WhirledView

Nawaz Wins: What’s Next in Pakistan?

 By Patricia Lee Sharpe

The count’s still contested here and there—and loudly, especially in Karachi, which is no surprise. But the outcome is clear: the Pakistan Muslim League (N) won enough seats in last week’s parliamentary election to form a government all by itself. No need for coalition building in Islamabad.

That’s good. One-party government makes it easier to get things done, especially when there’s a responsible opposition to temper ideological excesses. Such an opposition the out-going People’s Party, whose lackluster performance in power made electoral defeat inevitable, has pledged itself to be.  Even so, the PPP won slightly more seats in Parliament than the perky new kid on the block, the Tehreek-e-Insaf (Movement for Justice Party) founded by ex-cricketeer Imran Khan, which had hoped to win a parliamentary majority.  The U.S. should be happy.  Khan has been very critical of Pakistan's relations with the U.S.

A Milestone

Before we start looking toward the future via a rather murky crystal ball, let’s pause to note an important milestone. For the first time in Pakistan’s history, the 2013 election will allow a civilian-led government to hand the baton to another civilian government. U. S. President Barack Obama has already congratulated PML-N leader Nawaz Sharif, and maybe this time—having been granted a third go as Pakistan’s Prime Minister—Nawaz will manage to complete a term in office. In 1999, Chief of Army Staff Pervez Musharraf, with whom Nawaz had just waged (and lost) a high-altitude, mid-winter, mini-war against India, staged a coup and sent him scampering into exile in Saudi Arabia.

A New Nawaz?

“I’ve mellowed.” So says Nawaz, but the world around him may have changed more than he has. To name just a few of the more dramatic events of the past decade or so: the Twin Towers catastrophe in New York; U.S. intervention in Afghanistan and Iraq; the rise of drone warfare; the elimination of Osama bin Ladin and Saddam Hussein; the Arab spring and its messy aftermath; the still raging civil war in Syria; the earth-shaking awakening of the Chinese dragon; the death of Kim Jung Il.There's more, but the point has been made.

A New Military?

Nawaz also faces a different Chief of Army Staff.

Many times during the lead up to last  Saturday’s polling, I thought that the level of election-related violence—car bombs set off; candidates, party officials and ordinary people murdered; a high-level kidnapping—must surely have reached coup level. The Army would step in, declaring with the usual paternalistic panache that poor old Pakistan still isn’t ready for democracy. It didn’t happen.

Perhaps the Pakistani military under General Ashfaq Parvez Kayani, has also mellowed. At the very least, Kayani honored his pledge (or inclination) to keep the Army out of the electoral process, even if that meant the Pakistani Taliban’s selective violence might skew the results toward parties they gauged to be more sympathetic to the Islamist cause. Taliban targets tended to belong to the MQM, the PPP and the AWP, all openly secular in orientation.  An interesting note: the PML-N insists that it too was harrassed, as if Nawaz feels some need to show there's air and light between him and the Taliban.  Even more important: Taliban threats notwithstanding, people in most constituencies flocked to the polls to exercise their right to vote.

On Dealing with the Hermit Kingdom

By Patricia H Kushlis

Does North Korea’s leadership belong in the madhouse or Alcatraz as so many of our right wing politicians, militarists and some journalists seem to suggest?  Or are they behaving as sanely – at least from their perspective - as their accusers?  Is there something important going on in Pyongyang that is overlooked here that should be considered?

I attended an excellent two-day Santa Fe World Affairs Forum symposium on US-East Asian relations at St. John’s College in Santa Fe, New Mexico early last week:  The North Korean nuclear threat, China’s capabilities and future intentions, reasons for Myanmar’s immense political changes and the overall ramifications of the changing face of Asia for US interests were at the top of the agenda.

Several years ago, then President George W Bush labeled North Korea – as well as Iran – as the Axis of Evil. This reversed Bill Clinton’s softer line that may or may not have been making progress towards some kind of normalization of relations with the Hermit Kingdom.  If such a sea change were to happen, our military presence in North Asia could and should be reduced substantially. This in itself is likely a flashing yellow light for those in the defense industry who profit from a continued state of high military readiness in the region not just those in Pyongyang but also our own in Washington.

No one, however, has ever satisfactorily explained to me the reasons for Pyongyang’s peculiar actions or what might induce its secretive leaders to change course.  In essence, the Hermit Kingdom has been brushed off as the proverbial enigma wrapped in a mystery - without further thought or examination.

Political Science 101

But put away the swords and the blinders for the moment and go back to the basics:  The first axiom of politics is a leader’s (or collective leadership’s) determination to remain in power.  That’s lesson one, political science 101.   In Pyongyang, the transfer of power is dynastic.  The country may call itself socialist, workers or communist but in reality it is governed through an age old form of familial leadership based on an historic Asian dynastic model.  Moreover, over the years, the North Korean dynasty has been propped up by the country’s military with China’s acquiesce and sometimes more.

I once had a Burmese cat named Cleo who spent the first two weeks of our assignment to Athens with her nose pointed into a back corner of a shelf in our bedroom closet.  I suppose she must have come out when no one was looking because she clearly used the litter box and ate her favorite food.  She ultimately resurfaced but only after we moved to a garden apartment which allowed her to explore the garden at will sitting for hours soaking up the Greek sun.

Fear of the unknown had much to do with Cleo’s behavior in that temporary apartment just as it’s plausible that fear of being dethroned (or possibly worse – think Ceaceşcu in December 1989) has been a likely motivating factor for North Korea’s seemingly irrational behavior since the country was established in the wake of the Korean War.  This flashed through my brain when one of the experts at the conference in describing the unique characteristics of the North Korean propaganda barrage pointed out that the country’s threats always concluded with the phrase: “if the Americans attack.”  But the speaker added that these four final words are not reported in the media or government statements we see in the West. 

Living in Challenging Times: the US and East Asia

 

LIVING IN CHALLENGING TIMES: THE UNITED STATES & EAST ASIA
a two-day symposium

April 8-9, 2013
St. John’s College, Santa Fe, New Mexico

sponsored by

SANTA FE WORLD AFFAIRS FORUM
Co-sponsors: U.N.M. Center for Science, Technology & Policy
Albuquerque Committee on Foreign Relations, American Foreign Service Association & St. John’s College

DAY ONE:  2-6 pm: Registration; “East Asia and the Pacific:  Issues and Challenges,” Ambassador Will Itoh, Director, Washington International Programs, University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill; and Senior Advisor, McLarty Associates ; “North Asia and the Korea Conundrum,” Dr. Chris Nelson, Vice President of Samuels International, Washington, D.C.; Cocktail reception for speakers and Symposium participants.

DAY TWO: 9:15 am -4:00 pm: Registration; “China as a Rising Power Seeking its Rightful Place,” Dr. Suisheng Zhao, Director of the Center for U.S.-China Cooperation, Josef Korbel School of International Studies, University of Denver; “The Chinese Military Machine,” Dennis Blasko, author “The Chinese Army Today: Tradition and Transformation” (Routledge 2012) and former US military attaché Beijing; talk on “Is the Myanmar Exuberance Irrational -- and whatever happened to Vietnam?,” Ms. Frances Zwenig, President, U.S.-ASEAN Business Council Institute, Inc.; wind-up panel.  Full buffet luncheon for speakers and Symposium participants.

All sessions will be followed by generous discussion periods.

PARTNER ORGANIZATIONS:  Friendship Force, Albuquerque Council on International Visitors, Public Diplomacy Alumni Association, University of New Mexico’s International Studies Institute, University of New Mexico’s National Security Studies Program, Public Diplomacy Council, Women’s Voices, American Association of University Women – Santa Fe Branch, & Fulbright Association of New Mexico.  

FEES & REGISTRATION: Both days: $70 members; $85 non-members; $30 students; 4/8 only: $40; 4/9 only: $50.  To reserve a place please e-mail waforum@gmail.com.  Symposium fees may be paid with your credit card using our Paypal account. You may access Paypal directly by clicking on this link or you may send your check to The Santa Fe World Affairs Forum, PO Box 31965, Santa Fe. NM, 87594, with your name and contact information, if you are not a member.  Checks should be made out to The Santa Fe World Affairs Forum.  Please note on your check that payment is for the April 2013 symposium.  Your payment guarantees you a place, but it is non-refundable after Wednesday, April 4, if you are unable to attend.

 

The Case of Chen the Party Crasher: Normal Diplomacy Meets Crisis Management

By Patricia Lee Sharpe

Traveling around the U.S. since I left the Foreign Service, I’ve been astonished by how little Americans  know about the rest of the world and how our representatives deal with it, which is to say, about diplomacy.  Sometimes, in despair about the deficiencies of U.S. education, I’ve found myself thinking, “No wonder Americans are so ready to go to war.  They’re barely aware of an alternative that saves money and lives.”  The Founders were savvier.  That’s why the Secretary of State ranks above the Secretary of War (now the Secretary of Defense) in the Cabinet hierarchy.

Wikileaks—does anyone even remember Wikileaks?—may have caused some harm and embarrassment (though much less than predicted), but the release of those classified documents should have proved to those who seldom have anything good to say about America’s diplomats that U.S. foreign service officers are excellent analysts and very good writers, too.

The Fly in the Ointment

In the past two weeks, even Americans who barely notice the headlines had another chance to observe how diplomacy works—and to watch two levels of diplomacy dramatically intersecting at that.  Just a few days before Secretary of State Hillary Clinton was due to arrive in China for the climax of an important bilateral dialogue a well-known Chinese human rights activist sought refuge in the U.S. embassy in Beijing.  If Chen Guangcheng were turned away, the Obama administration would be lambasted for abandoning America’s historic position of pressuring China to respect the civil liberties of its citizens.  If he were given refuge, China would protest and an important bilateral conference might go up in flames. 

And so a long-scheduled event collided with a totally out-of-the-blue crisis.   Diplomats need to be able to handle both, but they seldom have to do justice to both at the same time.  My impression is that the people at the U.S. embassy in Beijing did a pretty good, even impressive job of managing a difficult situation precipitated by an admirable, but impulsive, vacillating and conflicted petitioner.   

The Limits of Reform in China

Chen Guangcheng came to the world’s attention some years ago when he exposed corruption involving China’s one child policy.  Evidently he was never charged or tried for criminal activity, but vindictive, embarrassed local officials (no doubt with Beijing’s knowledge) had connived to solve their problem by building a very high wall around his house and keeping him under house arrest.  Chen escaped—an astonishing tale that has been well told elsewhere—and sought refuge in the American embassy, with the not-particularly-well-thought-out idea that he might be granted asylum in the U.S.   He himself might find refuge, but what would happen to his family and helpers if they were left behind, for instance?

When the U.S. opened its embassy doors to Chen, Chinese officialdom was furious.  During any big conference, the spotlight is on the backdrop as well as the stars.  Thanks to Chen, both China and the U.S. would be facing serious image problems instead of looking good at the conclusion of a successful event that was suddenly in danger of collapsing.

America's Asian Pivot

By Patricia H. Kushlis

At the Santa Fe World Affairs Forum’s symposium “Our World in Ferment” on April 17, China expert and Deputy Director of the Kissinger Institute for US-China Relations Douglas Spelman described the change in US policy direction in Asia over the past 18 months as more of a pivot towards Southeast Asia as opposed to one directed at the continent’s North where US attention has been fairly constant, and intense, for some time.

On the April 23 international news, a BBC correspondent reporting from the island of Palawan near where US and Filipino forces were engaged in Balikatan, the bilateral annual war game exercises held under the Mutual Defense Treaty, reported on the heating up of military tensions between China and the Philippines over who controls what in the South China Sea.  An aside: Palawan is an island where I once spent a week at a charming ecotourism resort a year after the US bases had been kicked out of the Philippines by one vote in the Philippine Senate.

Believe me, the reporter has a pretty cushy observation perch from which to observe military exercises as well as snorkel on the side.  

A Chinese Lake?  Maybe not

The Chinese consider the South China Sea a Chinese lake – made more valuable through exploration by international companies for likely oil and gas under the seabed.  Palawan is, by the way, just south of the South China Sea. A BBC report argues that it is precisely because the Filipinos and Vietnamese have signed contracts with international companies to explore for those riches in the disputed territorial waters they claim as their own that set the Chinese off.

The area in contention is called Scarborough Shoal. The Schoal lies within the broader area known as the Spratly Islands, tiny basically uninhabited dots in the sea.    

The rationale for the US pivot towards Southeast Asia has centered on keeping the sea lanes open. This is part of long standing US security policy in the region. What’s new is the Chinese challenge to it. Most of the shipping to North Asia passes through the Straits of Malacca then northward through the South China Sea.  The claims by Asian nations for control of their pieces of this sea bed off the coasts of southern China, Vietnam and the Philippines have been fuses waiting for a match for years. 

With China’s economic rise, it’s increasingly heavy handed approach to Southeast Asia has become more pronounced.  On the one hand, Chinese leverage is major in the areas of trade and economics where China has become the region’s dominant trading partner.  This is not necessarily bad for the US.  When I lived in Southeast Asia in the early 1990s, the Japanese were economically dominant in the region but that trade dominance did not negatively impinge upon the freedom of navigation through the Straits of Malacca and Singapore or the South China Sea.             

On the other hand, a deeply held fear of China’s growing security desires has sent ASEAN governments scurrying to find protection from other big powers further away.  The US is the obvious choice despite a residue of anti-American anti-colonialism in the Philippines and the mistakes of the Vietnam War – both of which seem to have been all but forgotten or at least, in the face of their larger concern, brushed under the carpet for now.

Aung San Suu Kyi: Should She or Shouldn’t She?

By Patricia Lee Sharpe

Some Americans boast of not voting in 2010.  Others strut and say they’ve never voted!  The system is too corrupt, too unresponsive, too dirty.  Idiots! They’re so pure they don’t exist, politically.  I wonder sometimes if WhirledView has any impact. And yet, without tossing a few well-chosen stones into the ocean, how to make a splash?

What's in a Win?

Just such questions of purity and efficacy have arisen in the aftermath of the recent Burmese elections.  Aung San Suu Kyi and her National League of Democracy have won 43 of the 44 seats available to civilian voters, which leaves 80% of the seats in Parliament controlled by the military (to say nothing of the presidency and other offices held by figures who have “resigned” from the military).  Suu Kyi herself has pointed out that the elections were flawed.  Observers from the European Union stopped short of praising the process as anything more than a step in the right direction. 

The elections, which were not nation-wide, evidently, were scheduled for many districts where cynics would have predicted no hope for reform-minded candidates, a devious way of tipping the scales even further against the opposition.  Most hard-headed observers expected voters in the four districts around the new capital and those in districts hosting military installations to back regime sympathizers.  Who employs them?  Who fills their rice bowls?  You don’t usually bite the hand that feeds you.  In addition, analysts assumed, the people in hilly tribal areas would vote for fellow tribals, not a Berman lowlander, whatever her glamor or her opposition to a repressive army.  This, too, would hurt Suu Kyi’s NLD.

Voters Thought for Themselves

The “realists” turned out to be wrong.  Suu Kyi and her party members won all but one available district, a Shan constituency, which did indeed send a tribal to the new Parliament, although the National League of Democracy won in a neighboring Shan district.  The NLD even came out ahead in those army-dominated districts.  This achievement should remind us all that military men and women can think for themselves, even if they spend most of their time following orders.

But let’s not over-hype the election results. Aung San Suu Kyi and her party have won a resounding victory in an election guaranteeing, by its very design, that she and her NLD colleagues will be hopelessly outnumbered in Parliament.  This clever bit of engineering on the part of the regime has led to the big question: should The Lady claim the seat she has won—or should she not, lest she legitimize a junta that kept her under house arrest for two decades and treated too many other justice-seekers worse by far? 

Is She Just a Tool?

Some analysts worry that Suu Kyi is being manipulated by a deeply-hated regime that has turned Myanmar into an economic basket case during its decades of iron-fisted control.  The Generals, they believe, have dug themselves into a hole they can’t get out of by themselves.  However, with Suu Kyi as a decorative but ineffectual figurehead in Parliament,  it may be that the US and other sources of economic aid will be sufficiently charmed and bamboozled to lift sanctions, allow trade and investment and provide the country with humanitarian assistance. 

What a contrast to the regime’s policy in the wake of the devastating cyclone Nargis in 2008, when the Generals preferred to allow people to die rather than risk the interference that would inevitably come with accepting commensurate emergency aid!  No doubt this callous policy lost them more than a few votes in the recent election.  Having monks shot during the Saffron uprising a few years ago didn’t help either. 

Santa Fe World Affairs Forum - Global Unrest Symposium April 16-17, 2012

April 1 Update

The Santa Fe World Affairs Forum

Join us on April 16 to 17,2012 for A Two Day Symposium on Global Unrest

Most recent commentary on the state of the world deals with revolution in one country or turmoil in a single geographic or cultural area.  The Santa Fe World Affairs Forum believes that it is time to examine these challenges and upheavals as part of a global phenomenon.  A SFWAF symposium to be held at St. John’s College on April 16-17 will look at the clash between change and status quo in Europe, China, Russia, and Mexico.  The symposium, co-sponsored with the University of New Mexico Center for Science, Technology and Policy, will provide for ample interaction between speakers and attendees.

The featured speakers for this symposium are:

EUROPE: Dr. Dieter Dettke, currently Foreign and Defense Policy Professor, Security Studies Program, Georgetown University, previously Executive Director for the US and Canada, Friedrich Ebert Foundation and staff director for the US-German Committee in the Bundestag, will help us understand a continent-wide social, political and economic flux. 

Ms. Teri Schultz, freelance international reporter for NPR and CBS News Radio and EU correspondent for Global Post will discuss the financial crash that threatens more than Europe’s image of unity.

RUSSIA: Dr. Raymond R. Smith, University of North Texas (Dallas) and former State Department political analyst is a specialist in Russian affairs.  Smith, author of Negotiating with the Soviets and The Craft of Political Analysis for Diplomats, will explore this question: “Is 21st Century Russia Doomed to be Authoritarian, Unlikeable and Threatening?”

CHINA: Dr. Douglas Spelman, former State Department China expert, now Deputy Director of the Kissinger Institute on China and the United States at the Woodrow Wilson International Center for Scholars in Washington, D. C., will focus on  “China’s Rise: Promise or Problem?”

MEXICO: Dr. Lois Meyer, linguist and professor, School of Education, University of New Mexico, and author of the book New World of Indigenous Resistance, will explore the effects of globalization on indigenous resistance movements in Mexico and the Americas.

The Symposium, which takes place at St. John's College in Santa Fe, opens at 2:00 on Monday, April 16 with registration, the presentations on Europe and a welcome reception. The Symposium resumes with morning and afternoon sessions on Tuesday, April 17.  Admission fee of $65 for members and $80 for non-members includes the welcome reception, morning pastries, lunch, coffee/tea and refreshments.

St. John’s College, the University of New Mexico Latin American and Iberian Institute,  the Albuquerque Council for International Visitors, the International Studies Institute (ISI) at the University of New Mexico, the Albuquerque Committee on Foreign Relations (ACFR) and the  the New Mexico Chapter of the Fulbright Associationare are partner organizations for this symposium.

TO REGISTER:  Send an email to waforum@gmail.com and include your organizational affiliation.  You may pay with your credit card using our Paypal account. You can access Paypal directly by clicking on this link or send your check to The Santa Fe World Affairs Forum, PO Box 31965, Santa Fe. NM,87594.  Checks should be made out to The Santa Fe World Affairs Forum.  To help keep our records straight please note on your check that it is for the April 16-17 Symposium.  If you are a member of a cosponsoring or partner organization which makes you eligible for member rates please also so note. Your payment guarantees you a place, but it is non-refundable after Tuesday, April 10 if you are unable to attend.  Reservations will be taken on a first come, first serve basis.

It is also possible to register only for the Monday session about Europe ($40) or the longer Tuesday session about China, Russia and Mexico ($50).

For information on Santa Fe accommodations please click here for the link to the Santa Fe Convention Bureau's listings.

For additional symposium information, please e-mail us at waforum@gmail.com

 

SYRIA: WHY RUSSIA AND CHINA ARE APPLYING THE BRAKES

By Patricia Lee Sharpe

From any normal human point of view, the disinclination of Russia and China to enthusiastically join efforts to restrain Bashar Assad from his slaughter fest is incomprehensible.  So far as I can tell, not even the most horrified foreign leaders are eager to put boots on the ground or even to provide the degree of assistance that Libyan rebels received, but China and Russia are not ready for serious jaw-boning, either. Nor have they joined the chorus suggesting that Assad and his family might seek a cozy retirement site. If recently leaked emails are authentic, the Assads would settle for nothing less than world class luxury aka life among the global 1%.  Bribing the unjust with chateaux leaves a very bad taste in the mouth, but it’s a time honored way to dislodge tyrants with minimal loss of life.

Meanwhile, what a bonus for the enablers!  While supporting a brutal dictatorship, China and Russia  masquerade as global  good citizens upholding long understood principles of international law.

Yes, a state is allowed to protect itself from most civil unrest and to defend itself from external threat. But only up to a point, in each case. 

The Assad regime claims to be restoring peace and stability by neutralizing “armed gangs” beholden to outside forces. When restoring order requires the scale of destruction we’ve seen in Homs, including day-after-day blanket shelling of residential areas followed by the systematic house-to-house slaughter of survivors, it’s probably safe to say the regime  has lost its legitimacy.  At this point what’s labeled unrest more closely resembles revolution, To date, in Syria, nearly 10,000 people have been killed, and yet unarmed civilians continue to take to the streets in their thousands at the risk of being picked off by snipers stationed on roof tops. Individual soldiers and even whole units of the army have joined the rebels.  So have some high ranking officers and even a minister in the Assad government.  It seems a shame that many more people will have to die before Bashar finally admits that his day at the top is over.

Yes, external meddling in the internal affairs of a country is normally to be deplored and resisted.  The sovereignty argument has always made considerable sense because international neighbors, if bigger and stronger, tend to be greedy and aggressive. So it might be argued that China and Russia are taking the high road in respecting Syria’s sovereignty.  However, the genocides and other brutalities of the twentieth century have given rise to an important sovereignty-trumping principle. It is known as the “responsibility to protect,” which means that rulers do not have carte blanche in terrorizing their own citizens. When external interference prevents internal massacre, it is not judged to be a classic invasion of sovereignty. The Assad regime, it would seem, has set itself up for some meddling, to put it mildly.

Unfortunately for the rebels, Syria is not Libya.  Syria is a heavily populated country.  It is well institutionalized and the regime controls all subordinate centers of power, including a very large army officered  by members of the minority Alowite sect to which the Assads belong.  

This brings us to the problem of minorities in Syria, most of whom, it's argued, continue to support the secular-minded  Assad regime.  Syrian Christians have no doubt noted that the Coptics in Egypt fared better under Mubarak than they seem to be doing now.  Alowites may fear the sort of retalitory maltreatment that Sunnis are presently suffering in Iraq.  The Asad regime may be brutal, but it is an equal opportunity oppressor, which is a grudging way of recognizing its relative tolerance for minorities.  The U.S. Constitution's  Bill of Rights protects minorities from the tyrrany of the majority.  As the aftermath of the Arab spring indicates, tolerance doesn't always come automatically with democracy.

Minorities' not unfounded fear of repression gives some altruistic cover to the Chinese and Russian tenderness toward the Assad regime, but other motives for their behavior are no doubt more persuasive.  Neither country is governed by figures who find it convenient to respect the will of the people.  Russia’s Vladimir Putin maintains his hold on power by manipulating elections, curbing the media, jailing opponents and breaking up demonstrations before they get too large and enthusiastic.  China tolerates absolutely no debate or street activity at all.  What’s more, both regimes rigorously suppress the political and cultural demands of their ethnic and religious minorities, especially those who happen to form majorities in ancestral territories with historic claims to independence.  Like Homs, Chechnya was ravaged to keep it Russian; brutality keeps it Russian.  Suppression of protest over cultural genocide in Tibet is so complete that an increasing number of monks have resorted to setting themslves aflame, although Tibetan Buddhism does not encourage such acts.  Meanwhile, Beijing floods Tibet with Han Chinese in order to reduce Tibetans to a minority in what was once their own country.  (The Soviets did the same in the Baltic states, which has led to many complications for the post-Communist governments in those countries.) 

Freedom of speech?  Freedom of assembly?  Freedom to chose one’s leadership in free and fair elections? Syrians want these freedoms.  If China and Russia acknowledge the validity of Syrians’ desires, how can they continue to deny them to the people within their own national boundaries?