Renewed Rwandan Troubles in France

The political game of (not) taking responsibility for sins of commission and omission in Rwanda's genocide took an interesting turn just before Christmas. Whereas other notable stakeholder countries have to some extent accepted blame for the failure to intervene and stop the genocide, France's voice alone has not joined the choir.

Now, the prosecutor at the Tribunal aux armées de Paris (TAP) has opened an investigation "into allegations that French peacekeepers facilitated attacks on ethnic minority Tutsis during the 1994 genocide of more than half a million Rwandans". The prosecutor's announcement comes following an inquiry by the TAP's juge d'instruction - the independent examining magistrate - including interviews in Rwanda. Obviously, what is at stake for France is the political fallout. Any negative verdict will mean that the French political system - via the proxy of the military - has received the strongest possible pressure to finally acknowledge its problematic role in the Rwandan genocide (complete 2000 OAU report here, pdf-file).

The interesting thing about the mechanics of the case is the combination of the setup of the TAP and the role of the juges d'instruction in the otherwise politically osmotic French legal system. The TAP is a military court funded by the French MoD - but its attorneys stem from the public legal system from where they are hired, and to where they will eventually return. The Tribunal has as its jurisdiction "infringements committed outside of the (French) territory by French military people":

Compétences: Le tribunal aux armées de Paris (TAP) est compétent pour les infractions de toute nature commises hors du territoire français par les membres des forces armées, les employés civils et les familles accompagnant les forces à l'étranger. Il juge aussi les autreurs et complices quand l'un d'eux relève du TAP, et les auteurs d'une infraction contre les forces françaises à l'étranger, leurs établissements et leur matériels si elle est réprimée par la loi. Les règles suivies devant le TAP sont identiques à celles suivies devant les juridictions pénales nationales à compétence militaire ; l'appel contre les jugements rendus par le TAP est porté devant la cour d'appel de Paris.

(A really rough translation would be: "Competences include infringements of any nature committed by the members of the armed forces, civil employees and accompanying families abroad. (...) The rules followed at the TAP are identical to those followed at the national legal institutions with military competence ; appeal against verdicts of the TAP can be brought to the court of appeal in Paris.")

As many Civil law courts the TAP is based on the inquisitorial system, i.e. with investigating magistrates taking and active part in investigating (as opposed to an adversarial system where the court merely judges between the proposed versions of the truth from defense and prosecutor). The juges d'instruction, of which there is one at the TAP, have an independent status within the judiciary, which means that they have the power to pursue inquiries within their jurisdiction at will. The juges d'instruction where the main drivers behind the revelations about the 1990s corruption and sleaze scandals in French politics. Juge d'instruction Eva Joly gained fame and notoriety for her handling of the Elf scandal. Evidently, politicians and other members of the administrative elite have tried to and sometimes bullied some juges d'instruction away from their inquiries. This is possible due to the not very effective protection offered by the institutional setup: each of the juges are very much dependent upon their personal resilience, including in the case of implicit threats.

The Monde has an interesting portrait of Brigitte Raynaud, the juge d'instruction at the TAP:

Sans jamais être vraiment soutenue, elle façonne une oeuvre solitaire. Traditionnellement mutique, l'armée supporte mal l'ingérence de la justice civile dans ses affaires. En novembre 2004, Janine Stern, au moment de quitter son poste de procureure au tribunal aux armées, avait laissé un rapport au vitriol. Elle parlait notamment d'"ingérence" ou de "justice aux ordres".

Ne comptez pas sur Brigitte Raynaud pour se montrer aussi définitive. "J'ai plutôt de bons contacts avec eux, dit-elle des militaires. De toute façon, au niveau procédural, c'est le même travail que dans une juridiction plus classique." Certes, elle admet que "l'armée a un peu vampirisé ce tribunal", mais elle prétend ne pas avoir subi de pressions directes. Même si, à la fin du mois d'octobre, le ministère de la défense a tout fait pour la dissuader de se rendre à Kigali, où elle est finalement allée recueillir les plaintes de six Rwandais. "Je suis à l'instruction, donc indépendante. On ne m'a jamais dit "surtout ne faites rien" ; il m'a simplement fallu du temps pour comprendre la mentalité et le comportement des militaires."

C'est en 1993 qu'elle a découvert l'institution, après avoir été substitut du procureur de la République, à Metz. Elle voulait voyager, découvrir une autre réalité judiciaire. Elle saisit rapidement la fragilité de son poste : "A l'instruction, on se retrouve complètement isolé, il nous faut impérativement le soutien du parquet." Ce fut le cas avec Janine Stern, ça l'est beaucoup moins désormais. Elle critique ouvertement Jacques Baillet, l'actuel procureur du tribunal aux armées de Paris, en lui reprochant de ne pas ouvrir d'information judiciaire dans le dossier rwandais. Elle lui en veut, aussi, de ne pas avoir requis l'autopsie des corps des neuf soldats français tués en novembre 2004 dans le bombardement de Bouaké, en Côte d'Ivoire. Dans une lettre à la ministre de la défense Michèle Alliot-Marie, ce 12 décembre, elle stigmatise ainsi "une souffrance supplémentaire rajoutée aux familles (...), due à la décision du procureur du tribunal aux armées de Paris, qui n'a pas estimé opportun (...) de faire procéder à l'autopsie des corps rapatriés".

Des archives qui brûlent soudainement aux documents subitement dévorés par les termites dans les soupentes d'une caserne, les obstacles qui se dressent sur son chemin sont divers et variés. "Le discours officiel de l'armée, c'est la transparence à tous les étages, aussi suis-je perplexe lorsqu'on m'oppose systématiquement la classification de documents que je réclame", lâche-t-elle.

Avec le temps, elle a développé une qualité essentielle au TAP : la patience. "Elle a de l'expérience, estime Janine Stern, mais elle n'est pas forcément soutenue par sa hiérarchie. Les choses ont évolué en pire, depuis mon départ." Brigitte Raynaud affronte une forme d'obstruction des plus subtiles. (...)

The question of whether France will accept its part of the blame for Rwanda has been reposed, and the investigation might bring troubling news for those preferring gloire for truth. But what the outcome will be hinges on a precarious institution and very few shoulders - in the midst of probably the strongest possible web of vested interests.

A Civilian Transportation Command?

The focus on transition processes from conflict to peace and thus reconstruction & development witin the civilian institutional circuit does not entail an end to inter-agency squabbles or wishful thinking in that context (pursuit of self-interest and wishful thinking being the main drivers of anything, though!). The reflections of the always interesting Dan Drezner are probably representative of the civilian circuit: the NSPD 44 (more in this post) ought to be only the first step on the way to aligning State and Defense budgets.

One final bureaucratic thought. The attempt to create logistical capabilities for aid and reconstruction within the State Department would have a significant effect on the traditional rivalry between State and Defense. The latter has always had an edge in terms of capabilities and resources. If State develops its own parallel means to deliver man and material somewhere, one of DoD's unspoken advantages in bureaucratic politics will be dented just a little bit.

This is of course never, ever going to happen. The idea of creating "logistical capabilities for aid and reconstruction within the State Department" must mean something completely different from building a parellel - civilian, but public - logistics system. That would amount to building a State version of the (joint) US Transportation Command, including the service agencies' actual fleets of air and sea freighters. Not happening of course: the cost would be ridiculous and the gain speculative. But lets have a look at it anyway as the subject of logistics is essential to both parts - fighting the wars and winning the peace, including relief operations.

First, obviously the cost of replicating the Transportation Command and the service units is prohibitive. Positioning from shows of force to in-theater deployment is the backbone of what the military does. Literal global reach is the strategic basis for anything: America's blue water navy and littoral capacities and the Air Mobility Command are central to much of the constitutive power the US. The ability to move almost anything anywhere fairly quickly equals power on a global scale. Tactics might win battles, but logistics wins wars: this truism explains why so much money has been poured into the "boring" platforms that move others - and serves to illustrate that the civilian side would have to demonstrate a strategic need of an equally important scale. Now, that argument might be made in the name of development - as part of shrinking the Gap - but it seems rather fluffier than Stieglitz.

Second, we might contemplate the spirit of the NSPD 44 and the call for enhanced military-civilian cooperations in the 3000 directive, which together points to the need for a more structured civilian effort - hence the Office of the Coordinator for Reconstruction and Stabilization. In terms of logistics, what would enhanced civil-military cooperation and coordination of the civil side alone mean?

If we look at the civil equivalents of the service agencies we find a combination of the private logistics market where single organizations - IOs and NGOs - hire according to need and means plus a bit of proprietary logistics means and the occassional helping hand of ... the military (during the tsunami, the Pakistani earth-quake and Katrina the US military showed how importants its assets are for the big civilian relief ops). Thus we basically have an operating market-based solution for the ngos and IOs having the greatest needs - and means of course. One would suppose this is the best way to achieve efficient resource allocation - something that would speak against a unified command. Furthermore, the idea of a unified logistics command supposes a unified political command, which again is probably inconceivable. Just like the saying about war, logistics is so much what NGOs and IOs do in the field that any attempt at forced coordination of logistics efforts seems like a lost battle up front. Who is to tell the civil society organizations how to weigh their responses to different challenges?

Yet one implicit central tenet of the intended reorganization spree of development is exactly to achieve better coordination, so there will be less waste through inefficient double coverage. And freeing the efforts from negative impact of media driven high profile operations that take away focus and funds from the less hip needs. In the end, building a Civilian Transportation command would be less about replicating existing capacities - within the private sector and the military - and more about the joint Nichols-Goldwater element: improving planning and response capacities across the different actors, including the UN.

What such a unit could aspire to in the first place would then be a best practice hamonization of procedures: acting as a clearing house for lessons learned about reconstruction logistics - taking in (formally structured) information; putting out civilian doctrine proposals in some sort of negotiated process with the stakeholder organizations. It would thus be an important element of the political decisionmaking HQ.

Transatlantic Division of Labor #2

Continuing on the subject of development of transition capabilities on both sides of the Atlantic: Opposed Systems Design comments with a sigh on the signs coming out concerning the strategic changes in the 2006 QDR, which looks set to continue the 1-4-2-1 setup. As he points out the 2-1 distinction between being "ready to simultaneously combat aggression in two of these regions (2); and maintain a capability to “win decisively” in one of these two conflicts (1)" is not valid because the fall out from Iraq must be the need for effective SysAdmin and thus to win the peace - making the calculation either 1-1 or 2-2.

Barnett's calls for SysAdmin being carried out by the Rest of the West (and, eventually, the New Core countries) means that the partners would then be relied upon to create Pentagon's capacity to make 1-1 a 2-2:

To be fair, an allied SysAdmin force that could pick up the slack to bring America’s “2-1″ up to a “2-2.” Which would be in keeping with Dr. Barnett’s “America supplies the Leviathan, the Core provides the SysAdmin” paradigm. But if our Leviathan is going to be relying upon our allies’ capabilities that much, we had better be clear about that and make sure they get the memo.

This is a pretty weird calculation in the realm of strategy where autarky is more the rule than anywhere else. On the one hand then, you have a division of labor where the US holds the Leviathan force and the allies are left to do the cleaning. Packing the punch means that the US has the ability to do the major decision-making. When reiterating the tech development of the Leviathan over time as opposed to the - in principle - more low tech SysAdmin, the division of labor would imply that the US will only get more weight in the decisional matters. But on the other hand, if 1-1 can only get to be 2-2 if the allies join in, the transatlantic division of labor might become a strategic advantage for those parts of the Old Core that excells in SysAdmin.

Atlantic Patriot Acts: What? Denmark worried?

Legal anti-terror measures were passed on both sides of the Atlantic in the aftermath of the 9/11. While the US system Congress saw through the Patriot Act, their counterparts in the European Union seized the chance to present an already prepared reform proposal for strengthening of the European Union cooperation on police and legal matters. And while the Patriot Act in the following years seemed to be a case of almost more worrying and consternation on the European than the American left, nobody on the European front seemed really to worry about the fairly unrelated but deifnitely so defended new steps taken within the EU network.

The single most dazzling new legal toy was to be the European Union Arrest Warrant and - especially - the concomitant Surrender Procedures. Astonishingly, this aborts one of the basic common sensical principles of politics and law: that a citizen of a given country shall be protected by his or her country and not be surrendered to another country against his or her will. Incredibly, the Patriot Act drew a lot of fire among European Union citizens while these provisions passed without much attention. The potential level of legal assurance in Scandinavia was thus at once lowered from "acceptable" to "whatever goes in Greece".

While the Patriot Act in the States was just extended if only for a month, there are no provisions for expiration in the European initiatives. The short extension of course only means that the battle over the Act is just postponed a bit as well described in this AP/Washington Post piece by Laurie Kellman - and the outcome is not given. But the Europeans' strongest tradition for critiquing and productively mistrusting power seems to be guided more against the US and the US institutions rather than their own. A new Danish Gallup poll, carried out for DK newspaper Berlingske Tidende points to an overwhelming welcoming approach to a set of new Danish anti-terror measures:

* 85% "probably" (25) or "definitely" (60) support the granting of access without consent or notification to passenger lists for all international Danish flights.
* 69% "probably" (23) or "definitely" (46) support wider powers for the Danish FBI equivalent, PET, to gather information from 3rd party public institutions without notification, consent or asking a judge.
* 85% "probably" (19) or "definitely" (66) support the widening of CCTV monitoring of public spaces and traffic circulation.
* 73% "probably" (25) or "definitely" (48) support the demand for tele-companies to gather, keep and render to PET information about and including telephone calls and internet traffic.

Asked whether they are worried that these initiatives might lead to a "surveillance society" Gallup's respondent's show that 39% are "not worried at all", 34% are "only a little worried", 16% are "somewhat worried" and finally, 9% are "very worried".

Given the dismal track record of separations of powers, independent review systems, and checks and balances within the Danish police and legal system this level of instinctual trust is potentially pretty worrying. Of course, in either case, a functional and acceptable balance must be found between the needs of the security system and the civil liberties of the citizens. But hey, why worry about cozy Denmark when you can point your finger at those crazy Americans?

As it turns out the Danish Lawyer's Council does indeed worry a bit. And they should know: the fairly illiberal tendency in Denmark to respect the system before the citizen has grown worse over the last decade as laws aimed at particular groups (organized crime, for-profit-sects) have meant that police has gotten new measures with which to deal with all crime. The new anti-terror measures can, in the same lead, be applied to anyone as they widen the system's operating conditions in general, not in the particular tied to suspicions or terror related activities. Spokesperson Sys Rovsing Koch points out that the initiatives weaken control with the police in a number of ways - including moving a lot of investigative activity from the police proper to the PET which has much less external oversight:

The Council warns against letting the PET itself carry out policing because it will lead to secrecy, a lack of possibilities to properly defend indicted persons as well as the necessary court oversight. 'The proposition is a step on the way toward more secret police in Denmark. It will weaken attorney access to cases and court oversight, and so weaken the rule of law ('retssikkerhed') for all citizens. Lately we have seen that politicians are willing to loosen both attorney and court access to and control with cases. The tendency started with the socalled 'biker law' in 2003, and already then we warned that this could become a slippery slope. We are moving further down that slope with the government's action plan against terror'.

But, of course, without an instinctual - productive - mistrust in government the Danish public seems set to ignore the warnings of the professionals.

EDIT (Feb 12): As always the US media are doing their job, while there has been almost debate whatsoever in Denmark.

Transition Capabilities & the Transatlantic Division of Labor #1

Transitioning from conflict state to post conflict proper is the strategic challenge when it comes to preparing for the Next Intervention. The war part is not the problem. And the post-conflict situation proper is mostly a question of ressources. But the link tying the two situations together - transition - is a stepchild of military and civilians both. Tom Barnett's call for a SysAdmin force is undoubtedly the most useful grand strategic analysis framing that whole question.

Just looking at the US force structure alone is not enough: even if the US takes leadership responsibilities, the Rest of the West wants to be part of the equation - and it should be. There is no way the US could or even would want to run everything itself. Part of the Transatlantic debacle over the last years is also about this: what does the division of labor look like? Who does what, on average? And, as a consequence of this division of labor: who gets to weigh in how much on the big decisions?

This meta-discussion (which has often looked like a catfight but really is about power) wouldn't be there if we only looked at pure military punch. But all the other elements of power are of course part of it - all together, they can be cashed in to the most valuable of all kinds of power in the long term: constitutive power, i.e. the kind that lets you change the basic rules. So: what the US and the Rest of the West (Barnett's old Core) do in terms of security politics can basically be conceived of as a the supply side of a market: supplying security in situations when needed. Not always at the right time of course, and not always in the best way. But nevertheless. It is in this light, and because interventions without state-building and proper subsequent development really amounts to nothing more than a plaster that the "security" market must contain more than just the big guns. This means including the capabilities for transitioning - Barnett's SysAdmin force.

Looking at the aggregate capabilities of the European countries (NATO, EU) and the US (plus the other old Core countries) is interesting because the European Union has been working on developing joint capacities in civil crisis management for a while now, especially, and as of late also military capacities for crisis management. As the term 'crisis management' shows, the emphasis is much less war-oriented than the EU's detractors on both sides of the Atlantic would have. One element in this, which basically bridges the two is the French-Italian initiative to form a European gendarmerie unit - a paramilitary police force perfectly suited to transitioning ops.

David T. Armitage Jr. and Anne M. Moisan of the National Defense University just published a piece on it - and hopefully the Pentagon will be reading it. And not just State, like here.

Transitioning Rocks: Will DoD and State Deliver?

Two initiatives have been launched lately which -- in the US system -- go some way to redeem the botched Phase IV in Iraq in terms of prepation for the Next Time. Of course this is not just about Phase IV - transitioning form militarily dominated process to civilian dominated process in the wake of an intervention - but about managing complex emergencies involving civil, military, official and private, for profit and ngo actors in general. Both are good news - but there is one major deficiency: transitioning from military to civilian dominated ops risks getting undercut by the usual inertia because neither DoD nor State has a proper stake in them. And wasn't that what this was all about avoiding?

The two initiatives are: The Department of Defense Directive 3000 "Military Support for Stability, Security, Transition, and Reconstruction (SSTR) Operations"; and the National Security Presidential Directive (NSPD 44) "Mananagement of Interagency Efforts Concerning Reconstruction and Stabilization".

Read Fred Kaplan's bona fide analysis regarding the 3000-document as I won't add much to what he has to say about that one: the judgment is still out as to whether the Directive will actually get implemented in doctrine - and in practice through a massive change of culture at the DoD. The latter will be necessary because it means a revision of the deep organizational self-understanding of the US military based on warfighting and warrior spirit. The crucial element is that transitioning ops are to have the same status as combat ops:

It is DoD policy that: 4.1. Stability operations are a core U.S. military mission that the Department of Defense shall be prepared to conduct and support. They shall be given priority comparable to combat operations and be explicitly addressed and integrated across all DoD activities including doctrine, organizations, training, education, exercises, materiel, leadership, personnel, facilities, and planning.

The problem of intergancy coordination has haunted all of the 1990s complex emergencies including those with a military element - peace operations. Thomas P. M. Barnett's debate defining analysis of these as the Lesser Includeds and thus not something to take serious within the Pentagon is crucial here. The Lesser Includeds where the ops the Pentagon might undertake while waiting for the next big one, but not someting that commanded any special strategic attention. And because they were less 'properly military' they were stepchildren, not a wise move for someone looking for a step up the career ladder. Thus the necessity for a very deep change of organizational self-understanding. As Barnett too observes, cultural changes only happen only after major screw ups, but whether Iraq is big enough for the Pentagon to change remains to be seen. Until the QDR emerges, or until practical consequences are drawn definitely from the 3000 we cannot know.

But what is common to both of the directives is the emphasis on the 'boring' management challenge that is the interagency coordination of complex emergencies. As recommend in the Defense Science Board studies, State is given the major responsibility of this coordination effort:

Need for Coordinated U.S. Efforts. To achieve maximum effect, a focal point is needed (i) to coordinate and strengthen efforts of the United States Government to prepare, plan for, and conduct reconstruction and stabilization assistance and related activities in a range of situations that require the response capabilities of multiple United States Government entities and (ii) to harmonize such efforts with U.S. military plans and operations. The relevant situations include complex emergencies and transitions, failing states, failed states, and environments across the spectrum of conflict, particularly those involving transitions from peacekeeping and other military interventions. The reponse to these crises will include among others, activities relating to internal security, governance and participation, social and economic well-being, and justice and reconciliation.

Coordination. The Secretary of State shall coordinate and lead integrated United States Government efforts, involving all U.S. Departments and Agencies with relevant capabilities, to prepare, plan for, and conduct stabilization and reconstruction activities. The Secretary of State shall coordinate such efforts with the Secretary of Defense to ensure harmonization with any planned or ongoing U.S. military operations across the spectrum of conflict. Support relationships among elements of the United States Government will depend on the particular situation being addressed. (from NSPD 44, ed.).

The challenge here is first of all to resolve the practical problems of interagency coordination as theyhave been seen all through the 1990s up to now. Fine.

But the second issue which much less dealt with is the question of transitioning. Transition here involves handing over the reins of the process from the military to civilians - in principle from DoD to State - following an intervention. These operations are subsets of both the complex emergencies (most of which are carried out within the UN circuit) and the changing characteristics of war. This means that unless they are specifically targeted from both parties as an area of concern we run the risk of screwing up the next time around.

DoD: If what happens at the DoD really is (and remember: this may very well be a best case scenario) 'merely' to upgrade their capabilites to some extent within the old SASO/Phase IV; spend a bit on training for cooperation with State; and included a few phrases about being nice to the ngos in the coming field manuals - then the strategic attention to create and sustain the Phase IV in a proper shape until State can deliver will probably be lacking. Because: Phase IV is now State's responsibility (the NSPD 44).

State: Giving them responsibility for coordination in complex emergencies is logical. But the problem is - and even more so for the 'State equivalents' further out in the system, outside of the US - that their main attention will not be on the subset of these operations which include a major military role. Why? Because that is 'war' and they are in the 'peace' business. This looks like a highly problematic weakness in the new initiatives.

As Crane and Terrill stated in their Strategic Studies Institute report an optimistic transitioning scenario involves handing responsibility of ops shortly after the end of major combat operations (Phase III) to our civilian authorities. But in reality, as we have seen in Iraq, if this element is not deployed fast and with full weight, the realistic scenario means that the military is the only organization with boots on the ground to actually run things.And so the transition will be much longer, much more expensive - and be directed to the local civilian and military organizations once these have been built.

That was not the intention, was it?

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Related posts (newest first):

• Democratization: Squaring States with People
• In Long Term, Connectedness Doesn't Define Danger
• Effects Based Cultural Awareness
• Afghan SysAdmin Training for US Army
• Defining the Long War: Tony Corn's 4GW
• Cato's Critique of S/CRS is Wrong
• USAID's Office of Military Affairs
• More Long War: State of the Union and MCC Reform
• QDR: GWOT Becomes The Long War
• SysAdmin Funding for Pentagon and State

Purple fingers & interventions: spinbattle anew

With President Bush and the administration on a domestic offensive regarding the stakes, situation and prospects of Iraq and last week's very successful election, the long-running debate over the possibility and actualization of democratic reform in the Middle East is poised to take yet another round. Both Susan E. Rice's oped and Kristol & Kagan's piece are part and parcel of this political game. In the Western public spheres 'Iraq' is thus a metaphor for many things: not just about that country's situation; the political fallout of the decision to intervene; a proxy for the tendencies of the region; but importantly also a spinbattle about the legitimacy of rationales for the next intervention.

Jackson Diehl of the Washington Post stays true to his abilities and delivers precisely with his first sentence of today's column:

Though Iraq has now held the freest election in Arab history, conventional wisdom in Washington and the Middle East still dismisses the Bush administration's hope that its military intervention will catalyze democratic change around the region.

Off course, Iraq is a doubly special case to that effect: a 'testing case' and a 'case apart'. The former refers to the 'neocon argument' for the war, namely the creation of Iraq as a shining beacon of democracy in the region that would help transform the rest in a domino theory reversed. This position is necessarily tied up with a healthy dose of universalism, i.e. the belief that many things are constant across societies and that the basic forms of the human habitus are rather stable. The latter, then, refers not only to the common sensical fact that any given democratic development in Iraq cannot be compared to the rest of the ME for the obvious reason that is the war and the insurgency. Diehl quotes Mark Malloch Brown, for one:

"There's enough going in the right direction . . . that I am one of those who believes that the intervention in Iraq will be good for democracy in the region in the middle term," is the way Mark Malloch Brown, the witty chief of staff to U.N. Secretary General Kofi Annan, puts it. "I'm just not sure it will be good for democracy in Iraq."

But in terms of fronts in the metadebate about how to frame the discussion about Iraq it furthermore refers to a heterogenous crowd: the culturalists and area studies people who emphasize anthropological differences; those that for ideological reasons wish to cash in on Iraq's bad run; non-interventionists from both sides of the spectrum; etc. So apparently this is what is at stake in the debate over Iraq: whether the shining beacon theory of the Iraqi Example, or Diehl's "conventional wisdom around Washington and elsewhere" (where 'elsewhere' includes pretty much all of the European political and administrative class) gets to be the agenda.

Unfortunately, neither of the two represent a valid framework for a long term assessment - and due to the high political stakes everyone wants to cash in on the short term, concluding in either direction every time an AP piece hits the network. Malloch Brown's "middle term" perspective is the proper for practitioners, and Diehl's when he points to systematic if not conclusively positive progress.

But in the long term, Bush's recent speeches and the Strategy for Victory in Iraq is more than just parts of the quarrell over how the war got started in the first place. That debate also plays an important role as a subset of the ME/democ spinbattle: the two things overlap in the discussion about official and 'proper' rationales for war. Rules of proper government, law, officialeese and procedures will deal with the official element - mixed up with and validated by the normal political process and press, domestic as diplomatic.* But the deep meaning of the debate we have now about 'Iraq' is a negotiation about the terms of how and why we will wage a war the next time.

This level, regarding the proper rationale, however, is about whether it would be OK to carry out regime change with military intervention - or rather: whether it would be OK to put the democratic argument behind the next intervention. That negotiation is structured less as a question of law and codified adminstrative interaction than as a deal between the people of the West and their governments. While the other level is necessary and important, this is the interesting debate: the much larger question is to which extent the cold war paradigm of interventions to protect freedom is or will be merged with the UN caretaker paradigm of humanitarian interventions of the 1990's.

The strategic blunder of the botched Phase IV - stabilization, reconstruction and transition - in Iraq and the increased understanding of the huge costs and difficulty of managing this part rather than 'just' the war part has of course put a welcome premium on interventions. Moreover, the debate on the official rationale of the (now known faulty intelligence on) WMD exacerbates this premium: pointing to intelligence will not get anyting flying with the public for a long, long time. (Kagan's October piece on the run up to the war is interesting in this respect and as an analysis of the media as an inefficent market for mediating between the public and the political).

Bush himself points to the humanitarian argument for taking out Saddam Hussein's regime (implicitly drawing on a tough cost-benefit calculus of course):

But much of the intelligence turned out to be wrong. And as your president, I am responsible for the decision to go into Iraq. Yet it was right to remove Saddam Hussein from power. He was given an ultimatum -- and he made his choice for war. And the result of that war was to rid the world of a murderous dictator who menaced his people, invaded his neighbors, and declared America to be his enemy. Saddam Hussein, captured and jailed, is still the same raging tyrant -- only now without a throne. His power to harm a single man, woman, or child is gone forever. And the world is better for it.

So in terms of words, the coupling of the two paradigms - visible as in the National Security Strategy of 2002 - hints that the UN circuit may have gotten more out 'Iraq' than hoped. The question is just whether any of the middle term changes will be evident long term conclusions before the next time around.

Functional Integration: Explicit Versus Implicit Criteria

An article in this Sunday's New York Times describes an underlying problem with the functional integration of 2nd and 3rd generation immigrants in France. The piece's solid analysis* goes some way to explain the reasons for the riots earlier this fall in France.

But the problems are not exclusively or idiosyncratically French. The link between eductional systems, implicit cultural criteria or more bare-bones explicit - economic or efficiency oriented - criteria adds to the usual explanation of why integration is doomed to be extremely problematic especially in Continental Europe. The usual story states that the high European levels of social benefits, minimum wages and strict labor market regulations on hiring and firing makes it difficult for 2nd generation immigrants to get jobs - and achieve functional integration. The United States's labor market with lesser regulation and safety nets instead forces everyone to work and so gets around the problem.

The NYT article deals with the problem of the educational system:

Nothing represents the stratification of French society more than the country's rigid educational system, which has reinforced the segregation of disadvantaged second-generation immigrant youths by effectively locking them out of the corridors of power. While French universities are open to all high school graduates, the grandes écoles - great schools - from which many of the country's leaders emerge, weed out anyone who does not fit a finely honed mold. Of the 350,000 students graduating annually from French high schools, the top few grandes écoles accept only about 1,000, virtually all of whom come from a handful of elite preparatory schools. (...) "It's as if in the U.S., 80 percent of the heads of major corporations or top government officials came from Harvard Law School," said François Dubet, a sociologist at the University of Bordeaux.

The paradox of the French system is that it was created to work as a pure meritocracy - in order to break the dominance of the aristocracy. As explained in the best book on France, Tocqueville points to the continuity of the state and thus the central administration before and after the 1789 revolution as a deep explanation of why France is like it is. The elite educational system was and is integral to the 'reproduction' of the elite as a group of like-minded and able legacies. This is akin to the Anglo-Saxon tradition where 'liberal colleges' historically have provided rich kids with seemingly unuseful general education - leading to what the Germans call Bildung: a construction of personal character and well-versedness that forms the basis for a young gentleman.

These preferences for general and abstract subjects of course in the early 20th century up until today had and has a functional utility in that they prepare coming leaders to take up a variety of challenges including the pursuit of graduate and professional degrees. But their groundwork and raison d'etre was formed much earlier. In France, the state's new nobility as part of their deal with the old aristocracy, had subsumed exactly the aristocratic emphasis on the vulgarity of practical work and a preference for the abstract, the old, the traditional, and the 'cultural' over the concrete, the quantifiable, the useful and the profitable. Because most Western countries elites' cultural canons - if not their economic, judicial or constitutional systems - were inherited from the French this set of distinctions was and is a central feature in the Western division of labor within the educational systems.

The basic educational system was thus left with the paradoxically much less useful study of useful applied subjects:

The initial fork in the lives of many young people comes when they are about 13 and have to choose between a general course of study or vocational training. Many young second-generation immigrants are guided into technical classes or, at best, post-high-school associate degree programs in marketing or business that are of little help in finding a job. Second-generation immigrants also often "live in an environment that is outside of French culture," said Mr. Descoings of Sciences Po. "They are not in the proper social network. There isn't the socialization that exists in a wealthy family in an exclusive neighborhood of Paris."

The gifted Mr. Descoings was instrumental in launching a programme several years ago, before 9/11, to bring more students to Sciences Po from outside the regular circuit. These students are recruted from certain "Zones d'education prioritaires", thus undercutting the informal selection procedures that would normally see through only candidates from the best French high schools.

This drop in the ocean aside, Descoing's analysis is to the point because the problem for the 2nd generation immigrants is bascially two things. First, they have not been immersed from the earliest childhood in the legion cultural codes that decide whether you fit in, in any given situation - in a microsociological way through manners, gestures, clothing, and especially your way with language, the form of your expressions. Second, the best parts of the French and many Continental European educational systems are intimately tied up with these broad cultural demands, exactly because they aim not to produce candidates with the most useful skills, but prospective members of an elite wary of societal differentiation - too much difference, too much dissent. This again leads to forms of examination that basically measure more how well your master the cultural forms of the elite - much more than what you know. Incidentally, this preference is mirrored in the cultured European classes' disdain for the whole American testing circus - especially multiple choice tests - even if these, in spite of their weaknesses, are more meritocratic.

In the end, the young immigrants of Europe and elsewhere cannot get around the problem of functional integration through the mastering of cultural codes before they can successfully enter the workmarket. Even if the setup would be changed by decree the selection process on the high end of the labor markets would still function this way for generations. But basically, any reform of the European educational systems must include measures to bring the actual demands of schools and universities out in the light of day: make demands explicit - away from the implicit.

Modernity - and with it: freedom and wealth though democracy and capitalism - consists in a everpresent battle between the forces of tradition and those who challenge it. This battle is always about bringing to debate the things we are not supposed to address. Implicitness is thus a central virtue of Inertia.


*These issues were described a long time ago in Pierre Bourdieu's work (e.g. Les héritiers; La reproduction/Reproduction; Noblesse d'Etat, etc.)

Statement of Intent: Draconian Observation #1

[Oct./Dec. '06 Update: Draconian Observations is a reservoir for observations and notable news and a playground or sketchbook for analytical meanderings. And hopefully worth a read. Behind the blog is a young Danish researcher not affiliated with any political party or particular cause. Semi-anonymity is for reasons of convenience. Political tolerance stretches less far in some parts of the world than the obligatory self-image would let you believe. My original statement of intent below - if somewhat pompous - still pretty well captures what I want to participate in. Whether the blog actually does that well is another matter and not for me to judge.]

Eponymous Draco was the first law scribe of Athens. After his codification of the law, breaking it most often meant death. Hence the normal meaning of "draconian". In that sense, "draconian measures" is an oft employed tagline for public outcrys against perceived malicious government. "Draconian" thus carries three useful connotations here.

First, the construction of democratic politics as a negotiation of power relations between the governed and the governors. Second, the inescapability of politics - or with a word out of fashion: ideology - in whatever discussion we have about society.

But Draco's bad press was unwarranted: without the effort to seek and express society's changing rulesets in any given form there can be no progress. Draco did this through the writing of the law: with a law, even a bad one, the possibility of reform arise, and thus the contest that is politics.

And this is the third element: the promise of reason, that our debates, our attempts at conceiving of tendencies, our judgments of them, from civil society to government, from research to policy, may lead to better ways, over time. Reason is a mediator of politics as power, and of politics as ideology. To quote from the ending of Raymond Aron's memoirs:

"Si les civilisations, toutes ambitieuses et toutes précaires, doivent réaliser en un futur lointain les rêves des prophètes, quelle vocation universelle pourrait les unir en dehors de la Raison ?"

I can be reached on this email: draconianobservations at gmail dot com.