Muslim Brotherhood

**Stu-6** · 06-14-2006

Originally Posted by Steve Blair

With regard to Hamas, I do think that we mishandled that one to a degree. They were elected, so if we are the champions of democracy we claim to be then we have a certain obligation to at least make a good faith attempt to deal with them. I don't think it's in our best interest to see the Palestinian situation fall apart, which seems to be happening right now.

Agreed we do more damage to ourselves by appearing as hypocrites who do not truly support democracy than we would by dealing, cautiously, with Hamas.

**Tom Odom** · 06-15-2006

Again,

Excellent discussion. The 800 pond gorilla in the room, however, is the U.S. relationship with Israel and attempts to balance that with approaches to organizations/parties/groups ala Hamas and the MB. To use an analogy, negotiations are like a playground see saw; it is difficult to achieve balance when you are sitting on one end.

As a point and not trying to stick a finger in RE Jones eye, I would offer this:

Every dollar we give to them, even if it isn't spent on weapons, frees up another dollar for them *to* spend on weapons. The whole point of money is that it's fungible, after all. Similar logic applies to humanitarian relief - if we're shipping over antibiotics, that's money they're free to spend on high explosives.

The exact same paradigm applies to U.S. funds supplied to Israel that are not accounted for and have served as offsets for projects like settlements on the West Bank and in Gaza.

So in applying a degree of real politik to Hamas or the MB, a DIME approach must look at all nodal linkages with an equal degree of realism.

Best
Tom

P.S.

Adam, here come the phone calls

**Steve Blair** · 06-15-2006

Couldn't agree more, Tom. If memory serves, one of the few ways that the U.S. has been able to convince Israel to "play ball" when it comes to policy decisions is to threaten to cut off either loans or direct aid. And that usually creates a backlash. I'm working off memory here, so I can't really provide any detailed examples.

**Jones_RE** · 06-15-2006

I recall a political cartoon (run sometime after Operation Desert Storm), that depicted Prime Minister Rabin kicking an Uncle Sam ATM only to find no money coming out.

Tom, you're absolutely right about US foreign assistance to Israel. Personally, I think we should have cut that off a long time ago - its continued operation plants an implicit stamp of approval on *every* action Tel Aviv may take which obviously has done us no good whatsoever.

Note that I'm *not* suggesting economic sanctions against any party, here. What I *am* suggesting is that maybe we shouldn't be paying these guys to fight (which is what a policy of supplying either Tel Aviv or the Palestinian Authority with free money from the US does).

**Strickland** · 06-15-2006

While not consistent with the US's current ME policies, what would the ramifications of US support for the "one man - one vote" idea across the area? While we know AQ disdains democracy, by supporting it, the Muslim Brotherhood in Egypt, Hizbollah in Lebanon, the Muslim Brotherhood in Syria, Hamas - the Palestinians in general, and MMA in Pakistan would all come out potential winners. Would this somehow take the wind out of the AQ sails globally, and provide a potential "in" for the US to exploit with all these groups? Would potential "grievance guerillas" or "economically - socially motivated terrorists" not side with these groups as they gained influence, instead of AQ?

Second, what if we "pushed" Israel to except the one man one vote idea across all of Israel / PA? Imagine if we could get the Israelis to accept this in exchange for Palestinian disarmament?

We can all dream.

**Jones_RE** · 06-15-2006

One man one vote doesn't seem to be too much of a problem in Egypt. The issue is who is allowed to be on the ballot! Opening up all elections to fully competitive races is the main issue - and one on which the US would decisively lose to most of those governments. They know their policies aren't sufficiently popular.

Of course, demanding one man one vote from Israel would get them to draw up final borders with amazing swiftness!

<edit>
But yes, opening up more elections in the Middle East and more broadly would indeed give these groups the choice to side with someone besides AQ. And that could only be good for us (and the world) long term.

**Tom Odom** · 06-16-2006

Note that I'm *not* suggesting economic sanctions against any party, here. What I *am* suggesting is that maybe we shouldn't be paying these guys to fight (which is what a policy of supplying either Tel Aviv or the Palestinian Authority with free money from the US does).

RE,

I would apply a different wrinkle on assistance. When signed Camp David was a geostrategic breakthrough because it removed the Israeli-Egyptian struggle from the Cold War game board; we paid for them not to fight and at the time (1978) that was a good thing. In 2006, I believe that across the board, all assistance and development monies should be on an established schedule according to need as set by an international body like the Wold Bank. That would be hard thing for a lot of folks to get used to--many of whom who see assistance as leverage and many who seek such assistance with no intention of accepting such leverage. As an influence and image tool, assistance according to need gets us more for each buck. The tsunami relief effort, the Pakistan earthquake, and other such actions completed without agenda do more as a global IO tool. Put another way, apolitical assistance I believe is more effective politically than the pursuit of political leverage through assistance.

But I will also say that in my experience, the absolute worst tactic is to hold out assistance until a recipient complies--especially if the perspective assistance recipient is truly in need. In some ways I see that in our reactions to Hamas; we stated our "new" policy was to encourage democracy. The Palestinians voted and Hamas won. We said recognize Israel or we cut off funds. Israel had already labeled Hamas a terrorist organization and refused to deal with it. Big surprise, Hamas said no to recognition and we suspended funds. Though of economic importance certainly to the Palestinians, the amount of money compared to that routinely directed to Israel without condition made the face issue to the newly victorious Hamas more important.

In the case of the post-genocide Rwandan government the assistance issue was even more convoluted. The new government (that stopped the genocide) could not get World Bank help until arrears on loans to the old government (the one that planned the genocide) were paid. France played a large role in blocking UN and European assistance to the new government until that government proved it sought to preserve human rights and justice. The same French government was closely aligned with the old government and helped train the folks who committed genocide. Meanwhile the UN, the US, and the West poured relief monies into assisting the "refugees" who were responsible for genocide. The last figure I heard for the Int Tribune for Rwanda was that the court would try less than 100 people for genocide at a cost of $25 million per conviction. Rwanda with well over 100,000 prisoners in its jails could not get funding to speed justice because it the existence of the prisoners and the poor conditions was used as a sign the new government was not committed to human rights. And if it released those same prisoners and they were killed out of revenge, then the issue of revenge killings was also raised as a human rights issue to block assistance.

It was rather like a bizarre marriage of Catch 22.

"Do you think you are crazy, Yosarian?"
"Yes, I do"
"Then you are not because this war would drive anyone crazy. Anyone who thinks he is crazy is not. Anyone who thinks he is sane is crazy."

and

Have you stopped beating your wife?

then applied to foreign assistance.

best,
Tom

**Jones_RE** · 06-16-2006

Perhaps putting the aid money through a third party would be the best idea: the neutral criteria provide political cover to deal with regimes who are unpopular with certain factions in Congress, for example.

However, I think we need to ditch the term "human rights" as a qualifier in our international relations. Why? Because it's ambiguous. Which rights? And what policies, lack of policies or courses of action or inaction lead to being a promoter or abuser of same?

The US is roundly blasted by the human rights crowd for its judicial system - despite having some of the more elaborate criminal law protections and better trained (and less corrupt) police forces around. You can never do enough to please folks on this score, in my opinion. The Europeans treat their immigrants like crap - the otherwise excellent German school system routes ethnic Turks into institutions so bad half the graduates are functionally illiterate and therefore can't work even the simplest of modern jobs.

Instead, I think we should set out a few concrete principles:

1) Failure to act is not sufficient grounds to deny aid. After all, if a country has the resources to put up a functioning education, health and criminal justice system then it doesn't need foreign assistance! I could say the same thing about drug production and domestically located terrorist groups - countries with the ability to control these matters are probably with it enough to get by without help.

2) Official corruption is not sufficient grounds to deny aid. Let's face it - graft is a universal human vice. We find it in the frickin' US House of Representatives, so maybe we ought to be willing to overlook it in a country without running water.

3) Lack of representative government is not sufficient grounds to deny aid. The fully democratic governments, by and large, can take care of themselves.

But what criteria should stop us from sending over aid dollars, food, medicine or supplies? What justifies permitting human death and suffering on a national scale?

(I'll throw out the easy one right away: because of the action or inaction of a nation's government, the aid is not being received by those who need it. In this case, the human suffering involved doesn't increase by the drop in aid, because international aid wasn't getting to those who need it in the first place.)