Christopher Hill: The Politics of Anger Management

 

DENVER – Shortly after John Roberts, the conservative United States Supreme Court Chief Justice, sided with the Court’s four liberal justices to uphold President Barack Obama’s major health-care reform, he joked that he was leaving the country for the “impregnable island fortress” of Malta. Roberts was referring not so much to the mainstream media’s speculation about the reasons for his surprise vote, but rather to the fury and thirst for retribution among conservative bloggers and pundits.

Indeed, “traitor” was one of their common epithets, as were “coward” and “sellout.” Real-estate mogul Donald Trump, with his customary charm, thought it appropriate to refer to the brilliant and scholarly Roberts as a “dummy.”

The apoplectic rage that followed the Supreme Court’s decision on Obama’s health-care legislation is becoming routine in America’s public discourse, and it is a bipartisan malady. Though it may have started on the left – in response to Richard Nixon, Ronald Reagan, and George W. Bush – it has become increasingly a right-wing phenomenon. Radio personalities like Rush Limbaugh and Glenn Beck (who recently signed a $100 million deal to spew more hatred on the airwaves) dwarf liberal commentators in audience size. The age of information and communications has given way to an age of anger.

Of course, this is not the first time that anger and fear have ruled US public discourse: Father Charles Coughlin’s toxic radio broadcasts in the 1930’s paved the way for today’s stars, who would feel similarly at home during the Red Scare of the 1920’s or the McCarthy era in the early 1950’s. But this contemporary ugly mood, unlike those times, seems to be independent of the real threats that America faces in the world: a weak global economy, terrorism, failed states, and protracted wars, to name a few. Americans have been angry for some time now, and their ire shows no sign of abating.

This sentiment is perhaps most obvious – and damaging – in foreign policy, where the choices facing officials are seldom obvious or risk-free. For example, the bloody conflict in Syria is fraught with challenges and unforeseen consequences. But such realities are lost on bloggers who blithely hold forth on what they claim are patently obvious solutions – and on the stupidity, cynicism, or insanity of leaders who fail to implement them.

Officials have an obligation to look beyond the current news cycle, and especially to understand that policy aimed at Syria, for example, engages policy toward Russia, Iraq, Lebanon, Egypt, and Israel. As a result, it is profoundly difficult to develop policies that enjoy support at every excruciating phase of their implementation. Wise policy is not always popular (a cliché that happens to be true).

Instant access to information does not mean instant access to knowledge, much less wisdom. One aspect of knowledge, as we know from nineteenth-century philosophy (and who studies that anymore?), reflects the integration of information with experience. Today, information is integrated with emotion – and with suspicion, sometimes bordering on paranoia, about the underlying motives of the leadership classes.

Compare this behavior to that of people who have truly suffered at the hands of political leaders – for example, South Africa’s Nelson Mandela, Burma’s Aung San Suu Kyi, or Poland’s Adam Michnik – and who managed to conduct respectful dialogue with their tormentors. Their tolerance, one suspects, would not have been diminished had they had access to the Internet during their incarceration.

Nevertheless, technology does seem to be playing a central role in facilitating anger. Establishing a blog, downloading photos, and creating catchy, sarcasm-drenched captions is not a particularly challenging activity. (Fortunately, making a living from it is another matter!) Mainstream media (whatever that expression means anymore) woo viewers by enabling them to “sound off” at the press of a button. As anyone who has read a thoughtful article or news story can attest, bitter, vituperative responses usually follow. Have these unhappy legions somehow always been there, waiting only for a button to push to register their views?

Clearly, there is something more going on than just an increase in clickable menu options. One fundamental issue seems to be dwindling respect for established institutions, many of which are drowning in the noise of opinion. The editorial of the local newspaper used to carry weight. Now it is just another view among many (and, worse, it relies on a platform whose business model is in trouble).

Digital technology has played another important role in fostering this atmosphere of bad manners, vicious personal attacks, intolerance, disrespect, and general rudeness. Sitting in one’s basement in pajamas, spewing out venom on a keyboard like a Batman movie villain who was poorly treated in a past life, one is at a safe distance from one’s target. Bullying has gone virtual.

Indeed, perhaps the most damaging aspect of all of our wonderful technology is that it enables us to live blissfully apart from those with whom we disagree. Our access to news can be tailored to our preconceived opinions. Even where people live seems to be having an effect. The proliferation of gated communities across America has increased the odds that people will live only with those who vote the same way.

The age of anger will end when Americans decide that they have had enough. For starters, they could make a mid-summer resolution to buck the trend. They might, for example, resist the Internet algorithm that suggests which book to buy or film to rent, based on what they read or watched previously. And they might begin to re-learn the useful democratic art of respectful debate with those who happen to hold views different from their own.

Christopher Hill, currently Dean of the Korbel School of International Studies at the University of Denver, was one of the main architects of American diplomacy in the 1990’s and 2000’s. A key negotiator of the Dayton Accords, which ended the war in Bosnia, and a special envoy to Kosovo in the late 1990’s, he then led the US delegation to the six-party talks on North Korea’s nuclear program and was US Ambassador to Iraq from 2009 to 2010. He has also served as US Ambassador to Macedonia, Poland, and South Korea, and as US Assistant Secretary of State for Asian and Pacific Affairs.

Christopher Hill: Where Are the Syrian Peacemakers?

DENVER – Much has been said about the similarities between the chaos in Syria and the Balkan wars of the 1990’s. But, while the prolonged killing may indeed be reminiscent, the political and diplomatic effort that finally ended the war in Bosnia is hardly in evidence today.

To date, there has been nothing similar to the Contact Group plan that was hammered out in the summer of 1994 by representatives from Britain, France, Germany, Russia, and the United States, and implemented the following year in Dayton, Ohio, after months of on-the-scene diplomacy. In Syria, the only diplomatic process is in the hands of the courageous, if beleaguered, former United Nations Secretary-General Kofi Annan, who has understood – better than many analysts of this latest international outrage – that any lasting political settlement must not be a triumph of one side or the other.

No one can watch the ongoing violence in Syria without a sense of horror at the armed attacks on largely unarmed civilians, overwhelmingly by groups that support President Bashar al-Assad’s regime. But those who say that Syria is on the brink of civil war miss what has become more obvious with each passing day: Syria alreadyis in a state of civil war, one whose battle lines were drawn months ago.

On one side is Assad’s minority Alawite tribe, which over the years has attracted secular Sunnis to share in the spoils of a one-party, authoritarian state. But Assad’s coalition is broader than that, which helps to explain how he has been able to hold on to power while other regimes in the region have not. Syria’s Christians, many of its 1.5 million Kurds, and even Damascus-based, secular classes have been disinclined to join what is widely perceived in the country – though not by the rest of the world – as a sectarian Sunni opposition that might not be supportive of cultural pluralism were it to assume power.

In the past, characterizing as a civil war a conflict in a complex region was a tacit warning that others should stay out. But the civil war in Syria has much broader ramifications, which could lead to a wider regional conflict. Given this looming threat, it is becoming increasingly clear that staying out of the Syrian mess may not be an acceptable choice for countries that have an interest in a calmer and more democratic Middle East.

Ominously, the conflict looks increasingly like a proxy war between Iran and the Sunni Arab states, which regard their own minority Shia populations as a potential Iranian fifth column. Iran has sought to maintain its influence in the Levant (including in Lebanon and among some Palestinian groups) by providing material support to Assad. By contrast, many Sunni Arab states have provided varying degrees of support to the largely Sunni opposition, a hodgepodge of groups that include the Muslim Brotherhood and other sectarian forces similar to Egypt’s ultra-conservative Salafis. 

Russia and China, bruised by their loss of face in the NATO-led intervention in Libya in 2011, have sought to keep the international community out of Syria. Both countries fear that intervention – whether militarily or through economic sanctions – could harm their interests in Syria, where they – especially the Russians – have been the dominant external players.
In the absence of concerted international action, the US and Europe have largely weighed in with vocal condemnation of the party committing the overwhelming number of human-rights violations: Assad and his henchmen. They have also highlighted the loss of life in an effort to shame Russia into adopting a more amenable position.

But denouncing Assad or Russia is unlikely to produce any effect except to assure domestic audiences that the West is on the side of the angels in the conflict. Likewise, proclaimed support for disparate, barely-known rebel groups; demands for dead-on-arrival sanctions resolutions; feckless calls for Assad’s departure (as if he plans to take the advice); and half-baked ideas about enforced “safe areas” (an utter failure in Bosnia) are unlikely to spare many lives, much less bring about the endgame that is so desperately needed.

What is really needed are serious and sustained negotiations among interested international powers (let’s call them a “contact group”) on a viable political outcome. A “Contact Group Plan” should be carefully worked out with Annan and his team (the only entity at this point that seems to have access to all sides). Most importantly, all of the plan’s stakeholders then need to support Annan, publicly and privately. Publicly declaring support for Annan’s ceasefire plan, and then whispering to journalists that it is “in tatters,” as has occurred repeatedly in recent weeks, will not get the job done.

Clearly, a new way forward is needed, and a good start would be a political/diplomatic plan that Annan could sell to the parties. In the Balkans, it was a US team that finally sold the Contact Group Plan to the parties directly involved. We didn’t succeed because we were geniuses. We succeeded because we had tremendous support from every country that wanted to see the horrific conflict in Bosnia brought to an end. The same unqualified support is what Annan – the best diplomat we have out there – needs and deserves.

Christopher Hill, currently Dean of the Korbel School of International Studies at the University of Denver, was one of the main architects of American diplomacy in the 1990’s and 2000’s. A key negotiator of the Dayton Accords, which ended the war in Bosnia, and a special envoy to Kosovo in the late 1990’s, he then led the US delegation to the six-party talks on North Korea’s nuclear program and was US Ambassador to Iraq from 2009 to 2010. He has also served as US Ambassador to Macedonia, Poland, and South Korea, and as US Assistant Secretary of State for Asian and Pacific Affairs.