Stephen Walt sur Twitter : “One of the most persistent oddities in American politics is the belief that government institutions are terrible at providing domestic benefits but nearly infallible and should therefore not be questioned on foreign and national security policy.” / Twitter
▻https://twitter.com/stephenWalt/status/1092589941048131585
Une affirmation d’une évidence...
Stephen Walt* sur Twitter :
Simple question: if a foreign country fired cruise missiles onto US soil, would we think it was an “act of war?” Of course we would.
Mais qui en dit long sur les tenants de la diplomatie US et du principe de non réciprocité.
▻https://twitter.com/stephenWalt/status/851184052258447360
* : Professor of International Affairs, Harvard Kennedy School
#géopolitique #syrie #USA #trump
Livingmaps Review
▻http://livingmaps.review/journal/index.php/LMR/index
Je ne connaissais pas, ça vaut la peine d’explorer
Livingmaps Review
A journal for theory and practice in critical cartography and participatory social mapping.
Vol 1, No 1 (2016): Livingmaps Review
Table of Contents
Editorial
Livingmaps Review goes live
PDF
Navigations
Our Kind of Town
Phil Cohen
Text (PDF) Slides (8Mb pdf)
Mapping the (in)visibility of community activism in planning in London
Martine Drozdz
PDF
Sand in the Mapmaking Machinery: The Role of Media Differences
Øyvind Eide
PDF
Waypoints
Future(s) Perfect: uchronian mapping as a research and visualisation tool in the fringes of the Olympic Park
Mara Ferreri, Rhiannon Firth, Andreas Lang
PDF
How do you lose a river?
Jonathan William Gardner
PDF
Map Orkney Month: imagining archaeological mappings
Daniel Lee
PDF
The Mappers and the Mapped
Jerry White
PDF
Lines of Desire
Discovering Geographies
Andrew Motion
PDF
Poetry and mapping: Jerry Brotton and Kei Miller
Mitch Panayis
PDF
Summer Solstice 2015
Karen Smith
PDF
Social media trails, mapping and mashing memories at the Queen Elizabeth Olympic Park. May 2016
Richard White
PDF
Mapworks
Field Drawings
Emma McNally
PDF
Nova Utopia, 2010-2013
Stephen Walter
PDF
Reviews
Kei Miller: The Cartographer tries to Map a Way to Zion
Phil Cohen
PDF
Jerry Brotton: A History of the World in Twelve Maps
Jeremy Crump
PDF
Ken Worpole and Jason Orton: The New English Landscape
Bob Gilbert
PDF
Nick Papadimitriou: Scarp
Bob Gilbert
PDF
Laura Kurgan: Close Up at a Distance: Mapping, Technology and Politics
Dan McQuillan
Des décennies de pratiques génocidaires et de racisme institutionnalisé
18 mai - Jeremy Salt - The Palestine Chronicle - Traduction : Info-Palestine.eu - MJB
▻http://www.info-palestine.eu/spip.php?article16073
(...) Les Palestiniens ont tout essayé. Ce ne sont pas eux qui n’ont ‘jamais raté une occasion de rater une occasion’ comme l’a une fois fait remarquer le ministre des affaires étrangères israélien Abba Eban, mais c’est Israël. Il n’a jamais été prêt à échanger la terre pour la paix. Il veut et la terre et la paix et semble espérer que le temps va résoudre les contradictions inhérentes à cette formule.
Les perspectives sont terriblement sombres, mais n’y a-t-il plus aucun espoir ? Il y a des raisons de penser que si. Si Israël annexe bel et bien la Cisjordanie et refuse d’accorder aux Palestiniens les droits de citoyens, il deviendra ouvertement un état d’apartheid et encore plus un paria sur la scène mondiale. La campagne BDS remporte chaque jour toujours plus de succès mondialement. Des sociétés, des facultés, des églises et d’autres groupes sociaux se désinvestissent tous. Les torrents d’invectives en provenance du gouvernement israélien et de ses lobbyistes, et leurs tentatives visant à criminaliser le mouvement BDS sont une preuve manifeste de son succès.
Aux États-Unis John Mearsheimer et Stephen Walt ont brisé un tabou en publiant en 2007 leur livre : The Israel Lobby and US Foreign Policy (Le lobby israélien et la politique étrangère états-unienne). Ce n’était pas des gauchistes hallucinés mais des universitaires traditionnels conservateurs de deux des meilleures universités au monde – Chicago et Harvard. Qu’un livre remettant en question la nature de la ‘relation spéciale’ pour des raisons à la fois politiques et morales, puisse même trouver un éditeur grand-public était en soi le signe que l’opinion publique était en train de changer.
Israël a depuis subi d’autres revers, et tout récemment l’incapacité des lobbies d’empêcher la signature de l’accord avec l’Iran. Pendant ce temps, sur les campus les étudiants juifs sont tout aussi susceptibles de rejoindre la campagne BDS que de s’y opposer. Ils soutiennent sans aucun doute le droit d’exister d’Israël, mais pas ce qu’il est devenu. Ils ne lui accordent plus un soutien inconditionnel – comme ce pouvait être le cas dans les années 1960 – et ce soutien ne va plus de soi.
Dans la sphère politique à proprement parler Bernie Sanders a critiqué Israël, pas très durement certes, mais il l‘a critiqué et dans une campagne électorale présidentielle c’est une première absolue. Les Européens adoptent une ligne plus dure. L’UE dresse une liste noire des entreprises israéliennes et bloque le financement de toute entité opérant en Cisjordanie. L’UE et le gouvernement états-unien interdisent l’étiquetage ‘made in Israël’ des produits fabriqués en Cisjordanie. Israël perd régulièrement du terrain dans les parlements européens et auprès des populations.
La roue de l’histoire tourne lentement, mais elle tourne et tourne tout le temps contre Israël.(...)
Why Is America So Bad at Promoting Democracy in Other Countries?
There’s no quick, cheap, or military-based way to bring peace to places like Afghanistan, Yemen, and Iraq. It’s time we changed our approach, and we can start at home.
Stephen Walt - Foreign Policy / 25.04.16
▻http://foreignpolicy.com/2016/04/25/why-is-america-so-bad-at-promoting-democracy-in-other-countries
To believe the U.S. military could export democracy quickly and cheaply required a degree of hubris that is still breathtaking to recall.[...]
At the risk of stating the obvious, we do know what doesn’t work, and we have a pretty good idea why. What doesn’t work is military intervention (aka “foreign-imposed regime change”). The idea that the United States could march in, depose the despot-in-chief and his henchmen, write a new constitution, hold a few elections, and produce a stable democracy — presto! — was always delusional, but an awful lot of smart people bought this idea despite the abundant evidence against it. [...]
So if promoting democracy is desirable, but force is not the right tool, what is? Let me suggest two broad approaches.
The first is diplomacy.[...]The United States has done this successfully on a number of occasions (e.g., South Korea, the Philippines, etc.) by being both persistent and patient and using nonmilitary tools such as economic sanctions. In these cases, the pro-democracy movement had been building for many years and enjoyed broad social support by the time it gained power. Relying on diplomacy may not be as exciting as the “shock and awe” of a military invasion, but it’s a lot less expensive and a lot more likely to succeed.[...]
The second thing we could do is set a better example. America’s democratic ideals are more likely to be emulated by others if the United States is widely regarded as a just, prosperous, vibrant, and tolerant society, instead of one where inequality is rampant, leading politicians are loudmouthed xenophobes, the prison population is the world’s largest, and airports and other public infrastructure are visibly decaying, yet no one seems able to do much about it. When millions of qualified citizens are excluded from voting, or when a handful of billionaires and other moneyed interests exert a disproportionate and toxic effect on U.S. politics, it is hardly surprising that other societies find America’s professed ideals less appealing than they once were. Add in Guantánamo, targeted killings, Abu Ghraib, overzealous NSA surveillance, and the reluctance to hold powerful people accountable for their misdeeds, and you end up with a pretty tarnished brand.
Stephen Walt dresse le bilan de la politique étrangère d’Obama en exécutant l’idée défendue par certains de ses critiques (liberal Hawks et neocons) qu’il serait un « réaliste » - ce que Walt se revendique être. Walt lui reproche au contraire de ne pas l’avoir assez été.
Obama Was Not a Realist President
If he had been, he might have avoided some of his biggest foreign-policy mistakes.
Foreign Policy / 07.04.16
▻http://foreignpolicy.com/2016/04/07/obama-was-not-a-realist-president-jeffrey-goldberg-atlantic-obama-doc
Pour la bouche la conclusion :
In short, Obama did not in fact run a “realist” foreign policy, because he doesn’t fully embrace a realist worldview, didn’t appoint many (any?) realists to key positions, and never really tried to dismantle the bipartisan consensus behind the grand strategy of liberal hegemony. As I’ve noted before, a genuinely “realist” foreign policy would have left Afghanistan promptly in 2009, converted our “special relationships” in the Middle East to normal ones, explicitly rejected further NATO expansion, eschewed “regime change” and other forms of social engineering in foreign countries such as Libya or Syria, and returned to the broad strategy of restrained “offshore balancing” that served the United States so well in the past.
Of course, even if Obama had explained the logic behind this strategy carefully and followed it consistently, he might still have failed to transform the foreign-policy establishment’s interventionist mindset. After all, that worldview is supported by plenty of wealthy individuals, powerful corporations, influential think tanks, and well-connected lobbies. A more ambitious effort to change how Americans think about foreign policy might not have succeeded. But as his presidency approaches its close, I still wish he had tried.
Ça ne m’étonnerait pas que @dedefensa nous fasse un commentaire de cette analyse brillante de Walt.
Stephen Walter, the artist mapping London’s shifts, stories and secrets – in pictures | Art and design | The Guardian
▻http://www.theguardian.com/artanddesign/gallery/2015/may/10/stephen-walter-the-artist-mapping-londons-shifts-stories-and-secrets-in
Stephen Walter’s highly detailed, hand-drawn #plans of the metropolis record long-forgotten histories and recent developments with a native Londoner’s critical eye. Here we show some of his remarkable maps from his book The Island, published by Prestel
Stephen Walter: ‘Any map is always a projection of the opinions of its maker’
Stephen Walt ▻https://mobile.twitter.com/StephenWalt/status/353261537806401537
Sometimes I wish US pundits (myself included) worried as much about state of American democracy as they do about democracies overseas.
Je suis en train d’imprimer l’étude que vient de publier le Center for American Progress : Fear, Inc. The Roots of the Islamophobia Network in America :
▻https://www.americanprogress.org/issues/religion/report/2011/08/26/10165/fear-inc
J’ai bien l’impression que c’est un document très important. J’en reparle quand je l’aurai lu (et que j’aurai le temps).
Signalé par Stephen Walt:
Fear, Incorporated: Who’s paying for all that Islamophobic paranoia? - By Stephen Walt | Stephen M. Walt
►http://walt.foreignpolicy.com/posts/2011/08/26/fear_incorporated
The irony in all this that the extremists examined in this report have gone to great lengths to convince Americans that there is a vast Islamic conspiracy to subvert American democracy, impose sharia law, and destroy the American way of life. Instead, what we are really facing is a well-funded right-wing collaboration to scare the American people with a bogeyman of their own creation, largely to justify more ill-advised policies in the Middle East.
(c’est moi qui souligne).
Très intéressante, la réaction des néoconservateurs de American Thinker :
Blog : The Soros-supported Center for American Progress blames rich Jews for stoking Islamophobia
►http://www.americanthinker.com/blog/2011/08/the_soros-supported_center_for_american_progress_blames_rich_jews_f
Who are the figures mentioned as the promoters of prejudice? Most of them are prominent Jews and supporters of Israel, such as David Horowitz, Daniel Pipes and Steven Emerson (the founder of the Investigative Project on Terrorism). The eight foundations mentioned as funding this effort include are almost exclusively ones founded and funded by Jewish donors, and lest readers not be aware of this fact, the Center for American Progress lists not only the other beneficiaries of the charities and foundations (most of them having Jewish or Israel in the title) but also goes to the trouble of naming the individuals behind these charities — not just the donors but also those who serve on the boards.
Why include this additional information except to highlight that Jewish people are behind this effort to “defame” Muslims? By “outing” the people involved, the report puts endangers them. Furthermore, this “report” relies on the conspiracy and age-old anti-Semitic trope that Jews fan prejudice towards others and promotes divisions for their own nefarious purposes (to support Israel in this case). This mindset is straight out of Mein Kampf.
De ce que je vois dans le rapport, ça ne se focalise justement pas sur des donateurs/acteurs juifs américains, mais plus largement sur des illuminés chrétiens américains (surtout !), un ancien milicien chrétien maronite libanais... En accusant American Progress d’antisémitisme, ce sur quoi American Thinker attire l’attention, c’est que le point commun de ce réseau de la haine est l’ultra-sionisme de droite (largement likoudnik), que ses membres soient juifs ou non.
REPORT: $42 Million From Seven Foundations Helped Fuel The Rise Of Islamophobia In America | ThinkProgress
►http://thinkprogress.org/politics/2011/08/26/304306/islamophobia-network
To explain how the Islamophobia network operates, we’ve produced this video to show just one example of how they have mainstreamed the baseless and unfounded fear that Sharia may soon replace American laws:
►http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Zx4M0xFjRKA
Ce qui est sympa dans le commentaire d’American Thinker, au delà du point Godwin c’est :
This will work its magic in the Muslim world, a substantial fraction of which believes that “defaming” Islam is legitimately punishable by death at the hands of any righteous Muslim. By thoughtfully providing a hit list, the CAP does its part to spread fear and — yes — terror among the opponents of radical Islam.
Moralité : ce rapport n’excuse pas simplement les terroristes : il est, lui même, de nature terroriste.
@baroug : oui. Mais c’est un classique du sionisme de droite américain. Il s’agit des États-Unis, avec deux caractéristiques : (a) la liberté d’expression interdit de « condamner » une simple opinion (et le racisme est une opinion aux États-Unis - il ne suffit pas, comme en France, de dire des choses comme « ça n’est pas une opinion, c’est un délit »), (b) l’extrême-droite sioniste américaine, et notamment sa composante d’extrémistes religieux chrétiens, est elle-même raciste et facilement antisémite.
Du coup, cette droite ne peut répondre simplement en taxant une opinion de « raciste » ou « antisémite » (ce qui suffit à disqualifier un interlocuteur en France) : il faut affirmer que cette opinion a une conséquence pratique directe, en ce qu’elle constitue un appel au meurtre. Et ça, même aux États-Unis, c’est interdit et moralement indéfendable.
Du coup, aux É-U, c’est un classique : il faut toujours aller plus loin que l’imputation d’antisémitisme et pousser le bouchon jusqu’à l’appel au meurtre qui, lui, ne ressort pas de la liberté d’expression.
Le Doha Institute vient de publier son propre commentaire sur ce rapport :
The Islamophobia Network in the United States
▻http://english.dohainstitute.org/release/0bfba905-573f-4ae2-8a83-2863aef9a4eb
In conclusion, I focus on the four following points:
First: Islamophobia is on the rise in the United States, and it has become more widespread in this past decade than at any other time previously; it has also increased dramatically since 2008.
Second: Islamophobia has its own structure and organization, and enjoys a network of collaborating and coexisting groups that share a hefty budget, experts, and supporters.
Third: The study that I have summarized is extremely useful and contains many facts and examples and a careful study of the backgrounds of the major players in the Islamophobia network.
Fourth: The study’s importance mandates its translation into Arabic; Arab and Muslim organizations will benefit from its practical strategy to combat the dangers of increasing Islamophobia.
Il y a quelques jours, le Washington Post a présenté, au monde émerveillé, le nouveau leader de l’opposition syrienne, Ammar Abdulhamid :
Syrian rebels don’t want U.S. aid, at least for now - Washington Times
►http://www.washingtontimes.com/news/2011/mar/27/syrian-rebels-dont-want-us-aid-at-least-for-now
Ammar Abdulhamid, who has emerged as an unofficial spokesman in the West for the activists organizing the Syrian protests...
Angry Arab n’a pas tardé à faire remarquer à quel point cette prétention était ridicule :
►http://angryarab.blogspot.com/2011/03/this-is-hilarious-when-western.html
This is hilarious: when Western countries select leaders for the region
They decided that a Syrian living in Washington, DC is the leader of the protests. I wonder how many Syrians actually know who he is. (thanks Ahmet)
Joshua Landis (Syria Comment), dans un article apparemment neutre, rappelle des infos bien gênantes :
►http://www.joshualandis.com/blog/?p=8864
Déjà présenté par le WaPo en juillet 2004, l’homme a trouvé l’équation idéale (ancien super-musulman donc légitime, mais plus musulman du tout donc rassurant pour le lecteur du WaPo) :
Ammar Abdulhamid is no Islamist. He did flirt with Islam and the notion of going to Afghanistan during a difficult period of introspection after dropping out of University of Wisconsin-Stevens Point, but pulled away from the lures of fundamentalism. “It gave my life structure, but it enslaved the hell out of me,” he told the Washington Post’s Nora Boustany. Eventually he abandoned Islam for atheism and ultimately became an “agnostic.”
Notez bien : il pense aller en Afghanistan en... 1988. Contre les russes, donc. Pas contre les américains. (Ouf.)
Mais, dès 2005, il rejoint le Saban Center, think tank fondé par Haim Saban, dirigé par Martin Indyk, et décrit par John Mearsheimer and Stephen Walt comme un élément du lobby pro-israélien.
He was appointed a visiting fellow at the Saban Center of the Brookings Institute in Washington DC, shortly after he had established the Tharwa Project [...] in June 2004.
À l’instar d’une Joumana Haddad, c’est un auteur écrivant sur un passionnant sujet à la con, mais totalement dans l’air du temps (ce qui en fait, je suppose, le Carrie Bradshaw de Damas) :
He is the author of a prize winning novel, Menstruation: A Novel, that depicts how the culture of Islam in Syria is sexually and morally repressive.
En novembre 2005, le gars soutient le rapport Mehlis avec ferveur dans le quotidien libanais Daily Star (il se présente comme « Visiting Fellow » pour le Saban Center for Middle East Policy). Aujourd’hui, plus personne ne se réfère au rapport Mehlis, sauf pour le désavouer.
►http://www.mafhoum.com/press9/256P5.htm
In making up his mind on the next steps, Assad needs to consider that the Mehlis report was only a preliminary document prepared for the sake of getting an extension of the UN probe and securing Syrian cooperation. Mehlis did not put everything he had in the report and did not divulge all the pieces of evidence. This includes more taped conversations with Syrian officials, both alive and recently dead, as well as testimony by more credible witnesses whose identity still needs to be protected.
En 2005, il rejoint le Front de salut national en Syrie d’Abdel Halim Khaddam et Ali Sadreddine Bayanouni.
Following the 2005 defection of Syria’s long time Vice President Abdul Halim Khaddam, who founded the National Salvation Front in cooperation with the long-time leader of Syria’s Muslim Brotherhood, Bayanuni, Ammar decided to join opposition politics directly. Abdulhamid worked to gain the NSF a place in Washington and recognition from the Bush administration. It was successful in opening an office in Washington DC, largely thanks to Ammar’s connections and support, despite considerable reluctance on the part of US lawmakers to support any organization associated to the Muslim Brotherhood.
Selon Landis, il quitte cet attelage trop ouvertement associé à l’administration Bush (en 2007 ?) :
Ammar quite the National Salvation Front in 2007 shortly before it was dissolved at the time the Obama administration took office.
Avec un curriculum pareil, il semble impossible de ne pas être proclamé représentant d’un truc arabe quelconque par le Washington Post.
En 2008, Bush :
►http://www.project-syndicate.org/commentary/abdulhamid5/English
America’s “freedom agenda” is not the cause of its current travails in the Middle East. The problem has been a lack of consistency in promoting the agenda, failure to develop broader international support for it, and the behavior of the US itself, which has presented it as a martial plan, rather than a Marshall Plan.
Whatever the cause of these shortcomings, the lesson that US and Europe policymakers should draw is that the objective – facilitating democratization and modernization – remains valid, despite the need for a change in tactics.
[...]
Despite Bush’s mixed record, he still seems to share this hope. Will the same be true of America’s next president?
