For Broadway and the heyday of musical comedy -- America's unique contribution to theater. When the stars of stage were household names; when there was magic in the theater addresses and you knew not only the lyrics but the dialogue by heart; when you devoured the bios of the producers and directors, the composers and lyricists on the front of Playbill and combed the back of the program to find the name or photo of your favorite dancer in the chorus. When the opening reviews were eagerly awaited not just by readers of the NYT, but across the country in the weekly news magazines and the Sunday papers.

That brief frisson that comes as the lights dim and the orchestra launches into the overture hit me for a moment when I read that Jerry Orbach had died. For me, Jerry Orbach was the epitome of that Broadway -- the great male counterpart of the female legends who made musicals come alive, who let you suspend disbelief and be transported to an imaginary world for a couple of hours. Not the glamorous leading baritones of Rogers and Hammerstein, with their moving melodies, who were the romantic foils for the sassy or brassy leading ladies or the blossoming ingenues. No, Orbach was the "journeyman" Broadway star who created some of Broadway's most memorable characters by his attitude, his natural jazzy rhythms of speech and saunter, by the seamless shift of voice and movement from actor to song-and-dance man and back again. By the contagious joy he infused each of his roles and the players around him.

The Glittering Eye offers an appreciation of Jerry Orbach's special contribution -- both the artist and the colleague -- and notes his passing is an end of an era.

There are certainly substantial differences in the motives and means of intervention by leading nations today in failed states and regions of conflict when compared to those of the imperial nations of the colonial era. But many of the issues confronting both groups are similar, and there may be some broad lessons to be learned from the experiences of the colonial powers.

So argues a new book by an associate professor of political science at Barnard College, Columbia University, Kimberly Zisk Marten. Enforcing the Peace: Learning from the Imperial Past compares the colonial activities of the United States, Britain and France at the turn of the 20th century with the post-conflict peace-keeping/peace-building operations of the 1990s (Haiti, Bosnia, Kosovo, East Timor). Her study does not extend to the conflicts of this decade in Iraq and Afghanistan.

Reviewing the book in AsiaTimesOnline, David Isenberg sets out Marten's central observation and its broad implications for adjusting the policies and approaches of the intervening states. The intervenors have, typically, multiple objectives which may often be somewhat in tension, if not out-and-out mutually inconsistent. And of course the intervenors are operating under constraints, both internal to their own domestic politics and capacitites to act abroad and to the international arena. Isenberg, with respect to Afghanistan and Iraq summarizes the argument as follows:

The wars in Afghanistan and Iraq, in Marten's view, represent an oxymoron, or as she more politely phrases it, an "intertwined set of problems". It is the desire by the international community to avoid being tarred with the imperial label while attempting to exert what amounts to political control over foreign societies, and the need to encourage multilateral participation to achieve legitimacy while avoiding inconsistency.

Looking at past experience, both colonial and the most recent decade:

Among Marten's findings are the following:

• Powerful states in both eras have lacked the political will that would be necessary to gain control over political development in foreign societies;
• military organizations are one of the factors contributing to the lack of clear direction we find on the ground; and
• when properly directed to do so, disciplined soldiers can do a good job of providing public order.

The meaning of all this is that peacekeepers should try to limit their goals but expand their expectations of what military forces can reasonably do. Specifically, rather than trying to transform foreign societies, peacekeepers should be directed toward providing security and preventing anarchy in unstable regions of the world. [emph supplied ed.]

Shares some important observations with what Gen. Zinni has been talking about. Though I think both he and Thomas Barnett would say that, given the hyper-kinetic nature of today's combat, the US soldier or Marine who's at the tip of the spear or engaged in days of intense urban combat probably shouldn't be called upon to switch to a policing function within 24 hours of major combat operations.

Perhaps a fit with a somewhat less ambitious version of Barnett's SysAdmin? Martens' caution of not trying to use the force which "enforces the peace" to also transform the local political society is one that should be taken seriously.

[UPDATE 11-19-04] For a very interesting review of Marc Sageman's book, as well as of a more scholarly monograph on Afghan-Pakistani terror links by Mariam Abou Zahad and Olivier Roy, see Steve Coll's piece from Washington Post Book World, August 2004.

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[UPDATE 11-20-04] A fascinating look at the radicalizing process in French jails for the growing population of Muslim prisoners in this article from NYT earlier this month by Craig Smith.

From the standpoint of growing self-critiques of French failure to integrate its Muslim population, particularly following the recent murder of the Dutch artist, the article is a searing indictment. It also is suggestive of why concerns about the effects of high US incarceration rates for low-level criminality should not be dismissed lightly. It further underlines some of the observations above about the Salvadoran deportees who have found their way into Mara Salvatrucha, etc.

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A couple of months ago, Bondra pointed out for us the potential for disaster lurking in the growth of Central American gangs and the increasing indications of some linkages with Middle Eastern terrorism and Al Qaeda.

The expansion of the geographic zone of attention is part of the broader recognition that the nature of "the Al Qaeda threat" is continually morphing. As Peter Bergen argues, it is not simply an organization anymore but is also a movement; that those it inspires are as or more likely to come from Europe as from majority-Muslim countries; and the means, methods and networks used to harm the US and "the West" more broadly are likely to be far more varied than what we've come to think of as the "classic" Al Qaeda modus operandi.

Of particular concern in the Western Hemisphere is El Salvador's Mara Salvatrucha. The LA Times' Kevin Silverstein has a new piece focusing on the domestic problems for El Salvador presented by the gangs, their links to the prison population in the US, especially California, and measures being taken by El Salvador to crack down on the gangs.

Government officials, including Deputy Citizens' Security Minister Rodrigo Avila, blame the violence at least in part on the deportation of nearly 12,000 Salvadorans with criminal records from the United States since 1998. Many are prison-hardened former gang members in Los Angeles and other U.S. cities who were sent back here as illegal immigrants.

"The deportations are at the core of the problem," Avila said. "Gangs here now copy the whole L.A. gang culture, the way they talk, the clothes they wear and the absolute ruthlessness."

Many deportees simply join their counterpart gangs here upon arrival, often gaining leadership roles because they are generally the most violent in the ranks, National Civil Police Chief Ricardo Menesses said in an interview.
[...]
The brutality of the gangs' crimes is increasingly horrific. [...]In September, M-18 members attacked a teenage girl in San Salvador, stabbing her in the neck and abdomen before beheading her, police said. Gang rivalries were at the root of the killing of a 16-year-old mother here last year. Gang members also killed and dismembered her 5-month-old daughter.

A number of organizatons have protested the heavy-handed tactics being used as ultimately counter-productive, and their calls for a different approach seem to have had at least a modest effect. Indiscriminate roundups had earlier resulted in all but a small percent of those brought in by the authorities actually being arrested and charged with criminal activity. More recently, the government's operations seem to be better targeted and, they claim, producing results in reduced homicides and fewer "no go" areas. And the general Salvadoran public is supportive of most anything that will limit the impact of the gangs on their lives.


The most troubling part of the story, from my view, is the dimension of alienation described, and the role of the gangs in offerng an identity to deracinated young men. They are certainly of quite a different class in terms of family income, education and social status from the alienated young Muslim migrants described by Marc Sageman (Understanding Terror Networks) as the primary energy source for Al Qaeda-type groups in Europe. But there are some unfortunate similarities as well, including the strong group identity that appears to "justify" incomprehensible levels of violence against "enemies" of the group.    more »

Timothy Garten Ash, duly celebrated author of Free World, needs to pay his web hosting fees. Here's the message I got when I went to his site, FreeWorldWeb.net:

This Web site is temporarily unavailable, please call back later.

The Web hosting account holder should contact the server administrator at Hosternet immediately.

Better get on that, Timbo.

Tuesday I attended a presentation by Tyler Hicks, staff photographer for the New York Times (BU COM '92), and pride and joy of the photography department here. For good reason: Hicks has taken some amazing photographs over the past three years, a witness from the ruins of Ground Zero to the mountains of Afghanistan to Iraq, before, during, and after the invasion.


As a slide show of his work, the presentation didn't lend itself especially well to blogging, but you can find some of his pictures (some of which may be familiar to Times readers, but many of which I don't recall having seen before now) on display at the Times website. He also has a book out, with accompanying essays by NYT reporters John F. Burns and Ian Fisher, Histories Are Mirrors: The Path of Conflict through Iraq and Afghanistan. Powerful stuff.

I see that Daniel Drezner really, really likes Sebastian Mallaby's book about the World Bank and its head, James Wolfensohn. I just started it last night, and so far it's as good as Drezner says. As is my wont, I'd like to share a brief passage from it that relates to the current Colemanian brouhaha over Kofi Annan and the UN (btw, I'm willing to admit that I could well be wrong on the politics and/or the merits, especially given McCain's position).

Here's Mallaby:

We veer between contempts for international bodies--the United Nations, the International Monetary Fund, and likewise the World Bank--and unrealistic pronouncements on what they ought to do: forge peace, banish financial instability, lift every person out of poverty. It has become commonplace to say that our global institutions are not up to the challenge of our unprecedented global interdependence. But the reason for this mismatch lies partly in our shizophrenia. Sometimes we pour scorn on the Bank and other international bodies, and starve them of resources. Sometimes we talk as though they must have superhuman strengthm and we lumber them with impossible objectives.

That graf could have been written by our own inimitable Ms. Nadezhda, no? More concretely:

When President George W. Bush took office, it was the contempt that seemed most threatening. In 2001 and 2002, the Bush Treasury assailed the Bank with a mixture of aggression and plain ignorance, as this book will describe later [Note: I haven't gotten there yet. -p]. In early 2003, the Bank was left out of the planning for Iraqi reconstruction by the Pentagon, even though it had valuable experience from other nation-building exercises. The Pentagon's attitude did not prevent the Treasury from attacking the Bank for doing too little in Iraq; days after Jim Wolfensohn visited Baghdad in the summer of 2003, and days before a World Bank expert was killed by Iraqi insurgents, The Wall Street Journal published an editorial broadside about the Bank's lack of involvement in the country. Throughout this period, the very idea of the international system was called into question; some parts of the administration believed we lived in a unipolar world--that the United States was the international system. The unipolar fantasy is a trap, for it is only in military matters that American power is overwhelming. In the economic realm, the United States is the leading power, but it is not the only power; it depends on foreigners to open up trade, to prime the pump of global growth, and to provide savings that pay for the federal government's spending habits.

Idiots. Thomas Barnett would probably agree that you can't, er, connect "the Gap" to "the Core" unless you, um, actually try to connect them to the Core. Argh.

I'll likely never take the time to offer a comprehensive review once I finish the book, so treasure this brief snippet accordingly.

And now a question for our knowledgeable readers: do the regional combatant commands (e.g. CENTCOM) have liaisons to major international bodies like the World Bank, does the State Department handle those things on the ambassadorial level, are there interagency coordination groups back in Washington, do they employ their own development specialists, etc.? To make this more concrete, how (if at all) would someone in charge of World Bank development projects for Nigeria coordinate with United States European Command, who runs training projects for the Nigerian military (but doesn't talk about it on its website)? I bring this up in light of my growing concern about the militarization of American foreign policy. I thought this passage from Dana Priest's The Mission was particulary illuminating:

Operation Focus Relief said a lot about the times. For decades, the federal government and Washington's inside-the-Beltway brain trust had poured money into studying the Third World and Africa. Even so, no one had gotten very good at mapping out, and then executing, long-term strategies to solve Africa's massive problems. Funds and programs came and went with each new administration and each new majority in Congress. As a result, sixty U.S. soldiers might walk through hip-deep bushy fields with a battalion of underfed Nigerian soldiers, showing them how to conduct an ambush, but no cadre of U.S. economists flew there to train officials in the country's economic ministry. No legion of agronomists camped out in the middle of nowhere to help improve farming techniques. Battalions of teachers did not deploy to repair the educational system. The Peace Corps was marginalized and outdated.

Using the American military to address global problems had become almost a reflex in Washington. But even the best U.S. troops could deal only with the symptoms, not the causes, of incipient problems. Military programs did little to help political systems move from dictatorship to democracy, or economies from government control to the free market.

I echoed my concern in comments to Steve Clemmons, and a smart commenter responded:

Praktike, don't blame the CinCs (sorry, I mean "combatant commanders"); as Congress gutted our foreign service, the task of diplomacy didn't go away, it just devolved to the military. The CinCs are very cognizant of the importance of diplomacy, and they'd like a heck of a lot more civilian support in what they're doing. Our elected officials, Republican and Democrat, have basically abdicated much of their responsibility and forced unwanted responsibilities upon military leaders. (Shades of "The Origins of the Military Coup of 2012.")

To be clear: I don't blame the CinCs (most of whom "get it" and are trapped by the system). I blame Congress. Development alone won't solve the terrorism problem (and as Mallaby says, the World Bank can't exactly wave a magic wand), but boosting failed or failing states is part of a long-term solution. States that work and can find hope for their people are states that will fight terrorism. But we're eating soup with a knife on a global scale here, or using hammers on what look like nails but are actually screws, or whatever. I'm sure there's some cliche that sums it all up.

In any case, this has to change, because we're trying to solve problems too late, with too few resources, and sometimes with the wrong resources. Maybe we have to get more creative about boosting the non-military capabilites of the regional commands, or at a minimum, improve our coordination with, say, the World Bank, which employs thousands of brilliant technocrats. It benefits from having a board that, unlike the United Nations Security Council, isn't set up in such a way that politics routinely interfere with doing good; unlike the UN, it's well-funded and highly driven. Still thinking out loud here ... maybe the State Department should be reorganized to match the regional commands. Why, for instance, do State's geographic divisions not match the Pentagon's? Why doesn't "jointness" extend beyond the military?

Now ... tell me why none of these inchoate thoughts are realistic. Imagine that George Bush is not the current president if that helps my case.

Note: good thinkin', Matt, but the U.S. is not about to give up its veto.

This isn't a life and death matter, but it does illustrate the absurd traps our legislation or regulations often set for our foreign policy when we try to address one issue and end up producing other problems. Somewhere there ought to be an administrative proceeding for the State Department or other agencies to administer exemptions from blanket prohibitions. The problem has received increasing attention in the area of visas and foreign students, where our more stringent recent policies are being applied in a fashion that undermines all too frequently the strong economic, political and cultural interests America has in openness.

For a society that prides itself especially on openness to ideas and freedom of speech, this episode is postively perverse. It was described originally in the Christian Science Monitor by Farzaneh Milani, a native of Iranian who is director of Studies in Women and Gender at the University of Virginia.

Shirin Ebadi - a human rights lawyer and one of Iran's first women judges - is however, forbidden to publish her memoirs in the United States because of a trade embargo against three countries: Sudan, Cuba and Iran. Coming from a land that has no exact equivalent for the term "to sue," the 2003 Nobel Peace Laureate is suing the American government. Challenging the regulations imposed by the Treasury Department's Office of Foreign Assets Control, Ebadi calls the ban "a critical missed opportunity both for Americans to learn more about my country and its people from a variety of Iranian voices, and for a better understanding to be achieved between our two countries."

Ebadi has a point. Only a tiny percentage of the tens of thousands of new titles made available to the American reading public every year are translated works. Furthermore, with no official relations with the Iranian government, with new prohibitions on direct access to the people, with travel and tourism virtually stopped, it is hard for Americans to see Iran beyond the headlines. Misunderstandings and misperceptions are rampant.

In spite of its long history of cooperation and friendship with the U.S., which was interrupted by the 1979 revolution, especially the hostage crisis, Iran is represented as an intractable enemy. Its dominant image now is that of a country-turned-jailer; a country taking Americans, no less diplomats and emissaries, hostage.
[...]
For well over a century, women have been a moderating, modernizing force in Iran with Shirin Ebadi as one of its most articulate and successful representatives. Her voice, like Sheherazade's, is a beacon of hope and temperance. It should not be silenced. It ought to be heard.

Our friend the Brooding Persian would agree with the importance of women to Iran's ancient past and future, with a somewhat different take in his recent post "Warrior Woman."

And the past generally helps put present in perspective. I mean, who can really be surprised by the existence of warrior women knowing what woman in Iran have done and continue to do every day. It must be in the genes!

As I have said before,... Iranian women are poised to take the helm of this nation in a dazzling sort of way. They are the one consistently belligerent group incessantly challenging boundaries and refusing to be cowered.

The Persian's post is full of great links to materials about Iranian women both past and present. I was especially taken by his recommendation of the author of a forthcoming book dealing with gender and modernity in Iran, Women with Mustaches and Men without Beards : Gender and Sexual Anxieties of Iranian Modernity, by Afsaneh Najmabadi.

The issue of identity and modernity, and the gender dimension of identity , is a recurring theme in a number of publications about Iran. Another book to be published early in 2005 is reviewed in Beirut's Daily Star. Portrait Photographs from Isfahan : Faces in Transition, 1920-1950 is a collection of several hundred photographs from the period, assembled by Iranian artist, academic and activist Parisa Damandan.

[The book] focuses on a tight but tumultuous time frame, when Iran was undergoing rapid social, political and economic transformation. Damandan, who was born in Isfahan and remembers her own early experiments with having her picture taken by a professional photographer, returned to her hometown to find evidence of the old studios and commercial practices that once flourished in the ancient city.

The book resulting from her research reveals as much about how photographers worked in the first half of the 20th century as it does about how people in those times saw themselves, how they constructed their identities before the camera and, in turn, how the identity of a nation took shape, fell apart and reformed against a backdrop of industrialization, modernity, political change and looming revolution and upheaval.
[...]
[In addition to telling the story of individual photographers] Damandan adds the story of a city, a country and a people. The book is full of surprises - cross-dressing women, Isfahan's community of Russian prostitutes and the flood of Polish refugees who took up temporary residence in Iran during World War II. And it captures telling evidence of changing times - women casting off and taking up the veil, the significance of gymnasiums as a social space in men's lives, family configurations, gender roles at social events and the growth of industry (textile factories, workers on strike) that is evident both on the landscape and in the photographs themselves.

In addition to Damandan's narrative, "Portrait Photographs from Isfahan" includes essays by Iranian writer Reza Sheikh (who looks at the relationship between portraiture and democracy) and Dutch writer Josephine van Bennekom (who explores the differences between and encounters among Iranian and European portraiture).
[...]

As an interesting aside, the Persian has also been concerned about the problem of Iranian writings being blocked from publication in the US. In this case, the focus was on poetry.

One of the common complaints of liberals is that the United States has become increasingly reliant on its military; this is becoming especially relevant as Al Qaeda shifts from being an identifiable group to becoming a lodestar for an ideological movement. It's rare that you find someone elaborating on this point beyond the obvious case of Iraq, however, so I thought I'd give it a try by way of an example.

First, a bit of explanation. Most Americans think that foreign policy is made in Washington by the White House, Congress, and the executive branch. This is only partly the case. In practice, many regional problems tend to get addressed by the powerful "unit combatant commanders" (formerly and still coloquially known as the CinCs) or not at all, because they're the ones with the resources and the on-the-ground knowledge.

Did you know that Southern Command, which administers Latin America and basically runs the drug war, has more staff resources (about 1,100 people) devoted to the region than the State Department, Treasury, Commerece, Agriculture, the Pentagon's Joint Staff, and the OSD combined? With little guidance or oversight from Washington, the combatant commanders are often are forced to resort to freelancing.

They do a good job filling in the gaps where they can, but at the end of the day they have a natural bias toward military-to-miltary relationships at a time when America ought to also be expanding links with and building the capacity of civilian governments. At the same time, civilians back in Washington--and the press that covers them--often don't have a clue what's really going on in the world.

A book all thinking Americans (and especially liberals) should read is Dana Priest of the Washington Post's The Mission: Waging War and Keeping Peace With America's Military. It's a fascinating, balanced, in-depth look at the people and organizations who really run American foreign policy: the CinCs, special operating forces, and the military generally. The following passage on U.S. efforts to train the Nigerian army illuminates the problem quite succinctly, I think:   more »