As part of the war on terrorism, U.S. Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld recently called for rebuilding military relations with the Indonesian army. In a joint May 13 press conference with his Indonesian counterpart, Matori Abdul Djalil, Rumsfeld said the Bush administration intended to work with Congress, “to reestablish the kind of military-to-military relations which we believe are appropriate.”
Bush’s Speech a Setback for Peace by Stephen Zunes June 26, 2002 0206israelspeech.pdf [printer-friendly version] President George W. Bush’s speech on Monday represents a setback for Middle East peace. On the one hand, it is reassuring that after thirty years of rejecting the international consensus that peace requires the establishment of a Palestinian state alongside a secure Israel, an American president now formally recognizes that need. The bad news is that while President Bush correctly views Israel’s right to exist as a given, Palestine’s right to exist–even as a truncated mini-state on the West Bank and Gaza Strip–is conditional first and foremost on the removal of Palestinian President Yasir Arafat. This despite the fact that Israeli Prime Minister Ariel Sharon is more hardline than Arafat on all outstanding issues of the peace process–final borders, Jewish settlements, the status of Jerusalem, and refugees. In fact, Arafat’s positions have been more consistent with international law and UN Security Council resolutions than the policies of any Likud or Labor-led Israeli government. But President Bush still insists that it is the Palestinians, not the Israelis, who must replace their elected leadership in order for the peace process to move forward. The Bush administration’s distorted priorities could not have been more glaring when in the course of his speech, the president mentioned terrorism eighteen times but did not mention human rights or international law even once. Nor did he mention the peace plan of Saudi Prince Abdullah–endorsed by the Palestinian Authority and every single Arab government–which offered Israel security guarantees and full normal relations in return for withdrawal from the occupied territories seized in the 1967 war. The Abdullah peace plan is largely a reiteration of UN Security Council Resolutions 242 and 338, long considered by the U.S. as the basis for Middle East peace. While President Bush mentioned these resolutions briefly in his speech, he failed to challenge Israel’s false claim that the resolutions do not actually require it to withdraw from virtually all of the Arab lands conquered 35 years ago, an interpretation rejected by almost the entire international community. The Palestinians are insisting on statehood in the West Bank and Gaza Strip, which is just 22% of historic Palestine. They have already recognized Israeli sovereignty over the remaining 78%. But not only did President Bush fail to demand a total withdrawal of Israeli occupation forces, he called for merely a freeze on additional Israeli settlements, when international law–reiterated in UN Security Council resolutions 446 and 465–clearly requires Israel to abandon the existing settlements. The Palestinians have such a strong case, in fact, that the Bush administration has chosen to focus instead upon their weakest link: their corrupt and autocratic leadership and the terrorist reaction to the occupation. While many Palestinians are deeply disappointed in Arafat’s leadership, President Bush’s insistence that the United States has the right to determine who shall lead the Palestinians will only breed enormous resentment in the Arab world. Israeli Foreign Minister Shimon Peres, upon hearing President Bush’s speech, was quoted in Israel’s largest daily Yediot Aharonot as declaring that “making the creation of a Palestinian state dependent upon a change in the Palestinian leadership is a fatal mistake…. The abyss into which the region will plunge will be as deep as the expectations from this speech were high.” As the occupying power, the onus for resolving the conflict rests upon Israel, not the Palestinians. Just as occupation and repression can never justify terrorism, neither can terrorism justify occupation and repression. (Stephen Zunes < zunes@usfca.edu > is an associate professor of Politics and chair of the Peace & Justice Studies Program at the University of San Francisco. He serves as Middle East editor for the Foreign Policy in Focus Project ( www.fpif.org ) and is the author of the forthcoming book Tinderbox: U.S. Middle East Policy and the Roots of Terrorism (Common Courage Press).) to receive weekly commentary and expert analysis via our Progressive Response ezine. This page was last modified on Wednesday, April 2, 2003 12:36 PM Contact the IRC’s webmaster with inquiries regarding the functionality of this website. Copyright 2001 IRC and IPS. All rights reserved.
India is playing a highly risky game of brinkmanship in Kashmir. Its recent deployment of forces along the line of control (LoC), the de facto border between India and Pakistan in Kashmir, and the extremely provocative rhetoric from Delhi have brought the region closer to a nuclear war than ever before.
Less than three weeks after the horrid events of September 11, the Department of Defense published its Quadrennial Review, an official document that discusses in detail U.S. defense strategies. The review is the work of senior Pentagon officials–both military and civilian–who conferred extensively with the president. This key military document asserts that “the U.S. leadership is premised on sustaining an international system that is respectful of the rule of law.” But with recent developments in U.S. nuclear weapons policy, as in other policy arenas, the Bush administration has set an agenda that flagrantly ignores international law.
Almost 40 years ago, the late Pakistani leader Zulfiqar Ali Bhutto, who was then serving as Pakistan’s foreign minister, famously declared “even if Pakistanis have to eat grass we will make the bomb.” India and Pakistan have since fought two conventional wars and now have nuclear weapons poised to complete the short five-minute arc to the other’s national capital.
Since September 11, the war on terrorism has become the new rationale for doling out military assistance to repressive and politically unstable foreign governments. And just like during the cold war, the millions of dollars slated for our new allies in the war on terrorism have more to do with promoting American geostrategic interests than with protecting U.S. territory from external threats.
On the eve of a meeting of rich country leaders in Canada, President Bush has brought out a "new initiative" promising $500 million to prevent transmission of HIV/AIDS from mothers to children. Intended to stave off the embarrassment of coming empty-handed to a summit trumpeted as focusing on Africa, the White House initiative is in fact a cynical move to derail more effective action against AIDS.
There is a history of war in South Asia. India and Pakistan fought in 1948, 1965, 1971, and 1999. There is good evidence that in no case was there the expectation of a war on the scale and of the kind that ensued. Rather, war followed misadventure, driven by profound errors of policy, political and military judgement, and public sentiment. Nuclear weapons do nothing to lessen such possibilities. There is even reason to believe they may make them worse in South Asia. One lesson of the 1999 Kargil war is that Pakistan saw its newly acquired nuclear weapons as a shield from behind which it could fuel and stoke the conflict in Kashmir, safe from any possible Indian retaliation. During this war, nuclear threats were made publicly by leaders on both sides. It took international intervention to stop the slide to a larger, more destructive war.
Last night’s long-awaited speech by President Bush was to set the pace for the Palestinians and Israelis to step back from the vicious and bloody cycle of violence that has gripped them for nearly two years. Instead, President Bush and his administration have publicly adopted the Israeli agenda of battering the Palestinians into submission. President Bush’s delusion that the Palestinian-Israeli conflict may be “talked away” in a series of speeches is not only a poor example of leadership but places U.S. interests in the region at seriously high risk.
As the largest grand assembly ever held in Afghanistan, the Loya Jirga will gather 1,501 Afghan delegates from inside and outside the country. The Special Independent Commission for Convening Loya Jirga has been planning the logistics and management of this event since January, but officials remain worried. “For a long time the Afghan people did not have a say in their government. And for the first time in Afghanistan’s history we wanted the people to feel that they were being represented in the government,” said Ahmed Nadery, a spokesperson for the 21-member Loya Jirga Commission. This pronouncement may mark a step in Afghanistan’s evolution, but acting on it will put a strain on Afghanistan’s scant security. Planners also have to consider how to make the Loya Jirga fair and accessible to the country’s largely illiterate population, and keep it from becoming a platform for tribal, political, and ethnic violence.