The Democrats in Congress seem hell-bent on proving one more time that one very important lesson of history still holds true. Playing domestic politics with an important foreign policy consideration is a very, very bad idea--no matter how well it may play with the folks back home.
House majority leader Steny Hoyer has blown off the serious and well founded objections of SecDef Gates and SecStat Rice to the passage of a resolution declaring the killing of Armenians by the Turkish military between 1915 and 1923 as "genocide." Mr Hoyer (who has no direct experience with foreign policy to the Geek's knowledge) dismissed the warnings of Gates and Rice regarding serious damage to US national security interests as a mere "blip."
Get a grip, Mr Hoyer!
This is a hot button, maybe the hot button issue with the Turks both in government and on the street. Passage of this ill-considered feel-good measure would injure the US relations with Turkey not only today but into the future. Congress should bear in mind just how critical Turkey has been and will continue to be in US policy calculations in the region.
Congress should also keep in mind just how poorly the US has treated Turkey over the years. Years ago we tilted against Turkey in the conflict with Greece over Cyprus. More recently we have not shown anything approximating even-handedness as the conflict has re-emerged now centering on Cypriot development of off-shore oil fields.
We have leaned heavily on the Turks not to pursue an oil and gas pipeline development project with Tehran. We have interfered with Turkey's legitimate right to self-defense against the Kurdish insurgent group, the Kurdish Workers Party (PKK). We got ourselves in a totally unnecessary snit over Ankara's unwillingness to allow us to use Turkish bases for a part of of our 2003 invasion of Iraq.
Overall, it is not surprising that in a recent international poll, Turks showed the lowest approval rate of the United States of all countries--something on the order of nine percent. It is not surprising that the same poll showed a significant number of Turks believed that the US was cranking up an invasion directed against them!
We need Turkey as a close, willing, and effective partner in the Second Cold War--the struggle against Islamism. We need Turkey as a close, willing, and effective partner in our effort to clean up our mess in Iraq and leave a functioning state in our wake as we leave. We even need to look to Turkey as the only likely locus for a true Islamic reformation--a melding of timeless Islam with the realities of the world today and into the future.
There is a lot more at stake in Turkey than merely access to our bases. There is a lot more at stake in Turkey than the immediate course of events in Iraq, or even in the region. Turkey is a key player in most of our concerns throughout the Mideast and Islamic areas.
Politicians may only want to keep the folks back home happy and in a voting mood. That's how the word bunk, deriving from the earlier bunkum, entered the American dictionary. One hundred fifty or so years ago there was a congresswallah from North Carolina who made speeches about one absurdity after another and who spoke in opposition to measures for which he voted. When asked why, the man answered, "It's for the folks in Buncomb county."
Bunk--that's a good word for the fancy speeches of those who support the counterproductive, nationally self-destructive, feel-good resolution on Armenian genocide. Rather than voting for these critters who wish to apply a word that has become dangerously overused in recent years, the people back home in the various "Buncomb counties" of this country should toss the gripless, brain-dead purported representatives out.
Of course that won't happen. Bunkum always sells well. It helps on election day. And, it only hurts our nation's interests and future.
So, why worry?
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6 comments:
Steny, what are you thinking?
I mean, come on - you can't change history (just as the Geek), but you sure can piss 'em all off, with no benefits accruing to anybody that I can see.
I mean, even the Kurds aren't finding this really useful, because all your slop does is make the more extremist types who want Kurdish independence think that the US House will actually back them up, when we all know, that if (when) push comes to shove, they'll be looking for holes to dive into.
Steny, actually thought you were a halfway smart Democrat. Now, you're trying to make the Republicans look good. What are you trying to accomplish here - compete with John Murtha for the "Congress Critter Brainless Idiot Of The Week" award?
Ok, you guys are in charge now in Congress - It's time to start acting like the adults.
I know - it ain't fair - but that's the way it is going to be if your side wants to stay in charge. Your choice....
Are you saying that we should ignore the misdeeds of governments and leaders just because it would be inconvenient for US interests? Remember, this has led us in the past to support corrupt dictators and shore up reprehensible regimes. Why shouldn't we as a nation insist on standards all Americans can support in good conscience.
"Are you saying that we should ignore the misdeeds of governments and leaders just because it would be inconvenient for US interests? Remember, this has led us in the past to support corrupt dictators and shore up reprehensible regimes. Why shouldn't we as a nation insist on standards all Americans can support in good conscience."
I tend see comments using terms like "misdeeds of governments and leaders", or terms such as "...we as a nation insist on standards all Americans can support" as being a terribly slippery slope. Type of language that brings us to places like Bosnia, Kosovo, or Haiti, where we really don't have a plan (Except "maybe we can do some good"), and we end up bumbling around annoying the locals.
I tend to fall more into the Lord Palmerston arena. To refer back to his (Palmerston's quote) where he famously said we have no permanent allies and no permanent enemies, only permanent interests.
Concepts like "misdeeds of governments and leaders" are what gets us the rolling catastrophe known as the World Court, which has got to be one of the most completely useless and totally worthless concepts ever devised in history, and that's saving something.
Sorry, but in short, not interested in trying to be an absolutist "Internationalist Do-Gooder". Just takes up way, way too much energy, accomplishes nothing desirable that I can see, and besides, the above position already seems to be taken as the sole province of Al Gore.
OK, I did some research on the Turkey/Armenian situation. The killings of Turks by Armenians and Armenians by Turks occurred during wartime. Russia had invaded Turkey and the Armenians residing in Turkey sided with the Russians--a sure recipe for disaster.
I stand by my point that do-gooding should not be ruled out by flinty-eyed realpolitikers.
Case in point: insurgency
Ordinary citizens do not just take up arms for insignificant reasons. When an insurgency erupts, the US should not reflexively support the status quo power. We should to quote Al Stewart,"turn and listen closer." If the complaints are legitimate, why can't we support the insurgents? For instance, why weren't we running the winning insurgency in Nicaragua instead of supporting Samosa?
Insurgents are not criminals. They are not ne'er do wells, teenagers with adolescent oppositional disorder. They have political complaints they take very seriously, complaints that have to be addressed for counterinsurgency to work.
(BTW Maybe the world court will come in handy to get Blackwater.)
Between 1893 and 1896 the rapidly decaying Ottoman Empire took direct action against Armenians of a sort that today would be called "ethnic cleansing." The body count was modest, somewhere around thirty thousand.
In 1915 the moribund Empire was at war on several fronts. It had joined the Central Powers for reasons of national interest--specifically Germany had been a vital aide in both military and economic development and the Allies included Russia with whom the Turks had waged recent and not particularly successful defensive wars.
One of the several fronts on which Turkish forces was eastern Anatolia. (The others were the Gallipoli Peninsula, Palestine and Mesopotamia.)
The Russians had penetrated to some depth and had been joined by Armenian partisans. These partisan fighters not only fought shoulder-to-shoulder with the Czarist troops, they also engaged in attacks (including terrorist type actions) deep inside Turkey.
Not surprisingly the unstable Ottoman caliphate (and the political-military movement lead by Kemal Ataturk known as the Young Turks) retaliated against the Armenians who were seen with justification as traitors. The retaliations were robust--arguably over-robust.
To characterise the Turkish treatment of the Armenians as "mass killing" is correct. To characterize it as "genocide" is arguably incorrect.
The Geek objects to the expansion and cheapening of the concept "genocide." It should be limited in use to describe the official state policy of destroying an identifiable ethnic, religious or racial minority within the region controlled by the state.
The use of genocide to describe the Nazi efforts to eradicate the Jewish or Gypsy population of occupied Europe is accurate. The Nazi extermination program was state run, methodical, targeted and had the goal of totally eliminating identifiable groups from the population.
The term genocide is not accurately applied to actions as far removed in space and time as the killing fields of the Khmer Rouge and the Turks during the death throes of the ancien regime and the pressures of defensive multi-front war.
Leaving aside for the moment considerations of historical accuracy, it is necessary to ask if a nation with definable interests at stake can realistically afford to place those interests at risk for a piece of feel-good pseudo-legislation?
To the Geek, a realpolitiker to the core, the answer is no. That answer is historically justified. While historical trajectories can serve to either enhance or limit a state's cone of options, the interjection of irrelevant genuflections to the folks in Buncombe County is never justified. The current action under way in Congress can have the effect of severely constricting the cone of options available to the US over the near- to mid-term.
There is no justification for such a self-inflicted wound.
With respect to the question of morality in foreign policy generally, the historical record shows that we Americans more than the citizens of any other country have been bothered by the tension that can and often has existed between morality per se and the requirements of realism in foreign policy. Such excrescences of morality as the Fourteen Points of Wilson came back to bite the world, not because of the inherent moral position contained within some of the points but because it was not possible to implement them in an effective manner.
The concept of "human rights" is essentially a moral one. It is also an effective tool of foreign policy--if employed correctly. There need not be any contradiction between morality and realism, but the devil is in the details of implementation.
When Congress or president, for example, in a fit of moral mindedness orders the US intelligence community to have no dealings with unsavory individuals, that fit of morality runs across the grain of needing intelligence information.
The question of supporting insurgents rather than the status quo power is not a question of morality per se. It is a question of accurately determining where and how US national interests can best be served. It is also a question of where the internal dynamics of the society undergoing insurgency might be pointed.
History demonstrates that an external intervenor can only effect the trajectories of historical dynamic within a given polity or society on the margins. Outside intervention can advance or retard the progress of an insurgency but it can neither create a successful insurgency or its counter out of thin air and good intentions.
Often during the Cold War the US confused the appearance of short term order under an authoritarian regime with the reality of long=term stability. This lead to such errors as supporting or fostering dictatorships in countries as far removed as the Philippines, Chile and assorted African states.
Humans as individuals must have an ethical stance. Nation-states should have them, but not at the cost of national interest.
It may have seemed the "right" thing to do when we intervened in Somalia or Haiti back during the Clinton years, but what were the longer term effects? Did the short interventions bring about a better state of peace for the locals? Did they enhance any demonstrable US national interests?
Feeling good is wonderful. The Geek likes to feel good. Doing feel good things as a nation without due consideration of the effects of the action over time is just flat stupid.
OK, Geek, I get your point. Now, what about global warming? Or do you think it isn't really a foreign policy issue?
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