invasion wouldn’t be there?One of the possible explanations for the completely un-Israeli show of incompetence that is going on in Lebanon at the moment, could be, that it conveniently diverts the attention of the world from what is being done to Palestine.