Global Brief #16

Planning is Dead.

Glory to the Planners.

EDITORS’ BRIEF

The grandmasters think about five moves ahead. The amateurs one or two.

And the pretenders not at all.

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COVER ILLUSTRATION: CHRISTIAN NORTHEAST

military confrontation. Finally, Jeremi Suri of the University of Texas at Austin makes the case for greater promiscuity, flexibility and contingency in alliance-making among thinking states this century.

In Tête à Tête, GB sits down with former Australian prime minister Kevin Rudd to discuss Asia futures and specifically the creation of an Asia Pacific Community to institutionally bind the countries of that huge and hugely significant geopolitical space. GB then speaks with Navi Pillay, fresh off her term as the UN’s human rights chief, to understand where global, regional and country-specific discourses on various species of rights (and responsibilities) are headed.

In Query, GB Managing Editor Sam Sasan Shoamanesh stresses the urgency of standing up a permanent security forum for Middle Eastern states – a marker for a future more comprehensive security architecture for the region in order to save it from collapse. Former French foreign minister Hubert Védrine waxes skeptically about the existence of a real international community in this early new century, calling for a stronger dose of realism (indeed less dreaming) particularly among Western countries in respect of some of the world’s major challenges.

In Nez à Nez, Tamir Bar-On of the Tecnologico de Monterrey and the German philosopher Daniel Friedrich debate the merits and demerits of football boycotts for the upcoming World Cups in Russia and Qatar. (GB is in Qatar’s secretive Cabinet Room to listen in on the emirate’s deliberations in respect of World Cup 2022.)

In The Definition, we query Stratfor’s Kamran Bokhari, Myriam Benraad of the European Council on Foreign Relations, and the American jurist Dan Stigall about the Islamic State of Iraq and Syria (ISIS).

In Strategic Futures, we look ahead to 2020 and the future of Iraq’s Kurdistan Region with Alex Vatanka of the Middle East Institute, former top Iranian diplomat Seyed Hossein Mousavian, as well as Armin Seif of the Middle East Research Institute in Erbil. In Situ reports come to us from the Landfall Strategy Group’s David Skilling in Wellington, New Zealand, and also from Arabinda Acharya of the National Defense University at Fort Bragg and Dharitri Dwivedy of the University of Madras, who report from Baghdad to give some perspective on the threat posed by ISIS. George Elliott Clarke, Toronto’s poet laureate, closes the book with signature chutzpah in Epigram.

Enjoy your Brief. | GB

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entralized planners and strategists will not have great success this century, complexity oblige, without the feedback mechanisms so prolific in decentralized systems. And yet decentralized systems – federations both loose and tight – will also not have great success unless they can move their systems meaningfully and energetically in support of national interests and objectives. This will take talent in the executive, where the propensity to continuous distraction seems to have emasculated the general capacity to think about tomorrow, and then the day after that. For while there may be glory in doing the work of the people, there is no glory in making it up as you go.

The Fall/Winter 2015 issue of GB coincides with the launch of the Institute for 21st Century Questions (21CQ) – a vision and strategy tank that will study, debate and seek to be active in the search for on-the-ground solutions and resolutions to challenges presented by some of this century’s major questions. These questions range from the future of the former Soviet space to international criminal justice, the creation of a Middle East security framework, the creation of an Asian security framework, the Congo war, cyber-security, the future of the Quebec and Aboriginal questions, Arctic futures, science policy, and, among others, the negotiation of complex private-public transactions.

For more on 21CQ, visit www.i21CQ.com.

John E. McLaughlin, former CIA director, opens this number in the One Pager by revisiting his 2009 predictions for the future of conflict, first made in the inaugural issue of GB. In the lead Feature, GB Editor-in-Chief Irvin Studin proposes a five-point plan or algorithm to solve the Ukraine-Russia conflict.

Former Canadian foreign minister Lloyd Axworthy and the University of Winnipeg’s Wab Kinew argue for an ‘Aboriginal opportunity’ paradigm – one with conspicuous strategic consequences – for Canadian government and business in order to address Canada’s principal moral issue for this new century.

Patricio Navia of New York University and Santiago’s Universidad Diego Portales explains why Chile, of all countries, has fast become the most popular destination for intra-Latin American migrants. GB Geo-Blogger Barthélémy Courmont demonstrates the growing intensity, complexity and daring of ‘soft’ warfare between the world’s major capitals – a game in which everything goes, except for direct

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EDITOR-IN-CHIEF & PUBLISHER Irvin Studin

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D E PA R T M E N T S

MANAGING EDITOR Sam Sasan Shoamanesh ART DIRECTOR Louis Fishauf ASSOCIATE EDITOR Michael Barutciski ASSISTANT EDITOR Marie Lavoie

EDITORS’ BRIEF. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 1 ONE PAGER

John E. McLaughlin | The future of conflict: a second look. . . . . . . 5

SENIOR EDITOR & ASSISTANT PUBLISHER

Jaclyn Volkhammer

IN SITU

SENIOR EDITOR Milos Jankovic

David Skilling | Middle Earth and the Middle Kingdom. . . . . . . . . . . 6

JUNIOR EDITORS

Arabinda Acharya & Dharitri Dwivedy | ISIS in perspective. . . . . . 28

Carly Barefoot, Patrick Baud, Navdeep Johal, Yves Guillaume A. Messy,

TÊTE À TÊTE

Misha Munim, Ryan Nichols

Kevin Rudd | Asia needs one big new institution . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 8

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Navi Pillay | Rights fights, flavours and futures . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 38

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Sam Mizrahi, Don Ferencz, André Beaulieu, Tim Coates, David Dewitt, Paul Evans, Drew Fagan, Dan Fata, Margaret MacMillan

QUERY Sam S. Shoamanesh | Can the Middle East be saved?. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 18 Hubert Védrine | Existe-t-il une «communauté internationale»? . . . 54 IN THE CABINET ROOM Dusan Petricic | Qatar 2022: summer or summer? . . . . . . . . . . . . . 47

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THE DEFINITION

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Tamir Bar-On vs. Daniel Friedrich The World Cup in Russia and/or Qatar should be boycotted.. . . . . . . . . 56

“The Islamic State of Iraq and Syria (ISIS) is…. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 60 STRATEGIC FUTURES “In 2020, the Kurdistan Region in Iraq… …. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 62 EPIGRAM

George Elliott Clarke | Strategy as chess: the checkered record. . . . 64

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THE CONTOURS OF THE RUSSO-UKRAINIAN PEACE A five-point plan or algorithm can save us from a terrible winter, a frozen conflict, and a century-long problem BY IRVIN STUDIN

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THE INDIGENOUS OPPORTUNITY The resetting of the power of Indigenous peoples is an opportunity for Canada’s domestic and strategic success BY LLOYD AXWORTHY & WAB KINEW

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THE AMERICAN DREAM MOVES SOUTH Why Chile has become the most important country in the Americas for Latin American migrants BY PATRICIO NAVIA

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LE TEMPS DE LA GUERRE DOUCE Entre Pékin, Tokyo, Washington et Moscou, tous les coups sont permis, à l’exception de ceux utilisant les arsenaux militaires. PAR HUBERT VÉDRINE

ALLIANCES OF THE 21ST CENTURY Promiscuity and contingency will replace black and white in the making and breaking of strategic pacts and partnerships BY JEREMI SURI

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The Future of Conflict: A Second Look

ONE PAGER

The former CIA head revisits his predictions from 2009, and projects forward to 2020 BY JOHN E. McLAUGHLIN

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it. At least three key factors point in this direction.

First, the world’s long-time referee is less influential.

We are now past the 17-year period from the fall of the USSR in 1991 to the international financial crisis of 2008 – a period when the US could plausibly claim the title of sole superpower. During this period, not everything that the US did was wise, but it had the freedom to operate with few restrictions on its choices other than affordability.

Although no major problems today can be solved without the US, there are no major problems that the US can solve alone. While Washington has often had to lead various coalitions, the emergence of competing powers – China, Russia, India and others – means that the task will be more complicated and the outcomes less assured. This is receiving its first test in the fight that the US proposes to lead against the Islamic State in the Middle East.

Second, politics is changing and frictions are growing in theatres where there is no regional security organization comparable to NATO, the OSCE or the EU in Europe – and hence no tradition of pooling resources or referring conflicts to an international body. The Middle East is clearly in this category, but East and South Asia may be the most worrisome theatres. In Japan, the Abe government is seeking to remove constitutional limitations on its ability to use force. Many Westerners welcome this as a sign that Tokyo is prepared to assume a greater part of the regional defence burden. At the same time, China is aggressively asserting its perceived rights in the South and East China Seas, resulting in high tensions with Japan, Vietnam and the Philippines. In the event of a clash between China and Japan – deliberate or via miscalculation – there are no mutually accepted procedures for transparency or de-escalation.

Third, ill-intentioned non-state actors are growing in influence and scope. The proliferation of Al Qaeda affiliates and competing terrorist organizations like ISIS are the clearest examples. Altogether, these groups, spanning the Middle East and North and Sub-Saharan Africa, now control more territory and wealth than any terrorists in history.

Other examples include the militias now competing for control in Libya and Ukraine.

None of these problems have short-term solutions.

They form the emerging landscape of international relations. After a period of transition, in which the US enjoyed a measure of dominance greater than it possesses today, we may finally be seeing what the post-Cold War world will really look like. | GB

John E. McLaughlin is Distinguished Practitioner in Residence at the Johns Hopkins School of Advanced International Studies in Washington, DC. He was Deputy Director and Acting Director of the Central Intelligence Agency from 2000 to 2004.

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he future of conflict has become even more difficult to assess than when I took a crack at it in GB’s inaugural issue. Looking back, I would give myself a B on prognostication.

Two themes mentioned then have crystallized in the last five years: first, the growing role of technology, especially as it pertains to cyber offence and defence; and second, the growth of conflict within societies as a result of the convergence of rapid population growth, high unemployment, unresponsive governments, and ethnic/religious tensions.

In the last five years, cyber has become a major source of friction in the international system. The Mandiant security firm reports that every Fortune 1000 firm in the US has been targeted by Chinese hackers, and Symantec Security calculates that the cost of intellectual property theft for the US economy, from all sources, is about US$250 billion per year. No government is close to mastering this problem, nor are there international agreements in place to replicate the arms control pacts that dampened nuclear danger during the Cold War. The problem will be with us for years.

The Arab Spring that kicked off in late 2010/early 2011 is the preeminent example of an explosion that resulted from years of pent-up discontent. However, what we saw in that first year was, as Henry Kissinger then opined, “scene one of act one of a five-act drama.”

The play continues, mostly showing reversals of the original plot, although it is hard to say in which scene or act we now find ourselves.

On the other hand, I was wrong to give such import to resource competition. Demand for energy continues to escalate, but in the intervening years North America has been moving toward energy self-sufficiency as a result of shale technology and conservation – something that I did not foresee in 2009. By 2017, the US may need to buy oil only from Canada, and not long afterward North America will be a net exporter of oil. This does nothing to slow China’s growing need for energy, but it introduces incalculable new factors into the international arena.

What will be the effect on the US economy, world oil prices, import/export patterns, and various dependencies?

Will it revive manufacturing in the US, make exports more competitive, and reduce the current account deficit? Or does this exaggerate the impact? Will we pay less attention to the Middle East, or will we contend, as I do, that larger issues than oil are at stake?

Against that backdrop, and looking ahead five years, perhaps the major conclusion to be drawn about the future of conflict is that there is likely to be much of

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Middle Earth and the Middle Kingdom

IN SITU

Or on the dynamic between very small states and very large states, and how New Zealand is managing its Asia pivot DAVID SKILLING reports from Wellington

T David Skilling is the Director of Landfall Strategy Group, a Singapore-based research and

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advisory firm.

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he liberal, rulesbased international system is weakening, with a more fragmented system emerging in which larger countries and groupings can exert more power and influence. These developments are particularly challenging for small countries, which are disproportionately reliant on international institutions and the rule of law to ensure open markets and a stable security environment.

A small country at the end of the world provides a useful perspective on some of these emerging issues. New Zealand has been insulated from previous episodes of great power politics because of its physical New Zealand Prime isolation – “a strategic dagger Minister John Key pointed at the heart of Antwaves as he makes a arctica,” as it were. But as the speech after winning centre of global economic and a third term in office in political gravity moves toward the national election, Asia, New Zealand is grappling September 2014. with a new strategic context.

The country is adjusting to this relatively well (see my Nez à Nez debate with Hugh White in the Fall 2012 issue of GB), but ongoing adaptation to this disruptive change will be required.

Like Australia, New Zealand has long been seen as a Western outpost in Asia. It is physically on the periphery of Asia, but is now acutely aware that its economic and strategic future is increasingly tied to the region.

Indeed, New Zealand has profited substantially from the explosive economic rise of China (see the Feature article

by Barthélémy Courmont at p. 40); this relationship was one of the key factors that moderated the effect of the global financial crisis on New Zealand.

The share of New Zealand’s merchandise trade exports to China rose from four percent in 2001 to 22 percent in 2013. China is now New Zealand’s largest goods export market, and tourism, migration, and investment flows are also growing rapidly.The Chinese economic relationship is expected to continue to grow

strongly. Prime Minister John Key recently committed to an official target for two-way trade with China to increase by another 50 percent to NZ$30 billion by 2020 from about NZ$20 billion today. This growth is supported by investments to increase New Zealand’s official representation in China – now New Zealand’s largest offshore physical presence. The September re-election of the government for a third term will see a continuation of this policy direction.

Just as the New Zealand-China relationship has generated significant economic dividends (in the general), it has also created significant economic exposure. A Chinese economic slowdown would now have a significant effect on the New Zealand economy.

Of course, New Zealand has previous experience with such economic exposure. One of the searing moments in New Zealand’s history happened in 1973 when the UK joined the European Economic Community, ending preferential market access for New Zealand exports to the UK (which accounted for about half of New Zealand’s exports in the 1960s). This generated substantial economic costs.

Indeed, one general lesson from and for small states is that economic diversification is valuable: you do not want to have all of your eggs in one basket.

Partly for this reason, New Zealand is actively involved in negotiating free-trade agreements with a broad

PHOTOGRAPH: THE CANADIAN PRESS / AP / NEW ZEALAND HERALD / MARK MITCHELL

ship with Tokyo. But this is based on a more balanced economic power relationship between Australia and China: Australia has even greater economic exposure to China, but has the great advantage of Chinese reliance on its supply of high-quality iron ore.

To provide a sense of how China is prepared to act to advance its interests, it is useful to consider recent country experiences. In 2010, the Nobel Peace Prize was awarded to the Chinese dissident Liu Xiaobo by the Norwegian Prize Committee. Exports of Norwegian salmon to China were subsequently restricted (for new veterinary reasons), resulting in significant losses in global market share. The Norwegian government, in turn, recently announced that it would not meet with the Dalai Lama, with a view to restoring the Chinese relationship.

The UK Government had similar problems after Prime Minister Cameron met with the Dalai Lama in 2012. Cameron was refused a state visit to Beijing, and the relationship is still quite cool compared to that enjoyed by European competitors Germany and France. The UK’s quiet stance on recent protests in Hong Kong is seen to be at least partly based on a desire not to upset China. And in Southeast Asia, China uses its economic importance to influence the behaviour of ASEAN member states – for example, to make it more difficult to reach unanimity in ASEAN on South China Sea issues.

To be sure, China is not the only large country that uses its economic power over smaller countries. New Zealand has memories of French behaviour in the 1980s after the Rainbow Warrior bombing; and New Zealand has not been at the front of the queue for a free-trade agreement with the US, in part because of its stance on the 2003 Iraq war and its anti-nuclear stance in the 1980s (which resulted in banning US naval vessels from New Zealand ports). In other words, political power has always mattered, even if it seems likely that economics and politics will be more tightly linked in respect of China than for other relationships.

The possible pinch points could be several, from New Zealand’s stance on regional issues to policy on Chinese investment in New Zealand. But the ability of small countries to act fully independently is more constricted when large countries have significant economic power, and when the multilateral system is not functioning well.

The intersection of international economics and politics – and the growing need to balance economic and political interests – will, as in centuries past, be a real challenge for many countries in this early new century. In the region, apart from New Zealand, countries like Australia and Singapore face many similar issues. History shows clearly that large countries tend to act like large countries. And so small countries in Asia – and elsewhere – will need to continue to be very thoughtful in order to survive and prosper in the shadow of their larger neighbours. | GB

It is likely that Wellington will do or say something that will put the country at odds with Beijing on an issue about which the latter cares.

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range of partners (including with the Trans-Pacific Partnership), and has developed strategies for building engagement with regions such as ASEAN and the Gulf Cooperation Council.

Still, in addition to the direct consequences of the country’s economic concentration, there is a sense that this economic exposure may create a broader vulnerability in which China is able to exert strategic pressure on New Zealand. For example, it may be able to use New Zealand’s economic reliance on China to encourage New Zealand to act in a particular way, or to punish or reward the country for particular behaviour.

This may restrict Wellington’s freedom of choice, or make certain choices more costly.

This vulnerability is due to a manifestly asymmetrical power relationship. China clearly has more direct influence and hard power than New Zealand. And New Zealand’s economic reliance on Chinese demand is greater than China’s reliance on New Zealand (there are alternative suppliers of milk and other commodities to which China could shift).

New Zealand’s rapidly growing commercial relationship with China has to date been predicated on a strong bilateral political relationship, developed through sustained investment by successive governments over four decades. For example, New Zealand was the first country to recognize China as a ‘market economy’ for the purposes of WTO accession in 2004. This led to the world-first free-trade agreement with China (and now free-trade agreements with Hong Kong and Taiwan), as well as a recent agreement on renminbi convertibility.

New Zealand has thus been careful to position itself as relatively independent, and has not disagreed with China on major issues. Indeed, China refers to New Zealand as a model for the ‘bilateral relations between China and other developed countries.’

The flipside is that the ongoing health of the economic relationship is contingent on the state of the political relationship. And as the bilateral relationship becomes larger and more complex, New Zealand will inevitably be confronted by a series of challenging questions and choices in respect of China. It is likely that Wellington will do or say something that will put the country at odds with Beijing on an issue about which the latter cares. This need not be the consequence of New Zealand’s political mismanagement as much as of the basic realities of the interaction between large and small powers (as a Chinese official recently warned an ASEAN meeting: “we are large, you are small”). And China is becoming a much more assertive regional power in respect of its neighbours, such as Vietnam and the Philippines, not to mention Japan (see the Tête à Tête interview with Kevin Rudd at p. 8).

The differences in approach to China between New Zealand and Australia partly reflect these realities.

Canberra has adopted a more assertive stance on regional issues in Asia, has the US alliance as a central part of its foreign policy, and is deepening its relation-

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We need to develop a robust pan-regional institution that includes all emerging powers in Asia together with an open mandate to deal with political, economic and security questions.

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PHOTOGRAPH: THE CANADIAN PRESS / KYM SMITH / NEWSPIX / REX

Asia Needs One Big New Institution

TÊTE À TÊTE

GB sits down with the former Australian premier to discuss the future of Asian stability and the continent’s not-so-automatic stabilizers Conversation with KEVIN RUDD

GB: Do you foresee military conflict in Asia in the next decade?

Kevin Rudd was

KR: We cannot rule out military conflict in Asia in the next decade because there are too many hot spots on the one hand, and an absence of predictable diplomatic control mechanisms on the other. If we look across the whole spread of the region from the Korean Peninsula through to Kashmir, and all points in between, we have ample opportunity for military conflict to occur – that is, ample opportunity for incidents to occur that are difficult to contain diplomatically. This is why we need, as I have long argued, enhanced regional institutions capable of reducing these tensions over time and managing conflicts that might emerge.

Prime Minister of Australia between 2007 and 2010, and also in 2013.

GB: Which potential conflict in Asia worries you most?

KR: There are two that involve nuclear weapons. The big one, of course, is on the Korean Peninsula. We have in North Korea a nuclear programme and a regime that is proving increasingly difficult even for China to manage. Second, at the other end of Asia, is the continuation of the Iranian nuclear programme and our inability, thus far, to negotiate an outcome. When we are dealing with the breakout or the potential breakout of nuclear weapons capabilities, we have a huge problem – one compounded by the fact that the world community has perhaps forgotten the monstrously destructive nature of nuclear weapons.

GB: What will China look like 10 years hence? What about Japan?

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KR: The next 10 years are an open question. Xi Jinping has a blueprint for the country’s future. By 2023, Beijing wants to have achieved middle income status for the Chinese people. And by 2023 we are likely to see China’s GDP exceeding that of the US in both nominal terms and purchasing power parity terms.

Over the next 10 years, in strategic terms, we will see an increasingly active China right across Asia, seeking to improve its diplomatic operating environment. We will see a continued expansion of China’s military capabilities, but these will still fall far short of those of the US, which maintains an overwhelming strategic margin over China.

As for the Japanese, we understand what Prime Minister Abe and Finance Minister Taro Aso are trying to do economically in terms of reviving the national economy via the three arrows strategy. The international community will be assessing, with deep interest, the capacity of the Japanese to bring about systemic reform in the Japanese economy in order to promote growth beyond that which is the product of temporary fiscal and monetary policy stimulus. Whether

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Japan succeeds in this systemic reform is an open question. There have, of course, been signs of the economy at last growing. The question is whether Tokyo will bite the bullet in order to genuinely cause a new takeoff in Japanese growth.

GB: What is the current prospect of ChineseJapanese conflict?

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I do indeed see Indonesia being the third large anchor of the Asian economy.

Within the next decade Indonesia will be bigger economically than Australia.

And that forward trajectory will continue well into this century.

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KR: The China-Japan impasse is fundamentally unresolvable because there are such deeply entrenched official positions in Beijing and Tokyo in respect of the status of the disputed islands. We need to be vocal about the reality that a concession by either Beijing or Tokyo on the question of sovereignty would be politically unpalatable in their domestic politics. Unfortunately, there is a real danger of Japan and China entering conflict by miscalculation simply because there is so much military hardware lying around. If a collision were to occur, the political capacity to control escalation would be highly limited, particularly given the nature of national sentiment in each capital against the other.

More encouraging is the fact that over the last six months Japan and China have tried to de-escalate.

The number of military, naval and coast guard assets is, on my understanding, smaller now than it once was. There seems to be a mutual calculation to the effect that the chances of an incident occurring – again, through miscalculation, given the sheer quantity of military assets – are reduced to the extent that the volume of military assets, in what is a confined area, is reduced. Note, however, that when I say that the China-Japan impasse is unresolvable, I do not mean to suggest that the bilateral tension is unmanageable.

GB: What is your view of the proposition that Indonesia will, after China and India, be Asia’s third most important country this century?

KR: I have long been bullish on Indonesia. This goes back to when Susilo Bambang Yudhoyono (SBY) took on the presidency about a decade ago. Indonesia has undergone a democratic transformation. The country’s corruption is not fully under control, but it is certainly not spiralling out of control. Finally, until recently, Indonesia, with its significant natural resources and growing middle class, enjoyed a decade of over six percent economic growth. I do indeed see Indonesia being the third large anchor of the Asian economy. At present, the fourth largest economy in Asia, after China, Japan and India, is Australia. But within the next decade Indonesia will be bigger economically than Australia. And that forward trajectory will continue well into this century.

GB: How would Indonesia behave as a large Asian power? Does it have the psychology of a large power?

KR: Indonesia’s preoccupations have been overwhelmingly domestic in unifying a vast entity consisting of tens of thousands of islands containing over 250 million people into a single functioning nation-state. This is the continuing miracle of Indonesian politics – democratic progress coupled with reasonable economic growth.

In terms of Jakarta’s external orientation, under SBY Indonesia has begun to take upon itself a conspicuous regional and global role. You can see some of this through the ambition of the Bali Democracy Forum. Indonesia is a democracy and a major developing, Muslim country that has served as an exemplar for democratic transformation in the Organization of Islamic Countries (OIC), the G77 and also in the G20. I think that we are going to see the continued gradual emergence of a wider regional view and an increasingly mature global view on the part of the Indonesians, even if there remain challenges on the home front.

GB: How goes Australia’s Asia pivot?

KR: Australia’s engagement with Asia is by now a bipartisan consensus. Twenty years ago this was not the case. Australia is now a member of virtually every single pan-Asian institution. We are members of the East Asia Summit, APEC, the Afghan Regional Forum, and the Asian part of the table of the AsiaEurope Summit. We have been dialogue partners for 40 years with ASEAN, and we are members of the Asian Development Bank at the vice-presidency level. In my view, therefore, the institutional underpinnings of Australian engagement in Asia have been fundamentally established. The country is quite relaxed about that, and that is a good thing.

GB: What are the missing pan-Asian institutions for this century?

KR: We need to develop a robust pan-regional institution that includes all emerging powers in Asia together with an open mandate to deal with political, economic and security questions. I called this the Asia Pacific Community in 2008. In 2010, we took a significant step forward with the US and Russia joining the East Asia Summit.

My argument is quite simple. You take the expanded membership of the East Asia Summit, which includes all 18 major East Asian states, plus India, plus Russia, plus the US. That institution then begins to craft out basic levels of strategic trust, consensus-building, as well as dispute resolution mechanisms. Given the absence of any regional

mechanism like the EU in our part of the world, a large part of my own personal diplomacy lay precisely in advocating for such an institution. I continue to advocate for the creation of such an institution to this day.

GB: What would you propose to call this new institution?

KR: The name that I am proposing is Asia Pacific Community.

been NATO, for obvious historical reasons, and more recently the EU and also the US via bilateral engagements with the Russian Federation. For Australia, we engage the Russians through institutions like the UN Security Council (Australia has been a non-permanent member for the last two years) and even the East Asia Summit. But the bottom line is that the primary line of engagement has been European-Russian rather than Australian-Russian.

GB: Will Singapore survive this century?

GB: How important is language to a country’s capacity to pivot meaningfully to Asia?

KR: We are engaging great civilizations in Asia. It is important to convey respect. A key way to convey respect for some of the world’s great civilizations is to spend some time understanding the language and cultures of countries in the region. These countries, in many cases, have a high degree of national pride. These are all very large countries on the block – much larger than ours. Look at China, Japan, India or Indonesia: we need to get beyond the simple arrogance that English is the global lingua franca. English only really acquired that status after WW2. Prior to that, combinations of French and Latin occupied that status for many hundreds of years longer than English. But Chinese is now the most widely spoken language in the world. So for all these practical reasons, but also because of the need for cultural respect, there is a need for countries such as Canada, Australia and the US to take seriously the languages and cultures of Asia.

GB: Do federations like Australia, Canada and the US have more difficulty effecting pivots – say, Asia pivots – than unitary states?

GB: Australia was touched by the Ukraine crisis this past summer through the downing of Malaysian Airlines Flight 17. How does this affect Canberra’s Asia pivot, and does Australia have any serious strategic capacity in the former Soviet space?

KR: The principal point of Western engagement with the old Soviet Union and today’s Russia has

GB: Which leaders in the world today – democratic or non-democratic – are the most forward-looking?

And do democratic systems limit the planning function and capacity of political or public leaders?

KR: Publicly nominating political leaders as good, bad or indifferent does not help anyone in any global diplomatic processes. As for specific countries, there are evidently players that in their actions take both national and global interests into account – that is, they are national players and at the same time very invested in the health of the global order. The Scandinavian countries are the first to come to mind in this respect.

As for the second question, you ask whether democracies are hamstrung. The truth is that democracies have a huge capacity not just to legitimize the actions of government in virtue of the way in which governments are elected, but also a great degree of political ballast capable of enduring great political shocks in ways that other forms of government do not enjoy.

It is true, of course, that it is very difficult for democracies to sustain a strategic focus over time if leaders are constantly being buffeted by the reality of electoral politics. But that is where, in our various systems of government in Canada, Australia and the UK, there is great virtue in the idea of having a permanent, high-quality, committed civil service that is dedicated to continuing the advancement of particular national policy projects or to prosecuting particular international initiatives. | GB

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KR: The virtue of federal arrangements like those in Canada, the US and Australia is that through the principle of competitive federalism, provinces and states can often, within constitutional limits, do what they wish to do. States and provinces can therefore take the lead in mandating that Asian or other languages become part of the school curriculum. Australian states have done a lot of work in this respect over the years.

KR: Singapore will change and evolve in response to its strategic circumstances, and will continue to carve out its future this century. What has made Singapore work is simply the energy of its people.

It has no national resources other than its human resources. The Singaporeans turned the country from a swamp some 60 years ago – peripheral in the world – to one of the planet’s most important hubs. The operating environment for Singapore will be complicated by the rise of China, but I know that our Singaporean friends are thinking their way through that.

Democracies have a huge capacity not just to legitimize the actions of government in virtue of the way in which governments are elected, but also a great degree of political ballast capable of enduring great political shocks in ways that other forms of government do not enjoy.

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A five-point plan or algorithm can save us from a terrible winter, a frozen conflict, and a century-long problem Irvin Studin is

BY IRVIN STUDIN

Editor-in Chief and Publisher of Global Brief.

THE CONTOURS OF THE

RUSSO-UKRAINIAN PEACE

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here is a solution to the conflict in southeastern Ukraine.

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It is not necessarily elegant, but it must come soon – in the next month or two. The solution has five points, each of which I take up in turn below.

The onset of winter, when even in non-war years hundreds of people across Ukraine die from exposure, will change the psychological complexion of the conflict. With critical infrastructure destroyed in large parts of Donetsk and Lugansk, and with thousands of refugees internally displaced by the fighting, the winter death toll will likely rise.

While all parties to the conflict are increasingly tiring of combat, winter will inject renewed strategic importance into the question of the supply of Russian natural gas and its transport into Ukraine and through Ukraine to European markets. Economic sanctions against Russia, already felt, will increasingly push Russian leaders and elites to psychologically disconnect from Europe – Russia’s own species of a pro-China Asia pivot. And any push toward extreme sanctions in the form of boycotting or suspending Russia’s 2018 World Cup (see the Nez à Nez debate between Tamir Bar-On and Daniel Friedrich at p. 56) would likely only intensify Russia’s growing psychic alienation and radicalize its reactions and countermeasures in the theatre of conflict – to wit, by adopting a ‘nothing to lose’ or ‘a plague on their houses’ posture in respect of the West.

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ILLUSTRATION: CHRISTIAN NORTHEAST

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It would take a century to recover from the psychological loss of Russia. In theatres ranging from the Arctic to the Middle East (including in respect of ISIS – see Definition at p. 60), Asia and Europe proper, where there will not be direct confrontation between Western interests and Russia, there will be deep distrust and non-collaboration, leaving many major global challenges unresolved or altogether untouched.

Of course, the reverse should prove true if we are able to arrive at a sustainable peace in the RussoUkrainian space: Russia will play its proper role as a strategic and psychological bridge between Europe and Asia, will become a key partner for the peaceable development of the Arctic space, and will play a pivotal role in the reshaping of the Middle East this century (see the Query article by Sam Sasan Shoamanesh at p. 18).

Any solution to the Russo-Ukrainian conflict must reckon with the basic fact that the Ukrainian revolution and the subsequent Russian annexation of Crimea effectively resulted in ‘two houses radicalized’ – but radicalized in different ways. Ukraine’s radicalization came in the form of the rise and proliferation of violent ultra-nationalist militias – led by Pravy Sektor – which not only provided the sharp end of the revolts that toppled President Viktor Yanukovych in February of this year, but have been a key part of Ukraine’s subsequent military campaign in southeastern Ukraine. These militias are loosely beholden to the new government in Kiev.

Indeed, they have threatened to march on this same government a number of times in response to various grievances. And therein lies the key dynamic in Ukraine’s post-revolutionary radicalization: any peace with Russia must not disappoint or be seen as treacherous to these militias. Such disappointment or perceived treachery will lead the militias to topple the Poroshenko government.

For its part, Russian radicalization comes less from the Ukrainian revolution per se and more from the romantic nationalist euphoria (and agitprop) triggered across Russia by the annexation of Crimea – an annexation that might be viewed as a ‘biblical’ response by Moscow to a) the extra-constitutional removal of a sitting Ukrainian president, incompetent but otherwise friendly to Russia, by militias that now have a major say in the terms of Ukrainian government and strategic behaviour; and b) perceived Western cover for, if not interference

in the service of, this extra-constitutional removal (see my Query article on the causes and mechanics of the revolution in the Winter/Spring 2014 issue of GB). The annexation had two target audiences: the first domestic, for which the central narrative of the Crimean absorption was the reconstitution of historical Russian territory (the limits of which were left to the imagination); and the second international, for which the message was that Moscow would not accept Western states crossing swords with critical Russian security, political and economic interests right at Russia’s borders (see my Feature article “Governing in the Former Soviet Space” in the Fall 2013 issue of GB).

The Crimean gambit, to use a chess analogy (doubtless part of Russian strategic mentality), turned the board on its head and injected a de novo logic into the Ukrainian revolution. It suggested to counterrevolutionary forces in other parts of Ukraine – particularly in the eastern and southeastern oblasts – an algorithm by which they could also be absorbed by Russia in the context of a postrevolutionary Ukraine in which they did not see themselves as having a voice (or otherwise in response to the revolutionary militias that they perceived as wanting to make them accept the terms of the revolution at the barrel of a gun).

The algorithm was intimated, the counterrevolution gained speed (of course, even without Russian insinuation, there would have been counterrevolution of some description – as revolutions always breed counterrevolutions), but Russia did not, or could not, absorb. Still, Russia’s de facto and selfpropelled role as the protector and patron of these counterrevolutionary forces was confirmed – in particular for Russian audiences and for the more nationalist representatives of Russia’s political class.

A

nd so we have the boxes in which both Ukraine and Russia find themselves: Poroshenko must consolidate the revolution and stabilize post-revolutionary Ukraine without disappointing the ultranationalist militias, while Putin, in the context of a systemically fragile Russia, must not betray the image that he has erected as protector of Ukraine’s Russophone and Russophile populations. Let me add that if this is,

defensively speaking, Russia’s bottom line, then in light of the harsh sanctions levelled to date against Russia, Moscow also surely has the more general long-term (or ‘offensive’) objective of having these sanctions lifted and of normalizing Russian relations with Western states – even if the Kremlin is skeptical about the upward elasticity of Western demands in respect of the lifting of these sanctions.

T

Any solution to the Russo-Ukrainian conflict must reckon with the basic fact that the Ukrainian revolution and the subsequent Russian annexation of Crimea resulted in ‘two houses radicalized,’ but radicalized in different ways. in the idiom of Australian constitutionalism, that its federation is indissoluble. Russia should recognize this indissolubility in the peace treaty. This should overcome the Ukrainian fear that elected provincial governors will go on to hold secession referenda, as per the algorithm suggested by the Crimean annexation.

Fourth, Ukraine should establish ‘special economic zones’ for several provinces in the southeast.

These zones would allow these provinces to continue to enjoy preferential trading terms with Russia and the Eurasian Customs Union just as Ukraine in its entirety moves to free trade with the EU. Finally, and most controversially, Ukraine should agree not to pursue NATO membership, or otherwise to never allow the positioning of any foreign bases or forces on its territory.

The fifth point – more symbolic than substantive, as Ukrainian membership in NATO is highly improbable in the first place – will be the most contested, but it should not prevent a deal comprising at least the first four. We have a month and a half – maximum two – to make this happen. | GB

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he good news is that, for those who care to look, a diplomatic exit from the Ukraine-Russia impasse is in sight. The recent ceasefire agreements brokered in Minsk have been imperfect in completely arresting the hostilities, but they have shown that all sides, and certainly the civilians caught in between, are tiring of the fight – especially as the conflict has often pitted family against family, and cousin against cousin, even on the front lines. Still, the short-term ceasefire regime will soon be gamed against the prospects and content of a longer-term truce. If this strategic truce fails to materialize or is seen as improbable (the growing perception on the ground, and also in key international capitals), then general hostilities will resume – only to be complicated, as mentioned, by the onset of winter.

A five-point plan or algorithm suggests itself for resolving the conflict in a way that meets the interests of both Kiev and Moscow.

The first immediate part of any comprehensive peace plan must be the introduction of international peacekeepers into southeastern Ukraine and along the Ukraine-Russia border. While the current ceasefire regime has called for a buffer zone between the belligerents, only proper peacekeepers can secure this buffer zone and give the parties confidence to begin the process of disarming and demilitarization. Let me stress that, in order to be reasonably acceptable to all sides, these peacekeepers should come only from Asian countries (I nominate India and Singapore) – that is from non-NATO countries, and preferably not from other countries in the former Soviet space.

Second, Ukraine should federalize – yes, federalize. It should decrease the number of oblasts from the current 24 to no more than a dozen provinces in order to allow Kiev to still have planning and strategic coherence over the whole, while at the same time allowing the provinces to elect their governors. Federalism will moderate the excesses of the revolution for those parts of the population that have been reluctant to accept it, and will also allow the country to democratize more rapidly.

Moreover, the UK’s inevitable push to federalize in the aftermath of the Scottish referendum should overcome a received wisdom in Kiev today to the effect that unitary states seldom go federal.

That the major federations of the West – Canada, the US and Germany – have not jumped on Russia’s proposals for federalizing Ukraine is a testimony to how strangely dogmatic otherwise open societies have become in the course of the year since the Euromaidan protests began in late 2013. These same federations, with Canada in the lead, have for the last few decades been energetically advising on, and engineering, federal and quasi-federal solutions for countries around the world in order to resolve various species of majority-minority fissures. And yet for Ukraine, which, like all of the countries of the former Soviet space (including Russia), has no clue about how federalism really works, it is only the fact that a federal solution should come from Russian lips that has blinded established federations and their marketers from appropriating Moscow’s words in order to help Ukraine craft a proper federal regime that would save its national skin.

Third, Ukraine should insert into its constitution,

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Can the Middle East Be Fixed?

Yes. Amid the chaos and bloodshed, there may be a historic opportunity.

BY SAM SASAN SHOAMANESH

H

istory tells us that regional cataclysms can galvanize states to reconsider and renegotiate long-held positions and postures. They provide an opportunity to challenge conventional wisdom and to look for new ways of doing business. Even adversaries have to recalibrate when interests suddenly converge or demand a deviation from what was once considered normal behaviour. There may be realignment and reconsideration of alliances (see the Feature article by Jeremi Suri at p. 48). Witness the emergence of today’s 28-member EU from the ashes of WW2, or the growing calls for a comparable 21st century institution for the Asia-Pacific region

(see the Tête à Tête interview with Kevin Rudd at p. 8).

The Middle East finds itself at a critical juncture in its history. Yet another crisis confirms the growing imperative to reconstruct and reconstitute its outdated regional order through indigenous leadership, initiative and design. The rise of ISIS and the security threat that it presents to Iraq and Syria, and perhaps other states in the region (see the In Situ article by Arabinda Acharya and Dharitri Dwivedy at p. 28; see also Definition at p. 60) demands a coordinated regional response. The need for such a regional solution only adds to the strength – indeed, urgency – of the case for the establishment of a regional security framework in the Middle East.

PHOTOGRAPH: GETTY IMAGES / AMRU SALAHUDDIEN / ANADOLU AGENCY

very much a deliberate imperial project to bolster imperial London’s regional influence in the Persian Gulf and to secure a strategic outpost to safeguard British interests in India. Iraq itself was annexed by the British without much regard or appreciation for the tribal, sectarian and cultural realities on the ground – Kurds (see Strategic Futures at p. 62), Assyrians (mostly Christians), Turkoman, Sunnis, Shia, etc. Consider also Lebanon, its confessional politics, and the destructive Lebanese Civil War (1975-1990), as well a host of other examples in the region where colonial tampering has contributed to regional incoherence and angst. In short, the Middle East as it exists today is largely the product of poor external geostrategic engineering, rather than indigenous invention and planning. It is an archaic, failed order in need of reform.

T

he 2003 invasion of Iraq and the Arab Spring unleashed unpredictable and violent forces. The absence of democratic traditions and institutions across most of the region, coupled with the sudden weakening of many strong central governments, upended the logic of the region’s already weak and incoherent security and governance structures.

Building on the region’s costly historical experiences and hyper-volatile security landscape, we may today be observing an intellectual and strategic paradigm shift among a number of leading regional thinkers and actors – a shift that suggests that leaders and states in the region may before long be disposed to committing themselves to serious diplomatic engagement in respect of a more comprehensive approach to regional security. Early signals of Saudi-Iran détente precipitated by the threat of ISIS highlight the severe security crisis facing the region today. They also hint at opportunities to foster regional solutions to regional problems.

Mentalities may be changing, or being changed by strategic forces, to no longer see geopolitical interaction as zero-sum.

What are these leaders and states seeing? Answer: alarmingly frequent hot wars; the threat of nuclear proliferation; and, among many other problems, continuous threats of cross-border terrorism by potent non-state forces – like ISIS. They see a regional order that is not only highly unstable, but inching toward collapse. They see a region with countless instances of mass atrocities, incapable of adequately addressing such odious crimes or deterring their commission. (Note: The fact that the Middle East is one of the most underrepresented regional blocks of States Parties at the International Criminal Court certainly does not help this impunity gap.)

For all of its ills – and likely also because of them – the Middle East is one of the world’s most strategically significant regions. Stunningly, perhaps, the region

A first move must be the establishment of a standing regional security forum to discuss issues of strategic concern, from nuclear proliferation and crossborder terrorism to drug trafficking.

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As long as Middle Eastern states do not assume collective ownership of the long list of security challenges that plague the theatre, and otherwise fail to create effective mechanisms for security dialogue and conflict management – and, just as importantly, as long as the region’s security is farmed out to outside powers – the region will continue to be plagued by the acute security dilemmas that have driven its chronic instability.

The dysfunctional order that defines today’s Middle East has been shaped by critical events in both ancient and modern history: the Arab invasion of Persia in 633 AD, the Battle of Chaldiran and Ottoman-Safavid (Sunni-Shia) regional rivalry in the 16th century, WW1 and its colonial legacy, the 2003 invasion of Iraq, the Arab Spring, and now the Arab Winter. All of these and many more have contributed to the complex regional landscape, including its myriad sectarian divisions.

Grand external designs in the 20th century to shape the region into a satellite order that largely served Western interests, without due regard for, Foreign Ministers or adequate understanding of, start meetings at the the region’s diverse religious, 142nd session of the cultural, linguistic, historical Arab League in Cairo, and political realities led to September 2014. frictions and conflicts that fester to this very day. As we know, European annexation of the region – especially by the UK and France – was directly responsible for the creation of multiple fragile states after the collapse of the Ottoman Empire in 1923. These states have ever since been ridden with internal pressures – not easily mastered – and major cross-border and international tensions.

Consider, in more recent history, Saddam Hussein’s invasion of Kuwait in 1990. Apart from Baghdad’s interest in that country’s oil wealth and a desire to cancel out the sizeable debts owed by Iraq to Kuwait arising from the Iran-Iraq war, Iraq’s aggression was also largely premised on its historical ties and purported claims to Kuwait. In fact, the separation of Kuwait from contemporary Iraq was

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does not yet have in place the necessary institutions and mechanisms to discuss and manage, and to prevent and respond to crises. Strategic and visionary leadership is required to reverse the state of the region.

A first move must be the establishment of a standing regional security forum to discuss issues of strategic concern, from nuclear proliferation and cross-border terrorism to drug trafficking. Core regional states should champion and initiate such a project with the support of other Middle Eastern capitals and the international community. Let me suggest that, in the present circumstances, the first edition of this regional security summit should be jointly organized or hosted by the likes of Turkey, Iran, Saudi Arabia and Iraq. The central focus of the agenda should be the threat posed by ISIS and the contours of a collaborative, sustainable regional solution to the menace. The agenda could also plant the seeds for a region-wide strategy to address cross-border terrorism – a longer-term effort that would be in keeping with the idea that the security forum should be a logical precursor to a more comprehensive security architecture for the Middle East.

Ours is an age of regionalism – that is, of an emerging global order wherein different regions will increasingly interact, cooperate and compete with one another. Collective strength and common security will be key to individual country success. The Western world is well ahead in this game. Eurasia, Asia and the Middle East – all theatres of past and present conflicts, and surely candidates for more conflicts in the future – are notably behind. For Middle Eastern leaders, then, the reconstruction of the region’s security order is the ultimate test of statesmanship in our time.

Western capitals, for their part, have every interest to support regional security in the Middle East – that is, a regional order not based on the corrupt and violent ideologies of groups like ISIS, but one that is pluralistic, peaceful and productive, and designed to engage constructively with the rest of the world. As Henry Kissinger observes in his latest book World Order, “[t]he contemporary quest for world order will require a coherent strategy to establish an order within the various regions, and to relate these regional orders to one another. […] A world order of states affirming individual dignity and participatory governance, and cooperating internationally in accordance with agreed upon rules [and with respect for international law], can be our hope and should be our inspiration.”

In the tumultuous theatre that is today’s Middle East lies a historic opportunity – the opportunity to reverse the degenerative course of the region and to secure for it a bright and promising new century. A first diplomatic security conference, by and for the region, with the support of the international community, must be organized as a matter of priority. | GB

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ILLUSTRATION: SYLVIE DAIGNEAULT

The dramatic resetting of the place, position and power of Indigenous peoples is an opportunity – for Canada’s domestic health and also for its strategic success

BY LLOYD AXWORTHY & WAB KINEW

THE

INDIGENOUS

OPPORTUNITY Lloyd Axworthy was Canada’s Minister of Foreign Affairs from 1996 to 2000, and President and Vice-Chancellor of the University of Winnipeg from 2004 to 2014.

Wab Kinew is the interim Associate Vice-President for Indigenous Relations at the University of Winnipeg and a correspondent with Al Jazeera America.

GLOBAL BRIEF • FALL | WINTER 2015

t the northeast corner of British Columbia, the Fort Nelson First Nation – population 700 – is but one of many Aboriginal communities, organizations and individuals at the cutting edge of establishing a new doctrine that not only governs relations between Indigenous peoples and the Canadian state, but may even offer a new opportunity to bring sustainable approaches to resource development at the global level.

For centuries, the Dene and Cree people of today’s Fort Nelson First Nation have practiced a rich culture, harvesting the land to sustain themselves, yet also respecting the delicate balance of the natural order around them. Now there may be a new path to economic prosperity: liquefied natural gas (LNG). The BC government has staked its long-term fiscal health on the development of LNG, betting that a price differential in the Asian market (see the Tête à Tête interview with Kevin Rudd at p. 8) will provide enough revenue to help it balance its books and spawn an industrial base that may one day rival Alberta’s oil sands. While this ignores the prospect of Russian or Australian gas beating the BC product to the

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Asian market, it has led to dozens of wells being drilled in the traditional territory of the Fort Nelson Dene and Cree.

In April of this year, Sharleen Gale, at the time the community’s chief, invited industry, government and First Nations leaders into Fort Nelson to chart a course forward in respect of the development of the LNG resources. Around this time, and without informing First Nations, the provincial government removed the requirement for environmental reviews of LNG power plants in the province. Gale learned of this decision the day before the start of the conference.

On April 16th, clutching a sacred eagle feather, she ejected the emissaries of the provincial government, and then the LNG industry officials as well. The move had a profound effect. Within a day, the province reversed course, apologized and reinstated the environmental reviews.

Within a few weeks, the premier had visited the Fort Nelson First Nation and opened up direct communication between her ministers and the community.

The Fort Nelson story is just one of many examples across the country in which Indigenous interests, resource development imperatives and the larger sovereignty of First Nations and the Canadian state are being renegotiated and reconciled in an environment of continuous political, legal and even spiritual flux. Canada is experiencing a dramatic resetting of the place, position and power of Indigenous peoples. This will not only change the fundamentals of Canadian governance and society, but also have significant repercussions internationally.

The forces at play are numerous. A nationwide, spiritually inspired grassroots movement called Idle No More – driven primarily by young Aboriginal men and women who were challenging the unequal status of their people relative to other Canadians, as well as the deplorable living conditions in Indigenous communities – galvanized the country last year. Alongside Idle No More, several other vectors provide context and colour: the national Indigenous leadership

has thus far failed to work out acceptable funding for education and social services with the federal government (in August of this year, the Prime Minister dismissed calls for an inquiry into the disappearance and death of some 1,200 young Indigenous women); a new legal doctrine has emerged from the Canadian courts, with the recent Tsilhqot’in decision affirming treaty rights and Aboriginal title, and requiring the participation of Indigenous peoples in decisionmaking in respect of resource development in their communities; the work of the Truth and Reconciliation Commission of Canada investigating residential schools (government-sponsored, church-run institutions that, for more than a century, aimed to ‘kill the Indian in the child’) opened to public view the profound impact of this era on the identity and capacity of First Nations people; and, finally, the UN Special Rapporteur on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples shone a light on the destructive treatment of Indigenous peoples historically and to this day, including in his specific report on Canada this past spring.

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here has been mixed reaction to these various vectors. Ottawa, while trying to initiate education reform and retool on some governance issues, has been obdurate in its refusal to guarantee adequate funding for the education of First Nations children without extracting concessions from the communities. The First Nations chiefs are themselves divided: Shawn Atleo resigned as National Chief of the Assembly of First Nations in May of this year in part because of widespread disagreement about how to deal with the federal government. Mining companies and many in the business community are, for their part, reluctant to make changes in what has been a traditionally exploitative approach to resource development.

Finally, there is the recurring problem of Canadian racism: two Canadian cities – Winnipeg and Thunder Bay – have had candidates in their civic elections come under fire for being tied to discriminatory comments about Indigenous peoples.

There are, however, positive signs. National attention has finally turned to the issue of missing and murdered Indigenous women. The murder of 15-year old Tina Fontaine of Manitoba’s Sagkeeng First Nation led to large-scale marches, national media coverage, and a response from the provincial premiers and the federal government in August.

Indigenous people are increasingly educated. A 2013 report presented at a conference organized by Queen’s University noted that from 1996 to 2011 the proportion of the national Indigenous population

with a post-secondary education increased from 28 percent to 48 percent (an increase of some 183,000 post-secondary graduates). Indigenous adults with a post-secondary education today significantly outnumber those who have yet to complete high school. (Note, of course, that the high school attrition rate among Manitoba First Nations is 63 percent.)

The business world is similarly waking up to the Indigenous resurgence around it. Brian Lee Crowley and Ken Coates have written that “several impressive agreements between Aboriginal groups and businesses point to a burst of job creation, joint ventures and revenue-sharing the likes of which Canada has rarely seen.” They note that deals have led to increasing First Nations, Métis and Inuit employment and procurement at oil sands giants like Suncor, uranium companies like Cameco (where Indigenous employment is said to be 50 percent) and at the Baffinland mine. (iPolitics, December 10th, 2012) To be sure, critics may charge that this inclusion amounts to a new form of ‘beads and trinkets,’ but it more than likely betrays a growing recognition on the part of resource companies that they need a ‘social licence’ to operate, and more generally to abide

by Aboriginal and treaty rights in Canada.

To see this new dynamic in action, consider the Fort McKay First Nation in Northeast Alberta’s oil sands. The community of 700 operates completely independently of federal funding, relying instead on a group of companies that it owns to generate CDN$700 million in revenue from resource extraction activities. When Brion Energy (backed by PetroChina) proposed a new development that would have impacted Fort Mackay’s ancestral burial lands, the First Nation launched a sophisticated campaign levering legal, media and political pressure to bring Brion to the table and negotiate an agreement. The resulting deal is covered by a non-disclosure clause, but is said to include both economic benefits for the community and environmental protection for the surrounding area.

Seizing this ‘Indigenous opportunity’ would put Canada in a position to advance sustainability objectives on multiple fronts – starting with social sustainability by addressing its most pressing social justice and moral issue (the poverty and social conditions faced by many Indigenous people).

First Nations beyond the previously established “duty to consult” toward the standard of obtaining the “consent” of the Indigenous group in question.

In short, communities that can demonstrate Aboriginal title to their homelands have the right to say no to development. This does not necessarily mean they will in fact say no, but only that proponents now ought to treat them with the same seriousness with which they engage the federal and provincial governments in Canada.

Tsilhqot’in means that First Nations with Aboriginal title should now become even more of a force to be reckoned with at the negotiating table, given their enhanced legal standing. What is less well understood is that this may also be seen as another step toward a change in the constitutional order in Canada. The 1982 negotiation (and subsequent refinement in 1985) of section 35 of the Constitution, which “recognizes and affirms” Aboriginal and treaty rights, reintroduced the notion of Indigenous sovereignty to Canadian public discourse. Tsilhqot’in has now moved us a step closer to the day when

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he transformation has extended to governance as well. Bob Rae, former Ontario premier and past federal Liberal leader, who is now representing First Nations in the strategic development of minerals in Northern Ontario, wrote in the Globe and Mail this past July that “some ground-breaking modern treaties have been negotiated and signed – in Quebec, Labrador, Nunavut, Northwest Territories and British Columbia – in which more equal and positive relationships have been established with shared powers, revenue distribution, and massive land claims that have recognized Aboriginal

jurisdiction over large portions of their traditional lands. They have altered the political and economic landscape to better recognize the fact that First Nation and Aboriginal governments are real, and have a jurisdiction that needs recognition in fact and in law.” These agreements were negotiated in large measure because of a need to reconcile the Aboriginal title to the land with the Canadian state’s assertion of sovereignty over it.

Then came the Tsilhqot’in decision earlier this year. This was the first time that the Supreme Court had recognized that Aboriginal title exists on a defined piece of land. In the holding, the Court said that Aboriginal title is similar to fee simple title, with the exception that it is communally held, and can only be usurped by the Crown if there is a very compelling public interest to so do. The decision also moved the dial for engagement with

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First Nations are universally accepted as a proper constitutional order of government in Canada (see the Feature article by Douglas Sanderson in the Spring/Summer 2013 issue of GB).

Of course, this evolution entails a degree of uncertainty: Canada is entering uncharted territory. Rather than viewing this with skepticism or trepidation, we argue that it ought to be seen as an opportunity. Seizing this ‘Indigenous opportunity’ would put Canada in a position to advance sustainability objectives on multiple fronts: social sustainability by addressing its most pressing social justice and moral issue (the poverty and social conditions faced by many Indigenous people); cultural sustainability by finally acknowledging and celebrating the Indigenous dimension of its national identity; environmental sustainability by marshalling Indigenous knowledge to help mitigate environmental impacts; and economic sustainability

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The Arctic is a major test case for this new logic. Canada shares the theatre with seven other circumpolar countries. Melting ice and the opening of the waters are fast suggesting the prospect of a treasure trove of minerals and energy.

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by bringing business practices into line with the emerging framework of Canadian constitutionalism.

Canadian businesses, especially resource firms, should also manifestly benefit from better collaborations with Aboriginal communities. Risk and litigation can be replaced with certainty, partnerships and shared prosperity. Bref, the ‘Indigenous opportunity’ approach or paradigm makes good commercial sense. The smartest corporations in the land already recognize that it is better to have inclusive relationships with Indigenous people at the boardroom table rather than in the court room or on the picket line. Such thinking may before long prove to be a competitive advantage that will allow these companies to succeed in the new business environment – this as competitors that drag their heels and fight tooth and nail with First Nations risk being left behind.

The ‘Indigenous opportunity’ approach can also reposition Canada and its business community in the international arena. For one thing, the best practices of Canadian business in Indigenous

inclusion can be exported. For example, in the Canadian mining industry, which has worldwide interests, many projects involve fractious relationships with Indigenous people. The principles and norms established through partnership with Indigenous people in Canada could be applied to other theatres, leading to better opportunities and less resistance to activity abroad. Of course, this means that some firms will have to change the way that they do business – not only by accommodating Indigenous interests, but also by being prepared to respect the decisions of communities that do not give their consent to certain projects.

T

he Arctic is a major test case for this new logic. Canada shares the theatre with seven other circumpolar countries. Melting ice and the opening of the waters are fast suggesting the prospect of a treasure trove of minerals and energy. Already there is a boom in resource development, and nations with even a tenuous claim to the Arctic are calibrating their military and diplomatic capabilities to ensure that they profit from the bounty.

Canada can solidify its claims to sovereignty in the region by inserting Indigenous rights into the Arctic Council proceedings. This would mean ensuring that every nation making an Arctic play abides by international standards for Indigenous rights – specifically those articulated in the UN Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples, which asserts the same requirement for obtaining consent from local communities as articulated in the Tsilhqot’in decision. In such a scenario, Canada, but also Russia, the US, Norway, Denmark and other countries would include the Inuit, Saami, Native Alaskans and others in decision-making. Of course, including these Indigenous nations would also assure them of a proper stake in the dividends of Arctic development, helping to alleviate some of the social problems that they face. (Note that the Nunavut Land Claims Agreement with Canada gives the Inuit a strong reason to advocate for Canadian sovereignty over that part of the Arctic.)

The literature connecting Canada’s Indigenous peoples to not only the country’s internal health in this new century, but also to its strategic prospects on the global stage, has yet to be written. There is arguably not a single serious book in the genre.

For now, the contours of the norms for this new dance are being drawn faster on the ground than the pens of intellectuals and the rhetoric of the political classes can bear. But mentalities will soon shift, as the opportunities will prove overwhelming, just as failure to seize them will, for Canada, prove overwhelmingly painful. | GB

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Jeremi Suri argues that the United States has too often forgotten this truth over the course of its nation-building history— including the American Revolution and Reconstruction as well as efforts in the Philippines, Germany, Japan, and Vietnam. Suri draws lessons from all these efforts that are particularly valuable today.”

—Anne-Marie Slaughter, Bert G. Kerstetter ’66 University Professor of Politics and International Affairs, Princeton University

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The ISIS Threat in Perspective

IN SITU

Why this coalition of the willing will score some short-term victories, but should brace for longer-term pain ARABINDA ACHARYA & DHARITRI DWIVEDY report from Baghdad

A Arabinda Acharya teaches at the Joint Special Operations Master of Arts Program of the National Defense University at Fort Bragg, North Carolina.

Dharitri Dwivedy is a PhD candidate at the Madras Christian College, University of Madras, India.

The views expressed in this article are solely those of the

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authors.

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coalition of over 50 countries is now on the front lines fighting ISIS/ISIL – the Islamic State of Iraq and Syria, or the Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant (see Definition at p. 60). Unlike the post-9/11 ‘coalition of the willing,’ this assembly of states appears to be more wide-ranging, and its combined firepower could prove overwhelming – at least in the short term – for ISIS. The fact that Washington is leading the initiative to engage multilaterally against ISIS has arguably enhanced the immediate punch of the fight. And with a number of Arab countries, and now Turkey, directly contributing to the military strikes the mission against ISIS is increasingly seen as legitimate from the perspective of the Muslim world.

The 2006 proclamation, posted on the jihadi website Tajdeed.org, of the establishment of the Islamic State of Iraq (ISI), was a clear consequence of the 2003 US invasion of Iraq, the subsequent establishment of a Shia-led government in Baghad, and also the growing prominence of the Kurds (see Strategic Futures at p. 62) – dynamics that disenfranchised the Sunni elites that had ruled Iraq under Saddam Hussein. ISI said as much in its very first statement, in which it emphasized that its project was a response to the division of the country among the Shia and the Kurds. At the time, the group had limited objectives – principally to establish its control over an area encompassing “Baghdad, Al Anbar, Diyala, Kirkuk, Saladin, Ninawa, and parts of the provinces of Babel and Wasit,” for what it claimed to be the peace and safety of the “Mujahideen, the Ulama of Iraq, the chiefs of tribes, and the Sunnis in Iraq.”

Despite skepticism among fellow Sunnis about the feasibility of creating an Islamic state, ISI managed to bring a number of groups together. It had to deal with severe opposition – notably from Al Qaeda Central (AQC), then led by Osama bin Laden – which opposed ISI’s extreme brutality. Ultimately, AQC publicly dissociated itself from ISI. What explains the metastasis of this group from a putative “JV team” to a threat of apparent strategic proportions, possessing territory in both Iraq and Syria, recruiting cadres from all over the world, and amassing huge assets to finance and sustain its ambitious caliphate project? While ISIS capitalized on the discontent caused by the divisive policies of former Iraqi prime minister Nouri

al-Maliki, its surging strength can be attributed to the fallout from the Arab Spring which, as the current Al Qaeda leader Ayman al-Zawahiri has emphasized, provided opportunities to undertake jihadist state-building initiatives across the region.

As Middle Eastern governments and their security and intelligence apparatus remained preoccupied with internal protests and uprisings, groups that were largely marginal or marginalized were suddenly able to revive. Erosion of state power linked to the inexperience of the new regimes and the emergence of ungoverned or poorly controlled territories created spaces for various jihadists to regroup, reorganize and train. Prolonged instability, unmet promises of reform, and more general economic woes exacerbated public frustration and increased the susceptibility to radicalization. All of this the jihadists exploited.

The rise of ISIS is also attributable to the huge amount of money – estimated to be between US$800 million and $1 billion per year – that the group collects from multiple sources, including looting, donations, and revenues from captured oil and gas fields. For good measure, the group also appropriated the military hardware of the collapsing Iraqi army in the immediate aftermath of the pullout of US forces from Iraq.

ISIS’s spread also stems from its ability to harness the media, including social media, with which it has, according to Shiraz Maher of the International Centre for the Study of Radicalisation at King’s College London, “created a brand, spread a seductive narrative and employed powerful iconography,” thereby effectively becoming a magnet for foreign fighters – including, of course, fighters from North America and Europe.

Most assessments characterize ISIS as significantly different from Al Qaeda specifically in that it controls territory. However, in the post-9/11 context, territorial possession or mere presence at an identifiable physical location has proven to be a serious vulnerability, as with Al Qaeda in Afghanistan and the Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam (LTTE) in Sri Lanka. While Al Qaeda enjoyed a measure of stability in the areas in which it set up its training camps and safe havens – giving it the luxury of time and space to plan and carry out multiple operations and build up a worldwide movement – the same cannot be

said about ISIS. Indeed, ISIS has been in a constant fight to retain and not be ousted from the areas that it has controlled. This will doubtless continue to be a huge, and possibly growing, cost to the group, involving money and other resources, and eroding the group’s capacity to properly establish the governing structures and norms necessary for statehood.

In this sense, failure to credibly demonstrate the attributes of a functioning state would undermine its message – a message that, as mentioned, has been attracting recruits for the group from around the world – and could severely dent its ambitious caliphate project.

PHOTOGRAPH: THE CANADIAN PRESS / AP / GAIL ORENSTEIN

Peshmerga Kurdish Forces patrol an area around the Mosul dam, August 2014.

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o be sure, if terrorism, as a tactic, is meant to create fear and intimidation in the wider society, then ISIS appears to be scoring some successes. With beheadings and well-crafted missives accompanying these beheadings, ISIS has arguably provoked the same kind of fear and reaction that Al Qaeda did with the 9/11 attacks. The potentiality of foreign ISIS recruits returning to North America and Europe to carry out attacks in their respective homelands – a potentiality still unsubstantiated – has only added to public anxiety. For context, we should also note the speculation that ISIS could launch attacks through the under-protected US-Mexico border and target

the power grid in the US; the elevation of the risk of an imminent terrorist attack to “severe” by the British; the recent ISIS-related arrests in Australia; and also the beheading of a French national by a group supporting ISIS. All of these events and episodes have further intensified the overall fear factor in respect of ISIS. It is worth recalling, of course, that until ISIS had begun to appropriate territory and establish some rudimentary state control – especially in strategic areas with oil and gas fields and water resources – or to demonstrate barbarism (even bordering on genocide), there had been almost no serious discussion of the group in the countries that are now attempting to contain it. Now the debate is about whether the threat from ISIS is more relevant for the US or instead for other countries – specifically in Europe and the Middle East.

And yet country-specific calculations might not be sufficient to give us granularity in respect of the specific contours of the ISIS threat. First, the number of foreign citizens fighting for ISIS remains unclear.

Second, the underlying motivation of these individuals is understudied. Fighting in Syria, for instance, should not lead one to the conclusion that upon their return, these jihadists would necessarily carry out attacks in their home countries. Other things being equal, much would seem to depend on the extent

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of the radicalization of the concerned individuals and, more importantly, the type of narrative that radicalized them in the first place.

There could be different outcomes if radicalization is based on a purely religious narrative – that is, fighting for a religion that is perceived to be under threat or otherwise helping in the establishment of an Islamic state – as compared with radicalization based on perceptions of social, economic or political exclusion in particular countries. In the latter case, desires to carry out attacks to avenge domestic grievances or wrongs could well be stronger. This makes it imperative to investigate the roots of radicalization in country-specific contexts.

Ultimately, success against ISIS will depend on how the fight is conducted. Military strikes alone may win the day for the US-led coalition in the coming months, but defeating ISIS or ISIS-like groups will surely require countering their ideology and restricting their ability to amass resources (human, money and materiel). In other words, the kinetic aspects of counterterrorism – including air strikes or targeted killings – may lose their relevance as soon as the threat appears to be losing its steam, while the impact of counter-ideology and counter-financing measures can be long-term and sustaining. In this respect, the unanimous resolution of the UN Security Council on September 24th urging member states to take measures to suppress the recruiting, organizing, transporting, equipping and financing of ISIS is significant. The religious narratives of the group are also being challenged by mainstream Muslim communities in countries around the world, just as some of the most prominent Muslim countries begin to fight ISIS with their own military assets.

At the same time, with its brutality and its failure to discriminate between even attacks on Muslims and those against non-Muslims, ISIS could be sowing the seeds of its own eventual downfall. The brutality, broadcast all over the world, might earn the group short-term gains – winning a recruit or two, and otherwise terrifying many people, Muslim and non-Muslim alike, around the world.

But such extremes have proven to be counterproductive for the overall jihadist movement in the past, as evidenced by documents recovered from Osama bin Laden’s hideout and the writings of other prominent leaders of the movement. So too may they prove to be counterproductive before long for ISIS. Indeed, despite the expansionist rhetoric of ISIS and the attempts by the West to generalize the sense of the threat posed by the group, the ISIS agenda will likely remain local or at best regional. Suggestions to the effect that the world is at ‘war’ with ISIS point to disproportionality (and even hysteria) in the international response. But without a longer-term counter-ideological campaign, and indeed without boots on the ground, there may not be meaningful, strategic degradation of ISIS. Instead, the victories won by the coalition of the willing will be short-term, rather than world-historical.

The pain may come later. | GB

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ILLUSTRATION: SAM BREWSTER

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Why Chile has become the most important country in the Americas for Latin American migrants.

BY PATRICIO NAVIA

THE AMERICAN DREAM MOVES SOUTH Patricio Navia is Full Professor of Political Science at Universidad Diego Portales in Chile, and Master Teacher of Global Liberal Studies at New York University.

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hen Chilean democracy was restored in 1990, one in every 125 of the country’s residents was foreign born. Last year, with Chile standing as Latin America’s most developed nation, one in every 44 Chilean residents was foreign born. The huge rise in immigrants reflects Chile’s economic rise as well as its democratic consolidation. Though the US continues to be the country of choice for most Latin Americans who migrate – and Canada second – the difficulties associated with pursuing the Sueño Americano (American Dream) are leading a growing number of Latin Americans to look for an alternative in the increasingly attractive Sueño Chileno (Chilean Dream).

After decades during which the road to a better life seemed inevitably linked with migrating outside the region, recent economic progress in some countries – Chile, Colombia, Ecuador, Panama and Peru – has made migration within Latin America an increasingly attractive option for those who look beyond their national borders for upward mobility.

Of all these countries, it is Chile that has become the destination of choice for a growing number of Latin American migrants. The signalling effect for the rest of the region should not be underestimated: as people in other Latin American countries make Chile their new home, the country’s market-friendly economic policies and its focus on strengthening democratic institutions are not going unnoticed in other regional capitals. Unlike the

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American Dream, often seen as culturally distant from, or otherwise foreign to, the realities of the region, the growing footprint of a Sueño Chileno has many nationals of neighbouring countries reasoning that if Chile can enter the club of industrialized countries, so too can their own countries.

Migrants typically follow economic opportunity. They also take into account the difficulties of entering and integrating into countries with greater economic opportunities than their homeland.

Historically, as Latin American countries have suffered from periods of rapid, pro-cyclical economic growth followed by periods of stagnation or outright recession or bust, migratory waves have not been permanent or otherwise stable in the region. As late as the 19th century, mining booms attracted migrants to Brazil, Peru and northern Chile. Argentina and southern Brazil became destinations of choice for millions of Eu-

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Recent economic progress in some countries – Chile, Colombia, Ecuador, Panama and Peru – has made migration within Latin America an increasingly attractive option for those who look beyond their national borders for upward mobility.

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ropeans in the late 19th and early 20th centuries due to rapid growth produced by their entry into international markets as a result of improved transportation networks – to wit, railroads to connect the agriculturally rich areas with port cities, and engine-powered vessels to transport goods from the Americas to Europe. Subsequent economic crises slowed and even reversed these migration waves.

More recently, a period of export-oriented growth in the region, induced by the high demand for raw materials and agricultural goods from China and elsewhere in Asia, has not resulted in renewed interest for migratory waves from the rest of the world to Latin America. But within Latin America proper, people are increasingly mobile and migratory waves are increasing.

In 1990, poverty was widespread in Chile. Four in every 10 Chileans lived below the poverty line.

Chile was among the most unequal countries in the world, with a Gini coefficient of 56.2 (with 100 signifying perfect income inequality). In ad-

dition to facing mounting demands for poverty reduction programmes and social subsidies, the new democratic government was constrained by an institutional straightjacket left by the outgoing military dictatorship. The former strongman, Augusto Pinochet (1973-1990), who retained the position of commander-in-chief of the army until 1998, was a constant reminder of the limited power of the new democratically elected government of the centre-left Concertacion coalition.

With its pragmatic and moderate approach – democracy to the extent possible, as it came to be known – the new government focussed on building democratic institutions, expanding political and civil liberties, targeting the poorest with social spending, and promoting economic development to help millions escape poverty through formal employment.The strategy eventually proved successful as the country has, over the past two and a half decades, been the fastest growing nation in Latin America.

The strategy also proved politically rewarding for the Concertacion, which won four consecutive presidential elections, earning the record for the longest serving democratic coalition in the history of Latin America. By 2010, when the Concertacion lost its first election, poverty had declined to less than 15 percent.

GDP per capita had grown threefold (controlling for inflation). Even inequality had decreased to 52.1 – still high by international standards, but no small feat given that inequality normally increases in countries undergoing rapid economic growth.

A mix of market-friendly economic policies, an export promotion strategy (with a focus on signing free-trade agreements with countries all over the world), and an aggressive posture on attracting foreign investment for mining and funding public infrastructure transformed Chile into an engine of economic growth, as well as a role model for the rest of the region. Earmarked social spending helped to bring millions into the middle class. Educational coverage expanded drastically: well over half of university-aged men and women today go on to tertiary education. Though the cost of education is high – as underlined by two waves of student protests in 2006 and 2011 – returns to higher education continue to make it attractive to get a degree.

As with many other middle income countries (Chile is arguably caught in a middle income trap), Chile faces complex challenges in its quest to complete the transition to become Latin America’s first industrialized country. Its relatively low levels of corruption and effective government services are not sufficient to make up for the inadequate provision of public services. Privatization of education, health, transportation and infrastructure has expanded ac-

cess and coverage, but weak regulatory frameworks have left consumers’ rights imperfectly protected.

P

The two largest Latin American countries, Brazil and Mexico, have historically had notoriously low levels of immigration. In Brazil, the language barrier makes it less attractive for Spanish-speaking people to migrate. copper mining sector in northern Chile led to double-digit population growth in cities like Iquique and Antofagasta.

Bolivians have crossed the border to work in Arica and Antofagasta. But the flows have not been restricted to migrants from neighbouring countries: Colombians and Ecuadorians too have moved to northern mining towns in Chile looking for opportunities. There are now non-stop daily flights from Antofagasta to Cali in Colombia and Santa Cruz in Bolivia.

In 1990, there were 13.2 million people living in Chile – among them 107,501 foreigners, or 0.8 percent of the national population. By 2013, the population had increased to 17.6 million. This 33 percent increase over 25 years is lower than the Latin American average and just above that of the US. In that same period, however, the foreign-born population in Chile jumped to 398,251, or 2.3 percent of the national

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olls repeatedly show that Chileans are very optimistic about the future of the country and about their own personal future prospects. In the monthly reports on economic outlook issued by the polling company Adimark, Chileans have consistently shown bullish attitudes. In the past five years, an average of 55 percent of Chileans have fancied that the economic situation will improve in the coming year. Because the country has seen so much growth over the past two decades, Chileans have high expectations that growth will continue, even if a majority of them also paradoxically believe that others will benefit more than their own families from expanded opportunities.

Macroeconomic data justify the optimism. In 1990, Chile (US$4,388) had a lower GDP per capita (in purchasing power parity terms) than several Latin American neighbours: Venezuela (US$9,418), Argentina (US$7,462), Brazil (US$6,475), Uruguay (US$6,229), Mexico (US$5,993) and Colombia (US$5,021). Today, Chile has the highest GDP per capita in Latin America (US$21,911). Even when compared to the rest of the world, Chile has an impressive record. In 1990, Chile’s GDP per capita was 39.8 percent that of Portugal, and 18.3 percent that of the US. In 2013, it was at 85 percent and 41 percent, respectively. If per-capita national output grows at the average rate of the past 10 years, in less than a decade Chile will have surpassed Portugal. Of course, sustaining such growth will be difficult – the economy has expanded 4.9 times since 1990, but will have expanded by barely two percent in 2014 – and future economic prospects will depend on higher levels of education and higher productivity among younger cohorts.

Rapid economic growth has had the effect of reducing population growth. In fact, there has been no better birth control mechanism in the history of the country than its sustained economic expansion over the past two decades. After democracy was restored, the average number of children per woman decreased from 2.4 in 1990 to 1.8 in 2005. As the former poor entered the middle class, women waited longer before having children and young couples chose to have fewer children. The slower population growth made it easier for Santiago to expand social services.

Moreover, since the pension system was modified from the traditional pay-as-you go approach to individual savings retirement accounts, an ageing population has not presented the same chal-

lenges that it does in Western European countries.

The increase in educational levels among younger Chileans has led to growing demand for low-skilled workers – particularly for household work. From the mid-1990s, migrants from Peru began to fill positions previously taken by Chileans migrating to cities from rural areas. Indeed, the arrival of Peruvian nannies was early evidence that Chile was turning into a destination for immigrants from elsewhere in Latin America.

Other migratory waves soon followed.

After the 2001 economic crisis in Argentina, many highly skilled professionals crossed the Andes to find work in Chile.

Having already been positively impacted by the arrival of world-famous Peruvian food, the restaurant industry benefited from the influx of Argentine hosts and hostesses, a group better trained than their Chilean counterparts.

In recent years, immigrants have settled in cities and towns beyond Santiago. The active

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population. Bref, the foreign-born population grew nine times faster than overall population. This makes Chile, among Latin American countries, tied with Ecuador (also 2.3 percent) and ranked just below Argentina (4.5 percent), Venezuela (3.9 percent) and Paraguay (2.7 percent) for the percentage of its population that is foreign born. Only Ecuador and Chile, however, among all of these countries, have not seen their foreign-born populations decline over the past two decades. Argentina and Venezuela, the two countries that were favoured destinations for intra-Latin American migration in the second half of the 20th century, have gone through periods of extended economic and political turmoil.

In Ecuador, most of the newcomers are children of Ecuadorian migrants who returned en masse from Spain and other European countries after the 2008 economic crisis. While Ecuador has experienced

Sustaining such growth will be difficult – the economy has expanded 4.9 times since 1990, but will have expanded by barely two percent in 2014 – and future economic prospects will depend on higher levels of education and productivity among younger Chileans. rapid economic development, its democratic institutions still remain weak, and the country has not to date emerged as a destination of choice for internal migration in Latin America.

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he two largest Latin American countries, Brazil and Mexico, have historically had notoriously low levels of immigration. In Brazil, the language barrier makes it less attractive for Spanishspeaking people to migrate. The foreign-born population in Brazil has declined from 0.5 percent in 1990 to 0.3 percent in 2013. Mexico, for its part, is famously the largest source of immigrants to the US. The foreign-born population in Mexico has increased marginally from 0.8 percent in 1990 to 0.9 percent in 2013. And yet, in the aggregate, both Mexico and Brazil have also failed to emerge as key destination countries for Latin American migrants because of their slow economic growth over the last decade.

Canada and the US continue to be the preferred destination countries in the Americas for migrants.

In Canada, the foreign-born population increased from 16.3 percent to 20.7 percent between 1990

and 2013. The US experienced faster growth in the same period (9.1 percent to 14.2 percent), although the foreign-born population of the US continues to represent a considerably smaller share of the population than that of Canada. Having said this, entry into both countries has become increasingly difficult for people from Latin America. Reduced access to visas and work permits forces many immigrants to break the law to enter the country. Crossing the border illegally – especially via Mexico, the most common route for Latin Americans entering the US illegally – has also become more dangerous and more costly. Migration within Latin America is therefore becoming an ever more attractive alternative.

It stands to reason, naturally, that the large influx of newcomers to Chile presents both opportunities and challenges. In general, immigrants tend to be industrious people who are eager to make use of the opportunities available to them. They are a potential engine for future growth – inherently entrepreneurial and risk-taking. At the same time, immigration also poses challenges for receiving countries. In communities with high numbers of migrants, some people will feel threatened and might react negatively if they perceive that migrants are taking jobs away from them. Government programmes designed for the lowest income population will often have to be expanded to migrants looking for educational, health and housing opportunities. Many migrants, for their part, are ultimately interested in returning to their native countries and will therefore spend less of their earnings as they send remittances back home or save to return to their homeland with money to invest.

When newcomers do not speak the language or have cultural values that are very different from those of the host population, integration does not occur automatically. Religious differences certainly complicate integration challenges. And yet none of these problems seems to be present in Chile today.

Most new immigrants are Spanish-speaking and come from Latin American countries with similar histories, cultural values and even religious traditions. Their integration is generally regarded as far smoother than would be the case in the US or Canada.

Chile has, in many senses, ventured into unchartered territory for Latin American countries.

Since no other regional country has reached the same level of economic and democratic development, its challenges are new. As it moves from an export-oriented to a value-added economic model, the concomitant challenge of dealing with immigration and profiting from its new position as a primary destination country for many Latin American immigrants may be equally important in helping Chile overcome the obstacles that separate the region’s most developed nation from the clubs of the world’s most developed nations. | GB

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TÊTE À TÊTE

Rights Fights, Flavours and Futures GB looks ahead to the debates, bottlenecks and pitfalls, and looks at defenders and discontents, in the next decade’s struggles for human dignity Conversation with NAVI PILLAY

Navi Pillay was the UN High Commissioner for

GB: Is there, at the start of this new century, an agreed understanding of human rights around the world?

Human Rights from 2008 to 2014.

She is a past judge of the High Court of South Africa, past judge of the International Criminal Court, and past President of the International Criminal Tribunal

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for the Rwanda.

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NP: Because I served as the UN High Commissioner for Human Rights for six years, and also as a former judge, I would always ask: what is the framework under which I carry out my mandate?

What are the standards and values that are universal – that all states should uphold? The answer is easy. There is a framework of laws starting with the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, the UN Charter and framework, the Covenants on Civil and Political Rights, Economic and Social Rights. Then all of this is fleshed out until we get Conventions on the Rights of the Child, Women, and so on. All countries subscribe to the Universal Declaration of Human Rights. Many have ratified various conventions, but nobody has actually said, “We don’t support, say, the Convention on the Rights of the Child.”

That is where international common law steps in. These countries have not repudiated those conventions even though they have not ratified them. So what I am saying is that there is indeed an agreed understanding of human rights globally. This understanding has been steadily adopted, over the last 65 years, by older member states. It is a rich treasure trove. And that is where we begin the next century: with a good start, a good framework.

GB: If we were to assemble the leading politicians and thinkers in societies across the globe, would there still be an agreed understanding of rights beyond the strict international legal framework?

NP: The system is not perfect. One can always improve on it. The main complaint, of course, is that it is still rhetoric and lacks implementation. But year after year at the UN summit, all heads of state agree to these principles. So we may differ in specific philosophies across countries, but there appears to be universal acceptance of the general principles and values.

GB: Which region of the world has the worst human rights record? Which one has the best record?

PHOTOGRAPH: THE CANADIAN PRESS / AP / ERANGA JAYAWARDENA

NP: I would not adopt that kind of approach – not least because regions are comprised of individual countries, and among those countries there are manifest variations in the human rights records.

Of course, there are raging armed conflicts that one can clearly identify: Syria, Ukraine, Iraq, South Sudan, Central African Republic. These are of grave concern to all of us because of the huge displacement of populations, the serious acts of killing, the rape, and, among other things, the recruitment of children into military activity. We all agree that there are some terrible situations in the world.

That said, if you look at the Human Rights Council’s Universal Periodic Review (UPR) – a system devised by member states in which members review the human rights records of other members according to specific criteria – what emerges is that there is not a single country in the world that is completely free of human rights violations. In other words, there is always some problem in respect of rights for certain parts of the populations within those countries. In the second cycle, states are now coming forward to explain how they are implementing the recommendations made by other states.

For me, then, that is the standard of what is wrong and right, in human rights terms, in each country.

As for grading countries on the score of rights, let us agree that if a woman is beaten up in her home, she would feel that her human rights have been seriously violated – that is, she cannot enjoy any other rights while she is subject to violence.

A Roma person in Germany who is marginalized and poverty-stricken would also consider his or her rights to have been violated. So we do not grade violations and say that just because there are thousands of people being killed in one country we should not pay attention to these other violations or view them as smaller violations. This is why I generally avoiding saying that some regions have the best or worst human rights record.

GB: Which countries are at the cutting edge of global human rights debates and discourses?

GB: What reforms can be undertaken to maximize the effectiveness of the UN Human Rights Council in this early new century?

NP: First, I would encourage greater space for participation by civil society organizations. At the moment, the Human Rights Council, unusually for a UN forum, allows NGOs to participate in the UPR presentations. But each presentation lasts less than a minute, and presentations are limited to four or five organizations. I would like that space to expand. In other words, there should be a bigger role for people.

The word ‘people’ should be brought back into the UN. For me, this would maximize the effectiveness of what the Human Rights Council is trying to achieve – to wit, better protection of human rights on the ground, which is something that cannot be achieved by government alone.

Second, I believe that the Human Rights Council should always tackle chronic human rights situations. There are longstanding human rights situations in which we see pockets of territory that are now disputed land. There are stateless people within those territories – a situation that has, in some cases, lasted four or five decades. The situation in the Democratic People’s Republic of Korea – North Korea – for instance, was untouched until, for the very first time, the Human Rights Council established a commission of inquiry to examine the concerns over human rights violations there.

GB: Has the Responsibility to Protect (R2P) doctrine been helpful or harmful to the cause of human rights globally over the last 15 years?

NP: I am somewhat ambivalent about the value of R2P. Of course, I understand the principle and I understand that all heads of state accept that R2P is intrinsically a part of sovereignty. I also know the argument about R2P constituting an invasion of sovereignty. It is not. In fact, it is an expression of sovereignty to protect your people. I know that R2P has not been very effective because of the suspicion that it is an invasion of the sovereign right of governments. And so my past office, the Office of the High Commissioner for Human Rights, tended to look at the normative framework of the UN. In my view, that framework is sufficient for the purpose of holding states to account for the obligations that they have undertaken in respect

Clearly, the longstanding resistance to defining and including the crime of aggression in the Rome Statute is an indication that this would be a very important step.

I do indeed hope that it will serve as a deterrent and reduce illegal wars.

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NP: First we might consider that there are certain countries in which there is patently no serious debate about human rights – that is, there is in fact repression of human rights dialogue. At the other end of the spectrum, the Scandinavian countries are probably in the lead in advancing human rights protections.

Sophisticated populations are very keenly aware of their rights and, correspondingly, assert them – in respect of delivery of justice, freedom of speech, assembly rights, and others.

Let me also say that I have been impressed by the increase in rights-based demonstrations by ordinary people around the world – perhaps as a function of the rise of social media and new com-

munications media. Consider the recent protests in Hong Kong, last year’s Idle No More protests in Canada (see the Feature article by Lloyd Axworthy and Wab Kinew at p. 22), or the Occupy Wall Street protests a few years ago against decisions made by financial institutions – unaccountable institutions that affect people’s rights.

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of the protection of their people.

On my visit to South Sudan, I reminded President Kiir and the opposition leader, Riek Machar, based on R2P, of their responsibility to protect their civilians, because I felt that these were two leaders who were turning to violence to hang on to power. I raise this example to note that there are indeed situations in which one can call on, or remind, individuals to abide by the responsibility to protect.

GB: Do you think that R2P has been accepted, philosophically, by non-Western leaders?

NP: I do not think so. They view it with suspicion.

I have been impressed by the increase in rights-based demonstrations by ordinary people around the world – perhaps as a function of the rise of social media and new communications media.

GB: The crime of aggression should crystallize by 2017. Do you think that it will act as a meaningful deterrent to illegal wars?

NP: The purpose of the International Criminal Court (ICC) and the Rome Statute is to deter serious crimes.

Clearly, the longstanding resistance to defining and including the crime of aggression in the Rome Statute is an indication that this would be a very important step. I do indeed hope that it will serve as a deterrent and reduce illegal wars. Leaders will be very cautious about engaging in wars that are acts of aggression. Right now Iraq has requested that the US intervene to help it deal with the very serious problem of the Islamic State (see Definition at p. 60). President Obama has been very careful in spelling out exactly what the US intends to do, and has established an international coalition to do so. I see all of these measures – and the general case for military intervention – as addressing what the Court will eventually be looking out for. In other words, the Court will be asking: was this an act of aggression or a resort to violence in order to deal with very serious violence against people?

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GB: Do you think that there is a sound legal case for intervention in Syria in the Obama rationale?

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NP: Yes, I would say so. The commission of inquiry, on which I served, has now produced five or six reports that detail wide-scale crimes and acts of killing in Syria that are still continuing. I myself have called for a referral to the ICC. GB: So there is a legal basis under the UN Charter for the coalition to intervene in Syria?

NP: It is not really for me to say that there is a case for military intervention in Syria. These are the political decisions that the UN Security Council makes. We all know that the Security Council has not to date supported military intervention in Syria.

I know the objection of Russia and China: Moscow and Beijing feel that the military intervention in Libya did not produce a good outcome, and in fact created more problems. That was their objection to military intervention.

GB: Would the human rights landscape in Syria, Iraq and generally across the Middle East and North Africa be different if more countries had ratified the Rome Statute of the ICC (see the Query article

by Sam Sasan Shoamanesh at p. 18)?

NP: I think it would. This is a very important law.

All states agree that there should be no impunity for serious crimes. I therefore do believe that the human rights landscape in Syria and Iraq and generally across the Middle East could well be different if more countries from that region had ratified the Rome Statute.

I know that the concern of the leaders in some of the countries of that region is that there is no immunity for a serving head of state. However, these countries should see the law instead as ending impunity. I have found that leaders are generally sympathetic to this argument.

GB: How should the ICC’s relationship with Africa evolve over the coming decade?

NP: Let me first recall that article 4 of the Constitutive Act of the African Union is very clear in that it recognizes an obligation to respond to mass crimes and underscores the importance of ending impunity. The African Union itself has set up the African Commission on Human and People’s Rights and the African Court of Justice and Human Rights. Still, I am very concerned about some recent developments at the African Union indicating that sitting heads of state or government or senior state officials are immune from prosecutions during their tenure in office. It is obvious that this idea arose because of the profile of the people indicted, and not because of the nature of the alleged crimes or the profile of the victim. The notion that political power can be a safe haven would create a dangerous double standard for accountability and is also incompatible with international law. I believe that fighting impunity requires not only time and determination, but also political support and commitment. So it is my belief that African states will continue to adhere to the fight against impunity in order to deliver justice and peace to their people, just as they have solemnly affirmed. I hope and trust that the African states that are already party to the ICC will continue to fully abide by their commitment to systematically adopt and implement legislation.

I am sure that the indictments against the Kenyan head of state and deputy president caused

consternation, but I myself as high commissioner intervened earlier on to urge Nairobi to conduct national prosecutions. So it was the parliament of Kenya that took the decision that the matter should be referred to the ICC. In other words, Kenya had the option of conducting national investigations and prosecutions, but did not pursue this path.

GB: Where will the world be a decade from now in terms of prosecuting sexual and gender-based mass crimes?

GB: What is South Africa’s near future?

GB: What is the key source of the anxiety you mention?

NP: The papers are full of it. Television is full of it: corruption, again and again, on the part of government officials. The public protector has produced a report detailing excessive spending on the part of the president himself, and asking him to pay back some of the money. There was the infamous shooting of mine workers at Marikana. A commission on that massacre is ongoing. And so, above all else perhaps, there is a general anxiety about the high levels of violence and rape in the country. People do not feel safe. They need proper law enforcement and protection under the law.

These are all issues that are evidently concerning, but they are manageable and can be addressed. I like that there is reaction on the part of government.

The issues are debated in parliament. All of this is openly discussed by everyone. | GB

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NP: This has been raised again and again with me because I participated in the first decision in the genre, the Akayesu judgement. People are very concerned that there continues to be a failure of investigation, lack of justice and reparation for victims, and indeed that sexual violence is on the rise both in conflict theatres and in the private sphere within countries. All of the commissions of inquiry have documented sexual violence in current conflicts: Democratic Republic of the Congo, South Sudan, Central African Republic, and even in Ukraine. We have reports of truly terrible incidents of sexual violence in Syria and Iraq.

The US recently expressed a desire for much more to be done to address sexual violence. There were cases of rape that were shocking in India, causing people to express their outrage on the streets. There is concern that an increase in instances of sexual violence has not been matched by a commensurate increase in investigations and prosecutions. This is a sad state of affairs. That said, the UN International Criminal Tribunal for Rwanda has confirmed that sexual assault and rape can constitute genocide when perpetrated as a means to destroy, in whole or in part, a national, ethnic, racial or religious group.

More and more UN colleagues and international NGOs are cooperating on how best to have these serious crimes investigated.

The ICC has gone even further in not only entrenching these legal developments in its founding treaty, the Rome Statute, but has also set up a trust fund for victims, and has made very clear the rules on the reparations for victims. The Prosecutor of the ICC, Fatou Bensouda, also recently launched a sexual and gender-based crimes policy in order to systematically treat the investigation and prosecution of these crimes. In short, national and international efforts have intensified to combat impunity for sexual and gender-based crimes. So, on the one hand, we have an alarming situation, while on the other there are now mechanisms and tools in place so that these egregious crimes will no longer be ignored in coming decades, but rather met with the full force of the law.

NP: That is the number one question that is being asked here. The country has good institutions – the Constitution, the National Human Rights Commission, the Constitutional Court, a vibrant and free press. It is, however, extremely troubled by a lack of services – essential services like water and power, and essential goods like housing and, of course, jobs.

Many blame the incompetence and corruption of the government.

So there is a great deal of anxiety as return to my country. Of course, I hope that the institutions will hold, and that government representatives will become more accountable. It is a good sign, for instance, that the government had one of its ministers look into the functioning of all of the country’s municipalities, and that the government itself conceded that one third of the municipalities were essentially dysfunctional – meaning that there is virtually zero service delivery to the communities in question. The finding is, to be sure, very troubling, but the fact that the government is publicly investigating it and struggling for solutions is interesting.

I am hopeful that by 2020 South Africa will have progressed much further. The country has done a great deal in its first 20 years post-apartheid. Now it has to protect its institutions and make them function. I also believe that there is a need for donor assistance. It is unfair that this small, young country that has created institutions for a supposedly small and harmonious population is suddenly having to absorb and accommodate millions of migrants and job seekers or people fleeing from conflict and diseases in other parts of the continent.

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Barthélémy Courmont est chercheur-associé à l’Institut de relations internationales et stratégiques (Paris), directeur-associé à la Chaire Raoul-Dandurand en études stratégiques et diplomatiques (Université du Québec à Montréal), et rédacteur en chef de Monde chinois, nouvelle Asie. Il a récemment publié Une guerre pacifique: La confrontation Pékin-Washington.

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LE TEMPS DE LA GUERRE DOUCE

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ontrairement aux apparences que nous offre l’actualité et aux idées reçues qu’elle véhicule, la notion de guerre entre les grandes puissances serait-elle en train de changer de nature?

Pourrait-elle surtout marginaliser le choix des armes, et se porter sur d’autres champs de bataille, propres aux stratégies de soft power? L’année 2014 est marquée par une recrudescence des conflits et de la violence armée impliquant à la fois États et acteurs non-étatiques. De l’est ukrainien (voir l’article Feature d’Irvin Studin à la page 12) à la Libye (voir l’article Query de Sam Sasan Shoamanesh à la page 18), en passant par les frappes consécutives à la création de l’État islamique sur les territoires irakien et syrien et la reprise de la violence dans la bande de Gaza, l’actualité internationale est actuellement monopolisée par cet arc du chaos vers lequel tous les regards se tournent.

Les tensions en Asie orientale, de la Corée du Nord et ses tirs de missiles aux troubles dans la mer de Chine méridionale, en passant par une nouvelle interprétation de la Constitution pacifiste japonaise et la montée en puissance militaire chinoise, font craindre le pire et s’ajoutent à cette liste des inquiétudes. À l’heure des commémorations du centenaire de la Première guerre mondiale (voir l’article One Pager de John E. McLaughlin à la page 5), nombreux sont ceux qui n’hésitent plus à mettre en garde contre la possibilité d’une Troisième

guerre mondiale avec tous les excès que cela suppose, comparant volontiers l’Ukraine aux Sudètes, tirant la sonnette d’alarme sur un inquiétant retour de l’antisémitisme sur fond de choc des cultures, et jugeant inéluctable un conflit entre la Chine et le Japon, et tout aussi inéluctable un engagement des États-Unis en soutien de son principal allié asiatique. Bref, l’histoire serait en train de se répéter.

Certes, les conflits actuels nous rappellent, une fois de plus, que l’angélisme qui a suivi la fin de la Guerre froide et les thèses sur la fin de l’histoire et un nouvel ordre mondial étaient déplacés. De la même manière, les chantres de la mondialisation et d’un libéralisme économique comme ultime réponse aux conflits se sont visiblement trompés sur toute la ligne, tant la mondialisation semble, justement, être à l’origine de nouvelles lignes de fracture et de conflits armés.

Enfin, ceux qui voyaient dans la retraite de l’État la possibilité d’une diminution des risques de guerre devraient revoir leur copie, car non seulement l’État comme acteur central des relations stratégiques n’a pas disparu, mais aussi et surtout parce que son absence se caractérise par des manifestations de violence, les conséquences du printemps arabe en étant sans doute l’exemple le plus manifeste (voir Strategic Futures à la page 62). En clair, la guerre n’a pas disparu, ou plus exactement les guerres font encore et toujours partie de notre actualité.

Cette résistance des conflits armés en ce début du 21e siècle est cependant l’arbre qui cache la forêt, et ne saurait masquer une évolution profonde de la définition de la guerre. En parallèle à des conflits de basse intensité et des guerres asymétriques qui subsistent et se sont peut-être même dans une certaine mesure renforcés depuis deux décennies,

Entre Washington et Pékin, Pékin et Tokyo, et Washington et Moscou, tous les coups sont permis, à l’exception de ceux utilisant les arsenaux militaires.

PAR BARTHÉLÉMY COURMONT

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ILLUSTRATION: RUSSELL COBB

les oppositions entre grandes puissances ont progressivement mais irrésistiblement glissé vers de nouveaux terrains. De fait, n’en déplaise à ceux qui voient dans la rivalité Russie-Occident et, plus encore dans le bras-de-fer Washington-Pékin ou les tensions Chine-Japon, les signes avant-coureurs d’une nouvelle guerre froide et pourquoi pas d’un troisième conflit mondial, ces confrontations entre grandes puissances marginalisent désormais de plus en plus le langage des armes, au détriment de l’économie, de la diplomatie, et plus encore de la capacité d’influence.

À Pékin, les critiques du consensus de Washington sont, comme cette critique des Instituts Confucius, d’une rare violence, ce qui incite de nombreux observateurs à prédire l’avènement

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d’un «consensus de Pékin».

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Dans le cas de la compétition américano-chinoise, la vision développée par Robert Gilpin dans son célèbre ouvrage War and Change in World Politics, selon laquelle la solution la plus courante de tous temps pour inverser les déséquilibres entre puissances serait la guerre, et même ce qu’il qualifie de guerre hégémonique, domine encore les perceptions trois décennies après sa publication. Or, comme tous les indicateurs annoncent que la Chine deviendra première puissance mondiale – et donc par la même occasion en position d’exercer son hégémonie – d’ici quelques décennies (voir l’entrevue Tête à Tête avec Kevin Rudd à la page 8), la guerre serait de fait inévitable. C’est d’ailleurs une hypothèse à laquelle souscrivent à la fois des experts américains et chinois, généralement associés aux thèses réalistes, en vertu du principe défini par Hans Morgenthau selon lequel «la politique internationale, comme toute politique, est un combat pour la puissance».

Les réalistes chinois n’en pensent pas moins: Ye Zicheng dans son ouvrage Inside China’s Grand Strategy estime ainsi sur cette question que «les ÉtatsUnis n’autoriseront pas la Chine à accéder au rang de superpuissance. En conséquence, la puissance émergente de la Chine conduira inévitablement à une confrontation à grande échelle avec les ÉtatsUnis». Quelle charmante perspective!

On peut cependant ne pas souscrire à cette approche et au déterminisme d’une guerre non seulement inéluctable, mais également proche, si on tient compte de la rapidité avec laquelle la Chine monte en puissance. Dans son célèbre Paix et guerre entre

les nations, tout en critiquant au passage l’approche à son sens trop limitée des relations internationales offerte par les auteurs réalistes (en particulier américains), Raymond Aron distingue des systèmes dits homogènes et hétérogènes, expliquant que les «systèmes homogènes [sont] ceux dans lesquels les États appartiennent au même type, obéissent à la même conception du politique. [Il] appelle hétérogènes, au contraire, les systèmes dans lesquels les États sont organisés selon des principes autres et se réclament de valeurs contradictoires». Voilà une parfaite définition d’une multipolarité dans laquelle la Chine aurait une place centrale, et voilà une définition encore plus exacte d’un système dans lequel les États-Unis et la Chine rivaliseraient, mais en cohabitant malgré tout. Les différences entre les deux pays sont en effet innombrables, et portent sur tous les sujets, ce qui impose une grande prudence dans la manière avec laquelle nous devons appréhender et tenter de décrypter la relation américano-chinoise.

De fait, parce qu’elle est plus complexe que toutes les relations qui ont concerné les grandes puissances par le passé, parce qu’elle est à la fois d’une grande proximité et emprunte d’une méfiance réciproque qui invite nécessairement à la prudence, à Pékin comme à Washington, parce que les deux pays sont à la fois si différents et si interdépendants, parce qu’elle pourrait potentiellement être d’une grande violence mais évitera tant que possible de basculer en conflit armé, la relation entre les États-Unis et la Chine est une guerre pacifique qui impose de nouvelles grilles de réflexion. Elle impose aussi et surtout de nouveaux comportements qui cohabitent avec les anciens modes de pensée issus pour la plupart de la Guerre froide, mais qui seront amenés à les remplacer. Les signes de cette nouvelle forme de confrontation ne manquent pas, et montrent à quel point la rivalité entre les deux pays est à la fois plus large que la compétition stratégique, et indique en même temps que les risques de confrontation armée relèvent jusqu’ici en bonne partie de la rhétorique.

L

es récentes critiques de l’Association américaine des professeurs d’université à l’égard des Instituts Confucius, véritables fers de la lance de la stratégie de soft power de la Chine depuis une dizaine d’années, et actuellement présents dans plus de 120 pays, sont assez inhabituelles et à la fois symptomatiques d’une nouvelle forme

Joseph Nye, et qui a fait depuis deux décennies des émules dans le monde entier. Washington et Pékin en sont les principaux acteurs, et leurs différends éclatent au grand jour sur quasiment tous les sujets, à l’exception notable des stratégies militaires où les deux pays n’ont ni l’intérêt, ni la volonté, de pousser trop loin leurs positions. La Chine fut même en juillet 2014 invitée par les États-Unis, pour la première fois en plus de 40 ans, à participer aux gigantesques manœuvres militaires dans l’océan Pacifique connues sous le nom de RIMPAC, événement certes moins médiatisé que le petit accrochage (ou presque) entre deux avions militaires américain et chinois au large de Hainan en août, mais dont la portée est nettement plus grande.

Le bras de fer entre les deux pays n’est ainsi en rien comparable à ce que fut, par exemple, la Guerre froide. Il est à la fois moins frontal (pas de plans stratégiques publics officiellement dirigés l’un contre l’autre) et considérablement élargi, en intégrant comme nous l’avons noté une multitude de terrains d’affrontement. D’une certaine manière, comme la guerre au sens classique aurait des conséquences dévastatrices pour les deux pays, ils choisissent d’autres champs de bataille. Si la guerre douce mar-

Les universitaires américains reprochent à leurs homologues chinois une promotion tous azimuts de la culture chinoise, et cherchent de manière assez explicite à en limiter la portée.

ginalise l’importance des forces armées, elle n’en perd pas nécessairement en intensité. C’est même tout le contraire. À Pékin, les critiques du consensus de Washington sont, comme cette critique des Instituts Confucius, d’une rare violence, ce qui incite de nombreux observateurs à prédire l’avènement d’un «consensus de Pékin». Nous dirons, à la Clausewitz, qu’il s’agit d’une «continuation de la guerre par d’autres moyens», la guerre au sens propre du terme devenant de plus en plus improbable. Cette nouvelle manière de concevoir les rivalités entre grandes puissances n’élimine enfin pas totalement les risques de confrontation armée, et il suffit à cet égard de relever les innombrables rapports du Pentagone sur la montée en puissance militaire de la Chine, ainsi que la réalité d’un budget de défense en forte hausse depuis une quinzaine d’années.

Le temps de la guerre douce doit également s’accommoder aux comportements et postures

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de confrontation. Pour comparaison, c’est un peu comme si les universitaires américains appelaient au boycott des Alliances françaises ou des Instituts Goethe. Ces critiques sont également et surtout révélatrices de ce que sont devenus les rapports de force entre grandes puissances. Les universitaires américains reprochent à leurs homologues chinois une promotion tous azimuts de la culture chinoise, et cherchent de manière assez explicite à en limiter la portée, en invitant les structures d’accueil à cesser toute coopération. C’est une position qui semble faire écho aux critiques de l’occidentalisation de la Chine formulées de manière répétée et tout aussi explicite par les dirigeants chinois – une position qui rappelle également à quel point les deux pays sont engagés dans une rivalité qu’on retrouve sur les questions du commerce extérieur, de la finance, de la délocalisation, de la dette, de l’emploi … et donc de manière presque naturelle sur les questions culturelles.

Prenons deux exemples qui illustrent l’importance de ces nouveaux facteurs au niveau politique dans les deux pays. Lors de la campagne présidentielle américaine de 2012, qui opposa Barack Obama à Mitt Romney, la Chine fut omniprésente, et d’une certaine manière accusée de tous les maux dont souffrent les États-Unis, par les Républicains comme par les Démocrates.

Les deux adversaires ne désignèrent jamais Pékin comme un adversaire stratégique – Mitt Romney citant ouvertement la Russie comme principal rival de Washington est l’exemple le plus significatif – mais sur les questions économiques en particulier, les références à la Chine furent incessantes.

Côté chinois, on relève la même obsession quand le Parti communiste attend le résultat des élections américaines pour lancer son Congrès en novembre 2012, ou quand les dirigeants se lancent dans les critiques acerbes de ce qu’ils qualifient d’occidentalisation – pour ne pas dire américanisation – de la Chine.

Ajoutons à cela les accusations de part et d’autres sur les manipulations monétaires, les différends à l’OMC, et une rivalité qui se traduit par de multiples luttes d’influence en Asie du Sud-est, en Afrique ou en Amérique latine, au point que le risque de voir deux modèles de développement et de gouvernance semble nettement plus élevé qu’une confrontation armée qui reste très hypothétique.

Ces confrontations dans lesquelles le poids des économies, la diplomatie publique et les stratégies d’influence sont plus importantes que les effectifs militaires peuvent être qualifiées de guerres douces (soft wars) en référence à la puissance douce (soft power) conceptualisée par le politologue américain

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des dirigeants qui s’adaptent parfois difficilement aux nouvelles réalités, et continuent de miser sur la force militaire en pensant qu’elle reste l’ultime attribut de la puissance, ou le meilleur garant de la sécurité. Et il ne faut pas oublier que si la possibilité d’une guerre entre les deux pays semble excessive compte tenu de ses conséquences et de son caractère contre-productif, les escalades portent toujours en elles des facteurs irrationnels qui éclipsent et parfois écartent la raison, au point de dégénérer bien au-delà de toutes les prévisions. En clair, pour que la «guerre» entre les États-Unis et la Chine reste

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Pékin et Tokyo se livrent une lutte d’influence et de leadership en Asie, dans laquelle l’importance accordée aux forces armées semble relever plutôt de la rhétorique nationaliste que d’une véritable ambition stratégique.

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«pacifique», la vigilance reste de mise et chacun des deux acteurs doit faire preuve de bon sens et de retenue en toute circonstance. Et ce qui vaut à Washington et à Pékin le vaut également pour les autres pays et grands acteurs.

En attendant on ne changera pas les vieilles perceptions du jour au lendemain, et les forces armées restent un outil indispensable, notamment pour faire face aux acteurs moins puissants. Si la guerre entre grandes puissances pourrait appartenir au passé, les guerres asymétriques ont un bel avenir devant elles! Mais si le cas de la relation Washington-Pékin est à la fois le plus déterminant et la meilleure illustration des préceptes de cette guerre douce, elle ne saurait en revendiquer l’exclusivité. La guerre n’est pas une fatalité, et encore moins une situation qui s’imposerait aux différents acteurs concernés sans que ces derniers n’aient le moindre contrôle sur sa conduite autant que sur les conditions préalables à son déclenchement. En d’autres termes, ce sont des acteurs – le plus souvent étatiques, mais on peut également imaginer des scénarios dans lesquels des groupes non-étatiques prennent le relais – qui provoquent la guerre, et décident de briser un statu quo qu’ils jugent inapproprié ou inadapté aux réalités du moment, ou plus simplement encore qu’ils perçoivent comme allant à l’encontre de leur intérêt.

La guerre devient ainsi une réalité quand au moins un acteur la provoque, manifestant ainsi son souhait d’en découdre militairement. Dans ce registre, les postures continuent de s’appuyer sur

un discours de fermeté, voire d’intransigeance, mais les conditions justifiant que des grandes puissances aient recours aux forces armées pour s’affronter sont de plus en plus difficiles à remplir. Ajoutons à cela ladite interdépendance, très souvent évoquée dans le cas de la relation Washington-Pékin, mais non moins évidente si on regarde de près les relations entre d’autres grandes puissances pourtant fréquemment qualifiées de rivales et supposément au seuil de la guerre, comme la Chine et le Japon.

De plus en plus montrés du doigt pour leur posture guerrière, ces deux pays n’en demeurent pas moins étroitement associés sur le plan économique, notamment dans le cadre de négociations sur la mise en place d’un accord de libre-échange. Pékin et Tokyo se livrent une lutte d’influence et de leadership en Asie, dans laquelle l’importance accordée aux forces armées semble relever plutôt de la rhétorique nationaliste que d’une véritable ambition stratégique.

Sans doute est-il normal que ces deux puissances se montrent méfiantes l’une de l’autre, le poids du passé étant toujours très présent dans cette relation. Mais sans doute aussi est-il très excessif, voire déplacé, de considérer qu’elles sont au seuil de la guerre, surtout si on considère que cette dernière serait déclenchée par un différend de longue date sur les îles Senkaku/Diaoyu qui, à défaut d’agiter les milieux nationalistes chinois et japonais, ne justifie rationnellement pas un conflit à grande échelle.

L

a rationalité, voilà la piqure de rappel que doivent constamment s’administrer les dirigeants des grandes puissances afin d’éviter des escalades inconsidérées ou des incidents qui dégénèrent en accidents. Dans les perceptions et les comportements entre grandes puissances, les mécanismes d’un autre âge et les vieux fantasmes ne disparaissent pas, et sans doute ne disparaîtront-ils jamais complètement. Et certains seront toujours tentés, pour des raisons de politique intérieure ou de prestige, de les agiter. Mais ils ne suffisent plus à eux seuls pour caractériser les relations entre grandes puissances rivales, qui associent désormais interdépendance et extension du domaine de leurs luttes. Des puissances structurelles pourrait-on conclure, dont la force de frappe ne se compte pas en nombre de blindés et d’avions de chasse, mais en capacité d’influence et de persuasion. Bienvenue au temps de la guerre douce, où tous les coups sont permis, à l’exception notable de ceux utilisant les arsenaux militaires. | GB

IN THE CABINET ROOM

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ILLUSTRATION: DUSAN PETRICIC

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Promiscuity and contingency will replace black and white in the making and breaking of strategic pacts, partnerships and pair bonds

BY JEREMI SURI

f the Cold War painted a relatively simple picture for power in the second half of the 20th century, then contemporary conflicts in the Middle East, Europe and Asia push toward something far more abstract. The unsettling complexity of Picasso is replacing the stable order of Monet and Renoir.

The lines between friends and adversaries are jumbled and frequently shifting. Light and dark colours are intermixed. Leaders in the US, Canada and Europe recognize these dynamics, but they remain too committed to the old style. For suc-

THE NEW

ALLIANCES OF THE 21st CENTURY

Jeremi Suri is the Mack Brown Distinguished Professor for Global Leadership, History, and Public Policy at the University of Texas at Austin.

His forthcoming book is The Reactive Presidency: The Rise and Decline

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of Presidential Power.

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cess in the 21st century, the most powerful states will have to embrace the messiness of the times and adopt a more flexible approach to making and breaking alliances. Power will follow strategic acts of promiscuity in forming momentary partnerships – partnerships that will before long replace the fixed bonds of loyalty and tradition that dominated decades past.

The dirty secret of international politics is that allies are often more difficult to manage than adversaries. Otto von Bismarck, the great German practitioner of Realpolitik, was far more successful in defeating his Danish, Austrian and French enemies than in getting his British and Russian friends to follow his lead. The unresolved tensions between Berlin, London and St. Petersburg contributed to WW1, which destroyed much of what Bismarck had built. The US learned the same lesson in the Cold War. After the Cuban Missile Crisis American leaders developed stable proce-

dures for managing the nuclear arms race, foreign interventions, and other forms of competition with the USSR – which is why there was no repeat of the Cuban Missile Crisis. The greater difficulty for American diplomats was in dealing with frequent French, German and even British resistance to USSoviet agreements on nuclear non-proliferation and stability in Europe. America’s allies became progressively more resistant to Washington’s leadership as the Cold War continued. By 1972, Richard Nixon and Henry Kissinger had developed a closer working relationship with Moscow than with Paris, Bonn or even London.

The US will face more alliance challenges this century. As the proliferation of international crises increases the pressure on Washington to nurture regional partnerships, America’s friends will feel emboldened to act with ever-greater independence. They will recognize, as many already do, Washington’s growing dependence on them.

(Oscar Wilde once called this the tyranny of the weak.) They will also defend interests and beliefs that strongly contradict American preferences. It will become increasingly difficult for Washington to get its allies to sacrifice for American-led goals.

This is presently the case for long-time allies in Israel, Japan, and Germany, which continue to cooperate closely with US, but also assert their independence and regional autonomy. They now frequently act with conspicuous disregard for American preferences. These allies do not follow Washington’s lead on settlement policies, military deployments, trade practices, and distribution of foreign aid. They have been quite critical of American military interventions and economic sanctions since the end of the Cold War. We should expect increased dissent and skepticism from such traditional allies in coming decades.

Many American foreign policy observers see this complex alliance landscape as a challenge, even if it offers a promising opportunity. In a world with diverse and shifting conflicts, more flexible, contingent and functional alliances will work better than the large and permanent structures built in the past to address near-universal Cold War threats. The smaller, context-specific

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ILLUSTRATION: AITCH

crises of the 21st century (in Iraq, Afghanistan, Ukraine and other places) demand an array of actors aligned around solving a particular set of problems, rather than upholding a treaty or protecting a set of institutions designed in another time for different issues.

Therein lies the central problem with relying so heavily on NATO, as the US, Canada and Europe do in this early new century, even as they confront threats that depart significantly from the purposes and structure of the alliance formed more than six

America’s allies became progressively more resistant to Washington’s leadership as the Cold War continued. By 1972, the US had developed a closer working relationship with Moscow than with Paris, Bonn or even London. decades ago. Russian-supported separatism in Ukraine and terrorist violence sponsored by ISIS (see Definition at p. 60), to take two prominent examples, are not the state-to-state conflicts that NATO and other traditional alliances anticipated.

Relying on these inherited organizations today is like using municipal police patrols to combat cyber-crime. The new configurations of actors and technologies require adjustments in the tools and the thinking about security.

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I 50

n regions where powerful local actors have interests that simultaneously overlap with, and contradict, American goals, more limited alliances will allow for better assurance that foreign military and development aid is used for intended purposes. Consider, for instance, the US’s dysfunctional relationships with Pakistan, Egypt and other generously supported allies. Each of these countries receives billions of dollars from Washington annually, but each unabashedly disregards American demands for democratic reform. Despite the obvious comfort that comes from identifying longstanding friends and enemies, research on the history of alliances shows that smaller, more focussed relationships between international actors are more effective, especially when key participants can shift allegiance on short notice.

The American alliance with the USSR during WW2 was an example of this dynamic – a partnership between rivals focussed on a shared threat and

some common goals. The US-China opening of the 1970s served a similar purpose, bringing ideological rivals together to contain the USSR and assure order in East Asia. Alliances with a clear purpose are more disciplined and less susceptible to corruption and mission creep than institutionalized dependencies.

The threat to end an alliance must be credible when trying to convince another country that it really must act in a particular way. When alliances seem permanent, as is the case with the US and Israel today, it becomes nearly impossible for Washington to threaten Tel Aviv with real penalties, even as Tel Aviv violates the terms of America’s massive aid. Israel and other long-term allies simply have too many supporters within the US. This fact limits American leverage and Israeli responsiveness. The same logic explains why Pakistan and Egypt continue to receive American aid, even as they stubbornly resist White House pressures to democratize.

In the pluralistic international landscape of the 21st century, filled with diverse actors and ever-shifting power dynamics, flexibility is more important than permanence.

As the most powerful international actor with the widest range of military and economic tools, the US will profit from a more complex and pluralistic set of alliance relationships, provided it uses its resources wisely. The same applies, to a lesser degree, for other powerful international actors, including Canada, Germany, France, the UK, China, India and Brazil. Although alliances like NATO still provide security value in specific contexts, policy-makers must look beyond this cumbersome model and think in more issuespecific ways.

Today’s friend on one issue is, on this logic, also the enemy on another. China and the US share a strong desire to limit the regional instability created

by North Korea’s nuclear capability, but they have antagonistic interests in respect of the future of Taiwan and the many disputed islands surrounding the mainland (see the Tête à Tête interview with Kevin Rudd at p. 8). Similarly, as stated earlier, Iran and the US are working informally together to halt the devastating violence unleashed by Sunni extremists in Iraq and Syria, even if they remain rivals for greater influence in the Middle East (see the Query article by Sam Sasan Shoamanesh at p. 18). The international landscape is filled with these contradictory relationships, and they are more important than ever because they involve the most powerful actors.

At times, even the US and Canada will have serious differences over the new shipping lanes in the Arctic, counter-terrorism in North America,

Brazil and so many other major international actors today.

In place of the categories that frequently characterize foreign policy thinking, leaders must learn to see alliances as floating relationships, defined by the specific issue. China and the US are indeed allies in containing North Korea. Iran and the US are indeed allies in fighting ISIS. Policy-makers must learn to work as closely with these partners on these issues as they do with more established allies in other areas. Most significantly, deep military, intelligence and economic coordination must be nurtured with contingent allies, while still protecting secrecy in areas of conflict. Mistrust in one domain, in other words, should not prevent necessary trust-building with the same actors elsewhere, even if we also cannot allow cooperation around one issue to create a false presumption of agreement on all matters. Judgements must remain issue-focussed, rather than generalized.

This compartmentalization is

In this context, foreign policy is not about distinguishing ‘good’ states from ‘bad’ states, or friends from enemies. China and Iran are both at the same time. Similar things can be said for Russia, India, Saudi Arabia and Egypt. very difficult for foreign policy bureaucracies that crave consistency, and public observers who demand moral clarity. Strategic alliances in the 21st century will shift frequently and rapidly. Leaders must begin educating their publics accordingly. Inconsistency will outperform consistency. The challenge will be to articulate overall strategic coherence behind the shifts, the contradictions, and the partial measures.

The public must hear why inconsistency is purposeful and productive for the national interest.

Despite our common rhetoric, alliances should not be about consistency or morality, nor should they turn on assumptions about trust and loyalty. The world of the 21st century has much less of all these qualities than we might desire. The key elements of alliance management will turn fundamentally on the definition of interests and issues. What are the driving concerns of the key actors? What are the dimensions of the topic under examination?

Identifying actors with compatible interests and defining issues that hold those interests together – these are foundational dynamics for the pluralistic

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and environmental and health regulations. The two long-time continental allies will remain close collaborators on many issues, but they must also prepare themselves for conflict in some areas. That conflict will not end the cross-border alliance, but it will change its nature – making the bilateral relationship more contingent, and various species of ‘linkage’ between the two countries more complex. Washington and Ottawa will differentiate points of partnership from sources of disagreement. Acknowledging both categories will allow for clearer focus on matters for which collaboration is most valuable.

The same applies to long-time rivals. In the recent past, policy-makers would have concentrated largely on the areas of conflict between countries like the US, China and Iran, characterizing them by their adversarial relationship. Today, that misses far too much of the overlap in their regional and global interests.

The adversarial focus also becomes self-fulfilling, encouraging an emphasis on points of conflict rather than cooperation.

Since 2000, the most dangerous moments in US-Chinese and US-Iranian relations have reflected this negative self-fulfillment. When the leaders of these countries emphasized their historical disagreements around the Taiwan Strait and the Strait of Hormuz, they made it harder to escape the pattern of belligerence evident throughout most of the Cold War. When, however, forwardlooking figures managed to focus more attention on common interests, these regimes found it possible to cooperate. This shift to emphasize overlapping interests, rather than longstanding differences, is what drove the US opening to China in the 1970s and 1980s, as well as the recent improvement in American relations with Iran.

Bref, the challenge for the 21st century is to build on the important areas of agreement between powerful regional actors, while also pursuing continued rivalries with these same states.

That means that the US must learn to cooperate more closely with Beijing in North Korea, just as it continues to contain Chinese aggression in the Pacific Ocean. (Beijing’s dominant strategy vis-à-vis Washington is probably not dissimilar.) Washington must also coordinate more effectively with Iranian forces fighting Sunni extremists, while continuing to limit Iranian nuclear proliferation and support for groups like Hamas and Hezbollah. In this context, foreign policy is not about distinguishing ‘good’ states from ‘bad’ states, or friends from enemies. China and Iran are both at the same time. Similar things can be said for Russia, India, Saudi Arabia, Egypt, South Africa,

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alliances that will shape contemporary international affairs in the Middle East, Asia, Africa, the former Soviet space, and other regions.

D

iplomacy will play a key role.

The US and other powerful international actors will have to learn how to cooperate with governments and groups that they deeply distrust, and perhaps even abhor. National representatives will have to maintain a wide range of contacts, and shift quickly from one ally to another as circumstances change. This flexibility calls for an ability to work closely with one group, while still cultivating and seducing others. Today’s ally cannot be allowed to veto or otherwise eliminate potential future allies, as often happens when local dictators kill all opponents. Skilled 21st century diplomats will work to maintain a wide and diverse

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Canada and the US will remain close collaborators on many issues, but they must also prepare themselves for conflict in some areas – making the bilateral relationship more contingent.

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field of potential partners – government and nongovernment alike – even when the potential partners consider one another blood enemies. Yesterday’s adversary will quickly become tomorrow’s ally, and then the next day’s adversary again. The groups that looked destined for annihilation might re-emerge as the new local king-makers. Skilled diplomats must be ready for these scenarios.

Preparation for this kind of nimble diplomacy will involve good intelligence, but also much more.

Language skills, despite their neglect in many Western countries today, will be crucial to communicate effectively with a range of actors who speak only in a native tongue. Local knowledge – the ability to understand customs, beliefs and symbols – will be crucial for anticipating power shifts and connecting with shifting figureheads. Support from above – confidence that one will not be penalized for risk-taking – will be supremely important, and is often most lacking today. Consider that for a diplomat or military representative to shift support to a new figure requires a tolerance of possible failure.

Alliance-makers will have to follow their own close readings about change on the ground, coupled with a sophisticated understanding of broader national and regional interests. Too much of contemporary diplomacy involves ‘reporting’ and ‘following orders’ from the president, prime minister, foreign minister, or their designated bureaucrats. The main task for the 21st century is to free diplomats from bureaucracies and make them intelligent field operators. They must act as catalysts for alliance formation in complex locales through negotiations, personal relations, and various ad hoc arrangements.

They need more strategic training, more regional expertise, and more decision autonomy.

The best functioning alliances will be the ones with the most skilled and adaptable diplomats. This brings us back to Monet, Renoir and Picasso. Diplomats are artists who paint on a canvas of politics, economics and military affairs.

They assess the interests of various actors and they create new understandings by redrawing familiar maps. Rudyard Kipling, the late 19th century British novelist and poet, captured this point so well when he described the ever-shifting imperial grey spaces of mixed conflict and cooperation in India and other international theatres. His jumbled and uncertain image of empire was a marked contrast with the black and white picture of the Cold War and the post-9/11 war on terrorism.

Power in the 21st century will closely follow the techniques employed by the main character in Kipling’s master novel, Kim. Actors on the ground will create situations that define the choices for policy-makers in far-away capitals. Partners will be necessary for all serious endeavours, but they will shift quickly as circumstances change. No one will be friend or foe forever. No one will be above suspicion. Everyone will be a potential ally, as well as a likely adversary.

In this complex and ever-changing landscape, mobilizing overwhelming military capabilities is less important than mastering keen observation, policy innovation, and the selective deployment of force. The effective powers will be the ones that seize opportunities for creative partnerships and then abandon them when they have outlived their purposes. Identities and interests will indeed shift fast. The most effective alliances will harness that dynamic, not try to resist it. Wise leaders will make and break alliances far more frequently than any state has in the preceding period of much simpler diplomacy. Ideology will still matter, but the management of potential allies will prove far more important to the Bismarcks and Kissingers of our time. | GB

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Existe-t-il toujours une «communauté internationale»?

QUERY

La Realpolitik, voire une simple politique étrangère normalement réaliste, semble aujourd’hui plus utopique encore que les utopies les plus idéalistes PAR HUBERT VÉDRINE

Hubert Védrine est ancien ministre des Affaires étrangères de la France (1997 à 2002). Il est président de l’Institut François Mitterrand

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depuis 2003.

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L

a situation internationale actuelle est très perturbante pour les Occidentaux et leurs croyances. Non seulement elle est inquiétante, voire menaçante ou dangereuse, mais elle met à mal, ou achève de mettre à mal, l’idée qu’ils se font du monde et de leur responsabilité internationale depuis toujours, et plus encore depuis la fin de l’URSS, comme le traduit bien la manie d’invoquer sans arrêt la «communauté internationale», même quand cela ne désigne en fait que les Occidentaux et quelques pays alliés ou associés, mais ni la Russie, ni la Chine, ni l’Afrique! Il ne s’agit pas alors, à l'évidence, de la «communauté» internationale, mais d’un groupe plus restreint, en général des Occidentaux, car les autres ne se sentent pas chargés des affaires du monde, alors que les Occidentaux se sont construits sur l’idée d’une mission et du prosélytisme.

De toute façon, ce terme est trop chaleureux pour désigner la foire d’empoigne qu’est notre monde.

En fait, c’est toute une vision des relations internationales cultivée depuis des décennies en Europe et au Canada (le cas des États-Unis est différent), depuis l’après-guerre en fait, et plus encore depuis la fin de l’URSS et de la Guerre froide, qui est brutalement contredite: prévention des conflits grâce aux Nations «Unies», développement de l’influence de la société civile et des ONG, au détriment de gouvernements forcément nuisibles, de plus en plus surveillés (transparence, lanceurs d’alerte, rebelles), valorisation permanente de la démocratie directe ou participative (c’est-à-dire de la transposition dans le champ politique de l’individualisme général qui s’amplifie), au détriment de la démocratie représentative, aspiration à un monde idyllique post-tragique, dissolution des identités dangereuses dans une magmatique démocratie de marché, stigmatisation de la Realpolitik au profit des «valeurs», etc…

Tout cela grâce au leadership occidental, mais qui lui-même s’est érodé.

Chacun reconnait là l’atmosphère dans laquelle il baigne dans nos sociétés. Tout cela est, selon les cas, touchant, désarmant de naïveté, justifié, courageux ou prémonitoire. Mais en tout cas jamais réaliste. Il n’y avait pas à s’étonner que cet Occident-là (l’Europe) s’enthousiasme d’emblée pour les «printemps arabes». Mais pas étonnant non plus, compte tenu des réalités profondes de ces pays et de la difficulté

de tout processus de démocratisation, que ceux-ci tournent au drame (mis à part le cas encourageant de la Tunisie et, peut-être, du Maroc). Mais cette déconvenue n’est rien à côté des chocs de 2014!

Déjà les métastases d’Al Qaïda, ou de ses fractions «franchisées» s’étaient développées au Nord-est du Mali (obligeant la France à une courageuse intervention, à la demande du Conseil de sécurité), au Nord-est du Nigéria, au Sinaï, au Yémen, en Libye.

Mais l’émergence foudroyante, comme des rezzous à l’ancienne, à partir de la Syrie puis de l’Irak, de l’État islamique (EI) est d’une autre taille et d’une autre nature, car elle révèle et précipite la décomposition de structures étatiques plus ou moins artificielles, issues, après la Première Guerre mondiale, du démembrement de l’Empire ottoman (voir l’article Query de Sam Sasan Shoamanesh à la page 18). La réalité est là, brutale, et ne laisse plus de place aux atermoiements, aux nuances et aux postures. En reculant les bornes de la barbarie par leur mise en scène obscène d’exécutions filmées, sur fond de réveil du conflit intra-musulman originel entre sunnites et chiites, en menaçant par contagion possible tous les États de la région, en se comportant comme le futur sanctuaire djihadiste mondial, les leaders terroristes de l’EI ont carrément obligé le Président Obama à mettre sur pied une large coalition pour l'éradiquer.

Quel que soit son désir de s’extraire des guerres de George W. Bush et de ne pas se laisser ré-engluer, il n’avait pas le choix. Engagement inévitable, mais extrêmement complexe.

Comment faire, après, au-delà des frappes aériennes de quelques avions occidentaux (et peut-être de ceux d’un ou deux pays arabes, souhaitables)?

Comment bâtir, ou rebâtir, ensuite des États stables capables de faire cohabiter en leur sein les divers groupes antagonistes, en évitant les comportements sectaires qui, par exemple en Irak (du fait, la question se pose, du Premier ministre déchu Al Maliki), ont poussé les sunnites à la dissidence et alimenté l’EI (voir Strategic Futures à la page 62)? Et quel régime futur en Syrie? Même si on essaye de se persuader que les frappes inévitables ne consolideront pas Assad, que l’on prétend d’ailleurs combattre en même temps, en armant son opposition démocratique, dont les militaires américains disent qu’elle n’existe pas sur le terrain. En réalité, la logique de la coalition, qui est

Si cette menace terroriste est la menace prioritaire, alors ce serait une occasion paradoxale de sortir par le haut de l’impasse de la tension occidentalorusse à propos de l’Ukraine.

ILLUSTRATION: DAN PAGE

et de renoncer à utiliser le gaz comme une arme; à Porochenko de mettre en place un système fédéral ou assimilé, de mener une politique étrangère prudente et «neutre», de confirmer la base de Sébastopol et de bien gérer son pays; à la Commission européenne de rendre l’Accord d’association, dont la mise en œuvre est reportée de 18 mois, compatible avec les échanges économiques Ukraine/Russie; aux alliés de l’OTAN de redire que l’Ukraine a vocation à être partenaire mais pas membre. Et finalement la Russie devrait être invitée comme partenaire à la réorganisation du Moyen-Orient et de l’Asie centrale de demain.

Mais la Realpolitik, voire une simple politique étrangère normalement réaliste, semble aujourd’hui plus utopique encore que les utopies les plus idéalistes, tous les conducteurs de politiques étrangères à usage interne affectionnant les postures de principe intransigeantes et, en général, strictes. Sauf bien sûr si l’Europe devait se réveiller de son sommeil stratégique, le Canada de ses rêves, et si les deux s’entendaient avec les États-Unis. | GB

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inéluctable, sera durable, contre l’EI et balaiera les contorsions des Européens, comme les états d’âme des Saoudiens et des autres.

Si cette menace terroriste est bien la menace prioritaire, alors ce serait peut-être une occasion paradoxale de sortir par le haut de l’impasse de la tension occidentalo-russe à propos de l’Ukraine et de l’escalade contre-productive dans les provocations et les sanctions (voir l’article Feature d’Irvin Studin à la page 12). N’oublions pas que tout cela n’est pas que «de la faute» de Poutine, mais est aussi le sous-produit des provocations, de la désinvolture et des contradictions occidentales depuis 20 ans, de la gabegie ukrainienne et de la volonté d’un Poutine aux aguets de réussir des «coups» restaurateurs, prestigieux, qui lavent en partie l’humiliation de 1991-1992 et font bondir sa popularité au-dessus de 80 pour cent! En bonne Realpolitik (préférable à «l’irrealpolitik» contemporaine), il serait demandé à Poutine de reconnaître sans ambiguïté la souveraineté de l’Ukraine, de ses frontières et de son gouvernement

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NEZ À NEZ On Boycotts and the Beautiful Game PROPOSITION:

The World Cup in Russia and/or Qatar should be boycotted.

TAMIR BAR-ON vs DANIEL FRIEDRICH

Tamir Bar-On (against): It might seem counter-

Tamir Bar-On is Professor in the Department of International Relations and Humanities, Tecnologico de Monterrey, Campus Queretaro, Mexico. His latest book is The World through Soccer: The Cultural Impact of a Global Sport.

Daniel Friedrich is a philosopher and a consultant on sustainable food consumption

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based in Berlin.

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intuitive for a political scientist to take a position against boycotting the World Cups in Russia and Qatar in 2018 and 2022, respectively. Let me point out at the outset that I am a critic of both the Russian and Qatari regimes (see Cabinet Room at p. 47). Both are authoritarian regimes. Russia has recently engaged in expansionist militarism in Ukraine, illegally annexing Crimea. It is eroding the civil liberties of its citizens and journalists. If you are a parliamentarian questioning wars in Chechnya, Georgia or Ukraine, you can be labelled a traitor to the nation.

For its part, Qatar is an authoritarian Gulf monarchy. There have been reports of forced labour in various newspapers, as well as reports of deaths of labourers working on the building of World Cup facilities.

Despite being a critic of both of these authoritarian regimes and of the way in which FIFA conducts bids for World Cups (corruption, kickbacks, and bribery have been reported), I believe that boycotts are counterproductive. First, if you boycott a regime like the one in Russia or Qatar, your message will stay home. But if you go to the World Cup, your message can get out to the world in a more powerful manner.

You will impact more people. Remember the black power salutes of sprinters Tommie Smith and John Carlos at the 1968 Olympic Games in Mexico City.

They were powerful reminders to the entire world that blacks were still second-class citizens in the US. If Smith and Carlos had stayed home, no one would have listened to their message.

Second, boycotts are contrary to the spirit of international sport. International sport should be indifferent to regime type, ideology, nation, culture, religion, linguistic group, tribe or sexual orientation. International sporting competitions should be about the feats of the wonderful athletes from all countries – not about politicians. FIFA has made a mistake by not compelling Arab countries to play Israel in sporting competitions. The de facto boycott of Israeli soccer clubs and national teams by Arab states (and Iran) is contrary to the spirit of international sport. Israeli soccer clubs and national teams now play out of their geographical zone in Europe,

thus giving them a disadvantage in qualifying for the World Cup because they must play against superior European rather than Asian opponents.

Finally, the best response to a boycott is winning and shutting up the critics, or sometimes even the racists. When Jesse Owens, a black American athlete, won his four sprinting gold medals at the Berlin Olympics in 1936, he made a mockery of Hitler’s warped ideas in respect of the superiority of the so-called Aryan race. Far more recently, the Ivory Coast international and Manchester City star Yaya Touré said that he would consider boycotting the World Cup in Russia because of the racial abuse that he has endured from Russian fans. My message to Touré is to not let the racists win. Do not silence your powerful anti-racist message. Go to Russia, speak out against racism there, and win the World Cup for Ivory Coast!

Daniel Friedrich (for): Given the powerful competition at the World Cup, the prospect of Ivory Coast, led by a brilliant Yaya Touré, lifting the trophy at the Luzhniki Stadium in Moscow seems highly improbable. It is, however, vastly more probable than any racist being shut up, as it were, by this result. Racists have long ago come to accept the reality of black star athletes. One more spectacular sporting success is not going to shake their warped emotional house.

Ivory Coast winning the World Cup is also not going to send a message about human rights abuses, about political and press freedoms being eroded, or about expansionist military activities. Nor are players likely to address these issues. After all, they already command a massive media presence that would allow them to send powerful messages.

And yet, for lack of interest or fear of losing their lucrative endorsement contracts they choose not to use this power. Why should we believe that any of this would change on Russian grass?

On the other hand, if Germany, the defending world champion, boycotted the next World Cup, this would surely send a message that would get noticed all around the world. Every news channel, including those in Russia, would have to confront the boycott and the reasons given for it.

PHOTOGRAPH: THE CANADIAN PRESS / AP / OSAMA FAISAL

one has for democratic institutions and human rights. It says loudly and clearly: abusing human rights, eroding political and press freedoms, and undertaking expansionist military activities are not acceptable. We will not stand for this; we will not be complicit in this – not even for the fun of competing in the beautiful game.

FIFA President Sepp Blatter, right, shakes hands with Sheikh Mohammed bin Hamad al-Thani, chairman of Qatar 2022 bid committee, at a press conference in Doha,

TBO: Let me begin with what unites us and then move to what divides us. We agree about the importance of human rights abuses, about political and press freedoms being eroded, and about expansionist military activities. Bref, we agree that Russia and Qatar are authoritarian regimes and that their values, forms and ways of governance, and rule by force rather than democratic legitimacy should be questioned and challenged.

Still, I cannot accept that boycotts are the answer to authoritarian regimes. You say the following: “If Germany […] boycotted the next World Cup, this would surely send a message that would get noticed all around the world.” This might be true, but this does not empirically test the value of boycotts. Did the values or policies of the US and USSR funda-

Qatar, November 2013.

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Contrary to what you argue, then, boycotting the World Cup in Russia or Qatar would be a more powerful way to get the message out. But this is not the only reason for a boycott. A boycott would also prevent instrumentalization of the World Cup by authoritarian regimes. I agree that international sporting competitions should be about the feats of the wonderful athletes from all countries. However, the reality is they are just as much about gathering support for regimes. Boycotting the World Cup in Russia or Qatar would not only take away a publicity stunt from an authoritarian regime, but would also provide a real incentive for FIFA to get its house in order and to ensure that, in future, there is no cause for choosing between having athletes from around the world competing on the one hand and becoming caught up in the massive publicity campaign of an authoritarian state on the other.

Moreover, our ideals require us to stand up for them. Getting angry at racial abuse is a way of expressing your hatred of racism and standing up for the ideal of equality. Likewise, boycotting a prestigious event like the World Cup is a powerful expressive action. It expresses the high regard that

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mentally change after they boycotted each other during the 1980 and 1984 Olympics? Do boycotts really work in a more globalized world?

In addition, are boycotts not really selective?

Should we have boycotted the US for invading Iraq in 2003 on false pretenses (weapons of mass destruction) and violating the sovereignty of a member state of the international community? If I am anticapitalist and Marxist, would I not call for a boycott of liberal capitalist states because they promote ‘class warfare’ and rampant social injustice? Why are boycotts often about easy targets like authoritarian or totalitarian regimes, thus reinforcing a simplistic binary opposition between our ‘good liberal regime’ and their ‘bad authoritarian/totalitarian regime’?

Like authoritarian regimes, liberal states engage in violence too, both directly and through more insidious structural forms.

A boycott is also contrary to the values that we are supposedly promoting through international sport. Nicholas Sarantakes, author of Dropping the Torch: Jimmy Carter, the Olympic Boycott, and the Cold

the manipulation of sport by both a liberal regime (the US) and an illiberal one (the USSR).

Finally, let me suggest that you assume a rather paternalistic posture in respect of athletes. After all, will boycotts not sacrifice the hard work of the athletes at the altar of politicians? You write: “Nor are players likely to address” political issues such as the human rights violations of regimes.

You go on to say that “for lack of interest or fear of losing their lucrative endorsement contracts they choose not to use this power.” In other words, you posit that athletes choose not to use the power of media. Of course, this is not completely true.

There are examples of players speaking out against military dictatorships, such as Carlos Caszely in Chile and Socrates in Brazil in the 1970s and 1980s.

Contemporary players have supported initiatives against racism, anti-Semitism and homophobia.

Female soccer players have also reacted to their second-class treatment by questioning how FIFA continues to favour the men’s game.

DF: Let me begin by going over a few points that

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Which regime does not instrumentalize sport? Liberal and non-liberal regimes alike use sport to unite a divided nation; to highlight the accomplishments of the nation; to garner public legitimacy.

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War, stated the following in an opinion piece in The New York Times (February 6th, 2014): “If you are going to have an international Olympic movement that is truly inclusive in its membership, then you need to be prepared to compete against teams and play in nations that do not share your values.

Otherwise, it is going to be next to impossible to have an Olympic gathering. There will always be someone with some issue worth protesting.” In short, a truly inclusive commitment to the values of international sport should mean competing against teams and playing in nations that do not share your values.

You argue that a boycott “would also prevent instrumentalization of the World Cup by authoritarian regimes.” But which regime does not instrumentalize sport? Liberal and non-liberal regimes alike use sport to unite a divided nation; to highlight the accomplishments of the nation; to garner public legitimacy; to demonstrate the superiority of their ideology; or even to promote what Joseph Nye calls ‘soft power.’ The Cold War was a perfect example of

should not take up our focus. You doubt that boycotts ever fundamentally change systems. Agreed.

But that should not be our measuring stick – even when focussing on impact and not on the expressive value of a boycott. True, Smith and Carlos did not fundamentally change the US. The question should instead be: will a boycott send a message that stimulates debate and works as a catalyst for gradual change? Let us also not get hung up on my paternalistic attitude toward athletes. Yes, it is not completely true that athletes do not choose their power over media for genuine political purposes. Yes, there have been exceptions. But by and large, we can agree that it is unlikely that Ronaldo or Messi will kick up a fuss about human rights abuses at the next World Cup. Finally, in respect of the instrumentalization of sport: true, every regime instrumentalizes sport. But this does not mean that the ends toward which sport is instrumentalized are all on par.

This leads me to the real bone of contention. You seem to reason that the world is too messy for a simple binary division between our ‘good liberal regime’ and their ‘bad authoritarian/totalitarian regime.’ They do wrong, but so do we. A boycott against one country is no more justified than against another; that is, boycotts are inherently arbitrary.

Hence, we better agree not to get into this whole boycotting thing altogether.

There is a large grain of truth to this. Ranking values is not easy. Some values may even be genuinely incommensurable. It does not get any easier if we try to assess complex sets of values all at once, as we must when passing judgement on nations. Still, despite this messy reality, it seems that

there are genuine moral differences worth calling out and defending. Killing is worse than slapping.

Killing 100 is worse than killing one; and so on. In other words, while there will always be someone with some issue worth protesting, some people’s issues are more deserving of protest than others, and some countries are more deserving of a boycott than others. Current-day Russia, I believe, falls into the latter category. I may well be wrong about this, but not because there are a lot of other countries that engage in wrongdoing. The world is morally messy, but it is not entirely arbitrary.

authoritarian and totalitarian regimes, but not about the effectiveness of boycotts. FIFA, for its part, is indifferent to regime types or ideologies. It promotes opportunistic nationalism in order to generate more revenue. There are more FIFA members than members of the UN, and each FIFA member pays FIFA fees for every match that its teams play. Before boycotting Qatar and Russia, then, I suggest that we revolutionize FIFA. The organization is far from transparent – indeed, corrupt and secretive. There have been startling revelations about corruption and kickbacks for the Qatar bid for the 2022 World Cup.

TBO: I appreciate that you tackle my arguments and

DF: A constructive debate moves forward. It is great

questions directly. Let me reiterate my arguments against boycotts: first, they hurt athletes; second, they are counterproductive and do not necessarily work; third, they are rather arbitrary in nature; and fourth, they run against the dominant ethos of international sport.

I want to add another argument against boycotts in sport – an argument that is an extension of my third argument in respect of the arbitrary and selective nature of boycotts. Boycotts are inherently politicized and they are not really about punishing bad leaders or regimes. Instead, boycotts are often about passions, media spin, and demonizing the enemies of the day – take, for instance, the calls to boycott Israel, its academics, and its various institutions. Why Israel and not, say, Syria or Sudan or China? The passions might be well off base. Bref, while I agree that a boycott might send a message that stimulates debate, for a boycott to truly work as a catalyst for change, we need more empirical evidence.

You argue that athletes are not all interested in politics. I agree in part. I highlight three dominant discourses about soccer in my book: the Nobel Prize (soccer has been nominated for a Nobel Prize), the famous Soccer War (fought between Honduras and El Salvador in 1969), and the Gramscian discourse (after the famous Italian Marxist). I am most inclined to view soccer through a Gramscian discourse in which soccer acts as tool for social control, but also for social change. Soccer historians Joshua Nadel, Brenda Elsey and others have shown how amateur and professional soccer players have challenged dictatorships (for example, Pinochet’s Chile), or how national soccer teams have promoted a more inclusive conception of the nation (for example, in Honduras or France). They have also shown how soccer is a tool for social and political control. (I concede, of course, that you might be right in stating that players today are more focussed on profits, and therefore less on social change, than in the past.)

I also agree that not all instrumentalization is the same, and that killing 100 is worse than killing one person.We are therefore in agreement against

that we have discovered much common ground. Let me add some more. I agree that many boycotts are based on partial and unfair reasoning. Boycotts of Israel, I agree, clearly fall into that category. I also agree that FIFA is non-transparent, corrupt and secretive, and that we should aim to change the way in which it operates.

However, even though many boycotts are based

Ranking values does not get any easier if we try to assess complex sets of values all at once, as we must when passing judgement on nations. Despite this messy reality, it seems that there are genuine moral differences worth defending.

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on partial and unfair reasoning, not all boycotts have to fall short of a defensible standard. Notwithstanding the aforementioned difficulties with value assessments, there are defensible ways of identifying some countries as particularly deserving of a boycott. Nearly every reputable NGO that assesses countries for human rights records ranks North Korea as one of the worst offenders in the world. These assessments are based on detailed analyses of the political and legal system, as well as on countless eyewitness reports. The assessments are not the result of media spin, blind emotion or partial reasoning. Thankfully, not even FIFA fancies the idea of staging a World Cup in North Korea. Still, if it did, then proposing a boycott would be far from arbitrary; on the contrary, it would be based on an impartial and rationally defensible assessment of comparative human rights data. Admittedly, the case for a boycott of the World Cup in Russia is based on less clear-cut grounds, and your critique powerfully highlights the challenge that needs to be met in making a solid case. | GB

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THE DEFINITION "The Islamic State of Iraq and Syria (ISIS) is… … the first transnational jihadist

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Seule une plus ample mobilisation citoyenne, en Irak comme en Syrie, pourra véritablement venir à bout de l’EI et de son dessein.

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organization to seize control of territory that transcends national borders. Its success is due to its ability to exploit the conflicts between the Sunnis and Shia in Iraq and Syria. As such, countering the group requires an accommodation between two rival powers: Iran, which leads the Shia, and Saudi Arabia, which leads the Sunnis.

ISIS is in many ways the byproduct of the SunniShia struggle, which erupted with the US invasion of Iraq in 2003. The group’s founder, Abu Musab Al-Zarqawi, took advantage of Sunni disenfranchisement and founded a group called Jamaat Tawheed wal-Jihad, which quickly emerged as a key player in the Sunni insurgency.

A year later, this new jihadist group allied with Al Qaeda, referring to itself as Tandheem Al Qaeda fi Bilad al-Rafidain. When Al-Zarqawi was killed in June 2006, the group had already begun to ignore orders from senior Al Qaeda leaders. It formed close partnerships with local Iraqi tribes, eventually forming an alliance, known as the Mujahideen Shura Council, consisting of various Sunni insurgent groups. It later donned a new moniker: the Islamic State of Iraq.

In 2007, the US reached an agreement with Iraq’s Sunni tribes, effectively ending the insurgency. For the next few years, the Islamic State of Iraq tried to continue conducting its suicide bombing campaign, but saw its real opportunity for revival in the Syrian civil war in 2011. There the one-time terrorist cell became a powerful militia, which funded itself in no small part by the oil fields now under its control.

After consolidating itself in Syria, the group changed its name to the Islamic State of Iraq and Syria and formally broke from Al Qaeda. Though it fought in Syria, it never lost sight of its home in Iraq, where the withdrawal of the US gave it ample space to reclaim lost ground. By exploiting the security vacuum and the alienation of Sunnis – a result of the Shiite policies in Baghdad – the group indeed reclaimed space from which it was once expelled.

After expelling the Iraqi military from Sunni territory, the group ‘re-established’ the caliphate and changed its name to the Islamic State. The Islamic State’s takeover of Mosul, Iraq’s third largest city, and its subsequent advances stem from its cooperation with Sunni communities – especially former Baathist military officers and commanders, on both sides

of the border – an essential part of its operations, considering that it is not a particularly large group.

This relationship is the source of the Islamic State’s strength and, at the same time, its vulnerability. Many Sunnis are using the Islamic State as leverage for greater political power. Likewise, the Islamic State is using the Sunnis to enhance its transnational ambitions. Therefore, the various international actors that have a stake in Iraq – the US, Iran, Saudi Arabia and, among others, Turkey – are working with various domestic Iraqi actors to drive a wedge between the Islamic State and its Sunni partners.”

Kamran Bokhari is the Vice-President of Middle Eastern and South Asian Affairs at Stratfor.

… originellement apparu en Irak en octobre 2006, émanation de la mouvance locale d’Al-Qaïda. Sur fond de marginalisation politique structurelle des sunnites après le renversement de Saddam Hussein, l’organisation salafiste-jihadiste s’est employée à restaurer le califat musulman par tous les moyens, y compris par l’usage d’une terreur et d’une barbarie les plus extrêmes. Ce mode de gouvernement historique est, en effet, considéré par les combattants comme un véritable âge d’or, dont l’État islamique ne serait au fond que le prélude. Depuis, c’est une triple conquête militaire, territoriale et politique qui est à l’œuvre et a bénéficié du contexte de guerre civile dans la Syrie voisine et de la déstabilisation plus large du Moyen-Orient. À force de violents combats et de coups d’éclat, l’EI est parvenu à s’arroger le contrôle de provinces entières dans ces deux pays, tenant à la fois tête aux régimes en place et aux autres factions de l’opposition. L’assaut fulgurant lancé le 10 juin dernier à Mossoul, puis la restauration unilatérale du califat annoncée par l’émir en chef du groupe, Abou Bakr al-Baghdadi, sanctionnent la détermination qui est celle des jihadistes à s’emparer du monde arabe et musulman dans son ensemble, même au prix d’un bain de sang et de l’élimination pure et simple de tous ceux (chiites, chrétiens, Yézidis, Chabaks, sunnites modérés) perçus comme faisant obstacle à leur projet. Leur ambition meurtrière est d’ailleurs loin de se limiter à l’Irak et à la Syrie, comme en témoigne l’appellation plus récente d’État islamique: les jihadistes entendent bel et bien placer sous leur coupe la région, du Machrek au Maghreb, en passant par l’Afghanistan, le golfe Persique et le Sahel plus à l’Ouest.

Au-delà, ce sont l’Occident et le monde entier qui sont directement visés par cet effroyable irrédentisme. La réponse ne pouvait être que militaire dans un premier temps. De ce point de vue, le sursaut occidental, américain comme européen, et l’appui armé accordé aux forces luttant contre les jihadistes, les peshmergas kurdes et l’armée irakienne

en particulier, sont évidemment les bienvenus.

Mais ils sont tardifs et insuffisants. Seule une plus ample mobilisation citoyenne, en Irak comme en Syrie, pourra véritablement venir à bout de l’EI et de son dessein. Pour cela, une plus grande assistance humanitaire et des armes seront nécessaires. Les puissances régionales, au premier rang desquelles les régimes sunnites (Arabie saoudite, Turquie, Qatar) et l’Iran chiite, qui se sont livrées des guerres par procuration sur ces deux théâtres de conflit, doivent également trouver un terrain de dialogue diplomatique en vue de limiter les dommages collatéraux de ces crises délétères. Les processus de transition amorcés en Irak en 2003, et en Syrie depuis 2011, doivent enfin retrouver leur sens par un soutien clair et assumé de la communauté internationale aux derniers démocrates qui, dans ces pays, sont les seuls susceptibles d’assurer un avenir à des populations civiles pour l’heure prisonnières d’un double étau de la tyrannie: la dictature et le chaos».

has thus far achieved in Iraq, MNLA and Ansar Dine seized major cities in northern Mali, including Gao, Kidal and Timbuktu. In response, the UN Security Council passed a number of resolutions that provided international legal authority for an armed intervention. This led, ultimately, to Operation Serval – a French-led multinational engagement in Mali that included regional components and has been largely viewed as successful. This multinational effort was coupled with capacity-building efforts by numerous international partners.

While there are certainly differences between Iraq and Mali, there is reason to believe that a similar multinational effort in Iraq will yield similar results.

Already, with US support, Iraqi forces have prevailed

Myriam Benraad est une analyste politique et ancienne chercheuse de la région Moyen-Orient et Afrique du Nord au Conseil européen des relations étrangères.

… a non-state armed group that,

PHOTOGRAPH: AP / RAQQA MEDIA CENTER OF THE ISLAMIC STATE GROUP

in battlefield engagements against ISIS and have retaken critical terrain – witness the combined IraqiAmerican effort that resulted in renewed control of the Mosul dam, a strategically important piece of infrastructure. This indicates that, while ISIS may thrive in the vacuum of ungoverned spaces, it will wilt and recoil in the face of significant and sophisticated opposition.

ISIS is significant but not unique – and there are recent examples of how the international community may successfully counter such threats. An international effort targeting ISIS – in partnership with a reconstituted Iraqi army, Iraq’s allies, and regional partners in the Middle East – can serve to effectively counter this terrorist organization, prevent further instability, and halt the ongoing atrocities that have been the hallmark of ISIS.” Dan Stigall is an attorney with the US Department of Justice, Office of International Affairs. He previously served in Iraq with the US Army JAG Corps. He is the author of Counterterrorism and the Comparative Law of Investigative Detention.

For more answers, please visit the Global Brief

A fighter of the Islamic State group waving the ISIS flag from inside a captured government fighter jet.

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by exploiting ungoverned spaces and state fragility in the Middle East, has asserted a degree of control over a large swath of territory that transcends the borders of Iraq and Syria. In so doing, ISIS has become a stark reminder of the dangers posed by ungoverned spaces – lawless expanses of the globe left effectively unregulated by sovereign authority, where terrorist organizations and other transnational criminal groups are permitted to thrive.

ISIS has proclaimed a caliphate (or an Islamic state) in the area that it currently controls. It is important to recognize, however, that ISIS is not a wholly unique phenomenon. On the contrary, it is one of a plurality of non-state armed groups willing to use popular disaffection, existing identity cleavages, and appalling levels of brutality to gain control over territory where legitimate government presence is weak or wanting.

Recent events in Mali, in this respect, provide an interesting parallel.There the exodus of armed Tuaregs from Libya after Gaddafi’s ouster served to vitalize other non-state armed groups in northern Mali. Most notably, in 2012, the National Movement for the Liberation of Azawad (MNLA) – a Tuareg rebel group that was formed for the purpose of creating an independent state in northern Mali – launched a rebellion with assistance from various terrorist organizations operating in the region, namely Al Qaeda in the Islamic Maghreb (AQIM), Ansar Dine, and the Movement for Oneness and Jihad in West Africa (MUJWA).

As with ISIS in Iraq, this syndicate of non-state armed groups in Mali succeeded in overwhelming Malian government forces. Similar to what ISIS

website at www.globalbrief.ca

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STRATEGIC FUTURES “In 2020, the Kurdistan Region in Iraq... ...will be, more than ever, a de facto

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The Iranian constitution has fully secured the rights of all minorities, including the Kurds – in some cases beyond what one would find in the constitutions of Western countries.

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state. This is the closest that the Kurds anywhere will have ever come to what looks and feels like an independent state. But Iraq’s Kurds will still act with the utmost caution, fearing the reaction of regional powers – most notably Iran and Turkey.

Based on a solid consensus among political factions in Erbil and Sulaymaniyah, the Iraqi Kurds will choose not to declare formal independence – a symbolically significant step but one that, in practical terms, can do more harm than good to the cause of Kurdish self-determination in the long run.

While both Iran and Turkey have learned to live with Kurdish autonomy in northern Iraq, they have combined forces and are increasingly committed to opposing official independence for the Kurds. Tehran and Ankara use a simple carrot and stick strategy to achieve their ends. The authorities in Tehran have been busy cultivating an anti-independence consensus among Iraqi Kurds for some time. Tehran does not want an independent Kurdish state next door, fearing that it will mobilize Iran’s own large Kurdish minority of some seven to eight million – already approximately 10 percent of the national population, and almost twice as numerous as the Kurds in the Kurdish Regional Government (KRG) in Iraq.

Since the fall of Nouri al-Maliki in 2014 and the rise of the Islamic State, Tehran’s message to the Kurds of Iraq has been unambiguous: stay within Iraq, keep your autonomy, and we will continue to trade and engage with you. If, however, you chose to break away, then we will do what we can to undermine any nascent Kurdish state. On this logic, Tehran would reconsider the multi-billion dollar annual trade that it conducts with the KRG. It would use its political leverage inside Iraqi Kurdistan to undermine the political leaderships in Erbil and Sulaymaniyah. And it would look to sponsor new Iraqi Kurdish political voices to weaken any independentist posture.

Iran benefits in this strategy from the fact that Ankara has abandoned its earlier flirtation with accepting Kurdish independence. As with the Iranians, the Turks now also fear a spillover scenario in which Kurds across the region – some 30 million people spread across Iran, Iraq, Turkey and Syria – mobilize

against existing international borders carved up in the region following WW1. As President Erdogan is no longer confident that Ankara can be the principal gatekeeper to Iraqi Kurdistan, he finds himself in agreement with the Iranians that Kurdish autonomy in Iraq is tolerable, but that independence can have unintended consequences. The Iraqi Kurds will therefore duly decide that the timing is still not ripe for declaring independence.”

Alex Vatanka is a Senior Fellow at the Middle East Institute in Washington, DC.

…will have to appreciate Tehran’s position on the Kurdish question. Due to the current situation in Iraq and Syria, with both countries on the verge of disintegration, any move toward an independent Kurdistan will fuel further instability.

Indeed, it may accelerate the collapse of both countries, causing chaos to spill over to other regional countries. Iran will therefore strongly oppose the idea of an independent Kurdistan and will advise against it.

It is important to point out that Iraqi Kurds have played a key role in drafting the current Iraqi constitution, which is not far removed from a federal system. Tehran will continue to support the current Iraqi constitution and nothing more.

Note also that the Kurds in Iran have traditionally been treated very differently from their compatriots in Turkey and Iraq. They have always been represented through their MPs in the Iranian Parliament.

Under President Ahmadinejad, Mohammad Reza Rahimi, the first vice president of Iran, was from Kurdistan. Kurds have always had representation in different administrations. Coincidentally, the Iranian Kurds claim that they are the original Iranians and have strong sentiments of national pride toward Iran.

The Iranian constitution has fully secured the rights of all minorities, including the Kurds – in some cases beyond what one would find in the constitutions of Western countries. In short, Iran embraces its Kurdish brethren. If, however, any issues or concerns arise in respect of minority issues and grievances, efforts should be made to solve them based on the Iranian constitution.”

Seyed Hossein Mousavian is a Research Scholar in the Program on Science and Global Security at Princeton University’s Woodrow Wilson School of Public and International Affairs. He is a former diplomat who served as Iran’s Ambassador to Germany (1990-1997), head of the Foreign Relations Committee of Iran’s National Security Council (1997-2005), and spokesman for Iran in its nuclear negotiations with the EU (2003-2005).

…will provide a leading example of

PHOTOGRAPH: WAHLEN / WIKIMEDIA COMMONS

a Kurdish state a threat to their sovereignty, as it would fuel aspirations for autonomy in provinces with substantial Kurdish populations.

While the Middle East remains in turmoil, with a poor record for regional cooperation, and with the radical jihadists of the Islamic State plundering and pillaging, the KR is emerging as a promising economic player. Increasing economic integration seems to be leading its neighbours to reconsider their persistent policies against Kurdish aspirations. Ankara’s new rhetoric toward the KRG demonstrates this.

Still, recognition remains a very unlikely scenario at this stage.

For the Kurds, there remains only one option – namely, to ally with the international community to gain its support for a future bid. Winning the international community over will only be possible through: a) accepting a responsible and gradual process toward independence; and b) adhering to international standards.

Both a) and b) will in turn provide fertile ground for government reforms.”

Armin Seif is the Programme Director of Democracy and Governance Programme at the Middle East Research Institute

Erbil is the largest city and capital of the Kurdistan Region of Iraq. In Shar Park, Erbil's busy and popular main square, crowds enjoy the cool area created by the fountains.

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good governance for the rest of the Middle East.

The Kurdistan Region (KR) of Iraq has come a long way. Its formation as a de facto state in October 1991 was a milestone in the history of the Kurds – a tumultuous and bloody history that saw Kurds suffer oppression, persecution, genocide and a civil war between two main parties led by Masoud Barzani (KDP) and Jalal Talabani (PUK). Unlike the Shia and Sunnis in the rest of Iraq, the Kurds remedied divisions among themselves and created an environment conducive to foreign investment, and also strong relations with regional neighbours and international powers. This has allowed them to expand their political and economic autonomy from the rest of Iraq. Gradual expansion of this autonomy and ultimately independence are inevitably part of the roadmap for Kurdistan.

Still, the road to independence is rocky. A declaration of independence would evoke mixed reactions internationally and regionally. Landlocked by countries dismissive of the idea of a Kurdish state, Kurds must reach beyond the region to receive necessary recognition. Iran, Turkey and Syria consider

in Erbil, Kurdistan Region, Iraq.

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EPIGRAM

Strategy as Chess: The Checkered Record Chaos, Schlieffen, and the best laid plans of the planners

BY GEORGE ELLIOTT CLARKE

A George Elliott Clarke is the E.J. Pratt Professor of Canadian Literature at the University of Toronto, and the Poet Laureate of Toronto. His newest book of poetry is Traverse, an autobiographical

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poem.

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s the second James Bond flick, From Russia with Love (1963), commences, McAdams, a Canadian, is bested in a Cold War chess match by the bow-tied, Czech player, Kronsteen, who is also, secretly, a honcho in a global, apolitical Mafia, namely SPECTRE. Kronsteen’s win is meant to forecast SPECTRE’s success in its plot both to liquidate Bond and disgrace MI6.

Dramatically, that’s not how it all turns out. Then again, wars wagered on grand strategies – Germany’s Great War Schlieffen Plan for a quick, one-two knockout punch against the French and the Russians, or Imperial Japan’s surprise attack on the US Pacific fleet at Pearl Harbor, Hawaii, in December 1941 – tend to get bogged down not only in flame and mud (“the fifth element,” said Napoleon), but intractable reality.

See also French General Charles Leclerc, whose 1802 campaign to retake revolutionary Saint-Domingue (Haiti) and likely restore slavery, started well, but soon had to indulge in torture. (Consider this procedure a preface to French atrocities in Algeria, 1954-1962.) No matter: Leclerc’s 40,000 troops were promptly annihilated, due to blacks’ machetes and yellow-fever-injecting mosquitoes.

The problem with viewing nations and/or subnational groups as players in a global game is that guiding notions such as ‘winning hand’ or ‘slam dunk’ or ‘rolling the dice’ or ‘domino theory,’ so appealing as locker-room metaphors, yield dire consequences in the arena of flesh and blood.

Thus, the stadium and the gymnasium become actual killing fields. (Witness Santiago, Chile, in 1973, and Beslan, Russia, in 2004.)

Even ‘foolproof’ war plans neglect the truth that making war is frequently a fool’s errand, entailing the dispatch of propagandized patriots to theatres where, as Matthew Arnold warns in his poem, “Dover Beach” (1867), “ignorant armies clash by night.”

No wonder the brilliant acronym snafu emerged out of WW2; no wonder its equivalent, MAD, defined Cold War nuclear deterrence.

War is a wrong wherein little goes right – except the commission of more wrongs. Unintended consequences befall grandiose bellicosity. So, the Coalition-of-theWilling invasion of Iraq in 2003, a Rommel-style Blitzkrieg across desert sands, found dashing success – the toppling of a bombastic tyrant and his Disneyland statues. So smashing was the victory that Percy Bysshe Shelley’s Vanity-skewering poem, “Ozymandias” (1819), could have serenaded every ‘liberated’ balcony in Baghdad.

But this triumph of the ‘Willing’ wreaked destabilization so profound that Iraq suffered a decade-plus of car-bombs and IED pogroms. Former British Prime Minister Tony Blair (cast) aside, most now see that to have passed from the nasty, poison-gas massacres of the late Saddam Hussein to the evil mass shootings and beheadings perpetrated by the sadistic, Caliphatein-a-hurry that is ISIS, ain’t no policy success meriting the popping of champagne corks.

(Likewise, Hannibal slaughtered Roman troops, for 15 years, campaign after campaign, only to find that, while he was strolling his elephants across the Alps, galley-borne, Roman ‘Marines’ were torching his bases in Carthage, thus disabling his supply lines.)

The fortunes of war impose, moreover, drastic misfortunes upon the multitude, even for victors. So, Britain suffered the ‘Blitz’ in 1940-41, but rallied – with the active assistance of Canada, the US and the USSR – to defeat Nazi Germany. Even so, Britain lost its empire, much gold bullion, and countless naval bases. (So, the US got Diego Garcia, among many others, and Canada got Newfoundland.)

For its part, the Soviets cakewalked into Afghanistan in 1979, but could not keep it. Some dozen years later, the USSR imploded, while Afghanistan steadily pumped out opium (following ye olde British Empire’s game plan) and became a world-class, breeding (or dumping) ground for extremists.

Perhaps it is one of the ironies of strategy that the failure to dislodge the Afghan Taliban tyranny in March 2001 for having dynamited the Bamiyan Buddhas (a diabolical assault on human heritage), also constituted a foregone opportunity to disrupt, if accidentally, the Al Qaeda plot against Manhattan’s Twin Towers that year.

Apart from planting spies, jailing plotters, or parachuting troops, the official answer to terrorists is launching missiles. Thus, the 2009 Nobel Peace Prize Laureate Barack Obama disses pacifism currently, preferring, as US Prez, to ‘drone’ on and on.

Air strikes – those Zeus thunderbolts from Olympus – are supposedly pinpoint, but still blast a regrettable number of weddings and kindergartens as opposed to bad guys, scheming up fresh outrages in their NORAD-parody caves.

Tempting it is to consider treaties, trade deals, and alliances as chess moves, delivering smug winners their spoils, if despoiling the losers. But seldom are rules clear or players fair, and sore losers tend to return to the gambling (or ‘negotiating’) table, with ‘terrorist’ guns blazing. | GB