Charting a known course in Colombia

Sunday's second round election saw Juan Manuel Santos beat his rival, Antanas Mockus of the Green Party, by 69% to 27.5%. His primary commitments echo those of his predecessor and associate Alvaro Uribe: taking a hardline approach against both the guerrilla movement, the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia (FARC), and with regard to the lawlessness stemming from drug-trafficking.

Explanations for Santos’ victory are not hard to find. On one hand he was the candidate for continuity, especially after it became clear earlier in the year that Uribe would not be able to stand for a third time when the courts blocked a constitutional change on presidential re-election. On the other hand, Mockus did not help himself. He alienated potential allies by refusing to build an anti-Santos alliance after the first round and appeared insufficiently prepared or firm for the job. This included a suggestion to disband the Colombian army and acquiescing in any extradition order against former political leaders if he was to become president.

Despite this, question marks hang over Santos as president, both in terms of foreign relations and the degree of public support for his policies. Santos is expected to remain one of Washington’s more reliable allies in the region, especially given his role as Uribe’s defence minister between 2006 and 2009, when he oversaw an agreement to expand the US military presence in Colombia. This caused tensions with Venezuela, leading to fiery denunciations of the deal by Venezuela’s president, Hugo Chavez. At the same time the active pursuit of the FARC has added to difficulties: with Chavez, over how best to engage them and with Ecuador when Colombians engaged in a cross-border raid to kill a FARC commander in early 2008.

On the surface Colombian public opinion appears to support Uribe’s – and presumably now Santos’ – robust approach to foreign policy. Uribe is frequently cited in the media as enjoying a high level of support, even after two terms as president. Gallup polls in the country suggest that support for the leadership has shifted back and forth between 45% and 65% between mid-2006 and mid-2009 – a reasonable level, including the lower figures. Uribe was probably also helped by Colombians’ general distaste for Chavez: during Uribe’s second term those who approved of the Venezuelan president fell from 26% to 14% and those who disapproved rose, from 49% to 65%. By comparison, Venzuelan’s opinion of Uribe was relatively more favourable of Uribe.

In addition Colombians’ support of Uribe (and Santos) reflects their greater willingness to place themselves on the right of the political spectrum. The 2006 Latinobarómetro poll occurred during the region’s ‘pink tide’ and shift to the left, highlighting Colombian differences with their neighbours. The average score for Colombians was 5.6 (5 being the centre), with 43% identifying themselves to the right and 14% on the left. This more right-friendly position was similarly reflected in the even split between those who had a favourable view of the US (44%) to those who did not (44%) – this during a period when many in the region had a poor opinion of then US president, George W Bush.

However, it would be inaccurate to assume that Colombian public opinion is completely in line with that of its leadership. First, despite Santos’s comprehensive victory, there was a fall in turnout of 11% between the first and second rounds. This does not suggest ringing enthusiasm for Santos across the whole electorate. Second, although Santos took around 45% of the vote in the first round, polling beforehand suggested a more even result between him and Mockus. That it did not happen may have been due to public uncertainty that Mockus would deliver significant change. For example, in the days following the first round, Mockus was unable to build a coalition with the left-wing Polo Democratico. Part of that failure was due to foreign policy differences, with the Polo Democratico wanting to renegotiate the military deal with Washington and Mockus happy to keep it. Third, as the pollster Marc Lizoain points out, measuring public opinion in Colombia may not be entirely accurate. He reports that Gallup, the biggest polling company in the country, tends to carry its surveys in the four largest cities. This means a preponderance of urban voters that make up around a third of the population. Furthermore, it distorts public opinion because the divided nature of the Colombian state – whereby the FARC holds large swathes of the country – means that voters not living in these metropolitan areas controlled by the establishment are largely overlooked.

In sum then, these factors highlight the need to take a more critical view of the relationship between Colombia’s leaders and public, including with regard to foreign affairs. The consensus suggests a high degree of convergence between Colombia’s political leaders and the policies it is taking. But this may not necessarily be so. Uribe may have been a decisive leader with considerable backing behind him, which he has successfully transferred to Santos. But how widespread or solid is that support? Certainly it is there among those living within those parts of the country controlled by the state. Furthermore, despite Santos’s immediate post-election claim for better relations with his neighbours, the adoption of a less confrontational stance by either himself or Venezuela’s Chavez could potentially undermine his present level of support. For this reason – as if his previous association with Uribe was not already enough – it is probably more than likely that he will maintain the present course, with the attendant effects of a troubled and fraught relationship with Venezuela and Ecuador.

Guy Burton is a research associate for the Latin America International Affairs Programme at the LSE Ideas Centre.

Semana contra la Impunidad: week against impunity in Uruguay

Despite its long-standing experience with democracy, during the 1970s and 1980s Uruguay - like its neighbours in the Southern Cone - fell under the spell of military rule and political violence.

Starting with Brazil in 1964, the whole region witnessed waves of authoritarian takeovers by the Armed Forces and the following consolidation of dictatorial regimes that employed policies of state terror inspired and sustained by the National Security Doctrine.

In Uruguay, the military coup of 27th June 1973 was the culmination of a slow-motion takeover and of the progressive loss of freedoms and liberties, whose origins dated back to the late 1960s with the adoption of the first authoritarian measures by the then democratically-elected government of President Pacheco-Areco.

The civilian-military regime that ruled Uruguay between 1973 and 1985 was the most totalitarian of the region, it being the only one to categorise its citizens as A, B, or C according to their political reliability, giving each a letter of designation of democratic faith.

As in Argentina and Chile, the Uruguayan regime adopted policies of repression and fear, whose defining features were the employment of mass prolonged imprisonment and systematic torture. The victims’ toll was unprecedented: over 200 people disappeared, one in every fifty was detained and there were over 4,000 political prisoners held long-term by the state, while more than 300,00 Uruguayans - out of a population of less than three million - left for exile. In the late 1970s, Uruguay earned the macabre title of the ‘Torture Chamber of Latin America’ and had the highest percentage of political detainees per capita in the world.

Upon democratization in the mid-1980s, the newly elected government adopted policies of silence and oblivion in relation to the horrors and political violence of the recent past. President Sanguinetti’s slogan ‘no hay que tener los ojos en la nuca’ (you should not have eyes at the back of your head) embodied this approach, presenting what had occurred during the dictatorship as not warranting the attention of either the political establishment or society. The victims’ trauma was thus doubly sealed: the inability of recounting the ‘unimaginable’ already rendered difficult the transmission of limited experiences like torture - even to loved ones. In addition to that, state policies of oblivion and amnesia silenced the victims’ voice, often negating what they had endured and restricting these discussions to the reduced circles of human rights activism.

The adoption of the Ley de Caducidad de la Pretensión Punitiva del Estado (Expiry Law) on 22 December 1986, exonerating military and security personnel from accountability for human rights abuses committed before March 1985, confirmed the government’s stand. The Law sets up an astute system, according to which the Judiciary always needs to consult the Executive whenever cases relating to past human rights abuses are presented to the courts. The Executive is only empowered to decide on a case-by-case basis whether it can be investigated or it falls under the Law’s remit. Unsurprisingly and very much in line with the government’s policies, all the cases presented until the early years of the 21st century were always included within the Law. Over time, the Expiry Law has therefore become the symbolic embodiment of impunity itself – although impunity has deeper and stronger roots than simply the amnesty law.

The story of transitional justice in Uruguay sees two protagonists. The executive – who wished to cover the crimes of the past under a mantle of silence and oblivion, and did so until 2003 when the first official institution (a truth commission) was created to investigate the fate of disappeared-detainees. And civil society – the only actor to consistently mobilise and lobby to progress on truth and justice regarding political violence. Indeed, two grassroots initiatives were the only ones to enable the public questioning of the Expiry Law which was submitted to public vote twice, firstly in a referendum in 1989 and later in a plebiscite in 2009. Both instances failed and the Law remains in force at this time.

This month, the fight against impunity in general and against the Expiry Law in particular is gathering momentum once again in Uruguay. On June 8, 9 and 10, a three-day human rights conference (Jornadas de Politicas Públicas de Derechos Humanos en el Uruguay: Memoria, Justicia, Reparación), organised by the Faculty of Psychology and the association of former political prisoners CRYSOL, was held, featuring both public evening lectures and afternoon seminars on questions such as Memory, Justice, Reparations, the Expiry Law, the Gelman case before the Inter-American Court of Human Rights and, more broadly, on the fight against impunity in Latin America.

This week marks the anniversary of the coup and various human rights, social, trade union, student and political associations – organised under the umbrella group Todos y Todas contra la Impunidad (Everyone against Impunity) – are holding a Semana contra la Impunidad (Week against Impunity), to inform, mobilise, raise awareness, reflect, and reaffirm the commitment to human rights and the fight for their fulfilment and achievement.

Running between 21 and 25 June, the calendar of activities of the Semana is rather full, including a movie projection, a two-day international symposium on human rights and state terrorism with speakers on themes like the Expiry Law and International Law, Society and the Armed Forces, the Recuperation of Clandestine Detention Centres and the Economic Model of the Dictatorship. The week-long event culminates in a march from Liberty Square towards the Legislative Palace on Friday 25 June at 6pm under the slogan ‘SIGUE SIENDO INJUSTA. Derogar es complicidad. Anular la ley de impunidad’ (The Law remains unfair: Derogating means being an accomplice. Repeal the Impunity Law).

On the 37th anniversary of the military takeover in Uruguay, the Semana demonstrates once again how parts of Uruguayan society forcefully reject the culture of impunity inherited from the dictatorship and later strengthened by successive constitutional governments, which refused to comply with their obligation to provide redress to the victims and investigate the crimes of the past. Once again, civil society organisations are the only ones that - just like during the past three decades - continuously challenge the state of impunity and push for the clarification of the truth, the achievement of justice and reparation, and the strengthening of memory, to finally fulfil the regionally famous commitment of Nunca Más (Never Again).

Francesca Lessa is a research associate for the Latin America International Affairs Programme at the LSE Ideas Centre.

The Bigger Picture: Israel-Turkey Relations in Context

By Guy Burton

The fallout from the Gaza flotilla debacle at the end of May provides an opportunity to consider the relative positions of Israel and Turkey both regionally and globally. The furore has reinforced the image of Israel as a growing liability for American and European interests and highlighted the increasing importance of Turkey.

Israel’s difficulties stem from its inward looking nature. What has been especially noticeable in the days following the crisis has been the extent to which Israeli leaders have sought to portray themselves as victims rather than villains. In a statement put out soon after the event the Israeli Ministry of Foreign Affairs said that the violence on the part of the protesters was pre-meditated since they were carrying weapons when the Israeli soldiers boarded. Meanwhile Prime Minister Benyamin Netanyahu argued that while the protestors’ deaths were regrettable, the Israeli soldiers were acting in self-defence. Almost overlooked in this appeal to self-justification was why the confrontation happened in the first place, namely the continuing siege against Gaza and whether that policy is yielding results.

The disconnection between Israel and the wider world over this crisis is contrasted with a second factor: the growing attention paid by policymakers in Washington and Brussels to Turkey. Turkey straddles several volatile areas – the Middle East, the Caucasus and the Balkans – which means that its application for European Union (EU) membership, participation in the Israel-Palestine conflict and engagement with Iran over its nuclear programme must therefore be given due consideration by the US and Europe.

Turkey’s rising international profile has obliged its governing Justice and Development Party (AKP) party to present itself as a moderating force in order to appeal to international interlocutors like Washington and Brussels. This has posed a particular challenge to the AKP, especially given its attachment to political Islam and pursuit of certain policies. These have included requiring women to cover themselves, allocating jobs and promotions on the basis of religious commitment and pressuring women out of the workforce.

At the same time though there have been a number of pressures that have constrained the AKP’s religious zeal – and therefore helped its leadership present itself as reasonable and restrained. Internally, the diverse nature of the AKP’s membership (pro-Islamic reformers, bankers, small and medium-sized business people) contributed to a looser ideological commitment and an emphasis on ‘conservative democracy’. Externally, the AKP faces pressure on several fronts: from a military willing to intervene to maintain a secular state; an electorate that withholds its votes when the government slows down democratic reforms; and EU members such as Germany who threaten to block Turkey’s entry into the EU on religious grounds.

In addition, several other factors have contributed towards a more active Turkish foreign policy in recent years including Russia’s military conflict with Georgia in 2008 and Russia’s confrontation with Europe over gas supplies. Ankara’s response has been to act as a broker in the region, in particular as an energy route. Indeed, perhaps the most recent evidence of an increasing Turkish willingness to take on a more active foreign policy was in last month’s fuel swap agreement between Turkey, Brazil and Iran, whereby Turkey agreed to process some of Iran’s uranium. The agreement between the three was also significant for illustrating growing Turkish independence from both Washington and Europe, a fact borne out by Turkey’s vote against sanctions on Iran in the UN Security Council (along with Brazil) on 9 June.

However, it would be incorrect to assume that the respective waxing and waning of Turkish and Israeli influence on the US and Europe is fully complete. It is not yet clear that Turkey constitutes a more important player for American and European interests than Israel. Indeed, both countries have a particular role to play, which is largely shaped by the wider regional context. Compared to the Turks, Israel arguably has much greater influence with the Americans and Europeans, which is due both to internal factors on both sides of the Atlantic and their search for reliable allies in the region.

Israel continues to matter on both sides of the Atlantic, regardless of its actions. Its supporters have penetrated the American and European decision-making processes to a far greater extent than have those for Turkey. The case in Washington is well known in this respect, with The Israel Lobby by John Mearsheimer and Stephen Walt providing a meticulous account for US support towards Israel even when it runs contrary to its own self-interest. While the Jewish lobby may be less visible in Europe, it is still significant. The recent efforts to build a new pro-Israel, pro-peace movement has generated conflict within the community over who best represents Israel’s interests in European capitals.

In contrast to Israel, Turkish lobbying efforts remain weaker and less organised. This is exemplified by both the 23-year EU accession process and the reticence of its politicians and business leaders to lobby actively during periods of military intervention and political uncertainty.

In international terms, a rather simplistic contrast can be drawn between the two in their foreign policy approach: Israel’s hardline stick to Turkey’s more diplomatic carrot. Both stances have their respective use which Americans and Europeans have readily exploited. In the case of Israel, its denunciation of Hamas as a terrorist organisation has been supported by both Washington and Brussels; indeed, former President George W Bush included Hamas in his ‘war on terror’. Meanwhile, Turkey’s diplomatic objectives have been generally shared by the US and Europe, including mediating peace between Israel and the Palestinians, stability in Iraq and Afghanistan and a nuclear weapon-free Iran. This last concern prompted support for Ankara’s search for a settlement with Iran over its nuclear programme, before it was superseded by a new round of sanctions.

While Israel is currently subject to international condemnation, its more aggressive stance vis-à-vis Iran’s nuclear programme could provide useful support should the sanctions embargo lead to a severe deterioration in relations between the Americans and Europeans with Tehran. In other words, a country that may currently seem like a liability could turn out to offer sufficient cover for a non-diplomatic solution.

In addition, that Israel remains in decision-makers’ calculation is evident in Americans’ and Europeans’ reluctance to cut ties with the Jewish state. Unlike the new sanctions regime on Iran (including a ban on the sale of arms systems, ballistic missiles, sea and air cargo inspections and financial and travel restrictions against the regime), criticism against Israel has been more muted, mainly confined to calls for an international inquiry. Neither the EU nor the OECD (which Israel joined days before the flotilla incident) has adopted positions that could pressure Israel to review its policy towards Gaza, such as reviewing economic relations.

Meanwhile, Turkey’s diplomatic approach can – and has – been used when necessary, only to be abandoned whenever the need no longer suits. This illustrates its ultimately marginal role, both regionally and globally. As noted above, last month’s accord between Turkey, Brazil and Iran was seen as a useful measure by the US and its European allies: it provided scope for a soft-footed alternative to reduce the threat from Iran’s potential nuclear weapon programme. That the accord has been so quickly abandoned is due largely to assurances by the US and its European allies to Russia and China, the permanent Security Council members most sympathetic to Tehran, that sanctions would not affect Iran’s energy sector or its population. The vote for sanctions highlights the limits of Turkish diplomacy. Its own ‘no’ vote may allow it to claim a moral victory but it also highlights which countries continue to call the shots.

Elsewhere, Turkish reticence has had other costs. Having opted out of the US-led invasion of Iraq in 2003 it effectively removed itself from any direct control over the war’s outcome. On one level Turkey’s fear that a wave of potential refugees would flee across its border with Iraq was unrealised. On another level, Turkey’s opposition to an independent Kurdish state has been undermined by expanded Kurdish autonomy since the war. This is apparent both in the Kurdish presence in the oil cities of Kirkuk and Mosul and the presence of the separatist Kurdish Workers’ Party (PKK) which uses the areas as a refuge in its armed struggle against Turkey. This has prompted Ankara to conduct intermittent incursions across the border against the PKK. Similarly, Turkish involvement in the region’s other conflict hotspot, Afghanistan, also remains constrained. Often cited as an important and influential Muslim and democratic ally, its present contribution to NATO in the country is less than 2000 troops.

In sum then, it would be wrong to assume that the US and Europe is abandoning support for Israel in favour of Turkey. The American and European policy establishments do not operate in so simplistic a fashion. Both Israel and Turkey offer Washington and its European allies different approaches, the former a robust, confrontational stance and the latter the opportunity for dialogue through an intermediary. Whichever path is chosen will depend on American and European interests in the region and an assessment on a case-by-case basis as to whether it is better served by associating with Israel or Turkey. How that decision is reached though will not be achieved in a completely dispassionate way though. It will include different factors, including support by Israel and Turkey for past policies as well as the relative influence of the Israeli and Turkish lobbies within American and European domestic politics.

Guy Burton is a research associate at the LSE Ideas Centre.

Shifting Sands is the blog of the Middle East International Affairs Programme at LSE IDEAS, analysing current events in the Middle East and contributing to the ongoing deliberations over policy prescriptions.

Amber Holewinski, Editor

Feminised International Politics: three cases from Latin America

What role and impact do women have on politics and international affairs? Nearly a century ago, when suffragettes demanded the vote, a number of assumptions were made about female political representation. They included the claim that women would bring virtue and morality into what was seen as a largely immoral male public sphere, while later feminists argue that women share common interests that are distinct from those of men (e.g. a greater concern with reproductive rights and state provision of social care).

Those beliefs have largely stuck even as the growing body of scholarly literature on female representation remains inconclusive. It has not been helped by the emphasis on women’s involvement in the legislative branch rather than the executive. Furthermore, it has generally focused on women’s descriptive role (i.e. their capacity to change the composition of politics) rather than whether they have had a substantive impact (i.e. if they have pursued a different agenda and with what results).

Latin America: a region of women presidents

Given that uncertainty, being able to compare women as political leaders and their approach to diplomacy may prove useful in this regard. Latin America is ideally placed as a region to draw this comparison since it has seen a number of women presidents over the past few years, including one that has just left office (Chile’s Michelle Bachelet, 2006-10), another more than halfway through her presidential term (Argentina’s Cristina Kirchner, 2007-11) and another at the beginning (Costa Rica’s Laura Chinchilla, 2010-14).

Latin America is also a useful case study in three other ways. First, its foreign affairs have been in a state of flux over the past two decades, which should provide greater scope for presidential action. The structural adjustments, including liberalisation of domestic markets during the 1980-90s occurred alongside an active commitment to democracy and human rights. For two of the three countries – Chile and Argentina – this coincided with the ending of the military dictatorships, while in Costa Rica the absence of a standing army since the 1948 civil war has provided it with a strong moral stance in favour of pacifism. Since then, the countries and wider region have seen a general economic and political shift to the left: Chilean voters continued to elect centre-left leaders from the Concertacion coalition while Costa Rica’s electorate plumbed for Oscar Arias in 2006 and the Argentine electorate for Nestor Kirchner (2003-07), Cristina Kirchner’s husband.

Second, variation between the different female presidents should be possible to spot given the specific conditions in each country. Chile and Costa Rica have been relatively stable politically and economically since the 1990s, in stark contrast to Argentina. During the 2000s the latter veered more to the left than Chile and Costa Rica, the 2001-02 financial crisis resulting in a fluid political and economic environment and greater scope for its presidents to pursue a new policy direction. From the early 1990s Argentina was the International Monetary Funds’s (IMF) model for the region, undertaking an extensive economic liberalisation and privatisation programme and tying its currency to the dollar. That policy proved unsustainable as debts mounted and proved too costly to pay. Abandoning the fixed exchange rate, the eventual political beneficiary, Nestor Kirchner, adopted an increasingly distant stance from its traditional alliance with the US and negotiated repayment of its debt with the IMF. At the same time he aligned with governments in the region that were critical of the previous economic mode, such as Venezuela’s Hugo Chavez and Bolivia’s Evo Morales.

Third, the present crop of female leaders in Latin America can be compared with minimal interference from other potential variables. By this I mean that they have all come to (or left) power in the last few years and in the same region, thereby diminishing potential contextual differences in terms of time or culture.

Laura Chincilla and Costa Rica

Since taking office in May 2010, Laura Chinchilla is following the main parameters of Costa Rican foreign policy. This is one that, according to Costa Rica academic Otto von Feigenblatt of Nova Southeastern University, stresses human security and rights, with a commitment to political neutrality.

Almost immediately after her inauguration, Chinchilla attended the Central America-European Union (EU) summit. The resulting agreement will lower tariffs on a range of agricultural and industrial goods which would benefit Central American and European exporters respectively. However, Chinchilla’s direct involvement was limited, the bulk of the negotiations having taken place over the past three years. Where she will have a role to play is in the agreement’s ratification, a situation made more difficult by the absence of a congressional majority in her favour.

Alongside the EU agreement, Chinchilla faces two additional foreign policy challenges. The first is relations with China. To date, Chinese trade with Costa Rica is smaller than with the rest of Central America. As she decides how far to open up Costa Rica’s markets to Chinese investment and products, she also faces encouragement from American ambassador Anne Andrew, who claims that US and Costa Rican interests are complementary, to press ahead with greater economic liberalisation.

The second challenge is Costa Rica’s relationship with Honduras – and Central America more generally. Chinchilla’s predecessor, Oscar Arias, brokered an agreement between the deposed president Manuel Zelaya and the instigators of the June coup in late 2009. Chinchilla’s first actions after winning the presidential election earlier in the year was to visit and appeal to neighbouring countries to readmit Honduras into the Organisation of American States (OAS) and restart the Central American Integration System (SICA) – the latter has not met since the coup.

Michelle Bachelet and Chile

Like Chinchilla, Michelle Bachelet largely operated within broadly set foreign policy parameters for Chile. It is revealing to read her speech to the Council on Foreign Relations in September 2008 to see how she perceived her role as an international actor, particularly as a ‘reliable partner, [and] not as an unconditional ally’ of Washington.

Just like her predecessors in the Concertacion since the return of democracy in 1990, Bachelet’s approach remained one committed to greater international integration and engagement. Examples of this included an increasing number of bilateral trade agreements including with Canada and Mexico in late 1990s and the US in 2004 on the one hand as well as peacekeeping efforts in Haiti.

In terms of her own time in office, Bachelet highlighted her country’s election to the UN Human Rights Council, financial provision for low cost treatment of malaria, tuberculosis and HIV/AIDS in the International Drug Purchase Facility (UNITAID) and development assistance to Haiti the hallmarks of that policy. In addition, Bachelet’s role as the acting president of the new South America-wide organisation, UNASUR, was instrumental in bringing together other heads of states to issue a declaration in support of Bolivian democracy and head off a potential coup in that country in September 2008.

Cristina Kirchner and Argentina

Given the economic and political crises of the early 2000s which helped realign Argentine foreign policy under Nestor Kirchner, Cristina Kirchner has had arguably had the greatest scope of the three women presidents to diversify her country’s foreign relations. However, her approach has been broadly in line with that of her predecessor and husband by maintaining previously developed links with Venezuela, Bolivia and Cuba – all of which have adopted a more critical attitude towards the US and the role of market liberalisation. Among the ongoing commitments signed up to by Cristina Kirchner include support to create an alternative development bank for the region in the guise of the Bank of the South (Banco del Sur) initiative with Venezuela and a jointly proposed reform of the global financial system with Brazil’s President Lula ahead of the 2009 G20 summit in London, to which both countries were invited.

That Cristina Kirchner has adopted the same direction to foreign policy as her husband has drawn criticism. This was apparent in early 2009 when she visited Fidel Castro at the same time that Barack Obama took office in Washington. Domestic opponents accused her of pursuing foreign support that were more in keeping with the contentious George W Bush period rather than in the more accommodating Obama era.

At the same time, Cristina Kirchner’s critics may reflect her domestic difficulties since the start of her term. They include agricultural producers’ protests against her government’s export tax soon after she took office and the fracturing of her political support, resulting in her party’s legislative defeat in mid-2009. As a result, much of the expectation that she aroused as a candidate has not come to pass, including in foreign affairs. Prior to her election in late 2007 she had made a number of overseas visits to Bill Clinton, Spanish Prime Minister José Zapatero and the Paris Club (the finance ministers of the 19 countries with whom Argentina owes much of the debt that it defaulted on in the early 2000s). These trips seemed to indicate that Argentina would diversify its relations under her presidency. That it has not done so is reinforced by the largely peripheral role that Argentina has influencing the international agenda. This is evident in two ways: first, when compared to Brazil’s relative influence, both within the regional trading bloc, Mercosur, and at last year’s G20 summit; second, her reiteration of the sovereignty issue over the Falklands/Malvinas in February.

By raising the question of the Falklands/Malvinas, Cristina Kirchner is not doing anything new in Argentina foreign policy. In raising objections to British deep sea oil drilling she merely echoes the view of the political establishment, which sees the islands as belonging to Argentina. Despite Cristina Kirchner’s stance, her achievements have been few: while she may claim victory through regional recognition of Argentina’s claims, the change in government in London and Washington’s unwillingness to involve itself directly in mediating talks between Buenos Aires and Britain has stymied progress.

Conclusions

Given the changing political and economic environment in Latin America over the past three decades, presidents have faced a regional order in flux. As a result, they have had the scope to shape and change their foreign policies in different ways, especially as the international arena is one where they face fewer domestic limitations. Instead, the constraints that presidents face are international, from past policy decisions their outcome to their relative room for manoeuvre in the global political and economic order.

This being said, the Costa Rican, Chilean and Argentine cases highlight the extent to which women as presidents have been largely hemmed in by their countries’ position in the world. In none of the three examples have female presidents carved out a new foreign policy direction; rather they have operated within the framework they inherited. While these have been supportive of a more multilateral environment and emphasise democracy and markets, there is nothing distinctively ‘female’ about them; international norms have all moved in this direction, even before women acquired the top job. Furthermore, women presidents in Latin America do not appear to be necessarily more virtuous or moral in their dealings with their peers, either in the region or globally.

In sum then, the evidence from the three cases suggests that women as presidents have a more descriptive than substantive role in international affairs. Of course this can only be a tentative conclusion; several objections can be made. One is the small presence of women as presidents in the region and the potential substantive shift that could result from a larger number of them. Another is women’s ability to shape the international agenda without using formal political institutions like the presidency (e.g. through participation in and lobbying of international organisations such as the World Bank and UN). These present additional variables which would need to be taken into account if a more comprehensive measure of women’s impact on international politics is to be made. Until then, as with the current literature on the matter, it will remain both incomplete and uncertain.

Guy Burton is a research associate for the Latin America International Affairs Programme at the LSE Ideas Centre.

Turkey and Israel: The End of the Affair?

By Christopher Phillips

As the dust from Israel’s 31st May attack on a Gaza-bound Turkish aid ship continues to settle, and the various sides push their own accounts of who violated which international laws and protocols, one thing is for certain: Turkish-Israeli relations are in dire straits. Despite a long history of friendship, tensions between the two have been simmering since Tel Aviv’s sudden invasion of Gaza in December 2008, further exacerbated by Israel’s public humiliation of Turkey’s ambassador and Ankara’s improving ties with the Jewish state’s enemies in Tehran and Damascus. However, the events 77 miles off the coast of Gaza, in which 4 Turks were amongst the 9 activists killed, has brought matters to a new low with Turkish PM Erdogan declaring the raid a ‘massacre’ and recalling his ambassador to Tel Aviv. So why has this decline come about?

Commentators in the pro-Israel camp have been quick to blame Ankara’s hostility on the Islamist roots of Turkey’s ruling AKP party. According to this narrative, the AKP, angry at continual rejection by the EU, is turning its attention eastwards to recast Turkey in the Ottoman role of dominant power in the Middle East. One writer, the Dayan Centre’s Joshua Teitelbaum, even went far enough to accuse Erdogan of waging ‘Jihad’ on Israel. Yet such analysis is severely flawed. The AKP have been in power since 2002 and, until the Gaza war of 2008, enjoyed excellent relations with Israel: extending military and economic cooperation and mediating Tel Aviv’s peace talks with Syria. Certainly no such Islamist ideological opposition to Israel was visible in those first six years.

Similarly Turkey has in no way turned its back on Europe. The EU remains Turkey’s principal trading partner, an economic relationship that has prompted the unprecedented growth that is allowing Ankara greater financial clout in the Middle East. Far from an Islamic idealism, Turkish foreign relations under the AKP has been characterised by a flexible realism. Foreign Minister Ahmet Davutoglu’s notion of ‘zero problems with neighbours’ has allowed Ankara to maintain and indeed strengthen its ties with Europe whilst abandoning historical hostilities with Russia, Greece, Syria and Iran in order to enhance Turkey’s influence in its surrounding countries.

The decline in relations with Tel Aviv is therefore better explained by Israel’s bizarrely provocative behaviour towards Turkey, rather than a renewed Islamic idealism in Ankara. Indeed, until recently Israel too could be considered a neighbour with which Turkey had ‘zero problems’, as illustrated by the first six years of AKP-Israel harmony. Yet Israel has seemed foolishly insensitive to Turkish national pride in its recent actions. Erdogan felt personally betrayed, for example, in 2008 when he had spent hours mediating a potential peace deal between Tel Aviv and Damascus, only for then Israeli Premier Olmert to scupper the talks by launching the Gaza invasion without any consultation with Ankara. Similarly current Israeli Foreign Officials deliberately humiliated the Turkish ambassador in 2009 by making him sit in a ‘low chair’ during a televised interview, prompting public outrage in Turkey. Now, following the flotilla crisis, despite Israel’s pleas that they had asked Ankara not to sanction the convoy, four bodies returned home to Turkey who had been shot at point-blank range by their government’s supposed ally - a difficult position for any leader to justify to an angry nationalist population.

Yet these actions point to a wider trend in the Middle East on behalf of both actors. For Israel, it displays an even greater siege mentality than usual under the stewardship of Premier Netanyahu and Foreign Minister Lieberman. This government’s willingness to discard any international criticism whether it be over the Gaza blockade or stolen western identities to assassinate Hamas leaders in Dubai, and their direct refusal of US wishes to halt West Bank settlements, suggests a leadership convinced of its own rectitude and steadfast refusal to compromise, whatever the costs to its international image. In this light, losing its oldest and most important Muslim ally is a price it seems strangely willing to pay.

For Turkey, we see an emerging regional power that has less and less need of an ally whose actions are increasingly indefensible. In the end, Israel is a tiny market of 6 million consumers, whilst the Arab and Muslim Middle East offer much more. Ankara, one suspects, would rather not have to choose, but conversely, Erdogan will be aware of his rising star in the Middle East as a champion of the Palestinians – even if his primary motivation remains Turkish national interests.

As such trends continue, Israel should be cautious not to disregard Turkey’s importance. This is no powerless Arab dictatorship but a thriving, militarily strong, democratic regional giant. Moreover, Western states, notably the US, have long looked to Turkey as its role model in the Muslim World: proof that Islam and democracy can be compatible. At the final analysis, Tel Aviv should understand that, from a realist perspective that ignores the power of domestic lobbies and sentimental attachments, Turkey is far more important to American and European long-term objectives in the Middle East than Israel is. The last thing Tel Aviv should do is to deliberately provoke circumstances whereby the West has to choose.

Christopher Phillips is a PhD student in International Relations at the London School of Economics and Political Science and Programme Assistant on the IDEAS Middle East International Affairs Programme.

Shifting Sands is the blog of the Middle East International Affairs Programme at LSE IDEAS, analysing current events in the Middle East and contributing to the ongoing deliberations over policy prescriptions.

Amber Holewinski, Editor

Tony Blair, Gordon Brown, Michael Gove: Proud of the British Empire

Michael Gove, Britain's school's secretary, recently asked pro-British empire historians, Andrew Roberts and Niall Ferguson, to recast the history curriculum to provide a "narrative" centred around Britain's imperial glories in the context of the global domination of the West over the past 500 years. As Seumas Milne argues in his excellent column in The Guardian (10 June, 2010), this merely revives the imperial project that became popular among Anglo-American elites after 1989, and found enthusiastic support from New Labour.

New Labour leadership contest front-runner, David Miliband, is quoted in The Guardian today as saying "George Bush was the worst thing that happened to Tony Blair." Not for the first time, USBlog wonders what Miliband meant by that remark. Could it be that Miliband is suggesting that Blair was duped into following Bush into the global war on terror, into Afghanistan and Iraq? That, had it not been for Bush, Blair's approach to world politics would have been significantly different?

As Seumas Milne says, Gordon Brown once remarked that "Britain was not about to apologise for the Empire", and Blair's principal foreign policy adviser, Robert Cooper, published articles and books calling for a "new liberal imperialism" by "post-modern/modern states" against "pre-modern states" that lived by the laws of the jungle. Cooper's view was that, in dealings with pre-modern states, Britain, the US and EU need not concern themselves with truth, international law and diplomacy, as cruelty and deception was all that such states understood.

Tony Blair, on the advice of his former FCO 'minder' and future chief of staff, Jonathan Powell, had wanted to tell a Manchester audience in 1997, just ahead of the general election, that he, Blair, was "proud of the British empire". Blair drew back at the last minute and did not deliver that particular line of his speech. But Blair's liberal imperialism was not extinguished; it found new outlets as time wore on.

Blair told an American audience in 1999, ‘If we can establish and spread the values of liberty, the rule of law, human rights, and an open society then that is in our national interests too. The spread of our values makes us safer’. Blair, who was comfortable being compared with President Woodrow Wilson – who famously waged a war to ‘make the world safe for democracy’, was on a mission to re-make the world. His arguments for military intervention for halting humanitarian crises and promoting democracy despite the inevitable violation of national sovereignty this necessitated were central to his imperial outlook.

Summed up, an imperial tendency emerged as a powerful force in Anglo-American foreign affairs, reminiscent of an earlier age. 'Democratic peace theory' (whose central claim is that democracies don't fight wars against each other) was its ideological higher truth, Britain and America the powers chosen by destiny to impose it on selected parts of the world. This is a twenty-first century version of the imperial civilising mission and of manifest destiny, welcomed by some and rejected by others as hubris. American-style political and economic capitalist democracy is declared suitable for export in a globalising world, another self-evident truth. The mission relies on the former colonial world forgetting Britain’s record of imperial domination, and amnesia about America’s post-1945 record of military interventions against leftist-nationalist governments and installation of right-wing military juntas.

Blair's Christianity was central to his sense of mission. Such belief has its radical, critical side - it questions the way things are, demands change and improvement. As Blair wrote in an article in the Daily Telegraph in 1996, being a Christian means ‘you see the need for change around you and accept your duty to do something.’ To Blair, Christianity is also ‘a very tough religion… It places a duty, an imperative on us to reach our better self and to care about creating a better community to live in…. It is judgemental. There is right and wrong. There is good and bad…[although] it has become fashionable to be uncomfortable about such language. But when we look at our world today and how much needs to be done, we should not hesitate to make such judgements. And then follow them with determined action. That would be Christian socialism.' Blair's references to the utility of Jesus in every day life suggest something of the southern US evangelical protestant.

There is also, of course, a strong strain of Gladstonian moralism in Blair’s global outlook. That combined well with the rising centre-left sentiment favouring humanitarian interventionism during the 1990s, especially with reference to events in the Balkans. Activist writers like David Rieff and the International Commission on Interventionism and State Sovereignty – of which the-now Harvard scholar, Michael Ignatieff, was a member, championed the cause of people suffering from the brutal excesses within states, beyond the reach of international law and the United Nations. According to Rieff, such tendencies, however, were appropriated by political forces – such as the American neo-conservatives in the Bush administration and by Tony Blair - that were far more imperialistic in their outlook and used the rhetoric of humanitarian intervention in a range of cases – such as Kosovo and Iraq – that fell beyond the original thinking behind the strategy.

The foreign policy of (late 19th-early 20th century) 'New Liberals' that Tony Blair admired so much back in the 1990s- such as almost the entire leadership of the imperialist Round Table movement and of its offspring, Chatham House - was to strengthen the bonds of the British Empire through imperial reform and alliance (and even federation) with the United States. The underlying rationale was founded on a racialised world-view based on Anglo-Saxon biological and cultural superiority. By the Second World War, the desire among some sections of British and American elite opinion was for a Federal Union between Britain and its Dominions and the United States, and the Scandinavian democracies. This was proposed on the basis that Anglo-Saxons, and one or two Nordic nations, were uniquely suited to good government, economic development, and to protection of the rights of the individual. The missionary zeal that inspired domestic reform had its overseas counterpart in imperial reform and Anglo-Saxonism.

The point here relating to Tony Blair is that such ideas, in an evolved and more 'sophisticated' form, came back into circulation in the 1990s and remain significant in leading policy circles in Britain and the United States.

And this is where David Miliband comes in with his remark that George W Bush was the worst thing that happened to Blair. He should look at Blair's history: at the Lord Mayor's banquet in November 1997, when the White House was not even a twinkle in Bush's eye, Blair set out his vision – ‘the big picture’ - for Britain and the world, so that its ‘standing in the world … [would] grow and prosper.’ Britain's principal strength is/was its ability to use its historical alliances so that ‘others listen.’ ‘I value and honour our history enormously,’ Blair emphasised. The fact that we had an Empire - about which ‘a lot of rubbish [is] talked’ - should be cause of neither apology nor hand wringing; rather it must be used to further Britain's global influence - through the Commonwealth and through the power of the English language. Britain must look outward - we are the world's second largest importer and exporter of foreign investment. What goes on in the rest of the world is, therefore, of vital importance. Britain must rebuild the special relationship with the United States, which the Major government had wrecked, Blair argued. ‘When Britain and America work together on the international scene there is little we cannot achieve.’ ‘We must never forget the historic or continuing US role in defending the political and economic freedoms we take for granted…. they are a force for good in the world. They can always be relied on when the chips are down. The same should always be true of Britain’.

9-11 was, then, a perfect opportunity for Blairites to size the moment. As former Blair ally, Mark Leonard, noted, 9-11 offered a golden chance to rebuild the world order, to further the concept of international community and to promote "security".

Although the Iraq and Afghanistan wars, and the economic-financial crsis, have dampened imperial ardour, they have yet to extinguish it. Not for nothing was the 'war on terror' re-named the 'long war' or the 'generational war': Anglo-American imperial hubris remains at large; and an imperial narrative in the school history curriculum, contested though it would be, would keep alive the flame of the British empire.

Inderjeet Parmar is Professor of Government at the University of Manchester and Vice Chair of the British International Studies Association. This post first appeared at his excellent US Blog

What the World Cup means for Latin America

For much of the past century Latin America has been characterised as Washington’s ‘backyard’. Economically and militarily, the region’s states have never been in a position to compete with the United States while the Cold War provided the backdrop against which governments largely opted for American patronage. The experience of those that opted for a more independent and socially transformative role, such as Cuba and Allende’s Chile, was not a happy one, the former being frozen out and obliged to seek support from Moscow and the latter succumbing to a US-supported coup and repressive military dictatorship.

But one arena where Latin America could compete with the US – indeed, even triumph over it – was on the football field. And with the World Cup due to kick off in South Africa later this week, it is perhaps worth considering the way in which the tournament has been used by the region’s governments to promote themselves globally.

Latin American countries have won half of eighteen World Cups held since the first one in 1930. Brazil holds the record, with five victories, with Argentina and Uruguay both having won it twice each. The political influence was present at the start: Uruguay’s appointment as inaugural hosts by FIFA (the international football body) in 1930 had as much to do with it celebrating its centenary as an independent state as much as it did with being the Olympic champion in 1924 and 1928 (and prior to the World Cup the world championship for the sport).

Brazil, which has always sought a leading international role, applied for the 1942 World Cup. Its main competition came from Germany. However, the Second World War was to interrupt the competition and prevent any competitive football by European teams in this period.

Brazil’s offer was reiterated and taken up after the end of hostilities in 1946. In the absence of any interest from the war-ravaged European countries, Brazil’s bid for the 1950 competition was the only one. The country saw the event as an opportunity to showcase Brazil’s global progress and set about building the largest stadium in the world, the Maracana.

Across the nation there was high confidence that this was to be Brazil’s year. The shock that followed the country’s defeat to Uruguay in the final game of the tournament – and hence the championship for Uruguay’s second and final success – plunged many into a state of grief, including several suicides. Brazil’s defeat was significant on two levels. Politically, it undermined the Brazilian leadership’s belief in itself as the country of the future and of success. In football terms, despite Uruguay’s football and demographic decline compared to Brazil, when the two countries meet the match is subject to acute levels of attention by Brazilians and excessive celebration whenever they win.

Brazil’s defeat in 1950 haunted the nation until it finally achieved its first win in 1958 at the tournament in Sweden. This made Brazil the first – and so far only – nation to win the competition outside of its own hemisphere (repeating the feat in Japan/Korea in 2002). It held onto the trophy in 1962 when the competition was next staged in Latin America, this time in Chile. That Chile was able to host the event was an achievement since much of the stadia, along with the country’s infrastructure had to be rebuilt in the wake of the 1960 earthquake, the largest so far recorded.

With FIFA adopting an alternation of hosts between Europe and South America, the region’s next turn came in 1970 when Mexico hosted the first of its two to date. Already before the tournament opened football had served as a backdrop to conflict between El Salvador and Honduras, dubbed the ‘Football War’. Although neither side qualified for the finals, the matches were played between the two countries amid rising tensions related to increasing migration by Salvadorans to Honduras and their expulsion. A day before the second game was played hostilities began, lasting several days and resulting in no decisive outcome for either side.

A year later when the tournament was finally held, it was considered a classic and was won by arguably the greatest Brazilian side ever produced. Brazil’s victory meant that it had won the competition for the third time, thereby earning it the right to permanent ownership of the original trophy. However, the occasion coincided two with both the rise of military repression and an industrial boom known as the ‘economic miracle’. Linking football success to the latter, the generals in charge sought to divert public attention away from the excesses being carried out. This was apparent in the use of the pro-government football hymn, ‘Go Forward Brazil’.

The same was to follow in an arguably more cynical fashion in 1978. That tournament was held in Argentina and won by the hosts, which had been granted the right to stage the event in 1966. However, during the early 1970s growing political tension had contributed to a ‘dirty war’, resulting in a military coup in 1976. Between 10,000 and 30,000 people disappeared during the seven years of dictatorship. Protest against the military government included a committee to boycott the World Cup which received support in France, West Germany and the Netherlands. However, divisions within the Left, including the Soviet Union’s continued economic links with the regime and a lack of support for the boycott by the Argentine Communist Party, weakened the movement. The regime saw an opportunity to exploit the tournament for its own purposes, spending around US$700m on infrastructure, equal to around 10% of the national debt and postponing non-World Cup related projects during the period.

Colombia was scheduled to host the event in 1986, having won the right in 1974. However, in the years that followed the country became increasingly plagued by internal strife including kidnappings and rising debts. By the early 1980s it was apparent that the country would not be able to provide the infrastructure necessary to host the event. In 1983 the decision was taken to move the competition, with Canada, Brazil, the US and Mexico all presenting bids.

Within one of the strongest applications, the US was rejected on two main grounds: one, FIFA’s opposition to the various rule changes made to the game by the American authorities in their country; and two, FIFA’s commercial priorities. The Mexican vice-president of FIFA not only owned several football clubs and a media company, but also provided the framework for the way the competition is now presented, bringing in sponsors and raising ticket prices to the advantage of the football world body.

Despite winning the right to stage the tournament for a second time, Mexico’s main achievement was not only the pitch but like Chile two decades earlier in actually holding the event. Eight months before the competition began an earthquake struck Mexico City but did not damage the stadia. Most of the games kicked off in the midday heat as to ensure European TV coverage, which was provided by the media company owned by FIFA’s Mexican vice-president. Argentina was the victors for a second time, dispatching England in a quarterfinal against which the recent Falklands/Malvinas conflict served as a backdrop. Although both team managers had sought to downplay the political aspect, Argentine players admitted a degree of satisfaction and revenge in the result.

Following Argentina’s success, Latin American honours have fallen to Brazil twice more, in 1994 and 2002. The 1994 victory was jumped on by the country’s president, who after the country’s economic decline during the ‘Lost Decade’, wanted to transfer the team’s success to the national psyche. The year also saw the introduction of the Real Plan which brought an end to inflation and led to a consumer boom in Brazil – an occasion not lost to the successful team, who returned from the US World Cup with tonnes of products. Similarly in 2002 the then president also sought to link the team’s achievement with the country’s economic recovery.

Since Mexico in 1986, Latin America has not played host to the World Cup, FIFA having opted to bring in other continents including Asia and Africa. However, in 2003 it announced that the 2014 competition would take place in South America. Brazil, Argentina and Colombia all declared their interest, although the South American confederation eventually opted to put its full backing behind Brazil. Its bid was formally accepted in late 2007.

Brazil’s success in winning the bid has echoes with the last time it staged it in 1950, by providing an opportunity for the country to demonstrate the extent to which it has advanced globally (this was further helped by President Lula’s involvement in supporting its successful 2009 bid to stage the Olympic Games two years after the World Cup). But many will hope that this time the result will be different, with Brazil presenting a success on the pitch as well as off it. However, this remains far from certain; earlier this year FIFA put the country on notice, highlighting concern with the slow pace of preparations.

Guy Burton is a research associate for the Latin America International Affairs Programme at the LSE Ideas Centre.

“Little Britain” ~ the New Coalition Government and the Middle East

By Matthew Hinds

With party deal-making and cabinet resignations so far making the headlines, scant attention has been paid to what the future policy of the new Con-Lib coalition government will be in key areas where British diplomatic and military involvement has been so prevalent in recent years: The Middle East, including the Arab-Israeli conflict, Iraq, Iran and Afghanistan. This may be considered a reflection of the fact that the heartbeat of British politics in recent months has been unusually local and insular for British standards, focusing squarely on the drama of the recent election, the continuing expense scandal and the poor shape of the economy. However, domestic concerns will not insulate the coalition government from having to address a number of vital policy questions centred on the Middle East in particular.

Looking at the Middle East from a British perspective, the damaged legacy of the Bush-Blair era is still sharply felt. For ten long years, the Labour Government has grossly overstretched the country’s armed services and weakened its diplomatic standing in the Middle East. This week’s Mavi Marmara flotilla incident has once again turned everyone’s attention to the Middle East at an inopportune moment for the coalition government. The new Foreign Secretary, William Hague, publically stated that the Gaza blockade is “unacceptable”, knowing that Israeli actions have undermined a key British strategic priority - convincing Arab states to support broader sanctions against Iran. With that being said, an intervention by the British military in Iran is almost unthinkable at a time when British forces in Afghanistan are scaling back operations, not because of strategy but due to the lack of crucial military hardware, like the scarcity of Chinook helicopters, which had jeopardized Operation Panther Claw in 2009.

Although it has been announced that there will be no withdrawal date for the 10,000 British military personnel in Afghanistan, the biggest challenge faced by the coalition is financial. Presently, the Ministry of Defence is running a deficit of 36 billion pounds, and the government would eventually like to cut the MoD’s running cost by 25%, thereby putting severe restrictions on Britain’s military capabilities internationally. The fact that Prime Minister David Cameron has already put into place a new US-style National Security Council does not point to Britain returning to the grand stage of international affairs as a world power. Rather, for the time being, it will be a cheerless forum in which the cabinet can discuss the shrinking of British power with the National Security Adviser, FCO mandarin Peter Ricketts and the Chief of Defence Staff, Sir Jock Stirrup. Discussions will include key questions such as whether Britain can afford to be involved in conflict zones like Iraq and Afghanistan, not to mention other fragile states that are considered to pose a threat to international stability - of which Yemen is prime example in the Middle East. To answer these sensitive questions, the coalition government has begun a Strategic Defence and Security Review that will publish a new National Security Strategy shortly.

A note of encouragement for leaders Cameron and Nick Clegg of the Liberal Democrats is that unlike the noted dissonance over the European Union, it is unlikely that the coalition’s Middle East policy will be a deal-breaker. It is indeed true that the Liberal Democrats have been more vocal than the Conservatives in their criticism of Britain’s bloody engagement in Helmand Province in Afghanistan. As recently as this past September, eyebrows were raised at the Liberal Democrat party conference when a motion was tabled stating that Britain should have “tea with the Taliban” in the hope of finding a quick exit out of Afghanistan. Moreover, out of the three major parties in British politics, the Liberal Democrats have been most consistent in their critique of Israel as shown by the party’s support for the Goldstone Report, which censured Israel for committing war crimes in the Gaza War of 2008. Looking farther back, the revival of the Liberal Democrats political fortunes converged with the outset of the Iraq War in 2003 when the party outshined the Conservatives in their denunciation of the Labour Government’s belligerency along with its supine compliance with the Bush Administration.

It could be argued that the Liberal Democrats’ general opposition to the Bush-Blair era was an instructive political lesson for David Cameron. Over the past several years he has sought to recast the Conservative Party’s attitudes towards Britain’s role in the world, particularly pertaining to the Middle East. Speaking to an American audience on September 11, 2006, Cameron outlined his vision of “Liberal Conservatism,” where he stated that supporting the aims of democracy, freedom and humanitarian efforts are imperative, but it is folly not to recognize the limits of the utopian schemes that go with remaking the Middle East. Cameron poignantly stated: "Liberty grows from the ground; it cannot be dropped from the air by an unmanned drone." Simply put, the leader of the Conservative Party’s reflective analysis would go down pretty well at any Liberal Democrat student society.

In some Liberal Democratic circles, there is a fear that the new team of William Hague as Foreign Secretary and Liam Fox as the Minister of Defence constitutes a Thatcherite outpost that is operating at the centre of the coalition. To some extent this may be true. However, it should be noted that when speaking of the former, Hague happily articulates the broad concept of “Liberal Conservatism” more eloquently than the Prime Minister himself, a feat unsurprising when considering that the Foreign Secretary is a keen student of British history having written biographies with equal passion on the liberal Wilberforce and conservative Pitt the Younger.

One political circumstance that will work to the benefit of keeping the Coalition Government together is the stance of the United States under Barack Obama. When the next crisis unfolds in the Middle East, the Liberal Democrats’ traditional skepticism of the Atlantic Alliance as an expression of British policy will be less of an issue given the general consensus that the Obama Administration, in stark contrast to the Blair–Bush era, has little interest in Britain serving as a junior partner to the United States. With the Conservatives dominating foreign policy, it will be the leader of the Liberal Democrats, Nick Clegg’s job to make sure that the leftwing backbenchers of his party do not become an impassable roadblock to the coalition’s efforts in the Middle East.

What Conservatives and Liberal Democrats in the coalition cabinet can firmly agree on is that that Britain’s long-term engagement in the Middle East and the world, hinges principally on the country’s economic recovery. As such, Cameron is right. There will be no room for “utopian schemes”- even with the aid of an ally like the US - because Britain simply cannot afford it. After the blatant mismanagement of the Blair and Brown years, the only choice that the Con-Lib coalition has at the moment is a policy of “temporary retrenchment.” It is the challenge of combating deficits, debts and national insolvency that will be the driving narrative of this coalition, not political or military adventurism in the Middle East.

Matthew Hinds is a PhD candidate at the LSE in the International History Department. His PhD research focuses on Anglo-American Relations and Saudi Arabia. In the department he taught a class on Anglo-American Relations in the Middle East, 1952-1970.

Shifting Sands is the blog of the Middle East International Affairs Programme at LSE IDEAS, analysing current events in the Middle East and contributing to the ongoing deliberations over policy prescriptions.

Amber Holewinski, Editor

Obama's National Security Strategy: Made at Princeton

President Obama's National Security Strategy may echo that of his predecessor, George W. Bush, but it is also almost identical to that suggested by a large group of elite academics, military officials, businessmen, and former Clinton administration insiders brought together as the Princeton Project on National Security (PPNS) back in 2004-2006. The Princeton Project was led by Princeton academics Anne-Marie Slaughter and G. John Ikenberry, featured Reagan's secretary of state, George Schultz, and Clinton's national security adviser, Anthony Lake, as co-chairs. Francis Fukuyama, erstwhile neo-con, sat on the steering committee and was co-author of the Project's working paper on grand strategy. Henry Kissinger acted as adviser, as did Harvard's Joseph Nye, author of the concept of Soft Power, morphing more recently into Smart Power. PPNS represented a new cross-party consensus on how to 'correct' the excesses and reckless enthusiasm for American power of the Bush administration.

Several PPNS-ers were appointed to the Obama administration: Jim Steinberg to the state department, Michael McFaul and Samantha Power to the national security council, for example. Anne-Marie Slaughter heads up the state department's policy planning staff - the department's in-house think tank, the first director of which was Princeton's George F. Kennan, author of the concept that defined US policy in the cold war era: containment. PPNS was a self-conscious attempt to replicate Kennan's work and impact in the post-Bush era, in the wake of the 'war of choice' (then supported by numerous current Obama administration members) against Iraq.

So what?

The similarities of Obama's NSS to those of Bush and Princeton suggests that it will be 'business as usual', in the main. The main lines of US global behaviour - Iraq, Afghanistan, Iran, Israel - remain the same, with tactical and stylistic differences. Undoubtedly, Obama's rhetoric is less bellicose and less inflammatory than Bush's, but that was beginning in the final months of the previous administration in any case. The military surge in Afghanistan, the identification of the Afghanistan-Pakistan border as the focus of the war on terror, the military 'draw-down' in Iraq, were also processes begun under Bush. The attempts to close Guantanamo began under Bush, and continue, without success, today.

But Obama continues to back rendition, and is actively trying to prevent the extension of constitutional protections to inmates at Bagram and other lawless prisons holding uncharged terror suspects. He may be accused by some of declaring war on Israel, but you wouldn't know it from his total silence on Israel's war on Gaza or its recent illegal attack on a ship carrying aid for Israel's million-and-a-half victims in Gaza, not to mention the billions of dollars of US military and other aid to Israel.

Obama's mission - US leadership, military superiority, global reach, shaping the international order, making and enforcing global rules, spreading freedom and democracy, lauding postwar international institution-building under President Harry Truman (the golden age to both Bush and Obama, and PPNS-ers) - is of a piece with all post-1945 American administrations. The rhetoric and tactics vary with conditions within the US and in the world at large but the goals remain the same.

At this point in time, therefore, the US is suffering from military overstretch and economic crisis: it cannot physically fight, or financially afford, two wars at the levels of intensity required, and remains committed to a professional military rather than a conscripted one (which proved problematic during the Vietnam War). At home, there are rumblings about America's internal problems of unemployment and other social issues, as well as increasing scepticism about the nature and costs - financial and moral - of America's global interventionism. Hence, Obama has adopted a policy similar to British PM Cameron's 'big society': building alliances with non-governmental groups, think tanks, and foundations better to intervene in world affairs, especially in the governance of other societies designated as threats or potential threats to America's 'security'.

Subtle shifts in policy and rhetoric help in times such as these: and Obama's 'face' and 'voice' has worked wonders, up to now at least, across the world, just as Jimmy Carter's did in the wake of Vietnam (and Watergate). But the impacts of such insubstantial changes are usually temporary: the Muslim world never fully bought the Obama story; and Europeans are beginning to learn that Obama is no soft touch either as he presses them to send more troops to Afghanistan and be ready to support principles for which they claim to stand.

The things that do not change are the American foreign policy elite's strategic role in defining 'national' interests or the policies that flow from their definition: those are 'vital' interests the benefits of which are unequally distributed within the United States, maintaining social and economic inequality. And Obama's appointments to high office were drawn from the ranks of the American elite - Wall St. lawyers and bankers, ivy league university academics, and the ranks of the Bush and Clinton administrations.


Inderjeet Parmar is Professor of Government at the University of Manchester and Vice Chair of the British International Studies Association.  This post first appeared at his excellent US Blog