The Obama "To Make Important Middle East Speech" MEGATHREAD

[Sheilbh]

There is nothing new in the speech re Israel/Palestine, it is just reaffermation of previous positions.

What is new, is Bibi's rejectionist stance. There can be no peace progress with Bibi in charge, since he'll just find ways to reject everything.   

Mind you, any progress at all appears unlikely these days, given the recent PA-Hamas amalgamation - with Hamas insisting as a condition that there be no backing down from its 'kill everyone in Israel' policy.

It's going to be hard to get any negotiations going with Bibi on one end, and a Hamas-dominated PA on the other. Obama's speech is whistling in the wind - until, that is, those two problems (Bibi and Hamas/PA) are solved.

I agree - though I think the Hamas-Fatah thing is more interesting in the context of the Arab spring and should be treated with suspicion but could end up as a positive step - that it's pretty disheartening. 

I think Bibi could, and I think wants, to make peace.  But his coalition partners are ultra hard-line and frankly racist and I think Bibi is, understandably, very scared with what's happening throughout the region.  I still think if Israel still had Sharon things would have gone better over the last few years.

I saw President Obama in another speech, I think it was his first Mid East speech. In that he said just the opposite, that Israel going back to the 1967 borders was not an option, that they should keep their capitol in Jersualem, etc. So this latest speech appears to be going back on that?

His line hasn't changed - the US line hasn't changed since Johnson.  1967, with land swaps, is the basis of any deal in terms of territory.  It's been Israel's position for a long while and, according to the Palestine papers, was the basis of negotiations by the Palestinians too.  Bibi's demand that the Palestinian Authority recognise Israel as a Jewish state is relatively new.  Generally Israel's been happy saying 'we're the Jewish state' and the Palestinian Authority saying 'we recognise Israel'.  That's a sophist workaround but that happens.

Because up until around Sabra and Shatila the story of Israel was very much a plucky David fighting off several Goliaths.  Starving Auschwitz survivers sneak through a British blockade and pick up smuggled Sten guns to battle massive professional armies from the entire Arab world to protect their *UN recognized* independence.

The question I've got for you is why Europe decided to throw Israel under the bus in 1967.

Europe doesn't; France does.  Britain continues to be close to Israel to the present day and Germany never criticises them.  In terms of population I think a few things happen.  The New Left self-identifies with national liberation movements and Third Worldism, plus there's an aspect of terrorist chich - while it's distant, I think Munich, the RAF, the Red Brigades and the rest tarnish this a bit.  I think there's post-colonial guilt, which is really just an extension of sympathising with those national liberation movements.  I also think that in continental Europe implicitly unbreakable support of Israel, like Atlanticism, was part of the hypocritical post-war settlement and after 67 successive generations feel less commitment and more hostility to that because their personal guilt over the war is gone.  Also Exodus wasn't a bestseller.

There is a risk for Israel I think if she stops looking like the only plucky little democracy in the region and if she starts to face anything like the sort of protests we've seen elsewhere in the Arab world. 

Hell, a lot of US support for Isreal is just because of moral disgust with the Holocaust.  But Viking is right, a lot of it was also Nassar accepting Soviet aid.

I think Israeli support of the US is important too.  I mean the Soviets make a massive play for Israel immediately after independence.  I think perhaps the American openness (more open-minded to a democratic socialist government backed by the USSR than in the rest of the Cold War at least) mixed with the start of anti-semitic purges begins to change things prior to Nasser and make the Israelis more amenable to the US and the Soviets needing a new Middle Eastern friend.

Thing is, the US was the first country to recognized Israel.  So it goes back further then that.

The USSR was.

[Pat]

So the appeal is to natural law.  I don't agree even as a matter of private law - the principle that one should do what one commits to do (which is what pacta sunt servanda reduces to) does not strike me as inherently obvious or natural.

It doesn't? Why not?

Focusing on the principle as an international law concept, it strikes me as an odd basic principle.  As a liberal, I would say that the basic "natural" or "rational" principle of state should be that the state should protect the liberty of its citizens and effectuate the ends of its free citizens as expressed through a free and democratic political process.  But that requires that the free, liberal state act autonomously with respect to the outside world, and to reverse itself with respect to external commitments when domestic political will so commands.  And that is inconsistent with pacta sunt servanda as a foundational concept of international law.

This seems to be the core of our disagreement and the rest is going nowhere so I'll go from here.

What is the rational or natural basis of that? If it's something like a social contract then that's pacta sunt servanda (the various attempts to derive society from contracts and agreements against all empiricism are themselves a testimony to pacta sunt servanda being one of the oldest and most central principles of law).

Anyway, the people should elect responsible representatives or be held responsible. If there's a trend of elected representatives acting really partisan in matters of long term foreign agreements you can always require that treaties should be ratified by parliamentary majority, and if that doesn't work, you can make it a qualified majority. So that's not really a problem.

BTW lege ferenda I would argue that the case for pacta sunt servanda (henceforth: PSS) is strongest as applies to democracies since then the states actually represent the people. It's much harder to justify when it comes to a people being held responsible to what a brutal dictatorship decided for them many regime changes ago when they didn't have say in it. Then I can agree it's a bad principle.

[The Minsky Moment]

I should have been more clear in my earlier post - my basic objection is to the concept of natural law in the first place.   Positing PSS as a natural principle is a good illustration of the problems associated with natural law as a theory.  As a matter of empirical reality, human beings often renege on commitments - indeed reneging on commitments is probably more common than keeping to them (think of New Year's Resolutions or "till death do us part").  So for PSS to be a natural law concept, the claim must be that notwithstanding the obvious fact that actual people (in "nature") often violate the principle, there is some reason nonetheless to conceive of it as a normative command.  But so such reason has been advanced here and I cannot think of one.  On the contrary, it seems to me there are good reasons why human beings should not be compelled to be bound by their commitments (e.g. because of the inherently dynamic and changing nature of human experience).  I.e one could easily posit the contrary of PSS as the normative rule, with the PSS principle being a policy-based (expediency) exception to that rule carved out for certain particular kinds of intercourse (e.g. certain kinds of commercial transactions, land transactions in writing, etc.).

Thus, when I stated "as a liberal, I would say that the basic 'natural' or 'rational' principle of state should be [X]", I did not mean to state that there actually was a "natural" or "rational" principle of state.  Rather I meant that to the extent I would recognize a principle for the organization of a state it would be along liberal democratic lines, not because liberal democracy is a "natural" principle of state, but because I happen to be a liberal democrat by conviction.

I do stand by the claim that a liberal democratic state is not consistent with strong adherance to PSS externally and I think your response demonstrates that fact.  You state:

Anyway, the people should elect responsible representatives or be held responsible.

Which is tantamount to explaining that in order to maintain consistency with PSS, democracy must be (and should be?) constrained such that the people only elect the "right" representatives ("responsible" representatives who will constrain state action to conform with PSS).  Then:

If there's a trend of elected representatives acting really partisan in matters of long term foreign agreements you can always require that treaties should be ratified by parliamentary majority, and if that doesn't work, you can make it a qualified majority

That requirement actually exists in the US (partially - the Senate must ratify) but it doesn't respond to the objection because legislative majorities in democratic states are ephemeral.  Indeed, public objection to foreign treaty terms can be a basis for the fall of a legislative majority.