Autocratic Regimes: Subject to the Domino Effect?

"In Beirut, gunfire broke out and crowds of people waved Egyptian flags. In Yemen, they gathered in front of the Egyptian Embassy chanting, 'Wake up rulers, Mubarak fell today.' In Gaza, they fired shots in the air and set off fireworks. . . . [However,] in a telling sign of the divide between the rulers and the ruled, the region’s leaders, presidents and monarchs remained largely silent." This depiction by The New York Times of ripple effects across the Middle East in the wake of the resignation of Egypt's Mubarak in February, 2011 intimated the hoped-for and feared possibility that the popular unrest could spread.  Moreover, the entire world, which had been been glued to the events unfolding in Cairo, wondered if a domino effect might be in store in countries under autocratic rule. Indeed, The New York Times wrote of a possible domino effect quite explicitly: "The popular uprising that started . . . in Tunisa had claimed its second autocratic government, this time in the largest country in the Arab world. With more protests planned in coming days, some governments were clearly worried they could be next." But do autocratic governments fall like dominos?  That is, is revolution contagious? Fawaz Traboulsi, a prominent Lebanese writer and columnist, thought so in the days following Mubarak's resignation. “All the regimes are shaking now . . . They are becoming more and more fragile. This is just the beginning.” In Bahrain, King Hamad Bin Isa al-Khalifa apparently thought so too, for he ordered the equivalent of $2,650 be given to every Bahraini family a few days before a planned "Day of Rage" protest. “Arab people discovered their ability to make change,” said Nabeel Rajab, a human rights activist in Bahrain. “And with Egypt in the leadership once again, the change will reach all the Arab world.” In Yemen, President Ali Abdullah Saleh announced he would suspend constitutional amendments that allow him to remain in his office for life. He also raised salaries for the military and civil servants and cut income taxes in half. In Algeria, the government promised to lift the state of emergency that had been in effect since 1992. To be sure, nineteen years is a rather long time for an emergency.  Such efforts can be likened to building up wetlands or widening a beach to take the wind out of the hurricane out at sea should it hit. In other words, it appears that there was "revolution watch" in effect for the Middle East in the wake of the fall of the Egyptian regime. One might reasonably question, however, whether revolutions are contagious.

It could be that autocracy itself had been weakened by the success of the protests in Egypt.  On the other hand, there had been revolutions before and dictatorship was not evicerated from the face of the earth. The belief that the Tunesian and Egyptian revolutions were the start of a wave that would flood all autocratic powers in the Middle East (or the world) might also consider that even autocratic states differ in their respective internal conditions. To use the hurricane analogy, some beaches are better protected than others. If the unrest in Tunesia and Egypt were linked in such a way that other countries could be impacted internally, the ensuing domino effect could perhaps be compared to that among Wall Street banks in September 2008.  The collapse of Bear Stearns, Lehman Brothers, and Merrill Lynch as independent or viable going concerns contained a momentum that was beginning to bring down Morgan Stanley and threaten even Goldman Sachs when the ex-CEO of Goldman Sachs at Treasury effectively pushed for the construction of a fortified sand-dune (TARP) a.k.a. an infusion of funds into the remaining banks from the U.S. Government and the Federal Reserve.  As a result, the force of the strengthening winds ceased to intensify and began to diminish, leaving the economy in a long rainy season (i.e., a recession and a subsequent nearly jobless recovery).

In the wake of the fall of the Egyptian regime, were the other regimes in the Middle East like Morgan Stanley and Goldman Sachs after Lehman Brothers declared bankrupcy?  In other words, are autocratic regimes subject to a "run on the bank" in another? If so, there would still be a notable difference between the big banks and the governments.  Namely, the banks were deemed too big to fail, while the autocratic rulers were deemed too powerful to rule. That is to say, the continued viability of the Wall Street pillars was deemed essential to the world economy, while it was thought in the wake of the Egyptian regime of Mubarak that the world was better off less one autocratic regime. Hence there would not be likely to be a TARP program arranged to prop up dictators. Even with this difference noted, I contend that both big banks and big dictators are too big to exist in a world that values freedom and individual rights. Perhaps we ought to have been cheering the domino effect on Wall Street just as we cheered the fall of the Tunesian and Egyptian dictators. In both cases, destabilization that could lead to the collapse of the global economy and civic order would of course need to be avoided.  However, I contend that the U.S. Government could have intervened to maintain order on Wall Street by assisting as the big banks split into pieces, none of which being too big to fail and thus more in the public interest than retaining the big banks as such.  In the case of public autocratic regimes, their demise and replacement can typically be handled domestically, as in the cases of Tunesia and Egypt, rather than by an international organization such as the U.N.

In general terms, the "run on the bank" in Tunesia and Egypt may or may not be contagious in its nature, yet a consideration of the possibility of a domino effect can remind us of the domino effect that we witnessed in September of 2008 on Wall Street. Making this connection might prompt us to ask whether autocratic governments and big banks aren't both too big to exist. In other words, the collapse of one badly run bank after another and the subsequent need to deal with the question of such banks as going concerns can perhaps be likened to the collapse of one badly run government after another.  Was the world finally noticing around the end of the first decade (and the beginning of the second) of the twenty-first century that enormous concentrations of private capital (and thus power) and of public autocratic authority were not necessarily givens, and thus could, and perhaps should, be taken down? In other words, were long-standing givens finally seen as replacable?  The world was stunned when huge investment banks that had been around for more than a century were suddenly collapsing, just as the world was stunned when the government of the largest Middle Eastern country suddenly fell after two weeks of popular protests. Pillars, even those that are thought vital, can indeed fall, and the world can discover through the experiences that they are not essential--and they might even be bad for the public good. Surely this is the sense of the free world concerning autocratic governments, yet we are less convinced concerning the danger in continuing to allow banks too big to fail to continue to exist as they have for decades. In both cases, the domino effect may be natural and good, provided it is managed so public order does not collapse in the process. 

Source: http://www.nytimes.com/2011/02/12/world/middleeast/12arabs.html?_r=1&ref=todayspaper

The International System: Undermining a Ban on Nuclear Weapons

The 2017 Nobel Peace Prize went to the International Campaign to Abolish Nuclear Weapons for the group’s work on behalf of a global ban on nuclear weapons. Just a few months earlier, two-thirds of the U.N.’s General Assembly approved the Treaty on the Prohibition of Nuclear Weapons. “The risk of nuclear war has grown exceptionally in the last few years, and that’s why it makes this treaty and us receiving this award so important,” Beatrice Fihn of the group said.[1] Unfortunately, the stance to ban rather than merely limit nuclear weapons was already being marginalized as utopian and even potentially counter-productive even though ongoing efforts to limit the proliferation were falling short. I submit that the international system itself had become problematic, given the relatively new global threat of nuclear war.  

Even amid “rising global alarm about a potential nuclear conflagration” between the United States and North Korea, Nikki Haley, the U.S. ambassador to the U.N., said that “we have to be realistic” about the spread of nuclear weapons—meaning that a total ban could actually increase the risk of nuclear war.[2] Yet with Pakistan having an estimated 140 nuclear warheads and India having 130, Israel having an estimated 80, and North Korea presumably working on developing warheads, the status-quo policy of the U.S. could be said to be insufficient to stave off the risk of nuclear war. Put another way, as proliferation was already underway, non-proliferation policies could be reckoned as faulty.

Why do human beings continue to hold onto a boat that is sinking while seeking to undercut an alternative that actually could work? The tyranny of even a deficient status quo is such that the answer may lie with human nature itself. The risk of nuclear war has such a gigantic downside (i.e., nuclear war) that drastic measures to eradicate the risk may be necessary, and yet none of the nuclear powers in the U.N. would be bound by the treaty. Why even ratify it then? The exercise could be said to evince the impotence of the world body even in the face of such a horrible risk. Given the propensity of human nature to ingratiate itself and the existence of grave global risks, the very survival of the species may have already come to depend on a reform of the nation-state system wherein nations hold a monopoly on governmental sovereignty such that some of it is moved to the global level. National governments face a conflict of interest in this regard, as they would be ceding some power. Even if the survival of the species depends on advancement from the nation-state hegemony, national governmental officials may demur out of sordid self-interest.

---

1. Michael Birnhaum of the Washington Post, October 6, 2017.

2. Ibid.

For more on conflicts of interest that governments (and businesses) face, see Institutional Conflicts of Interest. 

Knee-Jerk Reactions: On the U.S. Government Enabling Dictators

While in the U.S. Senate, Paul Kirk, the interim U.S. Senator who took Ted Kennedy’s seat, said, “Without a legitimate and credible Afghan partner, that counterinsurgency strategy is fundamentally flawed. The current Afghan government is neither legitimate nor credible. . . . We should not send a single additional dollar in aid or add a single American serviceman or woman to the 68,000 already courageously deployed in Afghanistan until we see a meaningful move by the Karzai regime to root out its corruption.” 

Kirk was essentially arguing that the U.S. was enabling (i.e., in the sense that one enables an alcoholic) President Karzai, who had been reelected by widespread fraud. Whether the U.S. Government was trying to have it both ways, or was utterly unwilling to put its money where American principles are, the perception around the world was probably that the United States had sold itself out for short-term strategic/military advantage. 

How resilient are principles that are upheld only when they don't cost anything?  Could it be that standing more on principle--insisting on fair and free elections as a precondition for any American aid and military involvement--would mitigate the need for a surge? Such thinking runs against the grain in the modern world, which is actually rather primitive in its insistance on knee-jerk force.  An eye for an eye and the world will be blind (Gandhi).  September 11, 2001: we must hit back.  There is no other option. They must pay. Ironically, practicing Christians were not only cheering, but also leading the charge.  An eye for an eye.

“Be realistic!” you might say.  "It's a real world out there!" Ok, how about this: the U.S. Government could have concentrated its military force in Afghanistan on the actual culprits, rather than on rebuilding the country or taking on the Taliban.  Is it really so idealistic to cut off U.S. aid to autocratic governments? I suspect that we are limited by the status quo as a normative and descriptive limitation that is actually quite dogmatic in the sense of being arbitrary.  In other words, we believe our self-constructed walls are real; we don't see how rigid we have become.

Given the emphasis on force, does it make all that much difference who is occupying the U.S. Presidency? President Bush invaded Iraq. President Obama criticized this policy then led a surge of his own in Afghanistan.  Eisenhower warned of the military-industrial complex, and both Bush II and Obama played ball with these pay-masters.  Meanwhile, we were mollified with the government's “scoldings” of Wall Street banks (the strongest of which went back to their old ways anyway).  Can we blame the bankers for ignoring government officials whose principled leadership is so contingent? People, especially powerful people--like Wall Street bankers and Karzai--can sniff hypocrisy and automatically reduce the respect given.

The United States is like a giant machine, or a very fat person, who can only move slowly…turning woefully slow with a rudder that is too small.    Meanwhile, we vaunt our ship as the biggest ever made: A city on the hill, from Puritan lore. We can’t sink, we assure each other.  But our ship of state is made of iron. I assure you, it can sink, and all the more because we have drifted out into deep water without realizing how far we have gone…how far off course.  Our rudder is too small for our mechanized monstrosity--our Titanic laden with $14 tillion in federal debt alone (not counting those of the states). Our primative knee-jerk reactiong after 911 suggests that everything we know is wrong, even as we presume we can’t be wrong.   So as we rearrange the deck-chairs at our mascurade dance, we order more champaigne and congraduate each other on having the biggest ship.  Meanwhile, is anyone looking ahead for icebergs?  We are so sure of our ship, and thus so vulnerable.

Source:

Brianna Keilar, "Obama Ally Breaks with Him on Afghanistan," CNN, December 2, 2009.

On the Obama Administration's Inconsistency on Syria and Libya

In his foreign policy speech on May 19, 2011, U.S. President Barak Obama attempted to justify his administration’s policy of selective military action against violent rulers. “(W)e cannot prevent every injustice perpetrated by a regime against its people, and we have learned from our experience in Iraq just how costly and difficult it is to impose regime change by change by force – no matter how well-intended it may be.” The Obama administration was assuming that facilitating the removal of a ruler who is violently betraying his people must involve a multi-year American occupation, as in Iraq. However, the case of the U.N.-sanctioned international coalition enforcing a no-fly-zon and protecting civilians in Libya proffers a counter-example.

Obama stated, “(W)e saw the prospect of imminent massacre, had a mandate for action, and heard the Libyan people's call for help. Had we not acted along with our NATO allies and regional coalition partners, thousands would have been killed. The message would have been clear: keep power by killing as many people as it takes.” The problem is that by the time the U.S. President uttered these words, Assad had killed perhaps up to a thousand unarmed protesters in Syria. In June 2011, after Assad's troops had killed an estimated 1,100 civilians, U.S. Secretary of State Clinton could only muster a warning. "The legitimacy that is necessary for anyone to expect change to occur under this current government is, if not gone, nearly run out." How many civilians did Qadhafi's troops kill before his right to rule was expunged by the U.S. Government? The irony is that whereas in Libya the protesters had relatively quickly become armed rebels, the Syrian protests remained largely in the protest mode. Ethically, it is worse to kill unarmed protesters than armed rebels. 

Even though Obama admits that “the Syrian regime has chosen the path of murder and the mass arrests of its citizens,” he claims it is sufficient for the U.S. to have “condemned these actions, [while] working with the international community [to step] up our sanctions on the Syrian regime - including sanctions . . . on President Assad and those around him.” Sarcastically, I am tempted to ask whether sanctions is sufficient, given what Qaddafi had done to provoke a no-fly-zone and bombing to protect civilians amid an armed civil war.

In addition to the red herring that any U.S. involvement must somehow match the Iraq case, it is misleading to suggest that the U.S. “can’t” stop every ruler who turns on his people as if other empires or independent states could not also take the lead. To be sure, the American military has its areas of expertise, but this does not mean that the U.S. should or must take the predominant role globally. Working with other empire-scale countries as well as independent states, the U.S. Government could provide moral leadership as the world takes a firmer stand than mere sanctions when a ruler is killing hundreds of protesters. At the very least, the credibility of the U.S. Government would be much enhanced were it more consistent in regard to similar cases. Inconsistency can provoke possible explanations hinging on partiality and self-interest.

For example, some foreign policy experts say the White House has not called for the world to unite in a military action against Assad not because he has been any less violent than Qaddafi, but because Syria is “critical to Obama’s attempt to end Iran’s nuclear program and to promote Arab-Israeli peace,” according the USA Today. If this explanation is correct, then the U.S. Government has put manipulation above Obama’s own pledge to stand up for democracy over tyrants.

Still others argue that Assad has the support of other Middle East regimes and that the elite in Syria is not fractured—making the case different from that in Libya. However, this is not an argument that Assad’s betrayal has been any less than Qaddafi’s; rather, the argument is that more obstacles exist to stopping Assad than Qaddafi.  However, standing up for human rights is not for the timid. In other words, it is not necessarily quick and easy. It does not say much about a leader’s character if a little difficulty is enough to resort to sanctions. In the case of Syria, that the E.U. had already joined the U.S. in leveling sanctions against the Syrian officials suggests that an international coalition could be strong enough to give the Syrian protesters a viable chance to topple the regime, even given the size of Assad's military.

In Libya, Mustafa Abdul-Jalil suggested that it is in the interests of the U.S. and E.U. to support such causes. "The United States and the European Union should know that we are a righteous people," he said. "We are fighting for a better future and they will not regret helping us." Perhaps the question of consistency comes down to how important human rights are to the American and European officials who have competing goals.

Sources:

Transcript: Obama’s Foreign Policy Speech, May 19, 2011.

Oren Dorell, “Syria, Libya Merit Different U.S. Policies,” USA Today, May 16, 2011, p. 5A.

Michelle Faul, "EU Opens Diplomatic Office in Libya's Rebel East," MSNBC.com, May 22, 2011.

Jay Solomon, "Syrian Violence Tests U.S.," The Wall Street Journal, June 3, 2011

Did Obama Press Israel to Compromise for Peace?

Seeing to “capture a moment of epochal change in the Arab world,” U.S. President Obama delivered a foreign policy speech on May 19, 2011 in which, according to the New York Times, he sought “to break the stalemate in the Israeli-Palestinian conflict” by “setting out a new starting point for negotiations.” In particular, he suggested that the Israelis go back to the 1967 borders, adjusted somewhat to account for settlements on the West Bank. Meeting with Obama on the following day, Israeli Prime Minister Netanyahu said, “We can’t go back” to the 1967 borders, according to MSNBC.com. This put the U.S. at odds with one of its foremost allies. Considering the amount of financial and military aid involved, Netanyahu could have been accused of biting the hand that was feeding Israel. Yet due to lobbying no doubt, the Obama administration did not fully play its hand in pressuring the ally.

Before the president’s speech, according to the New York Times, Netanyahu “held an angry phone conversation with Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton” to demand that the president’s references to 1967 borders be cut. White House officials said that nothing was changed from Israeli pressure. In spite of the billions in aid to Israel from the U.S., the Israeli government had ignored the president’s request that settlements be halted—only to reject the 1967 borders proposal.  Given the position of Israel in the Middle East and its financial support from the U.S., the Israeli government’s rejection of the American proposals is perplexing. In fact, the refusals, as well as the pressure, could be taken as presumptuous, given Israel’s intransience in negotiating with the Palestinians.

So why, one might ask, didn’t the American president freeze aid to Israel? Although Jews in the U.S. are only about 2% of the total population, as donors to political candidates and the Democratic Party, the Jewish influence is disproportionate. Congress would hardly support real pressure on Israel, so realistically the president’s hand was probably tied.

In fact, I would not be surprised if Netanyahu had threatened Obama that if he kept the 1967 border proposal in his speech, he would lose Florida in 2012. It would be unfortunate if Americans who happen to be Jewish would put another country before their own in voting for president. In fact, I submit that it is in the Jewish interest, whether in Florida or Israel, that additional pressure be applied to Israel so a comprehensive peace deal may be achieved. Indeed, the reaction to the speech in the E.U. was that finally the U.S. Government was standing up to Israel.  A spokesperson for E.U. foreign policy minister Catherine Ashton said she "warmly welcomes President Obama's confirmation that the borders of Israel and Palestine should be based on the 1967 lines with the mutually agreed swaps, with secured and recognized borders on both sides," according to Zawya.com. Perhaps the E.U. and U.S. could combine forces to pressure Israel to comrpromise.

However, was making a proposal not to Israel’s liking standing up to the Israelis? I contend that the most intractable problem in the Middle East requires more than words. Accordingly, President Obama should find the will to put money behind his words. Specifically, he should give the Israeli government a deadline for a peace deal, after which American aid would be frozen. If Congress’s approval is necessary, the president should make the recommendation, agreeing to take the heat. 

Coming off his victory over Osama Bin Laden, Obama has some political capital to burn, and he should not be afraid of retaliation from Americans who happen to be Jewish—whom I would think would be against occupation wherever it is going on, given the history of Jewish suffering under occupation. Surely Jewish Americans realize that two wrongs do not make a right, and, moreover, that Israel’s future will not be secured until it compromises with those whom it is occupying. Borne of occupied resistance, the United States itself ought to be for the occupied rather than the occupiers, and Jewish Americans are part of the United States, are they not?

In any case, the way to win a presidential election is to keep one’s eyes on the prize rather than deferring in order not to offend particular interest groups. Paradoxically, if winning re-election is the predominant factor in every major presidential decision, the likelihood of a win is diminished accordingly because there are inevitably costs borne more by some than others as a leader puts his money where his mouth is in order to achieve any truly worthwhile accomplishment. Relatedly, a benefit of a representative democracy rather than a direct democracy is that in the former representatives have a period of time insulating them from the immediate passions of the people so they can go out on a limb to bring home the bacon that might involve a bit of discomfort.

Sources:

Mark Lander and Steven Lee Myers, “Obama sees ’67 Borders as Starting Point for Peace Deal,” The New York Times, May 20, 2011.

MSNBC.com, “’We Can’t Go Back’: Israeli PM Rejects 1967 Border Proposal,” May 20, 2011.

Zawya.com, "EU 'Welcomes' Obama Call to Respect Pre-1967 Borders," May 20, 2011.

Could a Middle Eastern Union Cool the Isreali-Palestinian Conflict?

I contend that thinking outside the box can go a long way in getting past the stalemate on Israeli-Palestinian relations.  The key, I believe, lies in relativizing the conflict by shifting the paradigm by looking outward, at the region as a whole. If the autocracies in the Middle East are indeed on the way out--to be replaced by true republcs not in name only--then, at least according to federal theory, they could form a federal union somewhere on a spectrum with the AU, EU, and US. For example, one would not expect it to be as consolidated as the EU. Even so, Israel might just feel more comfortable with there bieng other democracies in the region, such that it might agree to join a union as long as there are strong minority rights (yet without too many areas subject to vetos, which tend to render a union impotent).  

 As in the case of the EU and US wherein avoiding conflict between the respective states is part of the rationale, the creation of a Middle Eastern Union (MEU) could mitigate conflict between Israel and its neighboring states.  Such a union would of course have its own particularities. The EU and US have theirs too.  Whereas giving each state a veto, such as in a senate or council, would eviscerate the MEU, machinery giving Israel a limited veto would be legitimate and warranted as it could fear being ganged up on by the other states. Such a limited veto concerning Israel’s security could be removed by unanimous consent once greater integration and mutual security is achieved.  The assumption that there would be one major division in the union is rather simplistic, however, as there are other divisions in the region that don’t involve Israel.  For instance, the Turks and Arabs have had their mutual distrust.  So the factions in a MEU would perhaps allow for Madison’s argument that the multiplicity of factions in a large union protects, in effect, a minority from an oppressive majority.  As an aside, a MEU with Turkey as a state would also resolve the problems around whether Turkey should become a state in the EU.

I propose a federal union of semi-sovereign states with governmental machinery including a court, legislature and president(s).  The EU has more than one president (e.g., president of the EU Commission and president of the European Council).  The MEU could arrange that each state has representation in each branch.  Furthermore, a qualified majority voting scheme could add to the protection of minority positions without hamstringing the union. In terms of the balance of power in the federal system, the MEU would doubtless not be as consolidated as is the US.  Relative to the US (nearly consolidated), the EU (the states have more power than the union) and the AU (the states are effectively sovereign in the confederation), the MEU should be between the US and EU. The MEU government would have to have enough power to resist the forces pushing the union apart, yet not so much power that an unhappy state leaves for lack of any influence.  Given the conflict, both the state governments and that of the MEU would have to have power.  In effect, this would create a system of checks and balances that would allow the contentious issues to be worked out with due regards to the interests of the region and to the rights of each state and citizen. To help maintain a viable system of such checks, the federal system would be designed such that both the state governments and that of the union would have the wherewithal to resist encroachments from the other.  Ironically, both Syria and Israel, for example, might find themselves working together in the same coalition in the senate or council (representing the state governments) in resisting a power-grab from the MEU’s executive branch.  Conflicts which seem insurmountable now may be trumped by others wherein the coalitions for and against are constantly changing.

Jerusalem would be akin to the District of Columbia in the US.  That is, it would be a federal district, with the states of Israel and Palestine being like Virginia and Maryland. I submit that this plank would be the most valuable plank in this proposal, at least immediately.  Jersualem would be a united city—the jewel of the union. In the course of time, the enhanced economic and political integration would mollify the current disagreements and prejudices as contact between now-different peoples increases.

To be sure, thinking outside the box occasions inevitable inside-the-box nay-sayers.  “It would never work.”  “Pipe-dream.”  “They would never agree to do it.”  Und so weiter …   However, true statesmen and stateswomen can rise to the occasion and look beyond their immediate interests to the greater good. Even if in incremental steps such as has been the case for the EU, Middle Eastern integration can gain a momentum of its own.  However, given the historical tendency of acts of violence in the Middle East to arrest peace-talks, I think an approach closer to that of the US would be better.  That is to say, delegates from all of the Middle Eastern states (or those interested in such a proposal) could meet in a summit (or convention) to formulate the structure of a MEU.  Theoretically, it would then have to be ratified in the states, though it is possible for a government to cede some of its governmental sovereignty (the process of amendments in the US and EU have involved both).  Given the utility here of statesmanship, determination by referendum is not necessarily advisable in this case.  The democracy purists could ponder the alternative of continued violence. Where a state’s officials are elected, the absence of a referendum is more palitable.

In summary, the principle I am invoking in this proposal to solve the Israeli-Palestinian conflict is essentially that where countries are states in a union, it becomes less important which state one is in because all the states share some commonalities (such as some basic rights).  Whether one lived in New York or Connecticut became less important, for example, once both were part of the United Colonies (and then the United States). So too, the differences between Israel and Palestine can be contained in a common union and mitigated by establishing channels of conflict-resolution.  To be sure, no one state would always get its way.  Also, each state would be taking a risk.  However, such is the ground of statesmanship.  It is possible to rise above even one’s immediate interests and achieve an enlightened self-interest. Lest problems be seen at this level, one has only to entertain more of the status quo, ad infinitum.

Religion and Politics: Russian Orthodox Patriarch Helped Syria’s Assad Regime

In the wake of yet another Syrian massacre of civilians, including families being shot at close-range in their own houses, the New York Times published a report in 2012 that claimed that Russian priests and theologians commiserated with diplomats from Damascus at the opening of an exhibition devoted to Syrian Christianity in a cathedral near the Kremlin. While it is understandable that the Kremlin would not want to lose its “longtime partner and last firm foothold in the Middle East,” it is perhaps less palatable for Christian prelates and doctors of the Russian Orthodox Church to essentially look the other way on atrocities so the Syrian Christians, many of whom are Orthodox, won’t be pushed under the bus in a wave of Islamic fundamentalism that could be unleashed should Assad fall from power. The Syrian Christians were reluctant to join the Sunni Muslim opposition to Assad for fear of being persecuted by the Sunnis should they gain power.

 Together, the fear of the Syrian Christians and the “foreign policy” of the Moscow patriarchate were forestalling internal and external forces, respectively, from having achieving enough power to stop the human rights abuses in Syria. This is ironic because Jesus preached selflessness, or self-emptying love for one’s neighbor (agape seu benevolentia universalis). I suspect that the martyrs of the early Church would be shocked to find such self-serving provincialism in the sectarian groups, both in Syria and the Russian capital.

The following observation from Andrew Tabler, a fellow at the Washington Institute for Near East Policy, is telling if not poignant. “What we see now in Syria is systemic failure—it’s brutal, it’s now an insurgency—but in the end its just systemic failure. If the Christian population and those that support it want a long-term future in the region, they’re going to have to accept that hitching their wagon to this brutal killing machine doesn’t have a long-term future.” I would add that the hitching makes the Christians and their leaders into hypocrites. That is, it contradicts Christian love as preached and lived by Jesus of Nazareth. In other words, compassion when it is least convenient was being thrown under the bus in the service of a sectarian interest.

                                              Clergy of the Russian Orthodox Church             NYT

When Russian Patriarch Kirill visited Damascus in late 2011 after 3,500 Syrians had been killed by government forces and the Arab League had suspended Syria’s membership, he “made a sympathetic appearance with [Assad], praising Syria’s treatment of Christians and making no mention of the mounting death toll,” according to the New York Times. Apparently the death of thousands of people is fine as long as one’s own kind is treated well. The good of a part outweighs the good of the whole. This point applies as well to the related opposition of Putin to efforts at the UN’s Security Council to take measures against the Syrian government. That is to say, Putin’s relationships to the patriarch and to Assad are more important than a higher good, such as stopping the slaughter of hundreds if not thousands of Syrians.

It follows that the vetoes held on the Security Council can and should be questioned because the parts holding them cannot be assumed to have any regard for the “big picture” or the common good at the global level. Even if the violent acts by Assad’s men are consistent with the interests of the Russian Orthodox Church and the Russian government, the international system is not served by a government that gets away with violating rather than protecting its citizens’ human rights. 

Source:

Ellen Barry, “Russian Church Is a Strong Voice Opposing Intervention in Syria,” The New York Times, June 1, 2012.