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      Former Austrian President Heinz Fischer Talks to Fair Observer

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      Austria is known as a stable Central European country that is the capital of classical music. It is also the home of prominent figures in the world of science and philosophy, including Sigmund Freud and Ludwig Wittgenstein.

      In 2014, Austria had the lowest unemployment rate in the European Union. That trend declined in the years that followed, but the economy remained largely competitive. Austria is also one of the top 10 countries with the fewest number of unemployed young people among member states of the Organization for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD).

      Debate Over COVID-19 Is Exactly What Austria Needs

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      Austrians will head to the polls later this year for elections. The incumbent president, Alexander Van der Bellen, remains undecided over running again, but he is eligible for a second term in office. In the 2016 election, he defeated Norbert Hofer of the Freedom Party of Austria, thwarting his rival’s attempt to become the first far-right head of state in the EU.

      Recently identified as the world’s fifth-most peaceful country in the 2021 Global Peace Index, Austria has seen substantial economic fallout due to the COVID-19 pandemic. The government’s decision to introduce mandatory vaccination and hefty penalties for those who do not comply has stirred controversy.

      Heinz Fischer, the president of Austria between 2004 and 2016, is a seasoned lawyer who had a long career in politics. He took his first step toward becoming a national leader in early 1963, when he served as a legal assistant to the vice president of the Austrian parliament. He later became a member of parliament himself and then served as the minister of science, before leading the national council, the lower house of parliament, from 1990 to 2002. He is currently the co-chairman of the Ban Ki-moon Centre for Global Citizens in Vienna.

      Embed from Getty Images

      I spoke to Dr. Fischer about the COVID-19 pandemic, the refugee crisis in Europe, the Iran nuclear talks in the Austrian capital and more.

      The transcript has been edited for clarity.

      Kourosh Ziabari: Mr. President, according to Statistics Austria and the Austrian Institute for Economic Research approximations, the total fiscal costs of the COVID-19 pandemic for Austria amount to roughly €70 billion [$79 billion] in the 2020-22 period. As of May 2021, the government had earmarked €37 billion for relief measures. Do you think this is a liability for the Austrian economy that may result in a short- or mid-term recession, or is it a deficit that can be made up for soon? Has the government been able to handle the economic burden of the pandemic efficiently?

      Heinz Fischer: When COVID-19 reached Austria and the first lockdown became mandatory, I was surprised to hear the finance minister from the conservative party announcing that he would compensate the economic burden with “whatever it costs.” This was unusual language for a conservative minister of finance.

      All in all, the government’s relief measures were crucial for reducing Austria’s economic damage of the pandemic. The Institute for Economic Research as well as our National Bank claim that Austria will be able to go back to the path of economic growth; this will reduce unemployment and keep recession lower than a traditional conservative finance policy of strict zero deficit would have done. But the performance of the government fighting against COVID-19 was less successful.

      Ziabari: It was reported that the government is planning to introduce mandatory inoculation starting in early 2022 and that those holding out will face fines of up to $4,000. Of course, vaccination is the most effective way of combating the effects of the coronavirus. But does a vaccine mandate and handing out substantial penalties not go against democratic practice in a country known for its democratic credentials? You are no longer in office, but as an observer, do you support the decision?

      Fischer: This is one of the hottest or even the hottest topic of current political debates in Austria. To answer your question promptly and directly: Yes, I believe it is necessary and legitimate to introduce mandatory inoculation — with justified exemptions — for a limited period of time in order to protect our population and our country in the best possible way. Other European countries start thinking in a similar way.

      It is not a one-issue question. You have, on the one hand, the obligation of the government to protect basic rights and individual freedom and, on the other hand, the obligation of the government to protect the health and life of its population. And it is obvious that there are different, even antagonistic basic rights, namely individual freedom on the one side and health insurance and fighting a pandemic on the other. It is not an either/or but an as-well-as situation. The government must take care of two responsibilities simultaneously, meaning that the democratically-elected parliament has to seek and find the balance between two values and two responsibilities.

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      If I remember correctly, a similar situation existed already two generations ago, when the danger of a smallpox pandemic justified an obligatory smallpox vaccination until the World Health Organization proclaimed the global eradication of the disease in 1980.

      Ziabari: Moving on from the pandemic, Austria was one of the countries hugely affected by the 2015-16 refugee crisis in Europe. When the government of former Chancellor Sebastian Kurz came to power, it took a hard line on migration and made major electoral gains as a result. Now, with the resurgence of the Taliban in Afghanistan, a new wave of westward migration appears to be in the making. Does Austria have a moral and human responsibility to protect asylum-seekers fleeing war and persecution, or should the responsibility be outsourced to other nations for certain reasons?

      Fischer: My clear answer is, yes, Austria has a moral and human responsibility to protect asylum-seekers on the basis of international law and the international sharing of responsibilities.

      Of course, we must discuss the numbers, the conditions, the possibilities, etc. of the respective country. But immediately saying no, we will not take women from Afghanistan, or we will not participate in burden-sharing of the European Union with the excuse that earlier governments many years ago already accepted a substantial share of refugees, is not acceptable. One cannot outsource humanity and moral duties.

      Ziabari: How is Austria coping with the effects of climate change and its human rights implications? While the average global surface temperature rise from 1880 to 2012 has been 0.85° Celsius, it has been 2° Celsius for Austria. Austria’s target for 2030 is to cut greenhouse gas emissions not covered by the EU Emissions Trading System by 36%, but the International Energy Agency has forecast it may only achieve a 27% benchmark. Will Austria need external help to overcome the challenge? Are you positive it can fulfill the EU expectations?

      Fischer: I do not think that Austria needs external help to fulfill its climate commitments. I do, however, think it is urgently necessary for the Austrian government to find a way forward in combating the climate crisis, a way that does not only cut greenhouse gas emissions, but which will also help to achieve societal consensus on the measures that are to be taken. This means the government must also be supporting social coherence.

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      Combating climate change is a multi-stakeholder effort and includes a just transition to clean energy, rapid phase-out of coal and end to international fossil fuel finance. In Austria in 2018, already 77% of electricity came from renewable energy sources and the number is constantly rising. While building a sustainable and climate-friendly future, we must, however, not forget to create green jobs, uphold human rights around the world and leave no one behind. I am positive that Austria will fulfill its EU expectations because it has to. There is only one planet, and we have to protect it with all means.

      Ziabari: Let’s also touch upon some foreign policy issues. The former US president, Donald Trump, was rebuked by European politicians for alienating allies and spoiling partnerships with friendly, democratic nations and embracing repressive leaders instead. But Austria-US relations remained largely steady, and despite Trump’s protectionist trade policies, the United States imported a whopping $11.7 billion in goods and services from Austria. Do the elements that undergirded robust Austria-US connections still exist with a transition of power in the White House and a change of government in Austria?

      Fischer: Yes, the relations between Austria and the United States have a long history and stable basis. Austria has not forgotten the prominent role of the US in the fight against Hitler. It has not forgotten the Marshall Plan — 75 years ago — and other ways of American support after World War II. The United States was a lighthouse of democracy in the 20th century, including the time of Hitler, Stalin, Mussolini, Franco, Horthy, etc. in Europe.

      Of course, the Vietnam War, the political and economic pressure on countries in Latin America, the false arguments as the basis for a military invasion in Iraq and the heritage of racism have cast shadows on US policy. But having said all this, it is also true that the US has strengths in many fields of foreign policy and good relations between the US and Europe are a stabilizing factor in the world.

      I would like to add that Donald Trump was and still is a great challenge for democracy in the US and a danger for the positive image of the United States in Europe and elsewhere.

      Ziabari: Are you concerned about the tensions simmering between Russia and the West over Ukraine? Should it be assumed that Russia’s threats of deploying intermediate-range nuclear missiles in Europe are serious, or are the Russians bluffing to test the West’s resolve, particularly now that one of Europe’s influential leaders, Angela Merkel, has departed? Are Russia’s complaints about NATO’s exploitation of Ukraine to expand eastwards and the ongoing discrimination against Ukraine’s Russian-speaking populace valid?

      Fischer: Yes, I am concerned about the growing conflict between Russia and the West, and this conflict has a long history. World War II was not started by Russia, the Soviet Union, but brutally against them.

      After World War II, there was a bipolar world developing between the East and the West, between Moscow and Washington, between NATO and the Warsaw Pact. After the fall of the Iron Curtain and the collapse of the Soviet Union, a new situation emerged. Gorbachev was honestly interested in a more peaceful world. He was accepting over the reunification of Germany and accepted the former Warsaw Pact member East Germany to become a member of NATO.

      Embed from Getty Images

      But the deal was that Russia’s security should not be reduced, and other parts of the former Soviet Union should not become part of NATO. And, in this respect, Ukraine is an extremely sensitive issue. It is already a while ago, but let’s remember how sensitive the United States reacted to the so-called Cuban Missile Crisis — the stationing of Russian weapons near the US. NATO weapons at the border of Russia are not supportive of peace and stability.

      Ziabari: German Chancellor Angela Merkel stepped down after 16 years in power. Aside from being referred to as the de facto leader of the EU, she was praised for her leadership during the eurozone debt crisis and her role in mustering global solidarity to fight COVID. What do you think about the legacy she has left behind? In terms of relations with Austria, do you think her differences with the government of Sebastian Kurz on immigration, Operation Sophia and the EU budget blighted the perception that Austrians had of her?

      Fischer: Angela Merkel was a great leader, crucial for Germany, crucial for Europe, crucial for human rights, crucial for peace. I admired and liked her. When former Austrian Chancellor Kurz and former German Chancellor Merkel shared different views, Merkel was, in my opinion, mostly on the right and Kurz on the wrong side. She was “Mrs. Stability and Reliability” in a positive sense.

      And her legacy? She belongs with Konrad Adenauer, Willy Brandt and Helmut Schmidt to the four great German leaders after World War II. Under her leadership, Germany was the most stable nation in the European Union and her relationship with Austria was a mirror to her character, namely balanced, friendly and correct.

      Ziabari: In the past couple of decades, Europe has been the scene of multiple terror attacks with hundreds of casualties, including the November 2020 shooting in Vienna, which European officials and media unanimously blamed on Islamist terrorism and political Islam. What are the stumbling blocks to the normalization of relations between secular Europe and its Muslim community? Is this civilizational, generational clash destined to last perennially, or are you optimistic that the two discourses can come to a co-existence?

      Fischer: The melting of different nationalities, cultures and religions is always a difficult task. The Austro-Hungarian monarchy finally collapsed because of unsolved conflicts between European nationalities.

      Embed from Getty Images

      Conflicts become even more difficult when they include different religions and ethnicities. We can say that the conflict between our German-speaking, Czech-speaking, Hungarian- or Polish-speaking grandparents is more or less overcome, but the conflict between Christians and Muslims will last longer. We can study this in the United States. But it is my personal hope that multi-religious integration is possible in the long run in a fair and democratic society.

      Ziabari: Talks to revive the 2015 Iran nuclear deal, the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action, are underway in the Austrian capital. Are you hopeful that the moribund agreement can be brought back to life? Do you see the determination to save the accord in the Iranian side and the other parties, for the benefit of international peace and security?

      Fischer: I was very happy when the 2015 JCPOA was signed between Iran, the United States, China and several European countries. And I believe it was one of the very wrong and unwise decisions of Donald Trump to withdraw from that agreement. To revitalize this agreement is, as we can observe these days, very difficult.

      As you asked me about my opinion, I am inclined to a more pessimistic outlook, because the present Iranian leaders are more hardliners than the last government and President Biden is under heavy pressure and has not much room for compromises. On the other hand, I recently met a member of the Iranian negotiation team in Vienna and, to my surprise, he was rather optimistic.

      One of my wishes for 2022 is a reasonable and fair solution for the JCPOA negotiations and a détente between Iran and the Western world. But the chances for a positive outcome seem to be limited at the moment.

      The views expressed in this article are the author’s own and do not necessarily reflect Fair Observer’s editorial policy. More

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      A History of Indian Conservatism

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      At the time of independence from British rule in 1947, India’s first prime minister, Jawaharlal Nehru, adopted a mode of governance that came to be known as Nehruvian socialism. State control of industrial production and government interference in all spheres of life came to define this era and, indeed, the entire Indian political and intellectual landscape. Social mobility became virtually impossible without having the right connections or lineage, while a lumbering, deeply corrupt bureaucracy — the so-called “License Raj” — further handicapped the fledgling economy. Nehru’s descendants, including his daughter Indira Gandhi and her son Rajiv Gandhi, both of whom served as prime ministers, further reinforced the socialist legacy.

      The economic climate changed somewhat during Prime Minister Narasimha Rao’s tenure, when his finance minister, Manmohan Singh, carried out a series of long-overdue structural reforms in 1991 to spur economic growth by liberalizing Indian markets.

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      A notable holdout to the near-total Nehruvian consensus was the Swatantra Party, committed to equality of opportunity of all people “without distinction of religion, caste, occupation, or political affiliation.” Created in 1959 by C. Rajagopalachari as an alternative to Nehru’s increasingly socialist and statist outlook, the party envisioned that progress, welfare and happiness of the people could be achieved by giving maximum freedom to individuals with minimum state intervention. Perceived to be on the economic right of the Indian political spectrum, Swatantra was not based on a purely religious understanding of Indic culture, unlike the Hindu-nationalist Bharatiya Jana Sangh.

      Jaitirth “Jerry” Rao, a former Citigroup honcho, MPhasis CEO and presently chairman of the Value Budget Housing Corporation, in his 2019 book, “The Indian Conservative: A History of Indian Right-Wing Thought,” explores the philosophical roots of modern Indian conservatism in five domains: economic, cultural, social, political and aesthetic. The book clearly and concisely conveys the intellectual underpinnings of conservative thought based on indigenous traditions and culture. True conservatives advocate for evolution and not revolution, and the idea that conservative thinking is static, frozen and fixated on a Utopian golden past is a caricature designed by detractors, according to Rao.

      In this guest edition of The Interview, Vikram Zutshi talks to Jaitirth Rao about what it means to be an Indian conservative today, about the history of right-wing thought, and the conflicts in Kashmir and with China.

      The text was lightly edited for clarity.

      Vikram Zutshi: What is your personal understanding of conservatism? Can you give us a timeline of conservative thought in the Indian context?

      Jerry Rao: Conservatism is more a way of looking at the world than a philosophy. In politics, conservatives support gradual, peaceful, constitutional change where care is taken not to abandon the good things inherited from our ancestors. In aesthetics, conservatives have a love for old established traditions in music, dance, drama, painting, literature and, above all, in town-planning and architecture. A conservative will always oppose the Corbusier school of town-planning and architecture.

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      In economic affairs, conservatives support market-based systems not because they are efficient, which they might very well be. Conservatives support markets because they are time-honored, organic, voluntary institutions evolved by human beings and are predicated on peaceful intercourse, negotiations, bargains and consensus.

      Markets have a positive moral dimension as far as conservatives are concerned. Symmetrically, conservatives opposed central planning in economics as it concentrates power and reduces citizens to serfs. Conservatives believe in a minimalist state which is strong. They do not believe in anarchic libertarianism. Conservatives believe in cultural cohesion in societies. We believe that the culture we have inherited from our ancestors, while always in need of modest change, is nevertheless a precious legacy which we need to preserve and hand on to our descendants intact or in an enhanced way. It is not to be abruptly jettisoned.

      The same spirit pervades apropos of the environment. Our forests, water bodies and landscapes are sacred trusts given to us, which we need to pass on as trustees rather than as short-term owners. Conservatives are usually positive toward religion, which is seen as an important cultural inheritance —  conservatives are very fond of religious music, liturgy, chanting, painting, architecture, sculpture, dance and ritual — and also as being a very successful part of the moral cement that a society needs.

      The roots of Indian conservatism go back to the Shanti Parva of the Mahabharata and the Tirukkural. Modern Indian political conservatism has had two fathers: Ram Mohan Roy and Bankim Chandra Chatterjee. The intellectual descendants include Rajagopalachari, Minoo Masani on one side, and Deen Dayal on the other. In economics, the tradition of Naoroji and Dutt has been carried forward by Shenoy all the way down to contemporary market-friendly economists. In aesthetics, the traditions of Bharata Muni, Sarangadeva, Abhinavagupta and Appayya Dikshitar have been carried forward by Ananda Coomaraswamy all the way down to the present efflorescence.

      Zutshi: To what degree does the current government in India embody conservative ideals?Rao: The present government of India, in political terms, is the very embodiment of conservatism. The Constitution of India represents a gradual constitutional change over the Government of India Act of 1935, which represented gradual constitutional change over previous acts like the Montagu-Chelmsford reforms, the Minto-Morley Reforms, the Indian Councils Act, the Queen’s Proclamation, The EI Company Charter Acts, the Pitt India act and the Regulating Act. We have retained the same constitution for 70 years, unlike Latin American countries which jettison constitutions quite quickly.

      Changes to our constitution have been done through a complex amendment process and has been subject to judicial review. While conservatives are not happy with all the changes, we must perforce be happy with the gradual, peaceful, constitutional nature of the changes. No revolutionary changes here.

      Now, coming to the current political dispensation, which has been in power for six years, we can state that it is more conservative in character than the previous dispensation. It is not as market-friendly as some conservatives may desire. But it is more market-friendly than the government of the previous 10 years. It is also more scrupulous about constitutional propriety — no outrageous acts like retrospective legislation. In its emphasis on subjects like yoga and Sanskrit, it certainly supports a cultural continuity so dear to conservatives. Its focus on the Ganga River and on solar power demonstrates a sense of trusteeship about the environment.  

      Principally, the government needs to be more market-friendly and it needs to dismantle large parts of the intrusive administrative state which it has inherited. It needs to hasten slowly in this area. I cannot think of any serious blunders.

      Zutshi: At what juncture did your political philosophy begin to crystallize? To what extent does Indian conservatism resemble its American and British counterparts?Rao: This took some time to grow. Reading a biography of Edmund Burke in 1975 may have been when it started. It has taken years, even decades to crystallize. There is an amazing synchronicity between the ideas of the Shanti Parva of the Mahabharata, the ideas of the Tirukkural, the ideas embedded in the Apastamba Sutra of the Yajur Veda and the ideas of Edmund Burke, Benjamin Disraeli and Roger Scruton. In modern times, great Indian conservatives like Ram Mohan, Bhandarkar, Bankim, Rajaji and Masani acknowledged their debts both to the classical Indian texts and to Burke. 

      Zutshi: There is much noise in the Indian media about the silencing and incarceration of dissenters. Many activists and academics have been locked up without due process, for example, Varavara Rao, Sudha Bharadwaj, Hany Babu and others. Do you think such draconian measures are justified?

      Rao: The Indian state and republic have been under attack. The previous prime minister, Manmohan Singh, emphatically stated that Maoists were India’s greatest security threat. So there is a continuity between governments in the threat perception. We are dealing with people who wanted to destroy bourgeois democracy from within. In recent times, the alliance between Maoists and jihadists who are bent on an Islamic reconquest of India has led to considerable concern and alarm. Those who supply the ideological basis for violence against the republic, those who shelter the extremists, those who help the extremists acquire arms and those who create a penumbra of respectability around people who violently murder Indian police personnel and ordinary citizens, have much to answer for.

      These ideologies have until now taken advantage of the soft Indian state. They have been foolish. The Indian Republic has contained Naga, Kashmiri and Khalistani separatists and the bomb-throwers and murderers of Naxalbari. Sooner or later, the velvet glove was bound to get a little loose. That is what has happened.

      Embed from Getty Images

      Zutshi: What is China’s long-term agenda with regards to India? What are we to make of the ongoing aggression between the two powers? Can India afford another war at this point? If not, what are its remaining options?

      Rao: In my opinion, China’s leaders see India as an irrelevant pinprick. They see America as their natural rival. Having said this, the Chinese do have a desire to break up India and they will try their best to do so. There is no “aggression between the two powers.” There is only Chinese aggression and aggressiveness. I don’t know what we can make of it, except to assume that their expansionist and irredentist stance is not likely to abate. In strictly economic cost-benefit terms, we cannot afford it. But if the other option is servitude and disintegration, they do not leave us with much choice but to resist irrespective of the economic calculus.

      Truman articulated the doctrine of “containment” apropos of the Soviet Union. A global coalition along those lines is the answer. We do not have the choice of being non-aligned now. The Soviet Union was far from us and did not attempt to encroach on us or weaken us. China is our neighbor and seems to have decided that we are like Poland of the 1930s. We might need to demonstrate that we are closer to the weak and inefficient Russia which suffered much but still did halt the efficient German juggernaut in the 1940s.

      Zutshi: Finally, do you agree with the abrogation of article 370 in Kashmir? More importantly, is the lockdown and curtailment of civil liberties justified?

      Rao: Yes. It was a serious anomaly. It was detrimental to Kashmiri women, religious minorities like the Hindus and the Buddhists, Dalits, refugees and so on. It was allowing for the retention of a space for Islamist groups like the ISIS to infiltrate; 370 had to go.

      Noisy sections of the valley’s population took the public and publicized position that a self-proclaimed ISIS terrorist was a hero and a martyr. The previous local government either could not or chose not to do anything. When such things happen, any organized state worth its name has to take drastic intrusive action. Let us not forget that Lincoln suspended habeas corpus during the American Civil War and Pitt suspended habeas corpus during the Napoleonic Wars.

      Zutshi: What will it take to bring Kashmir back to normal again, or is that just a pipe dream?

      Rao: The Kashmiri Sunni leadership has to realize that if they do not change, in 40 years, they will resemble the Naga Muivarh faction leaders seeking medical treatment in Delhi and talking gibberish. The rank-and-file Kashmiri Muslims need to realize that they have been fed ridiculous propaganda. Joining Pakistan means joining a failed state that is a bit of an international joke. Given the years and decades of educational damage and brainwashing that has happened, this is not going to be an easy task for the Indian state to accomplish. But slowly, inevitably, inexorably, it will get done.

      The views expressed in this article are the author’s own and do not necessarily reflect Fair Observer’s editorial policy. More

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      Israel Will Continue Disregarding International Law

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      The Israeli–Palestinian conflict is now in its 72nd year. Israel has been given renewed impetus after agreeing to the Abraham Accords with the United Arab Emirates on August 13, when the two states announced the normalization of diplomatic relations. Bahrain soon followed in Abu Dhabi’s footsteps.

      Now, along with Sudan, there are five Arab countries that recognize Israel, and there are rumors that others like Oman will join the bandwagon. This recent development could have implications for the Palestinians, including the bitter realization that Arab and Muslim countries are betraying them. A 2019 poll by the Palestinian Center for Policy and Survey Research found that nearly 80% of Palestinians feel they are abandoned by Arab states.

      The task of bringing Israel into compliance with its obligations as the occupying power vis-à-vis the Palestinians has become ever more convoluted. UN Security Council resolutions addressing the Israeli–Palestinian conflict are routinely disregarded by the Israelis. A case in point is the Security Council Resolution 2334, adopted in 2016, which terms Israel’s settlements in the Occupied Palestinian Territories as “a flagrant violation under international law.”

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      Richard Seaford is a professor emeritus of classics and ancient history at the University of Exeter, United Kingdom. A distinguished scholar, he has been a fellow of the National Humanities Center in North Carolina and a member of the British Committee for the Universities of Palestine.

      In this edition of The Interview, Fair Observer talks to Seaford about the Israeli public’s perception of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, Donald Trump’s “deal of the century,” and the global reception of the boycott, divestment and sanctions movement.

      The transcript has been edited for clarity. This interview took place in summer 2020.

      Kourosh Ziabari: How do Israel’s political, intelligence and military elites, particularly those on the right, perceive the status quo in the Israeli-Palestinian conflict? The Israeli author Micah Goodman believes the dominant narrative is no longer about the “sanctity of the settlements, the fulfillment of biblical prophecies, and imminent redemption.” Rather, for him, the main concern is guaranteed security. Do you agree with this assumption? Can it be inferred that Israeli leaders are prepared for a compromise with the Palestinians, and possibly making territorial concessions, provided that their security concerns are addressed?

      Richard Seaford: The answer to both questions is no. The Israeli elite is no doubt concerned about security, and I recognize the problems that they face. But if security was their main motive, they would have established, and could still establish, an impregnable state on their own in pre-1967 borders, if necessary with a massive wall and all the sophisticated technology available to them.

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      Instead, they have illegally filled with settlements conquered land that belongs not to Israel but to more than 2 million Palestinian Arabs. In doing so, they have made a two-state solution impossible and created a further massive security problem that is used to justify unbearable suffering for the Palestinians and the further expansion of settlements. No doubt some of the elite are aware of the present and future nightmare created by this expansionism, but there is no sign of any political will to do anything substantial about it.

      The basic problem is that Israel is a military superpower up against a defenseless people — the Palestinians — with no genuine international pressure to prevent Israel from stealing as much land as it wants.

      Ziabari: In late June, UN Secretary-General Antonio Guterres told a meeting of the Security Council that Israel’s plans to annex swaths of the West Bank would threaten the vision of a two-state solution and represent a most serious violation of international law. Since the Trump administration has reversed the US position on the settlements and no longer considers them a breach of international law, do you expect the Security Council to take action to block further annexations? Is there any legal barrier dissuading Israel from annexing more West Bank lands?

      Seaford: No! Firstly, the past record of the Security Council does not encourage the belief that it will take action to require Israel to conform to international law and UN resolutions.

      Secondly, there is no reason to believe that Israel will reverse its decades-long disregard of international law, especially given the encouragement now given to its lawbreaking by Trump. A Biden government may not continue the policy of encouraging illegality, but it will probably do nothing substantial to prevent it.

      Western countries adopted sanctions against the Russian Federation after rightly regarding its annexation of Crimea in 2014 — after a referendum there — as a violation of international law. But when Israel illegally annexed East Jerusalem in 1980 and the Golan Heights in 1981, where were the sanctions? The double standards are so obvious as to be embarrassing, and they encourage Israel to further acts of illegal annexation.

      According to Article 49 of the Fourth Geneva Convention, “the occupying power shall not deport or transfer parts of its own population into the territories it occupies.” The United Nations Security Council, the United Nations General Assembly, the International Committee of the Red Cross, the International Court of Justice and the High Contracting Parties to the Convention, among others, have, unsurprisingly, all affirmed that the Fourth Geneva Convention applies to the territories occupied by Israel. Trump has, in order to please his base, de facto withdrawn from the Geneva conventions.  

      Ziabari: In August 2018, the Trump administration suspended all US funding for UNRWA, the UN program supporting Palestinian refugees. UNRWA is now believed to face a major financial challenge, hindering its ability to provide education for 520,000 students, health care for 3 million patients and food assistance for 1.7 million refugees. On other occasions, the Netherlands, Australia, Switzerland and other countries have also cut or reduced their contributions. In what ways will these cuts affect the prosperity and wellbeing of the Palestinian people?

      Seaford: To cut off funding for those who live in some of the worst conditions in the world, while maintaining much more funding for the state that has dispossessed them, speaks for itself. A [recent] letter appeared in The Guardian signed by numerous European senior politicians stating that UNRWA needs funding desperately, not least to use its proven expertise in preventing the coronavirus from spreading through densely populated Palestinian refugee camps in the region.

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      Apart from the further intensification of the misery of the Palestinians, there are two less obvious consequences of the defunding. One is the potential for an increase in regional instability caused by the despair. The other is to diminish yet further the standing of the US in the region and in the world generally. One effect that the defunding will not have is the one desired by Trump: to force the Palestinians to give up their claim to their homeland.

      Ziabari: The United States has long worked to position itself as an intermediary in the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. President Trump has renewed efforts to play this role by tabling his long-awaited “deal of the century.” Does this deal make any positive contribution to resolving the Israeli-Palestinian conflict? Given the Palestinians’ lukewarm and uninterested response, does it have any chance of being successfully implemented?

      Seaford: No. The idea that the US is a neutral intermediary in the conflict is now absurd. The discussions that produced the “deal of the century” entirely excluded the Palestinians. It gives Israel virtually everything that it wants, and the Palestinians virtually nothing of what they want. It confirms the illegal expansionism of Israel, gives the Palestinians limited control of the fragments of a very small part of their historic homeland, and leaves by far the largest part of it to a state formed and controlled by 20th-century Jewish emigrants to Palestine and their descendants.

      I could go on and on detailing the one-sidedness of the plan. But people may be thinking: Why propose a plan that is so absurdly one-sided that it has no chance of being agreed by both sides?

      One answer might be the sheer ignorance of the people responsible for it — for example, Jared Kushner. But the more substantial reason is a kind of propaganda that has been used in the past. The plan helps to instill in the millions who do not bother to ascertain the details of the idea that Trump is trying to create peace, and that the Palestinians are being unreasonable in rejecting it.

      Ziabari: The UAE recently announced normalized relations with Israel. Negotiations are also underway between Israel and Oman. Why do you think a growing number of Muslim, Arab states are leaning toward forging closer relations with Israel? What are the implications for the Palestinian Authority and the Palestinian people?

      Seaford: The causes of the Gulf states’ rapprochement with Israel include their fear of Iran, the various consequences of the Arab Spring, and perhaps also the steep decline in the price of oil over the last few years, which will endanger states that are almost entirely dependent on it.

      However, the rapprochement should not be exaggerated on the basis of a few highly publicized statements or events. For the elites of the Gulf states, whose only concern is to remain in power, it retains its dangers. Surveys show that concern for the Palestinians amongst Arabs has generally risen, rather than fallen, over the past few years.

      The UAE has long had commercial and security links with Israel, and its claim to have averted annexation of parts of the West Bank in exchange for normalizing relations is bogus. The annexation was postponed earlier, for other reasons. Anyway, the fact is that the Arab states over the last decades have not succeeded in improving the political position of the Palestinians. What they have provided is financial support, which continues.

      Ziabari: Efforts are underway by independent scholars, public figures, artists and athletes as well as some businesses in Europe to boycott the Israeli government, institutions and universities in the framework of the BDS movement. What are the costs for Israel? Will it be induced into changing its policies?

      Seaford: The costs to Israel are so far not great in material terms, but there are some cultural and academic consequences. The reason why Israel and its apologists do so much to combat BDS by the anti-Semitism slur is what it calls its delegitimating effect. BDS does not, of course, seek to destroy the state of Israel. What it seeks to delegitimate is its defiance of international law and of UN resolutions.

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      Citizens, when their governments have abdicated all concern with international law, feel that they must act to enforce it. And the most immediate way of acting is to adopt the boycott personally, as well as urging companies to divest and governments to apply sanctions. Anybody can do it.

      Moreover, the call for BDS becomes a way of creating publicity and raising consciousness of the crimes of Israel. It is this change of opinion, especially among US students, that Israel fears, because it may eventually, though not any time soon, limit their expansionism. Israel will be induced to change its policies only by external pressure, a combination of the reduction in the massive amount of US aid, with diplomatic pressure, sanctions, boycott and divestment — the kind of combination that helped to end apartheid in South Africa.

      One imagined objection to BDS says: But what about the horrible things going on elsewhere? What is unique about Israel is the combination of illegal colonization, the inaction of governments and that the victims by a large majority are asking us to boycott. When someone who is being beaten up and robbed asks me to do something simple, safe and legal to help, I do it. Wouldn’t you? I boycotted apartheid South Africa, and so consistency requires me to boycott Israel, or anywhere else with the same combination of circumstances.

      Ziabari: Have international organizations and blocs, including the United Nations and European Union, lost their competence in resolving the Israeli-Palestinian conflict? Israel is the subject of several dozen Security Council and UN General Assembly resolutions, but it continues to defy them. How is it possible to be brought into compliance?

      Seaford: The answer to the first question is yes, and the answer to the second is that Israel will be brought into compliance only by external pressure. There are many good and brave Israelis who deserve our support, but any idea that the Israelis may elect a government that wants to dismantle the settlements, comply with international law and so on has been shown by the last few decades, especially recently, to be fantasy. A just peace will come only from citizens in other states, especially the US, raising consciousness and electing governments that will exercise the required pressure on Israel. It is our historic responsibility.

      In the UK, in the 1980s, there were only a few thousand of us in the anti-apartheid movement. But Western politicians who had done nothing to help the imprisoned Nelson Mandela or isolate apartheid attended his funeral [in 2013]. When we succeed in dissolving Israeli apartheid, there will be numerous Western politicians who will falsely take the credit. But it feels better to have changed history than to pretend to have done so. 

      The views expressed in this article are the author’s own and do not necessarily reflect Fair Observer’s editorial policy. More

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      in World Politics

      The American Empire: Maintaining Hegemony Through Wars

      by

      In January, the US assassinated Qassem Soleimani, the head of Iran’s Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps’ Quds force, in an airstrike on Iraqi soil. General Soleimani was seen as the main pillar of the regional resistance bulwark in Iran. He was revered by many Iranians as a brave defender of the nation and a mastermind of asymmetrical warfare — the cornerstone of Iran’s security doctrine.

      His death sparked frenzy and unrest in the Middle Eastern country, further straining the US and Iran’s delicate relationship. The assassination of Soleimani revealed that the US was willing to go to any extent to prove its military might over its self-declared enemies.

      Under President Donald Trump, the US has used several measures for the last few years to demonstrate American power over the world. From Soleimani’s killing to the imposing of tariffs on China to pulling out of the Paris climate agreement, the US has disrupted the world order and threatens to continue doing so.

      Will Donald Trump’s Bad Deals Cost Him the Election?

      READ MORE

      In this edition of The Interview, Fair Observer talks to Peter Kuznick, director of the Nuclear Studies Institute at American University in Washington, DC. Kuznick speaks about the most important foreign policy areas for a US president, America’s raging desire to wage war, why the US has a fraught relationship with Iran, and how the US can mend its relationship with North Korea.

      The transcript has been edited for clarity. This interview took place in early 2020.

      Ankita Mukhopadhyay: With the US elections looming on the horizon, what should be the key areas of focus in foreign policy for the US president?

      Peter Kuznick: The danger is that the new president of the US will be the old president. Trump will get reelected. However, Trump has not been as catastrophic when it comes to foreign policy as we feared he might be. He started off with a good idea, that the US and Russia should be friends. No one understands why he took that position, given that he is mostly wrong on everything else. Most of my Russian colleagues and friends were supporting Donald Trump during the 2016 election. I asked one member of the Russian Senate why did he and everyone else support Trump. He said because Trump wants to be friends with Russia.

      I told him he was being naive as what Trump says and does usually has no connection. Hillary Clinton was terrible too in her own way. She was very hostile to Russia and too hawkish for my taste. But I believe she’s a reasonable, rational actor. Donald Trump is potentially quite reckless. If we see what he’s done — with the recent confrontation with Iran, be it the tearing up of the Iran nuclear deal (the JCPOA), which Obama negotiated with the help of several other countries like Russia and China.

      Trump wasted little time in tearing that up. He’s been pushing for a confrontation with Iran ever since. The danger is: Trump’s advisers didn’t agree on a lot of things, but what they agreed on is that they hate Iran. It was striking to me that Jim Mattis, who had been demoted by Obama because he was such a hawk when it came to Iran, was actually a restraining influence in the Trump administration. Rex Tillerson, the former secretary of state, said when he was fired that he was sick and tired of trying to be stopped on what [he] wanted to do against Iran. Tillerson referred to Trump as a fucking moron because of his hawkish policies.

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      Let’s be optimistic that Trump is winning again. Whether he will lose depends on who the Democratic candidate is. My priorities are number one, the New START [Strategic Arms Reduction] treaty. The New START treaty is set to expire in February 2021. That would be a disaster. It will dismantle the world’s nuclear arms control architecture. It began with the US leaving the ABM [Anti-Ballistic Missile] treaty in 2002, it accelerated with the US pulling out of the INF [Intermediate-Range Nuclear Forces] treaty last year. The only thing in place is the New START treaty that puts limits on the number of nuclear warheads and delivery systems that both sides are allowed to maintain.

      Trump intends to end this treaty. This is evident from his phone conversation with Putin. The Russian leader said to Trump, we should renew the New START treaty. Trump said hold on, he put down the phone and asked people in the room, what’s the New START treaty? He didn’t even know what it was. He got on the phone and said: It’s not a good treaty, we don’t want to renew it. Putin has been pushing ever since for the renewal. The US and Russia have about 93% of the world’s nuclear weapons between them. In March 2018, Putin revealed [Russia’s five most powerful] nuclear weapons, all of which can circumvent US missile defense. China has only 290 nuclear weapons, and China has a no-first-use policy. China is not a threat to the world order like the US and Russia. Now Trump says, we should rip the START treaty up.

      In February 2018, the US released its nuclear posture review to expand the role of nuclear weapons. The problem of using nuclear weaponry goes back to the era of Barack Obama. Obama had implemented a trillion-dollar modernization program to make nuclear weapons more deadly. Trump inherited this, but he’s added more insanity.

      Another area where Trump has been criminally reckless is global warming and climate change. The second thing the new US president should do is convene a new international conference on climate change. We have to do this as we can’t go along with the Paris Climate Accord — it’s far too minimal. We got to have a crash program to deal with this crisis.

      If the new president doesn’t want to keynote the conference, let’s get Greta Thunberg to do it, but we need to take it as seriously as she takes it. There’s a lot more we can do beyond that. We have to deal with the militarization of the planet. We have to deal with the fact that the richest eight [people] of the world have more money than 3.8 billion people. There’s a crisis of epic proportions.

      As a US president, I want to see the US military footprint drastically cut back. The US has 800 military bases in the world. Other countries have maybe 29 overseas military bases combined, while China has one. Right now, we have Trump saying make America great again, Putin saying make Russia great again, Xi Jinping saying make China great again, Narendra Modi saying make India great again. We have got nobody who thinks and speaks for the planet.

      Mukhopadhyay: The US has been particularly stern with Iran’s nuclear policy, despite building its own nuclear arsenal. Trump has already torn up the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action (JCPOA). What will happen if Iran doesn’t rein in its nuclear program?

      Kuznick: It was absolute insanity on Trump’s behalf to tear up the JCPOA deal. It was a good deal and it would have constrained Iran’s nuclear program for 15 years. During that time, we could have done many things to bring Iran back into the international community. They were supposed to get economic benefits as a result of the JCPOA, but Trump imposed more sanctions. The Europeans were furious because not only did Trump impose sanctions on Iran, but Trump threatened very harsh penalties on any country — including India — that continued to trade with Iran, especially for oil. The Europeans eventually tried to set up an alternative international banking system to trade with Iran outside of the US orbit.

      The US goes around sanctioning everybody. It’s out of control. The sanctions against Russia, Europe, Iran, China — it’s crazy. People need to be sanctioning the US. When the US acts like a rogue power, the rest of the world needs to stop being cowards and hypocrites and employ the same standard the US applies on other countries.

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      Countries need to be standing up to the US. The US can’t be a pariah as much as it wants because it’s so powerful. I don’t like this cowardly behavior. In the US, TV commentators say Russian interference in the 2016 election was an act of war. It’s such hypocritical behavior. I don’t approve of Russia’s interference in US politics, but the US interferes in everybody’s elections. They have been doing so since 1947 when the CIA was founded. The commentators condemn what’s happening to the US, but they don’t see what the US is doing on a global scale.

      On the Iran deal, we don’t get as much criticism as necessary for tearing this up and creating havoc. The US in the early 2000s, under George W. Bush, was itching for a war with Iran and wanted to take down Iran’s nuclear facilities using nuclear weapons. When that got exposed, the joint chief of staff threatened to resign and they took that proposal off the table.

      Let’s back up a little bit to understand Iran. I will go back to 1990. In 1990, Charles Krauthammer, a leading neoconservative thinker, in the Henry Jackson address, called it America’s unipolar moment. He said that after the collapse of the Soviet empire, nobody can challenge the US — economically, geopolitically. The US must recognize that and assert itself everywhere.

      Krauthammer said this unipolar moment could last 30-40 years. In 1993, neoconservative thinkers came up with a defense planning guidance so that no country should be allowed to emerge in any region to challenge the US globally. They walked back when this was released in The New York Times.

      The neoconservatives cheered the American invasion of Afghanistan in 2001. Krauthammer revisited his article and said that he underestimated the strength of the US. It’s the unipolar era. It’s going to last indefinitely. The neoconservatives were ecstatic. Even before the invasion of Iraq, on January 5, 2003, the NYT headline was, “American empire, get used to it.” Then we invade Iraq. Now they are saying, well we have got to have regime change in a lot of places. Start with Syria, Libya, Somalia and Lebanon.

      Iran was always on everyone’s hitlist. Iran did abandon its nuclear weapons program in 2003. But US never abandoned its dream of overthrowing Iran.

      Mukhopadhyay: Is the dissatisfaction with Iran and the JCPOA to do with overthrowing the government?

      Kuznick: For that, we need to understand the American mentality. The Americans accuse Russia of interfering in the 2016 election. In fact, the Israelis interfered more than Russia in the 2016 election. Benjamin Netanyahu openly campaigned for Trump, opposed the JCPOA and addressed a joint session of Congress. Obama knew that he couldn’t even get the JCPOA passed through Congress as a treaty, with a two-third majority, so he had to say that it was a deal to get it through with a simple majority.

      Once the Republicans got in there, one of the first things we wanted was to tear it up. Trump knew nothing about the deal, and he is an idiot. It’s a crisis of America’s own making. Trump said he will negotiate a better deal. He’s a disaster when it comes to negotiating, as we see with North Korea.

      Then Iran responded, we got a couple of incidents in the Gulf there, shooting down an American drone — things were heating up already. The reason the US wanted to take the Korea issue of the table is to focus on Iran. The killing of Soleimani on January 3, 2020, was very dangerous and very reckless.

      Embed from Getty Images

      I am glad that some people acted with diplomatic aplomb and eased the crisis there because many of us feared that we would go to war [with Iran]. It was a disaster for US policy and a disaster for the world.

      What kind of principle do you establish that you can go around killing anyone with our drones (shame on Obama for legitimizing that) and even killing American citizens without due process. But to take out a leader of another country — the second most powerful and respected person in Iran, a top general — was to force Iran to take military action. Fortunately, Iran didn’t take Trump’s bait. Iran had a measured, limited response when they hit two American bases in retaliation.

      At that time, had Iran retaliated in any other way, the US was set to strike. Iran has capabilities throughout the region — they can hit Israel, they can hit American bases, they can use Hezbollah, they have proxy bases in Syria. Fortunately, they didn’t do that. However, like India and Pakistan, this can erupt at any point.

      Iran is going to retaliate at some time. Iranians were out on the street asking for military action against the US after the death of Soleimani. Americans need to understand that Iran is not Iraq. We underestimate what a war with Iran would mean. A war with Iran will be 10 times costlier than the war in Iraq was militarily and in terms of human lives. Iran is a bigger country, with 80 million people, much bigger capabilities and a much more competent military. If someone thinks that Iran is going to be like the “cakewalk” in Iraq (which we are still not out of, 17 years later), they are terribly mistaken.

      Iran has increasingly abrogated its own part of the nuclear deal. It was a great deal. They shipped 97% of their nuclear material outside of Iran. They mothballed most of their centrifuges. They shut down the Iraq plutonium facility. Now, they are increasingly bringing more centrifuges, raising the level to which they can enrich, and this is a crisis of Trump’s making. It’s off the headlines in the US recently — that’s not going to last forever. There are people in this cabinet, in this administration, who believe that a war would be good for Trump’s reelection.

      They might miscalculate that this may help them. This is why people were suspicious when Soleimani was assassinated. Why did Trump do this? Why did he do it now? Bush and Obama had looked into knocking off Soleimani and decided to not do it because the repercussions would be horrendous. The speculation around Trump is that he is trying to distract the people from the other crisis.

      Mukhopadhyay: Why is waging war so important in American foreign policy? How does this war-centric mentality affect the US’ relationship with other countries?

      Kuznick: The American empire is based on military presence everywhere. India would not define something that happens in Central America as part of its national security concerns. The US does. In January 2018, the US changed its national security strategy. Before that, the US said that global terrorism was the main threat to American national security. In January 2018, the US announced that Russia and China posed the greatest threat to national security.

      The US under Trump sees the world as a zero-sum game. Anything that Russia or China gains anywhere is a loss to the US, in terms of trade, geopolitics or military. The US wants to maintain this global empire through Boeing, BAE, General Dynamics, Lockheed Martin and the American defense contractors.

      For example, they make billions of dollars in weapon sales to India. India is a country that should not be spending billions of dollars in weapon sales when they have so many social needs. This is what [Dwight] Eisenhower warned about the military-industrial complex in 1961, that it has a disproportionate influence on American policymaking. Every drone shot is money in someone’s pocket.

      One of the things we were hearing in the US Senate in the 1930s was to nationalize the defense sector. Why should people make money off killing? It makes no sense to me. The second level is American hegemony and American global domination. Look at America’s wars. The US wants to control the economy all over the world. Why are we involved in Central America and Afghanistan? It is estimated that Afghanistan has mineral resources worth a trillion dollars. Look at the rare earths, the pipelines that go through that region. On one hand, it’s just naked economics and that’s always a factor.

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      Trump wants Iran’s oil, Syria’s oil and Iraq’s oil. He said that we should maintain our control over Syria’s oil. Which is why he shifted the American troops from the western part of Syria to the eastern part of Syria — to the oil-rich zone. That’s the way he feels. A lot of American policymakers feel the same way.

      During the Iraq War, one of the most popular signs was, “what is our oil doing under their sand?” We wanted the Iraqi oil, we thought we deserved it. And this goes back to [Franklin D.] Roosevelt. In 1944, he said to Lord Halifax, the British ambassador, that Saudi oil will belong to the US, Iranian oil will belong to the British and we will share Kuwaiti and Iraqi oil. So, when Mohammad Mosaddegh nationalizes the oil industry in Iran, the British freak out and Americans freak out.

      The problems with Iran run back to 1953, when the Central Intelligence Agency ran a coup to overthrow Mosaddegh. Why? Because the Anglo-Iranian oil company, which had 100% of Iranian oil, was giving the Iranians 16 cents on the dollar. The British were keeping 84 cents on the dollar. The Iranians were very impoverished as a result. Saudi Aramco in Saudi Arabia negotiated a new deal and they got 50 cents on the dollar. That infuriated the Iranians even further. They did what the British had done a few years earlier — they nationalized the oil industry. The British were outraged and decided they had to overthrow Mosaddegh.

      Mosaddegh was immensely popular. He featured as Time magazine’s man of the year in 1951. The US ambassador in Tehran wrote back to Washington that Mosaddegh had the support of 95 to 98% of the Iranian people. He was a hero throughout the Middle East for standing up to the imperialists. [Harry] Truman hesitated, but in 1953, when Eisenhower took office, he ran Operation Ajax and overthrew Mosaddegh. They had terrorist gangs, the CIA bought out the military leaders — it was outrageous — and then they brought the shah.

      The shah ruled for another 25 years through a brutal dictatorship. He used SAVAK, the Iranian intelligence agency, in order to impose domination in Iran, and then in 1979, the Iranians finally overthrew the shah and imposed their religious-nationalist regime under [Ruhollah] Khomeini. The people of Iran will obviously retaliate against the CIA. Especially after the US allowed the shah into the US for medical treatment.

      [Jimmy] Carter had proposed that the Iranians should develop their own nuclear power industry. The US was giving them nuclear fuel and wanted to build 12 nuclear reactors in Iran. And then we say it’s outrageous, why do they need nuclear power when they have all this oil? We pushed them to do that.

      The history of US-Iranian relations goes back further than 1979. If you look at the American media, when all this was happening, some people who were sensible traced it back to 1979. Any Iranian would trace it back to 1953. How would the Americans feel if Iran came here to depose a popular American president and replace him with a brutal dictator? The Iranians have got legitimate grievances against the US, not the other way around, obviously.

      Americans don’t know history. Which is why we have a low attention span. Talk about America and the endless wars. Start with the two big ones. Americans don’t know anything about the Korean War. It’s called the forgotten war in the US. Americans don’t know that millions of people died in that war. The Americans bombed the crap out of both Koreas. In 1951, the British annual military yearbook said that because of America’s bombing, South Korea doesn’t exist as a country anymore.

      We burned down almost all cities in South Korea and North Korea — and people were living in caves. It was horrific what the US did there. It was four times the number of bombs dropped in Japan and the Pacific in World War II.

      That was a nightmare for the Koreans and they remember it. The Koreans have a very different historical memory. The North Koreans have drilled the war into their heads. There are billboards, museums about what the US did during the Korean War. It is a very different historical memory as compared to the Americans. The Americans have no historical memory.

      Let me give you another example. The American and Russian understanding of World War II is completely different. For the US, World War II starts with Pearl Harbor. Then there’s a hiatus and we get involved a little in North Africa.

      But the real war for the Americans begins on June 6, 1944, with D-Day and the invasion of Normandy. The Americans bravely take the beaches, which we did. The Americans march to Berlin, defeat the Germans, win the war in Europe and the Americans are the heroes of World War II.

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      The Russian narrative is quite different. The war there begins with the German invasion [of the Soviet Union] on June 22, 1941, when they looked at the US for economic support for war material, which the US promised but couldn’t deliver. The US couldn’t deliver it because we thought that Europe is built on military industries and partly because of sabotage.

      We promised them the second front in late May 1942, but we didn’t open it up till 1944. The Russians know who won the war in Europe.

      The Germans lost 1 million on the western front, 6 million on the eastern front. I once did an anonymous survey with college students and I asked them: How many Americans died in World War II? The median answer I got was 90,000. OK, so they were just 300,000 off. I asked them: How many Soviets died in WW2? The median answer was 100,000. Which means they were only 27 million off.

      Which means these kids know nothing about World War II, they can’t understand what the Cold War was about, they can’t understand Ukraine now. That’s what Americans suffer from — a complete lack of understanding of history. In 2007, the national report card found that American high school seniors performed the worst in US history. Only 12% of high school seniors were found to be proficient in US history. Not outstanding, just proficient.

      What we found out from that survey is that even that number is bogus because only 2% could identify what the Brown vs. Board of Education Supreme Court case was about, even though it was obvious from the way the question was worded. It’s obvious that Americans are historically ignoramuses. That’s why Oliver Stone and I did the “Untold History” project to educate people about their own history.

      Americans know nothing about the Korean War, they don’t even remember Vietnam anymore. When Robert McNamara, the former US secretary of defense, came into my class, he told the students that he now accepts the fact that 3.8 million Vietnamese died in the war. But common Americans have no understanding of that.

      Mukhopadhyay: Not just Vietnam, even Laos and Cambodia saw a heavy death toll in the Vietnam war, right?

      Kuznick: Laos, Cambodia — the whole region was a disaster. The Vietnam War memorial in Washington has got the names of 58,280 Americans who died in the Vietnam War. The tragedy of Vietnam is that 58,280 Americans died. What they should have on that memorial is the name of 3.8 million Vietnamese, along with millions of Cambodians and Laotians, British, Australians, South Koreans — everyone who died. Right now, the wall is 492-feet long. If they include the names of everyone who died, the wall would be eight-miles long.

      The scary thing is that in a poll, 15-20% of students said that the Vietnam War was necessary to fight. These are 18 to 29-year-old people who love Bernie Sanders. These are the ones who are opposed to war generally, but they don’t know history.

      Mukhopadhyay: Why do people have such contradictory views about war in the US?

      Kuznick: Part of the reason you have these wars is: one, they are profitable; two, they allow the US to maintain hegemony; three, Americans are historically ignorant; four, they happen over there. Lindsey Graham had once said that if there’s war, they are dying over there, not here. Americans don’t get touched by these wars.

      The wars are fought by a very small tiny fraction of the population of professional soldiers, who are not from the middle classes. They come from mostly poor, rural backgrounds. They are mostly young people who don’t have good prospects in life. They are not my college students, they are not people I know — that’s the case for most of the middle class in the US.

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      It’s always another war, in another place, with very few American casualties. A lot of Afghans die, a lot of Iraqis die. These wars allow the US to maintain its hegemony and there’s a lot of profit. We have got 800 bases around the world. In 2009, Chalmers Johnson called it the empire of bases. We justify that in part by finding enemies. Alexei Arbatov, the Russian-Soviet strategist, once said the Soviet Union did the worst possible thing to the US by collapsing because they left them with no enemy.

      Once the Soviet Union collapsed, what did we do? We immediately intervened in Panama, overthrew the government there, we militarily intervened in Kuwait and Iraq. There is no enemy. We defined new enemies and we created them after the Soviet Union collapsed. There was a call to overthrow the government of Saddam Hussein in the 1990s, that was the goal. There was nothing to do with the nonsense about weapons of mass destruction which many people later exposed as a lie before the US invaded. This was just part of the US’ global agenda. The US doesn’t win these wars.

      The US has not won a war since 1983 when the US invaded Grenada, which was Operation Urgent Fury. We were able to defeat a couple of Cuban construction workers, after which [Ronald] Reagan said, America is proud and standing on its feet again. We can destroy things, we blow them up, but we didn’t win. We have been fighting, not winning, in Afghanistan for almost 20 years. Iraq is finally wanting to throw the US out. We have a military meant for destroying things, for killing people, for blowing things up, but not for creating what is really needed.

      Mukhopadhyay: A parallel I can draw is that both the US and India have not learned from history.

      Kuznick: India has such a rich history. How Gandhi and [Jawaharlal] Nehru led the global fight against the Cold War. They led the fight against the nuclear arms race. It was Nehru who said that American leaders are self-centered lunatics who will blow anybody up who gets in their way. Do we see Modi standing up or welcoming world peace in any way? War can happen anytime.

      Especially with these extreme nationalists in India and with the Pakistani military and intelligence community. Fortunately, both sides decided to hit each other in a way that wasn’t going to hurt last year, but the issue in Kashmir isn’t getting any better. The Indian army is twice as big and powerful as the Pakistani army. Indians would overrun the Pakistani army in the event of a war. Will Pakistan sit back and say, OK, you’re stronger and we surrender? No, they can use nuclear weapons. India will retaliate. We don’t know. There’s a real risk that it can escalate.

      Latest studies show that a limited nuclear war between India and Pakistan in which 100 Hiroshima-size nuclear weapons were used would create a nuclear winter, cities would burn, it would send 5 million tons of carbon and soot into the stratosphere.

      Within two weeks, it would encircle the globe, destroy global agriculture, temperatures on Earth would plummet to freezing; this would last for 10 years and that alone could cause up to 2 billion deaths. We [the US] have 4,000 nuclear weapons in the world, 80 times as powerful as the Hiroshima bomb. We are risking the future of our planet. We are dealing with that and the insanity of global warming. We have an existential crisis which requires real leadership right now. It’s too dangerous a world.

      Mukhopadhyay: You criticized Trump’s policy on North Korea. What should the president have done instead, and what can be done to diffuse the tension in the Korean Peninsula?

      Kuznick: North Korea is a difficult problem that requires diplomacy, not military action. I take it back to the 1994 deal that [Bill] Clinton had negotiated with North Korea. In 1994 and 2002, North Korea produced no plutonium and they abided by the nuclear deal. There was some suspicion about their nuclear program, but it wasn’t proven or confirmed. They deny it. That deal was very effective.

      The George W. Bush administration blew that up. Bush announced the “axis of evil” — Iran, Iraq and North Korea. Rather than deal with North Korea diplomatically, he put it in crosshairs. North Korea was very nervous about the US overthrow of their government.

      John Bolton, who is hated by North Koreans, said that the accusations against North Korea’s nuclear arsenal gave him the leverage to destroy the nuclear deal in 2002. He was happy that it happened. The North Koreans call Bolton human scum and a bloodsucker — and rightly so.

      Then, in 2006, North Korea tested their first nuclear weapon. They have had six since then. Last year, they tested their nuclear bomb, which was 17 times more destructive than the bomb thrown on Hiroshima. The North Koreans said it wasn’t a fusion bomb but a fission bomb, a hydrogen bomb — it just blew up an entire mountain. Then they tested an inter-continental ballistic missile that seemed like it could hit the US. That gave Trump the excuse to give the threat to start fire and fury.

      In 2017, it did seem like we were going to nuclear war and we seemed desperate to want to stop that. I was considering going to go to North Korea to interview Kim Jong Un and walk this back a little bit. We didn’t have to, as Trump decided to take a different tack. But I approved that Trump wanted to talk. I was glad that they met in Singapore. However, Trump has no diplomatic skills. That’s another powder cake ready to blow.

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      North Korea has enormous military capabilities and missiles poised to strike Seoul, a city of 25 million people, 35 miles from their border. The US is running these war games with decapitation drills to overthrow the government in North Korea — which is insane. The US has 28,500 troops stationed in South Korea. I was upset with Trump for creating a crisis when it didn’t have to exist.

      North Korea isn’t going to give up its nuclear arsenal. The North Koreans know that the only thing standing between them and being overthrown by the US is their nuclear weapons. When the US invaded Iraq, North Korea’s main newspaper said that Saddam made one big mistake: not having weapons of mass destruction. It was clear that North Koreans understood that and didn’t want to give up their weapons.

      From the very beginning, when Trump is talking about denuclearization, it’s absurd and the wrong thing to demand from North Korea. The first thing we should do is foster an atmosphere of trust. How do we do that?

      The Korean War has never ended. Instead of having a peace treaty at the end of the war, they signed an armistice. That war is still going on. One thing the North Koreans desperately want is a peace treaty to end that war. The second thing they want is for the US to stop their military exercises with South Korea.

      The US is overmilitarized. We don’t need 28,500 troops on the Korean Peninsula — we don’t need all the military exercises that we do. The third thing they need is sanctions relief. The US is heavily sanctioning North Korea. Even the UN.

      After the North Korea tests, China and Russia also supported the sanctions against North Korea. Everybody thinks that North Korea’s nuclear program is dangerous and that we should have a denuclearized Korean Peninsula. I obviously support that. But the North Koreans are not going to do that — until they are integrated in the global system and they have a measure of trust that they are not under attack.

      Would I like to see a different government in North Korea? Yes, I would. Do I want to see more freedom in North Korea? Yes, absolutely. The Korean people will have to do that. My friends in the South Korean embassy tell me the gross national standard of living, per capita gross domestic product in South Korea is 42 times as high as it is in North Korea. Vladimir Putin once said the North Koreans would rather eat grass than give up their nuclear program. Putin is right.

      It’s still a dangerous situation. We have to ease the sanctions. Nothing else has worked. The US program of maximum pressure has not worked. When something doesn’t work, you don’t double down on it, you try a different direction.

      You lift the sanctions on North Korea, say for six months, and see how they respond. Stephen Biegun, who is the US negotiator, was getting nowhere with the negotiations. The North Koreans don’t trust him and they don’t trust the US. Trump says absurd things like Kim Jong Un writes me love letters, we are in love. Trump doesn’t know what the term love means, he isn’t capable of love or empathy. But he wants to be flattered.

      The meeting in Hanoi is pointless. To get North Koreans to reciprocate, you do need the pressure from Russia and they do need assurances that the US won’t do a regime change there. At least UN sanctions need to be lifted so that North Korea’s economy responds. There isn’t mass starvation there, but they are under economic hardship and duress.

      It doesn’t make sense to me that a country where people barely spend time eating spend[s] so much money on weapons of mass destruction. It’s the insanity of our planet. Someone coming from another planet, looking at the Earth would say it’s insane to have a world where the richest eight [people] have more money than the poorest 3.8 billion. It’s insane to have a world that spends such vast amount of resources on perfecting the means of killing.

      The views expressed in this article are the author’s own and do not necessarily reflect Fair Observer’s editorial policy. More

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      in World Politics

      What Explains Donald Trump’s Foreign Policy?

      by

      Ever since his inauguration in 2017, US President Donald Trump has placed an emphasis on unilateralism and the rejection of international organizations and treaties as the hallmarks of his foreign policy.

      Trump has assumed an aggressive modus operandi in dealing with US partners worldwide and alienated many allies. He repealed US participation in the UN Human Rights Council, UNESCO, the 2015 Paris Climate Accord, the Treaty on Open Skies, the Intermediate-Range Nuclear Forces Treaty, and the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action (JCPOA). Even in the wake of the coronavirus pandemic, he pulled the US out of the World Health Organization.

      The president has pledged to draw an end to the “forever wars” the United States has been involved in over the past couple of decades, and he has challenged the view that America should be the world’s “policeman.” At the same time, his Middle East policy has been nothing short of hawkish, and he has dragged the United States to the brink of war with Iran.

      The Role of Foreign Policy in the US Election

      READ MORE

      Some observers explain Trump’s overseas agenda by noting that he has been hellbent on scoring political points by hurling out of the window the foreign policy legacy of his predecessor, Barack Obama. Others say he has been focused on pulling off his “America First” policy, premised on putting US commitments and global leadership on the backburner and emphasizing the empowerment of the national economy.

      Stephen Zunes is a professor of politics and international studies at the University of San Francisco. A leading scholar of the US affairs in the Middle East, he is a senior policy analyst for Foreign Policy in Focus and an associate editor of the Peace Review journal. His latest book is “Western Sahara: War, Nationalism, and Conflict Irresoluton.”

      In this edition of The Interview, Fair Observer talks to Zunes about Trump’s foreign policy challenges, his relationship with autocrats and his strategy in the Middle East.

      The transcript has been edited for clarity. This interview took place in summer 2020.

      Kourosh Ziabari: In a recent article on Foreign Policy, the former undersecretary of state for political affairs, Wendy Sherman, claimed that President Trump — after three and a half years in office — has “developed no foreign policy at all” and that his approach to foreign affairs has been one “without objectives, without strategy, [and] without any indication that it protects and advances US interests.” Is Trump’s foreign policy as disastrous as Sherman describes, or is she saying so merely as a former Obama administration official with partisan interests?

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      Stephen Zunes: This is a reasonably accurate statement. Indeed, many Republicans feel the same way, believing Trump has wasted an opportunity to further a more active foreign policy advancing their more hegemonic and militaristic agenda by failing to fill a number of important State Department positions and failing to articulate a clear policy.

      By all accounts, Trump is profoundly ignorant of even the most basic facts relevant to foreign policy — the names and locations of foreign countries, modern diplomatic history and other things which most reasonably well-educated Americans know. His refusal to even read policy briefs his advisers have written up for him has made it impossible for him to develop any kind of coherent foreign policy agenda. His view toward foreign relations is largely transactional — what you can do for me will determine US policy toward your country — and therefore not based on any overall vision of advancing US interests, much less international peace and security.

      His efforts to push foreign governments to pursue policies designed to help his reelection led to his impeachment earlier this year, but the Republican-controlled Senate refused to convict him despite overwhelming evidence of illegal activities in this regard.

      Ziabari: Some of the major foreign policy challenges of the Trump administration emanated from the threats apparently posed to the United States by Iran, North Korea, China and Russia. How has Trump dealt with these challenges? A June 2020 poll by Gallup found that only 41% of US adults approve of Trump’s performance in foreign policy. Is there a yardstick by which we can measure the president’s success in his overseas agenda?

      Zunes: Virtually every administration, regardless of party, has tended to exaggerate overseas threats to varying degrees, and this is certainly true with Trump. There have been real inconsistencies, however. For example, he has been far more tolerant toward North Korea, which has violated previous agreements and pursued its nuclear weapons program, than he has been toward Iran, which had dramatically reduced its nuclear capabilities and was scrupulously honoring its nuclear agreement prior to the US withdrawal from the Iran [nuclear] deal. Similarly, he has tolerated a series of provocative actions by Russia while obsessively targeting China.

      While hypocrisy and double standards is certainly not a new phenomenon in US foreign policy, Trump’s actions have taken this to a new extreme and have severely weakened US credibility in the international community.

      Ziabari: How has foreign policy historically influenced the prospects of politicians winning elections in the United States? Do you expect President Trump’s divisive foreign policy decisions to derail his chances of being reelected in November? 

      Zunes: Foreign policy is even less of a factor in this year’s election than usual, so it is unlikely to determine the outcome. Ironically, as in 2016, Trump may run to the left of the Democratic nominee, so, despite Trump’s impetuous and problematic foreign policy leadership, foreign policy issues may actually weigh to his advantage.

      During the 2016 campaign, Trump successfully, if somewhat disingenuously, was able to portray himself as a president who would be more cautious than his Democratic opponent regarding unpopular US military interventions overseas. Despite having actually supported the invasion of Iraq, Trump was largely successful in depicting himself as a war opponent and Hillary Clinton as a reckless militarist who might get the United States in another round of endless wars in the Middle East. An analysis of voting data demonstrated that a significant number of voters in northern swing states who supported the anti-Iraq War Barack Obama in the 2008 and 2012 elections switched to supporting Trump in the 2016 election over this very issue, thereby making possible his Electoral College majority.

      Already, the Trump campaign has begun targeting Joe Biden on this very issue. Biden played a critical role as head of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee in pushing the war authorization through the Democratic-controlled Senate, limiting hearings and stacking the witness list with war opponents. He has also repeatedly lied about his support for the [Iraq] war — even after inspectors had returned and confirmed the absence of the weapons of mass destruction that he and President Bush falsely claimed Iraq still possessed — giving the Trump campaign an opening to press this issue even more.

      Meanwhile, Biden has alienated many rank-and-file Democrats by pushing through a party platform calling for tens of billions of dollars of unconditional taxpayer-funded arms transfers to Israel while not even mentioning, much less condemning, the Israeli occupation and settlements. It criticizes efforts by both the United Nations and civil society campaigns to end the occupation as somehow unfairly delegitimizing Israel itself. This comes despite polls showing a sizable majority of Democrats oppose the occupation and settlements and support conditioning aid.  

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      Neither candidate appears willing to reduce the United States’ bloated military budget or end arms transfers to dictatorships. However, Biden has promised to end support for Saudi Arabia’s devastating war on Yemen and the longstanding US backing of the Saudi regime, as well as reverse Trump’s escalation of the nuclear arms race, both of which are popular positions.

      Meanwhile, Biden has won over the vast majority of the foreign policy establishment, including quite a few Republicans, who have been appalled by Trump’s treatment of traditional allies and cozy relations with the Russian regime. How much impact this will have on swing voters, however, remains to be seen.

      Ziabari: Trump’s pullout from the Iran nuclear deal was one of his major and contentious foreign policy decisions. In a poll conducted shortly after he announced the US withdrawal, CNN found 63% of Americans believed the United States should stick with the accord, while only 29% favored abandoning it. Last year, a Pew Research Center poll revealed 56% of the respondents did not have faith in the president’s ability to handle the crisis with Iran. Has the Trump administration’s maximum pressure campaign against the Islamic Republic yielded the results it was expected to achieve?

      Zunes: Iran already made enormous compromises in agreeing to the JCPOA required it to destroy billions of dollars’ worth of nuclear facilities and material while neither the United States nor any of Iran’s nuclear-armed neighbors — namely Israel, India and Pakistan — were required to reduce their arsenals or any other aspects of their nuclear program. Iran agreed to these unilateral concessions in return for a lifting of the debilitating sanctions imposed by the United Nations Security Council.

      Despite full Iranian compliance with the agreement, the United States not only re-imposed its own sanctions, but it effectively forced foreign governments and countries to do the same at an enormous cost to the Iranian people. Hardline elements in the Iranian government, who opposed the agreement on the grounds that the United States could not be trusted to uphold its end of the deal, feel they have been vindicated, and moderate elements in the government are on the defensive.

      Some fear that the goal of the Trump administration in tearing up the agreement was to encourage the Iranians to resume their nuclear program, which is exactly what happened, in order to provoke a crisis that could give the United States an excuse to go to war.

      The mistake the United States made in Vietnam was seeing the leftist revolution against the US-backed regime in Saigon in terms of its communist leadership rather than the strong nationalist sentiments which propelled it. Washington could not understand why the more troops we sent and the more bombs we dropped actually strengthened the opposition.

      Similarly, looking at the Iranian regime in terms of its Islamist leadership misses the strong nationalist sentiments in that country. While a growing number of Iranians oppose the authoritarianism, conservatism and corruption of the clerical and military leadership, a large majority appear to support the regime in its confrontation with the United States. Iranians, like the Vietnamese, are among the most nationalistic people in the world. Iran, formerly known as Persia, has been a regional power on and off for the past 2,500 years and does not appreciate being treated in such a dismissive way. The more pressure on Iran, the greater the resistance.

      Embed from Getty Images

      Concerns raised by the Trump administration about the Iranian regime — its repression, discrimination against women and religious minorities, support for extremist groups, interference in other countries, among other points — are indeed valid. Yet each of these issues are also true, in fact, even more so, when it comes to Saudi Arabia and other close US allies in the region. The problem the United States has with Iran, therefore, is not in regard to such negative behavior, but the fact that Iran is the most powerful country in the greater Middle East that rejects US hegemony. Iran was willing to compromise on its nuclear program, but it is not going to compromise when it comes to its sovereignty.Ziabari: One of the critical points President Trump’s opponents raise about him is his affinity for autocratic leaders and dictators. He has — on different occasions — praised, congratulated or invited to the White House President Rodrigo Duterte of the Philippines; President Abdel-Fattah al-Sisi of Egypt; President Vladimir Putin of Russia; the far-right leader of the French party National Rally, Marine Le Pen; and the supreme leader of North Korea, Kim Jong Un. Why is Trump attracted to these unpopular leaders? Can it be attributed to his desire for becoming a president for life? 

      Zunes: Most US presidents have supported allied dictatorships. Under both Republican and Democratic administrations, US arms have flowed to autocratic regimes in Egypt, Saudi Arabia and other repressive Arab regimes as well as dictators in Africa, Asia and, in previous years, Latin America as well.

      What makes Trump different is that while previous administrations at least pretended to support improved human rights in these countries, and often rationalized for arms transfers and other close relations as a means of supposedly influencing them in that direction, Trump doesn’t even pretend to support political freedom and has even praised their repressive tactics.

      There is little question that Trump himself has autocratic tendencies. The US Constitution prevents him from becoming president for life and other more overt autocratic measures, but he has certainly stretched his presidential authority in a number of very disturbing ways.

      Ziabari: Rescinding international agreements, reducing the commitments of the US government abroad and embracing unilateralism have been the epitome of Trump’s foreign policy. This is believed to have created rifts between the US and its traditional allies, particularly in the European Union and NATO. Some observers of US foreign policy, however, say the gulf has been exaggerated and that the United States continues to enjoy robust relations with its global partners. What are your thoughts?

      Zunes: Due to the United States’ economic and military power, most foreign governments have little choice but to work closely with Washington on any number of issues. However, the United States is no longer looked at for leadership in ways it had been previously. This decline has been going on for some time, accelerating during the George W. Bush administration and paused during the Obama administration, but it has now plummeted under Trump to a degree that it is not likely to recover. The rejection of basic diplomatic protocols and other traditions of international relations repeatedly exhibited by Trump has alienated even some of the United States’ more conservative allies.

      While Joe Biden is certainly far more knowledgeable, experienced and diplomatic in his approach to foreign policy than the incumbent president, his support for the Iraq invasion, the Israeli occupation and various allied dictatorships has also made him suspect in the eyes of many erstwhile allies. And many allies have already reset their foreign policy priorities to make them less dependent on and less concerned about the United States and its priorities.

      Ziabari: President Trump appears to have taken US-Israel relations to a new level, making himself known as the most pro-Israel US president after Harry Truman, as suggested by several commentators and pundits, such as the renowned political analyst Bill Schneider. Trump recognized Jerusalem as the capital of Israel, defunded UNRWA, closed down the Palestine Liberation Organization’s office in Washington and unveiled the “deal of the century,” a much-hyped peace plan for the Israeli-Palestinian conflict that Palestinian factions rejected outright on account of being overly biased in favor of Israel. Why has Trump prioritized pleasing the Israelis and advancing their territorial ambitions?

      Zunes: The right-wing coalition governing Israel shares Trump’s anti-Arab racism, Islamophobia and contempt for human rights and international law, so this is not surprising. While Democratic administrations rationalized their support for Israel on the grounds that it was a liberal democracy — at least for its Jewish citizens — what draws Trump to Israel is the right-wing, anti-democratic orientation of its current government.

      Though Trump has brought US support for Israeli violations of international legal norms to unprecedented levels, in practice — at least for Palestinians living under occupation — it has made little difference. For example, previous administrations did not overtly recognize Israeli settlements and annexation as Trump has, saying such issues should be resolved in negotiations between Israel and the Palestinians. However, this policy ignored the gross power asymmetry between the Palestinians under occupation and the Israeli occupiers, an imbalance compounded by the fact that as the chief mediator in negotiations, the US has also served as the primary military, economic and diplomatic supporter of the occupying power.

      By refusing to condition the billions of dollars’ worth of unconditional military aid to Israel on Israeli adherence to international law and human rights norms and blocking the United Nations Security Council from enforcing — or, in some cases, even passing — resolutions calling for Israeli compliance with its international legal obligations, it gave Israel’s right-wing government no incentive to make the necessary compromises for peace. In many respects, Trump’s policies have simply codified what was already going on under previous administrations.

      The views expressed in this article are the author’s own and do not necessarily reflect Fair Observer’s editorial policy. More

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      Kashmir’s History and Future Meet in Literature

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      For as long as one can remember, the stunningly beautiful valley of Kashmir has been a tinder box of clashing ideologies and religious beliefs. In the not too distant past, it was known as the land of Rishis, holy seers who combined the profound philosophies of Hinduism, Buddhism and Sufism to create a uniquely syncretic spiritual tradition.

      Today, it is the site of a bitter territorial dispute between India and Pakistan, a conflict that has resulted in scores of casualties and the forced expulsion of hundreds of thousands of Pandits, as Kashmir’s Hindus are commonly referred to.

      Author Rakesh K. Kaul’s first novel, “The Last Queen of Kashmir” (Harper Collins India, 2015), tries to shed light on the roots of this conflict by going back in time to explore the dramatic life of Kota Rani, the last ruler of the Hindu Lohara dynasty in Kashmir. Kota ruled as monarch until 1339, when she was deposed by Shah Mir, who became the first Muslim ruler of Kashmir.

      The Modern Indian Woman: A Conversation with Trisha Das

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      His most recent work, “Dawn: The Warrior Princess of Kashmir” (Penguin India, 2019), is an unexpected foray into the far distant future. Set in 3000 AD, the book combines artificial intelligence, genetics and quantum theory with the ancient wisdom of Kashmir’s traditional Niti stories, which inspire Dawn to overcome seemingly impossible odds to save humanity from impending destruction.

      In this guest edition of The Interview, Vikram Zutshi talks to Rakesh Kaul about the inspiration behind his two novels, childhood memories of his strife-torn homeland and how his grandfather, the famed Kashmiri mystic Pandit Gopi Krishna, guides the trajectory of his life and work.

      Vikram Zutshi: You have written what is possibly the first science fiction novel set in Kashmir. What inspired you to choose the genre of science fiction to tell this story and how does it adapt itself to Kashmiri history and culture?

      Rakesh Kaul: I wish I could claim the honor of being a pioneer with “Dawn: The Warrior Princess of Kashmir.” But much as I admire them, I have many literary ancestors who are the equals of Joseph Campbell, George Orwell and Aldous Huxley. I am a mere upholder of a literary tradition that is over 2,000 years old. Western science fiction imagines possibilities like time travel, space exploration, parallel universes, extraterrestrial life. There are robots who are more advanced in their intelligence than humans.

      But all these themes were part of the stories in Kashmir, plus more. “Dawn” has in it an ancient story about a robot city with a remarkable safety override. The Puranic story of Indra’s net holds within it the concept of recursive universes. The pinnacle of these stories is of course the collection of stories in the Yoga Vasistha.

      The word “sahitya,” which means “literature,” was coined by Kuntaka in Kashmir. Within sahitya, there was a genre which dealt with all the above-mentioned themes but went beyond. One could say that if science fiction’s domain was all the possibilities within the bounded universe, then in Kashmir specifically — and India generally — the stories explored all the possibilities within the unbounded inner-verse.

      So, if you like “1984” or “Brave New World,” which are sci fi classics, then “Dawn” is going to take you to a whole new level. Even more than Joseph Campbell, the stories that I have brought are not mere myths or fantasies; they reveal a cognitive organ and knowledge acquisition capability which unlocks the deterministic laws of nature in a manner that science is just beginning to grapple with.

      Zutshi: What does the story arc of the central character, Dawn, tell us about the state of the world today?

      Kaul: All science fiction stories in the West and their Indic counterparts, the Niti stories, deal with the existential question of the arc of one’s way of life. The mind is seduced by utopia and yet ends up in dystopia. One ignores at one’s peril the addictive narrative wars happening today that are shaped and served by technology. The world, whether global or local, is heading toward a duality of monopolistic cults that fiercely demand total obeisance. Non-conformity results in a flameout at the hands of troll armies.

      Artificial intelligence is the omniscient eye watching over us. What we cannot ignore is that computer power is doubling every 20 months, data every six months, and the AI brain every three months. The champions of AI are promising that we will have sentience in 30 years. That is a close encounter of the third kind. That is within the lifespan of the readers. The danger to you as an individual has never been greater. One cannot take lightly the rising depression and suicide graphs coupled with desperate drug usage. Hence, the vital necessity for Dawn. 

      Dawn is the last girl left standing on earth in 3000 AD. She is facing an army of weaponized AIs and mind-controlled automatons; they rule over a deadly world where men have lost their souls and women have been slain — all heading to Sarvanash, the Great Apocalypse. This is a story of a close encounter of the seventh kind. How does Dawn arm herself? Can she win? Great Niti stories remind us that if the mind is a frenemy, then the need to nurture what is beyond the mind that one can turn to and trust is paramount. The Dawn lifehack that is presented is time-tested but oh so amazingly simple, yet powerful.

      Zutshi: Is the characterization of the main protagonist based on a real-life person?

      Kaul: “Dawn” in Sanskrit is “usha.” Usha is the most important goddess in the Rig Veda, the oldest extant text in the world. By contrast, none of the goddesses that we think about today are even mentioned there. Dawn is the harbinger of the rebirth of life each morn. She is the only Indian goddess who has spread around the world. Usha’s cognates are Eos in Greek, Aurora in Roman and Eostre in Anglo-Saxon [mythology], which is the root of the word Easter —the festival of resurrection. Interestingly, Usha is also the name of the sanctuary city where the Sanhedrin, [Israel’s] rabbinical court, fled to in the 2nd century. She is also the goddess of order, the driver away of chaos and darkness. She is dawn, she is hope, she is the wonder leading to resurrection.

      Humans recognized her wonder a long time ago. They imagined Dawn born at the birth of the universe, whose one-pointed mission is to make darkness retreat and drive ahead fearlessly.

      But Dawn is also a tribute to the warrior princesses of Kashmir, a land which was celebrated for its women in practice and not just poetry. They were not merely martial warriors, nor just holy warriors or ninja warriors, but much more. The Kashmiris enshrined the dawn mantra within themselves, men and women, and repeat it to this day. In my novels, the protagonists repeatedly draw upon it.

      Zutshi: You have spoken about Niti, the traditional storytelling technique of Kashmir. Please elaborate on Niti for the lay reader and how it informed your work. 

      Kaul: “Niti” means “the wise conduct of life.” The first collection of Niti stories from Kashmir is the 2,000-year-old celebrated Panchatantra, which is the most translated collection of stories from India. Kashmiri stories have found their way into the Aesop and Grimm fairy tales, Chaucer and Fontaine.

      The Kashmiris maintained that one is born with only one birthright, namely the freedom to achieve what is one’s life quest. So, the existential question is, What is the “way of life” by which one can maximize one’s human potential? The Kashmiris defined life’s end goal in heroic terms as unbounded fulfillment while alive, not limited by the physical and encompassing the metaphysical. But how does a mere Niti story enable you to achieve fulfillment and consciousness? Niti’s cultural promise is that it enables one to face any threat, any challenge in reaching one’s goal as one travels through time and space.

      How does Niti work? Let us start with the Western perspective first. Descartes famously said that wonder was the first passion of the soul. Kashmir spent a thousand years studying this phenomenon and helps us penetrate deeper here. When we have an experience that is a total surprise, we go WOW — an acronym for “wonder of wonder.” When we go wow, it is expressing, How can this be? We not only accept the limited capacity of our senses and the mind, but we also have a profound moment of self-recognition that there is an unlimited capacity in us to experience what lies beyond our knowledge.

      The wormhole between the two brings the relish of the state of wonder which in India was described as “adbhuta rasa” in the text “Natyashastra,” written by another Kashmiri illuminati, “adbhuta” meaning “wonder” and “rasa” meaning “juice.” So, in the wow moment you momentarily taste the wonder juice. All Niti stories are written in the adbhuta rasa literary style, and so is Dawn.

      Zutshi: Your first novel, “The Last Queen of Kashmir,” inspired by the story of Kota Rani, was a hit with Kashmiris in India and the diaspora. What would you like readers to take away from the book and how is it relevant in our times?

      Embed from Getty Images

      Kaul: Yes, much to my surprise the novel received critical acclaim and sold out! The second edition will be coming out worldwide in a month or so, with another beautiful cover of Kota Rani! “The Last Queen of Kashmir” is a historical epic about a great queen from India who informs and inspires. It engages audiences while serving as a cautionary tale for today. It was a precursor of what is now being called fail-lit. Much like Icarus, Kashmir’s humanist civilization of oneness and inclusivity flew too close to the Sun.

      The story provides lessons on the importance of protecting, preserving and perpetuating our social freedoms in a unified society from being divided by religious and cultural conflict. Kota Rani’s story shows that we should look for leaders who protect freedom and defeat the pied pipers within who threaten us with tyranny in the guise of offering utopia.

      Yet, “The Last Queen of Kashmir” is eventually a resurrection story to show us how the light of knowledge and the power of freedom can conquer all enemies. Kota was described as always captivating, never captive. It is a highly recommended read for all women because its notion of femininity and feminine power may surprise them. Kota Rani is memory and Dawn is imagination. Both are reflections of the same double reflexive power. Memory is what makes who you are, and imagination is what makes who you can be. 

      Zutshi: As a Kashmiri Hindu who moved to the United States fairly early in life, what are your earliest memories of your ancestral homeland? What do you hope to see in Kashmir’s future?

      Kaul: My earliest memories are of the journey that we would take to my homeland from Delhi, where my parents had migrated to after the Kabali raids in October 1947. I remember my mother dropping a coin into the raging river Jhelum and praying for a safe journey as the bus would slowly creak across the hanging bridge in the hill town of Ramban.

      Once there was portage across the old Banihal tunnel, where a section had caved in, only small, open jeeps could ferry us with our bags from our buses across to the waiting buses on the other side. The old tunnel was dark with a few small lamps that only accentuated the shadows. There were sections which were deliberately left bare in the older tunnel so that the massive water flow inside the mountain could rush out. They did not have the technology in those early days to divert the water. The sound of the rushing water still resonates inside me.

      Kashmir was a place of sensory overload. I would sip the nectar endlessly from the honeysuckles, pluck the cherries growing in our garden. My cousin would rent a boat, and much like Tom Sawyer and Huckleberry Finn we would paddle through the water canals in our neighborhood raiding the mulberry trees growing by the banks of the river. We would wake up early in the morning and go for a hike to Hari Parvat, walking through the Shia neighborhoods with the graveyards. Once we saw a crowd of [Shia] self-flagellate as part of their religious observances, and we hid until they passed by. There would be other mob gatherings, but we were culturally trained to avoid them.

      Once a year, we would go to my grandfather’s retreat overlooking the Nishat. It was a huge apple orchard. Evening time we would scurry back to the cabin because then the bears would come from the other side of the hill. Night was their foraging time.

      Nothing compared, though, to the experiences when the family would rent a houseboat, technically a doonga. We would go to the shrine of Khir Bhavani for a week. The boat would move slowly, and there would be endless tea poured from the samovar accompanied by the local breads. Family life seemed to have kith and kin as an integral part. There was a feeling of intimate connectivity. At night, all the cousins would gather. We would spread the mattresses on the bottom of the boat and share the blankets. Then it was storytime. The girls would cry that we were scaring them when the boys would share the monster stories. But they would not leave the group because they did not want to miss out. I have brought some of these Kashmiri monsters and their stories into “Dawn.” 

      But, ultimately, Kashmir was about the mystic experience. I would sit in the inner sanctorum of our small temple at the end of the bridge on our little canal. There was barely space for a few. I would watch the water drops drip endlessly on the lingam. The small trident would be by the side. I would look at the paintings on the wall, each one a story and wonder about it all. The best, of course, would be the nighttime aarti at Khir Bhavani. It seemed that all of humanity was there with a lit lamp in their hands. The faces of the devout women and girls would be luminous, the moonlight would give them a sheen. There was beauty, love and innocence in the air.

      As a Kashmiri, I would want the lakir ka fakir (blind ideologues) to disappear and the artist to reign supreme. Translation: Those who police others either morally or ideologically or religiously or by force of arms should go bye-bye. The rest will follow naturally, and the valley will emerge from its long, deep darkness.

      Embed from Getty Images

      Zutshi: You are the grandson of famed Kashmiri mystic, Pandit Gopi Krishna. In what way have his work and teachings informed and influenced the trajectory of your life?  

      Kaul: The Pandit was the last rishi of Kashmir, a lineage that goes back to the formation of the valley by Rishi Kashyapa. Deepak Chopra said of him, “Pandit Gopi Krishna was a pioneer in the land of spirituality. His insights into the quantum nature of the body predate the scientific discoveries of today. I salute this great sage and scientist of the twentieth century.” Dr. Karan Singh, the crown prince of Kashmir who gave the eulogy at his funeral said, “In the 19th century, India gave the world Ramakrishna; in the 20th century it has given the world Gopi Krishna.”

      I suppose he shaped me even before I was born. He made the decision that he was going to marry my mother without giving any dowry to break that pernicious social custom. His father-in-law begged him, [saying] that they had bought a priceless wedding sari the day that my mother was born. But to no avail. My mother was married in a simple cotton sari. My inception was in simplicity.

      He was my first guru, and he continues to guide me. I learned from him the critical importance of being a family man, of community service, especially toward widows and destitute women, of being a fearless sastra warrior, of words being bridges, about poetry and the arts and, best of all, about the worlds beyond. I treasure his letters. I can never forget the talk that he gave at the United Nations where 600 Native American elders attended. It was a prophecy come true for them where it was stated that a wise man from the East would come and give them wisdom in a glasshouse.

      Would I have dared to embark on a 12-year journey to bring the story of a hidden Kota Rani without the inspiration of what it took him to bring his story to the world? No. Especially when writing “Dawn,” his work was invaluable in steering me in describing the close encounter of the seventh kind. What is the biotechnology of the evolutionary force within us? And then in the epilogue for “Dawn,” it is all him because only he has traveled there. Even now as I write this, his beaming face smiles at me. I smile back.

      The views expressed in this article are the author’s own and do not necessarily reflect Fair Observer’s editorial policy. More

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      The One-State Reality to the Israeli-Palestinian Conflict

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      The Israeli-Palestinian conflict has been raging for over seven decades, and the prospects for peace have never seemed more distant than today. The two-state solution, which was once the most widely-accepted remedy for the impasse, has lost traction, and efforts by the United Nations and other intermediaries to resolve the dispute have got nowhere.

      In 2018, a survey by the Palestinian Center for Policy and Survey Research and the Tami Steinmetz Center for Peace Research at Tel Aviv University found that only 43% of Palestinians and Israeli Jews support the establishment of an independent Palestinian state alongside Israel. This was down from 52% of Palestinians and 47% of Israeli Jews who favored a two-state concept just a year prior.

      In October 2019, the UN special coordinator for the Middle East peace process, Nickolay Mladenov, described the situation in the occupied Palestinian Territories as “a multi-generational tragedy.” He said to the Security Council that Israeli settlements — which are illegal under international law — on Palestinian land represent a substantial obstacle to the peace process.

      The Israeli-Palestinian Conflict Faces Its Most Consequential Decision in Decades

      READ MORE

      US President Donald Trump, who is seen by some observers as the most pro-Israel president since Harry Truman, has billed himself as Israel’s best friend in the White House. Trump has overturned the US position on many aspects of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict to the dismay of the Palestinian people and leadership. His administration has recognized Jerusalem as the capital of Israel and no longer considers Israeli settlements in the West Bank to be inconsistent with international law.

      In January, the Trump administration unveiled its long-awaited peace plan. Dubbed the “deal of the century,” the 181-page document was promoted by Washington as the solution to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. Palestinian factions have rejected the proposal as overly biased and one-sided in favor of Israel.

      Ian Lustick is an American political scientist holding the Bess W. Heyman Chair in the Political Science Department of the University of Pennsylvania. He is an advocate of what he calls a “one-state reality” to solve the conflict. His latest book, published in October 2019, is called “Paradigm Lost: From Two-State Solution to One-State Reality.”

      In this edition of The Interview, Fair Observer talks to Lustick about the ongoing skirmishes between the Israelis and Palestinians, the declining traction of the two-state solution, the BDS movement and the US support for Israel.

      The transcript has been edited for clarity.

      Kourosh Ziabari: In your 2013 article in The New York Times titled “Two-State Illusion,” you note that Israelis and Palestinians have their own reasons to cling to the two-state ideal. For the Palestinians, you write that it’s a matter of ensuring that diplomatic and financial aid they receive keeps coming, and for the Israelis, this notion is a reflection of the views of the Jewish Israeli majority that also shields Israel from international criticism. Are you saying that these reasons are morally unjustified? Why do you call the two-state solution an illusion?

      Ian Lustick: I do not argue they are morally unjustified. I am seeking to explain why they persist in the face of the implausibility if not the impossibility of attaining a negotiated two-state solution. I am trying to solve the puzzle of why public agitation for it continues by these groups, one that wants a real two-state solution and one that does not, even though the leaders of each group know that the two-state solution cannot be achieved. The key to the answer is a “Nash Equilibrium” in which both sides, and other actors as well — the US government and the peace process industry — can get what they minimally need by effectively giving up on what they really want.

      Embed from Getty Images

      The mistaken idea that Israelis and Palestinians can actually reach an agreement of a two-state solution through negotiations is an illusion because so many people still actually believe it is attainable when it is not.

      Ziabari: As you’ve explained in your writings, the favorable two-state situation envisioned by Israel is one that ignores Palestinian refugees’ “right of return,” guarantees that Jerusalem will be the capital of Israel and controlled by Israel, and fortifies the position of Jewish settlements. On the other side, the Palestinian version of the two-state solution imagines the return of refugees, demands the evacuation of Israeli settlements and claims East Jerusalem as the capital of the Palestinian state. Do you think the two sides will ever succeed in narrowing these stark differences?

      Lustick: No. The elements of the two-state solution that would make it acceptable to Palestinians are those that make it unacceptable to the majority of Israeli Jews who now have firm control of the Israeli government and of the Israeli political arena. But once a one-state reality is acknowledged, then both sides can agree that Jerusalem should be united and accessible to all who live within the state, that refugees within the borders of the state, at least, should have a right to move to and live in any part of the state, and that owners of land and property seized illegally or unjustly anywhere in the state can seek redress, or that discrimination in the right to own and inhabit homes anywhere in the state must be brought to an end.

      Ziabari: You are an advocate of a one-state solution to the decades-old Israeli–Palestinian conflict. What are the characteristics of such a country? Do you think Israelis and Palestinians will really agree to live alongside each other under a unified leadership, share resources, abandon their mutual grievances and refuse to engage in religious and political provocation against the other side while there are no geographical borders separating them?

      Lustick: I do not advocate a “one-state solution” in the sense that I do not see a clear path from where we are now to that “pretty picture” of the future. I instead seek to analyze a reality — a one-state reality — that is far from pretty, and thereby not a solution. But that reality has dynamics which are not under the control of any one group, and those dynamics can lead to processes of democratization within the one-state reality that could produce a set of problems in the future better than the problems that Jews and Arabs have today between the river and the sea.

      The substantive difference I have with advocates of the “one-state solution” is that they imagine Jews and Arabs “negotiating,” as two sides, to agree on a new “one-state” arrangement. I do not share that view as even a possibility. But within the one-state reality, different groups of Jews and Arabs can find different reasons to cooperate or oppose one another, leading to new and productive political processes and trends of democratization. That is how, for example, the United States was transformed from a white-ruled country with masses of freed slaves who exercised no political rights whatsoever into a multiracial democracy. Abraham Lincoln never imagined this as a “one-state solution” — it was the unintended consequence of the union’s annexation of the South, with its masses of black, non-citizen inhabitants, after the Civil War.

      Ziabari: Several UN Security Council resolutions have been issued that call upon Israel to refrain from resorting to violence against Palestinian citizens, safeguard the welfare and security of people living under occupation, halt its settlement constructions and withdraw from the lands it occupied during the 1967 war. Some of the most important ones are Resolution 237, Resolution 242 and Resolution 446. There are also resolutions deploring Israel’s efforts to alter the status of Jerusalem. However, Israel has ignored these formal expressions of the UN and seems to face no consequences. How has Israel been able to disregard these resolutions without paying a price?

      Embed from Getty Images

      Lustick: The short answer to this is that the Israel lobby has enforced extreme positions on US administrations so that the United States has provided the economic, military, political and diplomatic support necessary for Israel to withstand such international pressures. The reasons for the Israel lobby’s success are detailed in my book and can be traced, ultimately, to the hard work and dedication of lobby activists, the misconceived passion of American Jews and evangelicals to “protect” Israel, and the fundamental character of American politics which gives a single-issue movement in foreign policy enormous leverage over presidents and over members of Congress.

      Ziabari: You’ve worked with the State Department. How prudent and constructive is the current US administration’s policy on the Israeli-Palestinian conflict? What are the implications of decisions such as recognizing Jerusalem as the capital of Israel, cutting off funding to UNRWA and closing down the PLO office in Washington, DC? Will the “deal of the century” resolve the Middle East deadlock?

      Lustick: US policy has, for decades, been unable to realize its foreign policy interests in this domain for reasons I explained earlier. Now that the opportunity to do so via a two-state solution has been lost, the policies of the Trump administration hardly matter, except that by not emphasizing America’s emphasis on democracy and equality, it postpones the time when Israelis and Palestinians will begin the kinds of internal struggles over democracy and equal rights that hold promise of improving the one-state reality.

      Ziabari: Is the Trump administration working to silence criticism of Israel by painting narratives that are unequivocal in censuring Israel’s policies as anti-Semitic? Do you see any difference between Trump’s efforts in protecting Israel against international criticism with those of his predecessors?

      Lustick: Yes. The Trump administration has sided in an unprecedentedly explicit way with the extreme wing of the Israel lobby and with extreme and intolerant right-wing forces in Israel. 

      Ziabari: The proponents of the boycott, divestment and sanctions (BDS) movement, who believe that denying Israel economic opportunities and investment will serve to change its policies regarding the Palestinian people, are widely smeared as anti-Semites. Is the BDS movement anti-Semitic?

      Lustick: There may be some anti-Semites among BDS supporters, but the movement itself is no more anti-Semitic than the Jewish campaign to boycott France during the Dreyfus trial was “anti-French people.” In fact, as it becomes clearer to everyone that successful negotiations toward a two-state solution will not occur, the significance of the BDS movement will grow rapidly. 

      It is an effective way to express, non-violently, an approach to the conflict that emphasizes increasing justice and quality of life for all those living between the river and the sea. Its focus is not on the particular institutional architecture of an outcome, but on the extent to which values of equality, democracy and non-exclusivist rights to self-determination for Jews and Arabs can be realized. Nor do BDS supporters need to agree on which forms of discrimination, at which level, they focus on. Some may target sanctions against every Israeli institution, but many will target the most blatant forms of discrimination, such as radically different rights and protections accorded to Arabs vs. Jews in the West Bank, in the Jerusalem municipality or in southwest Israel, including the Gaza Strip.

      Ziabari: The settlement of disputes between Palestinians and Israelis requires a reliable and effective mediator, one in which both parties have trust. Which government or international organization is most qualified to fulfill this role?

      Lustick: The time for mediation or negotiation between Israeli Jews and Palestinian Arabs, as two groups, has effectively passed. That is no longer what is crucial. What is crucial are political processes within each group and across them. African Americans became empowered over generations, not because an outside mediator helped arrange an agreement between whites and blacks, but because gradually self-interested whites saw opportunities in the emancipation of and alliances with blacks. 

      This approach does imagine a long-time frame, but when states with democratic elements are confronted with masses of formerly excluded and despised populations, that is the kind of time it takes to achieve integration and democratization. In addition to the American case vis-à-vis blacks, consider how long it took to integrate Irish Catholics into British politics after Ireland was annexed in 1801, or how long it took South Africa to integrate and democratize its long excluded and oppressed black majority.

      Ziabari: And a final question: Will the unveiling of President Trump’s “deal of the century” change anything for the reality of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict? Some Middle East observers say it is just a green light for Israel to go ahead with annexing more Palestinian territory. Others believe Israel doesn’t need such an endorsement and has been annexing Palestinian lands anyway. What do you think about the deal and how it will transform the demographics and political calculus of the region?

      Lustick: The Trump plan is a hoax. In the pages it devotes to its own justification appear all the Israeli government’s favorite propaganda lines. The “negotiations” that produced it were between the most ultranationalist and fundamentalist government in Israel’s history and a group of “Israel firsters” in the White House who are just as extreme, though substantially more ignorant. Advanced originally as a plan to give Palestinians a higher standard of living instead of a real state, it actually proposes no money for Palestinians until they become Finland. Only after that will Israel be empowered, if it wishes, to grant them not a state, but something Israel is willing for Palestinians to call a state but existing within the state of Israel.

      If realized as written, the plan would be an archipelago of sealed Palestinian ghettos. By awarding Israel prerogatives to patrol, supervise, intervene and regulate all movement to and from those ghettos, the plan affirms the one-state reality while offering Israel at least temporary protection against having to admit and defend apartheid by describing itself as a two-state solution. This is Palestine as Transkei or Bophuthatswana. As a plan, it has no chance of being implemented. Its real function is to give temporary cover to the deepening of silent apartheid.

      The views expressed in this article are the author’s own and do not necessarily reflect Fair Observer’s editorial policy. More

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      Why Has Islamophobia Risen in America?

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      Islamophobia in the US has increased ever since the 9/11 attacks in 2001. Discrimination and hate crimes against American Muslims skyrocketed immediately after the deadliest assault on US soil took place. Despite sporadic efforts by former President Barack Obama to bridge the religious and racial divides, anti-Muslim prejudice was further heightened after the election of […] More