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Posted By Stephen M. Walt
Tuesday, January 24, 2012 - 5:31 PM
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One of the nice things about writing for Foreign Policy is the energy and creativity of its leadership, as exemplified by their relentless quest for new publishing innovations. Just yesterday, for example, FP launched a new fiction section, clearly intended to highlight writing on international affairs that doesn't have much basis in reality.
I refer, of course, to Elliott Abrams' brief essay entitled "A Forward Strategy of Freedom," where he argues that neoconservative ideas and policies are responsible for the "Arab Spring." It's been apparent for a long time that being a neoconservative means never having to say you're sorry (or even admit that you're wrong), but this essay displayed a degree of historical amnesia unusual even by neoconservative standards. It's not really worth a sustained critique, so I'll just make a few quick points.
First, there's no evidence that the Bush administration's "forward strategy for freedom" had anything to do with the Tunisian's fruit seller Mohammed Bouazizi's tragic decision to set himself afire, an act of protest that started the wave of upheavals that has convulsed much of the Arab world ever since. Or is Abrams' suggesting that Bush's 2nd inaugural inspired Bouazizi? More tellingly, neither the liberal forces that drove much of the uprisings against the Mubarak regime nor the Islamic forces that have profited most from Mubarak's departure give credit to Bush & co. for inspiring their efforts. And it's not hard to see why: both the Muslim Brotherhood and the more fundamentalist Egyptian Salafis have been anathema for the neocons from the get-go.
Second, the entire neoconservative strategy for spreading democracy depended heavily on U.S. military power, and it focused almost entirely on countries like Iraq, Syria, and Iran. The Bush administration in which Abrams served continued to coddle Mubarak, the Saudis, and America's other authoritarian allies, for the same reasons that previous administrations did. The Arab spring emerged elsewhere, however, and had little to do with the deployment of American military power. Obama's Cairo speech is a far more plausible candidate in this regard (though I'd have my doubts about its impact too), but strangely, Abrams doesn't mention it.
Meanwhile, in the one place where the neocon strategy was fully implemented -- Iraq -- it was a colossal failure. The United States spent trillions of dollars and thousands of its soldiers' lives, and the end result is a deeply divided society and a dysfunctional political system that is drifting steadily back towards authoritarian rule and is at least partly aligned with Iran. So what were the neocons right about?
Third, the neoconservative hypocrisy about democracy was exposed in 2006, when the United States refused to accept Hamas' victory in the Palestinian legislative elections. You don't have to like Hamas or its charter to concede that they won the election fair and square, but that didn't stop the Bush administration from ignoring the outcome completely. In fact, Abrams subsequently tried to foment a Fatah coup against Hamas in Gaza, only to have his putative allies routed and discredited. Another neocon blunder, in short. And isn't it a bit odd that this deeply committed apostle of democracy has no problem with Israel continuing to violate the human rights of the millions of Palestinians it controls via its illegal occupation of the West Bank and its continued restrictions on movement in Gaza? Why isn't he pressing Israel to either give these people the right to vote, or to let them have a viable state of their own so that they can vote there? Some neoconservatives (e.g., Paul Wolfowitz) have been sympathetic to such aspirations, but as far as I know Abrams is not one of them.
Finally, let's not lose sight of all the other things that neoconservatives got wrong. They were wrong about Saddam's WMD. They were wrong about his alleged links to Al Qaeda. They were wrong that the occupation of Iraq would pay for itself. They were wrong that it would be easy to create democracy there once Saddam was gone. And given America's toxic image in much of the Arab world, they were wrong to believe that fostering democracy in the Arab world would create legitimate and pro-American regimes.
Weighed in the balance, therefore, the neocons got far more wrong than right, and it would be refreshing if they'd just man up and admit it.
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DEBKAfile a Joint Israeli Mossad/CIA Disinformation News Dissemi
DEBKAfile a Joint Israeli Mossad/CIA Disinformation News Disseminator
http://chasvoice.blogspot.com/2012/01/debkafile-joint-israeli-mossadcia.html
I find this topic to be really something which I think I would never understand. It seems too complicated and very broad for me.Duct cleaning
I'm unable to identify any significant project
associated with human freedom the Neo-cons got 'right' in any detectable way. The 'con' in "neo-con' is 'con' as in 'con job' not as in 'conservative' in any principled way.
What have we gained from that war? In the most Machiavellian, cynical assessment, what did we gain? Not a damn thing that I can tell. We're persona non-grata (:the Neo-cons can relate) we lost influence, lost and ain't getting oil contracts. We've lost influence with Iran. So please, tell what the benefit of that war was.
Also, you failed to mention the fall of a town in Libya to pro-Ghaddafy troops. It seems that "victory" was a bit premature as well.
Actually Turkey seems to have come off better than Iran in the entire mess so it's not entirely bad, just far less good than any American would have hoped for.
Someone did benefit but it wasn't us!
Although we gained nothing in the Iraq war, someone did. That someone of course was Israel. Iraq has been completely destroyed and will not be a threat to Israel in the near future. Forget about all the pain and suffering this caused in the process to us and mostly Iraq.
Machiavelli would have been very proud of the neocons. The neocons constructed a false flag with the Bin Laden/Iraq connection to take out Israel's enemy. The great beneficiary of this plan was always Israel.
This is not the last target of the neocons, just watch the news or read more articles for attacking Iran.
An American Machiavelli wouldn't feel proud of the Iraq War. I would suppose an American Machiavellian strategist would want that US policies benefit the US. But the Iraq War sole beneficiaries - Iran, Turkey or arguably Israel - are all foreign. The Iraq War cost the US dearly in every aspect - economic (along with the tax cuts, the war was one of the factors behind the US debt swelling, whilst most of the world during the period was reducing government debts); military (the US came out as the victor against Saddam, but it has failed to impose a conclusive defeat on the Islamist forces that arose after Saddam went down); diplomatic (more than ever before countries felt more comfortable in confronting the US; the US was publicly told off by the French and the Germans, who at the end felt vindicated as the US failed to find any WMDs); and strategic (the US defeated an enemy, Saddam, but instead of making a friendly nation out of Iraq, the country has instead fallen under the influence of another enemy, Iran, which has emerged as a regional power precisely because Saddam is no longer there to counterbalance its power).
Moreover, I would dispute that Israel has benefited from the Iraq War. For starters, it's arguable whether Saddam, in his last years, was indeed a threat to the militarily powerful Israelis. Moreover, after his fall, Iran emerged, strongly championing Palestinian rights - more than any Arab country except Saddam's Iraq had done before -, offering support to Hamas, and in the process rallying the support of many common Arabs. Iran is much more of a problem than was Saddam's Iraq.
Where did I say an "American Machiavelli"? I didn't! An "Israeli Machiavelli" or an "Israeli firster Machiavelli" would be correct to your statement. You don't remember the Skud missles that Iraq launched into Israel? I think that was a threat! The point I was making is the threat is now removed.
The neocons (which are part of the Israeli Lobby) and "Israeli Firsters" pushed for the Iraq war and they got it! It didn't turn out the way they thought but they got it.
You said your Machiavelli would be proud of the neocons. Thus I assumed, and with reason, that he would share the neocons' goals. And their main goal was to re-assert US global influence by means of unilateralism and militarism -- not to serve Israel; the neocons are only incidentally pro-Israel. Since their project backfired, since US influence has actually *decayed* on account of its unilateralism, I don't know why anyone who shared the neocons' views would be proud of their "accomplishments".
As for the Iraqi threat, at the time of the US-led invasion there was no danger of Iraq-Israel clashes or reason to assume they would be fighting again soon.
Will the cows in the pasture ever lift their heads from the grass and listen to the melodious music played by of Mr. Walt's words? Can they even hear the music of his words and stop chewing the grass that's in their mouths?
Can you be a neoconservative and be correct?
Neoconservatism. Combining the worst of realism and liberalism. Fortunately, as the U.S descends to something more like 'first among equals' in the future there probably won't be much room for them in political debate.
Abram’s has his head jammed so far up Israel’s back side, he can’t think straight. Why can’t he be dismissed because he’s a dual-citizen? Isn’t it a conflict of interest? I demand a notation at the end of his article saying he's a citizen of Israel.
As I see it, the piece of Elliott Abrams was dismissed too easily.
t is true, that the Bush admin was part of those who built the networks unleashed by Obama to enforce democracy in MENA. The most prominent of those US government sponsored networks is the Middle East Partnership Initiative (MEPI) whch was started by George W. Bush and continued by Obama/Clinton. THey worked in close coordination with other NGOs or GONGOs from the US and NATO countries.
It was a deliberate decision of Obama to unleash the "soft power"
CANVAS forces, which are portrayed in the video "The Revolution Business", to the arab world. Without this support, the self-immolation of Mohammed Bouazizi, after the slap that didn't happen, would have never been heard by anyone.
Obama unleashed these forces on the MEMA region in his "Presidential study directive 11". Target was wide-spread regime change in the MEPI countries. Simply put, the US strategy was regime change by propaganda. Both, the Bush and the Obama administration applied that strategy for regime change in the MENA regions, Bush most notably in Lebanon 2005.
However neither the Bush administration nor the Obama adminstration have restricted themselves to that strategy and both backed that soft regime change strategy with millitary coups and direct military action.
George W. Bush did it in Iraq, when he realized a coup won't succeed and Obama id it in Libya when he realized his soft regime change strategy failed. I shal be noted that Bush also used a direct military for regime change in Afghanistan. Obama prefers more indirect military stategies.
In Tunisia Obama managed the regime change by the US-backed defection of a high ranking officer. In Egypt Obama managed regime change by a similar defection and backed up US regime change pressure on Egypt with a US aircraft carrier. And in Libya Obama went to war for regime change, just like Bush did in Iraq. And it currenty looks like Obama earns in Libya similar problems as Bush earned them in Afghanistan and Iraq.
So, what I see, both, the Bush and the Obama administration had a policy of soft power regime changes, and both used hard power when soft power failed to produce the desired regime change results. Both administrations deviated from te course of peaceful struggle for ideas on bahest of the Israel lobby. Both administrations created huge blowback with their hard power regime changes in MENA. Both administrations failed and produced many dead people for nothing.
Winner is Iran. Iran only used only soft power in the "Islamic Aakening", and got it's way in Lebanon, in Iraq, and I predict, Iran will win also in Afghanistan, Syria, Egypt and Libya.
The US could a a lot to learn from Iran. Instead of using military, the US should use clerics to start competing in the epic struggle how a more just world would look like.
RE: "And isn't it a bit odd...
...that this deeply committed apostle of democracy has no problem with Israel continuing to violate the human rights of the millions of Palestinians it controls via its illegal occupation of the West Bank" ~ Walt
FROM ELLIOTT ABRAMS, 04/08/09:
(excerpt)…Is current and recent settlement construction creating insurmountable barriers to peace? A simple test shows that it is not. Ten years ago, in the Camp David talks, Prime Minister Ehud Barak offered Yasser Arafat approximately 94 percent of the West Bank, with a land swap to make up half of the 6 percent Israel would keep. According to news reports, just three months ago, Prime Minister Ehud Olmert offered 93 percent, with a one-to-one land swap. In the end, under the January 2009 offer, Palestinians would have received an area equal to 98 to 98.5 percent of the West Bank (depending on which press report you read), while 10 years ago they were offered 97 percent. Ten years of settlement activity would have resulted in a larger area for the Palestinian state…
SOURCE – http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2009/04/07/AR2009040703379.html
P.S. Ergo, the ‘Abrams Principle’ stands for the proposition that more Israeli settlement activity in the West Bank will ultimately result in a larger area for the Palestinian state. That’s why I say, “Damn the torpedoes, full speed ahead” with the settlement actvity; so as to result in the largest Palestinian state possible (from the Mediterranean Sea to the Jordan River)! “Let Right Be Done.”
Walt is right about Abrams but Abrams may have a point.
I have little use for neocons who really should be called Ziocons or Judeocons since their foreign policy objective is to use American power in the interests of Israeli or Jewish interests. Indeed, much of pro-democracy rhetoric from the 'neocons' amounts to 'what is good for Israel, what is good for Jews?' I would also argue that most neocons feel greater affinity with liberal Jews than with fellow non-Jewish conservatives. Most neocons despise Christian Evangelists and only use them to garner support for the interests of Israel. Of course, Jews being for Jewish interests isn't any different from Irish-Americans being for Ireland and Cuban-Americans being for a Cuba that is hopelessly with the Castros. The difference is (1) Jewish power is so much greater, what with Jews having great power in Wall Street, Hollywood, big media, academia, Washington, Silicon Valley, etc. and (2) Jews hide their globalist/Zionist interests in the name of 'democracy' and other principles grounded in universalism. So, neocons will make a lot of noise about the need to export and expand democracy in Central Asia, Asia, Latin America, Africa, and etc. But most of this is just a cover for America's real focus in the Middle East, which is really about 'what is good for Israel'.
That said--and while I agree that there is no direct link between Bush II and Arab Spring--, Bush's Middle East policy may have unwittingly set off some of the fireworks in the region. While the self-immolation of the Tunisian fruit seller set off the conflagration, there had to be conditions for the wildfire in the first place. The fall of Hussein demolished once and for all the image of the invincible Arab tyrant. In the courtroom and then in his execution, Hussein looked small, even pathetic. Also, the powerlessness of the Arab world to do anything about America's invasion of Iraq also sent a message to Arabs that their leaders are mostly paper tigers. Also, the Iraq War tragically pushed many Sunnis into Syria, and that may have exacerbated tensions in that country that made it into a tinder box for social and political upheaval.
And though one can argue that Iraq is a mess, the fact is Hussein is gone(along with his sons who would have inherited his power) and Iraq is now controlled by its majority population--the Shias. That example may have fired up the majority Sunni population in Syria: If majority Shias have a right to rule Iraq, why shouldn't majority Sunnis have similar right to take control of Syria? And if Hussein and his sons are gone, why shouldn't the Assad dynasty end?
Neoconservatism may also have made conditions ripe for Arab Spring in the sense that the Arab world loathes Jews/Israel; it just so happened that most Muslims came to realize that the American war in Iraq and American influence in the Middle East have been directed mostly by American Jews. Since their own leaders seem to be pushovers or puppets of American Zionist imperialists, they-- especially Mubarack--completely lost respect in the eyes of the people. And though Gaddafi may have thought he was making peace with the Western world, his people might have seen him as selling out to the very Zionists he'd condemned for most of his political career. Libyans didn't like him for a long time, but they lost all respect for him when he, along with his sons, just turned out to be western-style playboy. (By the way, Gaddafi most certainly would have prevailed if not for the military intervention of NATO. To the extent that it took Western military power to pull off the success of 'Arab Spring' in Libya, it was a continuation of the Bush doctrine, though this time opposed by Republicans and supported by Democrats. Libyan Arab Spring needed to be watered by the showers of Nato bombs.)
So, while the reasons Abrams give are almost entirely wrong, there may indirect links between the American war in Iraq and the Arab Spring. History is funny this way. For example, it may sound ridiculous to say Maoism led to the reforms under Deng. After all, Mao was an arch-communists who purged 'capitalist roaders'. But in having turned his nation upside down during the Cultural Revolution and in having destroyed the bureaucracy in the violent purges from 66 to 76, Mao may have unwittingly loosened up the entire system so that Deng and other reformers could try something new soon after his death. Had Mao presided over a more stable and powerful bureaucracy--had he not unleashed the Cultural Revolution, there may have been greater resistance to reform proposals of the late 70s and 80s; there would have been more entrenched interests of the party elites.
Of course, much of the credit for Arab Spring must go to people like Steve Jobs and other makers of hand-held electronic devices and entrepreneurs of the internet. Without such connectivity, a story of the fruit seller who killed himself would have been just a local affair covered up by the government with monopoly over the media. Though Jobs had no interest in Middle East affairs, it seems this half-Syrian American, indirectly anyway, did more to change the Middle East than most politicians and thinktankers did.
Stephen, I'm sure you haven't missed this great renaissance we have been experiencing in the past few years; that is the revival of the dumbest of ideas. Ideas that, no matter how you look at them, both theoretically and empirically have been proven false, not once but repeatedly.
The difference between Egypt and Iraq is that in the case of Egypt, the people themselves fought for their democracy and as a result they own it. The same isn't quite true of Iraq.
Machiavelli would have been very proud of the neocons. The neocons constructed a false flag with the Bin Laden/Iraq connection to take out Israel's enemy. The great beneficiary of this plan was always Israel. This is not realestate101 the last target of the neocons, just watch the news or read more articles for attacking Iran.
That said--and while I agree that there is no direct link between Bush II and Arab Spring--, Bush's Middle East policy may have unwittingly set off some of the fireworks in the region. While the self-immolation of the Tunisian fruit seller set off the conflagration, there had to be conditions for the wildfire in the first place. The fall of Hussein demolished once and for all the image of the invincible Arab tyrant. In the courtroom and then in his execution, Hussein looked small, even pathetic. Also, the powerlessness of the Arab world to do anything about google reklam America's invasion of Iraq also sent a message to Arabs that their leaders are mostly paper tigers. Also, the Iraq War tragically pushed many Sunnis into Syria, and that may have exacerbated tensions in that country that made it into a tinder box for social and political upheaval.
And though one can argue google reklam ver that Iraq is a mess, the fact is Hussein is gone(along with his sons who would have inherited his power) and Iraq is now controlled by its majority population--the Shias. That example may have fired up the majority Sunni population in Syria: If majority Shias have a right google reklam ajans? to rule Iraq, why shouldn't majority Sunnis have similar right to take control of Syria? And if Hussein and his sons are gone, why shouldn't the Assad dynasty end?
Good steps have been used in this article. By giving these type of examples we can easily understand what the writter is saying in this article. One of the nice things about writing for Foreign Policy is the energy and creativity of its leadership, as exemplified by their relentless quest for new publishing innovations. Just yesterday, for example, FP launched a new fiction section, clearly intended to highlight writing on international affairs that doesn't have much basis in reality.
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“The Secretary-General reiterates that all violence is unacceptable and must cease immediately from all sides,” said a statement issued by his spokesperson.
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Yes, you can be a neoconservative, and still be wrong
This is an affecting point of view on this topic. I refer, of course, to Elliott Abrams' brief essay entitled "A Forward Strategy of Freedom," where he argues that neoconservative ideas and policies are responsible for the "Arab Spring." It's been apparent for a long time that being a neoconservative means never having to say you're sorry (or even admit that you're wrong), but this essay displayed a degree of historical amnesia unusual even by neoconservative standards.
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One of the nice things about writing for Foreign Policy is the energy and creativity of its leadership, as exemplified by their relentless quest for new publishing innovations.
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You know, it takes the same amount of effort to think positive thoughts as it takes to think negative thoughts. If positive thoughts help move you towards your goals while negative ones move you further away from them, it makes sense to dwell on the positive.
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The governor has attempted to forestall those further reductions by asking voters to approve extensions of several state taxes, taxes that Californians already pay.
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Great post, what you said is really helpful to me. I can't agree with you anymore. I have been talking with my friend about, he though it is really interesting as well. Keep up with your good work, I would come back to you. A Forward Strategy of Freedom," where he argues that neoconservative ideas and policies are responsible for the "Arab Spring. drudge report
Great article and your blog template is so cool. First, there's no evidence that the Bush administration's "forward strategy for freedom" had anything to do with the Tunisian's fruit seller Mohammed Bouazizi's tragic decision to set himself afire, an act of protest that started the wave of upheavals that has convulsed much of the Arab world ever since. bumper stickers
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Stephen M. Walt is the Robert and Renée Belfer professor of international relations at Harvard University.
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