Democracy: the Gap between secular and religious views?

Habermas and Ratzinger put up a good show few years ago. They both turned their cheek to the slapping adversary and concluded cheerfully: we need to embark in an on-going conversation between liberal-secularist and religious representatives. This sounds very promising, and many have concurred with the basic conclusion. But the truth is that the dialogue has not yet begun, and it will not begin until few basic points are tackled directly.

Democracy is the first obvious obstacle to a genuine dialogue. Why? The reason is that many liberal-secularist, who agree with Rawls or Habermas, think that democracy is a market place in which we can enter only if we do a number of things. The suq of democracy requires you to accept that within the parameters of democracy various liberties are protected, but in order to get in, you have to accept that democracy itself cannot be put into question.

So, for instance, you cannot put into question the ethical foundations of democracy, as democracy is internally justified, and its legitimacy comes from the legalisation of the processes that make up democracy. In turn, those legal processes will be legitimised by the existence of a democratic framework. Thus, Law (human rights in particular) and Democracy are mutually supportive and fully sufficient to their own mutual justification.

In other words, there is no possible external justification to democracy. It is completely useless to engage in a conversation on this issue, as this issu is by definition off limits. This basic point on the justification of democracy creates an a-symmetrical relationship between different representatives willing to enter the debate. So, the liberal-secularist can boast a certain confidence and graciously grant the right to discuss to the excluded religious person. In exchange, the religious person will accept the invitation au voyage with a grin. Obviously, this is not the best position to be in, but at the end of the day religion can only improve its status within the European society where the slippery slope led them to a near to complete disappearance.

However, if you scratch the surface just a little you’ll find out, for example, that the Catholic Church understands democracy in the following way: ‘Whilst the autonomy proper to the life of a political community must be respected, it should also be borne in mind that a political community cannot be seen as independent of ethical principles.’ This is what John Paul II said few years ago, when he was still battling for a Catholic European soul. His message is clear: democracy should give to itself few substantive guidelines that must be acknowledged as objective, absolute, and inviolable. Better if these principles are of Christian inspiration. This is the gist of Ratzinger’s thought too. In fact, Ratzinger was the brain behind this assertive position, and he continues to carry on this agenda tirelessly. There is continuity between John Paul II and Benedict XVI.

Now, the problem is that either the Church accepts the democratic rules and gives up its pretension to introduce its own version of objectively entrenched Christian principles, or it sticks to that but then forgets any type of genuine dialogue. For, if the dialogue is meant to be about the scope of democracy, but one understands democracy as excluding ethical principles and the other understands democracy as including ethical principles, then the dialogue is not likely to go very far. We can fool ourselves and pretend that we can agree to disagree on that point and yet we should carry on conversation. Under these conditions, conversation can continue forever without producing the slightest result.

This issue is a real dilemma. Rawls, who is as usual extremely honest intellectually put it in the best possible way: ‘How is it possible –or is it – for those of faith, as well as the nonreligious (secular), to endorse a constitutional regime even when their comprehensive doctrines may not prosper under it, and indeed may decline?’ American experience shows that religious people are not willing to endorse a constitutional regime when their comprehensive doctrines have declined. This is the story of the American society in the last 30 years, more precisely since Roe v Wade. That famous decision of the Supreme Court of the US declared abortion to be permissible in the first two trimesters. This was perceived as a huge victory for the liberal non-religious side of the society. It was the greatest blow ever for the religious part. Since then, a portion of the religious society attempted to invert the course of this story by engaging in politics to the support of the conservative side which declares itself prepared to stir the state in a different direction from which the supreme court of Roe wanted to take it.

Today, some of the greatest supporters of Rawls believes that his strategy was flawed. So Ronald Dworkin, possibly the head priest of Rawlsian philosophy as applied to law, holds: ‘the schism over religion in America shows the limitations of Rawls’s project of political liberalism, his strategy of insulating political convictions from deeper moral, ethical, and religious conviction.’ The strategy of liberal secularist in the US must therefore be modified, they claim. Deepest convictions should not be excluded from the debate anymore; to the contrary, a genuine debate about those convictions should take place within society. Everything must be up for grab.

Here’s a lesson we can learn from America. Rawlsian political liberalism, even though couched in deeply reasonable terms, has not managed to make the American political system stable. Some hard core Christians felt deeply threatened by the enactment of a secularist-liberal agenda (notably on the part of the US Supreme Court), and responded by organizing themselves politically around a conservative right eager to please religious people in the country.

In Europe, the situation is symmetrically opposite. Liberal secularists are in a position of clear superiority and confidence, as religious is breathing its last breath. Europe is a deeply secular state, so it is religion that is claiming to be heard. Its strategy is the same as liberals in the US. Democracy, they say, must be supplemented by ethical and religious values or it becomes an empty shell for the tyranny of the majority.

Secular-liberals in Europe are not impressed with this argument. Habermas, to repeat, insists that Democracy does not need an external justification such as religion or other ethical convictions. In a discursive constitutional regime, democracy’s legitimacy is fed by legality and law’s legitimacy is in turn fed by democracy. In other words, law and democracy are mutually supportive within our constitutional regime and need no external source to be justified. Having solved the basic issue this way, Habermas goes on arguing that we should give up an imperialist understanding of secularism and engage in an on-going and open conversation with religion. Perhaps, however, the very imprerialist character of secularism is due to the unwillingness to engage in a genuine dialogue on the basics, that is on the (ethical) foundations of our democratic institutions.

In Europe, it is the Catholic Church that claims incessantly an unfavourable treatment. They desperately want to play the role of XXI century martyr. Already, some right wing parties are trying to enrol the Vatican on their side, as they see that the Church is being listened. On October 20, Cardinal Camillo Ruini, president of the Italian bishops, bemoaned that catholic politicians are not united around Christian values. He surely would love to see the rebirth of a Christian Democratic party. The situation, however, is more complicated than in the US. Europe is de facto a tolerant secular state. The Church plays a minority game in this context. Where polarisation is more evident in Europe is between liberal-secularist and Islam. This is a much more heated contest that Europe does not master that well.

For the same reason, Europeans are not able to deal with Islam and with the daily worries it raises. The shar’ia is in open contradiction with democratic values. Those who want to uphold it can only engage in a game where the enjeu is constantly raised. Today is the veil, tomorrow it will be something else. But those are not symbolic issues as we would like to think. Those are just instrumental issues to keep the pressure on democratic institutions and eventually claim that the choice is not between veil or no veil within a democratic framework. The choice is between democracy a la occidentale and other institutional framework that entrench some basic values.

The response to that cannot be: “shut up, you. We are providing a good framework where you can be happy and free.” The only solution is to show that the substantive values that make up our own democratic institutions are good and sound. With reason.

Europeans are not able to deal with Islam because they are unable to fully articulate why and how we are secularist. They are unable to give good reasons in favour of that and they retrench themselves behind the statu quo, namely the fact that all institutions in Europe have a secular faith, which is at the moment very solid.

This is further reason why the dialogue should happen and should be as open as possible. Liberal-secular must confront any type of arguments and come up with good convincing reasons why they stand on the right side. This exercise can only prove to be refreshing and there is little to lose when we finally acknowledge that we have arrived here after bloody experiences and through a work of hard refinement of our institutions. We don’t want to go back to a Res Publica Christiana, and we do not want to move to a Shar’ia led Islamic republic. Between these two, there is something. There are our own democratic institutions which are worth years of experience and fight. It is not about maintaining a statu quo. It is about bringing these institutions and our own history and philosophy to a next level. To do so, we have to start from Democracy as we know it and open up to a genuine dialogue on what are the most important feature of this institution as well as what we want to modify.

The European Soul: A Rose between two thorns?

Europe is a constellation of liberal democracies characterised by the conviction that the public sphere should be strictly secular, and where religious arguments should be ruled out from the realm of public reason. We may call this attitude ‘secular confidence'. In the last years, secular confidence has been put under considerable strain by a number of cases such as the scarf, the cross in the classroom, the Mohammad cartoon saga or, very recently, the Pope’s speech in Regensburg. It quickly appeared that secular confidence could not provide convincing arguments to decide those issues. The principal explanation for the lack of a convincing secular position is reflected in the dogmatic character of the secular confidence which assumes, instead of articulating a sound justification, that religion, religious symbols and religious opinions are best kept away from our sight. This artificial situation creates more tensions than it solves and it is time to review this fundamental weakness in the secular strand of thought.

The main question at stake is the following: what place should European liberal democratic states make for religion in the public sphere? The short answer of many Europeans as things stand is: none. The long answer, however, is more complicated since the impression is that our secularist doctrines are not anymore able to justify why religion should be wholly privatized. Moreover, in Western countries, secularism is a phenomenon proper to Europe, but not to America. From this perspective we can clearly distinguish two broad ideal-models: on the one hand we have a tolerant religious state (USA) and on the other we have a tolerant secular state (Europe). At this point one could argue that Europe is not a state and, more importantly, it does not have a homogeneous position in relation to the place of religion in the public sphere. Recent sociological studies, however, have clearly demonstrated that Europe as a whole shows a powerful trend toward secularisation.

The relation between politics/law and religion in Europe is hard to grasp. A broad liberal attitude in European States tends to exclude any type of exchange. The classical example of this attitude is France. But religion keeps fighting back for a place in the public sphere, be it in the name of Christian or Muslim values. More specifically, religion claims that our liberal democracies are unable to deliver a sound model of good life. Atomized individuals, religious leaders claim, are lost in our consumerist societies and are unable to work out for themselves a set of ideals that would make their lives meaningful. The response of the leaders of our liberal democracies is that religion is unable to offer a model of life together where religious and non-religious people can be treated equally by the neutral institutions of the state.

This icy relationship could have continued rather blandly were it not for the tragic events that shook the western world in the last five years. Since 2001, Bush, Blair, Barroso and Berlusconi raised their voices in the name of objectively good western values that they want to spread all over the globe. Thus, before invading Afghanistan or Iraq they sought the benediction of the Pope. The Vatican suffered a major blow as well. John Paul II, possibly his most charismatic leader in centuries, expired in 2005 after a long illness. His successor, Joseph Ratzinger, is an intellectual with strong views on the role of Christian roots in Europe, but a very poor record as a leader and communicator. Both Religion and secularism are doing very poorly; as a result, in the last few years a copious literature on the relationship between faith and reason, State and Church, Christianism and Europe attempted to show that the two are mutually supportive and they should not be regarded as mutually exclusive.

The first real battleground to test the place of Christian values in the European polity was the draft proposal of the European Constitution, which now sits still awaiting happier days. John Paul II had repeatedly asked for the inclusion of Christian values in the preamble of the Constitution. Joseph Weiler, probably the most influential European lawyer and academic, wrote a short essay in Italian –Un’Europa Cristiana-- hammering the same point. A Catholic alliance of European States including Italy, Poland, Spain and part of Germany (Bavaria) were created to support the reference of Christian values in the text. The alliance failed to achieve this task. But not very long after the whole Constitution failed to pass the democratic test of referendum in France and Holland, two of the founding states that take themselves to be very secularist and liberal.

The real problem is that if the public sphere is not defined in terms of few selected public values, but instead is considered as a mere stage for pluralism and tolerance, then the distinction between public sphere and private sphere collapses. In Britain, for example, the debate concerning the veil is raging stronger than ever. British Muslim women have recently argued that wearing the veil is an entirely private choice; as a result public institution should not intervene in this issue. They also argued that the liberation of Muslim women start from their ability to choose how they want to lead their life starting with the issue of the veil. Feminism, so they say, should support this kind of position. This kind of arguments are puzzling. The reason why they are so is that they use the notions of public and private sphere interchangeably, just in relation to the strategic effect they want to produce. Is wearing the scarf in public a mere private choice? I really wonder. Unfortunately, there is no clear framework to decide these issues, which transform every argument into an issue of perspective including the question of the public/private divide.

Why are we now there? My point is that liberal democracies by insisting on the importance of the private sphere and individual rights have voided the public sphere of any meaningful content. More precisely, and in philosophical terms, the transition from comprehensive views to more moderate forms of liberalism emptied the public sphere of its content of values. We have no yardstick to decide what is permissible and what is not in the public sphere. We simply know what the public institutions should refrain from doing in the private sphere. This has been a welcome improvement, but the price to pay in terms of the impoverishment of the public sphere is worrying.

Religion is trying to reconquest the public sphere by intervening on issues of public domain such as bioethics, same-sex unions, and many other issues at the edges of life. But what kind of argument can we accept as far as religion is concerned?-- after all its claim to truth has been swiped away long ago. What kind of function can religion play if it cannot ground its position on an alleged objectivity of values. Even if we are somehow 'terrorised' at the moment, this is not a good reason to engage in endless dialogue with no content. Let's pause for a second and think more deeply about what kind of a dialogue is possible and what are the objectives to be achieved. Only then, we could start listening one another. Perhaps with some results.

How Not To Argue About Abortion

The issue of abortion, while never anything like as vociferously contested in Europe as it is on the other side of the Atlantic, nonethless does raise its head from time to time. Zoe Williams has an extremely provocative opinion piece in today's Guardian, written to mark the 39th anniversary of abortion being legalised in Britain, and against what the author sees as an increasingly deceitful and hypocritical tenor to the debate in the UK, both in Parliament and in the public at large.

The polemics of the piece are striking. The abstract begins by bemoaning the fact that, even for the left, abortion is now viewed as a "necessary evil", allowing pro-lifers to "dominate the debate" and putting "women's hard-won rights under threat". Williams recalls her own experience, first with abortion and then with writing about it, in the mid-90s. Then, as now, she railed against the fact that it was, although legal, nonetheless viewed as something taboo: why, for example, are there nop jokes about it? We have jokes about everything else, from cancer to physical and mental handicap; but, she insists, "in comedy, even in very mainstream comedy, there are almost no taboos" however, "you could make a joke about September 11 before you could make a joke about abortion". And this at a time when a quarter of all women have had abortions, then it is something thqat must affect all of our lives: "Seriously, unless you are very cloistered or you are incredibly judgmental and uptight and nobody ever tells you anything, you will have been aware of an abortion at very close quarters, even if it was not your own".

I pause at this point to flag one or two concerns about the facts of her polemic. Firstly, something anecdotal; I view myself (perhaps, of course, mistakenly) as neither cloistered nor uptight and judgmental, and yet abortion has not yet affected me at close quarters. Of course, I may well be simply an unlikely exception; however, Williams' rhetorical use of the blunt 25% statistic in this manner seems a little at odds with her insistence, towards the end of the article, on the social/ class elements of abortion availability and uptake. Further, I am simply not convinced that it is true that mainstream comedy has an abortion taboo to a degree greater than, for example, September 11th: I have seen abortion jokes, for example, in recent episodes of both South Park and Family Guy; and both are American series, although admittedly known for pushing back the boundaries.

These are not important points, but they do provide us with a hint that things are not quite as straightforward, not quite as black and white, as the author presents them; and it is this that, to my mind, constitutes the most serious failing of the piece: it's insistence on framing the abortion debate within a series of strict dichotomies (open/taboo; honest/hypocritical; banal/murderous), and its outright rejection of any possibility for complex and nuanced positions that simply reject that the ethics of the issue can be reduced to a set of "either/or" extremes. Consider, for example, the following passages:

Why are there never any abortion jokes? Why is it unthinkable to discuss it without prefacing everything with "of course, it's terribly traumatic, no woman enters into this lightly"? I found it no more traumatic than any other operation I have ever had, no more psychologically scarring, way less painful than anything involving my teeth and considerably less annoying than anything I have had done on the NHS...

Even writing that, I am furious - it is considered a given, an unarguable tenet of modern society, that you would feel ashamed of having a termination, that you would, in some cutesy, feminine, inarticulate way, feel "bad" about it. You are not allowed to talk about this operation unless it is to say how dirty it made you feel. We are all expected to have these moral objections and yet suffer the business anyway, in the name of pragmatism. Ethically, this is a far dodgier and more repugnant position than mine, which is that I am entirely pro-abortion because I do not consider it murder; if you do not consider this foetus human, then it becomes no more of an issue than getting a tumour removed.

These passages illustrate perfectly, to my mind, the deeply reductive and impoverished manner in which Williams thinks and writes about the issue of abortion. There can be no middle ground which is not hypocritical: either abortion is murder, in which case we must surely ban it all; or it is not, in which case it should be viewed in much the same way as having any unwanted body removed by medical procedure. There is quite simply no room here for the position that I, and I suspect many others, hold: that it is an absolute violation, indeed a form of bondage, to force women to do with their own bodies that which they do not want; but that, at one and the same time, a foetus is an entity that can command both respect and sympthy; not, perhaps, as a human in its own right, but out of understanding of and hope for the life that it has the potential to become. Williams would have us believe that one cannot feel sorrow for the loss of a foetus, for the loss of that potential life, without either being anti-abortion or thoroughly disingenious. The latter allegation is one, however, that I would level at her: her attempts to polarise through reductive polemic are not an accurate representation of the debate, and are undertaken in order to browbeat her target audience (the rights-conscious "left") into agreeing with her basic position: that having an abortion is no different from removing a tumor.

It would be remiss of me not to acknowledge a very major influence on my own thought in this regard. The American legal theorist and literary critic James Boyd White has looked at the issue of abortion from the perspective of his own understanding of the role of rhetoric in social life, and has bemoaned the reductive and dichotomous terms in which American public debate is held. Perhaps there are some (like Williams) who do experience the decision to abort in terms of one of the extremes that she thinks exhaust the field of honest debate: either it is without question murder, and unacceptable, or it is no different from a woman's decision to drink, smoke or wear makeup, and to be left entirely to her own preference; however, it is doubtful in the extreme whether this is how the majority of women who have an abortion experience it. White presents the distortions in the debate between right and left in the US on this issue in the following manner:

The "pro-life" position is often associated with those who favour capital punishment, for example, the "pro-choice" with those who on moral grounds oppose the infliction of the death penalty - and the ironies on both sides are instantly apparent. The "pro-life" position rests upon sympathetic identification with the unborn child but is often - with some honorable and compelling exceptions - associated as well with political positions that resist "welfare programmes" of the kind that might make these children's lives more endurable after they are born. The "pro-choice" side speaks of freedom to choose as though abortion were entirely unproblematic, like choosing some other consumer good, rather than the tragic decision it surely is for almost every woman who faces it. On both sides there is thus significant denial; if each side could admit just this much of what is problematic in its position one could imagine a conversation - unsatisfactory, no doubt - beginning to occur. (James Boyd White, Acts of Hope: Creating Authority in literature, Law and Politics (1994) p. 166-167.

Williams article is a perfect example of how not to argue about abortion. There is absolutely no room for nuance or complexity of any kind in her position; still less for any acknowledgement of what might make it problematic to others. This brings us to a striking paradox in her piece: the only rapprochement, the only understanding that she can reach is with those who are diametrically opposed to her; those in for whom abortion is murder, who campaign for a blanket ban. Only these groups are speaking her language; only they escape her charge of disingenuity and hypocrisy, and thus only they win her respect. It is only this blind commitment to the abstract extreme that leads her to invert White's point, and claim that abortion is only a tragic choice because of a creeping and covert criminalisation in political and public rhetoric, and not because the loss of a foetus, and the potential it embodies, can be mourned on terms other than those of the loss of human life. To take White again (whose work I really cannot recommend highly enough), "[i]n such terms as these no thought worthy of the name can proceed, and the vice is not merely intellectual but ethical and political as well, for neither formulation establishes a community in which difference is respected" (White, "What Can a Lawyer Learn from Literature?" 102 Harvard Law Review (1988-1989) 2014-2047, at p. 2046).

Williams article can thus provide us with absolutely no intellectual resources for understanding and explaining precisely why abortion is a hard choice for most of those faced with it; instead, her polemic is geared towards forcing acceptance of the proposition that it is not in fact a hard, or tragic, choice at all, but is only made to appear such by a dishonest political and public rhetoric designed by crypto-right wingers to make women feel ashamed to exercise their inalienable rights. Hers is not a contribution to a debate; it is a call to arms in an outdated battle that will, like most extremist wars, end up causing far more harm than it avoids for those it ostensibly seeks to champion.

New UN Arms Treaty in pipeline

The United Nations Disarmament Committee has recommended, by an extremely impressive majority, to begin work on a new treaty to control the lucrative trade in weapons (background here). The Resolution, entitled "Towards an arms trade treaty: establishing common internattional standards for the import, export and transfer of conventional arms" (UN Doc. A/C.1/61/L.55) has the support of most of the major players in the market, both manufacturers and exporters and importers. The draft was approved by 139 votes for, 1 against, and 24 abstentions. Among the abstainers were China, Cuba, Iran, India, Pakistan and Russia; the single vote against came from the United States.

A Better Democratic Campaign Strategy

The release of a new television advertisement by the Republican National Committee highlights the Republican Party’s choice to campaign for the mid-term elections next month in the same manner that they campaigned for elections in 2002 and 2004: scare voters into voting for Republicans. This strategy is perhaps best represented by the ad Republicans ran in the last weeks of the 2004 campaign, a chilling image of a circling page of wolves and a scary voice-over warning about weak-on-defense Democrats. Pundits generally agree that, although the ad was cynical, it was very effective. This tactic worked because voters have traditionally seen Republicans as being stronger on national security issues, and terrorism continues to be a central concern for Americans. It may not work this time, however, because despite the Bush administration’s continued attempt to conflate the two issues, voters have begun to differentiate between the war in Iraq – which a majority of Americans now believe to be a mess – and terrorism, and voters seem to be more worried about the mess in Iraq than Osama bin Laden. Democrats have been content to sit back and allow the Republicans to lose the 2006 election in the face of their incompetent handing of Iraq and a plethora of domestic scandals. They should be doing more. Polling indicates that the Republicans are increasingly likely to lose control of the House of Representatives and may even lose control of the Senate. However, most analysts agree that the only thing giving Republicans a glimmer of hope is the Democrats’ failure to offer a coherent alternative to the Republican platform (tough on security and low taxes). What, even generally, would Democrats do if they controlled one or both houses of Congress? The vast majority of voters don’t know, because Democrats are not saying, at least with any sort of clarity or consistency. Tony Blair once observed, quite accurately, that if you want to motivate voters, you should talk about two things: their hopes and fears. Republicans have cornered the “fear” side of the market. But they have left the “hope” message wide open. The Democratic Party should spend the next two weeks advertising a message of hope. They could even fudge a bit on the specifics of their policy proposals, especially since they probably couldn’t agree on such specifics anyway. But a positive message – something along the lines of a smarter foreign policy and help for middle class families - would contrast very favorably to the scary Republican advertisements and their gloomy warning that Democrats want to “cut and run” in Iraq and to raise taxes. A hopeful message, properly advertised, could well turn the current Democratic advantage into a rout.

Domestic courts consider Iraq

George Monbiot had an interesting piece in the Guardian a couple of days ago, in which he looked at a few cases, from the UK, Ireland and Germany, where the legality of the Iraq war, or of certain aspects thereof, came under consideration in domestic courts. (Thanks to Opinio Juris for flagging this, where Kevin John Heller has an interesting and illuminating discussion of the issues raised in the piece). In the two UK cases, involving criminal damage of military equipment to be used in the war, the jury failed to reach a verdict. In Ireland and Germany, the results were even more dramatic: in the former, protesters who had taken axes and hammers to a US Navy plane were held by a jury to have acted lawfully, while in Germany, a court threw out a charge of insubordination against an officer who had refused to carry out an order he felt would implicate him in the war in Iraq, on the basis that the war was indeed illegal.

The material background of the cases involved can be found in the House of Lords judgment in R v. Jones (March 2006). This was the case in which it was decided that the defendants could not rely on the fact that state agression is a crime under international law in constructing their defences before the UK courts. This, of course, deals with the issue of whether or not customary international law forms part of the common law of England and Wales, which was raised, for example, by Lord Millett in his separate judgment in the Pinochet case. In Jones, I think, we have a fairly definitive statement of the current UK law on this position: that although customary international law may be viewed as having been assimilated into domestic law even in the absence of specific legislative action, this process cannot be viewed as happening either necessarily or automatically (and, interestingly, the court here explicitly distances itself from Lord Millett's view, expressed in Pinochet, that international torture became a crime under domestic UK law as soon as it became a part of customary international law - see para. 19).

Indeed, the Court's judgment seems to make it very unlikely that any non-legislated incorporation of new customary international law into English domestic law will be recognised ever again, in terms of criminal law at the very least. The relevant passage from Lord Bingham's judgment reads as follows (para. 28):

The lack of any statutory incorporation is not, however, a neutral factor, for two main reasons. The first is that there now exists no power in the courts to create new criminal offences... While old common law offences survive until abolished or superseded by statute, new ones are not created. Statute is now the sole source of new criminal offences. The second reason is that when it is sought to give domestic effect to crimes established in customary international law, the practice is to legislate. Examples may be found in the Geneva Conventions Act 1957 and the Geneva Conventions (Amendment) Act 1995, dealing with breaches of the Geneva Conventions of 1949 and the Additional Protocols of 1977; the Genocide Act 1969, giving effect to the Genocide Convention of 1948; the Criminal Justice Act 1988, s 134, giving effect to the Torture Convention of 1984; the War Crimes Act 1991, giving jurisdiction to try war crimes committed abroad by foreign nationals; the Merchant Shipping and Maritime Security Act 1997, s 26, giving effect to provisions of the United Nations Convention on the Law of the Sea 1982 relating to piracy; and sections 51 and 52 of the International Criminal Court Act 2001, giving effect to the Rome Statute by providing for the trial here of persons accused of genocide, crimes against humanity and war crimes, but not, significantly, the crime of aggression.

Lord Hoffmann concurred, noting simply "the democratic principle that it is nowadays for Parliament and for Parliament alone to decide whether conduct not previously regarded as criminal should be made an offence" (para. 60). He goes even further, in a interesting passage of dicta on "the limits of self-help" (paras. 70-88), holding that allowing citizens to use force against military installations on the basis purely of their own views - however honestly held - of the legality of state action would turn the Statute of Treason into a dead letter; instead, legal and democratic means must be used to force a change in government policy. Hence, he concludes that the defendants should be convicted "even if aggression had been a crime in domestic law" (para. 87). It seems, however, that not enough members of the jury in the most recent case were in agreement...

The Place of Religion in the European Public Sphere

This is the topic of a forthcoming conference I am organizing at the University of Aberdeen, Scotland, UK. For more information, please see here.

This is a short description of the project:

Europe is a constellation of liberal democracies characterised by the conviction that the public sphere should be strictly secular and should rule out religious arguments from the realm of public reason. We may call this attitude 'the liberal confidence.' In the last years, the liberal confidence has been put under considerable strain by a number of cases such as the scarf, the cross in the classroom or the Mohammad cartoon saga. It quickly appeared that the liberal confidence could not provide convincing arguments to decide those issues. The principal explanation for the lack of a convincing liberal position is reflected in the dogmatic character of the liberal confidence which assumes, instead of articulating a sound justification, that religion, religious symbols and religious opinions are best kept away from our sight. This artificial situation creates more tensions than it solves and it is time to review this fundamental weakness in the liberal strand of thought. This problem raises various legal, religious and philosophical issues. First, it points to a serious epistemological problem, namely what is the status of religious beliefs in the formulation of public policies? Second, it raises a political issue regarding the relationship between political and religious institutions in European polities. Third, it brings back to the public forum the fundamental ethical question - How should we live?- by asking how can we possibly share the same polity without engaging in these issues in comprehensive terms (that is, in a way that takes seriously everyone's religious and other beliefs alongside with other types of beliefs).

The No-Risk Society

Our national attitude to risk is becoming defensive and disproportionate; the way we try to manage risk is leading to regulatory overkill. There is an over-reliance on Government to manage all risks, yet it is neither possible nor desirable to control every risk in life. Personal responsibility and trust must be encouraged. Britain must safeguard its sense of adventure, enterprise and competitive edge.

These are the words of the newly-established Better Regulation Commission, a group of UK Government advisors who have just released their first major report, entitled "Risk, Responsibility and Regulation - Whose risk is it anyway?". In it, they assert that "we have all... been complicit in a drive to purge risk from our lives and we have drifted towards a disproportionate attitude to the risks we should expect to take". However, "enough is enough - it is time to turn the tide".

This, to my mind, is to be welcomed. The anecdotal evidence from the UK regarding the increasing refusal to take any risks is overwhelming: from the difficulty in getting schoolteachers to engage in extra-curricular activities, particularly sports, to the intrusion of Health and Safety officials into almost all aspects of social life. A relative of mine, who works in the food industry, was astonished - and delighted - recently when confronted by the Italian tradition of aperitivo for the first time, in which many pubs and restaurants put on a pre-dinner finger buffet for those drinking there; "Health and Safety", he claimed, "would never allow that in the UK". Our loss, certainly. The report contains a number of other, less anecdotal, examples.

Of course, the increasing litigiousness of the general public is both driving and driven by this process. As the report notes (p. 17), "Fear or litigation, terrifying and lurid headlines, single-issue campaigns, lack of trust, lack of information, confused accountability and a 'something must be done' mentality - all swirl around the policy-making process and put impossible pressure on the system - and ministers - for rapid and decisive action". All contribute to the fact that in the UK, much as in the US before it, the word "accidental" is slowly being expelled from the English language, and replaced by the accusation "negligent".

It seems to me, however, that we can go one step further than the report does, and apply its insights to one of the most pressing and important issues of our time: human rights and national security. If our increasingly risk-averse nature has led us to prefer regulation at all and any cost in the relatively petty spheres of everyday life, then how much more this is true of our reaction to the steady erosion of human rights and civil liberties in the face of the threat of terrorism. Indeed, it is this risk-aversion, this demand for security at all costs, that forms the single most important justificatory strategy in governmental rhetoric on, for example, the draconian detention powers now available to police; this was perhaps clearest in Home Secretary John Reid's almost pathetically transparent speech in which he declared (the day before UK police foiled the "biggest anti-UK terrorist plot ever") that the critics of the Government's anti-terrorism policy (including, for example, the ECtHR judges in the Chahal case) simply "didn't get it" - didn't appreciate the seriousness of the threat facing the UK.

Perhaps, however, they did "get it"; perhaps they simply refused the Government's risk assessment - that terrorist attacks must be stamped out, regardless of the very high costs to fundamental principles of our ethics such as the right to liberty. The argument that I want to make here is not the (very plausible) one that such limits are in the end counter-productive, and contribute to making sustained terrorist campaigns more, and not less, likely; rather, it is that, in a spirit of human rights adventurism - for, if you will, the thrill of the ethical - terrorism is a risk that we have to be prepared to run. Such risks are an inevitable attendant of our ethical self-image; and, as recent events have shown, we cannot supress one without seriously eroding the other. Of course, it is, as always, a question of balance, of how much of our ethics we are prepared to trade for our security. My claim would be that, in the UK and perhaps even more spectacularly in the US, we have got this balance seriously wrong.

More nuance to US Iraq policy debate

A significant change in US policy towards Iraq now seems likely, after a number of senior Republicans have called for a rethink of strategy. Perhaps most significantly, the report of a bipartisan review panel on the issue, set up with the blessing of Bush himself and chaired by Republican and Bush-ally James Baker, which isn't scheduled for release until after the elections on the 7th November, has been leaked to the press.

Perhaps most significant is the claim, which Baker has repeated in TV interveiws, that political rhetoric on the subject has been impoverished by the imposition of a crudely dichotomous framework (which has been exploited on many occasions by Bush himself in order to shore up support for the venture). Baker himself has stated that 'Our commission believes that there are alternatives between the stated alternatives, the ones that are out there in the political debate of 'stay the course' or 'cut and run'".

This can only be welcomed. In the context of a situation as complex and challenging as Iraq, no debate worthy of the name can take place within such a discursive framework; however, opening up discourse in the manner suggested will make it harder, if not impossible, for the occupation to be presented and understood in the simple terms that American politicking often seems to demand: that of victory and loss. This may, however, be a risk that Bush is prepared to run now, as it seems increasingly likely that, if such a stark appraisal is to be made, then most will view the Iraq war as the latter.

The proposals of Baker's Commission have not yet been released in full, but they look likely to include greater dialogue with, and a greater role for, Iran and Syria (as neither country has an interest in an unstable Iraq). Perhaps more interestingly, from an international law point of view, is that the stated aim of democratisation - for Iraq and for the Middle East in general - may be downgraded to securing simply "representative government"; government that reflects the will of its constitutents, without necessarily being democratic.

If such a move was to become a major element of US foreign policy in the region, it would be a significant blow to those, such as, most notably, Thomas Franck, who have claimed for over ten years that a human right to democratic governance has been "emerging" in international law, based, in large degree, on state practice, both multi- and uni-lateral in this field, and in particular on the practice of election monitoring and the soft law development of rules on what constitutes a "free and fair election". If a state as important as the US begins to pursue representative, rather than democratic, government, then this would provide significant ammunition to those skeptics, such as Brad Roth, who have argued that, although international law is no longer blind to the nature of domestic government, a right to democratic governance is based on a "wishful reading" of the available empirical and textual evidence:

[a]lthough international law regards "the will of the people" as sovereign, that will is not reduced by international law to the outcome of a particular participatory process... And this is quite as it should be. After all, even where electoral process, however "free and fair", occur, they are not necessarily the last word in popular will. (Roth, Governmental Illegitimacy in International Law (1999) p. 343).

I will conclude by briefly noting some ofthe other sources on this debate, for those who are interested. Most of the important articles have been collected in the volume edited by Fox and Roth, Democratic Governance and International Law (2000). Apart from Roth's monograph on Governmental Illegitimacy, one other major - and excellent - book-length contribution is Susan Marks' Riddle of All Constitutions (2000). The profoundly related area of the "democratic peace thesis", which appears in most of not all of the proponents of the proposed human right ot democracy, is dealt with in some detail in the volume edited by Brown, Lynn-Jones and Miller, Debating the Democratic Peace (1996). Lastly, for a more detailed account of my own view on these issues and works, and for further sources, see here.

Le Parlement légifère sur l'histoire...

While many in Europe profess themselves uneasy with the limitations on freedom of speech respresented by laws criminalising holocaust denial (as evinced by the decidedly lukewarm reaction to the news that David Irving had been arrested on such charges in Austria recently), the French Parliament has decided to move in exactly the opposite direction. Holocaust denial is already illegal in France, outlawed by the 1990 Loi Gayssot; however, they have decided to go one step further, as the Parliament has provisionally passed a bill proposed by the opposition Socialist Party last week, which will penalise anyone denying that the Turks carried out a campaign of genocide against the Armenians from 1915-1917, thus "completing" a law of 21 January 2001, which officially recognised that the relevant events constituted genocide. The penalty envisaged is one year in prison and a 45,000 Euro fine.

The Turks, who refuse to acknowledge that their actions at that time were genocidal, are more than a little upset by this, particularly as it comes at a time when the EU is pressuring them to remove their own restrictions on freedom of expression; and they and others have not been slow to point out France's considerably more ambiguous relation to its own past, be it in terms of Algeria or, more recently, of the Vichy collaboration during the Second World War. It has further been suggested that the new law was specifically designed to complicate Turkey's admission to the EU. This is certainly a major issue in French politics, although I am unsure as to the official line of the Partie Socialiste in this regard. In any event, the potential to hinder Turkey's accession will undoubtedly have been a significant factor in garnering cross-party support for the initiative. Chirac, it seems, is against the proposal.

There are, to my mind, many reasons for feeling less than comfortable with the very idea of Parliament legislating on history, not the least of which are the implications for freedom of speech through criminalising the uttering of certain words. This is not to say, of course, that freedom of speech can or should be absolutely unfettered by the law: few would argue, for example, with some limits set by defamation or libel laws; and many, myself included, feel that there is a role to be played by laws against the incitement of racial hatred. As always, then, the urgent task is not to seek escape into abstract absolutes, but rather to enter into the context of controversies, and to make and take responsibility for a choice informed by the circumstances of the case.

What, then, could be the reason for this latest step? The PS seems, officially at least, to be stressing the logical need to "complete" the law of 2001; but this, of course, only shifts the focus of debate back a few years. It is possible to argue that denial of the Armenian genocide now contributes to a climate which can lead to continuing suffering of those involved: however, it is pertinent to ask whether this problem (of anti-Armenian sentiment) is of sufficient seriousness in contemporary France to warrant the extreme measures taken. Further, in respect of all such arguments where history is being determined by the legislature, we may well inquire into the current harm that such denial causes that cannot, in large degree, be covered under existing incitement laws.

There is, of course, the good of securing acknowledgement of respect for the wrongs of the past; surely, however, the best way to achieve this is through diligent scholarship rather than by parliamentary fiat. If such scholarship is inconclusive, then this is simply a greater reason to distrust legislative efforts in the field; I can see no good reason for looking to law-makers where historians have "failed". Perhaps here we have the crux of the matter, however: that law and history are in some senses incommensurable. The law simplifies, reduces: it speaks (or at least aims to speak) with one voice, that of unshakeable authority; history, on the other hand, is pluroivocal; contested; ambiguous - all of the things that law seeks not to be.

Allowing law to speak for history, then, is a usurpation by the former and a tragedy for the latter; a very powerful set of reasons indeed must be in place for any defence thereof to be persuasive. It must be borne in mind always that this conclusion in no way bears upon the historical debates involved, of which I am almost entirely ignorant; to my mind, however, the necessary justifications are singularly lacking in France's recent move to legislate the history of another region.

Europe and the Scarf

Prodi, the italian Prime Minister, thinks that the Muslim veil is a question of reasonableness. Women can wear it, but they should remain visible. If only certain issues were so easily solvable...

The veil saga is taking incredible proportions in Europe. Last week, in Britain, Jack Straw declared that the veil created an unbridgeable barrier. Muslim women responded that the veil made them free.

The point is that the veil would be a simple pragmatic issue of reasonableness if we were not facing a much deeper politico-religious issue of identity. European Muslim do not feel very European. They have a point as many Europeans of birth do not really want to consider Muslims as European as well.

In this kind of political climate, the veil issue becomes a political act of identitity definition. First, Europe has to try to show that its values are worth being embraced for what they are. Then, it can quibble about the veil being a pragmatic issue or an issue of reasonableness.

But the real issue is deeper and should never be overlooked. We want and we must create an image of Europe which is distinctive and positive. At the same time, such Europe should be able to assimilate all the 'others' in a way that becoming a European Muslim or a European Jew or a European Buddhist or a European Christian or a European secularist would be a matter of pride, not a question of rejection.

LRB "Israel Lobby" debate online

For those that have been following the furore kicked up over Mearsheimer and Walt's provocative piece in the London Review of Books in March this year, entitled "The Israel Lobby", this link is certainly worth checking out. Mearsheimer and Walt's basic claim was that there exists a loose yet powerful and effective grouping of pro-Israeli individuals and institutions in the US that exercise their influence over the political process - both by positive lobbying and the negative silencing of critics - to "distort" US foreign policy with regard to Israel.

Reaction was predictably vociferous, and basically two-pronged: the first raised the issue of anti-semitism, while the second focused on the quality of the scholarship involved. Both are discussed at length during the linked debate, which took place last month, and involved Mearsheimer himself, Tony Judt, and some of those mentioned by name in the article, Martin Indyk and Dennis Ross. The debate was chaired by Anne-Marie Slaughter. Few punches were pulled.

Certainly worth a look. Other interesting pieces, some directly linked, some less so, can be found here, here and here.

The Island that isn't there

Where is Ithaka, Ulysses hometown? The place Ulysses took twenty years of...Odyssey.. to go back to.

Some exciting new research shows that Cephalonia may be that place and not the actual island that bears the name Ithaka.

For all those interested in the greek heroe's adventures, have a look here.

Balkans is Europe-Says Nicolas Sarkozy

In an editorial opinion for the Wall Street Journal-Europe on Monday 2 October 2006, Nicolas Sarkozy, French Interior Minister and one of the most serious candidates for becoming a French president in the next elections raised the issue of European Borders arguing, "[n]ow is the time, too, to face up honestly to the issue of Europe's borders, and accept that the French and Dutch referendum results were partly provoked by a Europe "sans frontiers"."

Determining which countries belong to Europe he states that Norway, Switzerland and the Balkans are in principle eligible to become members of the EU, whereas he suggests that there are some countries that "are clearly non-European" and that instead of a full membership EU should look into building a "preferential relationship" with Turkey for example.

The War of Cartoons

Since the Mahommad Cartoon saga, a lot of ink has been spilled around the world trying to understand what are the limits to the 'right to ridicule.'

In the last year we have seen cartoons about the holocaust and cartoons against the christian faith.

The last in time is the Ratzinger cartoon, following the recent debates surrounding the pope's speech in Regensburg. You can view the cartoon here.

Even if the taste of the cartoon is arguably open to disagreement to say the least, there is no reason to ban it or to stop circulation.

Most importantly, this idea should be understood in the framework of reciprocity. Different faiths owe to each other mutual respect. If the condition of mutuality is respected, then dialogue will be possible. Without mutual respect, no dialogue is feasible. This is what ratzinger was trying to say, but some people wanted to misunderstand the message.

Ratzinger was sound!

This time Ratzinger is sound, those who criticized him misunderstood him (at times willingly). Ratzinger may be a conservative pope (I for one do not share his conservative values), but he is not a bully or a shallow thinker. He's an intellectual who expressed very complex thought and has been misunderstood by extremists in Islam and by liberals in the western world.

With his speech he wanted to stress various points, many of those were sensible; in particular the idea that the holy war is against the will of god.

Perhaps, misunderstanding was inavoidable --some people say in Europe. Their argument is that we are dealing with too sensitive topics to make deep quasi-academic comments. These ideas are bound to be misunderstood --they say.

I personally believe that some extremist people desperately want to misunderstand the message given by spiritual and political authority in the west. This gives them the necessary legitimacy to motivate people who do not have direct access, or enough education to understand the message sent from America or Europe.

There's hardly something Ratzinger can do about it. There's hardly something we can do about it. We are desperate to engage in a serious conversation with the Islam, but there are some extremists who want to prevent this from happening. They want to raise the voice and prevent the dialogue as they know that the point in all this is not to communicate with us; instead they want to provoke us into splitting into two or more factions, just for the sake of weakening our positions.

We don't have to fall prey to this strategy. We should refrain from condemning Ratzinger for taking a position and arguing in favour of it. We should try and understand what he says and engage in a further conversation with him and with the Islam in oder to further a more stable world.

Romantic Love

Browsing a second-hand bookshop recently, I came across a book by Denis de Rougemeont called 'Passion and Society'. I think it has since been re-issued as 'Love in the Western World'. De Rougemeont is an interesting figure - a public intellectual without any particular academic affiliations involved in the post-war advocacy of European Unity. This book, I have since learnt, made a deep impression on John Updike who has recently made something of a stir with his latest work 'The Terrorist'. The core thesis of the book is that the Western concept of Romantic love originated in Troubador poetry, which itself was an expression of the 'Cathar-influenced' culture of the 'languedoc'. The Cathars offered a Manichean interpretation of Christianity based on an opposition between an irredeemably evil world and a transendant hereafter. As (almost) eveyone now knows, thanks to Dan Brown, the Cathars didn't last very long - their beliefs directly contradicted one of the core doctrines of orthodox Catholicism: the idea of the incarnation and its partiuclar concept of love as agape. Troubador poetry, according to Rougemont's thesis, was an 'outlet' for 'cultural Catharism'. The idea of the unattainable lady, the notion of a 'pure' love unsullied by the terrestrial bonds of matrimony and most importantly the 'pain' of such love celebrated in this poetry and in the 'courts of love' established by the poets' atistocratic patrons can all be seen as, drawing for their symbolic power, on the underlying substrate of Cathar belief. Rougemonet then goes on make the case that these ideas found a further powerful expression in the Arthurian legend and in particular in the legend of Tristan and Isolde. The latter provided in particular the strongest expression of the idea of an unttainable love ending in the death of the lovers that was to prove an important trope in romantic literature and cinema up to the the present day; consdier, for example 'Romeo and Juliette', 'La Traviata'. The idea of the 'death of the lovers', so de Rougemont arguments goes, drew on Manichean cultural resonances that emphasized the imperative of transcending the transient, corrput and terrestrial world through death. The contemporary concept of Romantic love is then a secularization of this initial religious-cultural composite.
How should we assess de Rougmont's argument? First of all, it has to be acknowledged this is more a suggestive argument than anything else - evidence for the links he wants to make are obviously few and far between. I would argue, however, that it is useful starting point for considering the complex resonances that romantic love has for us in the West. Indeed, the full force of his argument cannot be appreciated until the reader has followed his historical narrative that takes us from the Arthurian legends to the latest Hollywood Rom-Com. Also interesting for us is the fact that de Rougemont highlights the way the Manichean world view is not the sole legacy of the Christian west. He indicates that the Manchean religions were developed largely in what is now known as the East and further that the Celtic religions of pre-Chrisitan Europe also contained certain manichean themes.

Il fare politica

Imagine a documentary film that took more than twenty years to make. Couple of nights ago, here in Brussels, I went to see “Il Fare politica” of a Belgian author Hugues Le Paige. The movie was showed in the cultural centre “Espace Marx”, in collaboration with the “Association Antonio Gramsci”. “Il fare politica” is a story about 4 Italian communist party activists in a small Tuscan village of Mercatale also known as “little Russia”. The movie follows the story of Fabiana, Carlo, Claudio and Vincenzo who are members of the Italian communist party at the local level. The story starts in 1982 and follows the lives of these authors, their experience of the fall of the Berlin wall the end of a dream and transformations. The story ‘ends’ in 2004. I must say this is one of the best documentary films that I have ever seen, so emotional, real to the extent that it becomes an illusion, the story tells about a dream of a classless society, but not aggressive militantism of Italian urban extreme left of the 1970s ‘led years’. The film starts with a conversation with a mother of on of the main actors, the Belgian journalist asks her:

-when you say little Russia, is this something positive for you.

-yes – she replies, and continues – we used to applaud to Stalin, like this…

The film starts with a funeral of Enrico Berlinguer

Memorable Italian Communist Party leader, one of the main promoters of the so-called ‘historical compromise’ that sought to form a governing coalition between the Demochristians and the communist but it never happened…Enrico’s brother Giovanni (when I entered the room I saw the pannel and could not believe my eyes I though I saw Donald Rumsfeld, I saw an amazing similarity between two people, then I realized that he is the brother of the historical leder of the Italian Communists and a contemporary european politician), at present an MEP from the Italian Democrats of the Left (ex Communist Party) was present at the discussion after the film.

‘Il fare politica’ is a typically Italian expression that could be approximately translated as political activism, but one of the main personalities from the film Fabiana defines it much better then me. Asked how would she define ‘il fare politica’ she answers, after a short, timid reflection, “do not stand by and idly observe, participate, understand the reasoning of the others.” The film partially wishes to demonstrate how political activism of the 1970s, 1980s in the Communist party, constant debates, demonstrating, slowly dies out with the Great political transformations that occurred with the fall of the Berlin wall…it is certainly at the personal level highly nostalgic, but also at the political level. At a certain moment during the film one of them 4 says, “we are not the same as the Communists form Eastern Europe”, but why I wandered and asked was it because there was something profoundly different in the historical development of the two parties or was it merely because the Italian communist Party stayed in the opposition and was forced to act in a hostile capitalist environment that essentially made it better…If they came to power in 1945, if the decision made at Yalta was different, if the Red army was faster, would they be still different than the Polish, Czech communists? The director of the film answered that he indeed belives that the Italian Communist Party was different, because “Gramsci was not a Leninist”. Berlinguer added that the Italian Communists were in fact socialists but they did not fully realize this. Another person from the audience asked an interesting question, he generally objected to the nostalgia of the film, he rather saw the changes political and personal of the main personalities as a positive thing, as if they became more mature and started demanding more from the politicians. He asked Berlinguer why didn’ t they (the Italian Communists) change a name, much earlier, ay in 1982, this way the entire crisis of the Italian politics of the 1980s and early 1990s could have been avoided. Berlinguer, said that they feared that they would lose many voters and activists…but that he still does not know whether they did a right thing to maintain the old line until the very end…Il fare politica is a truly wonderful thing and once again I got convinced that Cinema Forums, discussing films in group after seeing them (in an organized manner) is a truly entertaining exercise…thanks to "Espace Marx" and "Assotiation Gramsci".

Republicans and Misappropriated Intelligence, Part 2?

Another unsavory story about apparent Republican twisting of intelligence to support ideological goals - as many Bush administration critics claim occurred prior to the invasion of Iraq in 2003 – is making headlines. The Washington post reports that officials from the United Nations’ International Atomic Energy Agency have angrily disputed some of the central conclusions in a report recently released by the U.S. Congress’s House Committee on Intelligence, which claims that Iran’s nuclear weapons program is more advanced than either the IAEA or U.S. intelligence agencies will admit. Democrats on the House committee reportedly did not contribute to the final draft of the report and characterize it as badly flawed. The Committee chairman, Republican Peter Hoekstra, has yet to respond to the IAEA’s criticism. However, when the Committee report came out last month Hoekstra announced that, “This report is aimed at providing information for the American people to use in understanding the very real threat our nation faces from Iran.” In recent months many conservatives have become increasingly impatient with the Bush administration’s continued support for diplomatic efforts to convince Iran to abandon the covert nuclear weapon program that everyone thinks it has. This report seems to be part of an ongoing effort to convince the American public of the need for - and to force the Bush administration to embrace – a tougher policy. This would presumably entail an immediate push at the U.N. Security Council for sanctions. If that were to fail, as might well be the case given Chinese and Russian reluctance to vote for sanctions in the Security Council, then conservatives would then either push for U.S. military action or support for an Israeli attack. However, proponents of this tougher line have yet to explain how the U.S. would carry out an effective attack on Iran, given that its military is already overcommitted in Iraq and Afghanistan and that Iran has been careful to hide, disperse and protect the various components of its program. The latter obstacle would also apply to an Israeli strike. Stay tuned for further developments....

Is there a Japanese Threat for peace in Asia?

After spending few weeks in Japan, I became quite worried at what Japanese International Polics may become in the near future.
Japan's Prime Minister, Mr Koizumi, will step down next week.
In pole position for his place, we find Mr Abe, an highly suspicious political figure who will try to reassert Japan's role in Asia with the use of force.

Mr Abe is planning to revise the Japanese Constitution. In particular, he's concerned with article 9 of that Constitution which has limited Japan's military interventions since the end of WW2.

In an interesting contribution to the New York Review of Books, Ian Buruma explains why Japan is still very much hated by China and North Korea; the move in the direction of Abe will not do much in the improvement of Sino-Korean-Japanese relationships.

Bush's 9/11 Address: A Deconstruction

President Bush addressed the nation last night to commemorate the fifth anniversary of the September 11 terrorist attacks. Surprisingly for some, perhaps, the President chose not to simply eulogize those who died. Instead, he offered a vigorous defence of his national security policy and sought to persuade a skeptical American public that his policies are the best way to keep the nation safe. In doing so, Bush sought to frame the conversation in the next two months before the mid-term Congressional elections in a way favorable to Republicans. An analysis of Bush’s remarks offers a wealth of information about the President’s worldview and how he is trying to sell that worldview to Americans.

First, Bush and his speechwriters are trying to mobilize the strain in American culture that the historian Frederick Merk has called “Mission.” This is the idealistic impulse to improve the world, bolstered by the conviction that America is uniquely good and uniquely equipped for the task. Thus, Bush argued that, “Throughout our history, America has seen liberty challenged, and every time, we have seen liberty triumph with sacrifice and determination.”

Bush also emphasized a distinction between civilization and barbarism, with America and her allies (though the emphasis was definitely on the U.S. and its “distinctly American” virtues) representing civilization and “the terrorists” representing barbarism. This dichotomy is reminiscent of Theodore Roosevelt, whose worldview, according to historian Frank Ninkovich, was deeply influenced by a similar vision of the international system. Bush went further than Roosevelt did, however, in trying to rally Americans to his side. He depicted the current problem with radical Islamic terrorism as nothing less than a war to the finish between two diametrically opposed ideologies, democracy and Islamic extremism. He argued that, “The war against this enemy is more than a military conflict. It is the decisive ideological struggle of the 21st century, and the calling of our generation….[The terrorisists] know that given a choice, people will choose freedom over their extremist ideology….it is a struggle for civilization….And we're fighting for the possibility that good and decent people across the Middle East can raise up societies based on freedom and tolerance and personal dignity.”

In presenting this apocalyptic vision to Americans, Bush drew parallels with past successes in American foreign policy in an effort to connect Iraq in Americans’ minds with something good and invoked the names of mythologized Presidents like Franklin Roosevelt and Harry Truman. “Do we have the confidence to do in the Middle East what our fathers and grandfathers accomplished in Europe and Asia?”

He also defended his record in the fight against terrorism. Answering a common criticism, he acknowledged that Iraq had no connection to 9/11 but then, without skipping a beat, conflated Iraq, Iran, al Qaeda into one big “evil” that he claims threatens America and that demands nothing less than total victory in Iraq. “If we do not defeat these enemies now, we will leave our children to face a Middle East overrun by terrorist states and radical dictators armed with nuclear weapons. We are in a war that will set the course for this new century -- and determine the destiny of millions across the world….On September the 11th, we learned that America must confront threats before they reach our shores, whether those threats come from terrorist networks or terrorist states. I'm often asked why we're in Iraq when Saddam Hussein was not responsible for the 9/11 attacks. The answer is that the regime of Saddam Hussein was a clear threat. My administration, the Congress, and the United Nations saw the threat -- and after 9/11, Saddam's regime posed a risk that the world could not afford to take. The world is safer because Saddam Hussein is no longer in power….Al Qaeda and other extremists from across the world have come to Iraq to stop the rise of a free society in the heart of the Middle East….The safety of America depends on the outcome of the battle in the streets of Baghdad. Osama bin Laden calls this fight "the Third World War" -- and he says that victory for the terrorists in Iraq will mean America's "defeat and disgrace forever." If we yield Iraq to men like bin Laden, our enemies will be emboldened; they will gain a new safe haven; they will use Iraq's resources to fuel their extremist movement. We will not allow this to happen. America will stay in the fight. Iraq will be a free nation, and a strong ally in the war on terror.” In blurring the differences between Iraq, Iran and al Qaeda the President continued what seems to be an administration strategy of simplifying, at least for the public, the threats in the Middle East.

Bush world vision, of course, is linked to the Republican Party’s election strategy for the November mid-term elections: scare Americans and make them focus on national security (the only issue where voters trust them more than Democrats) to the exclusion of all else. Thus, Bush wants voters to think that, “Today we are safer, but not yet safe” This is a perfect pitch for the campaign: I am doing a good job but you still need to be scared. “Thanks to the hard work of our law enforcement and intelligence professionals, we have broken up terrorist cells in our midst and saved American lives. Five years after 9/11, our enemies have not succeeded in launching another attack on our soil, but they've not been idle. Al Qaeda and those inspired by its hateful ideology have carried out terrorist attacks in more than two dozen nations. And just last month, they were foiled in a plot to blow up passenger planes headed for the United States. They remain determined to attack America and kill our citizens -- and we are determined to stop them.” Bush also wants support for his continued efforts to legalize his use of wiretapping without judicial approval and the use of torture in interrogating suspected terrorists: “We'll continue to give the men and women who protect us every resource and legal authority they need to do their jobs.”

While critics of Bush will find little in this speech to applaud, no one can deny the skill with which he and his speech-writers address the American public. They hit on all the key buttons that Americans respond to: a clear definition of good vs. evil, with America as the protagonist; the superiority of American virtue; the memory of the “Greatest Generation” that triumphed over the Nazis and the Japanese in World War Two; the existence of a powerful evil that threatens the American way of life. As it stands, the President and his policies continue to be unpopular. The President’s speech, although dressed up as a commemoration of the attacks on September 11, was obviously the opening salvo of the White House’s attempts to stabilize public support for Bush’s Iraq policy and to frame the terms of the election debate on the only ground favorable to Republicans. The next few months will show whether or not this strategy will pay off, as it did in the 2002 and 2004 elections.

In Search of a Democratic Foreign Policy

Justin Logan’s post last week on the American Prospect online edition addresses the continuing struggle by the Democratic Party to formulate a post-September 11 foreign and national security policy. Concluding his analysis of the divide between Democratic Party grass-roots activists, who are fiercely critical of all aspects of the Bush administration’s foreign and national security policy and seem to largely favor a rapid end to American involvement in Iraq, and Democratic Party policy makers and intellectuals, who are also critical of Bush and Co. yet still fairly hawkish on Iraq and national security, Logan warns that, “The danger is that casting a ballot for a Dem in ’08 will yield a reheated, squishier version of the Bush doctrine.” This is a silly conclusion. Can anyone see President Hillary Clinton invading Syria, a la the Bush doctrine’s call for preventive war? However, Lamont’s broader (implicit) point, that Democratic Party leaders are not wholly responsive to activist concerns about foreign and security policy, is trenchant. In fact, this is a fundamental problem that Democrats have yet to solve. Traditionally, Democratic Presidential hopefuls have responded by talking tougher than Republicans, like John F. Kennedy in 1960. However, Kennedy had the luxury of talking tough about the Soviets while still appealing to Democratic voters on domestic progressive issues, like fighting poverty and addressing civil rights issues. Plus, the fact that Democratic voters were not nearly as critical of Republican foreign and national security policy prescriptions left Kennedy plenty of room to take a hawkish national security stance. Party leaders today must appease a base that is animated first and foremost by its rejection of some or all of the Bush administration’s foreign and national security policy. Current Democratic grass-roots voters seem to either take progressive domestic policies as a given or place secondary importance on them. Party leaders must therefore address the following conundrum: how do they reconcile the concerns of this base with the need to craft policy positions that appeal to centrist Democrats, independents and even some Republicans? Republican reaction to leftist Ned Lamont’s recent defeat of centrist Joe Lieberman in the Connecticut primary offers a case in point. Conservatives gleefully highlighted Lamont's victory as proof that Democrats are out of touch with the concerns of mainstream voters. Democrats dismissed such talk and still speak of regaining the House and possibly the Senate in November’s mid-term elections. However, their success in November and in 2008 will rest in no small part on their ability to craft a message that gets its base to the voting booth and appeals to centrists.

The grain of Intolerance: by Slobodan Antonic

This article was published by the Serbian daily newspaper “Politika” 29.08.2006, for the Serbian version of the article see here. Slobodan Antonic is one of the most prominent Serbian political analysts. This article was inspired by the statement of Martti Athisaari, the United Nations Special Envoy of the Secretary-General, leading the talks for the determination of the final status of Kosovo. The Serbian government protested against Athisaari’s statement because it reportedly implied that Serbs are guilty as a nation for what had happened in Kosovo and that they have to pay the consequences of the crimes committed in the past. Thus, that they have to reconcile to the possibility of losing Kosovo. Ahtisaari’s chief spokesperson Hua Jiang told B92 that Ahtisaari would not apologise for his statements because he never mentioned the collective guilt of the Serbian people. “The statement was taken out of context and poorly presented. He never mentioned the collective guilt of the Serbian people. Ahtisaari spoke of the historical legacy, that every nation should have the courage to face its own past. There is no reason for Ahtisaari to offer an apology and that is not going to happen.” Jiang said. [Srdjan Cvijic in green letters are my comments while in black letters the translation of the original text by Slobodan Antonic].

The author of this editorial was there 5^th October [referring to 5^th October 2000 – Revolution against Milosevic’s regime]. I was not storming the Parliament, but I did throw rocks at Takovska 10 [Serbian Radio Television – used to be a symbol of Milosevic’s regime]. Near by, one young man fell down hit by a rubber bullet in the stomach. It smelled like smoke and teargas. Yet, one could also smell the hope that Serbia finally became part of the West. I remembered this when I heard Ahtisaari’s statement that Serbs are guilty as nation and that they have to pay for it. The topic of the collective guilt of the Serbs was especially en vogue during the 1999 bombings. There were claims how the destruction of Serbian factories, bridges and hospitals, as well as murdering of Serbian civilians was not entirely unjustified. “The vast majority of Serbs”, used to explain Daniel Goldhagen are, “now caught in the grip of delusions, hatreds, an ever more belligerent society and culture, war and death.” In this way the majority of the Serbs, “have rendered themselves both legally and morally incompetent (The Guardian, 29^th April 1999). Serbian civilians are those who made it possible for Milosevic to stay in power, hence they have to assume part of the responsibility “, explained Marsha Hepfel, from the University of Tennessee.

Granted, maybe there was some kind of collective responsibility in the fact that Serbs for a long time tolerated Milosevic. But, Milosevic lost the 2000 elections (as he lost the 1993 and 1997 elections). When he refused to recognize their outcome, people dethroned him by means of a remarkable revolution. Serbs, hence, demonstrated that they do not support Milosevic and his thuggish politics. Why are the Serbs still guilty?

Indeed, one cannot help but to ask why doesn’t still the West like us? No, I do not want to simplify things. I know that there is no love in politics and that interests prevail. I know that the main Serbian interests in Kosovo are in disaccord with some powerful interest of the West. I likewise know that there is a bureaucratic inertia to continue to habitually punish those who were once naughty pupils. I also know that it is the easiest for the Brussels and Washington officials to come to diplomatic mission to Serbia. They just need to repeat: “Mladic, Mladic” and “There will be no partition of Kosovo, no return to the pre-1999 state of affairs” and their task is completed.

All this is clear to me. Still, however, can the policy of the West towards Serbia be explained purely in terms of interests? Isn’t there maybe also a grain of intolerance, an irrational grain of aversion that at times comes to the fore, like in the statement of Ahtisaari? Indeed, it seems that there is something more to it. As if Ahtisaari’s statement were not an incident provoked by one diplomat only, but an outbreak of sincerity of an entire Western diplomatic service?

Recently I reread Hobbes, that teacher of the modern West. He says that we don’t hate anyone as much as we hate the one to whom we did a great evil. This is because, the philosopher further explains, the presence of that person reminds us of the dishonour and ignominy of our deeds. Furthermore, because we know that that person, provided that he/she is rational enough, can hardly still be fond of us. Besides, it is very probable that he/she will try to avenge in the future.

Maybe the key to our riddle lies in this remark? For, when we wander – why doesn’t the west treat us Serbs, as they treat Croatians, Albanians or Bulgarians – maybe we ought to have in mind that the West did not bomb the Croats, Albanians or Bulgarians? That it did not kill their two-year-old Marko Simic, eleven-month-old Bojana Tosovic, three-year-old Milica Rakic, six-year-old Branimir Stanijanovic, five-year-old Dejana Pavlovic. And other 83 children. That it did not throw on them at least ten tons of enriched uranium, that creates radiation as 437 atomic bombs thrown at Hiroshima (because of which in 2004 Serbia there are 40% more registered cases of cancer than in 1999).

When, hence, the West looks at Croatians, Albanians or Bulgarians, they probably see nations that they supported, to whom they did a significant good deed and from whom they can expect gratitude. When, however, they look at the Serbs what do they see? Probably only a nation whom they had bombarded and to whom they left radiation?

But, my lord, trust us: Serbs really forgot all that! Is there anyone who really remembers all that, who still thinks about that? We really forgot and forgave everything. We really honestly love the West. We really want to be like you!

But, maybe they did not forget it? Maybe they think that we ought not to, provided that we are rational, love them so much? What a stupid misunderstanding! Yet, there is a solution for that also. The West needs to do a greater good to Serbia. A good that would make it rational for them not to fear us any more, because of which they would no longer have to be ashamed of us. A solution to the Kosovo question not only to the detriment of Serbia, or a genuine opening of the European perspective are two possible deeds that first come to my mind.

Do it! It really isn’t difficult! Automatically will Serbia seem better to you. Because – you will be better too!

Political Analyst

Slobodan Antonic

[published in “Politika”: 29.08.2006. translated by Srdjan Cvijic]

John McCain, George Bush, Iraq and Public Opinion

Republican Senator John McCain, frontrunner for the 2008 Republican Presidential nomination, criticized the Bush administration yesterday for misleading Americans about the difficulties it faces in stabilizing and rebuilding Iraq. McCain, commenting on recent opinion polls which show further erosion in public support for the administration’s Iraq policy, said that President Bush, Vice President Cheney and Defense Secretary Rumsfeld, with their constantly upbeat public statements about the progress being made in Iraq, had “contributed enormously to the frustration that Americans feel today because they were led to believe this could be some kind of day at the beach.” McCain’s comments are sure to resonate with a broad cross-section of the American public, from Democrats (and now a majority of independents) who oppose the war to Republicans who support an American presence in Iraq but are critical of the administration’s policies. Indeed, McCain continues to rank as one of the most popular politicians at the national level. However, a closer look at McCain’s policy proposals for Iraq and his background should give pause to Americans attracted by his charisma and candor. Rather than lightening America’s Iraq burden, the Arizona Senator advocates deeper American involvement in Iraq. This would have serious implications not only for Iraq but also for Americans.

McCain did not oppose the American invasion of Iraq. On the contrary, he is a leading defender of the invasion and removal from power of Saddam Hussein, and supports a continued occupation. Instead, he differs from the administration on the best way to pacify the country. Bush, Rumsfeld and Cheney have attempted to stabilize Iraq using existing American military force levels. McCain has yet to give detailed policy proposals for Iraq. However, we know that he favors the resignation of Rumsfeld (though he refuses to say so publicly), who is widely acknowledged to have poorly managed the occupation, and that he has consistently advocated increasing, rather than decreasing (as the administration would prefer), the number of troops in Iraq and opposes setting any timetables for U.S. troop withdrawals. In order to raise troop levels he would need to expand a military which, experts agree, is stretched perilously thinly. This would entail lowering standards for recruits (a process already being embraced by military recruiters who are facing mounting difficulty in keeping troop numbers at their current level, let alone raising them) or reinstituting the draft. Like many Vietnam veterans, though certainly not all, McCain’s experience as a Navy pilot and prisoner of war convinced him that the Vietnam War had been winnable. He believes that the American defeat was the result of timid politicians unwilling to prosecute the war to the necessary extent. For him and many others, a winning strategy would have included mobilizing the entire nation for war and invading North Vietnam, though how they would have justified this to an American public that was increasingly anti-war is never articulated.

Critics of the current war have often drawn a parallel between America’s failure in Vietnam and the problems it faces in Iraq. While these comparisons are often overdrawn and of limited use, it is useful to consider how Vietnam shaped McCain’s conception of American foreign policy, especially in terms of how he would change the country’s Iraq policy as President. We know that McCain would push for deeper American involvement in Iraq. It is also quite possible that he would retaliate against Syrian and Iranian involvement in Iraq (an escalation Bush has so far prudently avoided) given that he chafed against similar restrictions as a pilot in Vietnam. This highlights a striking paradox. American voters are largely disenchanted with the Bush administration’s policy in Iraq. According to the latest New York Times/CBS News poll, 53 percent consider the invasion of Iraq a mistake and 62 percent think events in Iraq are going “somewhat or very badly.” This falling support comes despite the fact that the conflict, with relatively low casualties (roughly 2,600 American soldiers killed) and no tax increases, has had comparatively little impact upon American civilians. However, one of the most popular politicians on the national scene and the most likely Republican nominee for President in 2008 favors deepening American involvement in Iraq to an extant that would begin to affect Americans at home. Though we will not know for a number of years what the Bush administration’s exact reasons for their minimalist policy in Iraq (i.e. lowest possible troop levels in Iraq, refusal to raise taxes to pay for the war’s enormous cost), it seems that they are determined to fight the war with as little impact on Americans as possible. It seems that, with good reason, they have little faith in the American public’s willingness to support a truly national effort to quell Iraqi insurgents and stabilize the country. McCain, on the other hand, seems to take American willingness to support such an effort for granted, or at least believes it to be superfluous. This is surprising, considering that critical public opinion forced American withdrawal from Vietnam. Despite the extent to which his war-time experiences color his world view, it seems that Senator McCain may have failed to learn the most important lesson of Vietnam: Americans will not support an ill-conceived war once it begins to seriously impact them. Public support for the Iraq conflict is weak even with the Bush administration’s No Domestic Impact model; how would Americans react to the McCain Mobilize the Nation for War model?

War on terror vs. Realpolitik in the Middle East

The Chatham House has published an excellent report on Iran, entitled “Iran, its neighbours and the regional crises” have a look at it here. Moreover, on the secret background to the Israel’s was on Lebanon and the US foreign policy have a look at the new article of famous US journalist Seymour Hersh, “Watching Lebanon” published at the Newyorker. Hersh writes that the White House, esspecially Cheney and his team supported the Israeli plan to attack Hizbollah. The problem for the future is as one of Hersh’s sources puts it, “There is no way that Rumsfeld and Cheney will draw the right conclusion about this…When the smoke clears, they’ll say it was a success, and they’ll draw reinforcement for their plan to attack Iran.” For an interesting position on the geopolitics of the US relationship with Shias and Sunis read the very interesting Vali Nasr’s article in the Foreign Affairs magazine “When the Shiites Rise” .

Reading these articles one can get a strong sense of the dangerous path ideological neo-conservative foreign policy is leading America into. Moreover, it seems that US foreign policy is currently not only a hostage of the abovementioned ideology but also of powerful private economic interests that often have absolutely nothing to do with the national interest of the US and the security of its citizens home and abroad. Israel’s military campaign in Lebanon demonstrated what could be the outcome of a US military campaign if it decides to attack a 70 million people strong giant like Iran. Interesting point from the Chatham House report is that post-9/11 US policy actually reinforced Iran’s position by eliminating its hostile neighbours the Taliban and Sadam Hussein. US is not powerful enough to lead the war against all in the broader middle east, which is often how some US policy makers interpret the war on terror, possibly a return to realist foreign policy is needed?

Italy Ready to Lead UN Force in Lebanon

This time Berlusconi is prudent; He has suggested the Prime Minister, Romano Prodi,
to be patient, not to rush the mission in Lebanon.

What the hell, I say, if there's something urgent, this is probably the most glaring case. Europe is proving once more static. They need to meet up, to discuss, to disagree and to avoid taking a decision.

Italy, however, has already taken a decision. It wants to take the lead, someone has to take the lead in this Europe. Of course, we shouldn't end up there all alone, exposed to every possible risk without the help of any other state. But while european politicians discuss at length without an end in view, a state, Lebanon, is suffering from all we haven't done in the past, all the things we haven't sais, all the actions we haven't taken.

That Holocaust cartoon competition...

Some time ago, around the time of the Mohammed Cartoon Controversy, I noted in a post that the Iranian newspaper Hamshari had launched a competition for cartoons satirising the Holocaust, to illustrate the double standards of the West in allowing the images of Mohammed in the Danish newspaper to be published then republished all over the world. Unfortunately, I have been unable to find any of these online; if I do, I'll provide a link. Cartoons involve, however, images of the Statue of Liberty reading a book on the Holocaust while giving a Nazi salute with the other hand, Ariel Sharon in an SS uniform, a Jewish figure drinking from a cup marked "Palestinian blood", and an Arab figure impaled on the ground by a Jewish man's nose, on which is marked "Holocaust".

Leaving aside the issue of whether the cartoons are any good until we have actually seen them - and, from the descriptions available online, it seems that they have a much more overtly political message than the Danish ones did - it seems worthwhile to ask whether the contest will have the desired effect of illustrating perceived Western "double standards" over the publication of religious satire. As one organiser of the contest has argued, "we staged this fair to expose the limits of the freedom Westerners believe in... They can write freely anything they like about our prophet, but if one raises doubts about the Holocaust he is either fined or sent to prison".

A worthy aim, no doubt, but one that has, as I thought it might, backfired. Leaving aside the differences in the subject matter - which are not insignificant - we are simply not seeing anything like the type of reaction from the West that we saw from the Arab world over the depictions of Mohammed. Certainly, there has been condemnation from many quarters - as there was also over the earlier cartoons, but there have been few if any calls for the criminalization of those who participated. And the story will very soon be out of the news altogether, perhaps to make a brief reappearance in early September when the winner is chosen.

My own reaction - and, I'm sure, that of many others like me - is a combination of interest and distaste; the latter at the crude and cheap racial stereotyping that appears to be present in some of the entries, the former at what seem to be some points that are genuinely worthy of discussion being raised. The Guardian piece notes that one split-image contribution portrays a stand-up comedian performing in the "West Club"; the first window shows him "telling jokes about Islam" to raucous laughter; the second, "telling jokes about the Holocaust", shows him being kicked out of the club.

As I noted before, there are significant and material differences between the two subject matters; however, this is not to say that there are not genuinely worthwhile arguments to be had over the role that the Holocaust plays in debate, particularly over the current actions of both Israel and the US, in terms of acting as both a conversation-stopper and critic-demoniser.

This being said, given the pretty low-key reaction, this exhibition has already, I think, proved that the West in general is much more open to satire about the Holocaust than the Islamic world showed itself to be over depictions of the Prophet; and it wil further illustrate, I think, that many if not most Westerners are prepared to judge satire for themselves, and not to have the State to do it for them. What the organisers of the competition seem to have missed is that the handing down of jail sentences for Holocaust denial remains an exception in the West - and one that many, if not most, are decidely uncomfortable about at that.

Bush don't spy!

That is what a federal judge decided in what seems to be a very important case against the wiretapping plan of the Bush Administration. Here' s a report.
Here's a commentary.

Some time ago, some of the most prominent intellectuals in the States came out against the NSA program on the New York Review of Books. Here you find the letter sent to the Congress.

The decision will most certainly be appealed. Will privacy be stripped off or protected?