The negotiations between Iran and the five permanent members of the United Nations Security Council, plus Germany, over Iran’s nuclear programme are entering a new, and probably decisive, stage. The negotiations have been going on for almost a decade, with long interruptions, and whether a breakthrough will come this time is anyone’s guess. But the situation has never been as serious as it is today, and peace hangs in the balance.

After the recent visits by Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu to Washington, DC, and by Turkish Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan to Tehran, a foggy situation is nonetheless becoming clearer. It appears that US President Barack Obama has won time by drawing a line in the sand — the start of an explicit Iranian nuclear-weapons programme — and by assuring Israel of America’s readiness for military action should negotiations fail.

Moreover, in view of the danger of a military confrontation, the US, together with Europe and other partners, has implemented tough new ‘smart’ sanctions aimed at Iran’s oil exports — its main source of income — while largely isolating the Islamic Republic from the international payment system. Iran urgently needs the oil revenue, and, without participation in the payments system, its international trade is grinding to a halt. Barter transactions and suitcases full of cash are not a viable alternative. So Iran’s economy is being shaken to the core.

The good news is that all of the parties involved seem to be aware of this, which should focus official minds on a serious negotiation process and a diplomatic solution. Moreover, it should be clear soon enough whether Iran is serious about a compromise this time, because there are ample benchmarks.

The content of such a compromise is more or less clear: acceptance of low-grade uranium enrichment by Iran for non-military purposes, and enhanced and verifiable safeguards, such as export of low-grade enriched uranium for further processing and stronger and more extensive inspection rights for the International Atomic Energy Agency inside Iran. For example, the IAEA would gain access to previously closed Iranian nuclear facilities. Of course, a compromise would not address the Iranian regime’s domestic behaviour and regional ambitions — a source of shared angst for Israel and the Arab Gulf states, first and foremost Saudi Arabia.

But, with no one seriously prepared to go to war for regime change in Iran, particularly after the decade-long misadventure in Iraq, no one should weigh down the negotiations with futile aspirations. This applies equally to Iran, where some influential people still think that the US can be forced out of the Middle East, and that the status quo can be changed to install Iran as the region’s hegemonic power. This illusion, no less than western hopes of regime change in Iran, could be seriously pursued only at a high risk of war and regional chaos. Other significant factors will play an important role in deciding the outcome of these negotiations. The first concerns Iranian domestic politics and the ongoing power struggle within the regime — a struggle that scuttled a diplomatic solution once before, because neither conservatives nor reformers were willing to afford Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad a diplomatic triumph. One can only hope that, in view of the seriousness of the situation, this route to failure will be closed off.

Strategic debacle

Developments in Syria, Iran’s last remaining ally in the region, are equally likely to play a role. The fall of President Bashar Al Assad’s regime would amount to a strategic debacle for Iran, which would then be faced by a united front of Arab states, supported by Turkey, the US, and, in a way, by Israel. Iran would then find it difficult to maintain its foothold in Lebanon, and its position would become more complicated even in Iraq, despite its Shiite majority. In short, its quest for regional predominance would collapse.

In light of the complexity of external factors, it will be important not to overload the nuclear negotiations with issues that the talks are not designed to resolve. Syria, the future of Iran’s regime, the situation in the Arabian Gulf and in the wider region: all of these problems must be addressed at a different level and at another time if the risk of war over Iran’s nuclear programme is to be contained or avoided.

Ever since Alexander the Great memorably solved the puzzle of the Gordian knot with just a blow of his sword, people have dreamed of a simple military solution to complex problems. But, all too often, applying military force to a problem leads to more problems. In Iraq, then president George W. Bush, vice-president Dick Cheney, and then secretary of defence Donald Rumsfeld demonstrated that using military force only as a last resort is not merely an ethical and moral imperative, but one based on realpolitik as well.

There are times when using military force becomes unavoidable, but it should never be chosen as an alternative to diplomacy. That is certainly true for today’s “Persian Knot.” Yet that choice – war or diplomacy – now confronts both sides.

The last decade of the twentieth century witnessed dramatic strategic, economic, and political changes in international politics. The remarkable transformations in the global security structure and in trade and investment patterns continue to influence international relations. The United States recognizes the vitality and importance of India to America’s long-term interests. India’s emergence as a rising world power and a mature market economy are significant to the region and the world. US changed its foreign policy after September 11 attacks as well as India Economic Reforms introduced since 1991 have radically changed the course of the Indian economy and led to better growth rates, higher investment and trade flows and accelerated decline in income poverty. The effects of these reforms on trade and investment relations with the United States have been profound. In July 2005 the Indo-US relationship received a major boost, with both countries pledging to step up cooperation on non military nuclear activities, civilian space Programs, dual-use high-technology trade, and an expanded dialogue on missile. The 123 Indo–US deal encompasses an enhanced ‘cooperation between the governments of United States of America and India, but it has certain implications for the regional stability.

Historically, relations between India and the United States were unexcited following Indian independence, as India took a leading position in the Non-Aligned Movement, and attempted to pursue even-handed economic and military relations with the Soviet Union. The country now seeks to strengthen its diplomatic and economic ties with the States. After the end of the Cold War, India-USA relations have improved dramatically. This has largely been fostered by the fact that the USA and India are both democracies and have a large and growing trade relationship. The emerging relationship between the two countries is not only bound to impact the geopolitical environment especially in the Asian region in the near future, but also has the possibility of influencing relationships at the global level. Both China and Pakistan have already expressed their concern and anxieties about this new development. The smaller countries in South Asia will also not feel comfortable with the new Indo-US companionship.

India’s relations with us had their highs and lows prominent land marks that have changed the crucial foreign policy choices that India made include the Sept/11 attacks on the world trade center. Indian foreign and security policy is currently dealing with a range of issues that are controversial but central to the future of Indian global strategy. These include India’s relations with the US, the idea of a strategic triangle involving Russia, China and India, India’s nuclear doctrine and its impact on the emerging civil-military relations, India’s position of the ballistic missile defense system, India’s relations with Iran and Israel, and India’s quest for energy security. On almost all these issues, there is an intense debate in the Indian polity and the strategic community and how this debate resolves itself will in many ways determine the direction of Indian foreign policy for years to come.

The signing of the 123Agreement on civil nuclear energy in October2008 demonstrates both countries’ commitment to working together on matters concerning their common vital national interests, even in the face of vociferous objections within and outside both the US and India. The formation of the Indo-US strategic partnership served as a milestone for the conclusion of Indo-US nuclear deal in July2005. The deal turned into UN precedential agreement in 2006. 123 agreements was released by US department of state the deal encompasses an enhanced ‘cooperation between the governments of United States of America and India concerning peaceful uses of nuclear energy. This deal also describes the nature of Indo-US relations in the future. Once the agreement implemented it would be a yellow cake for India. India is acquiring nuclear technology from us although Indo-us strategic agreement is a bilateral affair, it has profound and grave regional and global implications and deterrence stability in South Asia is most likely to be disturbed.

The US nuclear deal with India has negatively impacted the deterrence stability in South Asia, as it has enabled India to fast track its fissile stockpiles that will enable it to spare more fissile material for its nuclear weapons programmed. Since the neucalarization the strategic stability of the region is decreasing indo us nuclear deal is the non-proliferation disaster. if in one hand US is providing support to the Indian nuclear deal and on the other hand it is blaming Pakistan on certain nuclear issues. South Asia is experiencing the nuclear instability and the point to be considered that no one in the international communities is paying attention. With this nuclear deal India would be able to produce more fissile material and nuclear weapons. The credible minimum deterrence requirement will be met by producing significant quantities of fissile material and nuclear weapons.

The nuke deal of India US has its implications. It could open the way for a potential arms race in South Asia .This assures India’s access to the US civil nuclear technology. India’s purchase for nuclear technology from US will free its domestic supplies of uranium for nuclear program. Military exercises will be outside inspections unsafe guard reactors can increase the production of fissile material. And as the weapons program expands, there will be an increased threat of nuclear catastrophe at both the local level due to substandard nuclear safeguards and at the international level. The agreement gives fresh impetus to a nuclear arms race in the region. Pakistan will play catch-up with India not only through expanded nuclear ties with China, but also by a more aggressive pursuit of nuclear technology from the global nuclear bazaar. The U.S.-India nuclear deal increases proliferation risks in the region and is a step backwards for global nonproliferation efforts. What is “bothering” Pakistan about the deal is the deal amounts to de facto acceptance of India as a legitimate nuclear weapons state.

There are different factors involved in this Indo nuclear deal there would be cooperation on the grounds of energy security, strategic cooperation and economic issues. The main factors are U.S. wants to maintain equilibrium with china as china is economically strong. India wants to become regional power.US presence in Afghanistan, Asian republics and Pakistan is not liked by china and Russia.

The Indo-US strategic partnership is of great importance for the international politics.The 1980/90s were a time of transition and chaos as familiar Cold War issues, precepts, structures, and strategies gave way to new security paradigms and problems. However, the 21st century has witnessed a major change in perceptions in Indo-US relationship. In near future no major ruptures in this new relationship are envisaged unless India attempts a major nuclear adventurism. Also, both India and the US are fully aware that there are many important non-nuclear issues which are at stake. The vital interests of both India and the US are now so congruent that the two countries can and will find ways in which to cooperate in the decades ahead.

Asian strategic dynamics reveal that India is endeavoring to seek primacy in every kind of modern military technology. It is constantly determined to enhance its conventional and strategic capabilities both qualitatively and quantitatively. The past events between India and Pakistan prove that fragile and insecure deterrence stability is under severe threat by Indian aspirations for a great power status. The convergence of Indo-US interests in a wide range of areas has further provoked the situation. According to the indo us 123 agreement India will acquire and is acquiring nuclear technology from the western world especially the United States of America. All this would be under the excuse of civilian use. All the indo-U.S. bilateral agreements have implications on the global and regional level. With these, the deterrence stability in South Asia is more likely to be disturbed.

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When Problems are so Big & Your Strength is no Longer enough to CaRRy them, Don't Give uP; Because where your Strength Ends the Grace of Almighty ALLAH Begins

Abstract

Russia's quest for the status of great power within the confines of the state system has been an ongoing concern since the time of Peter. After the Napoleonic Wars, Russia thought it had acquired great power status, only to discover that, after the Crimean War, it had either never been firmly obtained or it had been lost. Since the fall of the Soviet Union, the issue has once again dominated the foreign policy debate. Part 1 presents the two traditional ways of defining great power (Weberian vs Durkhiemian), and suggests that, in order to account fully for the lack of recognition by established great powers, we need to add a third, concerning governance. The inspiration for this move I take from Foucault's work on the emergence of governmentality. Russia's lack of social power to have its regime type accepted as being on a par with European ones is the key problem hampering Russia's quest for recognition. Drawing on extant historical studies, part 2 presents empirical evidence that this factor was present and remains so in European representations of Russia. I conclude that, as long as Russia's rationality of government deviates from present-day hegemonic neo-liberal models by favouring direct state rule rather than indirect governance, the West will not recognize Russia as a fully fledged great power.

Introduction

From early contacts between Muscovy and the Holy Roman Empire through the rapid increase in contact during and following Peter the Great's reign and finally during the Soviet period, Russia has tried to be recognized by the leading European powers as their equal.1 This quest has taken on an importance that places it squarely at the centre of Russian identity politics. Indeed, Russian nationalism congealed historically around this very issue. When, in the early 1990s, leading politicians wrote newspaper articles about how they did not want to live in a ‘banana republic’ and when Russian and European politicians point to data in a wide range of fields listing Russia on a par with smaller powers, the message lends its power from the tacit assumption that a small-power Russia is an impossibility.2 Russia has to be a great power, or it will be nothing. Indeed, this is an explicit, self-referential axiom in Russian identity politics, and has been so for a very long time. To quote the Russian Foreign Minister from 100 years ago, Aleksandr P. Izvol'sky, ‘decline to the level of a second class power […and] become an Asiatic state […] would be a major catastrophe for Russia’ (Lieven 1983: 6).

The persistence of the theme and the intensity of its presence in Russian identity politics suggests that Russia's quest for recognition as a great power has not been a successful one. This is because, if an identity claim is successful, it forms part of the horizon of the political debate rather than its substance. Recognition of Russia as a great power can only be given by great powers that are firmly established as such. Historically, that means the European powers to the West of Russia. It follows that if we want to account for Russia's feeling of non-recognition, then we need to give an account of what the criteria for great powerhood have been, and then discuss where Russia has been found wanting. Note that the main focus must then fall on how Russian state-building was represented by contemporary great powers.

Great power discourse has been dominated by a school of thought that has highlighted material power resources and the ability to project power, particularly military power. The problem with this so-called realist account is that, in the periods 1815–1848 and, arguably, also 1957–1991, Russia has met the criteria noted by realists, but full formal and informal recognition has nonetheless failed to emerge. This suggests that the realist account has failed to recognize the full gamut of preconditions for recognition. Historically, there does exist another and competing account of greatness, which fastens on moral greatness. It highlights how Russia, when judged by the standards of moral purpose shared by extant great powers, has consistently come up a bit short. The problem with this account is that, as an explicitly ethical account, it plays itself out in the somewhat disembodied sphere of ideas in the political realm. The scope of validity offered by this account is the ideational alone. This is too narrow a scope to account for a problematique, which is an aspect of the political as such. I begin my argument by discussing the classical loci of these two positions in social theory.3 I then suggest that we may forge a third and better account of Russia's recognition problem by approaching the problem from the angle of governance. Like the realist account, such an account takes cognizance of the materiality of the discourse which is left out by the moral account, and like the moral account, it is predicated on the intersubjective character of recognition, a factor which is left out by the realist account. In the main part of the paper, I apply the three accounts to some of the extant literature in an attempt to demonstrate that the governance-oriented account gives us the fuller understanding of Russia's non-recognition problem. I conclude by spelling out some corollaries.

Two Reading of Great Powers in Social Theory and an Underlying Factor

Categorization is an unavoidable and dynamic part of taking action. If the Durkheimians are right that high/low and large/small are organizing devices of social reality on a par with time, space, cause and effect, then any social system, the states system included, will and must have some kind of categorization of entities according to these principles. (A categorization of equality will confirm this rule by being a way of categorizing that explicitly negates it). The questions are on what grounds, with what effects. Since its inception as an academic discipline, International Relations has carried on a debate about the practical as well as the analytical importance of according some powers the status of being great powers. This debate was preceded by and has been paralleled by debates in the disciplines of international law and history.

In his major work, the immediate precursor of IR realists Max Weber defined a great power in the following way: ‘Nowadays one usually refers to those polities that appear to be the bearers of power prestige as the “Great Powers”’ (Weber 1991: 161).4 Prestige — Machtprestige — is the crux of the matter. To Weber, it is not specific to the states system, but rather a general ‘irrational element’ towards which every polity strives. At a minimum, in order to be a great power, a power has to think of itself in terms of being great, of having an historical task. In the states system, Weber insists that great powerhood is in practice relational: it means ‘the glory [Ehre] of power over other communities’ (Weber 1991: 160).5

To Weber, as to Vattel and Ranke before him, prestige is obviously tied in with military and economic factors. The comparatively superior strength and the mutually recognized spheres of influence that are constitutive of great powers may, therefore, be seen as what we would now call structural characteristics of the states system. In their eyes, these are characteristics of the social organization of states. However, in a slightly different context, Weber also noted that ‘There is a close connection between the prestige of culture and the prestige of power’ (Weber 1991: 448, n6). The reason why this emerges as a move of crucial difference is that, when used in this way, terms involving comparison emerge as explicitly intersubjective. Their meanings are then seen to depend on a game of negotiation by two or more agents. Seeing a great power as intersubjectively constituted by the actors of a system is a very different thing from seeing it as structurally constituted by the states system. Since Weber's usage was ostensibly in line with the meaning commonly ascribed to the term great power in the early decades of the 20th century, however, this seems to have gone unnoticed at the time.

In a lecture course on the state that he offered in 1913 that was only published in its entirety in 1950, the other key sociologist of the early 20th century, Emile Durkheim, set out his views on great powers (Durkheim 1950/1992). Durkheim saw the emergence of the modern state as emanating from a small cadre (historically, the King and his advisers). This state is one thing, the society that eventually comes to rule another: ‘the State is nothing if it is not an organ distinct from the rest of society. If the State is everywhere, it is nowhere. The State comes into existence by a process of concentration that detaches a certain group of individuals from the collective mass’ (1950/1992: 82). In the beginning, Durkheim held, this state does not have many ties to society: ‘it is above all the agent of external relations, the agent for the acquisition of territory and the organ of diplomacy’ (1950/1992: 85). The more the state grows, however, the denser its interface with society, and the more democratic it becomes. Durkheim famously describes this as an organic process, whereby the head grows an ever more finely honed cybernetic system with which to operate its societal body.6 He insists that this process is characteristic of the modern state from the 17th century onwards. Here we have a clear-cut criterion for gauging which states are ‘great’ and which are not. Drawing on the concept of pride, which seems close to Weber's prestige, Durkheim argues that
As long as there are States, so there will be national pride, and nothing can be more warranted. But societies can have their pride, not in being the greatest or the wealthiest, but in being the most just, the best organized and in possessing the best moral constitution (Durkheim 1950/1992: 75).

Where Weber acknowledges the importance of cultural factors but ultimately treats them as a factor shaping power, Durkheim makes specific use of a moral way of comparing states by denigrating ‘certain democracies’ that do not understand that the state must take the lead in economic matters, leaving this important sphere of social life to the market. Inasmuch as democracy to Durkheim is a sign of maturity, and inasmuch as his criticism is clearly directed against Britain (and, at least by way of collateral damage, the United States), the implication of this way of phrasing the question is to leave Durkheim's native France as the paradigmatic great power (1950/1992: 86–94). To Durkheim, the key is that states may or may not be great in a moral sense. Note, however, that Durkheim also makes an intriguing hint at how governance (regime type and efficiency) is a key factor of great powerhood.

In social theory, there is a bifurcation in how great powers are conceptualized.7 The question asked is what are great powers. The answer is, on the one hand, they are simply greater in terms of the relative resources they can bring to bear on interaction with other states, and, on the other hand, they are prestigious due to some superior moral quality.

Whence this prestige? In both IR and social theory classifications, a distinction is made between quantity and quality. Prestige is something more than overwhelming force, and it is to do with morals, that is, with which social practices that constitute the political entity in question, and how these are assessed on ethical grounds. The concept that has been used for this overall phenomenon in the European tradition for the last two centuries is civilization. In the IR literature, civilization has generally been a concern to people discussing the existence of a formal standard of civilization in international law (e.g. Gong 1984). In social theory, it has been a concern of historical philosophy (e.g. Elias 1994). Seemingly, there is little if any extant theorizing about how civilization is tied up with great power prestige. I would like to suggest, however, that there exists a rich literature on the question under a different heading, namely that of regime type. From the earliest Russian-European contacts, Russia's system of rule was seen as being despotic (Neumann 1997: 65–86; Poe 2000). Throughout the 19th and 20th century, it was seen as authoritarian or even totalitarian (Gleason 1951; Groh 1961). Parallel to the discourse on great powers — and I have in mind both the state conversations and the analytics of state conversations here — there exists a rich and continuous discourse on the key political question of how Russia orders the relationship between the one and the many. In keeping with the idea that the international and the domestic are two distinct realms of politics, these two discourses have seemingly been disconnected. I would suggest, however, that the discourse of great powers has been embedded in the wider discourse of regime type. The distinction made in the analytics of state conversations has blinded us as analysts to the fact that the state conversations themselves turned not only on the general questions of despotism and civilization, but on the specific question of regime type. I will give examples of this below. Here we have an underlying factor that may account for the unexplained aspects of great powerhood as described by realist and moral accounts. A power may also count as great by governing in a way that is deemed exemplary by others.

Indeed, Durkheim touches on the questions of rule and governance in his treatment of great powers without making it his explicit focus. He argues, however, that greatness may be secured simply by setting an example, that is, by making moves that are purely ideational in character. I disagree. As demonstrated by contemporary Sweden, it is fully possible to share a system's moral purpose without being amongst that system's great powers.8 It is a necessary, but not sufficient, prerequisite that the power in question has the material resources to socialize others into its system of governance. Once that is accomplished, however, the afterglow of superior governance may outlast superiority in resources. Consider the case of the East Roman or Byzantine empire's last centuries. Oikonomides (1992: 74) holds that the most striking point about its foreign policy was that
in the fourteenth century as well as the thirteenth, for all its increasing weakness, Byzantium acted as if it was still a great power of the past. Moreover — and this is even more interesting — other powers seemed to ignore reality and to accord the Byzantine ruler a special status: he was seen as the emperor par excellence, the head of a state that used to be a basic fixed point of European politics over past centuries.

It is Oikonomides who ignores reality here, not the polities in the vicinity of the Byzantine empire. Those entities owned the legal systems that constituted them and increased their capacity to rule to the Byzantines.9 To stay in the metaphorical lingo of the day, Byzantium was the father house, and the state households (or, in the Greek of the Byzantines, the economies) of the other polities were the houses of the sons or, rarely, of the brothers. The sons looked to their father with respect even in his dotage.10

The process whereby the European states system spread worldwide was not as clear cut. Beginning with Turkey and Russia, European rulers came up against powers that claimed superiority or parity for their own and had different governing structures. Such claims clashed with the European system for classification of these other polities, which explicitly focused on their system of government. Only those peoples whose political system closely resembled the European one were classified as civilized. Peoples with other large-scale systems were generally categorized as barbarians, and people who had few or no specifically political institutions as savages. As José de Acosta wrote in 1590 in a book about the new world, ‘It is a proven fact that barbarian peoples show their barbarity most clearly in their government and manner of ruling, for the more closely men approach to reason the more humane and less arrogant is their government’ (quoted in Bowden, forthcoming). The topic receives its most elaborate theoretical form in Hegel, and by the 19th century, it was firmly ensconced in international law. For example, Westlake (1914: 143) writes about it at great length under the heading ‘Government the International Test of Civilisation’.

I find Michel Foucault's discussion of how the rationality of government changed in Europe following the emergence of a (new type of) society from the 16th century onwards to be particularly enlightening in order to specify where this ‘standard of civilization’ came from and how it informed the ranking of political powers. To Foucault, the emergence of society as a not immediately transparent layer which comes between the sovereign and his subjects eventually led Western European states to complement direct rule by indirect rule. Such a move has as its discursive prerequisite a move away from thinking about subjects as part of a household headed by the sovereign, towards thinking of them as a partially self-organized productive group. It has as its material prerequisite that the state may draw on an adequate and varied enough amount of resources to pull this off. Foucault views the emergence of liberalism and its imperative that the state should always ask how it may rule less (i.e. less directly) as an historical answer to the emergence of society. Note that governing less simply means governing less directly; real existing liberal states have increased the size of their state apparatuses and the gamut of their instruments of governing for over two hundred years now.

Indirect rule by the state is dependent on inculcating a certain sense of responsibility for their own lives amongst the citizenry, so that they may govern themselves (along the lines indirectly laid down in discourse). Foucault refers to such ‘conduct of conduct’ as governmentality. To grasp the meaning and import of ‘governmentality’ as a form of power, it is useful to contrast it with that of sovereignty. Foucault identifies a historically significant transformation occurring from the sixteenth century onwards in which what he terms the ‘art of government’ emerged to form a practice that was separate and partly autonomous from the principle and practice of sovereignty (Foucault 1978/1991). ‘In contrast to sovereignty’, Foucault (1978/1991: 100) notes, ‘government has as its purpose not the act of government itself, but the welfare of the population, the improvement of its conditions, the increase of its wealth, longevity, health etc.’ Thus, for Foucault, government is defined in terms of the ‘conduct of conducts’, involving a range of techniques and practices, performed by different actors, aimed to shape, guide, and direct individuals’ and groups’ behaviour and actions in particular directions (Foucault 1978/1991: 102–03, 1979/2000: 341). The central elements of government as a form of power is captured in the following distinction made between the workings of sovereignty and the workings of government:
with sovereignty the instrument that allowed it to achieve its aims — that is to say, obedience to the laws — was the law itself: law and sovereignty were absolutely inseparable. …[W]ith government it is a question not of imposing law on men, but of disposing things; that is to say, of employing tactics rather than laws, and even of using laws themselves as tactics — to arrange things in such a way that, through a certain number of means, such and such ends may be achieved (Foucault 1978/1991: 95).

The concepts of ‘disposing things’ and ‘employing tactics’ are an essential feature of government as a form of power. In contrast to both sovereignty and discipline, which are the two other key modes of power theorized by Foucault, government takes the freedom and agency of those that are governed as both and end and a means for governing.

With the introduction of autocracy, the sovereign's right to reign is transcendentally based on a mandate from God himself. The exertion of power took shape as two types of practice: first as raison d’état (or prudencia mixta, see Oestreich 1982: 48) and second as what in French and English was actually called police, in German Policey (later Polizei).11 Police was a concept that was commonly used when referring to different types of statutory provisions that various power centres produced in early modern times:
Police had the connotation of administration in the broadest sense, that is, institutional means and procedures necessary to secure peaceful and orderly existence for the population of the land (that is, territory). Police in this sense, obviously a sense derived directly from polis, was apparently first used in Burgundy (hence the original German spelling policie and policey) in the late fifteenth century, from where it passed to the Hapsburg chanceries (Raeff 1983: 5).

The first known use in German is from Würzburg in 1476, but the most frequent use was under the wars of religion at the 14th century (Oestreich 1982: 155–65). The sovereign became sovereign among other reasons because he slowly succeeded in obtaining exclusive rights to produce such statutory provisions. The meaning of the police-concept thus changed and became a general and contemporary description of the sovereign's ideal order based on the reason of state. ‘The concept of “police” covered the authority which the ruler arrogated to himself to issue commands and prohibitions. The new structure of command and obedience contributed to a further break-up of feudal society,’ writes Oestreich (1982: 157). The proclaimed goal was for police to cover as many aspects of human life as possible, in what was called der wohlgeordnete Polizeistaat — the well-ordered police state. Foucault suggests, and this is crucial to our undertaking, that ties between states meant that good police was a question that concerned Europe in its entirety, and not just one's own state. As he puts it,
One can only effectively maintain the balance and equilibrium in Europe insofar as each state has a good police that allows it to develop its own forces […] In the end there will be imbalance if within the European equilibrium there is a state, not my state, with bad police. Consequently, one must see to it that there is good police, even in other states. European equilibrium begins to function as a sort of inter-state police or as right. European equilibrium gives the set of states the right to see to it that there is good police in every state (Foucault 2007: 314–15).

The new rationality of governing which Foucault refers to as governmentality posed a problem for Russia from the very start. First, it was a rationality different from the one informing sovereignty, and so a potential threat. Secondly, a prerequisite for the state's being able to use this rationality was that the state could draw on a varied slate of resources. The Russian state, whose system of government was less effective and less efficient than that of (other) 17th and 18th century European states, was at a relative disadvantage. As a result, the move in the direction of pervasive ‘police’ was inefficient in Russia. So was the move to indirect rule that was increasingly in evidence in France, Britain, the Netherlands, Sweden and Denmark, and at a later stage and often in weaker forms in France, the German states and indeed in all states to the West of Russia. Given that regime type was considered to be a key criterion when gauging how heavily a certain polity weighed in the scales of civilization, the resulting widening discrepancy between Russia and the great powers was of key importance for how the latter weighed the former in general, and Russia's claim to being a great power in particular.

A whole swathe of historians has discussed these discrepancies under various headings such as the lack of a Russian liberal tradition and the failure of Russian reforms. What I want to do here is to move these insights into a realm where they have been previously absent, namely IR debates about Russia's standing as a great power. I hypothesize that the lack of social power to have these governing structures accepted may account for Russia's problems in not being recognized as a great power. Weber's and Durkheim's approaches each take us part of the way, but adding a governmentality perspective takes us even further. Let us pair up what we may call the realist, the moral and the governmental accounts of great powerhood with a series of examples of European assessments of Russia as a great power over the last two hundred years in order to see which account that may give us a better understanding of the issue.

To be Continued....

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When Problems are so Big & Your Strength is no Longer enough to CaRRy them, Don't Give uP; Because where your Strength Ends the Grace of Almighty ALLAH Begins

Europeans Assessing Russia

On Weber's realist criteria — material resources and the ability to project power — there is no doubt that Russia was a great power by the end of the 18th century. Similarly, on Durkheim's moral criteria — setting an example for how a state should be in the world — the socialization into the states system would appear to be strong enough for Russia to qualify.12 There remained no doubt about its Christian credentials, the principle of legitimacy was the same as in the other powers, dynastic intermarriages had become common. How, then, should we account for the ubiquitous European complaints about Russia's lack of civility and the continuing doubt about the extent to which it should be considered as part of Europe? For Russia was still not seen as weighing heavily on the scales of civilization. An example is David Hume's complaint that ‘the two most civilized nations, the English and French, should be in decline; and the barbarians, the Goths and the Vandals of Germany and Russia, should be in power and renown (quoted in Horn 1945: 18–19). Variants of this complaint were heard in other forms and in other arenas. In 1804, the French ambassador Hédouville complained to his Foreign Minister Talleyrand that ‘There is no other foreign court where the diplomatic corps is less informed on political dispositions and proceedings than here’ (quoted in Grimsted 1969: 19).

Turning towards the issue of governance allows us to highlight two factors. First, regarded as a police state, Russia was less successful than others.13 The capacity for state action was less efficient and more limited. Hamilton and Langhorne (1995: 74) highlights how Peter's reforms also embraced the state apparatus. A ‘new college of foreign affairs was established, and unlike some of Tsar Peter's reforms survived a period of near chaos after his death and grew to have 261 members at the accession of Catherine the Great in 1762. The college had a president, vice-president and two chancery councillors at its establishment, and during the eighteenth century steadily lost its responsibilities for internal provincial (also Central Asian) administration, ecclesiastical administration, for tax gathering and for the postal system, which was separated in 1782’ (comp. Meissner 1956). The result was that, as late as at the eve of the nineteenth century, ‘Compared to the smaller and more efficient foreign offices of many other European powers, the Russian ministry counted on its rolls an extraordinary large number of officials, from those of higher ranks to clerks, codifiers, translators, and copyists. The exact number of men functioning at a given time is almost impossible to ascertain because the rolls listed many persons who rarely or never served’ (Grimsted 1969: 26).

Secondly, during the 18th Century, European societies emerged and states changed their way of handling societies from being one of direct rule to one of indirect governance. In Europe, this period saw the gradual emergence of liberal forms of governing that replaced that of the police state, and society gradually replaced territory as the object of reference for governing. While this system weakened the further east from Britain one moved, liberalism, understood as concrete social practice, firmed its grip. Russia eventually had to take cognizance of the change. In summing up Catherine the Great's reign, Bruce Lincoln places the emphasis on how one cause of her social policy was that Russia's ‘status as a Great Power’ imposed an imperative for civil peace, which again imposed heightened efficiency in the Russian administration. He then adds another factor which added to this imposition, namely that a number of young Russian bureaucrats were impressed by European Enlightenment thinking, and thought that Russia had to conform to Enlightenment ideals of how a civilized polity should be governed. As Lincoln sums up the point,
the pre-modern military and fiscal concerns of Muscovite Tsars confirmed poorly to the image of a Great Power that their sovereigns hoped to project. To be sure, Russia's military needs continued greater than ever, but, as a Great Power, she also must exhibit some proper concern for her citizens (Lincoln 1982: 3, also 175).

To paraphrase, a new ethos of what governing a state entailed was setting a new standard not only for what a state had to be in order to be considered well-ordered, but also for which states should be considered great powers. Liberalism formulated an imperative whereby letting go of the state's direct control of society was becoming a necessity not only for reasons of efficiency (producing a surplus that could feed state need, including a military capacity), but also and more fundamentally for reasons of conforming to a new Europe-wide standard of governance (the need to appear ‘normal’). Given 19th century European thought's penchant for conceptualizing world history in terms of stages taking place in the same order and leading to the same goal, the lack of normality was read more specifically as a slow rate of civilizational development.14 Russia was a laggard in introducing what was considered a civilized form of government, and this made it inferior.15

On the strength of moral criteria, after the Napoleonic wars, Russia was the great power par excellence. At Vienna in 1815, Russia's role as great power was institutionalized. At this time, for the specific purposes of managing the system of states, being the military arbiter of Europe proved sufficient. Only five powers were given the right to have ambassadors extraordinary and plenipotentiary, and Russia was among them. We note, however, that Russia experienced trouble with maintaining its great-power credentials throughout what Eric Hobsbawm calls the ‘long 19th century’ (1789–1917), and that this may be accounted for by the factor of governance. Indeed, Vattel's definition, that a great power should be able to hold its own against any constellation of other powers, was put to the test after the Vienna settlement, when all the other great powers allied against Russia in the quadruple alliance and Russia held its own with ease. In relative terms, Russia's strength weakened throughout the 19th century. Realism cannot account for this, but an account highlighting the factor of governance can. System of government was at the heart of Russia's increasing inability to match the growth in prosperity found (elsewhere) in Europe.

A moral reading of Russia's tenuous standing as a great power throughout the 19th century would highlight how, as the principle of legitimacy shifted towards popular sovereignty, Russia led the rearguard action on the behalf of kingly sovereignty. Such an account is, of course, apposite. When there was a shift in Britain and France's position on what should be the constitutive principles of international society, Russia's response was to insist on the role of God and the heavenly mandate for kingly rule. What continued to tie Europe's monarchs together, tsar Alexander argued in 1815, was that they were brothers in Christ (Palmer 1974). His proposed Holy Alliance was clearly and explicitly embedded in such a discursive universe. As seen both by the formal and informal reactions to it, however, these arguments had lost not only their obviousness, but also some of their persuasiveness. Russia's inability to rally the other great powers who constituted the Congress of Europe behind a program of policing Europe against regimes based on popular sovereignty demonstrates how the discrepancy on the principle of legitimacy translated into inability to act in concert. The result was continued questioning of Russia's standing as a European or even a civilized nation. Grimsted (1969: 3) is right when she argues that
Russia's stature as a great European power reached its zenith because the economic, social and political developments which were to transform the European continent in the next hundred years had not, by 1800, separated Russia from Western Europe to the extent that would be so evident in the Crimean War at mid-century.

As a more liberal type of governing took hold domestically as well as between states and established itself as ‘normal’, Russia once again became a laggard. Where governance between states is concerned, The Congress of Vienna had marked a breakthrough in international governance. It stabilized state boundaries between European states, and insulated Europe from extra-European rivalries. Much in the same way as Adam Smith had conceived of political measures as preconditions for economies to thrive, international agreement demarcated specific areas (understood as state-contained societies) for states to govern. This changed the meaning of what it meant to be a great power. As Paul Schroeder puts it, the general principles of the Concert of Europe ‘protected the rights, interests, and equal status of the great powers above all, but they also committed these powers to the performance of certain duties connected with those rights — respect for treaties, noninterference in other states’ internal affairs, willingness to participate in the Concert's decisions and actions, and a general observance of legality and restraint in their international actions’ (Schroeder 1986: 12–13). It became harder and less legitimate to compensate for bad governance with territorial expansion in Europe. In the 18th century, the three partitions of Poland and the resulting territorial aggrandizement of Russia, particularly after the third division, had a certain aggrandizing effect on Russia's standing as a great power. By contrast, Russia's imperial policy in Poland, Finland etc. in the 19th century did not have such an effect, but was rather detrimental to its standing. The explanation for this is to be found in the increasing importance assigned to systems of government.

This is generally occluded by realist analyses, which often conclude that, in the period from the Vienna settlement to the Crimean War (1853–1856), Russia was not only secure in its great powerhood, but that it was even preponderant. For example, William Wohlforth (1999: 21 note 30) holds that the Concert of Europe as it operated in this period was ‘based on a Russo-British cohegemony’. Paul Schroeder disagrees, pointing out
The common view that Russia enjoyed an enormous and growing power and prestige in Europe until the Crimean War broke the bubble is a great exaggeration. After 1815, Russia never was the arbiter of Europe or exercised the dominant influence in Germany that Catherine II or Paul I had enjoyed for a time, and the young Alexander I had aspired to (Schroeder 1986: 10).

The point here is that, underlying not only the growing gap in relative resources but also the gap in principle of legitimacy was a difference in governance. At the heart of Russia's troubles as a great power was its unwillingness and inability to change from a rationality of direct rule to a rationality of indirect governmentality. Again, consider Lincoln's argument that
If Russia was to meet the challenge posed by the rapidly industrializing West, she, in turn, had to find some way to achieve greater administrative efficiency and instil into her middle- and upper-level officials a measure of support for change. Russia's bureaucrats had to become responsive to the needs of the nation they served, and some means had to be found to enable those few who were well informed about complex social and economic issues to gain input into the tsarist policy-making process (Lincoln 1982: 6).

Lincoln's book painstakingly traces how this process unfolded in the middle of the 19th century to culminate in the emancipation of the serfs in 1861 and leading to sweeping judicial reforms directly and explicitly inspired by European models (esp. Lincoln 1982: 200). It is of key interest, however, that Russia's autocratic order put a clear limit to how such moves could be taken. If all power should in theory emanate from the Tsar, bureaucracy had to maintain the principle of direct control from above. Therefore, Russia's politicians could not act independently. Neither was there any way in which they could function as aggregators of societal interests apart from the tsar, and so any economic strengthening of the emerging middle class could not find any direct political expressions. ‘As a result, just when the new social and economic groups that comprised the middle class were eroding the power of absolutism in the West, it was strengthened in Russia’ (Lincoln 1982: 7).

There is broad consensus in the historical literature about the logic and importance of this process. In terms of state-society relations, the problem was that Russia simply did not have the social agents necessary to mediate between the state and the population at large. This meant that a necessary precondition for indirect rule was lacking. Given the absence of self/government amongst the subjects, if the state decided to ease direct rule, there was an immediate danger that anarchy would ensue. Therefore, moves to indirect rule, which would entail the easing of direct rule, were precluded. As Geyer (1977: 27–8) puts it
As a result of the new attitudes forced on the government, the reform period witnessed the first flowering of political journalism in Russia. […] A common thread to all the criticism was opposition to the bureaucratic machinery of the state and demands for self-government and ‘openness’ (glasnost’). No consensus existed, however, on the question of who should be responsible for self-government in the districts and provinces: aristocrats ‘born’ to mediate between the ruler and his people? owners of private property in their capacity as the most respectable group of citizens? the educated classes as the preceptors of the people and defenders of democratic rights?

The state was not able to put any of these social groups to good use, which meant that it was basically stuck with the state apparatus. Within this apparatus, however, the regime once again ran into the elite social forces, which it was not able to harness for indirect rule. The regime's lack of ability to deploy its own apparatus effectively meant that direct rule was inefficient as well. To draw on Dave Alan Rich's (1998: 29) formulation, ‘autocracy's constructed dynastic myth left little room for state professionals. Partnership with the rising ranks of experts who filled the central bureaucracy — and sharing of authority with them — were beyond its defining tropes.’ Rich's example is the Russian General Staff. The military leadership's response to the reforms of the 1860s was to embark on professionalization. This succeeded in setting up a solid planning operation, but having it implemented proved difficult, since the tsar and his immediate family sat at the top of the military hierarchy from which they were able to stall the process. Having failed to circumvent the royal family, the General Staff simply gave up. As summarized by Rich (1998: 19):
…civilian political leaders, who had sought unification of policy in the Council of Ministers after 1905, ultimately found themselves hobbled by habits of insularity and by the supreme power, Tsar Nicholas II, who thought government his personal possession. Professional bureaucrats, the experts whose authority might have insinuated interministerial political unity, instead settled into parochialism, and none more so than the technicians of the Russian general staff. In the end, professionals were not the potential savoirs of autocracy and empire but virtual guarantors of their demise.16

As did his predecessors, Nicholas operated according to a rationality of government where the tsar was supposed to be the head of the household. Etymologically, we may even trace this in the Russian term for state, gosudarstvo, which translates loosely as the holdings of the lord. The unwillingness to let the sovereign's documents count for more than the sovereign's whim, that is, the unwillingness to subsume leadership under the law, meant that Western-style bureaucratization was held back from the top. After the assassination of Alexander II in 1881, his son and successor passed a Statute of exceptional measures which gave one such body, the secret policy, a free run on the sovereign's subjects. Zuckerman (1996: 13) concludes from a careful reading that ‘the political police by the mid-1880s already operated beyond the control of the regular bureaucracy’. Since these measures remained in force until the October revolution, one may indeed describe Russia as a ‘police state’ in these years, but in a very different meaning from what 16th and 17th century Europeans meant by ‘police’.

Note that the bureaucracy tended to experience the delegation of power to ad hoc organs like the secret police and those organs’ subsequent tendency to ignore the bureaucracy's instructions as a direct hampering not only of their own power, but also of the effectiveness of the state. This may be seen, for example, in the internal fight between the ministry of Finance and the ministry of the Interior over the development of labour movements. Up until 1903, when the so-called starosta (elder) law allowing the choice of elders from amongst the workers to play a role as spokesmen was established, forming anything approaching even a proto-union had been illegal. The new law followed a failed attempt by Sergey Zubatov, head of Moscow's secret police, to construct police-controlled worker organizations. McDaniel (1988: 65) comments that
The Zubatov experiment was the closest the Russian state ever came to a corporatist policy of creating and coopting dependent organizations, a strategy that achieved notable successes from the standpoint of the authorities in numerous other countries.

In Russia, however, the state was too aloof, the industrialists too weak and the workers too unused to the give and take that is necessary for industrial relations to work for the Zubatov experiment to be successful. Again, the preconditions for indirect rule simply were not present. McDaniel stresses how autocracy's choice not to accommodate social groups was a self-conscious one, quoting the soon-to-become Internal Minister hailing in 1902 ‘the complete independence of our government’ (Sipyagin quoted in McDaniel 1988: 58). Note, however, that he also traces the impulse to study indirectly in this debate, for one of the express reasons why the Ministry of Finance wanted the starosta law in the first place was
to reduce the role of the police in the factories as much as possible. The law had its origins in the request of factory inspectors that they be allowed ‘to summon worker deputies and talk with them’ before the police intervened. The Ministry of Internal Affairs, they claimed, did not sufficiently recognize this duty of the factory inspectorate, and unfortunately all disorders were dealt with by the police (McDaniel 1988: 90–1).

Of course, the spokesman for indirect rule, the Minister of Finance, was a liberal (Witte), whereas the Internal Minister who was inclined towards direct rule was a conservative. The conservative was right in his assumption that indirect rule would undermine the regime, and so he won the debate. We may conclude that at least some Russian bureaucrats as well as its few liberal politicians shared the assessment of European statesmen where the weakness of the Russian state was concerned. They did not, however, draw the same conclusion, or at least not in the same degree, namely that Russia did not meet the standard of civilization necessary to pass muster as a great power.

For our purposes, where the key is to spell out the different rationalities of rule and government between Russia and other European regimes, these analyses may be generalized in ways that give them analytical purchase even today. Consider, for example, Moshe Lewin's (1987) reading of Russia's inability to reform. Throughout the nineteenth and twentieth centuries, Lewin argues, the Russian state would perceive the situation to be one where Russia was losing out to Western competitors due to the relative lack of productivity of its enterprises. In reaction, the Russian (or Soviet) state would ease its direct control of enterprises, and encourage them to increase their own initiative. The enterprises would go ahead and do so, and at some point, their very success would generate demands on the state (in the form of pressure for different systems and degrees of taxation, for new legislation, for a say in decision-making, etc.) The state would not consider itself to be able to answer these demands without systems-wide change, and would respond by putting an end to reforms. Leaning on the governmentality perspective, this process is easily defined as one of the state refusing to accept a change away from logic of direct rule towards a logic of indirect governance. Society is not allowed to exist as an institutional and hence non-transparent reality. As seen from Europe, Russia held on to an outmoded and inefficient mode of state power, which made it appear anything but great. The result was, to quote Lincoln once again, that
By 1856, the political ideologies of the West stood in unflinching, hostile array against those very precepts and institutions of autocracy that Alexander II was sworn to defend and to which the enlightened bureaucrats were committed by necessity and conviction. Europeans unhesitatingly saw in Russian autocracy the personification of that tyranny they had fought to destroy in the revolutions of 1789, 1830, and 1848, and the survival of autocracy only strengthened some of them in their opposition to Russia's claims for recognition as a European power (Lincoln 1982: 175).

Arguably, the tsarist empire's resistance to Western pressure for a change towards liberal governance cost it its life for it alienated the regime from every single emerging social group and zapped its military strength when it was most needed. Debate about whether the balance of power should be conceived as a balance of capabilities or a balance of threats has its specific counterpart in the debate about whether great powerhood should be assessed in terms of material or perceptual indicators. For example, William Wohlforth (1987) demonstrates how, in the decade leading up to the First World War, policy makers were led astray by their trust in numbers, which made them grossly overestimate Russia's power. Interestingly, the power that held that power to be the most modest was Russia itself. Since Wohlforth operates within the problematique of order, he rests content with demonstrating the discrepancy.17 A focus on governance suggests that the more intimate Russian knowledge of its weakness in this regard explains its modesty in overall assessment of its great powerhood. As Wohlforth himself demonstrates, furthermore, it was exactly the inability of foreign observers to appreciate the full importance of the state's tenuous hold on society for its international standing and survival that led them astray. Within Russia itself, however, there were key people who fully grasped the problem. Consider Grand Duke Constantine Nikolaevich's lament that ‘we cannot deceive ourselves any longer […] we are both weaker and poorer than the first-class powers, and furthermore poorer not only in material but also in mental resources, especially in matters of administration’ (quoted in Lieven 1983: 21). What the Grand Duke did not note, however, was that having someone like himself on top was exactly one of the things that made it impossible for tsarist Russia to match the administrative systems of the ‘first-class powers’.

When, in its final months, the tsar turned to the ambassadors of Russia's allies, who were also representatives of the most liberal states in the system, the stock answer was that the tsar should broaden the popular basis of his government. Despite the odds, he vehemently refused. After a short socialist interregnum, a communist regime was installed. In terms of resource base, the Soviet state quickly matched the level of resources once possessed by tsarist Russia. Realists may account for this by pointing to Soviet disinterest in managing the system, and a Durkheimian may account for it by pointing to the different principle of legitimacy on which the communists operated. By the same tokens, they may produce complementary accounts of how the Soviet Union regained its great power status after it emerged victorious in the Second World War. But, how may they account for the repeated relevance of the view, held by Western leaders like Winston Churchill, that the Russian leaders were barbarians, and the matching uneasiness of the Soviet leaders towards what they at some level obviously considered their more highly cultured counterparts? Consider an example from a period which, according to a realist account, has the Soviet Union play the role of one of the world's two superpowers. In his memoirs, Nikita Khrushchev compared himself to a heroine of a popular play from the 1930s, Lyubov’ Yarovaya, where little Dun’ka undertakes a trip to Europe. The expression ‘as Dun’ka in Europe’ passed into everyday language, translating as something like ‘as a country bumpkin in the big city’. Khrushchev wrote that
Dun’ka's travel to Europe was of consequence and went to show that that we could deal with international matters even without Stalin's orders. To use a metaphor, in foreign policy we had thrown away the boy's shorts and donned the long trousers of the adult. […] We felt our power (Khrushchev 1993: 78).

Maybe so, but how to account for the insecurity obvious in the need to spell out how one feels from the leader of a state that perceived itself and was perceived by the other powers in the system as having the military might of a great power? Fulfilling the criterion of having enough economic strength to uphold a military might that was great in relative terms appears as a necessary, but insufficient criterion of great powerhood here. From Grand Duke Constantine to Khrushchev and beyond, we see a continuing Russian fear of being seen as inferior by (other) European powers. And indeed, beginning in the late 1980s, post-Soviet leaders themselves began to identify the root cause of their uneasiness vis-à-vis the West in civilizational terms. One of the key slogans of the perestroika period was the need to ‘rejoin civilization’, a slogan that logically implied that the Soviet path had somehow led Russians away from it (Neumann 2005). With the fall of communism, for the next ten to fifteen years, the official Russian self-understanding of the Soviet past came to blame a mistaken system of governance for the lingering problems in what was frequently referred to as the civilized world. There was a tentative turn to European liberal models of government. During this period, the understanding of Russia as inferior was often shared by Russian leaders themselves.

During the 18th and 19th centuries, the Russian elite adopted a number of European social practices (marriage patterns, military procurement and deployment, diplomacy), and partook in the management of the states system in ways that were explicitly associated with great powers (having ambassadors plenipotentiary, being a guarantor power, participating in conferences, gaining a droit de regard). Still, doubt lingered in European capitals — and in some degree in Russia itself — about its role as a great power. Realists, which treat great powerhood as a matter of having and being able to project material and especially military power, may account for why Russia was increasingly recognized, but not for the lingering doubt. A moral account, which takes intersubjectivity seriously and stresses the degree in which a power accepts confluence of norms, may account for some of the doubt. It cannot, however, account for the lingering doubt in periods when Russia largely adhered to international norms. I have suggested that a governancy-based account, which focuses on regime types and their representations by other powers, can. Mine is a power-based and socially grounded account. As noted in the introduction, whereas this reading is something new in social theory and IR, a non-theorized prototype of it is fairly prominent in the work of Russian historians.18 For example, Bruce Lincoln (1982) remarks on Catherine the Great's reign how one cause of her social policy was that Russia's status as a Great Power’ imposed an imperative for civil peace and a need to ‘exhibit some proper concern for her citizens’ (Lincoln 1982: 3, cf. 175).

Conclusion

With the coming to power of Vladimir Putin in 2000, the official Russian line continued to be that Russia remained a great power, but one that now sought recognition in terms of democracy and market economy. Ostensibly, this is a liberal model. It is, however, only superficially so. In a work on the 1905 reforms in Russia, Weber once characterized the new system of government as Scheinkonstitutionalismus — fake constitutionalism. Putin's use of liberal slogans such as the rule of law etc. are equally lacking in seriousness and practical purchase. To quote an analyst who singles this out as a key development, Viatcheslav Morozov (2007: 18) writes that
As the liberal reforms of the social security system failed, the government tended to opt for paternalistic solutions, such as the measures aimed at raising nativity rates, demonstrating that the stronger state is better in providing security to the people. Foreign policy came to be dominated by the idea of establishing Russia as a strong and independent player on the global stage — here, as in domestic politics, autonomy became an end in itself.

The thinking about government that is promulgated by slogans such as managed democracy, sovereign democracy, etc. is predicated on the idea that a strong state may serve as the guarantee of the system of governance. The problem is that the model of governance that Russia pledges to implement here runs directly against a key liberal trend, where the question is how the state may govern less. Putin's view of what a state should do is the exact opposite of liberal. It focuses on how the Russian state should rule in a direct fashion and up front, not govern indirectly and from afar. It sees society as something to be managed, not as something that must by necessity be given a certain leeway. It sees law as one of the instruments of the executive, not as a check on it. It sees even human rights as something that is guaranteed by the state, not as something that pertains to individuals because they are human beings. What this means is that Russia is once again evolving a rationality of government that has firm precedents in Western Europe but that has, at the time of Russia's adopting it, been left behind by West European states themselves. The Russian state is once again opting for direct rule.

In the 19th century, in the wake of the French revolution and the Napoleonic Wars, Russia was also faced with the dilemma of choosing to follow the Western lead of giving society more leeway and govern by indirect means, or to maintain its policy of direct rule. It decided to maintain an ancien régime while other European powers went for modernization. In the 20th century, in the wake of the First World War, Russia again parted ways with other European powers by trying to implement a socialist future while the others hung on to their bourgeois present. In the 21st century, Europe seems to be set on a course of integration. If Russia wants to repeat its formal pattern, it should hang on to its sovereign present while others forge ahead. The problem, however, is that this will no doubt entail a whole swathe of interesting challenges of incompatibility. Russia's problem with being recognized as a Great Power is a social one. At its root is the question of relations between state and society. As seen from Europe, a Great Power cannot have state/society relations that are too different from those that at any one given time dominate European politics. In the final analysis, in order to achieve and maintain the status of a Great Power, social compatibility is needed. When, to quote a paradigmatic voice from Putin's Russia, Natal’ya Narochnitskaya argues that Russia ‘haunts Europe, which, having built its ‘paradise on earth’, remains apprehensive of our magnitude and our capacity to withstand all challenges’, she neatly sums up the problem. For it is not enough to parade what Russia itself considers ‘strength’ in order to be recognized as a great power (quoted in Prozorov 2006: 42).19 What is needed is to demonstrate strength and power that is recognized as being of a sort which makes its wielder a great power by the light of the firmly ensconced great powers. If that is what it takes to be recognized as a great power, then Russia under Putin is playing the wrong game.

With Russia's choice under Putin, the societal differences that have historically existed between Western European powers and Russia and those that are inextricably linked to the system of governance, are still with us. Examples include ownership, freedom of contract, judiciary and penal practices, health administration and a whole range of other practices. In a words, if, as I have argued, great powerhood depends not only on having material resources and being able to project military power, then Russia has now once again chosen a course that will thwart its ambitions to be recognized as a great power on a par with leading European powers and, even more crucially in terms of power, the United States. It is not just Russia's material base (Russia's gross domestic product being one-thirteenth of that of the US, less than half that of United Kingdom's and a third of Germany's) that goes to show that Russia's membership of the G-8 is by courtesy only. Russia's standing as one of five permanent members of the UN Security Council is yet another formal institutional feather in Russia's cap, but it cannot cover up the lack of a social base for great powerhood. The inability to project power in a degree sufficient to please a realist together with the unwillingness to play according to the moral rules laid down by extant great powers and the unwillingness to change the state to approximate a rationality of governing by indirect means stand in the way of it being able to earn the recognition of other states that it seemingly strives so hard to achieve. The very policy that is ostensibly forged to ‘make Russia strong again’ is predicated on an understanding of strength that is partial and dated. In a world where the liberal standard of civilization which played such a crucial role in the international relations of the 19th century is coming back in force, Russia will not be counted as a fully fledged great power for decades yet.

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When Problems are so Big & Your Strength is no Longer enough to CaRRy them, Don't Give uP; Because where your Strength Ends the Grace of Almighty ALLAH Begins

Nuclear Proliferation Treaties

The Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty (NPT)
The NPT was ratified in 1975. It has been ratified by 187 countries, more than any other arms limitation and disarmament agreement. The objective is “to prevent the spread of nuclear weapons and weapons technology, to promote co-operation in the peaceful uses of nuclear energy and to further the goal of achieving nuclear disarmament and general and complete disarmament.” Some 180+ countries thus agreed not to pursue nuclear weapons in exchange for the nuclear powers to adhere to treaties that would have the goal of eliminating nuclear weapons. However, as others have put more bluntly, this treaty was to prevent new members from joining the “nuclear club.”

The Anti-Ballistic Missile (ABM) Treaty
The ABM Treaty, signed in 1972, prohibits the use of defensive systems that might give an advantage to one side in a nuclear war. The Mutually Assured Destruction scenario was invoked here to assure that each nation had enough weapons to survive a nuclear attack and therefore have the ability to annihilate the other. Their rationale was that as long as both sides remained defenseless, in this respect, neither country would dare attack the other.

The Comprehensive Test Ban Treaty (CTBT)
The CTBT was designed to prevent testing of nuclear weapons and hence reduce the chance of an arms race.

The Strategic Arms Reduction Treaties, START I and START II
START I and II were designed to reduce the weapons that Russia and the US have.

All four of these have been under pressure for a few years:

1. The NPT is seen by some critics as a means for the five nuclear powers at that time to retain their weapons while telling others not to develop them, and thus allow these five to remain militarily more powerful than other nations. This is feared to then provide a pretext for other countries to develop their own nuclear weapons. For example,
   • India, Pakistan, Israel and Cuba did not sign the NPT.
   • India and Pakistan went nuclear in 1998.
   • Israel is known to have nuclear capabilities too.
   • North Korea went nuclear in 2006. (More on this below.
2. The US is currently looking at developing an expensive national missile defense system, which goes against the ABM treaty. [Since writing this page initially, the U.S. has withdrawn from the ABM Treaty.]
3. Although President Clinton had signed it in 1995, the US Senate rejected the CTBT in 1999. Other countries such as China and Iran are also “balking” on the idea, using the excuses of U.S. policies and costs, for example, as reported by Reuters (March 7, 2002).
4. Russia initially stalled on START II because of the USA’s national missile defense program. However, they finally endorsed the treaty in April 2000, but warned that if the US still pursues its missile defense program, which goes against the ABM treaty, then Russia would pull out of the arms negotiations.

While the major nuclear powers have agreed to eliminate their nuclear arsenal at a UN review of the NPT, it remains to be seen how much of that will be rhetoric and how much real political will there will be to follow it through.

Almost five years after writing the above paragraph, it would seem that much talk has been rhetoric. David Kreiger, president of the Nuclear Age Peace Foundation, notes some additional grim developments:

At the center of the nonproliferation regime is the 1970 Treaty on the Non-Proliferation of Nuclear Weapons (NPT)…. this treaty is based upon an important tradeoff. The nonnuclear weapons states agree not to develop or acquire nuclear weapons, and the nuclear weapons states agree to engage in good faith negotiations for nuclear disarmament.

Unfortunately, the nuclear weapons states, and particularly the United States, seem to have made virtually zero progress in the past five years. Despite its pledges to do otherwise, the United States has failed to ratify the Comprehensive Test Ban Treaty; opposed a verifiable fissile material cutoff treaty; substituted the Strategic Offensive Reductions Treaty (SORT), which is fully reversible, for the START treaties; scrapped the Anti-Ballistic Missile Treaty, opening the door for deployment of missile defenses and moves toward placing weapons in outer space; kept nuclear weapons at the center of its security policies, including research to create new nuclear weapons; and demonstrated no political will toward the elimination of its nuclear arsenal.

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When Problems are so Big & Your Strength is no Longer enough to CaRRy them, Don't Give uP; Because where your Strength Ends the Grace of Almighty ALLAH Begins

The United Nations is arguably the most worthwhile organisation on earth. On paper that is. Established in 1945, primarily to prevent a third world war, the goals encapsulated in its charter are admirable. Bringing the international community together under the UN umbrella was achieved to maintain peace and security, to nurture friendship between nations on the basis of human rights, fundamental freedoms, international laws — and the self-determination of peoples.

The idea was to provide a forum for the resolution of disputes with the benefit of muscle to be exerted as a last resort under Chapter VII of the Charter that permits the UN Security Council “to take military action to “restore international peace and security”.

No doubt UN organs such as Unicef, Unesco, the UNHCR and the WHO do invaluable work, but the main body has overall proved to be a spectacular failure.

A glaring example of the UN’s impotence is its ineffectiveness in halting the Syrian regime’s mass murder. It’s good at drafting resolutions and holding press conferences which make not one jot of difference to Syrian men, women and children who are being tortured, shelled and bombed.

I’ve been following the numerous Security Council meetings intently, hoping that its members will take decisive action to halt the killing, but all I see is squabbling and obstruction. On Friday, the UN General Assembly passed a resolution “deploring the failure of the Security Council to agree on measures to ensure the compliance of Syrian authorities with its decisions”.

But as the General Assembly has no power, that resolution is destined to be filed away.

Kofi Annan, the envoy appointed by the UN to mediate in Syria, has thrown up his hands, announcing his resignation effective end August.

“At a time when the Syrian people need action there continues to be name calling and finger pointing in the Security Council,” Annan said.

This isn’t the first time that the UN has reneged on its responsibilities; it abandoned the people of Rwanda.

A report published by an independent investigatory commission led by a former Swedish Prime Minister accused the UN of failing to stem the genocide in Rwanda that robbed the lives of some 800,000. Annan in his capacity as UN Secretary-General expressed his regret while pledging to thwart a similar future disaster. That promise has turned out to be empty.

The UN has also admitted failure in its peace-keeping role by permitting Bosnian Serbs to systematically murder thousands of Muslim men and boys in Srebrenica in July 1995. Srebrenica was supposed to be a safe area under the protection of UN-led troops.

“The tragedy of Srebrenica will haunt our history forever,” is a quote from a self-flagellating UN report.

Virtually powerless

Just like Rwandans, the Syrian people are crying out for international protection and all they’ve received so far are commiserations. To be fair, neither Annan nor his successor Ban Ki-Moon should be held accountable. Any UN head is virtually powerless with decision-making resting with the Security Council.

It’s preposterous than the Big Five — the US, the UK, France, Russia and China — can veto UNSC resolutions blessed by all other members.

Russia and China have recently used their vetoes to thwart resolutions censuring the Al Assad regime to preserve their respective interests. They’ve been condemned by Washington but the US doesn’t hesitate to wield its own veto to block resolutions that justly chastise Israel. Moreover, whenever the US fails to bring fellow members into line it threatens to cut UN funding.

Exposed as a bad joke

As long as individual countries prioritise their own national interests over the principles in the UN Charter, the organisation will continue holding out false hope to the dispossessed and the disenfranchised. Few had much faith in the Security Council before Syria erupted but now that it’s witnessed massacres of children from the beginning of the uprising on March 15, 2011 until now and done nothing, it’s been exposed as a bad joke.

I never imagined that I would agree with that hawkish neoconservative John Bolton, a former US Ambassador to the UN, who controversially said if the UN lost ten floors “it wouldn’t make a bit of difference”. Better still, the entire bloated edifice should be turned into a museum or mall. Those 7,750 pen pushers in the UN Secretariat and the 8,230 specially funded administrators should be sent home.

The UN’s annual budget currently standing at $5.15 billion (Dh18.91 billion) (2012-2013) should be put to better use such as ensuring no child dies of starvation in famine zones. I wonder how much goes on cocktail parties, trips and personal allowances. It should be investigated and audited. Its failures and accomplishments should be made public so its usefulness can be fairly evaluated.

The UN is a tool of big powers. The body’s charter is no longer worth the paper it’s written on. It’s lost its credibility so it should be replaced by an international organisation headquartered in a neutral country like Switzerland wherein member countries enjoy voting rights proportional to their populations — and where no one nation is empowered to lead the others by the nose.

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When Problems are so Big & Your Strength is no Longer enough to CaRRy them, Don't Give uP; Because where your Strength Ends the Grace of Almighty ALLAH Begins

Introduction

Middle East as a region holds strategic significance for US' foreign policy goals. Access to low-priced energy supplies, protection and support for Israel, a key US' ally in the region, and control of the routes essential for trade and maintaining regional hegemony are some of its top priorities. The fact that the most revered holy centers of the world's three largest religions lie here grants the region additional significance. These factors make this region indispensable to US foreign policy objectives.

President Obama assumed office at a crucial time when Middle East presented a checkered scenario. Time between Obama's election and oath-taking was marked by Israel's Gaza invasion that added fuel to already rampant anti-American and anti-Israel sentiments in the region. Since the Israeli-US relationship is generally seen as a litmus test of US behavior in the region, the new administration was presented with the task of maintaining alliance with two opposite camps—Israel and the Arabs, softening the Arab resentment towards Israel, and curtailing the anti-Americanism ensuing not only from unequivocal American support to Israel, but from invasions of Muslim countries, the hundreds of thousands of civilian casualties in the aftermath of 9/11, and the post invasion turmoil in the invaded countries as well. Although courting regimes never required much craft in general, the real issue remained the anti-American sentiments at popular level.

Nevertheless, a few developments in the region did provide the new administration with a baton to counter the prevailing challenges. In Iraq—that had been the hot spot in Middle East since 2003—the situation was getting better after a bloody war and there was talk of US withdrawal. The details of pulling out American forces from Iraq were outlined in an agreement between US and Iraqi regime known as 'Status of Forces Agreement' (SOFA) in November 20082. As far as Iran is concerned, it was tacitly helping US in Iraq and Afghanistan. Although Tehran continued maintaining an anti-US posture, it was cognizant of its gains in the form of conducive environment for enhancing its influence with the Shiite majority in Iraq after US invasion ousted Sadam who had been a constant source of worry for Iranians. In Afghanistan too, it cooperated with US in orchestrating the Karzai government at the Bonn conference of December 2001.

Amidst these developments, Barack Obama's arrival in the White House was expected to herald an epoch of 'change', a slogan very shrewdly chosen in line with the changing dynamics in international politics, particularly the Middle East. Obama's success in elections is a testimony to peoples' longing for change. Change, however follows or not, is yet to unfold.

Predictably, President Obama made a mention of his 'new initiative' for Middle East in his first interview with the Arabic news network, Al Arabiya, after becoming president, which was later on presented comprehensively in the form of much awaited "Cairo speech", generally labeled by media pundits as 'a historic turning point'. It was taken as ushering in a new era in Middle East politics and the slogan of 'change' was expected to make headway on the road to implementation. It is, therefore, important to see how Obama addresses the Palestine problem as the core issue of the region in particular and other peripheral issues of the contemporary Middle East.

Obama's Initiative
The much anticipated Cairo speech5 enunciated "America's strong bonds with Israel" that was based "upon cultural and historical ties and the recognition that the aspiration for a Jewish homeland is rooted in a tragic history that cannot be denied." In passionate words empathetic language, the 44th American president presented Israel's case and its right to exist as a Jewish State in Palestinian land, saying:

Around the world the Jewish people were persecuted for centuries. And anti-Semitism in Europe culminated in an unprecedented holocaust … Threatening Israel with destruction or repeating vile stereotypes about Jews is deeply wrong and only serves to evoke in the minds of the Israelis this most painful of memories.

President Obama also talked about the Palestinian people who "have suffered in pursuit of a homeland" and "endured the pain of dislocation … the daily humiliations, large and small, that come with occupation." He tried to assure Palestinian people that "America will not turn our backs on the legitimate Palestinian aspiration for dignity, opportunity and a state of their own." Obama deplored the stalemate and marked that "the only resolution is for the aspirations of both sides to be met through two states, where Israelis and Palestinians each live in peace and security."

The parties involved were asked to honor the commitments made in the 2003 Road Map and demands were made to end violence and govern effectively from the Palestinian side, particularly Hamas. Palestinians were also required to take all necessary steps to reduce negative sentiments against Israel and prepare grounds for normalization of relations between Israel and the Palestinian entity in all sectors.

Both parties were asked to recognize other's right to exist. Israel was asked to take steps to improve the daily lives of Palestinians, in reference to countless security checks that hamper free movement of Palestinians. The contentious Israeli settlements were dubbed "illegal", "an impediment to peace", and a "violation of previous agreements". Obama, while recognizing King Abdullah's Arab peace initiative, asked all—Arabs and others alike—to be supportive of two-state solution. He stressed that conflict with Israel shouldn't be used as a means to distract attention of Arab people from such regional issues.

However concerned Obama seemed at Cairo, he failed to refer to UN resolutions, specifically resolution 242 (passed in 1967) and 338 (passed in 1973) that had been accepted by the US as the guiding principles for any future settlement of the issue. It is also interesting to note here that Obama first talks about Israel's tragic history and Third Reich's oppressive treatments with Jews but when it comes to fulfilling obligations and responsibilities for reaching solution to Palestine problem, Palestinians take precedence as if the onus of present turmoil lies not on the Jewish occupation of Palestinian land but on the Palestinians for the most part. Besides, the gory Gaza conflict that marked the beginning of year 2009 and claimed hundreds of innocent lives was mentioned as a passing reference by the US President.

Besides addressing the core issue of the Middle East, Obama's Initiative also touched upon other peripheral issues in the region such as the situation in Iraq, Iran's nuclear program and commitment to democracy, women rights and religious freedom. President Obama claimed that the "US has no claim on Iraqi resources", or "wish of having bases here" and reiterated his plan of withdrawing combat brigades by July 2010 and all forces by 2012. In case of Iran, the Cairo speech reiterated his willingness to proceed with Iran on basis of "mutual interest", "without preconditions". It was made clear that US recognized Iran's right to peaceful nuclear energy provided "it complies with its responsibilities under the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty." President Obama also confessed American role in ousting the democratically elected Mosaddeq regime in 1953-coup, implying that such past conduct on part of his country was responsible in deteriorating US-Iranian relations.

In the context of current precarious situation in the region, it is imperative to ask whether President Obama's initiative is really a beginning of substantial change or following the ways of past American Presidents. The answer to this lies in the retrospect. To gauge the novelty of Obama's Middle East initiative, it is pertinent to have a look at the initiatives launched by Obama's predecessors in reference to Palestine issue in particular and Middle East in general. The outcomes of past initiatives would make it possible to understand the likely future scenario.

Past Presidents' Initiatives

Regional and International Environment: Since the beginning of Cold War, the subsequent US administrations had seen the Middle East in context of the international political environment, making the region an arena of superpower rivalry for influence, strategic advantage and access to oil. This approach effectively ignored the internal dynamics of the region. Generally speaking, from Eisenhower (1953–1961) to Reagan (1981–1989), containing Soviet Union was the prime objective of US Middle East policy. Considering Israel's performance in the 1967 Arab-Israeli conflict, the Nixon administration (1969–1974) thought the conversion of US-Israeli relationship into a strategic partnership would guarantee America's prime regional interest. After the 1973 war and the collective oil embargo on the West by Arab States, Carter (1977–1981) assumed office in White House with the slogan of giving Arab-Israeli conflict a fresh approach. He furthered the process of talks between Egypt and Israel and Israel and Syria via Camp David (1978) and Egypt-Israel peace treaty (1979). Israel's intransigence in terms of fulfilling these commitments led to diminish trust in the mediation efforts.

By the time President Reagan ascended to power, the regional and international scenario changed with the Iran-Iraq war in the Gulf and Soviet invasion of Afghanistan. So, unlike Carter, Reagan was less enthusiastic about the Palestine issue. Once again the globalist approach towards Middle East overshadowed the regionalist perspective.8 However the 1982 Lebanon war once again brought home the potential of Palestine issue to affect regional peace. Efforts of peace again failed and just like Nixon, Reagan deemed Israel as a reliable ally.

Following the end of Cold War George H W Bush (1989-1993) inherited a triumphant US. Being a sole superpower without the fear of rivalry, it had the opportunity to settle the regional disputes. But the US got itself bogged down in the Gulf War of 1991. To the general public in the Middle East, however, the unprecedented proactive US approach towards solving Kuwait Crisis that was perceived to have possibly been addressed through negotiations and dialogues, was in sharp contrast to the almost inactiveness of the US towards solving the decades old Palestine issue. Countering these sentiments, the Bush Sr. administration launched a peace process that was led on by President Clinton (1993-2001) who came into power with a renewed spirit to resolve the Arab-Israel dispute. Although negotiations and accords were orchestrated yet peace remained elusive and the process failed to bring any breakthrough.

With the radical neo-conservatives in power under the George W. Bush administration (2001-2009) and the incident of 9/11, the euphoric moments for US unfortunately ended with the 'terrorist threat' replacing the 'Red Army'. America was once again engaged in a global war ensued with the aim of hunting down the 'faceless' enemy. Conflicts in the Middle East were now defined in terms of 'terrorists versus the moderates'. Once again, US policy for the region became a mere extension of its counter-terror strategy that interpreted the local disputes in the same context. Another invasion of Iraq allowed the then American president to pronounce loudly that "the world is better off without Saddam Hussein"9 but the Middle East was still worse off with the bleeding Palestine issue. The déjà vu of US proactive action against Iraq contrasted again with American support to Israel for invading its neighbors. These hawkish policies of Bush administration gave rise to widespread anti-American sentiments in the Middle East in particular and in the Muslim World in general.

In short, the subsequent US presidents adopted certain policy approaches keeping in view certain regional and international environment of their times. Sometimes the international factors drove the US approaches in Middle East and some other times regional developments became the reasons for certain initiatives. In this context, it is significant to examine the former US presidents' initiatives towards the issues that President Obama talked about in his Cairo speech and the results of their efforts.

Palestine Problem – the Core Issue: The first year of George W Bush's presidency witnessed the seminal 9/11. The result being, his policies towards every region were shaped in the mould of his declared war on terrorism. Middle East, for reasons very obvious, was no exception. Bush's policies will always be associated with his 'either with us or with the terrorists''10 statement. These demands of choosing between the two camps of 'civilized world' and 'terrorists' were also made to the Middle Eastern countries, especially, Syria, Iran and Palestine in reference to their backing of Hezbollah, Hamas and other declared terrorist outfits by US.

Amid this, Bush was able to give his solution to the Palestine issue that came to be known as 'Road Map for Peace in Middle East'. This landmark speech gave the two-state solution, "living side by side in peace and security". Palestinian authority was also asked to "stop inciting violence by glorifying terror in state-owned media", because that hinders the peace process. A reference was made to King Abdullah's Arab peace initiative by saying that it could be a hopeful moment in the Middle East since this initiative was close to recognition of Israel by Arabs. Bush had also explicitly expressed his commitment to Israel's security.

Bush, however, categorically said here that "Israeli settlements in occupied Palestinian territories must stop", consistent with the Mitchell plan and Israeli forces must withdraw to secure borders in line with UN resolutions 242 and 338. He also asked Israel to halt incursions into Palestinian controlled areas, and also withdraw from the places it had occupied in the aftermath of second Palestinian Intifada launched in 2000.

Before George W Bush, President Bill Clinton started his tenure with an enthusiasm about making headway in the Palestine issue. Since Clinton administration was not facing the menace of Cold War, it was assumed that conditions were conducive to permanent settlement of the issues in the region. His era was marked with peace talks and negotiations, yet no permanent solution could be reached.

Clinton also considered Israel's security a top priority and he maintained that 'regional peace' was conditional on 'Israel's security'. His support for Israel seemed even more unequivocal when he said:

Lasting peace in the region is the key to Israel's security, something to what US is thoroughly committed ... US would do that [enhance Israel's security] by further reinforcing its commitment to maintaining Israel's military edge in the region.

The talks between the two sides encompassed the idea of two-state solution in line with UN resolutions 242 and 338, mutual recognition between Palestinians and Israel, recognition of the latter by Arabs leading to normalization of relations between them. Clinton also asked the Palestinians to stop glorifying terrorism in statement made during Clinton's address to Palestinian National Council in Gaza on December 14' 1998:

Every influential Palestinian, from teacher to journalist, from politician to community leader, must make this a mission to banish from the minds of children glorifying suicide bombers; to end the practice of speaking peace in one place and preaching hatred in another; to teach school children the value of peace and the waste of war; to break the cycle of violence.

Clinton, however, failed to acknowledge the contentiousness of Israel's settlements on occupied territories. In fact, he proposed the incorporation of as many settlement blocks into Israel as possible in his famous 'Clinton Peace Parameters'. In one of the statements, he talked about Israel's settlements in the following words:

The incorporation into Israel of settlement blocks, with the goal of maximizing the number of settlers in Israel while minimizing the land annex for Palestine.

All he could manage to say to compensate Palestinians in his speech at the occasion was that the settlements were 'inconsistent with the Oslo commitment'. Putting aside the practical measures to halt settlements, Clinton never conveyed the illegality of these. The Oslo Accord under Clinton very craftily ignored the issue of settlements. Even, the Camp David summit suffered an impasse because the issue of settlements was not paid attention to. He merely termed the settlement issue as being 'obstacle to peace'.

Going further back to his predecessor, George H W Bush might have ruled the most powerful America in its entire history, yet illegality of settlements was never outrightly accepted by his administration. There was an instance when senior Bush was asked to comment on a statement made by James A. Baker, his secretary of state where the latter had referred to Jewish settlements on occupied territories as being 'obstacle to peace',25 the President only indirectly subscribed to the idea when he said that "Secretary Baker was speaking for this administration. And I strongly support what he said … it would make a big contribution to peace if these settlements would stop."

President Ronald Reagan administration (1981-1989) was not much different in this regard: no talk of illegality but a "freeze" to settlements was demanded in the Regan plan of 1982 that categorically marked:

The United States will not support the use of any additional land for the purpose of settlements during the transition period. Indeed, the immediate adoption of a settlement freeze by Israel, more than any other action, could create the confidence needed for wider participation in these talks. Further settlement activity is in no way necessary for the security of Israel and only diminishes the confidence of the Arabs and a final outcome can be freely and fairly negotiated.

However, there was no concept of two-state solution; rather the idea of 'self-government by the Palestinians of the West Bank and Gaza in association with Jordan was propagated.

Here President Jimmy Carter stands out since he clearly labeled the settlements illegal. In an interview, he very explicitly said:

Our position on the settlements is very clear. We do not think they are legal.

Lyndon B Johnson, Richard Nixon, Gerald R Ford and Carter administrations used to maintain that the settlements are illegal by alluding to the Article 49, Paragraph 6 of Fourth Geneva Convention.

Thus, the stance adopted by President Obama that Israel's settlements on occupied territories are illegal was iterated by former presidents as well. The Secretary of State, Hillary Clinton reinforced America's 40-year opposition to Israeli settlement and rejection of the 'legitimacy of continued Israeli settlements'31 in her visit to Middle East in November 2009.

Needless to say that settlement issue is only the tip of the iceberg in the entire Palestine issue, yet it is consuming most of the efforts of American presidents. There are other very important aspects to this issue such as the right of return for the Palestinian refugees, the issue of Jerusalem, Israeli incursions into Palestinian territory, its potential to escalate into war-like situations or the dire need to move towards the final solution.

Other Peripheral Issues: After comparing the approaches of former US presidents with that of Obama's Initiative with respect to the core issue of the Middle East, it is pertinent to briefly examine the policies of former US administrations towards other peripheral issues concerning the region, namely Iraq, Iran and values, mentioned by President Obama in his Cairo speech.

Iraq: For quite some time, Iraq has been the focus of US Middle East policies for various reasons in different times. During the Iran-Iraq war, Reagan administration supported Saddam to undermine the regional standing of post-revolutionary Iran, and to curb its chances of exporting its revolution abroad. It was considered as a shift in American approach towards Iraq as it had belonged to the rival bloc all through the Cold War. However, the Gulf war of 1991 that initiated the Iraq-dilemma following its invasion of Kuwait. Many a times, Bush Sr. is criticized for leaving 'the unfinished business' of toppling Saddam. Since the Kuwait crisis, Iraq has been a centre of values-laden rhetoric emanating from the White House—values of freedom, democracy, justice etc. Manipulating the environment against Iraq, Clinton administration went as far as keeping Iraq under continuous missile attacks for deterring Sadam's pursuit of Weapons of Mass Destruction (WMD). Bill Clinton was also criticized for not taking measures to bring down Saddam's regime. Ironically, American commitment to 'freedom' and 'liberty' encouraged President Bush Jr. to 'conquer' Iraq on the pretext of fighting terrorism, dictatorship and ridding of WMD in the 2003. He termed Saddam Hussein as 'an enemy of the United States' because 'he attacked his neighbors' and 'he was paying Palestinian suicide bombers'.

In this background, it is interesting to note here that Obama's speech does not bring to fore significantly deviant postures on how best to handle Iraq as the incumbent could not deviate much from his predecessor, especially regarding the troop withdrawal strategy. In an agreement concluded between the US and Iraqi regimes in mid November 2008, it was agreed that all the US forces shall withdraw from Iraq no later than December 31, 2011 and the combat forces no later than June 30, 2009,33 whereas President Obama had promised during his presidential campaign that combat troop withdrawal will take place within sixteen months of his assuming responsibilities.34 At Cairo, Obama pledged that 'US shall withdraw its combat brigades from Iraqi cities by July 2010 and all forces by 2012.' The two strategies do not appear to be much different.

The only thing that could qualify to be called different was Obama's labeling Afghanistan as the central front, rather than Iraq, in the war on terror. However, one must also note that the idea of troop surge in Afghanistan too was not a brainchild of Obama, as President Bush had already proposed that in his speech on September 9, 2008 at US National Defense University.

In Iraq, Obama's responsibilities are far greater than his predecessor. The future shape and political stability of Iraq and the credibility of its regime in the eyes of Iraqis after US leaves are factors that shall gauge his performance here.

Iran: Iran also became a target of President Bush's harsh policies. 9/11 made the international scenario conducive enough for the US to brand Iran as part of the axis of evil states and to condemn it for its backing of Hamas and Hezbollah. In 2006, during Israel's assault on Lebanon, US blamed Iran for inflicting instability in Lebanon and Hezbollah's strength in contrast to the government,37 not to mention its frequent reference in relation to terrorism and destabilizing role in Iraq.

Bush's policies centered on isolating Iran in the region yet it had resorted to negotiations on the nuclear issue with latter that only ended in sanctions against the Iran. The US policy at that time was contrary to US regional interests in post-2003 scenario in the region. Considering Iran's influence with the Iraq's Shiite majority, courting Iran would have definitely benefited US, but George Bush had his Iran-policy set in line with the anti-Iran stance maintained by all successive US' Presidents since President Carter. It was basically President Reagan who took a U-turn in US-Iran relation and set the course for strict policies towards Iran.

However, prior to the Islamic Revolution, Iran was the regional policeman and caretaker of US interests in the Gulf. In the words of President Carter, Iran was 'an island of stability in one of the more troubled areas of the world' primarily because the dictatorial regime in Iran at the time guaranteed to safeguard the American regional interests. That explains US backing of dictatorial Shah in face of democratically elected nationalist-minded Mosaddeq. The latter was a serious threat to major powers' hold of Iranian oil resources. Keeping that in mind, the Eisenhower administration undertook what Harry S Truman was hesitant about and assisted the coup against democratic regime with an agreement that guaranteed 'effective control of oil production and marketing and 50 percent of the profits in the hands of the world oil cartel companies.'

In this backdrop, President Obama's goodwill message to Iranians on Neiroz, offers of 'unconditional talks', a reference to US foreign policy blunders such as the 1953 coup, and the recognition of Iran's right to peaceful nuclear energy provided it complies with NPT provisions are very important gestures from White House. Nevertheless, Iran alleged the US and its Western allies for exploiting the unrest in Iran ensuing from Iranian presidential elections. This development muddied the already debased political environment between the two countries. Also, noteworthy is the fact that President Obama has initiated the campaign of putting sanctions on Iran, same as his predecessor Bush Jr. did in collusion with his European allies.

Values: Ironically enough, almost all the US invasions, sanctions against various countries and formation of military alliances were claimed to further Democracy, women rights, equal right, religious freedom, education so on and so forth. Rhetoric of US commitment to these values could be traced back to George Washington. The most radical of US presidents, Georoge W Bush, also talked about promoting democracy, freedom, liberty, and human rights continuously as the objective of waging war against Iraq even though the international community was sure that real objectives behind Iraq War could be anything but those declared by Bush administration, as evidenced by the mass protests against Iraq War around the world. Paradoxically, President Obama also talks of promoting these values in the Arab world while standing at a place where state of emergency has not been lifted since 1967. One of the most practical reasons behind this contradiction in speech and action may be found in George Kennan's policy advice to Washington when he says:

We should dispense with the aspiration to "be liked" or to be regarded as the repository of a high-minded international altruism. We should stop putting ourselves in the position of being our brothers' keeper and refrain from offering moral and ideological advice. We should cease to talk about vague and … unreal objectives such as human rights, the raising of the living standards, and democratization. The day is not far off when we are going to have to deal in straight power concepts. The less we are then hampered by idealistic slogans, the better.

Conclusion
The sole intention behind making a comparison between Obama's initiative and those put forward by his predecessors was to underscore whether the flag bearer of change has put forward something revolutionary or, to say the least, launch an initiative in every sense of the word, particularly in relation to the Israel-Palestine issue that happens to be the core issue in the region.

In this context, Obama's rhetoric and policies seem to be the replication of decades old tradition of giving lip-service to the 'illegality of settlements', demands of 'abiding by the agreements and resolution'; 'respecting each other's right to exist', 'two states', where Israelis and Palestinians each live in peace and security'. Similarly, America's unbreakable strong bonds with Israel and the verbal sympathy for humanitarian crisis in Palestinian areas also appear to be a repetition of previous expressions. In fact, the very words of his statement 'the top US agenda in Middle East is ensuring the security of Israel as an independent Jewish state, since it's in the national interest of US' resonate with the similar statements of the older generation of US leadership.

Testimony to the continuation of the same course is Obama's Secretary of State's visit to Middle East in October 2009 that has only served to complicate things further. The US seems to be backing off from their earlier demands of settlement 'freeze' from Israel when the Secretary of State described Israel's offer of a 'policy of settlement restraint' [not freeze] as 'unprecedented'. Furthermore, during her visit she made it clear that US does not support Mahmud Abbas' demand of settlement freeze as a precondition for talks.48 This deviation makes one assume that President Obama's earlier furor over the settlement issue was only a façade probably for assuaging the popular resentment in the Muslim World.

In the same vein, US opposed the UN-backed Goldstone report that accuses Israel of war crimes in the Gaza conflict of early 2009. Although it was endorsed by the UN General Assembly, the US voted against it.49 History is froth with instances where US supported Israel in its illegal and inhuman acts even in face of opposition from international community. Almost any resolution at UNSC against Israel is rebuffed by US because of strong pressure from Israel and Israeli lobby in the US.

The 'Israel lobby' has been one of the most active and influential ones in Washington. Its clout is largely attributed to the presence of pro-Israel representatives in the US Congress. Among many other constituent organizations of the lobby, AIPAC (American Israeli Public Affairs committee) is referred to as "stunningly effective" and "better than anyone else lobbying in this town" by President Clinton while former House Speaker Newt Gingrich was found saying, "it is the most effective general-interest group … across the entire planet."52 Apart from that, various other powerful lobbies play a pivotal role in directing US Middle East policy, such as military-Industrial complex, oil industry and corporate entities. These interest groups directly benefited from US engagement in the Middle East, particularly from Iraq War and generally from the conflicts of various scales in the region.

In the presence of these 'outsized influence of lobbyists' as mentioned by President Obama in his State of the Union Address 2010, it would be important to see how Barack Obama is able to "put strict limits on lobbyists"54 and keep them from impelling the "federal office" towards a certain course of US Middle East policies, particularly in reference to Israel-Palestine dispute.

The comparative analysis of Obama's initiative with those of his predecessors brings out an applauding factor of perpetual consistency and continuity of US Middle East policy, masked by shrewdly chosen semantics, drawing profoundly on the international or regional mood. The Muslims around the world, in fact, expected to see practical steps coupled with unwavering US will to make Israel comply with the past agreements, lift the blockade of Palestinian Authority, particularly Gaza, ensure the security of civilians, engage in serious negotiations to reach decisions on the fate of Palestinian refugees, the issue of Jerusalem, and an independent sovereign State for Palestinians.

The analysis, however, depicts that deep down, Obama's objectives of Middle East policy happen to draw parallel to those of previous presidents: unequivocal support to Israel, providing cushion to Israel on the question of human rights violations, verbal commitments to Palestinians, insistence on Palestinians to abandon 'violence', reiteration of forty-year old stance on settlement without taking any action in this regard, failure to address the Palestinian grievances regarding Jerusalem and refugees issue. In essence, taking Obama's approach regarding Israel-Palestine issue as a test case, it is unlikely to witness any revolutionary change in the future US policies towards Middle East in general and Palestine issue in particular.

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When Problems are so Big & Your Strength is no Longer enough to CaRRy them, Don't Give uP; Because where your Strength Ends the Grace of Almighty ALLAH Begins

salam ASIF ,i will study IR as subject 4 da first time ,so wan 2 study it from da scratch.will these books will b easy 4 me 2 understnd ? or u will recomnd some other basic books .

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sapna

Walaikum Salam

Dear the CSS Course outline for IR is :
Part - A
The modern state system-history, basic features, evolving forms.

International Relations as a field of study, Basic Approaches- Power, Balance of Power, Imperialism, Nationalism.

Interaction between states-diplomacy, International Law, international economic and trade linkages-pressures in world politics.

Part - B
Evolution of the International System since 1815 (Congress of Vienna) Historical Overview.

World War III. Decolonization, Rise of the Third World Alliance System (NATO, SEATO. CENTO, WARSAW PACT) Peaceful coexistence: Non-Aligned Movement Theories of Peace and Security in Nuclear Age (Deterrence. Limited war. Crisis Management etc) Détente

Part - C
Foreign Policies of the Superpowers, major powers (USA. USSR. China) with special reference to South Asia (India. Pakistan, etc.).

Issues in global Politics.
Nuclear Proliferation.
Superpower rivalry in the Indian Ocean.
International economic order.
Regional Security issues and crises (Afghanistan Crises Iran-Iraq war, Palestine problem, Apartheid and South Africa, Namibia, Polish crises, Eurocommunism, Central American crises etc.)
Arms Control and disarmament.

The Part-A 7 Part-B focus on the historical background of the subject. For this part you should start with International Relations by Prakash Chander It contains enough material to make you familiar with the said subject and cover the above mentioned two parts i-e PART-A & B. Moreover, read thoroughly the following two threads:
http://www.cssforum.com.pk/312851-post9.html
http://www.cssforum.com.pk/317194-post10.html

Once you get done with that then for Part-C, there are available a number of
International Relations magazines (monthly or quarterly published), read them in detail. It will help you in comprehending the current issues of world affairs.

If you have any other query, feel free to ask.

Regards

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When Problems are so Big & Your Strength is no Longer enough to CaRRy them, Don't Give uP; Because where your Strength Ends the Grace of Almighty ALLAH Begins

Pakistan became the focus of criticism by the international community for blocking the negotiations for Fissile Material (Cut off) Treaty (FMCT) at Conference on Disarmament. Despite the fact that Pakistan is not alone at the forum that has reservations but none of them is openly expressing their reservations saving their faces behind Pakistan. A Fissile Material Treaty is currently focus of attention of an international effort in non-proliferation arena which bans the future production of fissile material for nuclear weapons and other devices.

In 2012, the global stockpile of the HEU was around 1440 tons while global Plutonium stockpile was around 500 tons. This includes the stockpile being used for civilian purposes. 99% of global stockpiles rest with the nuclear weapons states. There are several states in the CD which include the Non Aligned States argue that under the UNGA resolution 48/75L, the treaty should be non discriminatory. Some suggest that the treaty should be named as FMT instead FM(C)T. FMCT would only require the ban on further production while FMT would also address the existing stocks of fissile material along with the ban on the further production. Pakistan also stronglysupports the idea of FMT.

Pakistan’s security interests are directly threatened by the proposed treaty at both regional and global level. Pakistan is among eight states which posses nuclear weapons. Pakistan has clearly stated that it is not going to compromise over its principled position. There are several reasons why Pakistan is consistently insisting on the same position in spite facing pressure by theinternational community. The interests of P5 are secured as they have enough stockpiles. India as the result of civil nuclear deal with U.S. is even not at disadvantageous position. Pakistan’s stockpiles of fissile material are smallest than that of other nuclear weapons states. According toInternational Panel on Fissile Material (IPFM), in January 2012, Pakistan has 2.75 tons of Highly Enriched Uranium (HEU) and 0.14 metric ton of plutonium stockpiles. These stockpiles can be compared to that of other of nuclear weapons states.

At regional level Pakistan is also concerned about the strategic imbalance that arises from Indo-U.S. strategic partnership and especially Indo-US civil nuclear deal. The matter of concern is that India can divert this peaceful nuclear energy for military use. It will give India an opportunity to increase its nuclear capability both quantitatively and qualitatively.

Pakistan’s pursuit of nuclear weapons was because of filling the gap of conventional disparity between the two countries. Pakistan requires building sufficient stockpiles of fissile material shorten the gap in nuclear capability. The purpose is not to indulge in an arms race that is something beyond Pakistan’s capacity but to take the measures that ensure its survival and maintain the deterrence stability in the region. Ambassador Zamir Akram said in an interview:“We need to enhance our own capabilities so that we have sufficient fissile material for what we would then feel is a credible second-strike capability, or credible deterrence capability.”

According to Analysts the reason for the introduction of Tactical nuclear weapons by Pakistanwas to deter the threat that emerges from Indian Cold Start Doctrine which tends to inflict an aggressive attack by Indian conventional forces. These tactical weapons are plutonium based weapons. Pakistan’s fissile material stockpiles mostly consist of HEU. Given the fact that Pakistanhas smallest stockpile of plutonium, now Pakistan has turned toward the production of Plutonium. Plutonium Production Reactors, Khushab I and II are operational. Third and fourth reactors at Khushab are under construction.

Now it does not mean that Pakistan would equalize its stockpiles to that of other nuclear weapons states or specifically to that of India. The requirement is to develop sufficient fissile material stockpiles to cater for developments in nuclear arms field. Pakistan would need some parity with India. Indian pursuit of Sea-based Ballistic Submarine and Sea based Ballistic Submarine and Ballistic Missile Defense would definitely question the deterrence stability in South Asia. Even in future India can go beyond this. It would be inevitable for Pakistan to find alternatives for these developments in its own capacity to maintain the deterrence stability. In context of these strategic compulsions Pakistan has sustained the concept of dynamic “credible minimum deterrence” which would allow Pakistan to deal with changing strategic requirements.

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When Problems are so Big & Your Strength is no Longer enough to CaRRy them, Don't Give uP; Because where your Strength Ends the Grace of Almighty ALLAH Begins