The Eisenthal Report

Zawahiri's Macaca Moment

Al-Qaeda, in the person of #2 man Ayman al-Zawahiri, has broken its silence on the United States Presidential election. In 2004, Al-Qaeda leader Osama bin Laden made a notorious statement in advance of the voting between President George W. Bush and Massachusetts Senator John Kerry. That statement is thought to perhaps have pushed the election in Bush's favor. This time, al-Qaeda waited until after election to make its statement - and with this statement may have committed a major strategic error - one that in time might be known as Zawahiri's Macaca Moment.

Among other things, Zawahiri - who is himself Egyptian - referred to President-Elect Barack Obama by a term that was translated into English as "house Negro" or "house slave." While this observer is not knowledgeable in Arabic, I am willing to venture that the true connotation of this phrase is more like "house ni**er."

Experts say that one of al-Qaeda's goals is to provoke conflict between the West and Islamic world. Calling the incoming President of the United States a "ni**er" is certainly provocative, but perhaps not in the way that Zawahiri might want it to be. It is obvious that many Muslims of African descent around the world - in Africa, in America, and elsewhere - have a special place in their hearts for President-Elect Obama. I cannot imagine that Zawahiri's statements will play well in African nations with large Muslim populations such as Senegal, or Burkina Faso, or Nigeria, or Kenya for that matter - where the nation just celebrated a national holiday to honor a son of Kenya on his ascension to the most powerful office in the world.

In his "holy" war, Zawahiri may just have kissed away major possible sources of support.

In this way, Zawahiri may resemble the perpetrator of the original Macaca Moment - former Virginia Sen. George Allen. During the 2006 campaign, Allen was holding a lead in a race with former Navy Secretary James Webb until Allen singled out a Webb campaign worker named S.R. Sidarth, who was videotaping Allen at a campaign event. Sidarth is a native of Virginia who happens to be the son of Indian immigrants. Allen referred to Sidarth as "Macaca," which is a type of monkey.

Allen never recovered from the effects of this insult - Jim Webb went on to defeat Allen.

The point here is that terrorists - like other practitioners of power politics - need to win hearts and minds. I don't think Ayman al-Zawahiri was too successful this time. We can hope that this will be his Macaca Moment.

Comparative Democracy

When the 44th President of the United States takes office this coming January, one of his first meetings with a foreign leader is likely to be with the Prime Minister of Canada; it is possible that the Prime Minister with whom President Obama or President McCain meets will not be the current officeholder, Stephen Harper.

Prime Minister Harper has called a quick and unexpected general election to be held on Tuesday, October 14 - three weeks before the U.S. Presidential election.

I have commented previously on the difference between our approach to national elections, which seem virtually endless, and the approaches of other western democracies - which call elections and have them done pretty quickly. In particular, I commented on Australia's six week national campaign of about a year ago - one which saw a change in Prime Ministers - and contrasted this with our elections, which were still a year in the future.

Now, we may see a more dramatic demonstration of this contrast as either President Obama or President McCain meets with either Prime Minister Harper or Prime Minister (Stephane) Dion early next year.

Of course, we're comparing our Presidential system with the parliamentary systems of Australia and Canada. The parliamentary systems have well-established and well-functioning party mechanisms - perhaps so well-established and well-functioning that they do not allow as much innovation and responsiveness as our system allows.

On the other hand, not only are our allies not in constant campaign mode, but there usually are fewer concerns expressed about the experience of the party leaders who will be running a government if their party wins.

Foreign Affairs: Democracy, Venezuela, and the North Pole

The March/April edition of Foreign Affairs has a number of noteworthy pieces.

Larry Diamond, a Senior Fellow at the Hoover Institution, has written on Democratic Rollback. Diamond argues that the trend toward democratization among the countries of the world, which was strong from the 1970s to the 1990s, has slowed considerably in recent years. Even in many countries that have developed democratic institutions, authoritarianism and bad governance have remained or gotten stronger. Diamond argues that western policymakers should demand "more than superficial democracy" from nations in the developing world.

By holding governments accountable and making foreign aid contingent on good governance, donors can help reverse the democratic recession.

This observer agrees that promoting democracy and good governance around the world are good things, but worries about an attitude evidenced here that could easily become arrogance and inflexibility. Combined with ignorance of realities on the ground, such arrogance and inflexibility could well render efforts to support democratic development counterproductive.

One nation where democratic development - or deterioration - has been an issue has been Venezuela. President Hugo Chavez has been expanding his executive powers by a number of methods ever since he became President in 1998. The argument made by President Chavez and his supporters is that while they have been consolidating power, they have been doing so in order to expand economic opportunity for the majority of Venezuelans.

An article by Francisco Rodriguez, a former Chief Economist for the Venezuelan National Assembly, terms the movement toward expanded economic opportunity in Venezuela as An Empty Revolution. Rodriguez presents evidence that Venezuela has become more economically unequal over the past ten years. He discusses how the Chavez government underfunded the Consolidated Social Fund that it created to coordinate funding for antipoverty programs. When it was challenged on this underfunding, according to Rodriguez, the Chavez government used a "creative accounting gimmick" to make funding look more ample than it was.

A third noteworthy article in Foreign Affairs considers the foreign policy and security implications of the rapid warming now occurring in the Arctic Ocean. Within a few years, that ocean will be open to commercial and regular military shipping for many months each year. As noted in these pages in August, Arctic nations including Denmark, Norway, Canada, the United States, and Russia have already been positioning themselves for the coming competition in the far North.

On Benazir Bhutto

As I write this, Friday morning dawns over Pakistan.

About twelve hours have passed - a full night - since the obscenity that was the murder of Benazir Bhutto.

The lives of Bhutto and a few dozen of her supporters were ended in a sudden and horrible flash, but more was lost besides - hope, decency, the possibility of civility, the potential for stability.

Pakistan was already going to be a challenge for the next American President - for all Americans - and perhaps for the entire world. It will be far worse now.

Australia Votes

The Australian Broadcasting Corporation reports that the governing coalition of Prime Minister John Howard has been defeated in today's national election in Australia.

With the sixteen hour time difference, it is now 11:00 PM in Sydney - and the polls have been closed for a few hours.

Thus far, results have been called in 141 out of the 150 seats in the Australian House of Representatives. Labor, led by Opposition Leader Kevin Rudd, has won 83 seats - and is expected to win a few more. This would be enough seats for Rudd to become Australia's next Prime Minister.

The other big story in this election is that Prime Minister John Howard is trailing in his bid to keep his seat in Parliament, a portion of the city of Sydney, which he has held since 1974. As of a short time ago, former television journalist Maxine McKew was leading Howard by 569 votes.

Rudd is expected to change Australia's direction as that country's next Prime Minister. He is expected to withdraw Australian troops from Iraq by next year. He is generally expected to be less supportive of President George Bush's international policies. The BBC has also reported that Rudd favors a republican form of government for Australia. This would mean that the country would change its head of state from the Queen of England to an elected President.

The Burning Tigris: The Armenian Genocide and America's Response

The Burning Tigris is harrowing reading.

Peter Balakian, a professor at Colgate University, wrote The Burning Tigris as a work of witness to the Armenian Genocide. Balakian begins by recounting atrocities against the Armenians that were perpetrated by the Ottoman Empire in the years before the Genocide itself. Sultan Abdul Hamid II, who ruled from 1876 to 1909, was responsible for the deaths of 200,000 Armenians during the 1890s. British Prime Minister William Gladstone referred to Abdul Hamid as "the great assassin."

Balakian then brings his readers step by step through the horrors of the Genocide itself - very difficult reading. The outrageousness of the crimes of the Genocide itself is matched by that of Ottoman denials and other behavior.

Interspersed with these accounts are recountings of the responses to the Genocide by Americans and other Westerners. The substantial documentation of the Genocide is due in no small part to the efforts of Americans and Germans who were working within the Ottoman Empire during the First World War. Germany and the Ottoman Empire were allied during that war - and while the United States and Germany went to war in 1917, the United States and the Ottoman Empire never declared war on each other.

Once the horrors of the Genocide came to light, the West - and particularly the United States - was quick to offer support. The proceeds of the 1916 Harvard-Yale Football game were donated to Armenian relief. Former President Theodore Roosevelt referred to the Genocide as "the greatest crime of the war." He favored declaring war on the Ottoman Empire in large part to combat the Genocide. One reason that the United States did not declare war was that Christian missionaries working within the Ottoman Empire convinced President Woodrow Wilson that they could do more good for the Armenians if the United States did not intervene militarily - a judgement that some of the missionaries later regretted.

Balakian concludes by recounting how historical views of the Genocide have evolved over the past ninety years. Political considerations - particularly, the importance of Turkey as an ally of the United States during the Cold War and after - made official recognition of the Genocide very difficult. Official denials of culpability persist to this day - and have become an important issue here locally in Massachusetts, nationally, and internationally.

Rising Oil Prices = Massive Wealth Transfers

This morning's Washington Post has an article that details how rising oil prices are creating a massive and sustained transfer of wealth around the world.

According to the Post, the wealth transfer amounts to between $4 billion and $5 billion per day - or more than $2 trillion per year. The winners are fairly obvious: Saudi Arabia, Iran, Venezuela, Alaska. The losers are basically the rest of the world, including this country for the most part.

About this country, the Post writes that

The rising bill for imported petroleum lowers already anemic consumer savings rates, adds to inflation, worsens the trade deficit, undermines the dollar and makes it more difficult for the Federal Reserve to balance its competing goals of fighting inflation and sustaining growth.

What is different about this price rise is that it is more sustained than previous increases, which were mostly spikes in prices. As the Post writes,

With crude oil prices nearing $100 a barrel, there is no end in sight to the redistribution of more than 1 percent of the world's gross domestic product. Earlier oil shocks generated giant shifts in wealth and pools of petrodollars, but they eventually faded and economies adjusted. This new high point in petroleum prices has arrived over four years, and many believe it will represent a new plateau even if prices drop back somewhat in coming months. "There's never been anything like this on a sustained basis the way we've seen the last couple of years," said Kenneth Rogoff, a Harvard University economics professor and former chief economist at the International Monetary Fund. Oil prices "are not spiking; they're just rising," he added.

Colossal Gall in History - The Armenian Genocide

Peter Balakian, a professor of the humanities at Colgate University, wrote The Burning Tigris: The Armenian Genocide and the American Response.

This book, which was published in 2003, goes into great detail describing the horrors of the genocide and the efforts of many Americans and others to provide protection and relief to the Armenians. The book was praised by such luminaries as Paul Fussell, Sir Martin Gilbert, James Carroll, Deborah Lipstadt, and Robert Jay Lifton.

One incident described in the book stands out for sheer colossal gall. In 1916, after much of the killing had taken place, Talaat Bey, the Turkish Interior Minister, met with Henry Morgenthau, the United States Ambassador to Turkey. Balakian describes the exchange -

Knowing that many Armenians with American ties had life insurance policies with the New York Life Insurance Company and the Equitable Life of New York, Talaat said to the ambassador: "I wish that you would get the American life insurance companies to send us a complete list of their Armenian policyholders. They are practically all dead now and have left no heirs to collect the money. It of course all escheats to the State. The Government is the beneficiary now. Will you do so?"

Morgenthau stormed out of that meeting in an understandable rage. (The source of this account was Morgenthau's own book, Ambassador Morgenthau's Story.)

Sharp Thinking in Foreign Affairs

The latest edition of Foreign Affairs has three particularly noteworthy articles.

None of these, it should be noted, is written by a presidential candidate. This edition is the third of a series in which candidates for the Democratic and Republican Presidential nominations have presented their views on foreign policy. Previous editions have featured Sen. Barack Obama (D - Illinois), former Massachusetts Governor Mitt Romney, former New York City Mayor Rudolph Giuliani, and former Senator John Edwards. This time, it is the turn of Sen. Hillary Clinton (D - New York) and Sen. John McCain (R - Arizona).

Clinton and McCain present in extended form the points they make on the campaign trail. For Clinton, it is "elect me and I will earn back the respect of the world." For McCain, it is "elect me, and I will maintain America's position of power in the world." While there are no major gaffes here, there is also nothing of particular interest.

The three articles of note discussed the war on terror, the United States defense budget, and the Israel lobby.

Philip H. Gordon, a Senior Fellow at the Brookings Institution, asks the question "Can the War on Terror Be Won?" Gordon argues that the current debate on how to prosecute the "war on terror" fails to include any "concept of what 'victory' in the war on terror would look like."

In building a vision of what victory would look like, Gordon posits what defeat would entail -

A caliphate...established from Morocco to Central Asia, sharia rule will prevail, Israel will be destroyed, oil prices will skyrocket, and the United States will recoil in humiliation and possibly even collapse - just as the Soviet Union did after the mujahideen defeated it in Afghanistan.

Gordon believes that such defeat is unlikely - that Osama Bin Laden and his "violent ideology will end up on the ash heap of history." Gordon argues that Bin Laden's assessment of his chances for success are based on "an exaggeration of his role in bringing down the Soviet Union, a failure to appreciate the long-term strength and adaptability of U.S. society, and an underestimation of Muslim resistance to his extremist views."

What then would victory look like?

Smaller, uncoordinated organizations capable of carrying out limited attacks might still exist, but the global Al Qaeda organization that was able to inflict such destruction on September 11, 2001, will not. Its most important leaders will have been killed or captured, its sanctuaries destroyed, its financial resources blocked, its communications interrupted, and, most important, its supporters persuaded to find other ways to pursue their goals.

This world, in Gordon's view, "is a long way off...but...the paths that could lead to it can already be seen." The destruction of Al Qaeda, while not complete - and perhaps in some ways reversed - is under way. "Bin Laden and Zawahiri are now living like fugitives in caves rather than like presidents or military commanders in compounds in Afghanistan." Gordon also sees signs of a Muslim backlash against Al Qaeda - which he believes will be crucial in the ultimate defeat of that organization.

Gordon emphasizes that this will be a long struggle - not unlike the Cold War - "with plenty of setbacks, tragedies, mistakes, and risks still ahead." To put a time scale on it, Gordon writes that "on the calendar of the Cold War, which began in 1947, the sixth anniversary of 9/11 puts us in 1953 - decades before its denouement..." In the end, victory in this war will come - as it did in the Cold War - from forces on the other side - the "Lech Walesas, Vaclav Havels, and Andrei Sakharovs" of the Muslim world. Gordon concludes by saying "if the United States is strong, smart, and patient, they will come. And they, not the West, will transform their world - and ours."

Gordon's argument makes eminent sense to this observer. We need to prepare for the long-haul in the war on Islamic fundamentalism. We need not to be diverted into more adventures like Iraq that will drain our resources and create more terrorists. And we need to foster democratic and progressive forces in the Muslim world - to a large extent by getting out of the way.

A second noteworthy article in Foreign Affairs looks at how this country should balance its national security resources and strategies. Richard K. Betts, Director of the Saltzman Institute of War and Peace Studies at Columbia University, writes of "A Disciplined Defense."

Betts' major argument is that the current approach to defense budgeting does not fit either fiscal or strategic realities. This country spends far more than it needs for its basic security, but not enough to "run a benign American empire." Betts argues that the goal of defense budgeting should be to achieve "strategic solvency."

Betts cites a number of reasons why defense budgeting has proceeded in this way in recent years. One is a "visceral sense of threat spawned by the frightening intentions of the country's enemies rather than..a sober estimate of those enemies' capabilities." Another is the political structure of Washington in which defense contractors know how to work both Capitol Hill and the Pentagon to get what they want. A third is that "the last two U.S. presidents...have embraced ambitious goals of reshaping the world according to American values but without considering the full costs and consequences of their grandiose visions."

Betts reviews how previous Presidents - Truman, Eisenhower, and Kennedy, in particular - approached defense spending. Truman and Eisenhower spent less on defense relative to the size of the economy, but also accepted greater strategic risks. Eisenhower, in particular, created the doctrine of "massive nuclear retaliation" for a potential Soviet invasion of western Europe. This approach to budgeting also pitted the different armed services - Army, Navy, Air Force - in competition with each other for resources. Subsequent presidents did away with this competition - and thus a method for controlling spending.

Betts argues for a change in how defense budgeting is done. He feels that "expensive programs must fulfill unmet needs for countering real enemy capabilities, not merely maintain traditional service priorities, pursue the technological frontier for its own sake, or consume resources that happen to be politically available." He does not feel that this will be easy - he does not even feel that a dramatic reduction in the defense budget is called for. For Betts, "a starting point might be the slogan 'Half a trillion dollars is more than enough.'"

Betts highlights a debate that has not happened in the current Presidential race - whether we want to try to maintain an American empire. Betts argues well that it is foolish in the long-term for this country to try to maintain primacy for an extended period of time - we just do not have the resources. These resources are, in fact, likely to get tighter as the century goes on. We need to think hard and wisely about our strategic and budgetary choices in the coming years.

The third noteworthy article is a review of Mearsheimer and Walt's The Israel Lobby by Walter Russell Mead, a Senior Fellow at the Council on Foreign Relations. This book has become notorious and controversial for its claims that the "Israel lobby" is an overly powerful group that is advocating a foreign policy agenda that is at odds with the interests of this country. Mead defends Mearsheimer and Walt against charges of anti-Semitism, but he does argue that the book will give "aid and comfort to anti-Semites wherever they are found." Mead goes on to argue that the book is insufficiently rigorous in its arguments and documentation.

They claim the the clarity and authority of rigorous logic, but their methods are loose and rhetorical. This singularly unhappy marriage - between the pretensions of serious political analysis and the standards of casual op-ed - both undercuts the case they wish to make and gives the book a disagreeably disingenuous tone.

Mead is a highly respected expert on foreign policy; his views on this book are likely to be influential.

Australian Election

On November 24 - less than four weeks from now - Australian voters will go to the polls to elect a Parliament and a government.

Australia's Prime Minister, John Howard, who is a staunch ally of President George W. Bush, is thought to be vulnerable both to losing his job as Prime Minister and losing his Sydney seat in Parliament - which he has held since 1974. A prominent television journalist, Maxine McKew, is running against Howard for his seat. (Howard has sometimes been outspoken on topics that run far afield of Australian affairs - such as the qualifications of Barack Obama to be President of the United States.)

The current governing coalition holds 89 of the 150 seats in the Australian House of Representatives - the lower house of Parliament. For some time, polls have indicated that the Australian Labor Party - and its leader Kevin Rudd - lead the governing coalition and John Howard - and would be able to form the next government in Australia.

Four weeks from today, Australia should know the results of this election - and this country will still be more than 11 months away from a decision on its executive leadership.