Egypt and Jordan can remain at peace with Israel despite the profound unpopularity of this arrangement because the governments are unaccountable and authoritarian. Surely the elections in Gaza should tell us that democratization allows people with deep grievances to vent them by empowering the most extreme and radical elements. This has proved to be ruinous for people in Gaza and far from what Israel wants. Democratization and regional stability are incompatible. If you desire one, you cannot have the other.
Sullivan writes, “I don’t buy the argument that in the long run, autocracies are more stable than democracies, even in the Middle East,” and goes on to cite Iran as proof of the instability of the autocratic model when it comes to succession.
He’s missing the point, though. I’m not sure even steely Larison would go so far as to argue that autocratic succession is any kind of ideal. Autocracies by their very nature change leaders amidst a tension that can at any time spill over into war. Indeed, the greatest achievement of democracy has been that power transfers have been institutionalized to the point of violence being a nearly unthinkable outcome.
What Daniel is correctly railing against, however, is the by far most questionable aspect of Democratic Peace theory: namely that democracies do not go to war against each other. Democratic Peace theorists like the claim, with some sleights of hand, that history bears out this claim. But Daniel’s counter-example is a powerful one. Is there much doubt that the Arab Street, if given access to the reins of power, would demand anything but the annihilation of Israel?
A possible model for the imposition of a fair compromise on Israel and the Palestinians might be the 1999 Rambouillet negotiations to resolve the Kosovo dispute. Less important than the actual compromise offered was the method of compulsion, involving a threat against both sides. As Tim Judah recounts: ‘While the Serbs were being told that if they failed to sign up to the draft proposals they would be bombed, the Albanians were, in effect, being told that if failure was their fault, they would be left to the tender mercies of the Serbian security forces and paramilitaries.’ This follows the dictum of Conor Cruise O’Brien, that ‘Conflicts don’t have solutions. They have outcomes.’ In the case of Israel and the Palestinians, the international community should impose a just settlement by threatening to come down like a ton of bricks on whichever side rejects the settlement.
This specifies a framework through which to think about the “we need to save Israel from itself” line of argument. I’m just left wondering whether this kind of political will exists in the United States. I suppose we’ll find out soon enough whether the Obama administration is willing to wade into this minefield.
George Bisharat, writing in the Wall Street Journal, makes some noises about Israel’s war crimes in Gaza.
A question to those out there that are supporters of international justice: do you think that prosecuting Israeli soldiers, generals and/or politicians will bring us any closer to a long-lasting peaceful solution for the region? I would argue that in fact any such prosecutions will only further poison the atmosphere. As I wrote a few days ago, the main lesson of Nuremberg is not that evil is best punished through international justice, but that international justice is the best way to punish the loser in a war, kind of like the final thrust with a wooden stake through the heart of a badly beaten, prone and defenseless vampire.
The question of how the Camp David Accords played out and whose “fault” it was that they broke down is a vexed one, vexed enough that I know not to voice an opinion on it without having done further reading.
Nevertheless, I do love how Zbigniew Brzezinski just doesn’t care about pleasantries any more:
Over at Slate, David Haglund attempts to make the case that the Big Lebowski works as an anticipation of the perfidy of the neocons:
Watching The Big Lebowski in 2008, it becomes clear that appreciating Walter is essential to understanding what the Coen brothers are up to in this movie, which is slyer, more political, and more prescient than many of its fans have recognized. Perhaps that’s because Walter, with his bellowing, Old Testament righteousness and his deeply entrenched militarism, is an American type that barely registered on the pop-culture landscape 10 years ago. He’s a neocon.
If that seems like a stretch, consider the traits Walter exhibits over the course of the film: faith in American military might (the Gulf War, he says, “is gonna be a piece of cake”; in the original script, he calls it “a fucking cakewalk”); nostalgia for the Cold War (“Charlie,” he says, referring to the Viet Cong, was a “worthy fuckin’ adversary”); strong support for the state of Israel (to judge from his reverent paraphrase of Theodor Herzl: “If you will it, Dude, it is no dream”); and even, perhaps, past affiliation with the left (he refers knowingly to Lenin’s given name and admits to having “dabbled in pacifism”). Goodman, who has called the role his all-time favorite, seems also to have sensed Walter’s imperialist side. “Dude has a rather, let’s say, Eastern approach to bowling,” he said in an interview. “Walter is strictly Manifest Destiny.”
So, yeah, all the points of comparison do line up kind of conveniently, like Haglund says. But if we’re going to be interpreting the movie this way, why stop with Walter? The entire cast of characters, one could say, represents a skewering of the entire American political landscape. When you start to make pat interpretations, it’s hard to stop: There’s the dude (Sixties radicalism as a spent force), Maude Lebowski (Europhilic coastal elites), Jeffrey Lebowski…the other Jeffrey Lebowski (a straigh-from-central casting, cigar-chomping GOP corporate welfare case), and Donny (the “silent majority” in America’s flyover country, who can’t get a word in edgewise over all the partisan bickering). Indeed you can make a good case for these and many more readings, but by doing so, don’t we lose a little of the magic of the original?
As The Dude himself might put it, “No, you’re not wrong, Haglund. You’re just an asshole.”
