On Israel as an Apartheid State: an Interview with Richard Falk

19 Feb

[Prefatory Note: An interview David Falcone originally published in COUNTERPUNCH prompted by the Amnesty Report but extending beyond it.]

FEBRUARY 11, 2022

On Israel as an Apartheid State: an Interview with Richard Falk

BY DANIEL FALCONE

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Photograph Source: Chris Yunker – CC BY 2.0

Daniel Falcone: Could you give the context of the framework that brought us to Amnesty International’s findings regarding Israel and Palestine? What has changed regarding the organization to make this happen?

Richard Falk: I have no insight into the inner workings of Amnesty International, but it seems obvious from the length and detailed coverage in their 278-page report that this undertaking was begun years earlier. There were undoubtedly several elements in the background that prompted AI to undertake an inquiry that was bound to be controversial, and from experience to result in an insulting backlash with likely adverse impacts on funding. It has, perhaps, become a bit awkward for AI to dodge the issue of apartheid any longer given the 2001 reports of the two of the most prominent civil society human rights NGOs, Israel’s B’Tselem and Human Rights Watch, which detailed their reasons for concluding that the allegations of apartheid were well grounded in factual evidence and legal analysis.

I would also add that the UN Social and Economic Council for West Asia (ESCWA) academic report co-authored by Virginia Tilley and myself, released in March 2017 had reached similar conclusions, producing acrimonious reactions by Israel and the United States. This pushback reached a climax in a Security Council session, when the American representative, Nikki Haley arrogantly threatened the UN with a punitive response unless this report was repudiated. The recently elected Sec. General, dutifully ordered the report removed from the ESCWA website, which led the director of ESCWA, Rima Khalaf, to resign rather than carry out, a task left to her more compliant successor. So far as I know our report, although removed from the ESCWA website, was never repudiated.

Daniel Falcone: Yair Lapid called the report “false” and “antisemitic.” Do you suppose he believes this to be the case? It seems to be a talking point that is losing its effectiveness. 

Richard Falk: I have now carefully read the AI Report and have concluded that it maintains the highest professional standards of research and analysis throughout. Of course, any legal argument made in the context of a complex fact situation of this sort is subject to logically plausible divergent interpretations. Lawyers earn their livings by learning how to mount arguments defending their respective clients, and I am sure Israel and its supporter abroad have many qualified jurists who can interpret the evidence along lines consistent with Israeli claims of constitutional democracy with human rights equally protected whether the objecting party is a Jew or Palestinian.

Yet for Yair Lapid and others to attack the AI Report as ‘a despicable lie’ that is full of falsehoods, as well as being the work of anti-Semites is nothing other than a shaming tactic designed to redirect the conversation away from the substance of the apartheid allegations to an inquiry into the dubious motivations of AI. This is in an inflammatory and disgracefully irresponsible way of responding in view of AI’s long, distinguished identity as among the most trusted and professional human rights organizations in the world. It is reminiscent of the manner Israel has chosen to respond to all criticisms over the course of the last decade, especially during the period when Netanyahu was prime minister. A similar diatribe was launched against the International Criminal Court a year ago when it formally authorized an investigation of Israeli criminality in response to well-evidenced allegations of a series of distinct crimes by the Palestinian Authority (PA). Incidentally, the PA did not list ‘apartheid’ among its legal grievances.

Daniel Falcone: Lawrence Davidson just wrote a piece called the “Israeli Pogrom,” citing a Zionist group’s attack on Palestinians. Do you see this type of extreme violence as cause for leading up to the report?

Richard Falk: The Davidson essay is devoted to a critique of Israeli settler violence directed at Palestinian civilians living in the West Bank. It shows significantly the double standards manifested by Israeli indulgence of Palestinian abuse by Israeli settlers, while displaying a contrasting vigilance with respect to protecting Jews from Palestinian violence whether in Occupied Palestine or Israel. This certainly manifests racial discrimination carried out with the complicity of the Israeli State. However, it is not evidence of the ideology or even the existence of an apartheid system of control, which either explicitly or implicitly premises governance on racial inequality as between a dominant and subordinate race and adopts specific policies to ensure the persistence of structures of inequality. In Israel’s case it denies complicity and rejects racism as part of its governance plan.

Whether such Israel’s persistent disregard of the obligations of an Occupying Poweras set forth in the Fourth Geneva Convention played any role in leading AI to investigate the apartheid allegation remains unknowable as the organization has made no such reference. It is more plausible to suppose that the earlier reports on the apartheid claim played a principal role in leading AI to join the chorus although this is also a matter of conjecture.

Daniel Falcone: According to Haaretz, the US seems ready to dismiss the Amnesty International findings, can you comment on the state of the bipartisan consensus?

Richard Falk: I never for a minute expected the U.S. Government, including Congress, to accept an accusation of apartheid directed at Israel, no matter how impeccable the source and how persuasive the evidence and analysis. For one thing, it would break the special relationship causing a serious disruptive backlash domestically as well as gravely weaken the anti-Iran alliance in the Middle East. We should by not be surprised by the primacy of geopolitics when it collides with the requirement of international law and human rights standards, as well supposedly affirmed national values such as here, anti-racism.

For another, Biden like most of his presidential predecessors unabashedly follows unwaveringly a pro-Israel path in relation to grievances of the Palestinian people, although less crudely than Trump. This predisposition led Biden even to accept several of Trump’s more extreme shows of support for Israeli defiance of the UN consensus, including moving the American Embassy to Jerusalem, the normalization agreements with Arab neighbors, and the annexation of the Golan Heights. In effect, Biden has lowered his voice while maintained continuity most of Trump’s policies. The apparent discontinuities in the form of reviving support for a two-state solution or objection to further settlement expansion are gestures at best, widely known to be policy non-starters having a long record of zero behavioral impact. Above all, because the Oslo-type diplomacy has become superseded by Israeli disinterest in negotiating with the Palestinians, as equals with a shared acceptance of the principal goal being the establishment of an independent sovereign Palestine.

As a result, there is a wide gap in perceptions and attitude between the U.S. Government and the human rights civil society consensus on this crucial question of how to evaluate the apartheid charges. As the AI Report clearly argues, the evidence points to apartheid, and this engages international responsibility to take positive steps to suppress and punish the crime. On this basis AI recommends imposing an international arms embargo on Israel and urges the ICC to investigate the question of Israeli criminality and its legal consequences that is raised by the evidence of Israeli apartheid.

Daniel Falcone: Can you comment on how the Palestinian question is evolving in mainstream US circles? It seems that both individuals and institutions have become more robust to deal with the potential consequences of this political engagement. Can the movement maintain its intensity and enter liberal pragmatic spaces at the same time in your estimation?

Richard Falk: Despite notable developments, Israel continues to hold most of the cards as to the approach taken to the Palestinian question in the U.S. Although the bipartisan consensus and the Zionist civil society infrastructure has somewhat frayed due to the excesses of illiberal Trumpism and because of the increasing normalization of the apartheid critique, Israel still has the upper hand with respect to Congress, White House, and Beltway think tanks.

At the same time, the symbolic victories achieved by the Palestinians over the course of the last two years are significant from a Legitimacy War perspective. Admittedly, to an uncertain extent these developments have been offset by the successes of Trump’s normalization diplomacy (‘The Abraham Accords’), especially as endorsed and extended during the first year of the Biden presidency. It seems premature to reinterpret the symbolic balance between Israel and Palestine as it plays out in the U.S., The picture should become clearer during the next two years.

Because the apartheid line of critique indicts Israel for systemic criminality, which can only be overcome by renouncing the fundamental Zionist claim to secure a fully sovereign Jewish state, it will likely run into a stone wall of resistance in the United States, including in liberal Zionist circles. This resistance may take the form, as it has in NYT/CNNresponse to AI Report, which has been to maintain a stony silence. It is my impression that, not only in the U.S. but throughout the West, liberal opinion with respect to Palestinian grievances is evasive, if not entirely silent. Neither the alternative of implementing the AI recommendations nor the alternative of endorsing the official Israel pushback by way of attacking the reports as full of falsehoods and the work of anti-Semites is acceptable. Under these conditions silence and evasion seem like preferred options.

Yet such a course of action amounts to a validation of critiques of double standards. To weep about excess police force in responding to Hong Kong protest demonstrations or the treatment of the Uyghurs but avert eyes when it comes to the reality of prolonged Palestinian suffering and suppression of basic rights may be a contradiction is morally unacceptable, especially given the history of Western involvement in the political evolution of the Israeli state. At some point, the contradiction may become too blatant to accept even if it currently seems to remain an attractive pragmatic solution in relation to the apartheid critique.

Daniel Falcone: Is there any possibility that mainstream groups labeling the situation as “Apartheid” are making an oversimplification? Aren’t some parts of the region “better” than conditions were in South Africa, and some “worse,” as Chomsky points out. Also, is there a fear that the Palestinian cause is being reduced to a type of US middle class classical rights movements discourse, largely focused on symbolic political rights without constructing a path to wholesale economic policy and transformative justice?

Richard Falk: You raise an important set of overlooked issues. In retrospect, many progressives in South Africa feel that it was a severe mistake to settle for political rights and forego any challenge to white economic and social privilege. And it is also true that when Nelson Mandela was hailed for achieving the breakthrough agreement bringing the apartheid regime to an end, little attention was given to the widespread poverty of the black majority or the gross inequalities in health care, housing, educational opportunity that have hardly changed in the more than 30 years sincepolitical apartheid was dismantled.

At the same time, if Mandela had pressed demands for a more comprehensive approach to societal injustice no agreement at all would have been forthcoming. I am reminded of Hannah Arendt’s comparison between the American Revolution and the French and Russian Revolutions. She argues that the American Revolution was a humanitarian and political success because it didn’t seek to challenge economic and social structures, whereas the French and Russian Revolutions fell a bloody victim to their own laudable ambitions. Arguably the popular movement in Egypt that overthrew an autocratic leader settled for too little, making itself vulnerable to counterrevolutionary reversal, which occurred two years later. I think we are left with an insoluble problem that must be addressed in terms of the particularities of the situation.

Applying these considerations to the Palestinian situation, I would argue that it is preferable to accept limited goals in a manner like what ended apartheid in South Africa. This is ambition enough given the Palestinian circumstances and might make apartheid-ending diplomacy eventually negotiable. As in post-apartheid South Africa, I believe it best to leave the admittedly important economic and social agenda to post-apartheid Israel/Palestine, although realizing that these formidable justice issues remain unresolved.

Daniel Falcone is an activist, journalist, and PhD student in the World History program at St. John’s University in Jamaica, NY as well as a member of the Democratic Socialists of America. He teaches humanities at the United Nations International School and resides in Queens.

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Is The Amnesty International Report an Israeli ‘Sharpeville Moment?’

10 Feb

[Prefatory Note: The following interview contains some probing questions put to me by C. J. Polychroniou. The interview was published in Truthout  on February 9th, following the release on February 1st, of the explosive Amnesty International Report finding Israel to be guilty of committing the continuing crime of apartheid. How much longer can governments, the UN, and liberal Zionist close their eye in face of the mounting consensus in the international human community on the question of Israeli apartheid?]

Is The Amnesty International Report an Israeli ‘Sharpeville Moment?’

Q1. Amnesty International’s new report exposes Israeli abuses against Palestinians. The report shows that Israel imposes a form of domination and oppression against Palestinians under its control that qualifies as a system of apartheid under international law. In this context, it affirms the 2017 United Nations report that you had helped produce and for which you were personally attacked by Nikki Haley at the Security Council. Yet, the report is full of lies, according to Israel, and some of its strongest allies (US, UK, and Germany) reject the description of Israel as an apartheid state. Let’s start with the most basic question of all: Is there anything in the report that is not true? If not, why has it caused such a bipartisanship fury in the US?

I think it is important to assess the AI report in the wider context of the perception of Israeli apartheid over the course of the last five years since the issuance of ESCWA Report in 2017 [Richard Falk & Virginia Tilley, “Report on Israeli Practices Towards the Palestinian People and the Question of Apartheid,” UN ESCWA Report, March 15, 2017]. In 2001 two comprehensive reports by widely respected human rights organizations added weight to the apartheid allegations. The first one by the most established and internationally trusted Israeli NGO devoted to the protection of human rights, B’Tselem. It has developed an outstanding reputation for professionalism over the years. [“A Regime of Jewish Supremacy from the Jordan River to the Mediterranean Sea: This is Apartheid,” B’Tselem, Jan. 12, 2021.] The second report was issued by Human Rights Watch, the flagship human rights civil society organization in the United States with offices around the world. [“A Threshold Crossed: Israeli Authorities and the Crimes of Apartheid and Persecution,” Human Rights Watch, April 27, 2001, 312 pp.] The AI Report should be seen as the culmination of a trend validating allegations of Israeli apartheid, at least within international civil society. [“Israel’s Apartheid Against the Palestinians: Cruel System of Domination and Crime Against Humanity, Amnesty International, Feb. 1, 278 pp.]

To dismiss and denigrate these reports adhering to the highest human right research standards, as Israeli and American leaders and spokespersons have attempted to do, calling the AI Report full of ‘lies’ and the work of ‘anti-Semites’ is a shameless slander. Such inflammatory language is designed to shift the conversation from the message to the messenger. This interpretation of the tactics of those rejecting the AI Report is strengthened by the absence of any serious effort to refute the substantive charges. So far there has been a bipartisan angry rejection of the AI Report in Congress, and virtual silence in the mainstream TV and print media. How different would be the U.S. reaction to an Amnesty Report summarizing the breakup of Hong Kong demonstrations or damning the Chinese denial of human rights to the Uyghur minority. The inevitable  conclusion reached is that international law and human rights function for the U.S. Government as geopolitical tools rather than normative principles. 

Another element of context seems highly relevant. This pushback against the AI should be understood in light of a recent Israeli campaign to demonize the protection of human rights in Israel and Occupied Palestinian Territories. The most dramatic move of this character was the Executive Order issued on October 19, 2021 by the Defense Minister, Benny Gantz, declaring six of the most respected civil society organizations in the West Bank to be ‘terrorist organizations’ on the basis of secret and undisclosed evidence deemed ‘legally dubious’ even in liberal Israeli media venues such a Haaretz. A large sector of public opinion in North America and Europe, including in liberal Zionist circles, was shocked by Gantz’s crude move, which was followed up by Major General Yehuda Fuchs, the military commander in the West Bank by a milder declaration that five of the six organization listed by Gantz were ‘unlawful associations’ under his authority to issue Emergency Regulations. (one organization exempted from the list because it had previously been earlier so designated). At least, General Fuchs refrained from repeating the more severe condemnation of Gantz, but the intention was the same, to inhibit donors and to neutralize the efforts of civil society to cope with the hardships of prolonged Israeli occupation of the West Bank and attendant violations of international humanitarian law.

A final issue of context results from the Israel’s Knesset in the form of the 2018 Basic Law proclaiming Israel as the Nation-State of the Jewish people, who alone have the right of self-determination within Israel’s still unspecified borders, although the settler communities on the West Bank were clearly intended to be incorporated as part of Israel. The importance here is the extraordinary claim of Jewish exclusivity in what had been for centuries the homeland of a majority Palestinian population. When the colonialist Balfour Declaration was declared in 1917 the Jewish minority in Palestine was less than 10% of the total population of Palestine despite feverish efforts of twenty years of the Zionist Movement to settle Palestine with as many Jews as possible.

These issues of context are of help when assessing both the AI Report and the criticisms directed at it. Responding directly to your inquiry about whether there is reason to accord credibility to the Israeli response. In long reports of this nature there are sure to be contradictory ways of interpreting the evidence. The legal profession depends upon the plausibility of such diverse readings of the evidence. Yet. having collaboratively written one report and carefully read the others, I can assure you that there is no ‘lie’ or even irresponsible allegation in any of the four reports. Because of the sensitivity surrounding accusations of apartheid directed at Israel as well as the realistic apprehension that Israel and its most ardent supporters habitually resort to dirty tactics to discredit critics, the AI authors and researchers leaned over backwards to avoid making suspect allegation. They were scrupulous throughout in compiling and interpreting the evidence. I believe any objective reading of the reports would agree that the highest standards of competence and canons of responsible investigation were upheld. Unlike the apartheid leaders of South Africa, Israel’s leaders deny the charges of apartheid altogether while defending their belief in the appropriateness of the practices and policies used to uphold security given the nature of Israel as a state of the Jewish people. Yet rather than substantively defending reliance on apartheid Israeli apologists are irresponsibly attacking the integrity of the report and the supposedly despicable motivations of its authors and sponsoring organization..  

You also understandably also ask ‘why the fury?’ if the reports themselves are not mendacious, but serious objective assessments of allegations, then why would Israel not respond in kind with contrary interpretations of the evidence or by a show of evidence that the Israeli system of controlling Palestinians is consistent with a reasonable construction of Israeli security imperatives. After all, Israel has plenty of skilled jurists who always seem ready to go along with the prevailing Israeli policies based on Jewish supremacy. For instance, the Israeli Supreme Court upheld the legality of 2018 Basic Law, and its chief judge even had the temerity to assert that the law didn’t alter the democratic character of the Israeli state.

 I suppose that at some point an attempt will be made to put forward an argument in defense of Israel’s racial policies, although differing in nature from South Africa’ overt legal, moral, and political defense of apartheid. I believe Israel will never admit to the apartheid allegations but would defend its laws, policies, and practices as reasonable given security threats facing the country. This approach by way of legalism would be quite a stretch given the essentially uncontested evidence that Israel’s policies and practices do satisfy the accepted international definition of apartheid relied upon in international law circles, which rests on systemic racial domination together with the demonstration of a specific intent to impose and maintain system by all necessary means.

I would contend that from time of the 1948 War during which more than 700,000 were uprooted from their homeland mostly becoming refugees in neighboring Arab countries generations ago Israel was administering race relations according to an apartheid ethos. The destruction of several hundred Palestinian villages was an incriminating complement to the wartime coercive departure of Palestinians. Israeli intentions became even clearer by an official blanket denial to Palestinian refugees of thei4 international law right of return. These features accompanying the establishment of Israel lends credence to the view apartheid was integral to Israel’s state-building project from its origins until the present day.

Israel is understandably distressed by this growing civil society consensus that its treatment of the Palestinians amounts to apartheid. To begin with, apartheid is listed as one of the crimes against humanity in Article 7 of the Rome Statute governing the operations of the International Criminal Court. As the AI Report contends, if apartheid exists then there is present an international responsibility to take steps to bring it to an end. Although Israel has refused to govern its behavior by international law standards in relation of other issues, it nevertheless deeply resents being so charged. It is especially reactive to critics and organizations that have positive and generally apolitical reputations, which includes AI, HRW, and B’Tselem.

There is still the puzzle posed by Israel’s long record of defying international law without suffering adverse consequences, a position made possible by the unconditional geopolitical support provided by the United States, which is also often reinforced by its European allies. It is notable that despite the civil society consensus, few governments other that post-apartheid South Africa have been prepared to go along with the apartheid allegation in inter-governmental contexts, presumably fearing a backlash. This reluctance of governments and international institutions to implement the conclusions and recommendations of AI exposes the political weakness of  a normative consensus opposed by strong geopolitical forces.

Yet it is admittedly not foolish for Israeli officials and think tank policy experts to be worried. Even though Israel will not waver in its rejection of the apartheid allegation at this time or alter its policies of domination and victimization, it has suffered a serious setback. Symbolic politics have an underappreciated relevance to the long-term resolution of internal and international conflicts ever since 1945. This relevance runs counter to the lingering, anachronistic belief of political realists that the flow of world history reflects relative military capabilities. It should be illuminating to realize that the anti-colonial wars were eventually won by the nationalist side that prevailed on the symbolic battlefields of Legitimacy Wars rather than by prevailing by its military prowess in the combat zones. The U.S. experiences in Vietnam, Iraq, and Afghanistan illuminate various facets of this shift in the post-World War II balances of power that derive from the resolute pursuit of legitimate grievances, and the weakening of capabilities that arise from losing the Legitimacy War.

Beyond this, Israel has learned from the South African experience that anti-racism and anti-colonialism have strong mobilizing appeals in contemporary world society that can give rise to powerful global solidarity campaigns that encourages national resistance, and eventually influences the calculations of political leaders. Such concerns help explain Israel’s excessively punitive tactics adopted in reaction to the nonviolent BDS international campaign. South Africa criminalized internal forms of opposition to apartheid, but it never tried to pressure other government to take similar action against supporters of BDS, including in the U.S.       

Q2.  Let’s talk about the concept of apartheid. There is clearly severe discrimination inside Israel against Palestinians, but one could argue that there are many analogues elsewhere, including in the US. What are the similarities between apartheid South Africa and contemporary Israel in terms of the latter’s treatment of Palestinians living inside Israel?

The criminal internationalization of the South African regime of racial supremacy gradually occurred during the period after World War II. This process featured an increasing role of the United Nations in a global campaign of delegitimation of South Africa’s form of racism. The campaign initially concentrated on the former German colony that became under the control of Pretoria after World War I, becoming known as South West Africa and only years later challenging apartheid orientation of the Afrikaner leadership in South Africa itself. This latter development was the most direct encroachment on territorial sovereignty of a UN member in the early experience of the Organization. The campaign succeeded in having apartheid formally declared to be an international crime, initially in the 1973 International Convention on the Suppression and Punishment of Apartheid, and more recently enumerated in Article 7 of the Rome Statute governing the operations of the International Criminal Court.

It is important to understand that although the origins of apartheid as an international crime are entirely bound up with the experience of South Africa its internationalization from the outset was intended to reach any system of overt domination and victimization based on race, without any requirement that the racist regime so accused resemble the racist regime that governed South Africa until the mid-1990s.

The most widely accepted definition of apartheid is contained in Article 2 of the 1973 International Convention on the Suppression and Punishment of Apartheid. Racism, understood as discrimination based on ideas of ethnic superiority and inferiority, does not necessarily imply apartheid. For instance, the Nazi genocidal approach was unconcerned with using the state and its administrative apparatus to keep the races apart as its genocidal intention centered on erasing or exterminating inferior races, especially Jews and Roma.   Separation and racial discriminatory policies and practices are crucial components of apartheid forms of control, but by themsleves, lacks the element of specific intent as evidenced and sustained by cruel acts a system of domination with the purpose of keeping the subjugated race under the explicit control of the dominant race. In Israel and Occupied Palestine this has meant domination by Jews as implemented by an array of administrative decrees and nationality laws restricting immigration of non-Jews, and denying Palestinian refugees right of return, which is an international legal entitlement.

Even the sort of systemic racism that exists in the United States is embedded in the socio-economic-culture of the society rather than existing as an expression of the overt ideology and practices of the state. To be sure sub-national political entities are complicit to varying degrees in carrying out racist policies, which is often exhibited by allowing racist civil society sentiments to shape the behavior of public institutions. The United States with impacts from its notorious past that included the implemention of a genocidal approach to Native American indigenous communities and a labor system in agriculture based on generations of slavery. This dubious legacy is illustrated by the continuing disposition in the American South of trial juries to convict whites accused of murdering blacks, while rushing to guilty verdicts however scant the evidence if the case involves the prosecution of a black defendant accused of murdering a white woman. Also, double standards in policing expose the deep roots of anti-black racism in the U.S. as giving rise to the Black Lives Matter movement and the complex, contradictory societal reactions to the police homicide of George Floyd in May of 2020 in the Northern city of Minneapolis.

The similarities between Israeli and South African apartheid relate to the historical and ideological narratives of both countries in which European settlers displaced, subjugated, and exploited the resources of the indigenous population, and claimed rights of ethnic supremacy based on race. In both South Africa and Israel, native claims to homeland were overridden, and the settlers took over control of all aspects of governance with the intention of keeping the natives permanently under strict control, using law and lawmaking as a principal tool of control and exploitation by the state and its favored settler ethnicity.

The dissimilarities between Israel and South Africa derive from fundamental demographic, economic, and ideological considerations. The fact that the white minority was never more than 25% of the South African population meant that inclusive democracy could not be entertained as a legitimating option, while for Israel political democracy was a fundamental aspiration of the Zionist Project of establishing and legitimating a Jewish homeland in Palestine. This undertaking relied on biblical and historical connections to the land of Palestine (eretz Israel) that went back for hundreds of years. Israel’s first and most illustrious president, David Ben Gurion, put aside his secularized Judaism, famously declaring ‘the Bible shall be our weapon,’ by which he presumably meant that Zionism would mobilize support from Jews and others by insisting that Jews had a sacred right to return to the biblically promised land.

A further fundamental dissimilarity related to the economic role of blacks in South Africa and Palestinians in Israel. South African wealth was derived mainly from extractive industries involving mining, which depended on a large source of cheap labor. In contrast, Palestinian cheap labor undercut a well-organized labor movement at the core of the Zionist movement, and was considered inessential to the growth and development of Israel. The Israeli economy came increasingly to emphasize high technologies, including armaments, in part to avoid any future dependence on Palestinian labor.

In this regard, many on the Israeli right even now favor ethnic cleansing of Palestinians to achieve racial purity in Israel and to complete the work of de facto annexation of the West Bank. These concerns reference the so-called ‘demographic bomb’ that is seen as posing a future threat to the presently solid Jewish majority in Israel, and hence to political control. This threat arises partly from the higher Palestinian fertility rate, which if Israeli annexation plans become fully realized would lead to a 50:50 division of the combined population of fourteen million living in Israel and Occupied Palestine, which would mean a circumstance of demographic equality, which would weaken the case for considering Israel to be a Jewish state, and for that reason alone is regarded by most Israelis as intolerable, portending worse to come.

Q3. I raised the previous question about the relevance of the comparison between apartheid South Africa and contemporary Israel because when it comes to the occupied territories, the situation is far worse than apartheid. As Noam Chomsky has pointed out to me in some personal exchange, which I believe to be correct, “South Africa needed  its Black population, and catered to them at least to a limited extent. Israel had no need of the Palestinians in the occupied territories and is making life unlivable for them.” Can you comment on this as I think it really raises questions about the broad use of the term “apartheid” when it comes to describing the Israeli treatment of Palestinians in the occupied territories.

In my understanding, Chomsky’s essential insight is correct and significant, but I do not agree that South Africa catered to the black population more than Israel do to the Palestinian. Because Israel rests its claims on being ‘democratic’ it caters to the Palestinian minority of 20% in a variety of ways to sustain its international image of political legitimacy. The South Africans drew strict color lines that deprived blacks of any civil or political rights, while Palestinians in Israel proper can vote and even form their own political parties and serve in the government.

The greater harshness of Israeli apartheid arises from the Israeli ambition to control a relatively limited territory as compared to the South African ability to rely on African townships and bantustans for purposes of segregation, security, and control in a rather sparsely populated country. In effect, the proximity and demographic vitality of the Palestinians, ‘the dangerous neighborhood’ of hostile Arab countries, the historical legacies of the Holocaust and anti-Semitism, and the character of Palestinian armed resistance led Israel to be more engaged in violent repressive activities than were the South Africans, especially in Gaza. Also, Israeli concerns with demographic implications of a diminished Jewish majority led both to its adoption of a politics of fragmentation involving the dispersal of Palestinians beyond Israel’s borders and to the exclusion of Palestinians seeking fulfillment of their right of return. South Africa, as devising apartheid from the perspective of a racial minority, never had to cope with these specific to Israel concerns.

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The Problematics of Middle Eastern Diplomacy: The Case of Iran

2 Feb

[Prefatory Note: this is a modified, updated version of an article published in CounterPunch, January 30-31, 2022.][*]

The Problematics of Middle Eastern Diplomacy: The Case of Iran  

When a nuclear agreement with Iran was reached by U.S.- led multilateral diplomacy in 2015, despite vigorous opposition from Israel, it was widely viewed as the greatest foreign policy achievement of the Obama presidency, and for good reason. It also showcased the potentialities of great power cooperation when national interests sufficiently converge in a manner that supports the pursuit of the regional and global public good. In those days before Washington’s strategists and foreign policy wonks rediscovered the joys of geopolitical confrontation, not only the major NATO powers (UK, France, and Germany), but more intriguingly, China and Russia, joined as signatories to what became known at the time as the 5 +1 Iran Nuclear Agreement or simply, JCPOA (Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action).

That Iran was willing to curtail its nuclear program without demanding compensating moves by Israel remainss a surprise. Decades earlier Israel had been permitted, indeed helped, to acquire secretly the means to establish and develop a nuclear weapons capability without any adverse international reaction, becoming in 1967 or so the first state in the Middle East to possess nuclear weapons, although discreetly, to avoid embarrassment for the geopolitical promoters of a anti-proliferation approach to the risks posed by nuclear weapons. It would have seemed reasonable for Iran to have adopted a posture of willingness to commit itself to a nuclear-free Middle East, which would have been a more dramatic move toward denuclearizing the Middle East than was JCPOA. Why did Iran refrain in 2015 and now again, even with a hardline leadership in control of its government? Perhaps, because the Iranian leadership understood there was no prospect of sanctions relief if it depended on Israel’s willingness to give up its status as a nuclear weapons state. In this sense, the 2015 agreement can be interpreted either as a diplomatic triumph by the P-5 + 1 in so limiting the negotiating agenda, and especially the U.S., or as an indication that Iran was prepared to close its eyes to the unreasonableness of demanding restrictions on its nuclear program while ignoring the far greater breach of the nonproliferation ethos by Israel over a period of many years. Iran apparent willingness to accept such a bargain can only be explained by the high priority given to ending the societal devastation being wrought by the sanctions. It appears that the 2021-2022 Vienna talks among the five adherents to JCPOA (plus indirect talks with the U.S.) have similarly not been faced with demands to address Israel’s nuclearism, quite possibly for similar reasons.  

Why did this exhibition of constructive diplomacy happen in a region of the world, entailing overlooking Israel’s arsenal of nuclear weapons coupled with its belligerent posture so as to reduce tensions with regard to Iran, which had long been a major site of struggle, strife, and periodic warfare ever since 1979? I presume the main motivation was war avoidance in the Middle East and the belief that JCPOA contributed to the overall goals of nonproliferation and thus avoided a regional arms race by major Arab states to acquire nuclear weapons in the event that Iran crossed the nuclear threshold.

A secondary consideration prompted by the lingering failures of the Iraq ‘democracy promotion’ regime changing intervention of 2003 was to reduce the level of American military and political engagementsd in the Middle East. The 2015 initiative to downgrade Iran as a confrontational priority was seen as facilitating Obama’s ill-advised ‘pivot to Asia.’
Proclaiming this pivot amounted to geopolitical coded message for ‘taking on China in the South China Sea.’ How different might the mood and politics have been had Obama instead opted for a ‘pivot to America!’ And even now it may not be too late for a turn away from global militarism, although Biden, frustrated in achieving his campaign promises by Republicans on the home front, now seems hell-bent on pivoting toward Russia, Iran, and China, all at once. Biden seems to be yearning for the good old days of the crisis-fraught geopolitics of the Cold War with the most opportune zones of confrontation currently being the Ukraine, Iran, and Taiwan.

A side benefit of the 2015 agreement, not often noted, was to give moderates in Iran a major victory in the form of achieving sanctions relief, unfrozen bank accounts, and a path to normalcy in their external relations. The agreement was vigorously opposed at the time by Israel and its supporters, as well as hawkish elements in the U.S. political class. Their main contentions were that Iran would be free from enrichment and centrifuge limits by 2030 and that the agreement did not include an enforceable Iranian pledge to end support for anti-Israeli, anti-Saudi, and anti-American political actors in regional conflict situations as well as to place restraints on its missile program. Iran has adamantly insisted on separating diplomacy concerning its nuclear program from its political involvements in regional politics and its national security posture. In effect, although willing to overlook Israeli nuclearism, Iran has been steadfastly unwilling to alter its sovereign independence with respect to foreign policy or

In relation to the non-nuclear elements of its national security posture.  

When Trump came along in 2017, the unraveling of JCPOA was a foregone conclusion, guided as much or more by his vindictive resolve to erase Obama’s legacy in ways designed to degrade and denigrate the achievements of his predecessor, while gaining praise from Israel, many members of the U.S. Congress, and militarists in and out of government. Trump somewhat absurdly denounced the agreement as one-sided in Iran’s favor, a betrayal of Israel’s security interests, and thus calling for replacement by a more stringent arrangement, or according to his transactional mindset, ‘a better deal.’ In May of 2018 Trump withdrew the U.S. from the agreement, followed that June by the reimposition of sanctions, which were later further intensified inflicting great damage on the Iranian economy and civilian population. These moves were all part of a comprehensive approach to Iran that came to be known as ‘maximum pressure.’ These escalating steps toward confrontation were hailed by Israel’s leaders. In contrast, the repudiation of JCPOA was not appreciated by the five other signatories, and deeply destabilizing for the region as well as striking a devastating blow to the reformist government in Tehran led by President Hassan Rouhani, having the effect of opening the gates for the hardline victory of Ebrahim Raisi in the 2021 elections. It also led to retaliatory action by Iran, especially attacks on oil tankers in the Gulf of Oman.

In Tehran this return to the tense pre-2015 days was regarded as confirmation that the West, and especially the U.S., could not be trusted to keep its word and was regarded as evidence that Washington remained determined to bring the Iranian government to its knees in pursuit of its political agenda. Trump had also authorized the assassination of General Qasim Soleimani in early 2020, the most popular of Iranian leaders and seen as a future president of the country. In such an atmosphere Israel felt emboldened enough to assassinate Iran’s leading nuclear scientists and to engage in unlawful sabotage attacks on its nuclear facilities without adverse effects.

As might have been expected, Iran although it gave the remaining JCPOA signatories a year to overcome the U.S. withdrawal, eventually responded by gradually increasing the enrichment of uranium fuel that were somewhat closer to weapons grade levels, reportedly reaching 60% as well as installing higher quality centrifuges. Despite these steps, Iran reiterated its intention not to develop nuclear weapons on numerous occasions, and Western intelligence services confirmed that there was no evidence that Iran was intent on becoming a nuclear weapons state in the near future. Israel and its supporters issued alarmist statements suggesting that Iran was only weeks away from have the bomb, and was determined to become a nuclear weapons state.

When Trump was defeated and Biden elected in 2020, it was naively assumed to be just a matter of time until the 2015 Agreement was restored, and again made operational. After all, Biden had pledged to do so throughout his campaign to become president. It turned out to be far from simple in practice, partly because there was plenty of pushback from Israel and Republicans, and a lack of enthusiasm on the part of many Democrats. In the meantime, the leadership in Iran shifted, with a conservative cleric, Ebrahim Raisi easily elected to replace Rouhani in early 2021. It is relevant to observe that Raisi was a pre-Trump advocate of skepticism about the wisdom of trying to reach a diplomatic accommodation with the West. Despite this background, after being elected Raisi has seemed open to restoring JCPOA, yet entertaining this option in an understandable spirit of caution, suspicion, and firmness. Despite pressure from Washington, Iran has refused so far to engage in direct talks, now in their eighth round, with the U.S. in Vienna. Iranian officials have been telling the media that Iran is awaiting reliable signs from the U.S. that it is prepared to remove all sanctions without conditions accompanied by guaranties that it will not again withdraw from whatever arrangement is agreed upon. Once such a willingness is signaled, if it is, Iran will agree to direct talks. Until then, it will discuss the issues directly only with governments of the remaining five signatories, that is, 5+1 minus the U.S., allowing the co-signatories to serve as intermediaries in what amount to pre-negotiations with Washington the purpose of which seems to be to allow Tehran ascertain whether negotiations of the U.S. return to the 2015 framework will be fruitful. Iran seems determined not seem so weak as to accept whatever arrangement the U.S. insists upon, or to be in a position of being portrayed as a deal-breaker when it refuses the conditions set by the American negotiators.  

Beyond the obstacles associated with satisfying Israel’s alleged security concerns and a determination not to get mired in controversial foreign policy initiatives, Biden sought in the early months of his presidency to focus on domestic issues, especially the social and economic fallout from the pandemic. This meant an avoidance of even the semblance of a break with Israel, which helps explain why the White House made a series of unusual high-profile gestures to reassure Israel that the U.S. would not act unilaterally in negotiating the renewal of its participation in the 2015 agreement, but would coordinate with Israel its negotiating efforts to restore JCPOA. The only way for Biden to find such a level of approval by Israel for a restored nuclear agreement with Iran is if the new arrangements appeared to strengthen the constraints of the 2015 text by removing sunset clauses terminating vital features of the agreement, and through inclusion of more stringent monitoring and verifying procedures to assess compliance with permanent restrictions on enrichment, testing, stockpiling, and centrifuges. The U.S. has also signaled that the pace of sanctions relief would be quickened if Iran additionally pledged to roll back its political engagements hostile to the interests of the Gulf monarchies, Israel, and the U.S.. These engagements by Iran are supposedly currently causing trouble for Western interests in Syria, Iraq, Yemen, Egypt, Lebanon, and Gaza.

Matters of Context

Most important is the acknowledgement and relevance of the Trump withdrawal from the 2015 agreement because he (following Israel’s encouragement) thought it a bad deal. Because Iran reacted, at first cautiously, hoping for some compensatory actions from the European countries, which was never forthcoming. It seems obvious that Iran wanted the agreement to survive the U.S. withdrawal, but not at the cost of enduring the renewal of sanctions. With the present effort to restore JCPOA the U.S. acts as if it doesn’t even owe Iran an apology to Iran but seeks to condition its renewal of participation on the acceptance by Iran of a new more restrictive agreement, policy goals partly dictated by domestic circumstances. Anything less, will be openly attacked by Trumpists and by Israel, at least by the Netanyahu-led Likud opposition party.

The peculiarities of American politics should have been put aside in the Vienna diplomacy, and not heightened expectations about what it was reasonable to demand from Iran. If this was politically untenable, then Biden should have been willing to confess that his campaign pledge to restore American participation in the JCPOA was ill-considered. After all, from Iran standpoint it would have been reasonable to expect not only an apology and some compensation for the damage done to Iranian society by the post-2018 Trump sanctions. Instead Washington acts as if it is doing Iran a favor by rejoining and it is Iran that should be willing to accept more U.S. participation. 

It is important to appreciate the broader context of both the 2015 agreement and this attempt to renew compliance by both the U.S. and Iran with or without an alteration of its terms. To begin with, as mentioned, the 5 +1 group should recognize that Iran’s willingness to curtail its nuclear program without reference to Israel’s nuclear weapons, constituted a major concession without which negotiations would have been fruitless from their outset. It should also be appreciated that a genuine concern with nonproliferation, regional stability, and the equality of states would have made it reasonable for Iran to insist on prior Israeli denuclearization or parallel negotiations of a Middle East Nuclear Free Zone. What is more, such an inclusive approach to regional denuclearization would have served the regional and global public good. At the same time, for Iran to condition negotiations curtailing its own nuclear program by linkage to Israel’s nuclear weapons arsenal would preclude any diplomatic attempt to end Iran’s suffering from sanctions. It seems virtually certain that Israel would refuse all efforts to call into question its national security posture, including its right to possess and develop nuclear weaponry, and almost as certain that the U.S. and Europe would not exert pressure on Israel to link its relationship to the weaponry with efforts to ensure that Iran’s nuclear program never crossed the nuclear threshold.

Related to this, is the failure of Iran in its public discourse to condition its willingness to accept international controls be tied to an acceptance by Israel and the U.S. of a commitment to refrain from destabilization efforts to undermine the authority of the Iranian government or to damage its nuclear facilities by covert operations. In other words, Iran has not conditioned its participation in the 2015 agreement or its renewal on respect for its sovereign rights as prescribed under international law. This again is a meaningful indication of the importance Iran attaches to sanctions relief and overall normalization.

During this period of diplomatic uncertainty, Iran’s diplomacy has not been passive. The January drone attacks on Abu Dhabi by Houthi rebel forces in Yemen are assumed in the West to be undertaken with the approval of Tehran, and may be thought of as a setoff to Israel’s periodic attacks and threats directed at Iran, as well as a neutralizing response to the anti-Iranian moves of the Gulf monarchies. Whether the political allies of Iran in the region can be considered ‘Iran proxies,’ as contended in the Western media, is somewhat fanciful.

From the Western perspective, Iranian efforts to disregard the constraints of JCPOA seem to suggest an Iranian ambition to be at least a threshold nuclear weapons state, that is, capable of acquiring nuclear weapons in a matter of weeks. It remains ambiguous as to whether Iran is seeking leverage in the bargaining process currently underway or indeed had become disillusioned with accepting restraints in exchange for shaky promises of sanctions relief in light of Trump’s 2018 withdrawal, and the failure of the other parties to the agreement to step in to neutralize the imposition of harsh sanctions. In light of this history, it seems reasonable for Iran to demand a commitment against withdrawal or the reimposition of sanctions, although it may

not be implementable within the constitutional frameworks of the 5 + 1 states. For example, if Trump is reelected in 2024, it seems a near certainty that he would repeat his moves of 2018 without meaningful internal legal or political obstruction, especially given the conservative majority in the U.S. Supreme Court. If the restored agreement took the form of an international treaty, its legal durability might be enhanced, but such an instrument would require submission to the ratification procedures of the participating countries. Such a requirement would undoubtedly doom the agreement as the Republicans in the U.S. Congress, probably with help from some Democrats, would block ratification, which in any event would have to gain a 2/3rds majority in the Senate.

The broader context should not be overlooked. Imposing sanctions on Iran in relation to its nuclear program is unlawful as even the nonproliferation treaty does not impose such restrictions, making the sanction an unlawful exercise of force. Beyond this, foregoing nuclear weapons is from the perspective of international law a voluntary matter. The NPT gives parties to the treaty a right of withdrawal on the basis of supreme national security interests to be explained by an official explanation. Israel has resisted pressures to join the NPT, which would remove its ability to hide behind a refusal to admit or deny the possession of nuclear weapons.

Geopolitical Spillovers

If the agreement were to be restored within the JCPOA framework with minimal modifications, and is then implemented, including a show of tacit respect exhibited by Israel and, most importantly, if the promised sanctions relief is forthcoming and expeditiously implemented, the likelihood of a stabilizing impact on regional and global relations would greatly increase. It would also strengthen the political position of Raisi in Iran, claiming that greater diplomatic firmness yields better results.

If the Vienna talks fail, however, then the prospects for a heightening of regional tensions is likely, taking the form of intensifying anti-Iranian confrontational tactics, maintenance of sanctions, and a reactive Iranian pushback by way of asserting its leverage in regional hot spots. The likelihood of Iran’s alignment with Russia and China also becomes probable, already foreshadowed by long-term trade agreements, high-profile diplomatic visits, and recent joint naval training exercises. Again, the Raisi leadership will likely be strengthened by the claim that diplomacy failed, interpreted as showing the unwillingness of Raisi to fall into the kind of trap that occurred when the moderate leadership of Rouhani took the poisoned bait in 2015. The increased availability of reliable geopolitical alternatives that would ease the economic hardships long experienced by the Iranian people would also work to Raisi’s advantage.

Israel’s mood in its comparable post-Netanyahu phase exhibits continuity its stand of belligerent hostility toward Iran consisting of coercive diplomacy and threatened military strikes, combined with a major effort to expand the normalization accords, which was the final Trump gift to Israel, strongly affirmed by the Biden leadership. Israel’s president, Isaac Herzog’s, January visit to the UAE exhibited both the belligerence and the spirit of Israeli post-normalization self-confidence. While visiting the “Sheik Zayed Grand Mosque in Abu Dhabi spoke these alarming words: “There are only two alternatives in this region. One is peace, prosperity, cooperation, joint investments and a beautiful horizon for the people, or alternatively, or alternatively what Iran is doing, which is destabilizing the region and using its proxies to employ terror.” This kind of language boils down to normalization for Israel, confrontation for Iran, the forces of stability versus the forces of chaos and terror, good versus evil.

As if to confirm my worst fears, Israel conducted at the beginning of February a huge air force drill off its coast to simulate what the Times of Israel called ‘a massive attack’ on Iran’s nuclear facilities. These military exercises included dozens of F-15, D-16, and F-35 fighter jets, and featured what was described as the unusual presence of an officer of U.S. Air Forces as an ‘observer’ of such classified military exercises. Among the practice maneuvers tested were mid-air refueling operations, long-range military strikes, and responses to anti-aircraft fire. This provocative event was reinforced by extra Israeli budgeting to fund preparations for a military attack on Iran and a formal statement by the Prime Minister, Naftali Bennett, that regardless of whether an agreement is reached in Vienna, Israel reserves the right to protect its population by the means of its own choosing. The stunning silence of Biden/Blinken in the face of this belligerent independence and military drum beats by Israel should be deeply disturbing for all those wishing for stability, peace, and justice in the Middle East. Silence in such a context amounts to complicity in unlawful threats to engage in aggressive use of force with grave implications for regional peace and security.  

Concluding Observation

It is way past time for the West to get over its distress about the outcome of the Iranian revolution that brought the popular movement headed by Ayatollah Khomeini to power in early 1979. In 2015 the JCPOA seemed a step in that direction, soon to be spoiled by the disruptive Trump behavior. With a new president the U.S. Government was positioned to take the initiative in reinvigorating the JCPOA, acting in ways that that would engender hopes of a new dawn of peaceful relations in the Middle East, an end to the prolonged misery of the Afghan, Iranian, Iraqi, Syrian and Palestinian people. Unfortunately, assuming my analysis is correct, this desirable course of action now seems extremely unlikely. The Biden administration seems disinclined to accept any U.S. responsibility for the breakdown of the 2015 agreement, and unreasonably expects Iran to start from a premise of co-responsibility, or worse, without taking account of the fact that JCPOA worked well until the U.S. withdrew. Israel remains defiant. And as for the Palestinians, who have been wrongly treated as disinterested bystanders, already disappointed by Biden’s decision to go along with several of the most blatantly partisan moves in favor of Israel during the Trump presidency. It is foolish to expect anything more from Biden than a more moderate style of pro-Israeli solidarity, and few course corrections as to the way Trump faciliated unlawful Israeli expansionism. In relation to both Iran, Israel, and Palestine, the essential message sent by the new leadership is continuity when it comes to substance combined with a resumption of the pre-Trump pretension of equi-distance diplomacy when it comes to the search for a sustainable peace. 

[*] Richard Falk is Professsor of International Law Emeritus, Princeton University; Chair of Global Law, Queen MaryUniversity London; author of Public Intellectual: The Life of a Citizen Pilgrim (Clarity Press, 2001).

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Will the Iran Nuclear Agreement be Restored?

26 Jan

[Prefatory Note: An interview with Mojtaba Majidi of the Mehr News Agency (Tehran) on the Vienna Talks that are seeking to restore the Iran Nuclear Agreement of 2015 reached during the Obama presidency. When Trump became president in2017 he denounced the agreement as harmful to Israel and notstrong enough to control Iran’s nuclear ambitions. The U.S. withdrew in 2018, reimposing harsh sanctions, moves criticized at the time by the other five signatory countries (UK, France, Germany, Russia, China). Biden pledged to reinvigorate the agreement by rejoining, but has not wanted to override Israeli concerns nor generate a controversy at home. At present, it is quite uncertain as to whether these hurdles can be overcome.]

Q1: Apparently Iran has taken a constructive stance on the Iranian nuclear issue and has sent a delegation to take part in the new round of negotiation on resuming compliance with the JCPOA. However, the US and Western countries still criticize Iran for not being serious enough in the negotiation. How do you evaluate Iran’s performance in the negotiation?

It is difficult to assess these public statements made by both sides with reference to the Vienna Talks. It appears to be a pre-negotiating communication with media platforms and public opinion, as well as in the US. It seems to be a way of blunting Israel’s criticisms for any negotiations with Iran that might lead to the restoration of the 2015 Nuclear Agreement (JCPOA), the end of sanctions, or improved relations between the two countries. We do not know how motivated the US and Iran are to give ground so as to reach an agreed outcome. The degree of negotiating flexibility and the red lines of both parties will become more obvious as their respective preconditions for agreement are put forward in the negotiations.

Having acknowledged this obscurity, I believe the main burden is on the US to demonstrate its sincerity and credibility. In 2018 US formally and unilaterally withdrew, Trump having repudiated the agreement soon after he was elected in 2016, subsequently reimposing sanctions and authorizing various unlawful covert operations in violation of Iran’s sovereign rights, as well as refusing to criticize Israel’s unlawful threats and uses of force against Iran. In this sense, it is vital that the US demonstrate its good faith, including a willingness to offer some sort of guaranty against a second repudiation of the JCPOA( Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action) that would probably be combined with the reimposition of sanctions should the Republican Party return to power in 2025. To be sure, even a strong guaranty embedded in the restored agreement would be unlikely to be respected by Trump or enforceable. A US commitment to oppose any Israel’s future hostile acts directed at Iran would serve the purposes of the agreement, which aims at enhancing regional stability, but would also be vulnerabilities of American electoral politics.

Q2: Iran insists on the removal of all nuclear-related sanctions. Will the US do so? In fact, do you see any real political will in the US to reach an agreement?

I believe the US does seek stability in the Middle East. The question is whether it is prepared to pay the diplomatic and domestic political price of increased friction with Israel accentuated by the added difficulties with Congressional allies of Israel claiming a weakening of ‘the special relationship’ that the US has long maintained with Israel and the Biden presidency has repeatedly reaffirmed. It is less the absence of political will to reach an agreement, but the need Washington evidently feels to weigh the balance between the benefits of such agreement against the strong pushback in the US led by Trump-oriented Republicans. After the problematic manner of the withdrawal of American forces from Afghanistan, Biden is undoubtedly sensitive to allegations from the American right that he is projecting an image of American weakness, regional disengagement, and global decline.

Q3: Iran has repeatedly stressed that the core purpose of this round of negotiation is to lift sanctions against Iran and normalize Iran’s economic and trade activities. How do you evaluate this appeal of Iran?

I think the genuineness and justification of this pursuit of normalcy on Iran’s part is sincere, deserves respect, and is mandated by international law and the UN Charter. Arguably, Iran has done nothing wrong that would warrant punitive actions of the sort taken or the kind of coercion embedded in the ‘maximum pressure’ approach to the Trump presidency. It is unlawful to threaten or use force as a tactic of diplomacy, and Iran has been constantly threatened over a period of many years, economically harmed, and politically destabilized by such tactics, as well as by the imposition of sanctions that have inhibited foreign investment and trade by third party countries.

Q4: Iran says the text of the 2015 JCPOA should be the cornerstone of the Vienna talks but the other side, in fact, is after a new 2021 JCPOA. How do you assess these excessive demands?

On its face, these US demands are unreasonable considering that it was its unilateral, unprovoked act that led to the breakdown of the agreed arrangements embodied in the 2015 JCPOA  framework. Iran should not be politically expected to accept new conditions and constraints that impose additional limits on its freedom of action in a 2022 revamped version of the former agreement.

The argument for new conditions is to take account of Iran’s technological advances, its enhanced enrichment capabilities, improved centrifuges, and its alleged closer approach in knowhow and time to acquisition of nuclear weaponry. It is notable that the CIA director has recently declared that there is no evidence that Iran is seeking a nuclear weapons capability. Nevertheless, the expiration of key clauses of the 2015 JCPOA in 2030 is sufficiently close that there is pressure on the US, especially from Israel and counter-proliferation extremists to insist upon a longer termination date of 25 years from the time that a new agreement is signed.

Q5: Biden administration says it is not going to guarantee that the US will not withdraw from the possible future agreement like what Trump did. And even some in Washington are threatening to kill any agreement that Biden may reach. How do you assess the US stance and its effect on the talks’ process?  How may U.S. domestic competitions ruin any chance of reaching a good nuclear pact?

I think this risk of a future obstruction of an agreement within the US is very high. The prospect of Republican electoral success in 2022 and 2024 elections cannot be disregarded, and are reinforced by public opinion polls.

Such outcome would undoubtedly raise pressures for restoring the Trump approach to Iran and an overall approach to Middle East politics more in accord with Israel’s preferences. It may be because Biden accords priority to domestic issues, including COVID, public funding of infrastructure (roads, bridges, airports, renewable energy), and improved race relations that the US will continue to adhere to its version of a hardline approach with regard to both the Vienna negotiations on nuclear issues and in its overall relationship with Iran. At the same time, the US Government seems likely to engage in crisis management if the talks breakdown, and may believe it will have enhanced leverage to restrain Israel if it maintains the present status quo with Iran, meaning no new agreement and no sanctions relief. I think this would be a dangerous turn of events, likely to lead to a downward spiral in the Middle East that could produce open warfare.



Q6: Under such fragile circumstances threatening any possible agreement, how constructive role can Europe play? Basically, is Europe independent enough to be able to play a constructive role in securing any possible agreement? Or it will behave inactively as it did after Trump’s withdrawal?

I believe Europe is not likely to exert much influence on US diplomacy with Iran unless it fears the effects of a slide into war or aggravated instability in the Middle East. Europe seems currently more concerned about relations with Russia and China at this point, feeling a renewed dependence on the NATO alliance for its own security. In an atmosphere of a second Cold War Europe seems as though it will continue to accept Washington’s leadership. As well, European governments, above all Germany, but also France and the UK, remain subject to considerable pressure from Israel, and are not likely to take a strong independent position that is opposed by either Washington or the Israeli government.

I think Iran’s main source of leverage is to continue exploring the benefits of geopolitical realignment, especially in relation to China and Russia, but also seeking greater support from the Islamic world and by way of regional accommodations. .

Further in the background of the Vienna talks but in some respects Iran’s strongest diplomatic tool would be to support and advocate long languishing proposals for a Middle East Nuclear Weapons Free Zone (MENWFZ). Iran has somewhat surprisingly not yet voiced public vigorous objections to Israel’s acquisition of nuclear weaponry and their subsequent development. By making the MENWFZ an active peace proposal, perhaps enlarged to encompass categories of Weapons of Mass Destruction (that is, chemical and biological weapons), Iran would be taking a constructive stand consistent with its commitment to its reliance on non-nuclear defense capabilities and a security posture based on mutual principles of non-aggression.

Iran has a strong interest in promoting denuclearization for the region. Doing so would have additional benefits. It would expose Israel’s nuclearism, and accompanying hypocrisy. It might even exert pressure on Israel to change course and itself become receptive to the virtues of MENWFZ, which might include normalization of all inter-governmental relations. To make such an approach politically and morally feasible for Tehran, it would be important to reaffirm Iranian solidarity with the Palestinian struggle for basic rights. This factor would undoubtedly complicate the diplomacy surrounding the nuclear issue as Tehran would be inhibited from using ‘normalization’ with Israel as a bargaining chip in the nuclear context so long as Palestinian rights are being denied.

By raising these issues, I am suggesting the need for fresh thinking on all sides if the present signs of an impasse relating to the future of JCPOA are to be overcome, or if the Vienna process proves to be a failure with both sides shifting blame away from itself. This impasse would not exist, in my judgment, if Israel was not part of the diplomatic equation. This dysfunctional obstacle should be overcome or circumvented, and JCPOA restored in a form acceptable to both sides. Even should a favorable result be reached, it will not remove Israel from relevance, but would likely find Washington scrambling to provide Israel with tangible reassurances that its ‘special relationship’ with the US remains operative. Quite possibly, and most unfortunately, this could result in one more Palestinian setback in their struggle for basic rights if care is not taken by Iran to do its best to avoid such blowback side-effects or providing Israel with the latest weaponry or the funds to ensure that it maintains its regional edge with respect to military power.   

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Dangerous Gaps: Knowledge, Action, and Justice

16 Jan

[Prefatory Note: The following essay was published on the website of This View of Life (TVOL) <thisviewoflife.com>, which brings to bear the views of science and evolutionary biology on a series of global challenges increasingly overwhelming the capabilities of civilizational modernity. A series of related articles can be found on the TVOL website. My essay was published there on January 13, 2022.]

Dangerous Gaps: Knowledge, Action, and Justice

Knowledge without Action

Modernity prides itself on its core achievement—basing political order and economic progress on the tools of reason and a trust in science-based knowledge. Yet when it comes to grappling with the large problems of our time it is obvious that there exist wide and dangerous gaps between what we know and what we do, both individually and collectively. Organized governance structures have only selectively integrated the Enlightenment ethos into their formation and implementation of policy, and this explains part of the path of the pathos of Modernity, which despite the technological wonders it has wrought has led to the first bio-ethical-ecological crisis in all of planetary history. To address responsibly such a crisis in relation to climate change or other problems of global scope requires an adequate diagnosis together with new strategies for bringing our knowledge and collective wisdom to bear. Additionally, there exists a discrediting, and likely paralyzing, normative gap between what we do and should be doing in relation to the ethical and political dimensions of climate change.

The severe threats to present and even more to future human generations and habitat wellbeing have long been convincingly confirmed by a consensus among climate experts. [see Naomi Oreskes & Erik Conway, The Collapse of Western Civilization, Columbia University Press, 2014; Climate Change 2021, 6th Assessment Report, Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), 2021, and earlier assessment reports ] Civil society activists, most charismatically a young Swedish teenager, Greta Thunberg, have been sounding the alarm, raising public awareness and anger throughout the world as much as the unprecedented frequency of extreme weather events. Thunberg, speaking to an audience composed of UN diplomatic representatives of member governments gave the issue an embittered inter-generational twist: “You will die of old age. I will die from climate change.”

Not only do we know and increasingly experience the multiple harms due to global warming, but we also have increasingly dire and reliable warnings that unless the underlying situation is corrected within a narrow temporal window of diminishing opportunity, the effects of climate change will cause a series of worsening events and impacts. These include extreme weather causing flooding, drought, heatwaves, and super-storms; sea levels rising; destruction of river systems and lakes; glacial melting and polar warming; unmanageable migratory flows; polarized citizenries leading to extremist politics, demagogic styles of political leadership, and deteriorating quality of democratic governance. We have possessed this knowledge for several decades, and most governmental responses remain deeply disappointing and what is worse, objectively menacing.

Helen Camakaris in a brilliantly perceptive article writes: “The existential risks we now face are largely the consequence of neoliberal capitalism and partisan politics, super-charging growth, greed, and short-term self-interest.”[See Camakaris, “Evolutionary Mismatch, Partisan Politics, and Climate Change: A Tragedy in Three Acts,” In This View of Life, March 9, 2021.] She sensibly concludes that the time has come to rethink the fundamentals of democracy and the economy, and act “to quiet the partisan rage that is currently tearing the US apart.” It is my view that this partisan rage together with the greed-fueled preoccupation with maximizing the efficiencies of capital at the expense of human wellbeing and habitat sustainability is additional to the causal explanation Camakaris provides, a product of historical circumstances and the form of world order that has been evolving since the middle of the 17th Century when it began to take shape in Europe.

Historical Circumstances

Two elements of the historical circumstances bear heavily on why the present context fails to take rational account of the scientific consensus and its evidence-based warnings about the future when it comes to climate change. The first of these circumstances relate to the outcome of the Cold War, which induced a triumphal mood in the West about the superiority of what was touted at the time as ‘market-based constitutionalism’ that resulted in privileging capital flows at the expense of people, giving rise to ‘economic globalization’ as guided by neoliberal ideology. As long as the Soviet Union was associated with a socialist alternative on national stages, the political class in the West, including its economic elites, felt obliged to supply a measure of social protection to their citizenry and to place some limits on the accumulation of wealth by the ultra-rich. With the Soviet collapse, countervailing ideological forces no longer existed to exert a restraining impact on economic and social policies, and the result was to appraise economic wellbeing by aggregate GDP statistics and corporate profitability. In other words, humanity and natural habitat are paying this enduring price for a distorted and shortsighted response by the political classes in the West, led by the United States, to the Soviet collapse and the related discrediting of socialism as an alternative.

The second historical circumstance of particular relevance to the difficulties associated with mobilizing a political consensus on climate change at a global level that adequately complements the scientific or expert consensus relates to the post-colonial character of intergovernmental relations at the UN and elsewhere. Newly independent countries in Asia and Africa either refused to be distracted in their efforts to give the highest policy priorities to rapid economic and social development or challenged whether their relationship to industrialization deserved to be burdened by constraints designed to keep global warming within tolerable limits. Indeed, the buildup of greenhouse gasses in the atmosphere was predominantly brought about by industrialization in the West, yet the countries suffering most from climate change are in Africa and the Middle East, including the destruction of the agricultural foundation of their economic viability, prompting millions of climate refugees to flee their countries, and seek entry elsewhere to improve their livelihood prospects. The countries in the West assume scant responsibility, and when they do, it is not because of an acknowledgment of these causal connections of their behavior with migration flows, but as a hypocritical and purely discretionary humanitarian gesture displaying their high moral standards. Yet analyzing and negotiating safe limits on carbon emissions has largely ignored the underlying injustices arising from the historical antecedents of colonial governance, an aspect of which was keeping colonized peoples backward so that they retain their predominant role in the colonial era–providing raw materials and agricultural goods sought by the factories and lifestyles of the West. [See Deepak Nayyar, Resurgent Asia: Diversity in Development, Oxford University Press, 2019 on the de-development of Asia during the period of European colonialization.]

Dysfunctional Structures, Norms, and Ideologies

The failures of rational response to climate change also reflect the impacts of the deeply engrained and legitimated fragmentation of world order. There are many references to the efforts of ‘the global community’ to act and perform cooperatively, but behavioral patterns do not vindicate such rhetoric of solidarity. International institutions are overwhelmingly controlled by governments of sovereign states, whose representatives are beholden to national interests rather than either human or global interests. It could not be otherwise given the ideology of nationalism, ‘political realism,’ and geopolitical ambition that orients behavior toward the wellbeing of individual sovereign states, in other words maximizing what is good for the part rather than the whole.

Now it may be that the process of evolution, which has demonstrated that natural selection privileges cooperation, is in the early stages of manifesting an evolutionary jump ahead by the human species. It is possible that global cooperative potential is on the verge of breakthroughs, which if they occur, will only be adequately explained retrospectively being hidden from view until after their unexpected occurrence. As matters now stand there are not sufficient shared values at the global level to constitute community, and the cooperative alignments that are most robust in terms of commitment and funding take the form of alliances confronting adversary states.

This pattern was recently exemplified by the kind of vaccine diplomacy that illustrated the primary international realities of geopolitics and statism, the secondary reality of multi-state antagonistic clusters, and the tertiary reality of special interest private sector actors, especially the large vaccine manufacturers. Some civil society transnational actors are oriented toward holistic perspectives but exert almost no influence in settings where important global challenges are addressed, as for example, climate change, COVID pandemic, regulation of markets, migrant rights, and nuclear weapons.

Evolutionary Relevance

At first glance, the timelines of both biological and cultural evolution seem much too long to be relevant to unraveling the prospect for a timely, effective, and just response to the multiple challenges posed by climate change. And yet we cannot be certain that there has not been in progress over the course of antecedent decades and centuries natural selection events that incline toward the emergence of species identity along with an appreciation of the mutual benefits of collective cooperation at a global scale. In effect, humanity in various contexts seems increasingly aware that the tepid response to climate change, and perhaps other apocalyptic menaces to the future of humanity, are indeed dire news, having produced the first bio-ethical-ecological crisis in human history.

It is possible that the Paris Climate Agreement of 2015, although falling short of what the scientific consensus prescribed with respect to reductions of carbon emissions necessary for assurances that a safe ceiling for global warming will be achieved, was a partial breakthrough with respect to collective action with response to climate change at a global level. It seemed a dramatic recognition by 196 governments of sovereign entities that collective action in the form of global cooperation was indispensable in view of the dangers confronting humanity, and to be achieved needed to take account of diverse capabilities, vulnerabilities, and experience of these state actors. Such an event constituted a global moment of universal recognition, although limited by the voluntary nature of participation and subject to withdrawal, could be understood as a manifestation of an emergent evolutionary trend. The withdrawal of the United States from the Agreement by the Trump Presidency in 2018 followed by the promise of a return to full participation in 2021 by the Biden Presidency can be interpreted in contradictory ways or as the ebb and flow of the underlying evolutionary reality. It may be best understood as revealing the opaqueness of evolution. In this instance, in relation to the fragility and weakness of moves toward global cooperative problem-solving or as signifying the need to modify behavior within the prevailing fragmented world order.

Because inter-governmental behavior continues to be driven by short-termism as well as nationalism, sovereign rights, and geopolitical ambition, it would seem that transnational civil society activism is faced with an evolutionary responsibility and opportunity to act more forcibly in support of a transition from statism to regionalism/globalism, with a corresponding appreciation at the state level that deference to international law and other mechanisms to contain militarism and capitalism serve a drastically revised view of ‘political realism’ and ‘geopolitical ambition.’ [See Ahmet Davutoglu, Systemic Earthquake and the Struggle for World Order, Cambridge University Press, 2021; Robert C. Johansen, Where the Evidence Leads: A Realistic Strategy for Peace and Human Security, Oxford University Press, 2021; Richard Falk, Power Shift: On the New Global Order, Zed Books, 2016; also, Jeremy Brecher, Common Preservation in a Time of Mutual Destruction, PM Press, 2020; Brecher, Against Doom: A Climate Insurgency Manual, PM Press, 2017.]

If there is to be a positive outcome to the bio-ethical-ecological crisis it will necessarily be more comprehensive than bridging the current gap between knowledge and action as reflected in the polarized politics within sovereign states that misdirects the popular imagination toward subsidiary concerns of national egoism, obscuring the unprecedented challenge to human wellbeing, and species survival. Also, of crucial importance is the parallel normative gap between neoliberal capital-driven ethics and eco-humanistic ethics expressive of an inclusive practice of justice responsive both to human rights and the rights of nature. [See Universal Declaration of Human Rights (1948); Universal Declaration of the Rights of Mother Earth (2010) setting forth widely accepted normative frameworks.] If bold action is taken to bridge these gaps, we can begin to be somewhat hopeful about the prospects for overcoming the current ‘evolutionary mismatch,’ but not until then.

Richard Falk

Richard Falk is Albert G. Milbank Professor Emeritus of International Law at Princeton University, Chair of Global Law, Faculty of Law, at Queen Mary University London,  Research Associate the Orfalea Center of Global Studies at the University of California, Santa Barbara, and Fellow of the Tellus Institute. Falk is currently acting as interim Director of the Centre of Climate Crime and Justice at Queen Mary. He directs the project on Global Climate Change, Human Security, and Democracy at UCSB and formerly served as director the North American group in the World Order Models Project. Between 2008 and 2014, Falk served as UN Special Rapporteur on Human Rights in Occupied Palestine. His book, (Re)Imagining Humane Global Governance (2014), proposes a value-oriented assessment of world order and future trends. His most recent books are Power Shift (2016); Revisiting the Vietnam War (2017); On Nuclear Weapons: Denuclearization, Demilitarization and Disarmament (2019); and On Public Imagination: A Political & Ethical Imperative, ed. with Victor Faessel & Michael Curtin (2019). He is the author or coauthor of other books, including Religion and Humane Global Governance (2001), Explorations at the Edge of Time (1993), Revolutionaries and Functionaries (1988), The Promise of World Order (1988), Indefensible Weapons (1983), A Study of Future Worlds (1975), and This Endangered Planet (1972). His memoir, Public Intellectual: The Life of a Citizen Pilgrim was published March 2021. He has been nominated annually for the Nobel Peace Prize since 2021.

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Glimpsing the Light

10 Jan

My last blog [“January 6: A Year Later”] could be read as an anguished first draft for the obituary of democracy in the United States, and it without question looks at the national future through a glass darkly. I received some feedback that complained about the tone, the darkness of the forebodings, and the foreclosure of liberating surprises. Although my Enlightenment mind fails to find good reasons to paint the U.S. national and indeed the human future in brighter colors, my undernourished spiritual side has not given up, discovering feelings of hopefulness from radical uncertainty, grace, and ‘the politics of impossibility.’ 

I am not pretending that the impossible can happen, but only that what now seems impossible becomes possible with the passage of time and the creative impact of hidden forces of justice and change. From this vantage point I have grounds for hope, and if hope exists, then there exist a moral and spiritual imperative to engaged in struggles for a better national future for which outcomes are inherently unforeseeable, although if we are blessed and receptive, emancipatory glimpses can be foretasted and cherished. 

I find myself engaged in struggles to save American procedural (or electoral) democracy from the ravages that would be wrought by the onset of fascism. Beyond this rescue operation from the mobilized, violently disposed militant Trump base in full control of the Republican Party lies the more ambitious agenda to restore and extend the New Deal by creating social protection for everyone residing within American borders in relation to health, work, housing, education, food, clean air and water, natural habitat. A visionary commitment to the creation of a polity that combines substantiveand procedural democracy, and beyond that participates in a parallel movement for global democracy, a matter of planetary urgency. 

On the agenda of global democracy: giving priority to ecological responsibility, mobilizing against nuclearism and militarism, against racism, against predatory capitalism, and on behalf of a stronger United Nations, rights of self-determination for currently oppressed nations, on behalf of global problem-solving, against geopolitical impunity, for humane governance at all levels of social organization, on identity befitting citizen pilgrims seeking to construct a global community of shared values and visions, for human security, for love, wisdom, beauty,  compassion, and explorations of cosmic consciousness.

I add this picture capturing the reality of light in a dark sky as well representing this metaphysical moment in the evolution of the human species. It is a photo taken by my dear friend and collaborator, an exemplary citizen pilgrim, Hans von Sponeck on his daily morning meditative walk in the countryside of southern Germany. 

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January 6th: A Year Later

6 Jan

In retrospect, the attempted insurrection at the Capitol was about a great deal more than an angry expression of disappointment by the populist side of gun culture America. The coup attempt of January 6th failed, yet it succeeded in undermining the unwritten, yet vital, social contract that brought high levels of stability to United States since the republic was established in 1789. The contract had featured a long succession of peaceful transfers of power after national elections. In effect, the U.S. more than almost anywhere earned high praise for its sustained establishment of procedural democracy, further enhanced by a two-party system that put aside differences during times of national emergency proclaiming bipartisanship a political virtue if national security was at risk.

This stability was unquestionably a great achievement for an ethnically and religiously diverse country with a large population, but this American record should be celebrated cautiously, with humility, and massive qualifications that must never be ignored. This U.S. rise to great power status rested on genocidally driven ethnic cleansing of native Americans combined with economic prosperity for a land-based settler colonial white elite that owed its high standard of living to the racist and exploitative benefits of slavery. Even after the American Civil War and the end of slavery, racism remained, was cruel in its dehumanizing effects on perpetrators as well as victims, and extended to the entire country. That the United States could constantly invoke its own exceptionalism and convince most of the world that it was ‘the city on the hill,’ ‘the new Jerusalem,’ and ‘a light unto the nations’ remains without doubt a masterful triumph of public relations and state propaganda, a precursor of the capitalist empires built by Madison Avenue advertising ingenuity. But truth it is not, and never was!

What was true, which was a truthful exception to the big early lies, was the widespread adherence to the electoral process by which political leadership was determined, and legitimized. Procedural democracy at its core remains about the sanctity of elections as credible expressions of citizen consent. Even though there is no text it was this core provision of the social contract that was dangerously weakened by the January 6th assault on the Capitol, and even more than the assault itself, by the instigating and cheerleading role played by Trump and his immediate entourage. Even more telling is the commitment a year later by one of the two major political parties to a manifest falsehood of the greatest political consequence. The Republican Party overwhelmingly supports the central lie that the 2020 election was stolen, and this Trump deserves to be president. We can safely assume that most of the Republican leadership knows that it is endorsing a falsehood, but does so nevertheless for cynical reasons associated with calculations about their own political futures.

In the recent past this national ethos that expected politicians, whatever their ideology, to be good losers was strong enough in 1960 to lead Richard Nixon, not noted for his high morals, to forego any effort to overturn the official results despite strong indications that the votes recorded in Illinois were fraudulently manipulated to hand John F. Kennedy a victory he may not deserved if the votes had been fairly counted. Similarly, in 2000 Al Gore handed the presidency to George W. Bush despite some chicanery in Florida that invalidated a large number of Gore votes and may well have handed the White House over to the Republicans even though they ‘lost’ the elections. The point is not to revisit such controversies, but to show how previously strong was this sense that even when electoral outcomes that possibly had decisive, rough edges the official outcome should be respected for the sake of maintaining  confidence among the citizenry in the trustworthiness of the process. In mounting this ‘Stop the Steal’ campaign Trump repudiated this tradition in a context that lacked even a credible basis for questioning the propriety of the electoral process.

Such behavior prefigures downfall in a political system that stakes its legitimacy on the periodic opportunity of its political parties to nominate candidates, adopt platforms, and compete for the support of the citizenry. Such a procedural democracy does not pretend to rest its legitimacy on justice, yet early on the Constitution was amended to confer civil and political rights on its citizenry with the central abuse of power by the government. Yet to this day America never purported to become a substantive democracy that extends effective social protection or universal human rights to all of its citizens in the manner of many European countries that have upheld a quite different social democratic contract with their citizens . In that sense, the most basic freedom of all for American  citizens, although not inscribed in parchment or openly proclaimed, has been preserving the right of every citizen to fail, a right substantially upheld through times of prosperity and hardship, reflecting the boom and bust bedrock cycles of capitalist theory and practice. The mixture of a cult of individualism together with minimally regulated capitalism is as much a part of constitutional order as are elections and the rule of law, but rarely avowed.

Under the economic weight and political challenges of the Great Depression in the 1930s, the New Deal fashioned by FDR and the Democrats served to rescue capitalism, a recovery process further helped by the onset of World War II. This was something so-called principled conservatives never liked, considering it an encroachment on individualism, which included the sanctified right to fail, and the willingness of those who fail to accept the often cruel consequences resulting in homelessness and denials of health care. A sophisticated interpretation of January 6th would be to regard it as a long deferred payback by Republicans for the alleged abandonment by Democrats of this right to fail, including attendant flirtations with the New Deal safety net of social protection, demonized by the Republicans at the time and ever since as ‘crypto-socialism,’ if not outright socialism. Already in the 1980s Ronald Reagan built the ideological foundations upon which the House of Trump was erected, including dislike of the left, including liberals with particular hostility to organized labor, reproductive rights for woman, permissiveness toward racism, racially tainted toughness on crime, and initiatives that gave the 50 states much more of a governance role in the country at the expense of the central governance structures that operated out of Washington. 

What is almost as worrisome are that the defenders of the old order, mainly the Democrats and the Democratic establishment, are sleepwalking while political subversion on a large scale occurs. Democrats are disunited, lack coherent ideas, and mostly without passion, except at the progressive edges represented by Black Lives Matter and Alexandria Ortega-Cortez and the squad. Remember that AOC, despite being the clearest voice of national conscience was only allowed 30 seconds to speak at the Democratic Party nominating convention in 2019. Also, when it comes to truthfulness, the Democrats also have dirty hands. How many among their leadership condemn the apartheid nature of the Israel state despite the preponderance of the evidence, confirmed by mainstream human rights organizations (Human Rights Watch, B’Tselem)? Or propose sanctioning Saudi Arabia in response to the brutal murder of an internationally respected journalist, Jamal Khasoggi, in the Saudi Consulate in 2018, a state crime carried out on orders of the government? And despite school shootings and an epidemic of urban gun violence how many Democrats are willing to advocate the repeal of the Second Amendment or take the political risk of voting against a bloated military budget at a time of growing domestic economic misery? Bringing Joe Biden to the White House in 2021 was a metaphoric display of a moribund opposition that didn’t seem to grasp the central reality that the country was facing a growing crisis of toxic polarization. Biden obviously didn’t understand that his repeated early calls for national unity were not only ineffectual, but called attention to how out of touch he was with political tides sweeping across the country, which were yearning for confrontation, not societal harmony. As Noam Chomsky has been warning us what happened lasst January is still happening. In other words, the coup was not only an event, but that a process that is continuing to haunt our future, gains momentum, and engages willing architects draw up plans for achieving its dark goals.

Such a situation is dire, not only at home but globally. The needed focus on climate change, COVID, refugees and migrants, nuclearism and militarism, international law and the UN, peacemaking in the Middle East is missing, and other concerns is absent.

In other words, January 6th not only broke the social contract between state and society, but also exposed the ineptitude and decay of two-party democracy. Such an exposure should not be limited to the U.S. as parallel descents into political infernos are evident in such varied national contexts as Brazil, India, Myanmar, Philippines, Hungary, Russia. There seems to be a structural flight from humane patterns of governance due almost everywhere, at least partly due to the effects of neoliberal globalization intensifying inequalities and deepens alienation.

What must be evident is that without a surge of revolutionary energies responsive to national, sub-national, regional, and global challenges, the human future is unfolding beneath darkening clouds. Smoothing the rough edges of this American political crisis may buy some needed time to reinvent humane politics in the 21st century at the onset of this first bio-political-ecological-ethical-spiritual crisis ever to confront the human species, and then the hard work of inventing and deploying a transformative politics begins.     

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WHAT’S AHEAD FOR PALESTINE IN 2022

2 Jan

[Prefatory Note: A shorter version of this essay was published on the Middle East Eye website on 31 Dec 2021, as one of six pieces in a section called “Middle East Debate” with thetitle “More Traditional Diplomacy, but no stability.” This is a title conferred that I would not have chosen, and so here where I have autonomy, I use a title that I think is more descriptive.]

What’s Ahead for Palestine in 2022

Even before COVID people everywhere were living at a time of great complexity, uncertainty, and confusion. The future is always opaque when it comes to predictions other than near-term projections of current trends, which often turn out to miss occurrences that shatter mainstream expectations. For the Middle East, even modest predictions are often upset by a sudden swerve of events, and in relation to the Israel/Palestine struggle even more so. Putting aside this disclaimer, there are some expectations about 2022 that are worth expressing and sharing.

To begin with, we will witness a growing awareness that traditional diplomacy will not bring stability, much less peace with justice to this struggle that has gone on for more than a century. 2022 is likely going to experience an overdue funeral that finally pronounces the death of Oslo Diplomacy along with its reliance on direct negotiations between the two sides and supposed to end with the establishment of a sovereign Palestine. Throughout the process the U.S. was cast in the role of neutral intermediary, sometimes half ironically identified as ‘honest broker.’ This might have seemed plausible enough in Netflix TV series, but in the real world Oslo from the outset set a trap for the Palestinians, served as an expansionist opportunity for the Israelis, and continued to allow Washington to persist in its theater role of projecting a false sense of good will to all, a peacemaker rather than a geopolitical manager.  

It has by now dawned on everyone with even half open eyes that the political leaders of Israel don’t want a political compromise of the sort embedded in the Oslo process even, as was assume, its contours would lean heavily in Israel’s favor. Israeli has long shrugged off international pressures to comply with international law or to pretend support for a peace process guided from Washington. It is evident that Israel has for some years felt confident enough to stop pretending that it supports a diplomatically arranged solution. No foreseeable surge of Palestinian armed resistance is perceived as posing much of a threat, especially as neighboring Arab regimes have become distracted or detached from the conflict, with some governments displaying a willingness to accept normal diplomatic relations and join openly with Israel in confronting Iran.

This image of dead-end diplomacy when it comes to Palestine is reinforced by the U.S. posture post-Trump. On the one side, the Biden presidency has signaled that it will not challenge Trump’s signature moves, including relocating the U.S. Embassy in Jerusalem, confirming Israeli sovereignty over the Golan Heights, endorsing the ‘Normalization Accords’ and even actively promoting their expansion, capped by reassurances to Israel that it will collaborate regionally, especially when it comes to Iran. At the same time, Biden seeks to appear moderate in tone, which explains Washington’s renewal of public avowal of support for a two-state solution and the issuance of mild rebukes when Israel uses excessive violence against Palestinian civilians or moves to expand Jewish settlements in the West Bank. I would suppose that even Biden realizes that the two-state solution has long been a Zombie fix that allows Israel to let the unresolved conflict with the Palestinians continue indefinitely while verbally holding onto a commitment that includes acknowledging a Palestinian right of self-determination. In this sense, the best guess is that when it comes to substance Biden will go along with Trump’s, while adopting a public stance that is less shrilly partisan than was his predecessor in the White House. As matters now stand the Biden presidency is weak, unable to push forward its domestic agenda, which has disappointed the American public, tanking Biden’s approval ratings. Under these circumstances, the last thing Biden wants in 2022 is even the mildest break with Israel of the sort that occurred toward the end of the Obama presidency. The fear of Israeli wrath knows no bounds when it comes to mainstream American politicians.

At the international level, it seems likely that no meaningful additional pressure will be placed on Israel to seek a sustainable peace or even to uphold its obligations under international humanitarian law in the Occupied Palestinian Territories. The UN Human Rights Council will continue to issue reports critical of Israel’s behavior and Israel will continue to disregard the basic human rights of Palestinians living under occupation, and suffer no adverse consequences for doing so, and yet hysterically complain about Israel-bashing at the UN. The General Assembly will pass more resolutions in 2022 condemning Israel’s policies, and calling for censure and possibly an arms embargo, but nothing will happen except that UN will stand further accused, with implications that Jews are once again the victims of anti-Semitism. The only internationalist hope is that the International Criminal Court (ICC) will proceed next year with its investigations of Israeli flagrant violations of international criminal law since 2014, but this is a slender reed. The ICC has a new UK prosecutor who is thought to be receptive to US/Israeli opposition with going forward, and may prove susceptible to strong back channel geopolitical efforts to induce the ICC to drop the case. He has certainly taken his time to announce plans to carry forward the investigatory process. In my view there is less than a 50/50 chance that even should investigation be resumed, it will be allowed to reach the indictment stage despite overwhelming evidence of Israeli criminality. However, if the ICC jumps ship altogether, it will likely provoke widespread outrage, encouraging Palestinian resistance and global solidarity.

In my view, the most notable developments in 2022 will flow from the impacts of disillusionment with any hope that constructive action can follow from the peace diplomacy of the past or new UN pressures. Palestinian resistance will continue to send signals to the world that the struggle goes on no matter how hard Israel works to convince the public opinion that it has prevailed in the struggle, and that the best that the Palestinians can hope for are economic benefits to be bestowed following a Palestinian political surrender in the form of an acceptance of Israel as a Jewish state along with a pledge not to oppose Zionist Ambitions to conquer what remains of the ‘promised land.’ In other words, the year ahead will likely announce to the world that Israel is opting for a one-state unilateral solution based on Jewish supremacy along with a Palestinian refusal to swallow such toxic Kool Aid.

Given this line of thinking, the most encouraging development for the Palestinians in the year ahead is in the symbolic domain of politics, what I have previously called the Legitimacy War dimensions of political conflict. It is here the Palestinians are winning even in America, especially among younger Jews, along with some signs that the bipartisan consensus in the U.S. Congress is splintering, at least at the edges.

We all need to keep reminding ourselves of four salient features of the present context: (1) the Palestinians are fighting an anti-colonial war against an apartheid government in Israel; (2) the major anti-colonial wars have been won, not by the stronger side militarily, but by the winner of the Legitimacy War as the U.S. discovered in Vietnam, and more recently in Iraq and Afghanistan; (3) as Israel is a settler colonial state with racist overtones, such struggles should be understood as the most vicious and pronounced and more difficult to bring to an end that ordinary anti-colonial wars; (4) the Palestinians will be increasing seen by the informed global public and media as winning the Legitimacy War; this impression will  be supported by continued fact-finding at the UN and possibly by further engagement on the part of the ICC.

2022 will in all likelihood not bear witness to any transformative event bearing on Palestinian prospects for achieving their basic rights, but the anticipated shift from investing false hopes in inter-governmental diplomacy to civil society activism will become better understood, giving rise to patterns of stronger non-violent solidarity efforts. The analogies to apartheid South Africa is becoming more widely appreciated. This makes South Africa’s alignment with the Palestinian struggle by its support of BDS, advocacy of an arms embargo, and other initiatives has great symbolic significance during the year ahead in relation to the all-important Legitimacy War. Israel’s attempt of a few months ago to destroy the vitality and funding base of Palestinian civil society by branding six leading human rights NGOs as ‘terrorist’ entities should be seen as not only a severe violation of its obligations as Occupying Power under the Geneva Conventions, but more significantly as a desperate sign of weakness in the ongoing Legitimacy War.

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Private Prescriptions for a Better Life in 2022

1 Jan

[Prefatory Note: a thoughtful Indian friend in Paris sent this listas her prescription for a better life in 2022. I adopted her list and added to it. I invite readers of this blog to propose their own additions and subtractions.]

2022

More sleep

More music

More tea

More books

More creating

More long walks

More Laughter

More Dreaming

More Love                  

RAF Additions

+more peace

+more justice

+ more tennis

+more poems

+more chess

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Was China’s amazing rise due to ‘socialism with Chinese characteristics’ or ‘capitalism with a Chinese facade? Or a little of both?  

23 Dec

There has in recent months many discussions centering around the proper characterization of China from an ideological point of view. The Chinese leadership has its own reasons for doing this, seeking to present what it deems a glorious self-image. In contrast, the West, especially the United States has wanted to offer an ideological explanation of its confrontational stance with China. Part of the ideological confusion is whether or not China can be considered to be a type of ‘democratic’ state, which it sometimes claims to be. China was not invited to take part in Biden’s Summit of Democracies, but questionable democracies as Israel, India, and the Philippines received invitations. What the United States has refrained from doing is to attribute China’s success to its mastery of and reliance upon maket-managed economic policy.

In my judgement, China’s self-identification as ‘a Communist state’ in certain contexts is no more misleading than the U.S. assumption that it possesses all the credentials to be claimed the world’s leading ‘democracy.’ There are features of both political systems that defy such labels from a descriptive perspective. China accelerated its amazing development process of the last 50 years by sometimes defining its system of governance as ‘socialism with Chinese characteristics,’ which was a coded way of expressing its participation at home and internationally in the capitalist world economy guided by a perspective usually described as ‘neoliberal globalization.’ Such an identity was underscored by Chinese membership in the World Trade Organization (WTO), widely accepted as an institutional body entrusted with overseeing and promoting global capitalism in its neoliberal phase. It is became common for economists to describe China after the market friendly reforms to attract foreign investment and promoted trade associated with Deng Xiaoping leadership in 1991 as establishing a ‘socialist market economy.’ To ideological militants in the West to be ‘socialist’ amounts to being ‘communist,’ a negative characterization applicable not only to China but also to social democracy in Scandinavia or liberal tendencies of the Democratic Party in the United States.

It is obvious that invoking the label ‘Communist’ by a party leader in Beijing is quite different than its use as a political slur by right-wing politics in Europe and North America. When Chinese officials insist on ascribing a Communist identity to China it functions as a claim of  legitimacy, confirming fidelity to its founding ideology and recalling its revolutionary struggle. When agitators inside and outside of government in the West call China ‘Communist,’ or even ‘Socialist’ it is meant as both as an insult and a warning about an alien ideology that poses a domestic threat by way of leftist and even left liberal politics.

Looked at differently, China exemplifies the Communist political tradition after the Cold War associated with Marx and Lenin, and later Mao, in certain crucial respects. The Communist Party provides authoritative ideological guidance in relation to its own governing process, overseees one-party rule, provides guidance for political education and citizenship, and entrusts leadership to a single person essentially for lifetime. The current leader, Xi Jinping exemplifies this tradition in all respects. No political alternatives are accepted as legitimate challengers to Communist rule. In periodic five-year high-level conferences of the Chinese Communist Party leadership ideological articles of faith are reaffirmed and adjustments made by expressions of consensus seemingly shaped by the leader.  The Chinese government from the moment of its takeover of the Chinese mainland in 1949 has suppressed dissent, and insisted on an extreme form of secularism that has regulated religious movements strictly, sometimes harshly, particularly if they dare to exhibit political ambitions.

Despite some superficial resemblances to the Soviet Union, and the Cold War, it would be deeply misleading to view China through a Soviet lens or by way of post-World War II geopolitics. Two extraordinary differences highlight the gaps between the Cold War era and the present confrontation with China: first, in contrast to the Soviet Union, China has compiled a remarkable record of administrative competence, which has overseen the greatest economic and geopolitical ascent of any country in all of history, a story confirmed by spectacular growth, alleviation of extreme poverty, and increasing dominance of the most significant technological frontiers of 21st innovation; secondly, China’s expansionist foreign policy has been completely reliant on soft power instruments of influence, producing many win/win solutions, including its hyper-ambitious Belt and Road Project, and contrasting dramatically with the Western rise and Soviet attainment of superpower status which were based on military conquest and imperial forms of coercive control. It is the U.S. hostile reaction that confronts China rather than cooperates that seems mainly responsible for

inducing China to place an ever greater emphasis on military capabilities to maintain its national interests by discouraging U.S. provocations. The West should be learning from China rather than treating China as the second coming of the USSR, necessitating an ideological and militarizing mobilization for a new cold war that the world cannot afford, diverting attention and resources from a series of urgent global challenges posed by climate change, pandemics, global migration, gross inequalities that did not seriously impact on international relations.

Only the costly arms race, especially its nuclear dimension, made the last half of the 20th century vulnerable to catastrophe on a global scale, threatening species survival, prepared the public sphere for its present policy agenda.

Xi Jinping has been claiming that he is adapting Marxism to contemporary condition under the banner of ‘Marxism for the 21st Century.’ As near I can tell this terminology is used mainly as a way to identify and highlight the charismatic relevance of Xi Jinping personal leadership, and in the process elevate him to the status of the most eminent of revolutionary leaders, above all as the equal of Mao Zedong. Xi’s  ideological viewpoint has been also associated with explaining what is meant by the phrase ‘socialism with Chinese characteristics.’ In ideological discourse, especially internationally, Xi commonly refers to the ‘socialist’ nature of the Chinese approach rather than to claim its ‘communist’ character.’ Xi clearly wants his various audiences to believe that Marxist thought remains as dynamic and relevant as ever, being ‘full of vitality,’ and thus the key to future human happiness.


The Chinese references to 21sst century Marxism is also a way of entering dialogue with Marxist political parties in other societies and creating a common global discourse. It also seems a way to be faithful to Markist-Leninis traditions of thought without having to comment critically upon the Soviet-led interval as a departure from Marxism. Put in positive terms Marxism in the 21st century calls for dedication to ‘human progress’ focused on building ‘a shared future for humanity’ in collaboration with congenial forces around the world

Whether China is viewed as a Communist center of power or not is less important than for the West to relate to China in a manner that is mutually beneficial for world peace and multilateralism. The policy emphasis on the West should be on not only learning from China but on bringing out the most constructive responses in relation to China’s potential indispensable contributions to world order. Such a view is not blind to Chinese violations of human rights or the excesses of Han nationalism, but it views these undeniable blemishes as best left to dynamics of internal reform and to the pressures mounted by global civil society, rather than as presently, a form of geopolitical harassment and anti-Chinese mobilization.

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