He was meant not to come and he didn’t. Barack Obama decided to make Burma, Cambodia and Thailand his first foreign destinations after his re-election, revealing U.S. foreign policy priorities in the next four years. The American president plainly doesn’t have time for Europe now. It’s not a surprise, but it does require serious European deliberation and critical self reflections.

Historic Visit

Of special significance is above all Obama’s trip to Myanmar – a country under military rule since 1960’s, which until recently invariably occupied the very far end of every possible civil liberties ranking. Myanmar’s position began to change rapidly in 2010 when the new president, Thein Sein, for reasons not entirely clear, initiated democratic reforms and freed thousands of political prisoners, including the most famous regime victim, Aung San Suu Kyi, put under house arrest in 1989 and kept in custody virtually ever since. Suu Kyi was not only allowed to go on a triumphant international tour – in Oslo she finally received the Nobel Peace Prize awarded in… 1991 – but also to run in parliamentary by-elections. In April 2012 her National Democratic League won 43 of 45 seats under contention, thus becoming the largest opposition party. Only a few months after the reforms started, non-governmental organizations and independent media began to operate in a country not so long ago deemed as an “outpost of tyranny”.

And though democratic transformation in Myanmar proceeds quickly, there are still significant problems. Millions of its citizens live in extreme poverty. Hundreds of political prisoners remain in jail. The northern part of the country is being devastated by a civil war against one of many separatist groups. A military coup is an ever-present possibility, and the authenticity of president’s commitment to democracy is still difficult to assess. For these and many other reasons democratic changes in this former British colony may collapse at any time.

That despite all these uncertainties Barack Obama decided to visit Myanmar – becoming the first U.S. president in office to do so – is clear evidence of a fundamental change in American foreign policy, all the more so, because straight from Myanmar Obama flew to Thailand and then Cambodia, taking part in the Association of Southeast Asian Nations summit. And all this at a time when American ally, Israel, was engaged in a major military operation in Gaza, when Syria has been engulfed in a civil war for almost two years, and when Afghanistan still claims American lives on a daily basis.

Heading East… that is West

Reorientation in American foreign policy – the “Asian pivot,” as it is referred to by the White House officials – aims to strengthen U.S. presence in the Southeast Asia, turning attention away from its current involvement in the Middle East and Afghanistan, where Americans bogged down more than a decade ago. President’s visit is also a clear signal to China. Increasingly expansive foreign policy and Beijing’s massive economic influence in the region has aggravated its relations with neighboring countries, leading to serious territorial disputes with Japan on the one hand, and the Philippines and Vietnam on the other. In response to growing pressure from China, the United States already in June conducted trilateral naval exercises with Japan and South Korea in the ocean waters south of the Korean peninsula. Now, a few months later, in a speech delivered in Myanmar, President Obama left no doubts as to where Washington will concentrate its diplomatic efforts in the nearest future:

“The United States of America is a Pacific nation. We see our future as bound to those nations and peoples to our West,” he said in Rangoon.  “As our economy recovers, this is where we believe we will find tremendous growth. As we end the wars that have dominated our foreign policy for a decade, this region will be a focus of our efforts to build a prosperous peace.”

Obviously Obama’s hands are not entirely free in this matter. He cannot bring peace to Afghanistan and Iraq by decree; he will not solve the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, nor abandon American commitment to Israel; it’s beyond his powers to singlehandedly democratize Iran or foster an overnight regime change in Syria – in short, he cannot entirely give up on American involvement in the Middle East. Even the leader of the most powerful country in the world has limited room for maneuver, as he must take into account a complex interplay of geopolitical interests and honor previously taken commitments. Still, the same leader may put different emphasis on different aspects of foreign policy and make decisions that will gradually change, if not the global balance of power, then at least the focal point of global diplomacy. For many years after the Second World War the center of the world lied in Europe, later on attention moved to the Middle East. Today it is shifting again to the South-East Asia.

Does Anybody Need London?

And what role in this new order will the Old Continent play? If domestic and foreign policies of the European Union do not change dramatically, probably a marginal one. Incurable Euro-optimists may keep on hailing the Union as the largest and one of the most competitive economies in the world, but even they admit its actual importance on the global stage is disproportionately small. Obama’s visit to Asia and the latest Israeli-Palestinian conflict have once again confirmed what everybody knows but does not dare to say aloud. Alarmed by the events in the Gaza Strip, President Obama and Secretary Clinton called the leaders of several countries with the greatest influence in the region: Egypt, Turkey, France and Qatar. The idea to dial the number “to Europe,” in this case to Catherine Ashton, was not even mentioned.

European countries are rapidly losing their status of valuable partners to the United States, though some governments, especially that in London, do all in their powers to ignore this fact. On the day of Obama’s reelection, British Prime Minister David Cameron in a short interview aired by BBC congratulated the winner and expressed his hope for a close cooperation primarily in two areas: pulling the global economy out of the crisis, and helping to end the conflict in Syria. No profound geopolitical insight is needed to notice that in neither of these projects can the United Kingdom on its own may be of much assistance to the American president. Nevertheless, the bulk of British political class still seems to believe that UK’s foreign policy should be based on an Anglo-American “special relationship,” with London acting as a mediator in the dealings between America and Europe. The problem is that today Washington not only doesn’t need a middleman in its relations with the Continent – yet another side would make them even more difficult. And in fact, it’s need for the Continent itself is diminishing.

A true Euro-American partnership is possible only if the European Union acts as a whole. Many European politicians – including, I’m glad to admit, Poland’s foreign minister – are aware of this fact. Britain, probably because of its imperial past and relatively recent loss of a global superpower status, still has difficulty coming to terms with the new reality. London’s cognitive difficulties, however, seem to render Brussels increasingly impatient. They also further marginalize Europe on the international scene. Obama’s Asian trip and the way Israeli-Palestinian conflict was dealt are proofs. Hope lies with an embolden European Community to take a firmer stance towards Britain and demand a clear statement as to its future in the European club. Should this not happen, it will be another reason for presidential trips to the Old Continent to become even less frequent.

When analyzing politics and society in the Arab and Islamic world, it is admirable and important to break away from a Western-centered analysis. This move is not sufficient though. There is a temptation to continue to fall back on theories and rhetoric that have emanated from the west and have informed exactly that from which one attempts to break away. Furthermore, when discussing public discourse in the Arab world, it is imperative that one addresses the importance of Islam and its continuing vital role in Arab and Middle Eastern politics, despite Western scholarship’s tendency to suggest a historical end that involves the marginalization of religion. I appreciate Professor Challand’s posts in Deliberately Considered and the admirable move of breaking away from Western-centered analysis, but I think his posts suffer from theoretical temptation and an insufficient appreciation of the role of Islam.

It is true that civil-society is more than “NGOs and the developmental approach which imagines that the key to progress is when donors, the UN or rich countries, give aid to boost non-state actors, in particular NGOs, in the ‘developing south'” as Professor Challand asserts in his post “The Counter-Power of Civil Society in the Middle East.” I believe, though, that one must also conceive of civil-society and democratic institutions as more than a source for “collective autonomy” using other than secular slogans in the tradition of Tocqueville and Hegel.

Writing a history of democracy would have to include analysis such as de Tocqueville’s, but we should also remember that de Tocqueville wrote:

Muhammad brought down from heaven and put into the Quran not religious doctrines only, but political maxims, criminal and civil laws, and scientific theories. The Gospels, on the other hand, deal only with the general relations between man and God and between man and man. Beyond that, they teach nothing and do not oblige people to believe anything. That alone, among a thousand reasons, is enough to show that Islam will not be able to hold its power long in ages of enlightenment and democracy, while Christianity is destined to reign in such ages, as in all others.

Tocqueville criticized Islam for allowing no deviation from its laws which to his mind covered all aspects of private and public life. But he failed to recognize the diversity of civil-society and the capacity for democratic institutions embedded in Islam’s structure and its ability to adapt to changing times, in part because it does not possess the characteristics of Catholicism. Ernest Renan later argued that Islam is not able to develop its own modernity, diverging from Tocqueville, but making the same mistake of essentializing Islam in a static history, laying ground for much of today’s claims that Islam and democracy are incompatible. These assertions often mobilize a rhetoric that promote tired tropes of “separation of church and state” and that democracy is contingent on secularism.

In fact, secularism has a much different meaning in the Arab world than it does in the West for two reasons. Islam never had a clerical hierarchy (although this phenomenon developed in Shi’ism later, albeit in a much different way than Catholicism) and therefore never had to answer the same questions regarding state-church relations that were prevalent in European political history. Despite this fact, Islam and the state did evolve separately due to negotiations of autonomy and the political domains of Islam and the state. “Secular” as European vocabulary to describe the dichotomy between Christ’s heavenly body and earthly body, once represented by medieval kingship and later by the Church, is not the same in Islam. In fact, the lack of a hierarchical authority in Islam and its partial reliance on consensus, or ijma’, is precisely what lends to it the ability to foster civil-society and diverse political groups, as well as various “schools” of law. An example is the mass proliferation of diverse Sufi brotherhoods in the fourteenth and fifteenth century. According to Richard Bulliet, “By the eighteenth century, there were thousands of Sufi brotherhoods reaching into every Muslim community and spreading knowledge of Islam into new lands.”

Furthermore, “secular” as a modern political concept in the Islamic world has come to mean the marginalization of the clergy and Islam in favor of modern military organizations, state-run schools, and state-sponsored religious institutions. The secular Arab dictatorships, which are currently undergoing fundamental changes, have implemented these practices and have been some of the most brutal regimes in the world. The attempt to relegate Islamic politics to the sidelines, a process which included the state’s co-opting of previously autonomous religious institutions, such as Islamic universities (al-Azhar University in Egypt is an example) and charities (waqf), only resulted in the alienation of segments of society that have been forced to take up alternative political methods, which sometimes include violence.

It is also untrue that the language of current opposition movements in the Arab world is a “secular re-imagining of the people as a united nation,” as Professor Challand calls it, presumably meaning that religious language is abandoned in favor of modern political vocabulary. Currently in Jordan, protests involve a number of groups, most notably the Muslim Brotherhood (or the Islamic Action Front, as it is called in Jordan), as well as many other opposition and counter-opposition groups. Many of these parties use discourse that is couched in Islam and ethnicity (especially Jordanian vs. Palestinian ethnicity and nationality).

In closing, Castoriadis’ analyses and modern political thought that relies heavily on Marxist theory, though they make valuable contributions to interpreting revolution and revolt, are simply inadequate to explain Islamic politics. The Iranian Revolution of 1979 serves as a lesson as to how intimately connected revolution, democracy and religion are now connected in the Muslim world. While secularism supposedly goes hand-in-hand with the development of democracy and the modern state, it was Islam that opened revolutionary potentials, democratic and anti-democratic. The Iranian experience revealed how transformational potential can be and has been heavily steeped in Islamic political theology. The revolution was not only a watershed in Islamic and Iranian politics but also a wake-up call for critical observers, who previously expected an unfolding of modern history that would increasingly push religion out of politics. In order to effectively understand the Islamic world, scholars and analysts must not only re-evaluate the theories on which they rely, as well as history and historiography, but also their rhetoric and the words that they mobilize.

We certainly said good-bye to revolutions too soon, between 1989 and 1995. Yes, we were right Romania was the exception, and the series of changes of regime certainly did not represent revolutions. Yet the fact that the latter were represented finally and definitively by the journalistic cliche as the “Revolutions of 1989” demonstrates the tremendous power of the topos.  Central European ideologists of the radical right could still rely on it in the canard of the betrayed revolution, and the demand of a new revolution reversing the agreements of 1989-1990.  It is indisputably true that both the revolutionary imaginary, and the empirical possibility of revolutions belong to the concept of modernity.  This does not mean, however, that the critique of revolutions we inherit from Burke, Hegel, most brilliantly Tocqueville, and, despite all her sympathy, Hannah Arendt has lost their meaning and importance.

In the following analysis of the “revolutions” of 2011 I use the term revolution, from the legal point of view, as a type of internal change that transforms a system according to rules or practices other than those of the systems. This was Hans Kelsen’s definition, who could not however distinguish coups and revolutions as a result. Thus, I add that successful revolutions, unlike coups, change a system’s organizational core or its principle of organization.  Better still, following Janos Kis, we should introduce a new principle of legitimacy. Either way, an illegal act of changing rules is necessary if not sufficient for a revolution, whether carried out by a group or institution outside the old governing order (Lenin’s party or Khomeini’s sect) or one within it, sometimes called autogolpe or self-coup (a president, the Estates General, the military command).

Moreover as the legally sophisticated minds among revolutionaries like Marx, Lenin, and Carl Schmitt always knew, these coups always establish dictatorship at least in the interim. When the goal is truly revolutionary, Schmitt called them sovereign dictatorships, but he was only describing Robespierre’s and Lenin’s practice. Finally, both coup and dictatorship require organizational power.  This power must step in the place of the power that is overthrown, and this can be in the name of the masses that have forced the collapse of an old regime and achieved part of the work of liberation, but never by them.  The exception Hannah Arendt recognizes in this context, the American Revolution, is notably one with inherited republican-constitutional institutions that can step into the breach when the colonial sovereign is eliminated. The same thing happened more or less in India. Under dictatorships and autocracies, there is no such option.

1. Thus Hillary Clinton was only partially wrong when in Munich (amazingly enough!), a few days before the fall of Mubarak she warned about the destructive logic of revolutions. The reform she was pushing was however itself destructive in the given context, and reform and revolution as we should all know since 1989 are not exclusive options. It was admittedly a little strange that Clinton neglected the paradigm of 1989 in the company of chancellor Merkel, a GDR activist at that time. Since the American Secretary of State’s opinion counts for a lot, we should see the partially self fulfilling nature of her polarizing use of the two concepts. With that said, the correct part of her warning should not be disregarded. The highly admirable, disciplined, non-violent movement could force the fall of the Mubarak government, but
2. It could not control either the terms of its replacement, or the linking of liberation to a genuine change of regimes.
3. The latter would have to entail the replacement of what is ultimately a military dictatorship, originally established in the revolution of the Free Officers of 1952.
4. But given the fact that the last step in the Mubarak’s removal was carried out by a silent military coup,
5. And that not wishing to rely on inherited institutions at all the protagonists established a pure if supposedly interim open military dictatorship, the likelihood of such a genuine regime change establishing constitutional democracy is now rather remote.

Hannah Arendt analyzed revolutions in terms of two elements, liberation or the removal of old authorities, and constitution, or the construction of a new, free regime.  In line with what we are seeing in Egypt, she thought liberation succeeds often, but constitution very seldom. There is however a constituent process in Egypt and it is instructive to see why as it is currently organized it falls under Arendt’s strictures.

The current junta has suspended the existing constitution and has dissolved parliament. It has established a new constituent process based on its own decision alone. This consisted of a small unrepresentative panel of experts drawing up some few, indeed very much needed, amendments to Mubarak’s constitution, reversing in fact his most recent and most undemocratic amendments to the Constitution of 1971. This was done in 10 days, with very minimal results that Mubarak himself was ready to concede before he fell, with popular ratification to follow in a referendum in two months. Again, the method of amendment is entirely illegal under the constitution that is to be amended. Its democratic legitimacy will be equally doubtful, given a constrained referendum where the voters would have only the “choice” to approve these amendments or to retain Mubarak’s version that is moreover suspended. Thus they will have no choice at all in reality.

If approved, the amendments would provide for elections 6 months from now (or 4 months from ratification) it was said – too soon for new democratic forces to organize. This should favor a candidate close to the military, and/or the Muslim Brotherhood, if they support one as well.

Lenin rightly warned against electing constituent assemblies under these conditions in 1905, and the Hungarian Democratic Opposition of 1989 followed his advice, rejected quick elections for a national constituent assembly promoted by others, including reformists in the ruling party. Yet surprises in a setting like this, as Lenin himself found out in 1918, in the only free Russian elections till Yeltsin, are also very possible, fortunately. When he lost, needless to say, he did not abide by the results, and dissolved the constituent assembly with bayonets. It should not come to that in Egypt.

Aside from the constitution, free and fair elections in Egypt would require replacement of a wealth of laws dealing with the press, media, public meetings, personal freedom, and while no plans for such legislation have even been suggested, even the 30 year state of emergency has not been lifted. It is under that system that people are still detained, held, interrogated and tortured. Hardly a conducive framework for free and fair elections, even if there are international monitors present. This in addition to the problems of the questionable way the election system is being proposed and the overly powerful nature of the Presidential system.

If the scenario the military junta has in mind is carried through there will be no regime change, or only very incomplete steps in that direction. Egypt will look perhaps like some kind of democracy, but that was the case before, especially before the very last years of Mubarak, in appearance at least. More importantly, the military regime, deeply anchored in the state, society, and the economy as well will preserve all or most of its power. At worst, it will control the political outcomes. At best it won’t, but the governments that emerge will be weak and unstable, opening the door to future interventions. This will still be the old regime, especially on the level that people will experience it. I will explore this more fully in my next post.

Gary Alan Fine is not worried about hate speech.  Most of us are.  He thinks it excites and draws attention, and that its negative effects are overdrawn.  Iris “hates hate speech,” but thinks that we have to learn to live with it.  It is the price we pay for living in a democracy.  Rafael offers a comparative cultural approach, agreeing that in English hate speech may not be as pernicious as it may first seem.  But he, nonetheless, reminds us that sometimes hate and its speech have horrific consequences, citing the case of a local preacher “insisting on an idea of building a memorial reminding folk that Mathew Sheppard is now in hell.”  Rafael underscores that sometimes hate speech and aggressive actions are intimately connected, sometimes, even, hate speech functions as an action.  Esther looks at the problem from a slightly different angle. She thinks that concern about civil discourse is a good idea, but asks: “shouldn’t we be thinking, talking and doing some more about cause and prevention of violent outbursts by lost individuals?”  While, Michael is more directly concerned with hate speech and action, maintaining that it undermines democratic culture.  “Hate frequently destroys the cultural underpinnings needed for democratic processes to emerge and thrive.”  He then expresses his concern about the hate speech in Madison, echoing those who were most concerned with the relationship between hate speech and the massacre in Tucson.

© Akiramenai | Wikimedia Commons

And then, in a sense, the Supreme Court joined our discussion, supporting the free speech of anti-gay zealots at funerals, deciding more or less on Fine’s side of the debate.  But, this was a legal position, not really deciding our political problem. How to judge hate speech?  How to respond to it?

I don’t think there is an easy answer to these questions.  But I think that the beginning of the answer is to be found in thinking about our practice here at DC.  Look at the issue from different angles.  Observe how various principles apply in different situations.  Debate the issue.  Act upon the implications of the debate.

Col. Muammar el-Qaddafi © Martin H. | Wikimedia Commons

Don’t support hate speech and its actions, or make believe that such thought and action is normal, as many have responded to Colonel Qaddafi over the years.  Certainly don’t endorse a country’s participation and even leadership in a UN body on human rights when its leader spews hate and supports terrorism connected to that hate.

But do support the development of a political system which can be open to what Fine calls “lusty talk.”  He maintains that “The allegiance to debate reflects the principles of the Founders, it doesn’t deny them. Being engaged in left or right disruption – talk or action – can be handled by a confident society. Yes, legislators, justices, and government officials must find grounds for reaching agreement, but they can do this – and over centuries have done this – within a welter of voices.”  But of course, constituting such a confident (democratic) society is very difficult.  Something we should note as we observe the revolutionary changes in North Africa and the Middle East.

© Unknown| Wikimedia Commons

Benoit Challand in his two posts examined how the counter power of civil society, with people acting independently and freely, has been the force behind the great ongoing transformation in Tunisia, Egypt and beyond.  Not the magic of class identity or of sacralized politics, but youth, he tells us.  I think what is particularly important is that the youth are basing their actions on free and civil discussion.  Once a civil order is established, perhaps, it will be able to handle hate speech.  But civility and its order must be supported as a top priority. It’s a precondition for democratic life, as we see it also is a cause promoting democracy’s institutionalization.  And, I think, this is not only for newly constituted democratic societies.  I should add: exactly these are the issues that I tried to work on in Civility and Subversion, one in which I consider not only civil intellectuals such as Walter Lippmann and John Dewey, but also subversive ones who sometimes use a language of hate such as Malcolm X.

Thousands, hundreds of thousands, of ecstatic Egyptians have been seen celebrating in the streets and squares of Cairo. They are delighted that they are to be ruled by the Egyptian military who have dissolved the parliament and abrogated the constitution. This once was the well-worn tradition of banana republics. Surely the idea of the military as an institution of popular rule has changed dramatically. The duly, if not fairly, elected government has been overturned through the continuing demonstrations of the people. Hosni Mubarak is no longer President Mubarak. What is next?

In the coming days and months and years citizens and power brokers in Egypt will shape the answer to this question. And Americans will be watching nervously. There is a joke among Jews, all social change is to be evaluated through the prism of a simple question, “But is it good for the Jews?” Jews are not the only ones who ask the question. All peoples worry how massive change will affect their own lives. American policy makers and pundits are asking the equivalent question. If we determine that change has distressing consequences, a search begins for explanations and for those responsible. Typical of the narcissism of nations, the question of blame will arise. “Who is the scapegoat?” “Who is the traitor?” We read history backwards to discover culprits. Should the outcome in Cairo not be to our liking it will be hard for Americans to avoid asking: “Who Lost Egypt?”

Sixty years ago a powerful version of that question was being asked by journalists and in the halls of Congress: Who Lost China? The Nationalist government of Chiang Kai-Shek had recently fallen to the communist troops of Mao. Americans believed that China was within our sphere of influence.  We had been propping up the corrupt Nationalist regime, but suddenly these leaders fled to Taiwan. We found Chinese troops fighting against American soldiers on the Korean peninsula. Perhaps most of the blame could be given to Chiang’s corrupt regime, but were there American traitors who shaped State Department policy? This was the hue and cry first of the fiercely anti-communist Henry Luce, editor-in-chief of Time magazine, and his friends in the China Lobby. Later, Senators Joseph McCarthy and Patrick McCarran took up cudgels, as they pounded villains, such as Johns Hopkins Sinologist Owen Lattimore, using his prominence and connections to blame Truman’s State Department.

Of course, the thoughtful examination of foreign policy disasters is to be expected and to be encouraged. Even liberal Walter Lippmann remarked, “The heart of the Republican attack is the belief, in itself quite legitimate, that after such a humiliating and costly disaster there must be an accounting.” But who are the accountants? In part, because of the drumbeat of negative attacks on counter-subversives, Republicans triumphed in the 1952 elections, reshaping postwar America.

Historical events do not come in neat packages. No two are alike. While conservatives, including Rush Limbaugh, Dick Morris, and Sean Hannity, have raised the charge today, it is by no means clear that Egypt is lost and, despite the Obama Administration’s miscues, we do not yet have an expert or policymaker who might be targeted as responsible for the outcome in Cairo. While Islamists in the form of a newly radicalized and legitimated Muslim Brotherhood may assume power, it is also quite possible that Egypt will become a robust democracy with continuing ties to Israel and strong connections to the United States. With such an outcome Egypt will be far from lost.

But if Egypt changes in ways we find disconcerting, someone will be identified as a plausible villain to target.  Whether National Intelligence Director James Clapper who claimed, somewhat implausibly, that the Muslim Brotherhood is a secular organization, would serve in a pinch remains to be seen. In Congress today there seems no backbencher salivating to wear the McCarthy/McCarran mantle. The most enthusiastic detractors of administration policy are to be found on talk radio and Fox News. At this point the sharks are circling the Administration’s boat sensing weakness, but there is no blood in the water. Critics cannot even agree if the administration was too quick to distance itself from the Egyptian government or too slow. Should revolts continue throughout the Middle East, promoting governments hostile to American interests a more intense search for villains will occur. Yet, if democracy flowers in Algeria, Libya, Yemen, and Iran, the Obama administration will receive – and will deserve – some of the credit.

Still, the underlying point is that when bad and surprising things affect the national interest, an accounting will occur: a blame game. This is the role of opinionated fighters and reputational entrepreneurs, both of the left and of the right. It is part of how nations with contentious and democratic parties operate. These rivals construct narratives of malfeasance and of mischief, hoping that the stories gain listeners. Today, opponents of the Obama administration are ready for storm clouds to brew in Egypt. They wish to ask, not Mubarak, but Barack, “who lost Egypt?” “Why in your omniscience and omnipotence did you betray us so?”

Last night in my course on the sociology of Erving Goffman, we discussed the release of classified documents by WikiLeaks.  The students generally agreed with me that the publication was inappropriate and politically problematic.  I think actually only one person dissented from the consensus.  Given the general political orientation of the students and faculty of the New School, this was surprising.  We are far to the left of the general public opinion, to the left, in fact, of the political center of the American academic community.  Our first position is to be critical of the powers that be.

Why not disclose the inner workings of the global super power?  Why not “out” American and foreign diplomats for their hypocrisy?  We did indeed learn a lot about the world as it is through the WikiLeak disclosures.  On the one hand, Netanyahu apparently is actually for a two state solution, and on the other Arab governments are just as warlike in their approach to Iran as Israel.   China is not as steadfast in its support of North Korea and not as opposed to a unified Korea through an extension of South Korean sovereignty as is usually assumed.  And the Obama administration has been tough minded in coordinating international sanctions against Iran, as it has been unsteady with a series of awkward failures in closing Guantanamo Prison.

And, of course, The New York Times, yesterday justified publication, mostly in the name of the public’s right to know about the foibles of its government, and also noted today how the leaks reveal the wisdom and diplomatic success of the Obama administration.

Most of the opposition to the release is very specific.  It will hurt the prospects of peace in the Middle East.  It shows our hand to enemies, as it embarrasses friends.  But my concern, shared with my students is that as it undermines diplomacy, it increases the prospects for diplomacy’s alternatives.

In fact, given the social theorist we have been studying, Goffman, it actually is not that unexpected that my students and I share a concern about the latest from WikiLeaks.  Goffman studied social interaction.  He analyzed how people present themselves in everyday life, and the ritual practices that surround their presentations. He investigated the framing of action, which makes social understanding possible, and he investigates Forms of Talk , the book we were discussing last night.  Most crucially in understanding why we object to the leaks, he shows how all successful group interaction has a front and a back stage.  One is no more true than the other, nor does the presence of a backstage reveal the lie of the front stage.  In fact, the contamination of the front by the back can destroy successful interaction.  This is true of the performances that occur in a family and between families, among groups of individuals, at school, at work, and indeed in international diplomacy.   The contamination of the front by the back can lead to a breakdown in interaction.  Think of our relation with our friends and opponents, on the international stage but also down the block.  In order for successful interaction to occur, people have to share some things, hide others.

We did not proceed to have a political discussion about this last night.  After all, it was a class with its front and back stages and not a political event.  We saw the problem of staging as it illuminated a pressing topic of the day, but we actually didn’t declare and explain our political positions.  There were suggestions, but not careful exploration and debate.  I try to avoid that in my classes as a matter of principle.  I just had a sense of where people stood, perhaps they can reply to this post to fully explain their political positions.

But at DC, I can be more forthright.  I believe WikiLeaks’ disclosures present a clear and present danger to world peace.  I make this bold assertion not because of any particular piece of information that may be particularly damaging, though such information surely has been released.  But because the disclosures as a whole undermine the process of diplomacy as a form of interaction, when diplomacy is what stands between us and war and is a key tool to end foolish wars.  As I indicated in an earlier post, I am becoming more and more convinced that military solutions to the problems of the day are impractical, not likely to yield the desired results.  By  weakening diplomacy, war becomes the default option.  On good peacenik grounds, I am concerned.