Amitai Etzioni Notes

Changing the Rules: Is China More Westphalian Than the West?

G. John Ikenberry asks whether China will buy into the prevailing liberal, rule-based international order, which has been promoted and underwritten by the United States ("The Future of the Liberal World Order," May/June 2011). With regard to one key element of this order, however -- the Westphalian norm of sovereignty and nonintervention -- he might have inverted the premise. For here, the West has been seeking major modifications that weaken the norm, whereas China has championed the established rule and the international order based on it...

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Originally published in the November/December 2011 issue of Foreign Affairs.

Tunisia: The First Arab Islamocracy

Tunisia, significantly the first Arab Spring nation to conduct elections, may well be on its way to becoming the first Muslim nation to combine the rule of sharia with elements of democracy. Americans should not seek to stand in the way of such a development. Both American elected officials and the media tend to assume that for a nation to be democratic, it must adopt our kinds of institutions, including the separation of religion and state. (This tendency was very much in evidence when Americans played key roles in writing the new post-liberation Iraqi and Afghan constitutions.) Though Tunisia is a relatively “modern” Arab state and has a sizable secular population, the political struggle is over how much sharia will be implemented, rather than whether the new regime can do without enforcing at least some Islamic rules and traditions…

Read the rest at The National Interest.

 

Pirates: Terrorists of the Seas

Italy’s defense minister has just announced that the country will provide armed Marines to Italian ships that travel in pirate-infested waters. Other ships have retained private security guards. Many nations, though, still try to deal with pirates by using water hoses, surrounding the deck with barbed wire, and providing safe rooms in which the crew could barricade themselves once the pirates take over the ship. Meanwhile, the pirates are doing very well indeed. In the first half of 2011, there were 266 pirate attacks (a 36 percent increase from 2010). Somali pirates collected approximately $238 million in ransom in 2010. Hundreds of crew members and passengers have been held as hostages, some for over a year. And now pirates are branching out onto land. On October first, Somali pirates kidnapped a disabled French woman from her home in Kenya who has since died in captivity. Three weeks earlier, pirates killed a British publisher and kidnapped his deaf wife…

Read the rest at The National Interest.

 

Face It, Tough Times Are Ahead

President Obama has repeatedly stated, "We are tougher than the times we live in." Although the president may not have intended to signal a whole new approach to our future, the line has Churchillian implications. Speaking of tough times, he could call on Americans to recognize we face at least a decade of rough sledding, ask us to face the challenges and express confidence that we shall prevail.

The tough times approach differs radically from the prevailing wisdom that if we merely did X, Y or Z, we would be rolling in clover again. All we need to do is cut deficits, reduce taxes some more and lighten up on regulations, and the nation will be back on the right course...

Read the rest at CNN.com.

The Great Drone Debate

The Obama administration is criticized for greatly increasing the use of drones in Afghanistan, Pakistan, and, most recently, in Yemen and Somalia. The Pentagon reports that these drones have been successful in taking out leaders of al-Qaeda and various insurgent groups. The State Department is raising concerns about the use of drones against “rank and file” members of these organizations. Critics are up in arms against all drones. A recent investigative report on public television’s Frontline made much of one case in which Afghans reported that election workers were killed by a drone, while the U.S. military claims that the dead included Taliban fighters. And Frontline points to an incident in which it seems that the wrong Afghan leader was killed. As I see it, the real issue is: Should we be involved in such fighting in the first place? Only after answering that should we ask: If kill we must, should we use drones? These questions represent an analytical turning point…

Read the rest at The National Interest.