Intro to IR Roundup: Nukes, Migration, Syria and IR Research

Today is the first day of fall 2016-17 classes. I usually teach Intro to International Relations in the fall, but am out of my routine due to a conference I'm organizing. However, I thought I'd post several good sound bytes which I would have offered to students had I been kicking off class with a dose of current events and international crises.

Syria: Why is the war so damn long and bloody. It's gets more violent by the day. Drawing on IR

 AFP/Getty Images

research, Max Fisher of the New York Times provides a run-down of some of the factors contributing to the ugly nature of the Syrian war. The usual suspects like multiparty factions and ethnic/sectarian divisions. But a big culprit appears to be foreign sponsorship/intervention. As Fisher writes:

"Foreign interventions that were intended to end the war ...have instead entrenched it in a stalemate in which violence is self-reinforcing and the normal avenues for peace are all closed...Whenever one side loses ground, its foreign backers increase their involvement, sending supplies or air support to prevent their favored player’s defeat. Then that side begins winning, which tends to prompt the other’s foreign backers to up their ante as well. Each escalation is a bit stronger than what came before, accelerating the killing without ever changing the war’s fundamental balance."

Intervention: Recent interventions (Afghanistan, Iraq, Libya) have left us pondering the costs of such intervention.  Anne Applebaum asks what the costs of non-intervention have been in Syria in terms of total deaths, the refugee crisis, the destabilization of the region, and security threats in Europe . Of course, intervention could have made all of this even worse. Fareed Zakaria earlier argued that it was probably best for the U.S. not to intervene, but it could/should have done much more on humanitarian assistance, even if it rightfully chooses not to pursue humanitarian intervention. Part of the problem may be the politicization of aid.

Nuclear Weapons: Obama is toying with the idea of changing U.S. strategic doctrine by declaring a no first use nuclear weapons policy. Some pros and cons of a first no use policy are outlined by the WSJ.  While reducing nukes sounds good in theory, Stephen Sestanovich of CFR pushes back against this change.

Migration: Want to know the difference between migrants and refugees. A CFR video and backgrounder explains here.

Faith, Christsianity, and the Meaning of Christmas

Christians get bashed for being intolerant, closed-minded, and ignorant. Some of this is deserved by Christians who reflect the values of Christ poorly. But this Christmas season, it was refreshing to see news stories and editorials reflect on the beauty and centrality of the Christian faith and its importance in this broken world.

Michael Gerson's piece centered on German theologian and Nazi resistor Dietrich Bonhoeffer was at the heart of this message. Here's Gerson quoting Bonhoeffer:  "He [God] takes what is little and lowly and makes it marvelous. And that is the wonder of all wonders, that God loves the lowly. . . . He loves the lost, the neglected, the unseemly, the excluded, the weak and broken.”

Gerson then reminds us that amidst the oppression and violence:

In the Christian view, the door was swung open by the incarnation, by a God who somehow became a defenseless child, a refugee, a teacher of good, a victim of injustice, left alone, tired, in doubt, to face a humiliating death. A God who — strangely, paradoxically, mysteriously — at the end felt abandoned by God. A God on our side. 

“God wants to always be with us,” Bonhoeffer said, “wherever we may be — in our sin, in our suffering and death. We are no longer alone: God is with us. We are no longer homeless; a bit of the eternal home itself has moved unto us.”This, despite all our fears and doubts, is Christmas: a God secretly revealed as love.

This article set the tone for an editorial which repeated a frequent theme this Advent season connecting the Syrian migrant crisis to Christ's birth by reflecting on Jesus as a displaced person, his parents fleeing from Egypt upon King Herod's decree to kill all children under the age of  two. I quote the last section of the editorial here which ended in a verse from Matthew 25:35:

 But the word “Christian” is often misused in our times, in a way that implies some allegiance to a particular political party, economic doctrine or set of moral strictures that are not representative of large numbers of true Christians. (The media are often complicit in this confusion.) There is a broader concept of the term, one that is succinct, relevant and all but imperative in this season when we face a humanitarian crisis that tests our character and our compassion. It comes from the Gospel of Matthew and is stated as an ideal voiced by Jesus: “I was hungry and you gave me food.I was thirsty and you game me drink.I was a stranger and you welcomed me.”

Finally, last week's Washington Post featured a story headlines, "The quiet impact of President Obama’s Christian faith." Part of the article described Obama's thought process in drafting the eulogy of Rev. Clementa Pinckney following the mass shooting murder at Emanuel African Methodist Episcopal Church in Charleston, SC. The shooter, a white man, was welcomed by black church members to join their Bible study when an hour into the study he stood up and went on a shooting spree. As author Greg Jaffe writes, Obama observed that " the Charleston parishioners had demonstrated their faith when they welcomed the killer into their Bible study. The families of the dead had passed God’s test when they faced down despair and found the grace to forgive." In essence, the President wanted to set the response of Emanuel church members as an example for a polarized nation.  As Obama quoted, “There’s all this goodness and decency and common sense on the ground, and somehow it gets translated into rigid, dogmatic, often mean-spirited politics.”

I don't see President Obama always as a man of faith, so it was a refreshing to hear how he thinks and struggles to apply Christian teaching to his politics. The lesson here (particularly for Christians) is that even if we fundamentally disagree on principles and policy, there's a way to be civil in our discussion and at least attempt to understand the other's position.

Overall, I'm pleased to see a mainstream newspaper like the Washington Post publishing stories which address issues of faith and Christianity without resorting to simple caricatures of Christians.

Gratitude on Thanksgiving

We moved into our new house on Thanksgiving week, which means we have much to be thankful for this year. Our new home has also given me reason to pause and reflect on the millions of displaced people around the world with no place to call home.

EJ Dionne, in the spirit of thanksgiving, calls on readers cast aside politics and consider humility and gratitude. Quoting from Ecclesiastics 9:11 he speaks of grace, and reminds those with plentiful not to be arrogant, and remember what we have does not necessarily come from our own hands and works, but from Above.  Casting aside politics (but not religion), it's a call to be both gracious and caring.

Obama, Syria, Migration, and Intervention

Initial reactions from a few Republican presidential candidates and handful of Republican governors have ranged from disheartening to appalling. Unsurprisingly Democrats, including President Obama have attacked Republicans and others for refusing to accept Syrian refugees.

Conservatives have hit back, putting some of the blame on the Obama Administration for producing the Syrian crisis., and making a case for intervention. As Fred Hiatt of the Washington Post argues:

Four million Syrians have fled, with even more internally displaced. Half of all Syrians have been forced from their homes.For that, the Obama administration bears some responsibility — and the reasons should be something voters think about in 2016....He withdrew all U.S. troops from Iraq when experts advised that a residual force of 15,000 would help to keep a fragile peace. He bombed Libya to overthrow its dictator but opposed a small NATO training force that might have stabilized the new government. He ordered a limited surge of troops to Afghanistan but soon began withdrawing them on a timetable unmoored to conditions. When Syrian dictator Bashar al-Assad cracked down on democracy protesters, kindling violence, Obama kept the United States aloof.

As a result, Hiatt claims we are paying "the price of inaction."

Today Libya is “engulfed in civil war and bloodshed.” In Iraq, having lost leverage and interest, the United States stood aside as the Shiite prime minister turned the U.S.-trained armed forces into a sectarian militia that gave space and impetus for radical Sunnis — reborn as the Islamic State — to reemerge. In Syria, effects even direr than Obama feared from U.S. intervention bloomed in its absence: a wider war, spilling across borders; radical jihadists establishing the kind of statelet that al-Qaeda never achieved; millions of refugees destabilizing not only Syria’s neighbors but all of Europe. 

This argument fits well with an ongoing discussion in my class on the extent to which the U.S. needs to engage in global affairs. Following Chris Preble in  The Power Problem, overextending our reach only does us more harm than good, and does not benefit U.S. interests. We should rely on regional powers and our allies to deal with crises in distant lands, especially if we cannot make the situation any better. Others, believe the U.S. must exercise its leadership and lead by example, recognizing that securing long term U.S interests do require maintaining/managing  global crises.