Rise and Fall, Push and Pull (Pt. V)

At Democracy Arsenal, Shadi Hamid ponders “The Political Romantics and the End of History” in light of Christopher Hitchens’s new memoir (with some emphasis added):

For many of us, our politics is, or becomes, personal. Through politics, we wish to transcend politics. We want to believe we’re fighting for something that matters, rather than for one uninspiring policy option over another. So we impress upon ourselves the notion that there is, and will continue to be, an existential struggle of some kind. I remember what it felt like reading Paul Berman’s Terror and Liberalism for the first time. It was an inspiring read, although I intuitively knew that much of the analysis was off. All the same, Berman was enlisting us in a fight that was about something bigger. This is the same way I often feel about Hitchens – the prose is nearly as romantic as the ideas. He’s always fighting pitched battles that I – and I imagine most others – are not privy to. The battles are, in some sense, created, which is a bit different than saying they don’t exist.

With 9/11, history began again, or so we thought. Or maybe too many of us wanted to believe it had. Looking back at some of my older writing, I notice how it was inflected with a surfeit of existential urgency. I feel a bit sheepish about it. I think I probably attached too much importance to the treat of terrorism, a threat it may not have been (take for example this two-part essay I wrote for the American Prospect in 2006). If terrorism was a big enough threat, then it had the power to force us to fundamentally alter the way we looked at our relationship with the Middle East and the rest of the world. Terrorism became the engine of change in U.S. foreign policy, for better – the effort to promote Arab democracy – but, more often, for worse – pre-emptive and preventative war. Much of the overblown threat assessment of the post-9/11 period was probably due to somewhat subconscious desire to jump start history.

That said, so much of what Hitchens writes is refreshing because something, sometimes, is actually at stake. Reading Glenn Greenwald is enough to realize there are still existential battles – about basic matters of freedom – that have to be fought. It seems to me that so much of the Washington discourse on U.S. foreign policy suffers from the inverse of romanticism. I’m often struck by the smallness of so many of the foreign policy prescriptions that are bandied about in Washington – even, or perhaps particularly, the ones that are supposed to be new and original. In the age of post-Bush “realism,” what we suffer from, more often than not, is a failure of imagination. And that certainly goes for our notoriously myopic Mideast policy, which has been so consistently bad for so long that it really is something to marvell. It’s difficult to imagine a new Middle East, if you’re, well, unable to imagine a new Middle East. Sometimes that needs a bit of political romanticism. It’s just helpful to know when to stop.

Hamid begins his post by looking at Ross Douthat’s post on political romanticism, itself inspired by  David Runciman’s review of Hitchens’s Hitch-22 in the London Review of Books which includes insights from Carl Schmitt’s Political Romanticism (1919/1925, MIT: 1986).

Political romantics are driven not by the quest for pseudo-religious certainty, but by the search for excitement, for the romance of what he calls ‘the occasion’. They want something, anything, to happen, so that they can feel themselves to be at the heart of things.

Thoughts:

Rise and Fall, Push and Pull (Pt. IV)

Sports serve three Great Purposes: 1) To bring and keep groups together; 2) To distract (or release) group members from hardship, corruption, and other pedestrian and elite failures; and 3) To train the group for being set upon another group (or groups) — both mobilization and scapegoating. Sports are integral to building and maintaining ʿaṣabiyya. This is why developing countries often have whole ministries of “sports” or “sports and youth.” Team sports in particular teach young people that there is something greater than the individual in this world, the primacy of group survival and glory over individual recognition (Our Survival). It introduces young men to concepts like legitimacy and obedience to group authority outside the family setting. Learning sportsmanship can spill over into good manners, an understanding of duty and responsibility and other chivalrous attributes. (Of course, not everyone learns those things.) Membership in a group, a team or club, helps to socialize young citizens into civil society, builds pride in self, neighborhood, city and nation. As such, sports clubs are key in nation-building and other such projects. Recreational sporting encourages better citizenship. bowlers are famous for being more likely to vote than other Americans. All this is especially true where participation in sports is concerned. It spills over onto spectators, who put their faith in the team, drape themselves in its colors and reel with every try and every goal.

Fans learn something more useful from sporting: loyalty.

Rise and Fall, Push and Pull (Pt. III)

France24 has made available a video tape showing the daily routine of AQIM fighters at an undisclosed location by an unnamed “defector” from the terrorist group. The summary is as follows:

A video cassette obtained by FRANCE 24 contains rare images of Islamist militants in the remote Sahel desert. The exclusive footage shows a gathering of allied insurgent groups, training sessions for young recruits and, perhaps most interestingly, scenes of daily life and leisure of fugitive fighters.

The cassette was found on a defector of one of the insurgent groups active in northern Africa under the banner of al Qaeda in the Islamic Maghreb, or AQIM. The defector was stopped by security personnel for a control of personal documents.

[. . .]

The images are not dated, nor do they offer clues about what country they were taken in. What they do offer is a rare, unscripted glimpse of the lives of Islamist militants; in their daily chores, during moments of playfulness and boredom.

Much of the video consists of Algerians and Mauritanians (as well as some Moroccans and other Arabs; they are practically all Arabic speakers) horsing around, rolling the mud and playing commando. Like previous videos of the group’s after hours activities, the new tape makes AQIM look less terrifying than their reputation portends. It underscores previous knowledge: that it draws mostly urban, Moorish Mauritanians and that Algerians appear to be heavily entrenched in leadership positions.

At the moment it is more interesting to think about the tape while at the same time considering much of the ideas put out in the very engaging and interesting ACAS Bulletin, “US militarization of the Sahara-Sahel: Security, Space & Imperialism,” which includes an excellent article on democracy promotion in the region under Bush and Obama by fellow blogger Alex Thurston of the great Sahel Blog. Most interesting is Jacob Mundy’s introduction which, as introductions do, synthesizes the over arching ideas about American involvement in the Sahara-Sahel region, particularly by way of the US Africa Command (AFRICOM), energy interests and the rest. The whole issue asks important questions about the value, risks and motivations around American policy in the region and the “threat” that AQIM and “terrorism” poses to the region. Many North Americans take terrorism as first order threat to American interests in the region. Others have it somewhat differently: terrorism is a symptom (like smuggling and ethnic violence) of broader, systemic problems such as environmental, social, cultural and economic change and parasitic elites. Mundy and other authors in the Bulletin note that terrorism has been used to legitimize other, perhaps darker, motives. It is likely that the threat terrorism poses to vital American interests in North and west Africa has been exaggerated over the last decade.

Cocaine and west Africa

Below is a useful map from the Economist on cocain trafficking in West Africa for the years 2005, 2006, 2007 and 2008.

The Economist writes:

WEST AFRICA has become an attractive trade route for Latin America’s cocaine smugglers in recent years. On June 8th two tonnes (2000kg) of the stuff (with an estimated street value of over $1 billion) were seized in the Gambia. While cocaine use in America has fallen by 50% over the last two decades, some European countries have seen consumption rates double or triple. Aided by its corruptible police and flimsy money-laundering laws, up to 150 tonnes of cocaine are estimated to pass through the region a year. In 2006 36% of the cocaine carriers caught in one network of European airports had come from west Africa. In 2008 this had dropped to 17%. Whether this reflects a drop in trade or the traffickers’ increasing skill in avoiding capture is unclear.

Algerian cabinet reshuffle, 29 May: II

This post is intended to follow up on, clarify and correct the previous posting on the 29 May cabinet reshuffle in Algeria. Alle’s previous comments are invaluable as well have been those of Algerians inside the country who have offered observations and opinions.