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By Jonathan Marcus
BBC diplomatic correspondent |
Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has a problem.
Something has changed in Washington. This new US President, Barack Obama, is unlike any that an Israeli leader has faced before.
Certainly he shares Washington’s traditional concerns for Israel’s security. But his election victory marked a defeat for the neo-conservative Right and the Christian fundamentalists, the ideological camps that have provided the backbone of uncritical support for Israel over recent years.
Mr Obama’s popularity extends to America’s influential Jewish community – an overwhelming majority of whom voted for him.
The change in mood also extends to Capitol Hill where, when Mr Netanyahu visited Washington, he was left in no doubt that the president’s approach is supported by many of Israel’s longstanding friends in Congress.
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 The message has been repeated again and again; no settlement building – period  |
We already know a good deal about Mr Obama’s approach to the Middle East, and we will know a good deal more after his keynote speech due in Cairo in early June.
For a start he has decided to grapple with the Israel-Palestinian issue from the outset of his presidency.
He has appointed a foreign policy team well versed in the intricacies of the region, from Secretary of State Hillary Clinton herself, to his veteran peace envoy George Mitchell, and his National Security Adviser General James Jones.
Mr Obama also sees the problems of the region as interlinked. He wants to consolidate a broad Arab coalition against Iran even as he reaches out to Tehran.
To do this he believes that he needs progress on the Palestinian track.
This requires tangible changes on the West Bank to bolster the position of Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas. This is why discussion has so quickly come to focus on one crucial issue – Israeli settlements.
‘Natural growth’
The tone and content of the Obama administration’s pronouncements on the settlement issue are clear and to the point.
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WEST BANK SETTLEMENTS
 Construction of settlements began in 1967, shortly after the Six Day War
Some 280,000 Israelis now live in the 121 officially-recognised settlements in the West Bank
A further 190,000 Israelis live in settlements in Palestinian East Jerusalem
The largest West Bank settlement is Maale Adumim, where more than 30,000 people were living in 2005
There are 102 unauthorised outposts which are not officially sanctioned by Israel
Source: Peace Now
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The US wants a halt to settlement building. Now.
Mr Netanyahu seems to have at least half got the message.
He is trying to devise some sort of compromise whereby Israel will remove outposts seen as illegal even under Israeli law, but will continue to build in existing settlements to cope with what Israeli spokesmen call their “natural growth”.
But this “natural growth” argument is not getting any traction in Washington.
The message has been repeated again and again; no settlement building – period.
Mr Netanyahu may well argue that he is constrained by his highly conservative cabinet, but that argument too is unlikely to carry any weight with Mr Obama.
What is clear, though, is that Mr Netanyahu has little room to manoeuvre.
One issue dominates his thinking – not the Palestinians but the potential nuclear threat from Iran.
Iranian threat
Mr Netanyahu believes the threat from Iran is imminent
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It is impossible to overemphasise the hold this issue has on the Israeli political leadership of all parties.
Iran is seen as presenting an existential threat to the Jewish state.
Mr Netanyahu’s greatest priority is to maintain good relations with Mr Obama in order to face up to the Iranian threat when the moment of crisis comes.
And make no mistake, Mr Netanyahu believes that the crisis will come on his watch.
So Mr Netanyahu certainly has a problem. But many other factors are in play too and there is much that we still do not know about Mr Obama’s approach to the region.
On the Palestinian front, how far will he push Mr Abbas to form a unity government? In the absence of such unity, will America simply ignore the situation in the Hamas-controlled Gaza strip?
And what about the Syrian track? Mr Obama is being very cautious about engagement with Damascus, but might this provide an option on which Israel and the US can agree, especially if the Palestinian track falters?
Some of this may become clear after the president’s Cairo speech. He wants Israel to make concessions. But he also wants the Arab world as a whole to begin to shift its stance towards Israel.
It is a hugely ambitious approach. Many hardened pundits remain sceptical.
Does Mr Obama have the staying power and will he continue to have the diplomatic capital to invest in this issue? Those are two of the biggest questions of all.
bbc.co.uk
reuters blogs
May 26, 2009
India, Pakistan and the rise of China
India has been fretting for months that it could be pushed into the background by the United States’ economic dependence on China and by the renewed focus on Pakistan by President Barack Obama’s administration. That anxiety appears to have increased lately – perhaps because the end of the country’s lengthy election campaign has opened up space to think more about the external environment — and is focusing on China.
In an interview with the Hindustan Times, Indian Air Chief Marshal Fali Homi Major said China posed a greater threat than Pakistan. “China is a totally different ballgame compared to Pakistan,” he was quoted as saying. “We know very little about the actual capabilities of China, their combat edge or how professional their military is … they are certainly a greater threat.”
The Mint newspaper followed up with a editorial calling China “perhaps the gravest external threat” to India’s security. “That India is in an unstable neighbourhood is clearer than ever this summer,” it said. “But troubles from Pakistan, Sri Lanka or Nepal pale when compared with China.”
The increased anxiety has been driven by the end of the war in Sri Lanka, where the government’s victory was attributed partly to a supply of Chinese weapons, and where China has been building a new port on the island’s southern coast.
“This is part of a broad move by China into the Indian Ocean, which India has traditionally considered its sphere of influence,” said British newspaper The Times. Chinese engineers are building another port at Gwadar in Pakistan; roads are being cut or improved through Burma to help trade routes between Yunnan province in China and the Indian Ocean; ties are being improved with island nations such as the Seychelles; surveillance stations are being sited or upgraded on Burmese islands.”
But even without the Sri Lankan trigger, Indian analysts have suggested that India may no longer enjoy the favoured position that developed under former president George W. Bush, when Washington forged close ties with Delhi, in part as a counterweight to China. Facing the twin challenges of financial crisis and a military stalemate in Afghanistan, the Obama administration is dependent on India’s two main rivals — China to pay for American debt and Pakistan to help it defeat the Taliban.
“The crux of the matter lies in the US’s relationship with China,” retired Indian diplomat M.K. Bhadrakumar wrote in the Asia Times. “At first glance, it may appear there is hardly any ellipsis between George W Bush’s policy of engaging China in ‘constructive, candid and cooperative’ ties and Obama’s search for a ‘positive, cooperative and comprehensive’ US-China partnership. But the reality is that the US today has a much greater need of strategic engagement with China and arguably to ‘upgrade’ the partnership in the direction of an elevated dialogue on global political issues.”
“To be sure, China’s global influence has increased and a full-blown US-China strategic partnership – as evident from the mere talk of an exclusive ‘G-2′ matrix – will figure on the radars of countries such as India (or Japan) as a high probability if not an inevitability. The Obama administration will have to work hard to reassure India that it is not being relegated to a subordinate status.”
India’s loss does not automatically mean Pakistan’s gain.
Pakistan has traditionally regarded China as its most reliable ally. In the past, Sino-Indian rivalry has helped it to win military supplies from China along with financial and diplomatic support. But rivalry between its two giant neighbours has not necessarily always played in its favour. India developed nuclear weapons to counter China’s nuclear capability. Pakistan, according to the Pakistan Army’s official website, saw this as “coercive diplomacy” targetting not China, but Pakistan, and began its own nuclear weapons programme after India carried out its first nuclear test in 1974.
Nor did Pakistan necessarily gain from India’s defeat by China in a border war in 1962, which left India with an enduring anxiety about its long, unmarked borders. When it feared Pakistan was planning to take control of the mountains beyond Kashmir — an area so remote that it had never been demarcated — India sent troops to occupy the heights above the Siachen glacier in 1984. Although India had been burned by what it saw as Chinese encroachment in its border areas before the 1962 war, its actions on Siachen were directed against Pakistan. (Twenty-five years later, the Indian and Pakistan armies are still deployed on the heights above Siachen, with India commanding the higher positions.)
Nor does Pakistan automatically gain from ever-closer ties between the United States and China.
According to this McClatchy report, the Obama administration has appealed to China to provide training and even military equipment to help Pakistanis counter the growing militant threat. “The proposal is part of a broad push by Washington to enlist key allies of Pakistan in an effort to persuade Islamabad to step up its efforts against militants while supporting the fragile civilian government and its tottering economy.” it says. Richard Holbrooke, the administration’s special representative for Pakistan and Afghanistan, had visited China and Saudi Arabia, another ally, in recent weeks as part of the effort, it said.
In the past, Pakistan prided itself as a go-between, facilitating the Cold War thaw in relations between the United States and communist China in the early 1970s. That may seem like a long time ago, but in a region with a fierce attachment to history, is Pakistan really ready to have Washington and Beijing talk over its head about what is best for it?
(Photos: President Obama meets President Hu in London; and Indian soldiers in Siachen)
A New Direction
May 15, 2009
Over soy lattes and buttery-soft muffins, I sat down in a coffee shop a few weeks ago with one of Washington’s savviest Asia activists. Through endless networking and tireless advocacy, she has helped keep Burma’s human-rights abuses on Washington’s radar, even though the country has little strategic significance to the U.S. During the George W. Bush Administration, she exuded confidence. Now she’s anxious. Barack Obama’s government has taken a close interest in Burma, but not the sort she wants. On a trip to Asia in February, U.S. Secretary of State Hillary Clinton told reporters that the White House would review its policy toward Burma. My friend fears that the Obama Administration might move toward some kind of compromise with the junta, possibly even lifting sanctions. “You have the whole community of engagers coming out of the woodwork now,” she says. “They see an opportunity; they haven’t had one in years.”
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Burma is not the only country in Southeast Asia to draw the attention of the new U.S. Administration. While other recent American Presidents pretty much ignored the region, Obama has made it a priority because his government sees Southeast Asia as a place where Washington can pick up some quick goodwill. Clinton made her first overseas trip to Asia and since then she has built a team of Southeast Asia experts who include nominated Assistant Secretary of State for East Asian and Pacific Affairs Kurt Campbell, a longtime Washington power player who lobbies in particular for stronger ties with Singapore and Australia. It’s not just a matter of engagement. As with its actions and statements elsewhere, the Obama Administration is displaying flexibility and pragmatism in its dealings with Southeast Asia — not the ideological approach espoused by the Bush White House. These fresh initiatives promise, however, not only to be different but, in some cases, controversial.
During the Bush years, senior officials paid about as much attention to Southeast Asia as to New Orleans’ levee system. Policymakers would jet into Singapore to take in a couple of days of private meetings with local officials, then return to Washington never having set foot in regional giants like Indonesia. And when the White House did attend to Indonesia or Malaysia or Thailand, it usually focused only on talking to the élite, or about counterterrorism. Now, with Indonesia, which is proving to be Southeast Asia’s most vibrant democracy, the Obama Administration sees an opportunity to build a wider relationship while riding the President’s popularity in the country, where he spent some of his childhood years. This strategy would involve not just the government of President Susilo Bambang Yudhoyono but the Indonesian people through greater interaction among students, academics and opinion leaders in the two nations.
With other countries in Southeast Asia, too, the new Administration has shown itself willing to question years of received wisdom. While Laura Bush condemned the Burmese junta, the Obama Administration has held relatively high-level talks with the country’s leadership — in March, Stephen Blake, the State Department’s director of Southeast Asian affairs, met Foreign Minister Nyan Win in Naypyidaw. Condoleezza Rice would skip ASEAN’s Regional Forum, and the Bush Administration refused to sign ASEAN’s Treaty of Amity and Cooperation. The treaty is pretty innocuous — it merely pledges signatories to uphold a zone of peace in Southeast Asia. But the Bush Administration objected to Burma’s membership in ASEAN and was averse to signing anything (remember the Kyoto Protocol). In contrast, as with Kyoto, the Obama Administration says it will consider signing the ASEAN treaty.
But the Obama Administration is fielding fire, too, ironically from groups on the left. Burma is one particularly sore point; another is Clinton’s comment that pressing Beijing on human rights “can’t interfere” with policy on a number of global crises, like climate change, where cooperation with China is vital. This appears to be part of the Administration’s strategy to emphasize rights where it can make real progress, and not just for rhetoric. But in the past, activists say, they expected new Presidents to talk tough on rights first and then, if necessary, throttle back. Obama, they complain, has sold out on the opening gambit.
Still, at least Southeast Asia is no longer off the U.S.’s map. Issues in the region are not as pressing or as vital to American interests as they are in, say, Pakistan and Afghanistan. But precisely because they aren’t, Southeast Asia is where Washington can win easy points at a time when it needs as many as it can score.
www.time.com
More than an eye for a true picture
May 11, 2009
The old photographic cliche of “f/8 and be there” refers to the notion that the most important part of photography is being in the right place. Not in terms of the angle you take a photograph from, but more importantly, leaving your office, home or wherever and going out into the world to make pictures.
This can simply be pictures of your street, but it can equally be the other side of the world, and that’s what British photographer Sean Gallagher has done.
My first contact with Sean was a few years ago when, having just returned from a trip to Beijing, he e-mailed in a set of pictures to our yourpics@bbc.co.uk address. The photographs showed tourists having their pictures taken in front of the famous Mao picture in Tiananmen Square, near the Forbidden City, China.
The series stood out immediately and, just as importantly, he’d taken the time to explain why he’d shot the pictures. This wasn’t just a random set of images thrown together having returned from holiday, this was a well-planned series. Once we’d agreed a fee and Sean had expanded his captions, we ran them on the site.
A few months later with the fear of bird flu spreading to the UK, Sean shot a story for us covering the north of England’s biggest poultry and caged bird market in Clitheroe in Lancashire. Not so glamorous maybe, but again, a well-executed series of images.
Since then, Sean’s work has progressed to new levels. Recipient of the first Emerging Photographer Fund grant initiated by photographer David Alan Harvey in 2008 and awarded by the Magnum Foundation, Sean has shown how it is possible to find ways to cover stories you are passionate about.
His project entitled The Silent Wave: Desertification in Western China was sparked by an article he’d read in 2007 about increased desertification in the north and west of China.
It’s a story he is continuing to cover, delving deeper into the complexity of the situation, and he is currently on a six-week trip from one side of China to the other, stopping along the way at key points which each represent issues in the wider context of desertification and environmental changes.
The trip has been made possible by a grant from the Pulitzer Centre On Crisis Reporting. Again, it’s about commitment.
Sean notes that the:
“Application for the Pulitzer Center grant involved writing a detailed project proposal, along with outlined logistical and financial planning. The proposed project also had to fall in line with the Pulitzer Center’s aims and ethos. I made my initial application in July 2008 and got the green light in February 2009.”
To be a photographer you need more than an eye for a good picture. You need self belief and a deep passion in your subject, not to mention a fair degree of business sense and organisation.
While on his trip, Sean has shot a story for us from the town of Hongsibao, which was built to relocate some 200,000 environmental refugees from the dry mountainous regions of China’s poorest province.
bbc.co.uk
Is Israel heading for clash with US?
April 29, 2009
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By Katya Adler
BBC News, Jerusalem |
It is Israel’s Independence Day – traditionally time for leading Israeli politicians to give big interviews about their country’s past and future.
Israel’s new Prime Minister, Benjamin Netanyahu, has remained conspicuously tight-lipped.
Israeli voters went to the polls in February.
Mr Netanyahu knows their number one priority is personal and national security.
This would have been an ideal moment for him to set the scene as regards foreign policy, but it looks like Israelis – and the impatiently expectant international community – will have to wait a little while longer.
In a region where sparks can fly and wars can start without too much warning, Mr Netanyahu’s spokesmen have announced the world view of this new Israeli government will only be revealed around 18 May.
Mr Netanyahu is likely to reveal more about his policy in Washington
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This is when Mr Netanyahu is scheduled to meet US President Barack Obama in Washington.
In the meantime, the Israeli leader’s defence and foreign ministers have dropped some heavy hints (though, not unusually for tumultuous Israeli government politics, the declarations were not always harmonious).
They, as well as Washington’s statements and comments made by Arab leaders, are being closely monitored.
Israelis and Middle East-watchers are keen to know if there will be an ugly clash at the White House next month.
In the end, it is unlikely, but the players’ stated positions make it perfectly possible.
Mr Netanyahu has a track record of difficult relations with his country’s closest ally, dating back to his previous term as Israel’s premier back in the late 1990s.
Complex reality
Clearly, a key issue is Palestinian statehood.
Mr Netanyahu and his foreign minister have preferred to remain vague on the issue.
Foreign Minister Avigdor Lieberman claims boosting the Palestinian economy is more of a priority.
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We can’t talk forever… at some point steps have to be taken so that people can see progress on the ground US President Barack Obama
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He insists that the international community drop phrases like “land-for-peace” or “two-state solution”.
He says they oversimplify a complex reality.
Defence Minister Ehud Barak said in an interview published on Tuesday that he believed peace could be achieved within three years.
Mr Lieberman has promised “new approaches, new ideas, new visions”.
It is questionable whether that will be good enough for Barack Obama.
Since taking office, he and his Secretary of State, Hillary Clinton, have gone out of their way to insist a two state solution is the only solution to the decades old Israeli-Palestinian conflict.
They also appear keen to push for wider regional peace.
‘New war?’
This month Jordan’s King Abdullah became the first Middle East leader to be received in Washington by President Barack Obama.
He urged Israel’s acceptance of what has become known as the Arab peace initiative, where Israel would achieve diplomatic recognition in the Arab world in exchange for pulling back to its pre-1967 borders, allowing for the formation of a viable Palestinian state.
King Abdullah was the first Middle East leader to visit President Obama
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King Abdullah said it was imperative the US take a forceful role in resolving Israeli-Palestinian relations.
If no progress was made, he warned, the region was facing a new war.
Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas said King Abdullah spoke on behalf of the wider Arab world.
President Obama seemed sympathetic to the message.
He said: “We can’t talk forever… at some point steps have to be taken so that people can see progress on the ground. And that will be something that we will expect to take place in the coming months.”
But how far is he willing to push Israel? US administrations are famously reluctant to come to diplomatic blows with the country some describe as America’s 51st state.
‘Biggest obstacle’
It could all come down to Iran.
While in opposition, Mr Netanyahu repeatedly said Iran was the biggest threat to Israel’s existence.
He is very likely to deliver this message and ask for assurances during his visit to Washington.
President Obama may press for progress on the Palestinian issue in return.
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It’s impossible to combat any problem in our region without resolving the Iranian problem Israeli Foreign Minister Avigdor Lieberman
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Speaking in Washington on Friday, US Secretary of State Hillary Clinton said: “For Israel to get the strong support it is looking for vis-a-vis Iran, it can’t stay on the sidelines with respect to the Palestinians and peace efforts. They go hand-in-hand.”
International diplomats have speculated that Sunni Arab governments which fear Iran feel they need clear steps forward towards an Israeli-Palestinian peace deal in order for their nations to accept Arab backing of US-Israeli moves against a fellow Muslim nation.
Publicly the leaders of Egypt, Jordan, Saudi Arabia and other Arab nations insist the Israeli-Palestinian conflict is the core Middle East issue.
Until that is resolved there can be no regional peace.
But Israel’s Foreign Minister, Avigdor Lieberman, insists what he describes as “the Iranian problem” must be resolved before anything else.
“The biggest obstacle to a comprehensive solution is not Israel. It’s not the Palestinians. It’s the Iranians.”
“It’s impossible to combat any problem in our region without resolving the Iranian problem.
“This relates to Lebanon, to influence in Syria, their deep involvement with Egypt, in the Gaza Strip, in Iraq.
“If the international community wants to resolve its Middle East problems, it’s impossible because the biggest obstacle to this solution is the Iranians.”
Tough position
Mr Lieberman recently told Barak Obama’s Middle East envoy, George Mitchell, that 15 years of peace talks with Palestinians had “brought neither results nor solutions”.
To obtain true regional stability, the US should focus instead on preventing Iran obtaining a nuclear weapon, he said.
Mr Abbas is hoping the US will push Israel towards a two-state solution
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Mr Netanyahu has often said he believes it better to take a tough position at the outset of negotiations in order to have bargaining possibilities.
The most likely scenario is that he and President Obama will do their best to find common ground during their talks in Washington.
Israel’s foreign and defence ministers have clearly quashed domestic and international speculation that the Netanyahu government, dismayed at the Obama administration’s efforts to engage Iran, favoured going it alone against Iran with their own military strike.
Both men say they are open to normalising relations with Syria (something Mr Obama favours strongly, though Mr Lieberman says is unlikely because at the moment, he says, there is nothing to talk about).
Both men say they favour advancing stalled talks with the Palestinian Authority.
There is room for discussion, but Palestinians in particular are hoping Mr Obama will not just talk but act tough on the issue of expanding Jewish settlements in the occupied West Bank.
Here, Mr Netanyahu has been clear: he sees no reason to stop the building.
Mr Abbas has been equally clear – he will not sit down with the Israelis until all settlement growth is frozen.
President Obama has also invited him to the White House next month
Auschwitz note leads to survivor
April 29, 2009
BBC News
A prisoner number was tattooed on Albert Veissid’s arm in Auschwitz
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Auschwitz survivor Albert Veissid does not know who put his name on a list that remained hidden inside a bottle for more than 60 years.
Builders working near the site of the Auschwitz-Birkenau death camp found the bottle recently. It had been left in a cement wall by inmates.
“I’m surprised by all of this,” the 84-year-old told BBC News from his home in a village in the south of France.
The note bears Mr Veissid’s name along with those of six Polish prisoners.
Mr Veissid, a French Jew, was arrested by French police in Lyon in August 1943 and deported to Auschwitz-Birkenau, where Nazi Germany murdered more than one million people, most of them Jews.
Since Monday, Polish and French journalists have contacted Mr Veissid, wanting to hear his story.
He only learnt about the message in a bottle when his grand-daughter told him what builders had found at the site in southern Poland.
The bottle had been left in the cement of a bunker near the Auschwitz camp. The note is dated 9 September, 1944.
The note stayed hidden for more than 60 years
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The construction team to which Mr Veissid was assigned worked outside the concentration camp, in buildings used by the German SS as living quarters and for storage.
In one warehouse the prisoners had to fortify the walls in a section which was to serve the Germans as an air-raid shelter.
“I worked in the bunker, and the Christian Poles worked above me,” he said.
At least two other members of the group survived the camp, an Auschwitz museum official said.
The daughter of Bronislaw Jankowiak – one of the Poles named on the note – has confirmed to the BBC that her father survived Auschwitz and died in Sweden in 1997.
In an e-mail, Irene Jankowiak said “he came to Sweden in 1945, rescued from Germany. There he met my mother, married and had four children. One of them is me.”
“My father seldom spoke about his experiences during his imprisonment. It was too harsh for him. Now it feels like I have got one more piece to my family history.”
The building the Nazis used for storage today belongs to a school. Recently when builders started to lay bare the brickwork under the thick layers of old cement they discovered the bottle.
‘Very lucky’
“I wouldn’t have survived if I hadn’t worked in that construction team at Auschwitz,” said Mr Veissid. “I was very lucky. I was friendly with the Poles and they gave me some of their soup. And what they stole from the Germans I hid in the bunker – jam and other food.”
But Mr Veissid has no idea who added his name and camp identification number to the Polish names on the note.
Happier times for Albert Veissid – today and before his deportation
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Mr Veissid’s Holocaust journey began with a French police raid in August 1943. “The police rounded up quite a few young Jews that day,” he recalled. “They handed me over to the Germans, who sent me to a labour camp in Provence. There the Gestapo came to find me and on 30 May 1944 I was sent to Auschwitz.”
“The rest of my family hid from the Nazis – my father stayed in a cinema, my brother lived under a bridge and my mother and sisters found refuge with local peasants.”
On 18 January 1945, days before the Soviet army reached Auschwitz, Albert Veissid was sent on a death march to the Buchenwald concentration camp in Germany.
Later he was again moved to a smaller camp, about 80km (50 miles) away, where he was finally liberated.
Visits to Auschwitz
Mr Veissid returned to France suffering from tuberculosis and it took him four years to recover. Then he set up a small business in Marseille, selling clothes.
“Now I live in a pretty little Provencal village with my wife. I have a son aged 53, and a daughter aged 48,” he told the BBC.
Over the years he has stayed in touch with other survivors and every year he goes back to visit Auschwitz. This year he went with a group of schoolchildren – to keep the memories alive for the next generation.
bbc/co.uk
| Written by Kendall R. Giberson |
| Wednesday, 01 April 2009 |
United States President Barack Obama’s visit to Ottawa in February dominated the Canadian news for days. However, just hours before Obama bit into his first Beaver Tail in the ByWard Market, the Canadian Air Force dealt with a potentially hairy situation in the far north. According to Canadian reports, a Russian bomber was intercepted by CF-18 fighter jets as it approached Canadian airspace, and promptly escorted back to international airspace. Whether the purpose of the bomber’s flight was to assert a Russian presence in the Arctic by testing Canadian defences (as Canadians claim) or to carry out routine high-latitude exercises (as the Russians claim), we don’t really know; but the whole episode does make one a bit nostalgic for the Cold War.
Why would anyone who lived through all the chest-beating, espionage, counter-espionage, mutually-assured destruction and threat of mushroom clouds springing up like, well, mushrooms at the push of a button make that sort of statement? When the Cold War was over, the world breathed a collective sigh of relief that lasted about a decade before the newest threat to international security changed the way we live. Compared to the current problems with international terrorist organizations, during the Cold War you knew who your enemies were and where they lived. At the beginning of the last millennium, larger kingdoms took over smaller kingdoms and became empires. Two world wars in the last 100 years saw the collapse of the old empires and the emergence of two new ones in the forms of the United States and the Soviet Union, and most of the world fell under the sphere of influence of one or the other. The most significant military alliances were the U.S.-led North Atlantic Treaty Organization and the Soviet-led Warsaw Pact. The foreign policies of each camp clearly set out how hostile they were against members of the other. Canada, being an ally of the U.S., became an enemy of the USSR and vice-versa (no matter how much the two countries liked playing hockey with each other!).
The United States compiles lists of countries that it considers to be dangerous. They are referred to in speeches as the “Axis of Evil”, “Outposts of Tyranny”, “Rogue States” and “State Sponsors of Terrorism” and include such countries as Iran, Cuba, North Korea, Syria, Libya, Belarus, Sudan, Myanmar and Zimbabwe. Truthfully, how much damage can each of these states do to the U.S. when they are either consumed with internal strife or lack the military capability to pose any real kind of threat? This brings to mind the question, what about Canada, the international good guys? Well, we do keep a list of outlawed terrorist organizations and there was a tense standoff with Denmark over an uninhabited rock in the Arctic ocean a couple of years ago, but the most hostile Canada gets towards a foreign country is to issue an unfavorable travel advisory for its citizens. So, Canada, due to its military presence in Afghanistan and being an ally of the United States, is a target of terrorist organizations, members of which include some of its own citizens. Instead of having Nikita Khrushchev banging his shoe on a table in the United Nations headquarters, we now have Osama bin Laden issuing a videotape to the media from a cave in who-knows-where every so often. I slept better at night knowing that the Soviets had nuclear missiles pointed at me from silos in Siberia than now, not knowing where, when or how Al-Qaeda will strike next. culturemagazine.ca |
Today, one consequence of the global market is that there are very few powerful countries that are willing to go to war, largely because everyone is so interdependent upon each other. What we have now are international terrorist groups who pose the biggest threats to Canada. It is much more difficult to pin down who the enemy is if they operate in secret. It is much more difficult to collect intelligence on them when they communicate in secret, their identities are unknown, and one can only speculate as to the leadership structure beyond a few well-known leaders. It is more difficult to hunt them down when they have no central headquarters and their bases are ramshackle at best; destroying an Al-Qaeda training facility does nothing to weaken the organization. Mostly, all you have is the name of an organization and a vague idea of from where it operates. In the past, you knew which governments were hostile to your own. You knew the names and life stories of the main players. You knew where the military bases were located. You knew the military capabilities such as the number of personnel that could be mobilized, and more importantly, the size of the nuclear arsenals. And they knew yours.