Scholars, advocates, and activists seeking to make the U.S. a more responsible global partner.
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Where Is The Outrage?

by | Jul 30, 2002

Let’s suppose you knew someone trying to get a leg up in life by getting his young family out of the mean streets of someplace like Detroit, East Los Angeles, or Philadelphia. Not only was the school his three daughters attended substandard, it was contaminated with asbestos and the city itself was strewn with garbage. But when he tried to move into a tree-lined suburb with manicured lawns, he couldn’t because he was (take your pick) black, brown, Asian, Catholic, Protestant, Jewish, disabled, whatever.

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Power Politics in Central Asia

by | Jul 1, 2002

Oil rich, politically turbulent Central Asia finds itself at the center of a new great game of power politics. Both China and Russia, the two dominant powers of mainland Asia, regard this subregion of transitional states as part of their “near abroad.” Since September 11 and the ensuing war on terrorism, Central Asia’s geopolitics have been further complicated by the new military presence of the United States, whose troops are now stationed in China’s and Russia’s backyard.

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Deadly Illusions

by | Jul 1, 2002

The Middle East has always been a place where illusion paves the road to disaster. In 1095, Pope Urban’s religious mania launched the crusades. In 1915, Winston Churchill’s arrogance led to the WWI bloodbath at Gallipoli. Illusion tends to be a deadly business in those parts. And once again, illusions are about to plunge the Middle East into catastrophe.

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A Cure for the CIA’s Disease

by | Jun 1, 2002

In 1986, CIA Director William Casey and his deputy, Robert Gates, created a flawed Counter-Terrorism Center. Casey and Gates believed that the Soviet Union was responsible for every act of international terrorism (it wasn’t), intelligence analysts and secret agents should work together in one office (they shouldn’t), and the CIA and other intelligence agencies would share sensitive information (they won’t). The Center never understood the connection between Ramzi Ahmed Yousef, the coordinator of the 1993 World Trade Center attack, and the al Qaeda organization until it was too late. And the Center expected an attack abroad, not at home. Last year’s WTC attack exposed the inability of analysts and agents to perform strategic analysis, challenge flawed assumptions, and share sensitive secrets. The intelligence community claims that it must protect sources and methods, but that is not the issue. Each agency is trying to protect its position in the bureaucratic competition for access to the president. So what needs to be done?

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Bush’s Speech a Setback for Peace

by | Jun 1, 2002

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.

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The U.S. Role in the Breakdown of the Israeli-Palestinian Peace Process

by | May 1, 2002

In the time since the collapse of the Israeli-Palestinian peace talks at Camp David in the summer of 2000 and the subsequent Palestinian uprising, details have emerged that challenge the Clinton administration’s insistence—reiterated by leaders of both the Democratic and Republican parties as well as by much of the mainstream media—that the Palestinians were responsible for the failure to reach a peace agreement and for much of the violence that has engulfed Israel and Palestine since then.

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The Price of Failure in Kashmir

by | May 1, 2002

Following Pakistani President General Pervez Musharraf’s speech on May 27th and the Indian government’s official response the following day, it is clear that while war clouds have temporarily receded they have most certainly not been lifted. India will wait to see “results,” i.e. what steps the Pakistan government will take to end the ability of terrorists to strike from across the border into Indian territory, including Jammu and Kashmir. One must distinguish here between two claims. Any attribution that the Musharraf government is directly behind the December 13 attack on Parliament and now the May 14 attack in Kaluchak, Jammu, is not substantiated by evidence and is, politically speaking, utterly implausible. The Musharraf government is not so foolish or naïve as to impose even further pressure on itself in circumstances when his own regime is fighting for internal survival, or to want to shift attention away from the state-sponsored anti-Muslim pogrom in Gujarat and the world’s criticism of the Indian government on that score.

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U.S. and Israeli Governments Out of Step with Public According to New Polls

by | May 1, 2002

Both in the U.S. and in Israel, government policy and actions do not reflect popular sentiment. Two recent surveys–one by the University of Maryland’s Program on International Policy Attitudes (PIPA) and another by the Dahaf Institute in Israel–found that the American and Israeli public support more even-handed approaches to settling the Israeli-Palestinian conflict.

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