UN INTELECTUAL LIBERAL CHILENO QUE ALENTO LA DISCUSIÓN PUBLICA POR LA REFORMA EDUCATIVA, QUE FUE "CASTIGADO" POR ELLO, POR LA DERECHA Y AHORA HACE UN BALANCE DE LA NUEVA POLITICA IMPLEMENTADA POR BACHELET A FINES DEL AÑO PASADO.
Saturday, January 31, 2015
THE WESTERN MISTAKE OF DEMONIZATION
THE TRUTH ABOUT EVIL
By John Gray
THE GUARDIAN, OCTOBER 21, 2014.
Our leaders talk a great deal about vanquishing the forces of evil. But their rhetoric reveals a failure to accept that cruelty and conflict are basic human traits
When Barack Obama vows to destroy Isis’s “brand of evil” and David Cameron declares that Isis is an “evil organisation” that must be obliterated, they are echoing Tony Blair’s judgment of Saddam Hussein: “But the man’s uniquely evil, isn’t he?” Blair made this observation in November 2002, four months before the invasion of Iraq, when he invited six experts to Downing Street to brief him on the likely consequences of the war. The experts warned that Iraq was a complicated place, riven by deep communal enmities, which Saddam had dominated for over 35 years. Destroying the regime would leave a vacuum; the country could be shaken by Sunni rebellion and might well descend into civil war. These dangers left the prime minster unmoved. What mattered was Saddam’s moral iniquity. The divided society over which he ruled was irrelevant. Get rid of the tyrant and his regime, and the forces of good would prevail.
If Saddam was uniquely evil 12 years ago, we have it on the authority of our leaders that Isis is uniquely evil today. Until it swept into Iraq a few months ago, the jihadist group was just one of several that had benefited from the campaign being waged by western governments and their authoritarian allies in the Gulf in support of the Syrian opposition’s struggle to overthrow Bashar al-Assad. Since then Isis has been denounced continuously and with increasing intensity; but there has been no change in the ruthless ferocity of the group, which has always practised what a radical Islamist theorist writing under the name Abu Bakr Naji described in an internet handbook in 2006 as “the management of savagery”.
Ever since it was spun off from al-Qaida some 10 years ago, Isis has made clear its commitment to beheading apostates and unbelievers, enslaving women and wiping out communities that will not submit to its ultra-fundamentalist interpretation of Islam. In its carefully crafted internet videos, it has advertised these crimes itself. There has never been any doubt that Isis practises methodical savagery as an integral part of its strategy of war. This did not prevent an abortive attempt on the part of the American and British governments in August of last year to give military support to the Syrian rebels – a move that could have left Isis the most powerful force in the country. Isis became the prime enemy of western governments only when it took advantage of the anarchy these same governments had created when they broke the state of Iraq with their grandiose scheme of regime change.
Against this background, it would be easy to conclude that talk of evil in international conflicts is no more than a cynical technique for shaping public perceptions. That would be a mistake. Blair’s secret – which is the key to much in contemporary politics – is not cynicism. A cynic is someone who knowingly acts against what he or she knows to be true. Too morally stunted to be capable of the mendacity of which he is often accused, Blair thinks and acts on the premise that whatever furthers the triumph of what he believes to be good must be true. Imagining that he can deliver the Middle East and the world from evil, he cannot help having a delusional view of the impact of his policies.
Here Blair is at one with most western leaders. It’s not that they are obsessed with evil. Rather, they don’t really believe in evil as an enduring reality in human life. If their feverish rhetoric means anything, it is that evil can be vanquished. In believing this, those who govern us at the present time reject a central insight of western religion, which is found also in Greek tragic drama and the work of the Roman historians: destructive human conflict is rooted in flaws within human beings themselves. In this old-fashioned understanding, evil is a propensity to destructive and self-destructive behaviour that is humanly universal. The restraints of morality exist to curb this innate human frailty; but morality is a fragile artifice that regularly breaks down. Dealing with evil requires an acceptance that it never goes away.
No view of things could be more alien at the present time. Whatever their position on the political spectrum, almost all of those who govern us hold to some version of the melioristic liberalism that is the west’s default creed, which teaches that human civilisation is advancing – however falteringly – to a point at which the worst forms of human destructiveness can be left behind. According to this view, evil, if any such thing exists, is not an inbuilt human flaw, but a product of defective social institutions, which can over time be permanently improved.
Paradoxically, this belief in the evanescence of evil is what underlies the hysterical invocation of evil that has lately become so prominent. There are many bad and lamentable forces in the world today, but it is those that undermine the belief in human improvement that are demonised as “evil”. So what disturbs the west about Vladimir Putin, for example, is not so much the persecution of gay people over which he has presided, or the threat posed to Russia’s neighbours by his attempt to reassert its imperial power. It is the fact that he has no place in the liberal scheme of continuing human advance. As a result, the Russian leader can only be evil. When George W Bush looked into Putin’s eyes at a Moscow summit in May 2002, he reported, “I was able to get a sense of his soul”. When Joe Biden visited the Kremlin in 2011, he had a very different impression, telling Putin: “Mr Prime Minister, I’m looking into your eyes, and I don’t think you have a soul.” According to Biden, Putin smiled and replied, “We understand each other.” The religious language is telling: nine years earlier, Putin had been a pragmatic leader with whom the west could work; now he was a soulless devil.
Many view these western interventions as no more than exercises in geopolitics. But a type of moral infantilism is no less important in explaining the persisting folly of western governments. Though it is clear that Isis cannot be permanently weakened as long as the war against Assad continues, this fact is ignored – and not only because a western-brokered peace deal that left Assad in power would be opposed by the Gulf states that have sided with jihadist forces in Syria. More fundamentally, any such deal would mean giving legitimacy to a regime that western governments have condemned as more evil than any conceivable alternative. In Syria, the actual alternatives are the survival in some form of Assad’s secular despotism, a radical Islamist regime or continuing war and anarchy. In the liberal political culture that prevails in the west, a public choice among these options is impossible.
There are some who think the very idea of evil is an obsolete relic of religion. For most secular thinkers, what has been defined as evil in the past is the expression of social ills that can in principle be remedied. But these same thinkers very often invoke evil forces to account for humankind’s failure to advance. The secularisation of the modern moral vocabulary that many believed was under way has not occurred: public discourse about good and evil continues to be rooted in religion. Yet the idea of evil that is invoked is not one that features in the central religious traditions of the west. The belief that evil can be finally overcome has more in common with the dualistic heresies of ancient and medieval times than it does with any western religious orthodoxy.
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A radically dualistic view of the world, in which good and evil are separate forces that have coexisted since the beginning of time, was held by the ancient Zoroastrians and Manicheans. These religions did not face the problem with which Christian apologists have struggled so painfully and for so long – how to reconcile the existence of an all-powerful and wholly good God with the fact of evil in the world. The worldview of George W Bush and Tony Blair is commonly described as Manichean, but this is unfair to the ancient religion. Mani, the third-century prophet who founded the faith, appears to have believed the outcome of the struggle was uncertain, whereas for Bush and Blair there could never be any doubt as to the ultimate triumph of good. In refusing to accept the permanency of evil they are no different from most western leaders.
The west owes its ideas of evil to Christianity, though whether these ideas would be recognised by Jesus – the dissident Jewish prophet from whose life and sayings St Paul conjured the Christian religion – is an open question. The personification of evil as a demonic presence is not a feature of biblical Judaism, where the figure of Satan appears chiefly as a messenger or accuser sent by God to challenge wrongdoers. Despite the claims of believers and advances in scholarship, not enough is known to pronounce with any confidence on what Jesus may himself have believed. What is clear is that Christianity has harboured a number of quite different understandings of evil.
A convert from Manicheism, St Augustine established a powerful orthodoxy in the fourth century when he tried to distance Christianity from dualism and maintained that evil was not an independent force coeval with good but came into the world when human beings misused the gift of free will. Reflecting Augustine’s own conflicts, the idea of original sin that he developed would play a part in the unhealthy preoccupation with sexuality that appears throughout most of Christianity’s history. Yet in placing the source of evil within human beings, Augustine’s account is more humane than myths in which evil is a sinister force that acts to subvert human goodness. Those who believe that evil can be eradicated tend to identify themselves with the good and attack anyone they believe stands in the way of its triumph.
Augustine had an immense influence, but dualistic views in which evil exists as an independent force have erupted repeatedly as heretical traditions within Christianity. The Cathar movement that developed in parts of Europe in the 13th century revived a Manichean cosmogony in which the world is the work not of a good God but instead of a malevolent angel or demi-urge. A rival heresy was promoted by the fourth century theologian Pelagius, an opponent of Augustine who denied original sin while strongly affirming free will, and believed that human beings could be good without divine intervention. More than any of the ancient Greek philosophers, Pelagius put an idea of human autonomy at the centre of his thinking. Though he is now almost forgotten, this heretical Christian theologian has a good claim to be seen as the true father of modern liberal humanism.
In its official forms, secular liberalism rejects the idea of evil. Many liberals would like to see the idea of evil replaced by a discourse of harm: we should talk instead about how people do damage to each other and themselves. But this view poses a problem of evil remarkably similar to that which has troubled Christian believers. If every human being is born a liberal – as these latter-day disciples of Pelagius appear to believe – why have so many, seemingly of their own free will, given their lives to regimes and movements that are essentially repressive, cruel and violent? Why do human beings knowingly harm others and themselves? Unable to account for these facts, liberals have resorted to a language of dark and evil forces much like that of dualistic religions.
The efforts of believers to explain why God permits abominable suffering and injustice have produced nothing that is convincing; but at least believers have admitted that the ways of the Deity are mysterious. Even though he ended up accepting the divine will, the questions that Job put to God were never answered. Despite all his efforts to find a solution, Augustine confessed that human reason was not equal to the task. In contrast, when secular liberals try to account for evil in rational terms, the result is a more primitive version of Manichean myth. When humankind proves resistant to improvement, it is because forces of darkness – wicked priests, demagogic politicians, predatory corporations and the like – are working to thwart the universal struggle for freedom and enlightenment. There is a lesson here. Sooner or later anyone who believes in innate human goodness is bound to reinvent the idea of evil in a cruder form. Aiming to exorcise evil from the modern mind, secular liberals have ended up constructing another version of demonology, in which anything that stands out against what is believed to be the rational course of human development is anathematised.
The view that evil is essentially banal, presented by Hannah Arendt in her book Eichmann in Jerusalem (1963), is another version of the modern evasion of evil. Arendt suggested that human beings commit atrocities from a kind of stupidity, falling into a condition of thoughtlessness in which they collude in practices that inflict atrocious suffering on other human beings. It was some such moral inertia, Arendt maintained, that enabled Eichmann to take a leading part in perpetrating the Holocaust. Arendt’s theory of the banality of evil tends to support the defence of his actions that Eichmann presented at his trial: he had no choice in doing what he did. She represented Eichmann as a colourless bureaucrat performing a well-defined function in an impersonal bureaucratic machine; but the Nazi state was in fact largely chaotic, with different institutions, departments of government and individuals competing for Hitler’s favour. Careful historical research of the kind that David Cesarani undertook in his book Eichmann: His Life and Crimes (2004) suggests that Eichmann was not a passive tool of the state, but chose to serve it. When he organised the deportation and mass murder of Jews, he wasn’t simply furthering his career in the Nazi hierarchy. What he did reflected his deep-seated antisemitism. Eichmann took part in the Holocaust because he wanted to do so. In this he was no different from many others, though his crimes were larger in scale.
No doubt something like the type of evil that Arendt identified is real enough. Large parts of the population in Germany went along with Nazi policies of racial persecution and genocide from motives that included social conformity and obedience to authority. The number of doctors, teachers and lawyers who refused to implement Nazi policies was vanishingly small. But again, this wasn’t only passive obedience. Until it became clear that Hitler’s war might be lost, Nazism was extremely popular. As the great American journalist William Shirer reported in his eyewitness account of the rise of Hitler, The Nightmare Years:
“Most Germans, so far as I could see, did not seem to mind that their personal freedom had been taken away, that so much of their splendid culture was being destroyed and replaced with a mindless barbarism, or that their life and work were being regimented to a degree never before experienced even by a people accustomed for generations to a great deal of regimentation … On the whole, people did not seem to feel that they were being cowed and held down by an unscrupulous tyranny. On the contrary, they appeared to support it with genuine enthusiasm.”
When large populations of human beings collude with repressive regimes it need not be from thoughtlessness or inertia. Liberal meliorists like to think that human life contains many things that are bad, some of which may never be entirely eliminated; but there is nothing that is intrinsically destructive or malevolent in human beings themselves – nothing, in other words, that corresponds to a traditional idea of evil. But another view is possible, and one that need make no call on theology.
What has been described as evil in the past can be understood as a natural tendency to animosity and destruction, co-existing in human beings alongside tendencies to sympathy and cooperation. This was the view put forward by Sigmund Freud in a celebrated exchange of letters with Albert Einstein in 1931-32. Einstein had asked: “Is it possible to control man’s mental evolution so as to make him proof against the psychosis of hate and destructiveness?” Freud replied that “there is no likelihood of our being able to suppress humanity’s aggressive tendencies”.
Freud suggested that human beings were ruled by impulses or instincts, eros and thanatos, impelling them towards life and creation or destruction and death. He cautioned against thinking that these forces embodied good and evil in any simple way. Whether they worked together or in opposition, both were necessary. Even so, Freud was clear that a major threat to anything that might be called a good life came from within human beings. The fragility of civilisation reflected the divided nature of the human animal itself.
One need not subscribe to Freud’s theory (which in the same letter he describes as a type of mythology) to think he was on to something here. Rather than psychoanalysis, it may be some version of evolutionary psychology that can best illuminate the human proclivity to hatred and destruction. The point is that destructive behaviour of this kind flows from inherent human flaws. Crucially, these defects are not only or even mainly intellectual. No advance in human knowledge can stop humans attacking and persecuting others. Poisonous ideologies like Nazi “scientific racism” justify such behaviour. But these ideologies are not just erroneous theories that can be discarded when their falsehood has been demonstrated. Ideas of similar kinds recur whenever societies are threatened by severe and continuing hardship. At present, antisemitism and ethnic nationalism, along with hatred of gay people, immigrants and other minorities, are re-emerging across much of the continent. Toxic ideologies express and reinforce responses to social conflict that are generically human.
Mass support for despotic regimes has many sources. Without the economic upheavals that ruined much of the German middle class, the Nazis might well have remained a fringe movement. Undoubtedly there were many who looked to the Nazi regime for protection against economic insecurity. But it is a mistake to suppose that when people turn to tyrants, they do so despite the crimes that tyrants commit. Large numbers have admired tyrannical regimes and actively endorsed their crimes. If Nazism had not existed, something like it would surely have been invented in the chaos of interwar Europe.
* * *
When the west aligned itself with the USSR in the second world war, it was choosing the lesser of two evils – both of them evils of a radical kind. This was the view of Winston Churchill, who famously said he would “sup with the devil” if doing so would help destroy “that evil man” Hitler. Churchill’s candid recognition of the nature of the choice he made is testimony to how shallow the discourse of evil has since become. Today, no western politician could admit to making such a decision.
In his profound study On Compromise and Rotten Compromises, the Israeli philosopher Avishai Margalit distinguishes between regimes that rest on cruelty and humiliation, as many have done throughout history, and those that go further by excluding some human beings altogether from moral concern. Describing the latter as radically evil, he argues that Nazi Germany falls into this category. The distinction Margalit draws is not a quantitative one based on the numbers of victims, but categorical: Nazi racism created an immutable hierarchy in which there could be no common moral bonds. Margalit goes on to argue – surely rightly – that in allying itself with the Soviet Union in the struggle against Nazism, the west was making a necessary and justified moral compromise. But this was not because the Nazis were the greater evil, he suggests. For all its oppression, the Soviet Union offered a vision of the future that included all of humankind. Viewing most of the species as less than human, Nazism rejected morality itself.
There should be no doubt that the Nazis are in a class by themselves. No other regime has launched a project of systematic extermination that is comparable. From the beginning of the Soviet system there were some camps from which it was difficult to emerge alive. Yet at no time was there anything in the Soviet gulag akin to the Nazi death camps that operated at Sobibor and Treblinka. Contrary to some in post-communist countries who try to deny the fact, the Holocaust remains a unique crime. Judged by Margalit’s formula, however, the Soviet Union was also implicated in radical evil. The Soviet state implemented a policy of exclusion from society of “former persons” – a group that included those who lived off unearned income, clergy of all religions and tsarist functionaries – who were denied civic rights, prohibited from seeking public office and restricted in their access to the rationing system. Many died of starvation or were consigned to camps where they perished from overwork, undernourishment and brutal treatment.
Considered as a broad moral category, what Margalit defines as radical evil is not uncommon. The colonial genocide of the Herero people in German South-West Africa (now Namibia) at the start of the 20th century was implemented against a background of ersatz-scientific racist ideology that denied the humanity of Africans. (The genocide included the use of Hereros as subjects of medical experiments, conducted by doctors some of whom returned to Germany to teach physicians later implicated in experiments on prisoners in Nazi camps.) The institution of slavery in antebellum America and South African apartheid rested on a similar denial. A refusal of moral standing to some of those they rule is a feature of societies of widely different varieties in many times and places. In one form or another, denying the shared humanity of others seems to be a universal human trait.
Describing Isis’s behaviour as “psychopathic”, as David Cameron has done, represents the group as being more humanly aberrant than the record allows. Aside from the fact that it publicises them on the internet, Isis’s atrocities are not greatly different from those that have been committed in many other situations of acute conflict. To cite only a few of the more recent examples, murder of hostages, mass killings and systematic rape have been used as methods of warfare in the former Yugoslavia, Chechnya, Rwanda, and the Congo.
A campaign of mass murder is never simply an expression of psychopathic aggression. In the case of Isis, the ideology of Wahhabism has played an important role. Ever since the 1920s, the rulers of the Saudi kingdom have promoted this 18th-century brand of highly repressive and exclusionary Sunni Islam as part of the project of legitimating the Saudi state. More recently, Saudi sponsorship of Wahhabi ideology has been a response to the threat posed by the rise of Shia Iran. If the ungoverned space in which Isis operates has been created by the west’s exercises in regime change, the group’s advances are also a byproduct of the struggle for hegemony between Iran and the Saudis. In such conditions of intense geopolitical rivalry there can be no effective government in Iraq, no end to the Syrian civil war and no meaningful regional coalition against the self-styled caliphate.
But the rise of Isis is also part of a war of religion. Nothing is more commonplace than the assertion that religion is a tool of power, which ruling elites use to control the people. No doubt that’s often true. But a contrary view is also true: politics may be a continuation of religion by other means. In Europe religion was a primary force in politics for many centuries. When religion seemed to be in retreat, it renewed itself in political creeds – Jacobinism, nationalism and varieties of totalitarianism – that were partly religious in nature. Something similar is happening in the Middle East. Fuelled by movements that combine radical fundamentalism with elements borrowed from secular ideologies such as Leninism and fascism, conflict between Shia and Sunni communities looks set to continue for generations to come. Even if Isis is defeated, it will not be the last movement of its kind. Along with war, religion is not declining, but continuously mutating into hybrid forms.
Western intervention in the Middle East has been guided by a view of the world that itself has some of the functions of religion. There is no factual basis for thinking that something like the democratic nation-state provides a model on which the region could be remade. States of this kind emerged in modern Europe, after much bloodshed, but their future is far from assured and they are not the goal or end-point of modern political development. From an empirical viewpoint, any endpoint can only be an act of faith. All that can be observed is a succession of political experiments whose outcomes are highly contingent. Launched in circumstances in which states constructed under the aegis of western colonialism have broken down under the impact of more recent western intervention, the gruesome tyranny established by Isis will go down in history as one of these experiments.
The weakness of faith-based liberalism is that it contains nothing that helps in the choices that must be made between different kinds and degrees of evil. Given the west’s role in bringing about the anarchy in which the Yazidis, the Kurds and other communities face a deadly threat, non-intervention is a morally compromised option. If sufficient resources are available – something that cannot be taken for granted – military action may be justified. But it is hard to see how there can be lasting peace in territories where there is no functioning state. Our leaders have helped create a situation that their view of the world claims cannot exist: an intractable conflict in which there are no good outcomes.
"LA MARCHA DEL CAMBIO" DE "PODEMOS" EN MADRID
Podemos convierte la ‘marcha del cambio’ en un multitudinario mitin
Iglesias dice que es el momento del cambio y que Grecia ha demostrado que es posible
Francesco Manetto Madrid, DIARIO EL PAIS, MADRID, 31 ENE 2015
La dirección de Podemos ha convertido este sábado la movilización convocada en Madrid en un multitudinario mitin para intentar afianzar uno de sus principales mensajes políticos: “El cambio es posible”. Pablo Iglesias, Íñigo Errejón, Carolina Bescansa, Juan Carlos Monedero, Irene Montero y Luis Alegre se han dirigido a los miles de ciudadanos que abarrotaban la Puerta del Sol después de un recorrido de menos de un kilómetro, entre Cibeles y la plaza que simboliza los entusiasmos del 15-M. Según la delegación del Gobierno, el número de manifestantes alcanzó los 100.000. Los organizadores los elevaron a 300.000, mientras que los cálculos realizados por EL PAÍS, sostienen que la participación se cifró en 153.000 personas.
No obstante, el ambiente de la llamada Marcha del cambio ha sido menos festivo y más político que aquellas movilizaciones de mayo de 2011. La indignación y el hartazgo han sido dos de las notas dominantes.
Iglesias ha hilado un discurso propio de un mitin, con la vista puesta en las urnas, y reivindicando el derecho al sueño quijotesco. “Hoy soñamos para hacer nuestro sueño realidad en 2015. Este año comenzamos algo nuevo, este año es el año del cambio y vamos a ganar las elecciones al PP”, ha proclamado antes de esgrimir el ejemplo de Alexis Tsipras, líder de Syriza y ganador de las elecciones griegas del domingo pasado.
El secretario general de Podemos ha apelado al patriotismo. “Algunos dicen que España es una marca, creen que se puede comprar y vender. Malditos sean los que quieren convertir nuestra cultura en mercancía”, ha enfatizado. “Somos un país de ciudadanos, soñamos como Quijote pero nos tomamos muy en serio nuestros sueños”, ha agregado. "La soberanía no está en Davos", ha continuado Iglesias para contraponer a los poderosos que "viajen en jets" con los desahuciados, enfermos de hepatitis C, yayoflautas, estafados por las preferentes y otros colectivos que han sufrido de forma especial los embates de la crisis. "Han querido humillar a nuestro país con esa estafa que llaman austeridad", ha indicado al tiempo que ha abogado por "desplegar un plan de rescate ciudadano". También ha abordado el problema de la corrupción, un fenómeno que no ha limitado a quienes meten la mano en la caja: "Corrupción es que el 1% más rico tiene lo mismo que el 73% de los españoles" y que desde que comenzó la crisis "el número de ricos ha crecido al mismo ritmo que el de los ciudadanos en riesgo de pobreza".
Íñigo Errejón, número dos de la formación, ha resumido la filosofía de la marcha. “Demasiado hemos protestado sin que nadie escuchara. Venimos a celebrar que en el año 2015 la gente va a recuperar la soberanía y la gente va a recuperar nuestro país”. La idea era que los ciudadanos fueran los protagonistas, y por esta razón los líderes del partido no han encabezado la manifestación. Pero el peso político de los mensajes lanzados ha centrado el foco en el escenario. Juan Carlos Monedero, responsable del programa de Podemos, ha llamado a romper “los candados de la vieja política” y se ha dirigido a los simpatizantes. “La democracia no la trajo el Rey, no la trajo Suárez, no la trajo Fraga, la trajisteis vosotros. Hay que rescatar a la gente, no a los bancos. Tenemos la prueba de que este pueblo está despierto”, ha clamado.
Podemos ha medido sus fuerzas en las calles de Madrid con una movilización "por el cambio" que buscaba ser el primer hito de la formación de Iglesias en un año electoral que comienza el 22 de marzo con las elecciones autonómicas en Andalucía. En el acto con el que se ha cerrado la marcha, Iglesias ha destacado que ha llegado el momento del "cambio, porque el cambio es democracia" y ha puesto como ejemplo a Grecia: "Que ha hecho más en seis días" que los Gobiernos que hasta ahora había habido en Europa durante los últimos seis años.
Banderas republicanas y griegas y pancartas en las que se podían leer lemas como "políticos, el pueblo está despertando" o "se os acaba el tiempo ppsoe" han acompañado a los manifestantes, que también han coreado el "es ahora" que servía de lema de la marcha. "Tic, tac", ha sido otro de los lemas más sonado, en referencia a la cuenta atrás hasta un posible cambio de Gobierno.
Más de 260 autobuses han viajado a Madrid financiados por los círculos y los simpatizantes con la ayuda de un crowdfunding específico que anoche, según la organización, había recolectado 4.600 euros. Alrededor de 100 miembros de las asambleas locales han ofrecido, además, su coche particular para desplazarse a la capital y participar, en palabras de Iglesias, en un acontecimiento “histórico”, tal como lo definió al convocarla.
La marcha, anunciada semanas después de su constitución como partido político organizado, no tenía ningún objetivo instrumental declarado. No era una protesta ni estaba convocada para reclamar algo concreto al Gobierno. La dirección del partido había invitado a ciudadanos, simpatizantes y miembros de otras organizaciones políticas a manifestarse para demostrar que el cambio político es posible. Con la marcha, los dirigentes de Podemos pretendían lograr una fotografía que escenifique el protagonismo de los asistentes frente al de los responsables políticos.
Con información de J. Jiménez Gálvez y Virginia López.
Los círculos impulsan el éxito de la marcha del 31-E
En casa de Elías López, 29 años, la hora del cambio ha empezado este sábado a las cuatro y media de la madrugada. Este trabajador del Metal se ha levantado en Langreo (Asturias) para agarrar un coche y plantarse en Madrid más de cinco horas después. Junto a él, en el mismo vehículo, iban otras dos personas. “Nosotros hemos venido por nuestra parte para poder traer a un compañero que está en silla de ruedas”, afirma Elías, mientras sujeta una pancarta morada donde luce la marca Podemos y el nombre de su ciudad. Así que cuando el sol aún no había salido, los tres han ejercido de avanzadilla del círculo de su localidad, que ha partido después en dos autobuses rumbo a la capital.
Las organizaciones locales de la formación se han erigido este sábado como un pilar fundamental para lograr el éxito de la marcha. Llevan semanas preparando la cita, convertida en una verdadera demostración de fuerza del partido liderado por Pablo Iglesias. Según los datos de la organización, más de 260 autobuses han viajado hasta Madrid, financiados por los simpatizantes de Podemos y a través de crowdfunding. “Hemos superado las expectativas. A última hora aún me llamaba gente diciendo que quería venir y no tenía sitio”, continúa Elías, apostado junto a la Cibeles. A su lado desfilan los carteles traídos de todos los puntos de España: de Sevilla, Betanzos (A Coruña), Santa Pola (Alicante), Chiclana (Cádiz)... Y se pasean esos lemas heredados del 15-M, donde se combina indignación, sarcasmo y poesía: “La sonrisa ha cambiado de bando”.
Y en el centro de la capital también se escuchan las reivindicaciones: las de carácter nacional y las más locales. “Susana, Valderas, las mismas tijeras”, cantan los miembros de los círculos de Jerez, Málaga y Chiclana, mientras suben por la Castellana rumbo al punto de partida de la marcha. A pocos metros de ellos, se coloca Fernando Plaza, 44 años, comercial de sistemas de seguridad de datos. Él ha llegado desde Guadalajara, tras levantarse a las ocho de la mañana y juntarse, sobre las nueve y cuarto, con el resto de su círculo en la estación de tren. Allí han cogido el Cercanías y, durante el recorrido, se les han ido uniendo las agrupaciones locales de los municipios que componen el Corredor del Henares. Como habían preparado.
“Estamos muy ilusionados porque se nos ha sumado gente que no participa en los círculos y, también, personas de otros partidos”, apostilla Plaza, que destaca el papel clave que han jugado las redes sociales a la hora de organizar la cita. Los círculos se han coordinado a través de Facebook y de email. “Se necesitan manos para pegar carteles a las 21.00 en la plaza ”, instaba una integrante de la agrupación de Lavapiés a sus compañeros este mismo viernes. “Estábamos en contacto los círculos de toda la provincia. De hecho, los de Castilla La Mancha hemos quedado delante de la puerta del Retiro para bajar juntos a Cibeles”, añade Juan Luis, de 49 años, recién aterrizado en Madrid procedente de Numancia de la Sagra (Toledo). “Hay bastante más gente de la que esperaba. Está claro que es la hora del cambio”, remacha el hombre. Y los concentrados, situados a su lado, gritan: “Tic-tac, tic-tac”.
EL RASCACIELOS PERDIDO EN EL CENTRO DE ATENAS
La torre fantasma (o la desaparición del Estado griego)
Un edificio público abandonado acoge un albergue gestionado por un particular
Andrés Mourenza El Pireo, DIARIO EL PAIS, MADRID, 30 ENE 2015
El edificio, al que los vecinos conocen como “el rascacielos” por ser el segundo más alto de Grecia (84 metros), se alza monstruoso sobre los vendedores ambulantes, los puestos de fruta y las restantes construcciones del Pireo, absurdamente plantado en medio del guirigay de callejuelas que van a dar al puerto. Monstruoso y vacío. Por eso, algunos lo llaman “la torre fantasma”.
La asistencia oficial ya ha sido casi sustituida por la caridad
Su construcción comenzó en 1972, en plena dictadura pero la caída de los coroneles griegos dejó el edificio incompleto. En la década de 1980, las nuevas autoridades socialistas retomaron el proyecto que, al poco, volvieron a abandonar. Desde entonces, el Ayuntamiento del Pireo —que posee su titularidad, junto al Ministerio de Finanzas— ha convocado varios concursos internacionales para renovar el edificio, obteniendo fórmulas innovadoras y hasta osadas, como una que proponía convertir sus paredes en una cascada de agua marina. Sin embargo, aunque varios equipos de arquitectos se repartieron los premios de estos concursos, ningún proyecto se llevó a cabo por falta de presupuesto. Incluso su derribo resulta un gasto excesivo para las devastadas arcas municipales. Hoy, las planchas de vidrio se desprenden de la fachada, dejando al descubierto cicatrices de hormigón, y sólo las dos primeras plantas son utilizadas por algunos negocios.
En uno de los bajos se abre una puerta. Allá, en semipenumbra, decenas de personas se agolpan en una fila que se pierde escaleras arriba. Se reparten tyropitas (empanadas de queso) congeladas. “Pero sólo para aquellos que aún tienen electricidad en sus casas”, puntualiza el encargado, Ioannis Maronitis.
Este hombre, que preside un Club de Amigos de la Unesco, decidió el año pasado convertir sus actividades culturales en ayuda social. “Algo había que hacer para ayudar a los ciudadanos”, explica Maronitis. “Al principio repartíamos comida pero no nos parecía bien hacerlo como otras organizaciones que llegan con sus camiones a las plazas y sueltan todo lo que llevan”. Así pues, convirtió un local del abandonado edificio en una casa de acogida. Gracias a una subvención de la Unión Europea contrató a varias trabajadoras sociales y, con buena voluntad, convenció a diversas empresas para que donaran sus productos. Ahora cocinan para 150 personas cada día y reparten comida a otros tantos hogares. Además, ha llenado de literas una sala, en la que duermen 50 personas más.
“Vine aquí cuando ya no pude pagar el alquiler”, relata una desempleada
La crisis en Grecia ha golpeado duramente a la clase media. Los helenos han perdido casi el 40% de su poder adquisitivo, una de cada cuatro pymes ha tenido que echar el cierre, y asalariados y autónomos han tenido que hacer frente a un aumento sin precedentes de tasas e impuestos. Así, muchos no han podido resistir. “La gente que atendemos son personas como tú y como yo. Gente con ordenador portátil y smartphone”, subraya Maronitis antes de relatar la historia de un pequeño comerciante que, siendo donante de su proyecto, terminó ahogado por las deudas al fisco y la pérdida de clientes. Ahora tiene que acudir al comedor social cada día.
“Lo primero que siente esta gente es vergüenza. Muchos no saben a quién pedir ayuda, porque es una situación nueva para ellos”, agrega el presidente del Club de Amigos de la Unesco. Es el caso de Panayota, una mujer de 45 años, decoradora y ahora desempleada: “Cuando ya no pude pagar el alquiler vine aquí, porque me daba mucho miedo quedarme en la calle y que alguien me reconociera”.
Maronitis abre una puerta trasera, que da paso a la zona abandonada del edificio. Los escombros están siendo retirados, los suelos embaldosados y se están construyendo baños. Con ayuda de obreros voluntarios, se está escarbando en décadas de abandono y negligencia. ¿Cuenta con permiso? Maronitis se encoge de hombros: “No. ¿Pero qué voy a hacer?”. Tras el fin de la moratoria sobre los desahucios —una de las exigencias de la troika— “la situación está deteriorándose muy rápidamente”, sostiene: “El otro día nos llegó una mujer embarazada pidiendo techo, pero tenemos una lista de espera de 150 personas. Tuvimos que hacerle una cama con mantas y durmió tras una puerta”.
En los últimos años, el Estado ha desaparecido para amplios sectores de la población. La prueba son los tres millones de griegos que han perdido el derecho a la asistencia sanitaria o los cientos de miles que dependen de la caridad, de iniciativas sociales o de la ayuda vecinal para comer. Panayota no cree que la situación vaya a mejorar con el vuelco electoral. “No creo en ningún político, para mí son todos unos ladrones. Sólo creo en Dios y en él”, dice señalando a Maronitis. “Para mí, él es el único Gobierno”.
Friday, January 30, 2015
THE ETERNAL MUGABE
Politics
Mugabe appointed African Union chairman
Zimbabwean president made head of 54-nation bloc, prompting some to say it sends negative signal.
Zimbabwe's President Robert Mugabe has been appointed the new chairman of the 54-nation African Union.
Friday's announcement was made during the African Union's two-day heads of state summit at the organisation's headquarters in Ethiopia's capital, Addis Ababa.
The 90-year-old Mugabe, who has ruled his country since 1980, succeeds Mauritania's President Mohamed Ould Abdel Aziz.
"During my tenure as chair," he said, "I will deliberately provoke your thoughts to pay special attention to issues of infrastructure, value addition, agriculture and climate change".
The ascension of Mugabe, one of Africa's most divisive figures, to the rotating position has drawn criticism.
"Frankly I don't believe the elevation (Mugabe's appointment) is anything than symbolic," said Piers Pigou, Southern Africa project director for the International Crisis Group. "His elevation sends a negative signal of African solidarity with leaders who've misruled their countries."
Obert Gutu, a spokesman for the Zimbabwean opposition party Movement for Democratic Change (MDC), said that Mugabe "has trashed democracy in Zimbabwe and he and his party have ruined the economy".
"He lacks the political legitimacy to lead an Africa that should be looking to consolidate democracy and good governance."
Traditionally, the AU chairmanship is given to the leader of the country hosting the next summit, but exceptions have been made as in 2005 when it was the turn of Sudan's Omar al-Bashir but African leaders bowed to international pressures in the uproar over killings in Darfur.
They passed over al-Bashir and instead kept Nigeria's Olusegun Obasanjo for a second year.
Zimbabwe, a once-prosperous nation of 13 million people in southern Africa, has struggled since Mugabe's government began seizing farms owned by Caucasian people in 2000.
The president is also accused of using widespread violence to win several disputed elections, according to human rights groups. The country had suffered hyperinflation until it abandoned its currency for the US dollar in 2009.
Source: Agencies
INSOLITA IRRUPCION DE UN HACKER EN LA TV PUBLICA HOLANDESA
El asalto a la televisión estatal abre un debate sobre la seguridad en Holanda
Tarik Zahzah, el joven de 19 años que irrumpió armado en los estudios la noche del jueves, dijo estar apoyado por piratas informáticos
Isabel Ferrer La Haya, DIARIO EL PAIS, MADRID 30 ENE 2015
El asalto fallido contra la televisión pública holandesa (NOS), perpetrado la noche del pasado jueves por Tarik Zahzah, un joven de 19 años, estudiante de Química, que irrumpió armado en los estudios, ha abierto un debate sobre las medidas de seguridad adoptadas para proteger a la prensa. Desde el atentado sufrido el pasado 7 de enero por el semanario galo Charlie Hebdo, el Gobierno holandés había reforzado la vigilancia en torno a los medios escritos y audiovisuales. La sede de la televisión nacional se encuentra en la ciudad de Hilversum (centro del país), y aunque la policía actuó con diligencia y no hubo víctimas, el alcalde, Pieter Broertjes, ha reconocido que “el despliegue no ha funcionado y los fallos deben ser subsanados”. Se da la circunstancia de que el edil fue también periodista y dirigió hasta 2010 el rotativo De Volkskrant, una de las cabeceras de prestigio del país.
En 2002, el político antimusulmán holandés Pim Fortuyn fue asesinado en el aparcamiento de Media Park. Es el mismo complejo que alberga los estudios de la televisión pública y privada holandesa asaltados el jueves por Zahzah.
De momento, la policía investiga los antecedentes del detenido, que portaba una pistola falsa con silenciador y amenazó al portero para forzar su entrada en el edificio. El guardia de seguridad que le acompañó, le dejó, eso sí, en un estudio vacío. Desde allí estuvo negociando con los cámaras el discurso que pretendía leer. Pasados unos diez minutos, cuatro agentes entraron en el plató y le redujeron. La escena fue grabada en directo y transmitida luego por la propia NOS una vez recuperada la transmisión normal.
Durante el secuestro, el joven afirmó que debía “contarle al país una serie de cosas de interés internacional”. “Hemos sido contratados por los Servicios de Inteligencia y hemos visto cosas que ponen en duda el curso tomado por esta sociedad”, dijo. También aseguró que le apoyaba “un grupo de 98 piratas informáticos listos para lanzar un ciberataque”. En distintos puntos del territorio holandés habrían colocado, además, “ocho grandes bombas con material radioactivo” listas para ser activadas. Los artificieros no hallaron rastro de los supuestos explosivos.
Tanto los agentes como la fiscalía guardan silencio sobre los motivos de Zahzah, pero en las redes sociales sus compañeros de estudios en la Universidad Técnica de Delft le describen como “un chico callado e inteligente que llevaba varias semanas sin aparecer”. Los informativos televisivos indican que es hijo de padre egipcio y madre holandesa, divorciados. El joven residía con su progenitora cerca de La Haya.
GRECIA ALINEADA CON RUSIA?
Las relaciones con Rusia provocan la primera tormenta política sobre Grecia
Los servicios de seguridad europeos escrutan la cercanía de varios ministros al Kremlin
María Antonia Sánchez-Vallejo ATENAS (ENVIADA ESPECIAL), DIARIO EL PAIS, MADRID, 29 ENE 2015
Colosal error de cálculo o as en la manga a la hora de defender estrategias de negociación en Europa. Entre estos dos extremos basculan las explicaciones que se dan en Atenas al primer movimiento diplomático del Gobierno de Alexis Tsipras, decididamente pro-Rusia, lo que ha desatado la primera tormenta política sobre el nuevo Ejecutivo.
El lunes, nada más tomar posesión como primer ministro, la oficina de Tsipras lamentó que la Unión Europea hubiera incluido a Grecia sin consulta previa en un comunicado que instaba a Moscú a aplicar los acuerdos de alto el fuego de Minsk en el este de Ucrania, y amenazaba con nuevas sanciones. El martes, el número tres de Exteriores dijo que “Grecia no está de acuerdo con el espíritu de las sanciones”, mientras el mismo ministro de Defensa, Panos Kamenos —líder del partido de derecha nacionalista que apoya a Syriza—, abría la puerta “a una mayor colaboración con Rusia en la compra de armamento”. El miércoles, el superministro de Reconstrucción Productiva y Energía, Panayiotis Lafazanis —único representante en el Gobierno de la facción más izquierdista de Syriza—, declaró: “Estamos contra el embargo impuesto a Rusia”.
A todo ello se suma un gesto no por simbólico menos importante. Hasta ahora, el primer embajador que se reunía con el nuevo primer ministro griego era el norteamericano (EE UU tiene una importante base militar en el país, en la isla de Creta; vital para la cobertura del Mediterráneo oriental). Tsipras rompió con esa tradición el lunes, al elegir al embajador ruso en Atenas, Andrei Maslov, para su primer contacto diplomático. Nada pudo entusiasmar más a los medios rusos, unánimes en los titulares: “Grecia da una lección de democracia a Bruselas” o “Syriza es el nuevo aliado de Rusia”. Dos días después, el presidente Barack Obama llamaba por teléfono a Tsipraspara para reiterarle la “tradicional alianza” entre ambos países.
Las relaciones de Grecia con Rusia vienen de lejos, pero nunca habían alcanzado este protagonismo. El año pasado, durante su gira internacional como candidato a presidente de la Comisión Europea, Tsipras visitó en mayo Moscú, donde clamó contra “la presencia de neonazis en [el Gobierno de] Kiev” —el mensaje oficial de los prorrusos de Ucrania y de Moscú— y denunció las sanciones contra el Kremlin. En el viaje le acompañaba su actual ministro de Exteriores, Nikos Kotziás, procedente del Partido Comunista de Grecia (KKE, afín a Moscú). El nacionalista Kotziás mantiene una buena relación con el también nacionalista radical Alexander Duguin, uno de los ideólogos del eurasianismo —y próximo a Vladímir Putin—, a quien ha invitado a la Universidad del Pireo, donde Kotziás era profesor de Relaciones Internacionales.
Pero no es el único que frecuenta Moscú, también lo ha hecho Panos Kamenos. Tanto este como Kotziás han sido cortejados por el círculo más íntimo del Kremlin, donde figuran algunos de los nombres que tienen prohibido viajar a la UE y EE UU por las sanciones. Estas relaciones peligrosas —Dugin es muy conocido entre los radicales populistas europeos— están bajo la lupa de los servicios de seguridad europeos.
De todo lo dicho se desprende “la preocupación” con que el presidente del Parlamento Europeo, Martin Schulz, visitó este jueves Atenas. En la reunión que mantuvo con Tsipras se abordaron “todos los temas europeos”, incluidas la crisis de Ucrania y la postura hacia Rusia, el único asunto en el que, según fuentes de Exteriores, Tsipras y Schulz no se pusieron de acuerdo. “Estamos trabajando para evitar una ruptura de la UE y Rusia”, apuntó por su parte Kotziás en Bruselas.
“Me sorprende muy negativamente esta actitud del Gobierno hacia Rusia, porque aleja a Grecia de Europa en un momento crítico. Antes de que hayan empezado las negociaciones con la troika, el Gobierno de Tsipras ya ha creado una seria divergencia”, subraya el profesor Dimitri Sotirópulos, de la Universidad de Atenas. “No creo que Grecia vaya a cambiar sustancialmente su discurso pero sí va a utilizar este asunto como herramienta para sus negociaciones. Tsipras quiere ampliar su agenda internacional y abrir otros frentes para poder negociar con Bruselas; algo así como decirle a la UE "ya tienen bastantes problemas con nosotros, pero podemos crearles más", explica Kostas Pliakos, editor de Internacional del diario Eleutheros Typos. "Las relaciones con Rusia son un tema tabú, porque EE UU aún está muy presente en este país; pero Rusia, por cuestiones estratégicas y energéticas [el trazado del gasoducto alternativo a South Stream], interesa mucho más", concluye.
Thursday, January 29, 2015
RUSSIA OUT OF SWIFT?
What Would Exclusion From Payment System SWIFT Mean For Russia?
By Howard Amos
THE MOSCOW TIMES, Jan. 28 2015 21:34
Discussions among European leaders about new sanctions on Moscow have again raised fears that the SWIFT international payments system might be cut off, a move that experts warn would wreak financial havoc on Russia.
The Society for Worldwide Interbank Financial Telecommunication, or SWIFT, is a cornerstone of the world's financial architecture and integral to the functioning of Russia's stock exchanges and its Central Depositary, as well its banks and companies.
In 2012, Western countries forced the Belgium-based payments system to cut ties with Iran, a move credited with bringing Tehran to the negotiating table over its nuclear program.
"Before SWIFT they used telexes, which are now in museums," said Vasily Solodkov, head of the Banking Institute at the Higher School of Economics.
"Russia used to use stallions and sticks as money and we could return to that, but why?" he asked.
Under Discussion
Amid surging violence in eastern Ukraine fueled by Kremlin support for a separatist rebellion, European foreign ministers are currently considering what to include in a new round of sanctions.
The new restrictions are likely to be signed off by EU leaders at a Feb. 12 summit.
The measures under discussion include disconnecting Russia from SWIFT, according to a report in Russian newspaper Kommersant on Monday citing unnamed sources at the U.S. State Department.
Using the Belgium-based financial messaging service as retaliation against Russia for its role in Ukraine was floated last summer by Western officials and caused widespread alarm in Moscow.
'Unlimited' Reaction
In an apparent attempt to head off discussion of the topic, Russian officials have warned in recent days that any move on its membership in SWIFT would elicit a strong response.
"They have again begun discussions about restrictions on the SWIFT payment system," Prime Minister Dmitry Medvedev told a government meeting Monday, Russian state news agency RIA Novosti reported. "If such a decision is taken our economic reaction, and reaction in other spheres, will be unlimited."
Predictions of dire consequences were also heard from Andrei Kostin, the head of VTB Bank, Russia's second largest lender, during the Davos economic forum last week.
"It will lead to a serious deterioration of the international relationship between the East and the West," Kostin told an audience of investors, officials and journalists Friday, according to the Russian economic news agency Prime.
He added that formal diplomatic relations between the United States and Russia could well be severed should Russia be disconnected from SWIFT.
SWIFT in Russia
The core of SWIFT's work is a secure financial messaging service that communicates payment orders to be settled at correspondent accounts — accounts that one financial institution holds with another financial institution.
The network has become key to the functioning of Russia's financial system since the first bank began to use the service in 1989.
About 360,000 such messages are sent daily, making Russia the second most prolific user of SWIFT in the world, the head of SWIFT in Russia, Roman Chernov, told a conference last year, according to RIA Novosti. Over 600 Russian financial institutions use SWIFT, which saw a 40 percent growth in its traffic in 2014, he said.
Back '20 or 30 years'
An exclusion from SWIFT would not cause the Russian financial system to break down, but it would generate severe complications, particularly with international payments, analysts said.
"It will be a step backwards of 20 or 30 years," said Sergei Grigoryan, the head of the analysis department at the Association of Russian Banks.
Domestic payments could be clumsily re-routed via the Central Bank, but there would be limited options for international payments. Over 90 percent of the total payments currently being made by Russian banks to foreign destinations are made via SWIFT, according to Grigoryan.
Other possible options for replacing SWIFT include Internet transfers — analysts said the security risks were too high — or channeling money through accounts at foreign banks, adding an extra link in the chain of transfer.
"There are no other available systems, clients will have to open correspondent accounts with Chinese banks and work through them," said the Higher School of Economics' Vasily Solodkov.
"Any intermediary is extra costs and extra time."
Contact the author at h.amos@imedia.ru
INTERVIEW WITH BASHAR AL-ASSAD
Syria's President Speaks
A Conversation With Bashar al-Assad
FOREIGN AFFAIRS, JANUARY 2015.
The civil war in Syria will soon enter its fifth year, with no end in sight. On January 20, Foreign Affairs managing editor Jonathan Tepperman met with Syrian President Bashar al-Assad in Damascus to discuss the conflict in an exclusive interview.
I would like to start by asking you about the war. It has now been going on for almost four years, and you know the statistics: more than 200,000 people have been killed, a million wounded, and more than three million Syrians have fled the country, according to the UN. Your forces have also suffered heavy casualties. The war cannot go on forever. How do you see the war ending?
All wars anywhere in the world have ended with a political solution, because war itself is not the solution; war is one of the instruments of politics. So you end with a political solution. That’s how we see it. That is the headline.
You don’t think that this war will end militarily?
No. Any war ends with a political solution.
Your country is increasingly divided into three ministates: one controlled by the government, one controlled by ISIS and Jabhat al-Nusra, and one controlled by the more secular Sunni and Kurdish opposition. How will
you ever put Syria back together again?
First of all, this image is not accurate, because you cannot talk about ministates without talking about the people who live within those states. The Syrian people are still with the unity of Syria; they still support the government. The factions you refer to control some areas, but they move from one place to another—they are not stable, and there are no clear lines of separation between different forces. Sometimes they mingle with each other and they move. But the main issue is about the population. The population still supports the state regardless of whether they support it politically or not; I mean they support the state as the representative of the unity of Syria. So as long as you have the Syrian people believing in unity, any government and any official can unify Syria. If the people are divided into two, three, or four groups, no one can unify this country. That’s how we see it.
You really think that the Sunnis and the Kurds still believe in a unified Syria?
If you go to Damascus now, you can see all the different, let’s say, colors of our society living together. So the divisions in Syria are not based on sectarian or ethnic grounds. And even in the Kurdish area you are talking about, we have two different colors: we have Arabs more than Kurds. So it’s not about the ethnicity; it’s about the factions that control certain areas militarily.
A year ago, both the opposition and foreign governments were insisting that you step down as a precondition to talks. They no longer are. Diplomats are now looking for an interim settlement that would allow you to keep a role. Just today, The New York Times had an article that talked about increased U.S. support for the Russian and UN peace initiatives. The article refers to “the West’s quiet retreat from its demands that Syria’s president step down immediately.” Given this shift in the Western attitude, are you now more open to a negotiated solution to the conflict that leads to a political transition?
From the very beginning, we were open. We engaged in dialogue with every party in Syria. Party doesn’t mean political party; it could be a party, a current, or some personality; it could be any political entity. We changed the constitution, and we are open to anything. But when you want to do something, it’s not about the opposition or about the government; it’s about the Syrians. Sometimes you might have a majority that doesn’t belong to any side. So when you want to make a change, as long as you’re talking about a national problem, every Syrian must have a say in it. When you have a dialogue, it’s not between the government and the opposition; it’s between the different Syrian parties and entities. That’s how we look at dialogue. This is first. Second, whatever solution you want to make, at the end you should go back to the people through a referendum, because you’re talking about the constitution, changing the political system, whatever. You have to go back to the Syrian people. So engaging in a dialogue is different from taking decisions, which is not done by the government or the opposition.
So you’re saying that you would not agree to any kind of political transition unless there is a referendum that supports it?
Exactly. The people should make the decision, not anyone else.
Does that mean there’s no room for negotiations?
No, we will go to Russia, we will go to these negotiations, but there is another question here: Who do you negotiate with? As a government, we have institutions, we have an army, and we have influence, positive or negative, in any direction, at any time. Whereas the people we are going to negotiate with, who do they represent? That’s the question. When you talk about the opposition, it has to have meaning. The opposition in general has to have representatives in the local administration, in the parliament, in institutions; they have to have grass roots to represent on their behalf. In the current crisis, you have to ask about the opposition’s influence on the ground. You have to go back to what the rebels announced publicly, when they said many times that the opposition doesn’t represent us—they have no influence. If you want to talk about fruitful dialogue, it’s going to be between the government and those rebels. There is another point. Opposition means national; it means working for the interests of the Syrian people. It cannot be an opposition if it’s a puppet of Qatar or Saudi Arabia or any Western country, including the United States, paid from the outside. It should be Syrian. We have a national opposition. I’m not excluding it; I’m not saying every opposition is not legitimate. But you have to separate the national and the puppets. Not every dialogue is fruitful.
Does that mean you would not want to meet with opposition forces that are backed by outside countries?
We are going to meet with everyone. We don’t have conditions.
No conditions?
No conditions.
You would meet with everyone?
Yes, we’re going to meet with everyone. But you have to ask each one of them: Who do you represent? That’s what I mean.
If I’m correct, the deputy of the UN representative Staffan de Mistura is in Syria now. They’re proposing as an interim measure a cease-fire and a freeze in Aleppo. Would you agree to that?
Yes, of course. We implemented that before de Mistura was assigned to his mission. We implemented it in another city called Homs, another big city. We implemented it on smaller scales in different, let’s say, suburbs, villages, and so on, and it succeeded. So the idea is very good, but it depends on the details. De Mistura came to Syria with headlines. We agreed upon certain headlines, and now we are waiting for him to bring a detailed plan or schedule—A-to-Z plan, let’s say. We are discussing this with his deputy.
In the past, you insisted as a precondition for a cease-fire that the rebels lay down their weapons first, which obviously from their perspective was a nonstarter. Is that still your precondition?
We choose different scenarios or different reconciliations. In some areas, we allowed them to leave inhabited areas in order to prevent casualties among civilians. They left these areas with their armaments. In other areas, they gave up their armaments and they left. It depends on what they offer and what you offer.
I’m not clear on your answer. Would you insist that they lay down their weapons?
No, no. That’s not what I mean. In some areas, they left the area with their armaments—that is what I mean.
Are you optimistic about the Moscow talks?
What is going on in Moscow is not negotiations about the solution; it’s only preparations for the conference.
So talks about talks?
Exactly—how to prepare for the talks. So when you start talking about the conference, what are the principles of the conference? I’ll go back to the same point. Let me be frank: some of the groups are puppets, as I said, of other countries. They have to implement that agenda, and I know that many countries, like France, for example, do not have any interest in making that conference succeed. So they will give them orders to make them fail. You have other personalities who only represent themselves; they don’t represent anyone in Syria. Some of them never lived in Syria, and they know nothing about the country. Of course, you have some other personalities who work for the national interest. So when you talk about the opposition as one entity, who’s going to have influence on the other? That is the question. It’s not clear yet. So optimism would be an exaggeration. I wouldn’t say I’m pessimistic. I would say we have hope, in every action.
It seems that in recent days, the Americans have become more supportive of the Moscow talks. Initially, they were not. Yesterday, Secretary of State Kerry said something to suggest that the United States hopes that the talks go forward and that they are successful.
They always say things, but it’s about what they’re going to do. And you know there’s mistrust between the Syrians and the U.S. So just wait till we see what will happen at the conference.
So what do you see as the best way to strike a deal between all the different parties in Syria?
It’s to deal directly with the rebels, but you have two different kinds of rebels. Now, the majority are al Qaeda, which is ISIS and al-Nusra, with other similar factions that belong to al Qaeda but are smaller. Now, what’s left, what Obama called the “fantasy,” what he called the “moderate opposition”—it’s not an opposition; they are rebels. Most of them joined al Qaeda, and some of them rejoined the army recently. During the last week, a lot of them left those groups and came to the army.
Are these former defectors who came back?
Yes, they came back to the army. They said, “We don’t want to fight anymore.” So what’s left of those is very little. At the end, can you negotiate with al Qaeda, and others? They are not ready to negotiate; they have their own plan. The reconciliation that we started and Mr. de Mistura is going to continue is the practical solution on the ground. This is the first point. Second, you have to implement the Security Council resolution, no. 2170, on al-Nusra and ISIS, which was issued a few months ago, and this resolution is very clear about preventing anyone from supporting these factions militarily, financially, or logistically. Yet this is what Turkey, Saudi Arabia, and Qatar are still doing. If it’s not implemented, we cannot talk about a real solution, because there will be obstacles as long as they spend money. So this is how we can start. Third, the Western countries should remove the umbrella still referred to by some as “supporting the moderate opposition.” They know we have mainly al Qaeda, ISIS, and al-Nusra.
Would you be prepared to take any confidence-building measures in advance of the talks? For example, prisoner exchanges, or ending the use of barrel bombs, or releasing political prisoners, in order to build confidence on the other side that you’re willing to negotiate in good faith?
It’s not a personal relationship; it’s about mechanisms. In politics, you only talk about mechanisms. You don’t have to trust someone to do something. If you have a clear mechanism, you can reach a result. That is what the people want. So the question is, what is the mechanism that we can put in place? This takes us back to the same question: Who are they? What do they represent? What’s their influence? What is the point of building trust with people with no influence?
When two parties come together, it’s often very useful for one party to show the other that it’s really interested in making progress by taking steps unilaterally to try and bring down the temperature. The measures that I described would have that effect.
You have something concrete, and that is reconciliation. People gave up their armaments; we gave them amnesty; they live normal lives. It is a real example. So this is a measure of confidence. On the other hand, what is the relation between that opposition and the prisoners? There’s no relation. They are not their prisoners anyway. So it is completely a different issue.
So have you offered amnesty to fighters?
Yes, of course, and we did it many times.
How many—do you have numbers?
I don’t have the precise numbers, but it’s thousands, not hundreds, thousands of militants.
And are you prepared to say to the entire opposition that if you lay down your weapons, you will be safe?
Yes, I said it publicly in one of my speeches.
And how can you guarantee their safety? Because they have reasons to distrust your government.
You cannot. But at the end, let’s say that if more than 50 percent succeed, more than 50 percent in such circumstances would be a success. So that’s how. Nothing is absolute. You have to expect some negative aspects, but they are not the major aspects.
Let me change the subject slightly. Hezbollah, Iran’s Quds Force, and Iranian-trained Shiite militias are all now playing significant roles in the fight against rebels here in Syria. Given this involvement, are you worried about Iran’s influence over the country? After all, Iraq or even Lebanon shows that once a foreign military power becomes established in a country, it can be very difficult to get them to leave again.
Iran is an important country in this region, and it was influential before the crisis. Its influence is not related to the crisis; it’s related to its role, its political position in general. When you talk about influence, various factors make a certain country influential. In the Middle East, in our region, you have the same society, the same ideology, many similar things, the same tribes, going across borders. So if you have influence on one factor, your influence will be crossing the border. This is part of our nature. It’s not related to the conflict. Of course, when there is conflict and anarchy, another country will be more influential in your country. When you don’t have the will to have a sovereign country, you will have that influence. Now, the answer to your question is, Iran doesn’t have any ambitions in Syria, and as a country, as Syria, we would never allow any country to influence our sovereignty. We wouldn’t accept it, and the Iranians don’t want it either. We allow cooperation. But if you allowed any country to have influence, why not allow the Americans to have influence in Syria? That’s the problem with the Americans and with the West: they want to have influence without cooperation.
Let me just push you a little bit further. Last week, a commander of the Iranian Revolutionary Guard Corps, of their airspace command, Hajizadeh, said in an interview in Der Spiegel that Iran’s supreme leader has ordered his forces to build and operate missile plants in Syria. That suggests that Iran is playing a greater role and doing it on its own.
No, no. Playing a role through cooperation is different from playing a role through hegemony.
So everything that Iran is doing ... ?
Of course, in full cooperation with the Syrian government, and that’s always the case.
Now Iran is one thing to deal with because it’s a country. But you also have militias, which are substate actors and therefore more complicated. One problem with working with these groups is that, unlike a government, they may not be willing to cooperate and it’s not always clear who to talk to. Are you worried about your ability to control these forces and to rein them in if you need to? And, a related question, this week, Israel attacked Hezbollah forces in the Golan Heights, and the Israelis suggest that they attacked them because Hezbollah was planning an attack on Israel from Syrian territory. Doesn’t this also highlight the danger of allowing militias with their own agendas, not necessarily your agenda, to come into the war?
Do you mean Syrian, or any other militias in general?
I mean especially Hezbollah and the Iraqi Shiite militias.
It’s natural to say that only the institutions of the government, of the state, let’s say, are the guarantee for stability and to put things in order. Any other factor that would play a role in parallel with the government could be positive, could be good in certain circumstances, but it will always have side effects, negative side effects. That is a natural thing. And having militias who support the government is a side effect of the war. You have it, but you’re going to try to control this side effect. Nobody will feel more comfortable than if they are dealing with government institutions, including the army and the police and so on. But talking about what happened in Quneitra is something completely different. Never has an operation against Israel happened through the Golan Heights since the cease-fire in 1974. It has never happened. So for Israel to allege that there was a plan for an operation—that’s a far cry from reality, just an excuse, because they wanted to assassinate somebody from Hezbollah.
But the Israelis have been very careful since the war began to not get involved except when they felt their interests were directly threatened.
That’s not true, because they’ve been attacking Syria now for nearly two years, without any reason.
But in each case, they say it’s because Hezbollah was being given weapons from Iran through Syria.
They attacked army positions. What is the relation between Hezbollah and the army?
Those were cases where the army accidentally shelled ...
Those are false allegations.
So what do you think Israel’s agenda is?
They are supporting the rebels in Syria. It’s very clear. Because whenever we make advances in some place, they make an attack in order to undermine the army. It’s very clear. That’s why some in Syria joke: “How can you say that al Qaeda doesn’t have an air force? They have the Israeli air force.”
To return to my question about militias, do you feel confident that you’ll be able to control them when this war ends? Because after all, to have effective sovereignty, any government has to have what’s called a monopoly of force, and that’s very hard when you have these independent armed groups running around.
That’s self-evident: the state cannot fulfill its commitment to society if it’s not the only master of order.
But you see in Iraq how hard that is. It is now very difficult for the government to control all the Shiite militias that were empowered during the war.
There’s a very important reason in Iraq: it’s because Paul Bremer didn’t create a constitution for the state; he created one for factions. Whereas in Syria, why did the army stand fast for four years in spite of this embargo, this war, tens of countries around the world attacking Syria and supporting the rebels? Because it has a real constitution, a real, secular constitution. That is the reason. In Iraq, it is sectarian. When you talk about a sectarian constitution, it’s not a constitution.
But what will you do about these militias when the war ends?
Things should go back to normal, like before the war.
And you’re confident ... ?
Yes. We don’t have any other option. That is the role of the government. This is self-evident.
What impact are falling oil prices having on the war in Syria? After all, your two closest allies and supporters, Iran and Russia, are very dependent on oil prices, and they have suffered tremendous damage to their budgets in recent months as the price of oil has fallen. Do you worry about their ability to continue helping you?
No, because they don’t give us money, so it has no effect on Syria. Even if they are going to help us, it would be in the form of loans. We’re like any other country: we have loans. Sometimes we pay; sometimes we take loans.
But their military support costs them money, and if they have less money to pay for their own militaries, won’t that become a problem?
No, because when you pay for armaments or any other goods, you don’t have a problem.
So you’re saying everything you’re getting from the Russians and the Iranians ... ?
So far, we haven’t seen any changes, so what the influence is on them, I cannot answer.
You’ve said in past interviews that you and your government have made mistakes in the course of the war. What are those mistakes? Is there anything that you regret?
Every government, every person, makes mistakes, so that’s again self-evident; it’s a given. But if you want to talk about political mistakes, you have to ask yourself, what are the major decisions that you took since the crisis started? We took three main decisions: First of all, to be open to all dialogue. Second, we changed the constitution and the law according to what many in the opposition were saying, allegedly, that this is the reason of the crisis. Third, we took the decision to defend our country, to defend ourself, to fight terrorists. So I don’t think those three decisions can be described as wrong or mistakes. If you want to talk about practice, any official in any place can make mistakes, but there’s a difference between practice mistakes and policy mistakes.
Can you describe some of the practical mistakes?
I would have to go back to officials on the ground; there’s nothing in my mind. I would rather talk about policies.
Do you feel there have been any policy mistakes that you’re responsible for?
I mentioned the major decisions.
But you said those are not mistakes.
To defend the country from terrorism? If I wanted to say that it’s a mistake, then to be correct would be to support the terrorists.
I’m just wondering if there’s anything you did that you wish in retrospect you had done differently.
Regarding these three main decisions, they were correct, and I am confident about this.
In terms of lower-level practical mistakes, are people being held accountable, say, for human rights abuses, for the excessive use of force, or the indiscriminate targeting of civilians, those kinds of things?
Yes. Some people were detained because they breached the law in that regard, and that happens of course in such circumstances.
In terms of their treatment of civilians or protesters, is that what you’re referring to?
Yes, during the protests at the very beginning, yes.
Since the United States began its air campaign against the Islamic State, Syria and the United States have become strange kinds of partners and are effectively cooperating in that aspect of the fight. Do you see the potential for increased cooperation with the United States?
Yes, the potential is definitely always there, because we’ve been talking about or asking for international cooperation against terrorism for 30 years. But this potential needs will. The question that we have is, how much will does the United States have to really fight terrorism on the ground? So far, we haven’t seen anything concrete in spite of the attacks on ISIS in northern Syria. There’s nothing concrete. What we’ve seen so far is just, let’s say, window-dressing, nothing real. Since the beginning of these attacks, ISIS has gained more land in Syria and Iraq.
What about the air strikes on Kobani? Those have been effective in slowing down ISIS.
Kobani is a small city, with about 50,000 inhabitants. It’s been more than three months since the beginning of the attacks, and they haven’t finished. Same areas, same al Qaeda factions occupying them—the Syrian army liberated in less than three weeks. It means they’re not serious about fighting terrorism.
So are you saying you want greater U.S. involvement in the war against ISIS?
It’s not about greater involvement by the military, because it’s not only about the military; it’s about politics. It’s about how much the United States wants to influence the Turks. Because if the terrorists can withstand the air strikes for this period, it means that the Turks keep sending them armaments and money. Did the United States put any pressure on Turkey to stop the support of al Qaeda? They didn’t; they haven’t. So it’s not only about military involvement. This is first. Second, if you want to talk about the military involvement, American officials publicly acknowledge that without troops on the ground, they cannot achieve anything concrete. Which troops on the grounds are you depending on?
So are you suggesting there should be U.S. troops on the ground?
Not U.S. troops. I’m talking about the principle, the military principle. I’m not saying American troops. If you want to say I want to make war on terrorism, you have to have troops on the ground. The question you have to ask the Americans is, which troops are you going to depend on? Definitely, it has to be Syrian troops. This is our land; this is our country. We are responsible. We don’t ask for American troops at all.
So what would you like to see from the United States? You mentioned more pressure on Turkey ...
Pressure on Turkey, pressure on Saudi Arabia, pressure on Qatar to stop supporting the rebels. Second, to make legal cooperation with Syria and start by asking permission from our government to make such attacks. They didn’t, so it’s illegal.
I’m sorry, I’m not clear on that point. You want them to make legal ... ?
Of course, if you want to make any kind of action in another country, you ask their permission.
I see. So a formal agreement between Washington and Damascus to allow for air strikes?
The format we can discuss later, but you start with permission. Is it an agreement? Is it a treaty? That’s another issue.
And would you be willing to take steps to make cooperation easier with Washington?
With any country that is serious about fighting terrorism, we are ready to make cooperation, if they’re serious.
What steps would you be prepared to make to show Washington that you’re willing to cooperate?
I think they are the ones who have to show the will. We are already fighting on the ground; we don’t have to show that.
The United States is currently training 5,000 Syrian fighters who are scheduled to enter Syria in May. Now, U.S. General John Allen has been very careful to say that these troops will not be directed at the Syrian government, but will be focused on ISIS alone. What will you do when these troops enter the country? Will you allow them to enter? Will you attack them?
Any troops that don’t work in cooperation with the Syrian army are illegal and should be fought. That’s very clear.
Even if this brings you into conflict with the United States?
Without cooperation with Syrian troops, they are illegal, and are puppets of another country, so they are going to be fought like any other illegal militia fighting against the Syrian army. But that brings another question, about those troops. Obama said that they are a fantasy. How did fantasy become reality?
I think with this kind of training program.
But you can’t make extremism moderate.
There are still some moderate members of the opposition. They are weaker and weaker all the time, but I think the U.S. government is trying very carefully to ensure that the fighters it trains are not radicals.
But the question is, why is the moderate opposition—if you call them opposition; we call them rebels—why are they weaker and weaker? They are still weaker because of developments in the Syrian crisis. Bringing 5,000 from the outside will make most of them defect and join ISIS and other groups, which is what happened during the last year. So that’s why I said it’s still illusory. It is not the 5,000 that are illusory but the idea itself that is illusory.
Part of what makes Washington so reluctant to cooperate with you more formally are the allegations of serious human rights abuses by your government. These allegations aren’t just from the U.S. government; they are also from the UN Human Rights Commission, the independent Special Investigative Commission of the UN. You are familiar with these allegations, I’m sure. They include denying access for relief groups to refugee camps, indiscriminate bombing of civilian targets, photo evidence provided by the defector code-named Caesar, who made a presentation to the U.S. Congress showing terrible torture and abuse in Syrian prisons. Are you prepared to take action on these issues in order to make cooperation with the United States easier?
The funny thing about this administration is that it’s the first one in history to build its evaluation and later decisions on social media. We call it a social media administration, which is not politics. None of these allegations you mentioned are concrete; all of them are allegations. You can bring photos from anyone and say this is torture. Who took the pictures? Who is he? Nobody knows. There is no verification of any of this evidence, so it’s all allegations without evidence.
But Caesar’s photos have been looked at by independent European investigators.
No, no. It’s funded by Qatar, and they say it’s an anonymous source. So nothing is clear or proven. The pictures are not clear which person they show. They’re just pictures of a head, for example, with some skulls. Who said this is done by the government, not by the rebels? Who said this is a Syrian victim, not someone else? For example, photos published at the beginning of the crisis were from Iraq and Yemen. Second, the United States in particular and the West in general are in no position to talk about human rights. They are responsible for most of the killings in the region, especially the United States after getting into Iraq, and the United Kingdom after invading Libya, and the situation in Yemen, and what happened in Egypt in supporting the Muslim Brotherhood, and terrorism in Tunisia. All these problems happened because of the United States. They were the first ones to trample international law and Security Council resolutions, not us.
That may or may not be true, but those are separate issues, and that does not absolve your government of responsibility.
No, no. The United States accused, so we have to answer that part. I’m not saying if there’s any human rights breach or infringement, the government has no responsibility. That is another issue. The second part of your question is about the allegations. They’re still allegations. If you want me to answer, I have to answer about something that is concrete, proved, and verified.
Are you prepared to categorically deny that there’s torture and abuse of prisoners in Syria?
If there’s any unbiased and fair way to verify all those allegations, of course we are ready. That would be in our interest.
What impact would a U.S.-Iranian nuclear deal have on Syria?
Nothing, because the crisis here was never part of the negotiations, and Iran refused to make it such. And that is correct, because there is no link between the two.
But many in the United States anticipate that if Iran and the United States strike a deal, it will make cooperation between the two countries much easier. People therefore wonder if Iran might decide to reduce its support for Syria as a favor to the U.S. government.
We have never had any positive information about such a thing, never. I cannot discuss something which I don’t have any information about.
Describe whether you think the war is going well from the government’s perspective. Independent analysts have suggested that your government currently controls 45 to 50 percent of the territory of Syria.
First of all, if you want to describe the arena—it’s not a war between two countries, between two armies where you have an incursion and you lost some territory that you want to regain. It’s not like this. We’re talking about rebels that infiltrate areas inhabited by civilians. You have Syrian terrorists that support foreign terrorists to come and hide among civilians. They launch what you call guerrilla attacks. That is the shape of this war, so you cannot look at it as being about territory. Second, wherever the Syrian army has wanted to go, it has succeeded. But the Syrian army cannot have a presence on every kilometer of Syrian territory. That’s impossible. We made some advances in the past two years. But if you want to ask me, “Is it going well?” I say that every war is bad, because you always lose, you always have destruction in a war. The main question is, what have we won in this war? What we won in this war is that the Syrian people have rejected the terrorists; the Syrian people support their government more; the Syrian people support their army more. Before talking about winning territory, talk about winning the hearts and minds and the support of the Syrian people. That’s what we have won. What’s left is logistical; it’s technical. That is a matter of time. The war is moving in a positive way. But that doesn’t mean you’re not losing on the national level. Because you lose lives, you lose infrastructure; the war itself has very bad social effects.
Do you think you will eventually defeat the rebels militarily?
If they don’t have external support, and no, let’s say, supply and recruitment of new terrorists within Syria, there will be no problem defeating them. Even today we don’t have a problem militarily. The problem is that they still have this continuous supply, mainly from Turkey.
So Turkey seems to be the neighbor that you’re most concerned about?
Exactly. Logistically, and about terrorist financing from Saudi Arabia and Qatar, but through Turkey.
Do you blame Erdogan personally? This is a man you once had a fairly good relationship with.
Yes. Because he belongs to the Muslim Brotherhood ideology, which is the base of al Qaeda; it was the first political Islamic organization that promoted violent political Islam in the early twentieth century. He belongs strongly and is a staunch believer in these values. He’s very fanatical, and that’s why he still supports ISIS. He is personally responsible for what happened.
Do you see any other potential partners in the region? For example, General el-Sisi in Egypt?
I wouldn’t talk about him personally, but as long as Egypt and the Egyptian army and the government are fighting the same kind of terrorists as in Iraq, of course, we can consider these countries eligible to cooperate with in fighting the same enemy.
Two final questions, if I may. Can you imagine a scenario in which Syria returns to the status quo as it was before the fighting started almost four years ago?
In what sense?
In the sense that Syria is whole again, it is not divided, it controls its borders, it starts to rebuild, and it is at peace and a predominantly secular country.
If you look at a military map now, the Syrian army exists in every corner. Not every place; by every corner, I mean north, south, east, west, and between. If you didn’t believe in a unified Syria, that Syria can go back to its previous position, you wouldn’t send the army there, as a government. If you don’t believe in this as a people, you would have seen people in Syria isolated into different ghettos based on ethnic and sectarian or religious identity. As long as this is not the situation, the people live with each other; the army is everywhere; the army is made up of every color of Syrian society, or the Syrian fabric. This means that we all believe Syria should go back to the way it was. We don’t have any other option, because if it doesn’t go back to its previous position, that will affect every surrounding country. It’s one fabric—it’s a domino effect that will have influence from the Atlantic to the Pacific.
If you were able to deliver a message to President Obama today, what would it be?
I think the normal thing that you ask any official in the world is to work for the interests of his people. And the question I would ask any American is, what do you get from supporting terrorists in our country, in our region? What did you get from supporting the Muslim Brotherhood a few years ago in Egypt and other countries? What did you get from supporting someone like Erdogan? One of the officials from your country asked me seven years ago in Syria at the end of a meeting, “How do you think we can solve the problem in Afghanistan?” I told him, “You have to be able to deal with officials who are not puppets, who can tell you no.” So for the United States, only looking for puppet officials and client states is not how you can serve the interests of your country. You are the greatest power in the world now; you have too many things to disseminate around the world: knowledge, innovation, IT, with its positive repercussions. How can you be the best in these fields yet the worst in the political field? This is a contradiction. That is what I think the American people should analyze and question. Why do you fail in every war? You can create war, you can create problems, but you cannot solve any problem. Twenty years of the peace process in Palestine and Israel, and you cannot do anything with this, in spite of the fact that you are a great country.
But in the context of Syria, what would a better policy look like?
One that preserves stability in the Middle East. Syria is the heart of the Middle East. Everybody knows that. If the Middle East is sick, the whole world will be unstable. In 1991, when we started the peace process, we had a lot of hope. Now, after more than 20 years, things are not at square one; they’re much below that square. So the policy should be to help peace in the region, to fight terrorism, to promote secularism, to support this area economically, to help upgrade the mind and society, like you did in your country. That is the supposed mission of the United States, not to launch wars. Launching war doesn’t make you a great power.
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