Middle East Thread: Clarissa Explains the Fall

The Something Awful Forums > Discussion > Debate & Discussion > Middle East Thread: Clarissa Explains the Fall

Ham: Apr 30, 2009; You're BALD!

MiddleOne posted:

Same question. I've seen the protests slowly start popping up into my feed but media coverage is like zilch.

Ham posted:

Egypt update: People in multiple cities went out to protest Sisi's regime today, including at Tahrir square in Cairo

Backstory: Over the course of the past two weeks, Mohamed Ali, an actor and contractor that worked on "military" construction projects made a series of videos calling out Sisi's regime for building lavish palaces, military hotels, vacation houses, rest stops for the use of Sisi's family and top leadership, in addition to ceremonial upgrades for Sisi's mother's cemetery. These projects cost in the hundreds of millions of dollars and were kept secret to avoid any backlash or "sense" of corruption.

The contractor's complaint mainly related to the military withholding payments to civilian contractors, but it escalated after the regime went all out on the guy, attacking him, his family, accusing him of being simultaneously a muslim brotherhood agent as well as homosexual. The regime didn't try to refute these allegations either through official channels or through the state-controlled media - in fact, Sisi went on stage a week or so ago and didn't deny the allegations, instead saying he would build more and more.

After Sisi's response, there have been online rumblings about a call to protest. Nothing really happened after the Friday prayers, but protests went out today after a football match. The main chant is: "Say it, don't be scared, Sisi must be removed".

Some video: https://twitter.com/lummideast/status/1175153789684330496

Protests were dispersed yesterday with no reported casualties. No reports of protests that I've heard of today, but even if they don't happen, a psychological barrier against protesting seems to finally be breaking.

# ? Sep 21, 2019 11:48

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# ? May 24, 2024 16:11

V. Illych L.: Apr 11, 2008; ASK ME ABOUT LUMBER

loving brave people, stay strong and stay safe

# ? Sep 21, 2019 13:30

Throatwarbler: Nov 17, 2008; by vyelkin

quote:

O'Brien put his hawkish views on full display in While America Slept. The book is largely dedicated to criticising Obama policies that he claimed emboldened "autocrats, tyrants and terrorists".

The book denounced Obama for "supporting" Egypt's Mohammad Morsi. It also endorsed the 2013 bloody coup that toppled the democratically elected Egyptian president, led by now-Trump's "favourite dictator", Abdel Fattah el-Sisi.

"When General Sisi was elected President of Egypt on a platform of rooting out Islamic extremism, Washington was indifferent at best and hostile at worst," O'Brien says.

"The Gulf Arabs were truly taken aback by such an approach to the clear and present danger of radical Islamists controlling the Arab world's largest country and its cultural hub."

By "radical Islamists", O'Brien was referring to Morsi's Muslim Brotherhood, which is not designated as a terrorist group by the US State Department.

Not looking good for those al qaeda protestors

# ? Sep 21, 2019 13:59

Less Claypool: Apr 16, 2009; More Primus For Fucks Sake.

MiddleOne posted:

Same question. I've seen the protests slowly start popping up into my feed but media coverage is like zilch.

Your average America doesn�t even know what�s happening in Yemen. US media is awful.

# ? Sep 21, 2019 15:36

Kanine: Aug 5, 2014; by Nyc_Tattoo

Less Claypool posted:

Your average America doesn�t even know what�s happening

# ? Sep 21, 2019 15:49

ecureuilmatrix: Mar 30, 2011

Do we have enough Americas for a statistically significant sample?

# ? Sep 21, 2019 18:14

Kindest Forums User: Mar 25, 2008; Let me tell you about my opinion about Bernie Sanders and why Donald Trump is his true successor.

You cannot vote Hillary Clinton because she is worse than Trump.

we need to get rid of all americans i think

# ? Sep 21, 2019 18:18

gh0stpinballa: Mar 5, 2019

Numerical Anxiety posted:

(This is not ignoring, say, the Ottoman genocides, but at least they managed to kind of hide those from international scrutiny during the conflict)

why is covering up the genocide a point in their favour?

# ? Sep 21, 2019 18:25

WAR CRIME GIGOLO: Oct 3, 2012; The Hague
tryna get me
for these glutes

This protest spun off after football. So while there is a political reason for it. The police can spin it as hooliganism and denigrate the message

So it was dispersed and no one was gunned down by PKMs.

# ? Sep 21, 2019 18:40

WAR CRIME GIGOLO: Oct 3, 2012; The Hague
tryna get me
for these glutes

Less Claypool posted:

Your average America doesn�t even care about what�s happening in Yemen.

Ftfy

# ? Sep 21, 2019 18:42

Numerical Anxiety: Sep 2, 2011; Hello.

gh0stpinballa posted:

why is covering up the genocide a point in their favour?

The question was "why were the Germans viewed as uniquely malevolent during WWI?" - the fact that Turkish war crimes were not known until later helped create the impression that the Germans were the standout worst actors during the war.

# ? Sep 21, 2019 18:53

Pistol_Pete: Sep 15, 2007; Oven Wrangler

The last time there were major protests in Egypt, the regime just machine-gunned them and the West whistled and looked the other way.

I hope it doesn't turn out like that now!

It will.

# ? Sep 21, 2019 19:05

Helsing: Aug 23, 2003; DON'T POST IN THE ELECTION THREAD UNLESS YOU JOE BIDEN

Egypt is a great example of the basic continuities in American foreign policy across administrations and despite the two Presidents have extremely different personalities and goals. Obama actually did make some tepid attempts to resist the will of the blob but his own senior appointees were directly undermining him and already pushing for the policy that we currently associate with Trump.

The New York Times posted:

The White House and the Strongman

How the Obama administration watched the demise of Arab democracy � and paved the way for Trump�s embrace of dictators.

By David D. Kirkpatrick
Mr. Kirkpatrick is the author of the forthcoming �Into the Hands of Soldiers: Freedom and Chaos in Egypt and the Middle East,� from which this essay is adapted.

July 27, 2018

President Trump boasts that he has reversed American policies across the Middle East. Where his predecessor hoped to win hearts and minds, Mr. Trump champions the axiom that brute force is the only response to extremism � whether in Iran, Syria, Yemen or the Palestinian territories. He has embraced the hawks of the region, in Israel and the Persian Gulf, as his chief guides and allies.

But in many ways, this hard-line approach began to take hold under President Barack Obama, when those same regional allies backed the 2013 military ouster of Egypt�s first elected president, Mohamed Morsi of the Muslim Brotherhood.

That coup was a watershed moment for the region, snuffing out dreams of democracy while emboldening both autocrats and jihadists. And American policy pivoted, too, empowering those inside the administration �who say you just have to crush these guys,� said Andrew Miller, who oversaw Egypt for the National Security Council under Mr. Obama, and who is now with the Project on Middle East Democracy. Some of the coup�s most vocal American advocates went on to top roles in the Trump administration, including Secretary of Defense James Mattis and Michael Flynn, Mr. Trump�s first national security adviser.

I was The New York Times Cairo bureau chief at the time of the coup, and I returned to the events years later in part to better understand Washington�s role. I learned that the Obama administration�s support for the Arab Spring uprisings had been hobbled from the start by internal disagreements over the same issues that now define Trump policy � about the nature of the threat from political Islam, about fidelity to autocratic allies like the United Arab Emirates and Saudi Arabia, and about the difficulty of achieving democratic change in Egypt and the region.

Mr. Obama and his closest advisers were often on one side of those debates. They hoped to shift established American policy and forge a new relationship with the Arab world in order to undermine the appeals of anti-Western extremism. Even in the final days before the takeover, Mr. Obama was urging respect for Egypt�s free elections. In an 11th--hour phone call he implored Mr. Morsi to make �bold gestures� to hold onto his office.

Most of his government, though, took the other side, reflecting longstanding worries about the intrinsic danger of political Islam and about the obstacles to Egyptian democracy.

In a White House meeting the day after Mr. Morsi�s ouster � two days after that last phone call � Mr. Obama yielded to those views when he accepted the military takeover. In doing so, he had taken a first step toward the policies that have become the overriding principles of the Trump administration.

�He is the dumbest cluck I ever met.�

President Morsi, a leader of the Muslim Brotherhood, took office on June 30, 2012. He spent much of his energy struggling against resistance from an entrenched establishment � the soldiers, spies, police, judges and bureaucrats left in place from six decades of autocracy.

But he was an inept politician and he made his own mistakes, too. In November 2012, as part of a battle with the judiciary to push through a referendum on a new constitution, Mr. Morsi declared his own decrees above judicial review until it had passed. Many Egyptians, especially in Cairo, were angry at the new president for failing to fulfill the promises of the Tahrir Square uprising.

Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates, whose rulers feared elections and dreaded them even more if they were presented as Islamic, lobbied hard to convince Washington that Mr. Morsi and the Muslim Brotherhood were a threat to American interests. And American officials later concluded that the United Arab Emirates were also providing covert financial support for protests against Mr. Morsi.

The United States provides $1.3 billion a year in military aid to Egypt, more than to any other country besides Israel, and after the uprising in 2011 the Pentagon boasted that its aid had helped convince the Egyptian generals to accept a transition to democracy. But by the spring of 2013, conversations between Egyptian military officers and their American counterparts were becoming mutual �bitch sessions� about Mr. Morsi, several of the Americans involved later told me.

Like others in the Pentagon, Mr. Mattis, then a Marine general in charge of Central Command, often argued that the Muslim Brotherhood was just a different shade of Al Qaeda � even though the Brotherhood had said for decades that it opposed violence and favored elections while Al Qaeda, in turn, denounced the Brothers as na�ve patsies for the West. �They are all swimming in the same sea,� General Mattis later said in a speech looking back on the period. He blamed Mr. Morsi�s own �imperious leadership� for his downfall.

General Flynn, who has since pleaded guilty to lying to federal investigators under an agreement with the special prosecutor, headed the Defense Intelligence Agency at the time. He visited Cairo in the months before the coup to talk to the generals about Mr. Morsi. Whether the Brotherhood or Al Qaeda, �It is all the same ideology,� he told me in 2016.

Civilians in government were skeptical, too. Secretary of State John Kerry had grown close to many of the most fiercely anti-Islamist Persian Gulf royals during his decades in the Senate, even sometimes yachting with them. He had always distrusted the Brotherhood, he told me years later. When he visited Cairo for the first time as secretary of state in March 2013, he took an immediate dislike to Mr. Morsi.

�He is the dumbest cluck I ever met,� Mr. Kerry told his chief of staff as they left the presidential palace. �This isn�t going to work. These guys are wacko.�

Mr. Kerry got along better in his one-on-one meeting with Gen. Abdel Fattah el-Sisi. A former military intelligence chief, General Sisi had vaulted himself into the job of defense minister in a shake-up just a few months before.

�I will not let my country go down the drain,� General Sisi told Mr. Kerry, as he later recalled to me. He knew then that �Morsi was cooked.� General Sisi was prepared to intervene. Mr. Kerry felt partly relieved, he told me.

�It was reassuring that Egypt would not fall into a civil war or a complete massacre of the public or an implosion,� Mr. Kerry said, although he added, �I did not sit back and think, �Great, our problems are going to be solved.��

Senior American diplomats in Cairo had told me that March that a military intervention was �extraordinarily unlikely.� But by the next month, Ambassador Anne Patterson was picking up other signals from the top generals. In an encrypted email, she warned at least some in the White House that �if not imminent, a coup was a high likelihood within a few months,� one official told me. She predicted that any military intervention would surely be brutal.

The White House was sending Secretary of Defense Chuck Hagel talking points intended to warn General Sisi that Washington would punish a coup. Among other things, United States law mandated a cutoff of aid to any military that overturned an elected leader.

But the message Mr. Hagel delivered �was totally, totally different,� a senior official on the National Security Council who read transcripts of the calls later told me. �The White House wanted the message to be �Democracy is important,� and Hagel wanted it to be �We want to have a good relationship.� We never could get him to deliver stern talking points.�

In an interview in early 2016, Mr. Hagel told me that he had been besieged by complaints about Mr. Morsi from Israel, Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates. Mr. Hagel said that Crown Prince Mohammed bin Zayed al-Nahyan, the emirates� de facto ruler and military chief, had called the Muslim Brotherhood �the most dangerous element afoot in the Middle East today.�

Israeli leaders had said they were counting on General Sisi because they worried that � despite Mr. Morsi�s repeated pledges � the Muslim Brotherhood might threaten the border or help Hamas. And General Sisi himself had told Mr. Hagel that �there are some very evil, very bad forces afoot � you cannot understand it like we can understand it here.�

Mr. Hagel said he had agreed with them all and sought to reassure them: The Muslim Brotherhood �is dangerous � we recognize that,� Mr. Hagel said he told the Emiratis. �I don�t live in Cairo, you do,� Mr. Hagel said he had told General Sisi. �You do have to protect your security, protect your country.�

�On an island in our own government�
On June 30, millions of protesters took the streets across Egypt to demand Mr. Morsi�s ouster. The next day, Egyptian Air Force F‑16s with colored contrails painted hearts in the sky over downtown Cairo. The generals were openly backing the protests.

President Obama was traveling in Africa, and on July 1, he spoke for the last time with President Morsi. The Egyptian military was not �taking direction� from the United States, Mr. Obama warned, according to a White House aide�s detailed record of the conversation. But he mainly urged Mr. Morsi to strike a compromise with his civilian opponents so that his presidency became �almost a unity government.�

Follow Nelson Mandela, Mr. Obama said. He had just visited Mr. Mandela�s sickbed and recalled his post-apartheid government in South Africa. �He even put his former prison guard � the man who had been the warden at the prison where he had been held � and he put him in charge of the security services. It was because of those gestures that he showed he was about bringing the country together,� Mr. Obama told Mr. Morsi. �Be bold,� he added. �History is waiting for you.�

�Very good advice, from a sincere friend,� Mr. Morsi answered. But it was too late. The military�s presidential guard had moved Mr. Morsi into its own base, ostensibly for his safety. Two days later, on July 3, 2013, General Sisi announced Mr. Morsi�s removal.

Mr. Kerry told me he had argued at the White House that Mr. Morsi�s removal was not, in fact, a coup. General Sisi had merely bowed to the public will in order to save Egypt, Mr. Kerry said, noting that the general had announced a plan for new elections. (Mr. Sisi was elected president the next year and again in 2018, each time with more than 95 percent of the vote.)

�In Egypt, what was the alternative? It wasn�t Jeffersonian democracy,� Mr. Kerry told me. �Over whatever number of years we have put about $80 billion into Egypt. Most of the time, this is the kind of government they had � almost all of the time. And the reality is, no matter how much I wish it was different, it ain�t going to be different tomorrow.�

The United States needed the Saudis, Emiratis and Israelis for other priorities, Mr. Kerry said, and he did not want to �get into a fight with them over something as historically clear as how Egypt works.�

President Obama decided not to make any determination about whether Mr. Morsi�s ouster was or was not a coup, effectively accepting it.

�The people who wanted to have a different kind of relationship with the Egyptian people, including the president, were on an island in our own government,� Ben Rhodes, Mr. Obama�s deputy national security adviser, later told me. �There was a sense of inevitability about the military resuming control.�

The Egyptian military crushed the opponents of the takeover with a series of mass shootings, culminating on Aug. 14, 2013, in the killing of as many as 1,000. Human Rights Watch concluded that it was the biggest single-day massacre in recent history, surpassing the Tiananmen Square massacre in 1989. Egypt�s police soon widened the crackdown to suppress independent liberal, leftist, feminist and Christian organizers as well. And a backlash against the takeover ignited an extremist insurgency centered on the North Sinai that continues today.

President Trump and his advisers have hailed Mr. Sisi as a model Arab leader. �A fantastic guy� who �took control of Egypt, and he really took control of it,� Mr. Trump said when he first met Mr. Sisi.

Mr. Mattis no longer contends that �imperious leadership� is a problem in Egypt. In a public talk before he became Mr. Trump�s secretary of defense, he celebrated Mr. Sisi for trying �to reduce the amount of negatives about the Muslim religion,� concluding that �it�s time for us to support him and take our own side in this.�

�The only way to support Egypt�s maturation as a country with civil society, with democracy,� he argued, �is to support President el‑Sisi.�

# ? Sep 21, 2019 19:18

Grape: Nov 16, 2017; Happily shilling for China!

The Cold War never ended in the Middle East policy wise.

# ? Sep 21, 2019 19:24

Libluini: May 18, 2012; I gravitated towards the Greens, eventually even joining the party itself.

The Linke is a party I grudgingly accept exists, but I've learned enough about DDR-history I can't bring myself to trust a party that was once the SED, a party leading the corrupt state apparatus ...; Grimey Drawer

Numerical Anxiety posted:

(This is not ignoring, say, the Ottoman genocides, but at least they managed to kind of hide those from international scrutiny during the conflict)

That makes them worse, not better

# ? Sep 21, 2019 20:07

Randarkman: Jul 18, 2011

Libluini posted:

That makes them worse, not better

As already stated the point was that it didn't receive so much attention during the war, which left more attention on German war crimes. I'm not quite sure if that's exactly what happened though, the Armenian genocide was being reported on by various people as it was happening. I think part of it might just be that more focus was pointed at Germany as clearly the most dangerous and powerful of the Central Powers and also ostensibly a "civilized nation", so it was more shocking, while everyone essentially expected the Turks to be terrible ("the Terrible Turk" was essentially a kind of mantra).

I woudl say that maybe people in the West didn't really care that much for Armenians, but I doubt if that's that true, because you had plenty of other occasions where Turkish mistreatment of Christian minorities had made headlines in the preceding decdes.

There's also other atrocities in WWI which often don't seem to have made much more than local impact, such as Russian pogroms against Jews, both in the early war when they invaded Galicia and routinely rounded up, deported, plundered, humiliated and randomly killed Jews and then later during the great retreat when they essentially forced most of the Jewish population in the Pale of Settlement to relocate (believing they could become a fifth column for Germany) which resulted in unknown numbers of deaths (probably in the hundreds of thousands). And then there's the Austro-Hungarians (and later Bulgarians) who were absolutely brutal in their reprisals against Serbian civilians when they invaded (Serbia lost something like 25% of its total population during the war).

Randarkman fucked around with this message at 20:26 on Sep 21, 2019

# ? Sep 21, 2019 20:21

Rent-A-Cop: Oct 15, 2004; I posted my food for USPOL Thanksgiving!

WAR CRIME GIGOLO posted:

Well thats even worse isnt it? Because that means more is coming.

It's likely going to be a handful of Patriot batteries to protect high value targets and/or Americans.

The Saudis have Patriot, but they are laughably incompetent.

Even with Donnie the Dove at the helm nobody seems all that interested in getting into a new mess with Iran just because the Saudis are too poo poo at war to effectively murder a bunch of shepherds.

Rent-A-Cop fucked around with this message at 20:53 on Sep 21, 2019

# ? Sep 21, 2019 20:50

Ham: Apr 30, 2009; You're BALD!

Another night of protests in Egypt, specifically in the city of Suez - currently being dispersed with pellets and tear gas.

Live feed: https://www.facebook.com/mohamed.saied.18/videos/1662633620534549/

Suez was one of the first cities to follow Cairo and go all in on protests back in 2011.

# ? Sep 21, 2019 22:31

Savy Saracen salad: Oct 15, 2013

In his latest video, Mohammed Ali is calling for a million man/woman protest on Friday. Lets see how this plays out

# ? Sep 22, 2019 10:39

Dr Kool-AIDS: Mar 26, 2004

I don't think this is really news to anyone who reads this thread, but it's nice to see the Washington Post editorial board saying it since they've often been pretty hawkish in the past.

https://twitter.com/lrozen/status/1175501361716301826

# ? Sep 22, 2019 13:44

Throatwarbler: Nov 17, 2008; by vyelkin

kind of weird to see people in this thread who un-ironically believe American policy is some kind of force for good in the world

# ? Sep 22, 2019 14:29

Phil Moscowitz: Feb 19, 2007; If blood be the price of admiralty,
Lord God, we ha' paid in full!

Throatwarbler posted:

kind of weird to see people in this thread who un-ironically believe American policy is some kind of force for good in the world

Does anyone educated believe this about anyone�s foreign policy? Foreign policy of all states is the same: maximize national interest. Whether it�s a zero sum calculation or not is the only real distinction.

# ? Sep 22, 2019 15:20

Less Claypool: Apr 16, 2009; More Primus For Fucks Sake.

Phil Moscowitz posted:

Does anyone educated believe this about anyone�s foreign policy? Foreign policy of all states is the same: maximize national interest. Whether it�s a zero sum calculation or not is the only real distinction.

There are unfortunately. Even Christopher Hitchens was patriotically openly for the Iraq war.

# ? Sep 22, 2019 16:54

Helsing: Aug 23, 2003; DON'T POST IN THE ELECTION THREAD UNLESS YOU JOE BIDEN

Phil Moscowitz posted:

Does anyone educated believe this about anyone�s foreign policy? Foreign policy of all states is the same: maximize national interest. Whether it�s a zero sum calculation or not is the only real distinction.

Nah, different government's behave differently, you can't just reduce all government behaviour to the maximization of a fictitious concept like "national interest", especially since the "national interest" is at best a euphemism for what powerful domestic interests want, not some calculated sense of what is really going to benefit the average citizen.

# ? Sep 22, 2019 17:09

Phil Moscowitz: Feb 19, 2007; If blood be the price of admiralty,
Lord God, we ha' paid in full!

Helsing posted:

Nah, different government's behave differently, you can't just reduce all government behaviour to the maximization of a fictitious concept like "national interest", especially since the "national interest" is at best a euphemism for what powerful domestic interests want, not some calculated sense of what is really going to benefit the average citizen.

Sure, but none of them operate �to be a force for good in the world.� Anyone who believes that doesn�t pay attention to the world.

Lol at thinking �national interest� is a fictitious concept. Or that it has to be about benefiting the average citizen.

# ? Sep 22, 2019 18:41

Helsing: Aug 23, 2003; DON'T POST IN THE ELECTION THREAD UNLESS YOU JOE BIDEN

Phil Moscowitz posted:

Sure, but none of them operate �to be a force for good in the world.� Anyone who believes that doesn�t pay attention to the world.

Lol at thinking �national interest� is a fictional concept.

"All states... maximize [their] national interest" is how Realists (the school of foreign policy thought, not to be mistaken for actual realists) attempt to justify their application of neoclassical economic methodology to the study of interstate relationships. So they propose a bunch of law like axioms - that the international system is anarchic, that state's pursue their rational self interest, that states are unitary, and that all states are principally concerned with their own survival, and based on then based on these axioms various assumptions about state behavior can be deduced (much in the way that a neoclassical economist can use a model of labour market supply and demand to deduce from first principles that increasing the minimum wage will reduce employment).

It's a bad way to interpret international state behaviour that relies on an unrealistic level of abstraction to appear plausible. States are not "unitary" and their national interests can't be usefully reduced to a simplistic imperative for "survival". The entire approach is based around erasing the crucial conflicts that occur within state's between different interest groups. A theory of international relations that is more or less premised on the idea that a state and that privileges the state as the uniquely important actor in international affairs is fundamentally flawed.

# ? Sep 22, 2019 18:58

Phil Moscowitz: Feb 19, 2007; If blood be the price of admiralty,
Lord God, we ha' paid in full!

The basic realist model is too simple because it�s the underlying framework for more complex analysis. It�s absolutely not a bad way to interpret international relations and it has been the driving force behind US foreign policy up until we elected an unqualified criminal. US foreign policy has always been about advancing what are viewed by policymakers as US interests through the application of power�whether those are defined by private, corporate, security, or whatever (sometimes erroneous) interests those policymakers are emphasizing with a particular course of action. More �liberal� actions by the US are taken when they suit realist objectives, and when they don�t, the inconvenient liberal positions are jettisoned. Cafeteria liberalism.

But whatever, if you reject realism entirely we can just agree to disagree.

# ? Sep 22, 2019 19:13

Helsing: Aug 23, 2003; DON'T POST IN THE ELECTION THREAD UNLESS YOU JOE BIDEN

Phil Moscowitz posted:

The basic realist model is too simple because it�s the underlying framework for more complex analysis. It�s absolutely not a bad way to interpret international relations and it has been the driving force behind US foreign policy up until we elected an unqualified criminal. US foreign policy has always been about advancing what are viewed by policymakers as US interests through the application of power�whether those are defined by private, corporate, security, or whatever (sometimes erroneous) interests those policymakers are emphasizing with a particular course of action. More �liberal� actions by the US are taken when they suit realist objectives, and when they don�t, the inconvenient liberal positions are jettisoned. Cafeteria liberalism.

But whatever, if you reject realism entirely we can just agree to disagree.

This seems to effectively say "If the state does something, it was done in national interests, therefore everything the state does is in the national interest by definition". None of this would be necessary if we simply drop the assumption that states are unitary or that the state is the uniquely important actor in all international affairs. Your commitment to the methodological assumptions and terminology of realism is forcing you into adopting a vague and contradictory definition of "national interests" when you'd be better off abandoning the utility maximization framework and finding a more realistic set of starting assumptions.

# ? Sep 22, 2019 19:35

Phil Moscowitz: Feb 19, 2007; If blood be the price of admiralty,
Lord God, we ha' paid in full!

Helsing posted:

This seems to effectively say "If the state does something, it was done in national interests, therefore everything the state does is in the national interest by definition". None of this would be necessary if we simply drop the assumption that states are unitary or that the state is the uniquely important actor in all international affairs. Your commitment to the methodological assumptions and terminology of realism is forcing you into adopting a vague and contradictory definition of "national interests" when you'd be better off abandoning the utility maximization framework and finding a more realistic set of starting assumptions.

Like what?

Also I didn�t say �states are unitary.� Just that they never act out of pure altruism.

Phil Moscowitz fucked around with this message at 19:42 on Sep 22, 2019

# ? Sep 22, 2019 19:40

Charliegrs: Aug 10, 2009

I know it pretty much seems like states only operate in their own self interest but sometimes I think their might have been exceptions? Like the US involvement in Somalia in the early 90s? From what I understand, we were just trying to get those people fed. What selfish purpose was there for the US to get involved? I'm genuinely asking because I can't think of one but Im sure in the end there will be some cynical reason for it.

# ? Sep 22, 2019 20:01

Helsing: Aug 23, 2003; DON'T POST IN THE ELECTION THREAD UNLESS YOU JOE BIDEN

Phil Moscowitz posted:

Like what?

States are not unitary, their behavior is the expression of different and sometimes contradictory interests groups or individuals, social and economic factors (rather than just some imperative for the state to survive and/or maximize its relative power) are of major relevance, the state is not the only relevant actor for international affairs and it shouldn't be assumed that all states behave in the same way or that their internal constitution has no influence over their external behavior.

# ? Sep 22, 2019 20:16

V. Illych L.: Apr 11, 2008; ASK ME ABOUT LUMBER

the invasion of iraq was, emphatically, not in the US collective national interest. it was however in the interest of certain powerful groups influential with the american government

# ? Sep 22, 2019 20:17

Phil Moscowitz: Feb 19, 2007; If blood be the price of admiralty,
Lord God, we ha' paid in full!

V. Illych L. posted:

the invasion of iraq was, emphatically, not in the US collective national interest. it was however in the interest of certain powerful groups influential with the american government

�Collective interest� is not what matters. What matters is what policymakers believe the national interest to be (which has never been collective�often with horrible consequences for large sections of the population). The Iraq invasion was stupid neoconservative �force of good in the world through application of military power to mold international affairs for US interests.�

Re: Somalia, the US operated within the mandate of a UN peacemaking operation, which then converted to a manhunt for Aidid once US personnel were killed. �Realism� is not the end all be all of foreign policy and doesn�t require states to forego international cooperation, collective security, and other �liberal� policies. Stability and expanded spheres of influence benefit the interests of global powers and in 1993 the US was still exploring hegemony, what it meant, and how to exploit it.

The fact that the US withdrew support for the UN operation after the battle of Mogadishu demonstrates that the objective of disarming warlords and feeding people was evaluated and rejected once policymakers determined UNOSOM was no longer aligned with US interests.

# ? Sep 22, 2019 20:36

Phil Moscowitz: Feb 19, 2007; If blood be the price of admiralty,
Lord God, we ha' paid in full!

Helsing posted:

States are not unitary, their behavior is the expression of different and sometimes contradictory interests groups or individuals, social and economic factors (rather than just some imperative for the state to survive and/or maximize its relative power) are of major relevance, the state is not the only relevant actor for international affairs and it shouldn't be assumed that all states behave in the same way or that their internal constitution has no influence over their external behavior.

True, there are dozens of countries�the majority of the world by far�with no real ability to influence international affairs, economically, politically, or militarily. And those countries are usually much more interested in liberalism and lacking in cohesive foreign policy.

Seriously, realism and its offshoots aren�t a �one size fits all� framework. Nobody says they are.

# ? Sep 22, 2019 20:43

Helsing: Aug 23, 2003; DON'T POST IN THE ELECTION THREAD UNLESS YOU JOE BIDEN

Phil Moscowitz posted:

�Collective interest� is not what matters. What matters is what policymakers believe the national interest to be (which has never been collective�often with horrible consequences for large sections of the population). The Iraq invasion was stupid neoconservative �force of good in the world through application of military power to mold international affairs for US interests.�

Re: Somalia, the US operated within the mandate of a UN peacemaking operation, which then converted to a manhunt for Aidid once US personnel were killed. �Realism� is not the end all be all of foreign policy and doesn�t require states to forego international cooperation, collective security, and other �liberal� policies. Stability and expanded spheres of influence benefit the interests of global powers and in 1993 the US was still exploring hegemony, what it meant, and how to exploit it.

The fact that the US withdrew support for the UN operation after the battle of Mogadishu demonstrates that the objective of disarming warlords and feeding people was evaluated and rejected once policymakers determined UNOSOM was no longer aligned with US interests.

I still am not clear on what your actual definition of "US interests" actually is. You seem to be describing a style of rhetoric used by policy makers rather than a distinctive goal. In your mind is it ever even possible for the state to not act in its own interests?

Phil Moscowitz posted:

True, there are dozens of countries—the majority of the world by far—with no real ability to influence international affairs, economically, politically, or militarily. And those countries are usually much more interested in liberalism and lacking in cohesive foreign policy.

Seriously, realism and its offshoots aren’t a “one size fits all” framework. Nobody says they are.

Perhaps I didn't make myself clearer when I mentioned economic issues. Let me try to state this more directly. Realism introduces a simplifying assumption that says the state is the only real actor in international affairs (so large corporations, criminal mafias, elite power networks, non-state actors, are generally held to be of second order significance or their actions are always somehow reducible to the policy of this or that state). In order to make state behavior predictable a set of axioms are proposed: the state is assumed to be unitary (this is necessary for the state to have a national interest), the state is presumed to be motivated by its own survival, the state is presumed to do this in a basically rational manner (i.e. all states behave in basically the same way, as you yourself asserted). Taken together these assumptions make it possible to construct a relatively straightforward model of state behavior very reminiscent of models found in neoclassical micro-economics in which the behavior of the agents can be deduced from the underlying rules of the system.

My criticism here is that 'the state' is not the obvious default unit of analysis for international relations. States are not always as homogeneous in either their internal structures or their behavior as this theory requires them to be. Internal divisions such as personal power struggles, disputes between rival political parties, class conflicts, ethnic tensions, religious clashes or subregional rivalries are vitally important for understanding how government's behave in the international arena. You can't just dismiss these as secondary factors - in some cases they actually outrank any abstract commitment to state "survival". The state is not a living entity it is the summation of many different individuals and groups. When you make highly abstract and sweeping statements like claiming that all states are merely motivated to "maximize national interest" you're obscuring a lot more than you're illuminating.

# ? Sep 22, 2019 22:04

Herstory Begins Now: Aug 5, 2003; SOME REALLY TEDIOUS DUMB SHIT THAT SUCKS ASS TO READ ->>

Just write your manifesto instead of trying to get us to argue it out of you. Literally no one in this thread is arguing that american foreign policy is some national interest serving poo poo or a force for good or for textbook realism or anything remotely similar.

# ? Sep 22, 2019 22:56

Phil Moscowitz: Feb 19, 2007; If blood be the price of admiralty,
Lord God, we ha' paid in full!

I�m not writing a term paper for the IR degree I got 20 years ago. I�m shitposting in response to someone pointing out that people think American policy is a �force for good in the world� which is ludicrous whether you think Morgenthau is stupid or not

# ? Sep 22, 2019 23:18

Herstory Begins Now: Aug 5, 2003; SOME REALLY TEDIOUS DUMB SHIT THAT SUCKS ASS TO READ ->>

Phil Moscowitz posted:

I�m not writing a term paper for the IR degree I got 20 years ago. I�m shitposting in response to someone pointing out that people think American policy is a �force for good in the world� which is ludicrous whether you think Morgenthau is stupid or not

That wasn't directed at you

Herstory Begins Now fucked around with this message at 23:50 on Sep 22, 2019

# ? Sep 22, 2019 23:46

Ardennes: May 12, 2002

Herstory Begins Now posted:

That wasn't directed at you

Btw, one factor in our intervention into Somalia, was that the previous Barre government was one of our proxies (versus Soviet aligned Ethiopia) and we still had some invested interest there even after the Soviets had fallen. Obviously our interests started to wane as Cold War momentum faded.

# ? Sep 23, 2019 14:25

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# ? May 24, 2024 16:11

Squalid: Nov 4, 2008

Sometime ago I read through a several of the army's and State department's post-intervention internal summaries of the Somalia intervention and as I recall they gave two justifications for the occupation in 1991. The first, and I think it was sincere, was the Somali need for famine relief and the requirement of security to distribute the food aid. I think the humanitarian motive was real the course of the intervention does not make sense without it.

The second justification is more like a typical national or strategic level motive. It was that the collapse of the Somali government into anarchy was seen as a threat to the international order of sovereign states. This fear also explains why the world has refused to acknowledge the government of Somaliland even though there has been no authority capable of opposing it's secession in Mogadishu since 1990. Maintaining the fiction of a Somali central state is seen as necessary to support the basis of the world political system.

# ? Sep 23, 2019 17:37

The Something Awful Forums > Discussion > Debate & Discussion > Middle East Thread: Clarissa Explains the Fall

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