Inducing a Failed State in Palestine
Yezid Sayigh
The policies of the Quartet of the United States, the UN, the EU and Russia have contributed materially to systemic, probably irreversible collapse – ‘state failure’ – in the Palestinian Authority. The Hamas takeover of Gaza in June 2007 underlined the consequences of applying sweeping, punitive sanctions against an entity and a population already exhibiting signs of severe political, social and economic stress. The risk is that this approach will polarise Palestinian politics even further, expanding the scope and scale of internecine violence. If Hamas is brought down in the Gaza Strip neither the Palestinian Authority emergency government nor the government of Israel would be able genuinely to govern the area. But the alternative is that Hamas will succeed in consolidating its power in Gaza. A resumption of external trade or even a ceasefire agreement may allow a power-sharing deal to be reached once more with Fatah, but will not endure in the absence of a diplomatic initiative that reinstates firm benchmarks and detailed goalposts for the two-state solution. This is unlikely as long as the international community will not engage in forceful political intervention. The fact that the Quartet confined the mandate of its new special envoy, former UK Prime Minister Tony Blair, to assisting Palestinian political and economic reform suggests that it has opted for the default choice of persevering in a failed policy.
China’s Military Space Strategy
Ashley J. Tellis
Although it is often argued that China’s 11 January 2007 anti-satellite weapon test was a protest against US space policies, Beijing’s counterspace programmes are actually part of a considered strategy designed to counter the overall military capability of the United States. In preparing to cope with America’s overwhelming conventional might, China has settled for asymmetric military strategies that take aim at the Achilles heel of US military dominance: American space-based capabilities and their related ground installations. Consequently, China will continue to invest in space-denial technology rather than be a party to any space-control agreement that eliminates its best chance of asymmetrically defeating US military power. With its dominance of space now at risk, the United States must contest and win this offence–defence space race if it is to uphold its security obligations and deter increased Chinese counterspace efforts.
Unipolar Illusions
David P. Calleo
Following the great troubles in Iraq, Americans are more inclined to speak of the ‘unipolar moment’ than the ‘unipolar era’. Recent experience reveals that America’s global predominance has been seriously overestimated. The new century seems fated to a plural international order, with little prospect either of inner harmony or Hobbesian hegemony. How is such a world to be governed? We might start with a more plausible theory of international relations, one that accepts a plural order and tries to govern it by a combination of power-balancing, bargaining and mutual accommodation. The mutual appeasement that characterises relations within the European Union offers a promising approach.
A Strategic View of Energy Futures
Mathew Burrows and Gregory F. Treverton
While higher gasoline prices at the pump are a nuisance for consumers, they are only a minor drag on the United States and other rich economies, which are much less energy intensive than they were in the 1970s. No one can predict that supplies will remain tight and prices high, but there are good reasons – China and India, fast-growing economies consuming lots of energy, prominent among them – for planning on that assumption. This time around, the big strategic issues are not high prices at home but political effects abroad: how will the big winners, like Russia and Iran, use their new leverage? What will need to be done about the losers, like Pakistan and poor African countries – the latter hard hit by the one–two punch of higher energy prices and global warming? What challenges will both winners and losers pose for international security and global welfare; what are the implications of changes in the global oil and gas markets, especially the control of resources by national oil companies?
Russia and the Deadlock over Kosovo
Oksana Antonenko
Russia and the transatlantic community are engaged in a political battle over Kosovo’s right to be granted sovereign statehood outside Serbian jurisdiction. Europe and the United States have concluded that Kosovo’s identity as part of Serbia is unsustainable, and any delay in granting Kosovo at least partial sovereignty is a major obstacle for its development, stability and security. Russia, on the other hand, asserts that any attempt to grant Kosovo independent status would set a dangerous precedent and encourage further ethnic cleansing against Serbs. Moscow’s position on Kosovo is based on a complex set of interests and concerns – domestic, regional and global – which dominate the thinking of Russia’s modern political elite. Since Russia’s position on Kosovo seems uncharacteristically firm, a unilateral decision on Kosovo appears the only way forward. Moscow is convinced that it holds the moral high ground and will live to see yet another Western ’blunder’, on par with Iraq and an increasingly unstable Afghanistan. It is now up to Europe to prove that independence will bring stability and rule of law, not chaos and insecurity. If violence returns to Kosovo, Russia and the West will blame each other, worsening general relations. EU success in Kosovo, and closer ties with Serbia, could be the only way to remove the Balkans as a source of Russian–Western tension once and for all.
The Return of the Knights: al-Qaeda and the Fruits of Middle East Disorder
Bruce Riedel
Almost six years after 11 September, al-Qaeda has spread throughout the Greater Middle East, with franchises from Indonesia to the Maghreb. Thanks to the war in Iraq it survived the West’s counterattack in Afghanistan. It has a secure sanctuary in Pakistan and it is building avenues of approach to attack Europe and America using the Muslim diaspora community in Western Europe. In Iraq it is the dynamic edge of the Sunni insurgency, albeit only a small minority within the movement, and its goal now is to break the Iraqi state apart and create a jihadist state in the heart of the Arab world. Al-Qaeda wants to play a larger role in the Palestinian conflict but it has had a conflicted relationship with Hamas: very critical of Hamas’s participation in electoral politics but supportive of the Hamas coup in Gaza. Understanding al-Qaeda’s ideology and operations are the key to defeating it.
US Counter-terrorism Options: A Taxonomy
Daniel Byman
The George W. Bush administration has tried to fight the ‘war on terror’ with efforts ranging from aggressive intelligence and military campaigns to programmes to win over the youth of the Arab world. These efforts, however, are not part of an over-arching strategic framework: they are at best not integrated and at worst working against one another. This garbage-pail approach to counter-terrorism reflects a broader confusion on how to defeat al-Qaeda and its allies. Most elements of counter-terrorism strategy address one of two different goals: disrupting the group itself, and its operations; or changing the overall environment to defuse the group’s anger or make it harder to raise money or attract recruits. Too many options are presented as cost free or as co-existing harmoniously with other strategies, when in fact they are risky and loaded with trade-offs. Making the best strategic choice depends on the ultimate definition of victory. The most effective approach recognises that allies are usually the key to successful counter-terrorism efforts. With allied help, terrorists can be contained and, in the long term, their many divisions will rise to the fore.
