"So in many cases, solutions that might actually work are politically excluded, because of western ideology about the causes and remedies for conflict, as well as the range of aesthetically-pleasing permitted outcomes. It is a commonplace of western Liberal thinking that “lasting peace” is based on all sorts of good things like democracy, human rights, inclusivity, the suppression of corruption, multi-party political systems etc. "
The West cares nothing for these things, except to the extent they are in furtherance of Empire. Same with proposed solutions or the problems they are ostensibly intended to solve.
If you are unable to understand the problem all solutions are wrong as you just demonstrated with your complete misunderstanding of the war in Bosnia&Hercegovina (latter part matters) and Yugoslavia in general.
" . . . sabotaged by groups in Europe and especially in the US . . . "
Names?
" . . . Political power is in the end a zero-sum game . . . "
Indeed? Where is there not anything? Political power is a balance of powers, very much a something, very not a nothing, not a zero.
". . . no agreement about what “nation” or for that matter “people” actually meant in practice . . . "
Inviting this effort at clarification: "Civilizations comprise cultures, cultures comprise societies, formal and informal, and societies comprise organizations, most formal and some involuntary. Cultures outside civilizations -- e.g., Jews, Evangelicals, Jesuits, Mormons — are inherently dangerous, as are societies outside cultures — e.g., criminal organizations — and organizations outside societies — e.g., self-appointed governments."
" . . . Sometimes the best that we can do is to manage intractable problems as well as we can. Sometimes there is no way out. . . . "
1- To not misunderstand a situation, it helps to pull back to a wider view of it. For example, our "intractable problems" today may be in themselves intractable but in *their* context elements of a wide, slow, and arguably inexorable civilizational movement from, for example, evolved nation-state to original civilization-state.
2- Such that, what in granular looks like no way out, in perspective looks like -- how did Heraclitus put it? -- the father of all things. Liberal democratic norms don't have to be shunned or opposed. They can just be ignored while being avoided and run over.
"Liberal democratic norms" means, democratic bombardment. Its intrinsic posture is sententious spite.
IMO, the nations are moving from a desire for internal and external *security* based on the Westphalian model of an evolved nation-state to a desire for internal and external *order* based on, shall we say, the Eurasian model of an original civilization-state.
The difference between a nation-state and a civilization-state is at least an order of magnitude. A nation-state rests on a relatively consistent uni-culture. A civilization-state rests on an emphatically diverse multi-culture.
There can never be security, not in this world. Nor can there ever be peace, because to make things, anything at all, there has to be war (struggle). But there can be order. It's order, internal and external, that the nations seek now. Order, not peace or security, characterizes a civilization-state. It also characterizes a successful warrior.
I think Mackinder saw this truth more deeply and widely ("The Geographical Pivot of History") than he perhaps realized.
Not in order to argue with your thesis, but just to push back a little in a topical fashion. Here find linked the latest article by the editor of the Palestinian Chronicle, Ramzy Baroud entitled "Time for Israel to Pay: This is How to Prevent a New Nakba in Palestine" from which the closing paragraph:
"The ‘Gaza Nakba’ must be rejected, not just by words, but through solid Arab and international action, to prevent Israel from taking advantage of the war to expel Palestinians out of their homeland, again. They must also work to hold Israel accountable for its war crimes, past and present, starting with the original Nakba of 1948."
I'm not saying he has provided an ideal solution, but reading his article just after yours made me think: 'sure, Aurelian is right that sometimes there is no solution to Problem X, but what if the problem is seen as Y instead of X?' In this case, what if the problem is seen as 'the ongoing blatant ethnic cleansing of Palestinians from their homes' not 'how to resolve the conflict between the two peoples'? In the former case, solutions abound. None of them easy but all quite feasible. Whether they will be applied is another question but it doesn't mean that the problem is not resolvable only that there is insufficient resolution to do so.
Immediately, for example, international military forces could flood into Gaza and the West Bank and then impose a bilateral ceasefire. That is a bare minimum but at the least a ceasefire could be imposed following which a longer-term solution could be attempted but meanwhile an intervention can be effected by the world community, or the Middle Eastern States, to prevent an ongoing war crime.
It is a war crime. It must be stopped. This is simple. It is unequivocal. And there is a solution, at least to that aspect of the wider issue. Some might argue this is a partial, not a whole, solution, but when a partial solution can be done, better to do that than nothing at all making the perfect the enemy of the good. Moreover, providing that solution will change the parameters of the problem after which new solutions might be found that were not perceivable before the current incremental solution.
When reading it I couldn't stop thinking about the current political situation in Spain. The Spanish Constitution of 1978 did not expressly prohibit the presence of separatist parties, although it did expressly prohibit the indissolubility of the Spanish State. With roots in the 19th century and early 20th century (older according to its promoters), movements and parties have developed that propose the independence of territories that have always been part of it since Spain existed as a political entity. As you say, they have invented a mythical and dubious history of the separatist regions and their possible grievances. Since the establishment of democracy in 1978, these parties have served to shore up parliamentary majorities with the majority parties, nominally socialist and conservative, taking more state powers to their regional governments in exchange. In 2017, the regional government of Catalonia called for an illegal referendum and a unilateral declaration of independence that was prosecuted by justice. Some of the political leaders of the fraudulent independence spent a short period of time in prison until they were pardoned and others fled abroad. Now, one of these separatist parties has been necessary to form a government with the already President D. Pedro Sanchez, nominally socialist. In exchange, an amnesty law has been drafted specifically to forgive political and economic crimes (embezzlement of public money, creation of street terrorism groups, among others). A referendum has also been agreed on the independence of Catalonia, which the Spanish Constitution expressly prohibits. The Spanish population is very divided (even more so in Catalonia where 50% or more of the population is not separatist) and is being led to choose extreme positions. All this reminds us that countries do not lose large parts of their territory with opportunistic political agreements but, as you explain in your essay, violence appears when matters of great symbolic, emotional and historical charge are treated as a deceptive transaction. The legal and political reaction of the EU is important because it could be that the EU, if it does not radically pursue these frivolities, would be signaling that the disintegration of part of its territories is possible as a way of weakening the historical nation-states and more adequately subjugating them to the resulting pieces to the policies of the Union
As usual, very stimulating, enriching, and exquisit thinking. Yet, when seen from a psychological viewpoint, we could also ask: "is it preferable, to the human mind, to look at an awful reality straight in the face, or wouldn't it be more reasonable (so to speak) to be blind and imagine a world where solutions exist?". Saramago comes to mind.
The Franco-Algerian War was indeed such a disaster. The deGaulle-Ben Bella "solution" created a failed Algerian nation-state at the cost of hundred-thousands of lives and the violent erthnic cleansing undergone by Algeria's whole european minority. Yet at the very outset a complete solution was at hand and proposed by no less a figure than Jacques Soustelle--complete integration of Algeria into the French Republic with full citizenship and equal rights for all Al;gerians. But it was immediately buried by the entire French political elite and not supported by any Algerian political faction. Instead we got FLN terrorism and Mitterand's "La Seule Negotiation C'est La Guerre." Forty years after the FLN imposed its dictatorships Jacques Chirac asked an square massed full of Algerian Youth what France could do for them. The reply was a deafening chorus "Des Visas! Des Visas!"
Excellent post as usual! Maybe a better title would be "No Way Out Given Self-Imposed Constraints and Biases in Decision Making."
You state this about the Bosnian conflict: "Even early on, it was obvious to those dealing with the problem what the actual solution was. It would have meant turning Bosnia into an international protectorate, with an administration capable of making and enforcing laws and rules, disbanding all armies, and very slowly allowing political life to resume under very firm constraints."
So, arguably it's not absolutely insoluble. But it would be hard. This might have required some kind of multi-lateral peace-keeping force. Well, why not? I've been thinking that this is a necessary ingredient for any eventual peace in Israel-Palestine: one state, still a homeland for the world's Jews and Palestinians, equal under the law. It would include signatories of commitment by all of Israel's neighbors to the security of this new State. This would require disarming both Jews and Palestinians and maintaining the peace by force for a lengthy period. Well, why not?
Well, maybe not. You mention another snare: this would be unacceptable within existing self-imposed constraints. One constraint you mention (also in relation to Bosnia) is that the West's chosen side needs to WIN. What's the point of being the world's hegemon if you can't ensure that your side "wins"?
But now it's clear the U.S.-NATO never had this status. It couldn't impose a "solution" in Bosnia any more than it can impose a solution in Gaza. We can either keep the old constraints and assumptions in place and hope for the best (which never worked) or relax the constraints with a new vision. With a much more realistic vision, problems that seem insoluble can become soluble, right? Without vision the people perish.
But wait, is getting to a new vision possible? Ultimately, as with Israel, it comes down to the capacities of our leaders and their supposedly smart helpers. But the donor class does not want vision, they want one-dimensional obedient simpletons in positions of leadership, and they have a role in selecting their helpers too (Sullivan, Biden, Nuland). In the U.S., ever since Bush Senior at least, we've gotten simpletons in two flavors: 1) charisma and rhetorical flair (Democrats) and 2) plain simpletons with neither charisma nor rhetorical flair (Republicans). Biden is an exception, being clearly in the second category.
So a deep structural constraint, is not the electorate, but the donor class. In the case of Israel, we need to look at the influence of AIPAC (and other donors) on Congress. What's very interesting about Israel is that Democrats depend more on the black vote to win elections than the Jewish vote or Jewish donors. Not all members of a coalition will stay in their assignment compartments. Blacks are standing up for Palestinian rights, clearly outside their assigned compartment in the coalition (better treatment of blacks in the U.S.). Van Jones is trying to corral Blacks back into their domestic compartment, without success. Consequently, AIPAC and other supporters of Israel will do absolutely everything they can to get Republicans elected in 2024. With blacks sympathetic to Palestinians, the Democratic coalition will start getting very wobbly on Israel.
Biden is, so far, trying to prove AIPAC wrong by his willingness to sacrifice his presidency to prove his faithfulness to Israel, but I predict that, eventually, he will cave to keep his coalition from fracturing. He may already be too late. He's in a bind because it's so close to the next election, and he's dropping like a stone in the polls.
So, I guess I've changed my mind: your original title is right. It's not a "self-imposed" constraint after all! It's a deep structural constraint on both parties. Perhaps Jews and Palestinians must get plain exhausted before this constraint will be relaxed and a new vision can emerge. As you point out, the Dayton accords were possible from sheer exhaustion (although, as you say, that didn't work out too well either!).
Even exhaustion from the horror of war may not be enough to motivate the parties to re-think all assumptions and make peace. But I do think a peace-keeping force, adequately funded and empowered for a long enough period of time, or some other kind of bold experiment, is worth trying. If we don't solve this, Israel is going to drop a nuke on someone!
Where the West is concerned, I would argue that the pressure isn't to DO something so much as to BE SEEN TO BE DOING something -- both domestically and internationally. This further multiplies opportunities for self-delusion, smugness and ineffectiveness, none of which are terribly attractive for those on the outside looking in ...
1-"Any presentation of a “solution” implies three components. They are (1) what you think the problem is about (2) what you plan to do and (3) the situation you hope and expect to produce at the end"
In summary, per Yogi Berra, "If you do not know where you are going, you might never get there".
2-"In the words of one academic to whom I outlined this analysis many years ago: '“you’re just going to let them die then?” But this is a misreading of the situation, as well as a form of emotional blackmail. It’s really a question of recognising limitations, and especially what’s impossible."
I do not see the statements of your academic interlocutor as misreading the situation or as emotional
blackmail. Had the West stopped butressing israel when it unloaded its unwanted jews in Palestine, a
much fairer local equilibrium could have been possible. Perhaps those who sent the US armadas, US,
British and French SF, and plane loads of ordnance to israel , do envision a "possible". We would
have seen such a solution in the Ukraine had the Russians been weaker. In that case it was
"impossible", much to the chagrin of "cookies, F the EU" nudelman and her compatriots.
Overall, November 7th has shown the bankruptcy of the "Western Liberalism" to all and sundry. Was this worth the 5000+ dead children of Gaza? perhaps it is. This is ~ 2 orders of magnitude smaller than what Madeleine Albreight thought "was worth it" to subjugate Iraq and make the Middle East suitable for the izzies.
I wonder what will transpire after the "fat lady sings".
Regarding Krajina, which has been mentioned in the article, the facts are not so simple. In the 17th century Serbs moved from their territories occupied by Ottomans and were offered the land and the status of the free men, in exchange for the military services and the protection of the Austro-Hungarian Empire. This has caused the animosity of the Croatian population who had no rights and were serfs. To make the long story short, by the WW1, there was a constant rise of ultranationalist movement of Croats backed by some elements in the Catholic Church (mostly Jesuits). After the WW1, the Croatian elites, in order to avoid war reparations, have accepted the union with the Kingdom of Serbia under the Serbian dynasty. The Croatian ultranationalists (named Ustasha) have continued to undermine the political system of Yugoslavia, resulting in the assassination of the King Alexander in 1934 in Marseilles.
In 1941. Ustasha movement backed by Nazis formed the Independent State of Croatia, in which the most horrific atrocities have been committed against Serbs, Jews, Roma and Communists. The concentration camps were notorious for its brutality and mass executions were performed all over the country under the rule of the 1/3: 1/3 of the Serbs shall be killed, 1/3 of the Serbs shall be expelled and 1/3 of the Serbs shall be converted into Catholicism. By some estimates, around 700000 Serbs have been executed with a participation of significant number of catholic priests.
After the WW2, in which the Serbs were majority of the Partizan forces liberating Yugoslavia, the communists have seized the power and established the policy of “Brotherhood and Unity”, banning all types of nationalism, which brought peace and stability for the decades to come. The defeated Nazis have found the sanctuary in Canada, USA and the South America, carefully nourished by CIA.
In 1974. the last constitution of Socialist Yugoslavia has been ratified by which Yugoslavia became a federation of 6 republics, and one of them, Socialist Republic of Serbia had 2 autonomous provinces: Vojvodina and Kosovo & Metohija in order to protect the rights of the minorities.
In Socialist Republic of Croatia 1974 Constitution, article 1 stated that it was “the state of Croats and Serbs in Croatia”, so there was no need for a political or territorial autonomy because two nations were equal.
However, after the fall of the Berlin Wall, Yugoslavia started to “open” and allowed multi pluralism, which led to founding of ethnic based political parties.
After the first democratic elections in Croatia in 1990, Croatian nationalists backed by CIA and BND won the majority and changed the Constitution without the consent of the second constitutive nation - Serbs. This led to the armed rebellion and the civil war, which later spread to Bosnia & Herzegovina. The result is the largest ethnic cleansing after the WW2, when in 1995 250000 Serbs were expelled from their homes supposedly protected by the UN peacekeepers, me being one of them.
Things are never simple as they look, and the people in the West often don’t care enough to try to get the right answers, but rather follow the narrative.
Empires valued subjects because they were useful. The end of empires meant the emergence of states based on more traditional allegiances such as blood, religion and economic relationships. In Europe this unstable phase was "cured" by wars that led to wholesale administrative population transfers (WWII in the east), semi-violent ethnic cleansing (Poles vs Ukrainians; Serbs vs Croats; Greeks vs Turks) and genocide (in the case of the Jews). At the end of WWII the problem of the Jews was "solved" by a population transfer to Palestine and a war which led to ethnic cleansings. We got the largely Jewish-free Arab states like Yemen and Morocco, the largely Arab-free Jewish state of Israel and the Jewish-free West Bank and Gaza strip. The possible long-term solution of a grumpy Jewish-Arab truce with recognized borders for the Jewish and Arab Palestinian states with unintentionally untended by the 1967 War and an Israel political system which empowered fringe parties like the Jewish religious nationalists whose aim was a Jewish state based on Old Testament boundaries "from the Jordan to the sea". Once the "change the borders by slow ethnic cleansing" was underway, peace became impossible and both sides now seem to have gone Old Testament; everything between the Jordan and the sea is contested and the US must opposed democratic change in the Arab world because genuine elections would lead to anti-Israeli governments.
Gaza simply proves that you can herd sheep with thousand-pound bombs. But the videos will not be pretty. And much to the shock of Jewish Americans the traditional sympathy for the Jews has been replaced by a more sympathetic view of the Palestinians and I believe an even more dangerous (for Israel) attitude of "A plague on both their houses" and "Not my fight". The post-imperial unraveling continues.
"So in many cases, solutions that might actually work are politically excluded, because of western ideology about the causes and remedies for conflict, as well as the range of aesthetically-pleasing permitted outcomes. It is a commonplace of western Liberal thinking that “lasting peace” is based on all sorts of good things like democracy, human rights, inclusivity, the suppression of corruption, multi-party political systems etc. "
The West cares nothing for these things, except to the extent they are in furtherance of Empire. Same with proposed solutions or the problems they are ostensibly intended to solve.
"The chief cause of problems is solutions."--Eric Sevareid
If you are unable to understand the problem all solutions are wrong as you just demonstrated with your complete misunderstanding of the war in Bosnia&Hercegovina (latter part matters) and Yugoslavia in general.
One of the best analyses of international politics I’ve read in a very long time.
" . . . sabotaged by groups in Europe and especially in the US . . . "
Names?
" . . . Political power is in the end a zero-sum game . . . "
Indeed? Where is there not anything? Political power is a balance of powers, very much a something, very not a nothing, not a zero.
". . . no agreement about what “nation” or for that matter “people” actually meant in practice . . . "
Inviting this effort at clarification: "Civilizations comprise cultures, cultures comprise societies, formal and informal, and societies comprise organizations, most formal and some involuntary. Cultures outside civilizations -- e.g., Jews, Evangelicals, Jesuits, Mormons — are inherently dangerous, as are societies outside cultures — e.g., criminal organizations — and organizations outside societies — e.g., self-appointed governments."
" . . . Sometimes the best that we can do is to manage intractable problems as well as we can. Sometimes there is no way out. . . . "
1- To not misunderstand a situation, it helps to pull back to a wider view of it. For example, our "intractable problems" today may be in themselves intractable but in *their* context elements of a wide, slow, and arguably inexorable civilizational movement from, for example, evolved nation-state to original civilization-state.
2- Such that, what in granular looks like no way out, in perspective looks like -- how did Heraclitus put it? -- the father of all things. Liberal democratic norms don't have to be shunned or opposed. They can just be ignored while being avoided and run over.
"Liberal democratic norms" means, democratic bombardment. Its intrinsic posture is sententious spite.
IMO, the nations are moving from a desire for internal and external *security* based on the Westphalian model of an evolved nation-state to a desire for internal and external *order* based on, shall we say, the Eurasian model of an original civilization-state.
The difference between a nation-state and a civilization-state is at least an order of magnitude. A nation-state rests on a relatively consistent uni-culture. A civilization-state rests on an emphatically diverse multi-culture.
There can never be security, not in this world. Nor can there ever be peace, because to make things, anything at all, there has to be war (struggle). But there can be order. It's order, internal and external, that the nations seek now. Order, not peace or security, characterizes a civilization-state. It also characterizes a successful warrior.
I think Mackinder saw this truth more deeply and widely ("The Geographical Pivot of History") than he perhaps realized.
Not in order to argue with your thesis, but just to push back a little in a topical fashion. Here find linked the latest article by the editor of the Palestinian Chronicle, Ramzy Baroud entitled "Time for Israel to Pay: This is How to Prevent a New Nakba in Palestine" from which the closing paragraph:
"The ‘Gaza Nakba’ must be rejected, not just by words, but through solid Arab and international action, to prevent Israel from taking advantage of the war to expel Palestinians out of their homeland, again. They must also work to hold Israel accountable for its war crimes, past and present, starting with the original Nakba of 1948."
I'm not saying he has provided an ideal solution, but reading his article just after yours made me think: 'sure, Aurelian is right that sometimes there is no solution to Problem X, but what if the problem is seen as Y instead of X?' In this case, what if the problem is seen as 'the ongoing blatant ethnic cleansing of Palestinians from their homes' not 'how to resolve the conflict between the two peoples'? In the former case, solutions abound. None of them easy but all quite feasible. Whether they will be applied is another question but it doesn't mean that the problem is not resolvable only that there is insufficient resolution to do so.
Immediately, for example, international military forces could flood into Gaza and the West Bank and then impose a bilateral ceasefire. That is a bare minimum but at the least a ceasefire could be imposed following which a longer-term solution could be attempted but meanwhile an intervention can be effected by the world community, or the Middle Eastern States, to prevent an ongoing war crime.
It is a war crime. It must be stopped. This is simple. It is unequivocal. And there is a solution, at least to that aspect of the wider issue. Some might argue this is a partial, not a whole, solution, but when a partial solution can be done, better to do that than nothing at all making the perfect the enemy of the good. Moreover, providing that solution will change the parameters of the problem after which new solutions might be found that were not perceivable before the current incremental solution.
Excellent essay. Thank you very much Aurelien.
When reading it I couldn't stop thinking about the current political situation in Spain. The Spanish Constitution of 1978 did not expressly prohibit the presence of separatist parties, although it did expressly prohibit the indissolubility of the Spanish State. With roots in the 19th century and early 20th century (older according to its promoters), movements and parties have developed that propose the independence of territories that have always been part of it since Spain existed as a political entity. As you say, they have invented a mythical and dubious history of the separatist regions and their possible grievances. Since the establishment of democracy in 1978, these parties have served to shore up parliamentary majorities with the majority parties, nominally socialist and conservative, taking more state powers to their regional governments in exchange. In 2017, the regional government of Catalonia called for an illegal referendum and a unilateral declaration of independence that was prosecuted by justice. Some of the political leaders of the fraudulent independence spent a short period of time in prison until they were pardoned and others fled abroad. Now, one of these separatist parties has been necessary to form a government with the already President D. Pedro Sanchez, nominally socialist. In exchange, an amnesty law has been drafted specifically to forgive political and economic crimes (embezzlement of public money, creation of street terrorism groups, among others). A referendum has also been agreed on the independence of Catalonia, which the Spanish Constitution expressly prohibits. The Spanish population is very divided (even more so in Catalonia where 50% or more of the population is not separatist) and is being led to choose extreme positions. All this reminds us that countries do not lose large parts of their territory with opportunistic political agreements but, as you explain in your essay, violence appears when matters of great symbolic, emotional and historical charge are treated as a deceptive transaction. The legal and political reaction of the EU is important because it could be that the EU, if it does not radically pursue these frivolities, would be signaling that the disintegration of part of its territories is possible as a way of weakening the historical nation-states and more adequately subjugating them to the resulting pieces to the policies of the Union
As usual, very stimulating, enriching, and exquisit thinking. Yet, when seen from a psychological viewpoint, we could also ask: "is it preferable, to the human mind, to look at an awful reality straight in the face, or wouldn't it be more reasonable (so to speak) to be blind and imagine a world where solutions exist?". Saramago comes to mind.
The Franco-Algerian War was indeed such a disaster. The deGaulle-Ben Bella "solution" created a failed Algerian nation-state at the cost of hundred-thousands of lives and the violent erthnic cleansing undergone by Algeria's whole european minority. Yet at the very outset a complete solution was at hand and proposed by no less a figure than Jacques Soustelle--complete integration of Algeria into the French Republic with full citizenship and equal rights for all Al;gerians. But it was immediately buried by the entire French political elite and not supported by any Algerian political faction. Instead we got FLN terrorism and Mitterand's "La Seule Negotiation C'est La Guerre." Forty years after the FLN imposed its dictatorships Jacques Chirac asked an square massed full of Algerian Youth what France could do for them. The reply was a deafening chorus "Des Visas! Des Visas!"
In any case, it's very important to make the difference between problems and predicaments.
The former have solutions, the latter have only outcomes.
So when facing a predicament, better get ready and stop messing around...
Excellent post as usual! Maybe a better title would be "No Way Out Given Self-Imposed Constraints and Biases in Decision Making."
You state this about the Bosnian conflict: "Even early on, it was obvious to those dealing with the problem what the actual solution was. It would have meant turning Bosnia into an international protectorate, with an administration capable of making and enforcing laws and rules, disbanding all armies, and very slowly allowing political life to resume under very firm constraints."
So, arguably it's not absolutely insoluble. But it would be hard. This might have required some kind of multi-lateral peace-keeping force. Well, why not? I've been thinking that this is a necessary ingredient for any eventual peace in Israel-Palestine: one state, still a homeland for the world's Jews and Palestinians, equal under the law. It would include signatories of commitment by all of Israel's neighbors to the security of this new State. This would require disarming both Jews and Palestinians and maintaining the peace by force for a lengthy period. Well, why not?
Well, maybe not. You mention another snare: this would be unacceptable within existing self-imposed constraints. One constraint you mention (also in relation to Bosnia) is that the West's chosen side needs to WIN. What's the point of being the world's hegemon if you can't ensure that your side "wins"?
But now it's clear the U.S.-NATO never had this status. It couldn't impose a "solution" in Bosnia any more than it can impose a solution in Gaza. We can either keep the old constraints and assumptions in place and hope for the best (which never worked) or relax the constraints with a new vision. With a much more realistic vision, problems that seem insoluble can become soluble, right? Without vision the people perish.
But wait, is getting to a new vision possible? Ultimately, as with Israel, it comes down to the capacities of our leaders and their supposedly smart helpers. But the donor class does not want vision, they want one-dimensional obedient simpletons in positions of leadership, and they have a role in selecting their helpers too (Sullivan, Biden, Nuland). In the U.S., ever since Bush Senior at least, we've gotten simpletons in two flavors: 1) charisma and rhetorical flair (Democrats) and 2) plain simpletons with neither charisma nor rhetorical flair (Republicans). Biden is an exception, being clearly in the second category.
So a deep structural constraint, is not the electorate, but the donor class. In the case of Israel, we need to look at the influence of AIPAC (and other donors) on Congress. What's very interesting about Israel is that Democrats depend more on the black vote to win elections than the Jewish vote or Jewish donors. Not all members of a coalition will stay in their assignment compartments. Blacks are standing up for Palestinian rights, clearly outside their assigned compartment in the coalition (better treatment of blacks in the U.S.). Van Jones is trying to corral Blacks back into their domestic compartment, without success. Consequently, AIPAC and other supporters of Israel will do absolutely everything they can to get Republicans elected in 2024. With blacks sympathetic to Palestinians, the Democratic coalition will start getting very wobbly on Israel.
Biden is, so far, trying to prove AIPAC wrong by his willingness to sacrifice his presidency to prove his faithfulness to Israel, but I predict that, eventually, he will cave to keep his coalition from fracturing. He may already be too late. He's in a bind because it's so close to the next election, and he's dropping like a stone in the polls.
So, I guess I've changed my mind: your original title is right. It's not a "self-imposed" constraint after all! It's a deep structural constraint on both parties. Perhaps Jews and Palestinians must get plain exhausted before this constraint will be relaxed and a new vision can emerge. As you point out, the Dayton accords were possible from sheer exhaustion (although, as you say, that didn't work out too well either!).
Even exhaustion from the horror of war may not be enough to motivate the parties to re-think all assumptions and make peace. But I do think a peace-keeping force, adequately funded and empowered for a long enough period of time, or some other kind of bold experiment, is worth trying. If we don't solve this, Israel is going to drop a nuke on someone!
Where the West is concerned, I would argue that the pressure isn't to DO something so much as to BE SEEN TO BE DOING something -- both domestically and internationally. This further multiplies opportunities for self-delusion, smugness and ineffectiveness, none of which are terribly attractive for those on the outside looking in ...
A few points, not in any order:
1-"Any presentation of a “solution” implies three components. They are (1) what you think the problem is about (2) what you plan to do and (3) the situation you hope and expect to produce at the end"
In summary, per Yogi Berra, "If you do not know where you are going, you might never get there".
2-"In the words of one academic to whom I outlined this analysis many years ago: '“you’re just going to let them die then?” But this is a misreading of the situation, as well as a form of emotional blackmail. It’s really a question of recognising limitations, and especially what’s impossible."
I do not see the statements of your academic interlocutor as misreading the situation or as emotional
blackmail. Had the West stopped butressing israel when it unloaded its unwanted jews in Palestine, a
much fairer local equilibrium could have been possible. Perhaps those who sent the US armadas, US,
British and French SF, and plane loads of ordnance to israel , do envision a "possible". We would
have seen such a solution in the Ukraine had the Russians been weaker. In that case it was
"impossible", much to the chagrin of "cookies, F the EU" nudelman and her compatriots.
Overall, November 7th has shown the bankruptcy of the "Western Liberalism" to all and sundry. Was this worth the 5000+ dead children of Gaza? perhaps it is. This is ~ 2 orders of magnitude smaller than what Madeleine Albreight thought "was worth it" to subjugate Iraq and make the Middle East suitable for the izzies.
I wonder what will transpire after the "fat lady sings".
Ishmael Zechariah
Regarding Krajina, which has been mentioned in the article, the facts are not so simple. In the 17th century Serbs moved from their territories occupied by Ottomans and were offered the land and the status of the free men, in exchange for the military services and the protection of the Austro-Hungarian Empire. This has caused the animosity of the Croatian population who had no rights and were serfs. To make the long story short, by the WW1, there was a constant rise of ultranationalist movement of Croats backed by some elements in the Catholic Church (mostly Jesuits). After the WW1, the Croatian elites, in order to avoid war reparations, have accepted the union with the Kingdom of Serbia under the Serbian dynasty. The Croatian ultranationalists (named Ustasha) have continued to undermine the political system of Yugoslavia, resulting in the assassination of the King Alexander in 1934 in Marseilles.
In 1941. Ustasha movement backed by Nazis formed the Independent State of Croatia, in which the most horrific atrocities have been committed against Serbs, Jews, Roma and Communists. The concentration camps were notorious for its brutality and mass executions were performed all over the country under the rule of the 1/3: 1/3 of the Serbs shall be killed, 1/3 of the Serbs shall be expelled and 1/3 of the Serbs shall be converted into Catholicism. By some estimates, around 700000 Serbs have been executed with a participation of significant number of catholic priests.
After the WW2, in which the Serbs were majority of the Partizan forces liberating Yugoslavia, the communists have seized the power and established the policy of “Brotherhood and Unity”, banning all types of nationalism, which brought peace and stability for the decades to come. The defeated Nazis have found the sanctuary in Canada, USA and the South America, carefully nourished by CIA.
In 1974. the last constitution of Socialist Yugoslavia has been ratified by which Yugoslavia became a federation of 6 republics, and one of them, Socialist Republic of Serbia had 2 autonomous provinces: Vojvodina and Kosovo & Metohija in order to protect the rights of the minorities.
In Socialist Republic of Croatia 1974 Constitution, article 1 stated that it was “the state of Croats and Serbs in Croatia”, so there was no need for a political or territorial autonomy because two nations were equal.
However, after the fall of the Berlin Wall, Yugoslavia started to “open” and allowed multi pluralism, which led to founding of ethnic based political parties.
After the first democratic elections in Croatia in 1990, Croatian nationalists backed by CIA and BND won the majority and changed the Constitution without the consent of the second constitutive nation - Serbs. This led to the armed rebellion and the civil war, which later spread to Bosnia & Herzegovina. The result is the largest ethnic cleansing after the WW2, when in 1995 250000 Serbs were expelled from their homes supposedly protected by the UN peacekeepers, me being one of them.
Things are never simple as they look, and the people in the West often don’t care enough to try to get the right answers, but rather follow the narrative.
Empires valued subjects because they were useful. The end of empires meant the emergence of states based on more traditional allegiances such as blood, religion and economic relationships. In Europe this unstable phase was "cured" by wars that led to wholesale administrative population transfers (WWII in the east), semi-violent ethnic cleansing (Poles vs Ukrainians; Serbs vs Croats; Greeks vs Turks) and genocide (in the case of the Jews). At the end of WWII the problem of the Jews was "solved" by a population transfer to Palestine and a war which led to ethnic cleansings. We got the largely Jewish-free Arab states like Yemen and Morocco, the largely Arab-free Jewish state of Israel and the Jewish-free West Bank and Gaza strip. The possible long-term solution of a grumpy Jewish-Arab truce with recognized borders for the Jewish and Arab Palestinian states with unintentionally untended by the 1967 War and an Israel political system which empowered fringe parties like the Jewish religious nationalists whose aim was a Jewish state based on Old Testament boundaries "from the Jordan to the sea". Once the "change the borders by slow ethnic cleansing" was underway, peace became impossible and both sides now seem to have gone Old Testament; everything between the Jordan and the sea is contested and the US must opposed democratic change in the Arab world because genuine elections would lead to anti-Israeli governments.
Gaza simply proves that you can herd sheep with thousand-pound bombs. But the videos will not be pretty. And much to the shock of Jewish Americans the traditional sympathy for the Jews has been replaced by a more sympathetic view of the Palestinians and I believe an even more dangerous (for Israel) attitude of "A plague on both their houses" and "Not my fight". The post-imperial unraveling continues.
An excellent article, that peels back all the suppositions, false arguments, narrow perspectives, and elitist metro-liberalism of this age.