Ian Buruma: East Asia’s Sins of the Fathers

NEW YORK – One way to look at the growing military tensions over a few tiny islands in the East China Sea is to see in recent events a straightforward case of power politics. China is rising, Japan is in the economic doldrums, and the Korean peninsula remains divided. It is only natural that China would try to reassert its historical dominance over the region. And it is just as natural for Japan to feel nervous about the prospect of becoming a kind of vassal state (the Koreans are more accustomed to this role, vis-à-vis China).

Being subservient to American power, as Japan has been since 1945, was the inevitable consequence of a catastrophic war. Most Japanese can live with that. But submission to China would be intolerable.

And yet, because East Asian politics remains highly dynastic, a biographical explanation might be just as useful. Shinzo Abe, the Japanese prime minister, is the grandson of Nobusuke Kishi, once the top industrial bureaucrat of wartime Japan. Imprisoned by the Americans as a war criminal in 1945, Kishi was released without trial at the beginning of the Cold War, and was elected Prime Minister as a conservative in 1957.

Kishi was a nationalist with fascist tendencies during the 1930’s and 1940’s. After the war, an equally deep aversion to Communism made him a staunch ally of the United States; Richard Nixon became a close friend. His lifelong quest was to revise the pacifist Japanese constitution, written by the Americans just after the war, and turn Japan into a proud military power once more.

Abe’s greatest wish is to complete the project that eluded his grandfather: abandon constitutional pacifism and bury the war crimes of Kishi’s generation, while remaining allied with the US against China. As a right-wing nationalist, Abe feels compelled to resist the dominance of China, if only rhetorically for the time being.

One of Kishi’s greatest Cold War allies – apart from Nixon – was the South Korean strongman President Park Chung-hee, who came to power in a military coup a year after Kishi resigned as prime minister. Park, too, had a dubious wartime career. Under the Japanese name of Takagi Masao, he served as an officer in the Japanese Imperial Army. He graduated from a military academy in Manchuria, where Kishi had once ruled over an industrial empire that was built on Chinese slave labor.

Like Kishi, Park was a nationalist. But, apart from his sentimental wartime connections to Japan, his anti-Communism was incentive enough to continue warm relations with the imperial power that had brutally colonized Korea for a half-century. Park Geun-hye, South Korea’s current president, is his daughter.

Park Geun-hye adored her father at least as much as Abe loved his grandfather, but the result of her dynastic connection is the opposite of Abe’s. To be seen as a Korean nationalist today, she must distance herself from some of her father’s political ties, especially his links with Japan. Though still admired by many South Koreans for rebuilding the country from the ruins of war, his legacy, like that of many members of the old conservative elite, is tainted by wartime collaboration. So his daughter must confront Japan over territorial disputes, to avoid inheriting the stigma of her father’s colonial past.

The case of the current Chinese leader, Xi Jinping, is perhaps the most complicated of the three. His father, Xi Zhongxun, was one of the top leaders of the Communist revolution. A guerilla leader in the war against Japan, he helped to defeat Chiang Kai-shek’s Nationalists in China’s civil war, became a member of the Central Committee, and then chief of propaganda, Vice Premier, and Governor of Guangdong.

An impeccable Communist career, one might think, giving his son no need to distance himself or to complete a frustrated ambition. But Xi’s nationalism, too, has a history.

Chairman Mao’s main aim was to consolidate his revolution at home. His nationalist credentials were so impressive that he could afford to be relatively easy on former enemies. Territorial disputes over unimportant islands could be laid to rest. He did not even bother to reclaim Hong Kong from the British.

It was only when Deng Xiaoping opened the door to trade with capitalist countries that anti-Japanese sentiments were deliberately stirred up. Neither Marxism nor Maoism could be used to justify China’s joining the capitalist world. This left an ideological vacuum, which old-fashioned nationalism soon filled. The more the leadership opened up the Chinese economy, the more it stoked popular anger over past wrongs, especially those committed by Japan.

The man who was most responsible for Deng’s Open Door policies was none other than Xi’s father, Xi Zhongxun. Always a pragmatic Communist, the elder Xi had been the target of several purges under Mao, when relative moderates were frequently denounced as counterrevolutionaries. His son appears to follow in this pragmatic tradition, open to business with the world. That is why he, too, like Deng’s reformers, must burnish his nationalist credentials by standing up to Japan and asserting Chinese dominance in East Asia.

None of these leaders – Xi, Abe, or Park – wants a real war. Much of their posturing is for domestic consumption. One reason why they can engage in this dangerous brinkmanship is the continuing presence of the US as the regional policeman. America’s armed forces are the buffer between the two Koreas, and between China and Japan.

The US presence allows East Asia’s rival powers to act irresponsibly. The only thing that might change their behavior would be US withdrawal of its military force. In that case, the three countries would have to come to terms with one another by themselves.

But that is still regarded by the Americans, Japanese, Koreans, and probably even the Chinese as too much of a risk. As a result, the status quo is likely to persist, which means that nationalist grandstanding over conflicting territorial claims is far from over.

Ian Buruma is Professor of Democracy, Human Rights, and Journalism at Bard College. He is the author of numerous books, including Murder in Amsterdam: The Death of Theo Van Gogh and the Limits of Tolerance and Taming the Gods: Religion and Democracy on Three Continents.

Ian Buruma: Bombing for Morality

NEW YORK – A gift for words was always US President Barack Obama’s strongest asset. Now it looks as if his words have trapped him.

Having stated in March that the United States would “not tolerate the use of chemical weapons against the Syrian people,” and having spoken last year about a “red line” that could not be crossed, he will lose face if he fails to react forcefully to the murder, allegedly by the Syrian regime, of more than 1,000 civilians by sarin gas. Of course, the risk of losing face is not a good reason for attacking another country.

But why did Obama fence himself in with such rhetoric in the first place? Why this particular red line? Secretary of State John Kerry was right to call the use of gas “a moral obscenity.” But so is torturing children, which is how the civil war in Syria actually began more than two years ago. And is killing civilians with chemical agents morally more obscene than shelling, shooting, or starving them to death?

At least since the use of mustard gas in World War I, it has been a common assumption that certain weapons are more immoral than others. Weapons of mass destruction, nuclear bombs in particular, certainly cause more damage faster than conventional armaments do. But is there really a clear moral distinction between killing roughly 100,000 people in Hiroshima with one atom bomb and killing even more people in Tokyo in a single night of incendiary bombing? Was it more immoral to gas Jews than to machine-gun them into open pits?

There is an argument, made by Nicholas Kristof in the New York Times, that a swift punishment might persuade Syrian President Bashar Al-Assad to stop using chemical weapons and use “more banal ways to slaughter his people.” This does not make sense to me. The problem is surely the slaughter, not the methods used.

In any case, moral outrage, however justified, is not a sufficient reason for going to war. Mao Zedong was responsible for the deaths of more than 40 million Chinese in the 1950’s and 1960’s. No one in his right mind suggested that military intervention in China would be a good idea. In the 1980’s, Saddam Hussein gassed hundreds of thousands of Iranians and Kurds. The US supported him.

So is it a legal issue? Using chemical weapons is indeed a breach of international conventions, including the Chemical Weapons Convention, which Syria has never signed, and the Geneva Protocol, to which it is a party. So there are good reasons to treat Assad as a war criminal, in which case he should be indicted at the International Criminal Court (ICC) – established, incidentally, by a treaty that the US has never ratified. But bypassing the United Nations and unleashing an illegal war to punish an illegal act is not an easy policy to defend.

Still, one might say, surely the “international community,” or the West, or the US as the major Western power, must draw the line somewhere. How can responsible governments simply look away when innocent people are being killed in large numbers? Tolerating genocide is intolerable.

But where exactly do we draw that line? How many murders constitute genocide? Thousands? Hundreds of thousands? Millions?

Or is it not a question of numbers? Genocide, after all, is a matter of intent, of killing or persecuting people on the grounds of their race, ethnicity, or creed. Technically, killing ten people for such reasons – or even two – could be a form of genocide.

There is another way of considering the matter. The question to ponder before intervening with force in another country is whether doing so is likely to improve matters, save lives, and make the world more secure. Yes, violence against citizens, whether by sarin gas or helicopter gunships, is a moral obscenity. The issue is how to respond: What will work?

Justice and morality have little to do with this. Like the ICC, “humanitarian intervention” has more chance of working in the case of a weak country (say, Serbia, Mali, or Sierra Leone) than where a big power is involved. No one is going to shoot missiles into China or Russia for the sake of upholding human rights or international standards of warfare.

Syria, as many people have pointed out, is not Libya or Mali. Nor is it a great power. But its civil war has already spread beyond its borders, implicating greater powers like Iran, Turkey, and Russia in the process. One thing worse than the moral obscenities of a civil war would be a regional conflagration.

It is by no means certain that US intervention would do anything to reduce the risk of a wider war. In fact, certain advocates of US intervention – both neo-cons and “liberal hawks” – seem to desire the opposite outcome; they want a war against Iran. And there is probably a clear link in Obama’s mind between the red line in Syria and the one he has drawn for Iran, perhaps equally unwisely, to prevent it from developing nuclear weapons.

So what is to be achieved by a US strike on Syrian targets, which Obama has already assured the world is not meant to change the Syrian regime? It will not stop the civil war. But even one missile would turn the US into a direct participant, provoking yet more violence. Saving Obama’s honor hardly seems worth that risk.

This is the view of many people in Syria, even among the rebels. It is the view of most people in Europe. It is also the view of most people in the US. Perhaps it is even the view of Obama himself, which is why he is playing for time, desperately turning over approval of an attack on Syria to the US Congress. His relations with Congress have been far from smooth. But now he needs it more than ever – in order, as they say in America, to cover his ass.

Ian Buruma is Professor of Democracy, Human Rights, and Journalism at Bard College. He is the author of numerous books, including Murder in Amsterdam: The Death of Theo Van Gogh and the Limits of Tolerance and Taming the Gods: Religion and Democracy on Three Continents.

Ian Buruma: Send in the Clowns

NEW YORK – When too many Italians voted late last month for either a louche and discredited business tycoon or a comedian, European stock markets plummeted. With no public trust in the political class, Italy might become ungovernable.

But Italians are not alone. Rage against the political establishment has become a global phenomenon. Chinese bloggers, American Tea Party activists, British Europhobes, Egyptian Islamists, Dutch populists, Greek ultra-rightists, and Thai “red shirts” all have one thing in common: hatred of the status quo and contempt for their countries’ elites. We are living in an age of populism. The authority of conventional politicians and traditional media is slipping away fast.
Populism can be a necessary corrective when political parties grow sclerotic, mass media become too complacent (or too close to power), and bureaucracies are unresponsive to popular needs. In a globalized world managed by bankers and technocrats, many people feel that they have no say in public affairs; they feel abandoned.

Our national politicians, increasingly powerless to cope with serious crises, are suspected, often with good reason, of simply looking after their own interests. All we can do is vote the rascals out, sometimes by voting for candidates whom we would not take seriously in more normal times.

Italian elites are not the only ones in need of being shaken up. But the problem with populism is that it is rarely benign. In the 1930’s, it resulted in violent movements led by dangerous men in uniform. Today’s populists are different. They do not, on the whole, advocate violence. Some preach that Muslims are destroying Western civilization. Others think that President Barack Obama is a kind of communist out to destroy America.

Two types of contemporary populist, however, stand out: the ultra-rich business tycoon and the clown. In the Anglo-Saxon media world, Rupert Murdoch, owner of far too many newspapers, TV stations, and movie studios, is a typical populist tycoon. But he never aspired to lead a country. Former Italian Prime Minister Silvio Berlusconi and former Thai Prime Minister Thaksin Shinawatra did – and still do.

Neither the clown nor the tycoon is well suited to being a democratic leader. The question is which is worse.

Clowns have always played a role in politics. Medieval court jesters were often the only ones who could speak truth to despotic kings. Today, it is often comedians who claim to speak truth to power – and to the public.

In America, liberals turn for political commentary to television comedians like Jon Stewart and Stephen Colbert, who are now more trusted than traditional news broadcasters. And clownish right-wing radio talk-show hosts now have more influence on many conservative American voters than the sober journalists of the mainstream media do.

A few years ago, a clown named Brozo, with a large red nose and a bright green wig, was Mexico’s most popular political commentator on television, actively courted by all candidates running for national office. In 1980, the French clown Coluche actually dropped out of the presidential race when one newspaper put his popular support at 16%, causing him to fear that he might influence the result too much.

The prototype of modern European populism was the flamboyant Dutch political showman Pim Fortuyn, who was assassinated in 2002 by a fanatical vegan. Fortuyn’s outrageousness was deliberately provocative and always entertaining. His rants against the elites were often confused, but he was funny, which made the old elite politicians look like stuffy old bores – which many of them were.

And now Italy has Beppe Grillo, whose success in the country’s recent election makes him the first professional comedian to lead a major political party in Europe.

The thing about clowns, though, is that few have any aspirations to rule their countries. Before his death, Fortuyn is said to have been terrified of the prospect of becoming Prime Minister. And Grillo cannot even aspire to the job in Italy because of his criminal record.
Clowns mostly seek to provoke, and this can be healthy. They are less likely than members of the professional political class to allow political calculations to influence their views. And, sometimes, they actually say things that are uncomfortable but true, and that need to be said.

Political business tycoons, on the other hand, have different ambitions. They attack the old elites not to shake things up, but to take their power. Promising to spread the riches that they have made for themselves, they exploit the fantasies of those of us who have little and want more. Berlusconi understood the dreams of many Italians very well. His extravagance, clownishness, and even his girls were part of his popular appeal.

In Thailand, the self-made ethnic-Chinese media billionaire Thaksin Shinawatra was especially admired by the rural poor. Like a beneficent king, he would give them money, and promised to challenge the old elites in Bangkok – the bankers, generals, judges, and even the courtiers surrounding the Thai king.

But tycoons are not natural democrats. Their main interest is in their own business. And they do not hesitate to undermine an independent press or judiciary when their business interests are threatened. Even though his sister, Yingluck Shinawatra, is now in power, Thaksin is still trying to evade trial in Thai courts on a wide array of financial charges.

As it happens, Thaksin was overthrown in 2006 by a military coup that was largely backed by the Bangkok elites. Berlusconi was replaced by a government run by elite technocrats, whose policies had to be approved by European bankers and European Union bureaucrats.
Neither of these responses to populism is likely to boost democracy. On the contrary, they make things worse. What is needed is mainstream politicians who understand and respond to what is fueling popular rage. Paying attention to some of what the clowns are saying might be a good first step.


Ian Buruma is Professor of Democracy, Human Rights, and Journalism at Bard College. He is the author of numerous books, including, most recently, Murder in Amsterdam: The Death of Theo Van Gogh and the Limits of Tolerance and Taming the Gods: Religion and Democracy on Three Continents.

Ian Buruma: Does Europe Need Britain?

NEW YORK – Many people in the United Kingdom believe that their country can do perfectly well outside the European Union. Members of the UK Independence Party even think that Britain would do better, as do a considerable number of Conservative “Euro-skeptics.” They dream of Britain as a kind of Singapore of the West, a commercial powerhouse ruled from the City of London.

That is why Prime Minister David Cameron felt obliged to offer the British people a referendum on a simple question: in or out. Cameron does not personally want Britain to leave the EU, but he knows that some form of democratic consent is needed for future British governments to settle the matter.

The year of the promised referendum, 2017, is comfortably far away. Many things may change in the meantime. If the eurozone forges ahead, what countries outside the zone do may not matter much anymore. Moreover, other Europeans may end up agreeing with Cameron that ever closer political union in Europe is undesirable – if they have a choice, that is, which is by no means certain.

In the meantime, there is another question to be considered: how many Europeans want Britain to stay in the EU? The answer depends partly on nationality. The smaller northern countries, such as the Netherlands, have traditionally wanted Britain to be in. Without Britain, they would be bossed around by France, and even more so by Germany. And yet, as memories of World War II fade, more and more people in the Netherlands and Scandinavia feel content to be under Germany’s powerful wings.

But Germany itself would probably prefer to keep its British partner, rather than face the Mediterranean countries alone. Culture still matters. And the Germans have much in common with the British – more than they do with the Greeks, or even the Italians.
France is a different matter. According to a recent poll, 54% of the French would prefer Britain to leave the EU. This, too, might have something to do with culture. Britain never was very popular in France. President Charles de Gaulle blocked British entry into the European Economic Community twice. Like many French leaders, de Gaulle was deeply suspicious of the “Anglo-Saxons.” France, in his grandiose view, was the natural guardian of European values, which, according to him, were coextensive with French values.

In 1930, Winston Churchill said of his country: “We are with Europe, but not of it.” It is a sentiment still shared by many in Britain. De Gaulle agreed. As he once put it, somewhat ironically, Britain would lose its identity as a member of a European union, and this would be a great pity.

But culture and nationality, or even Gaullist chauvinism, cannot explain everything. There is an important political dimension to the pro- or anti-British sentiments in Europe. The French who said they wanted Britain to leave the EU were largely on the left, while many who held the opposite view were further to the right. It is not entirely clear why, though it is probably because the right includes neo-liberals, who share the British attitude to business and free trade.

Like leftists everywhere, the French left favors a large degree of state control of the economy, together with technocratic rather than liberal solutions to social and economic problems. This type of thinking has played a vital role in the development of European institutions.

Jean Monnet, one of the godfathers of European unification, embodied this tendency – a born bureaucrat who distrusted politicians. Democratic politics is messy and divisive, and riddled with compromises. Monnet hated all that. He was obsessed by the ideal of unity. And he wanted things to get done, uncompromised by political wheeling and dealing.

Monnet and other European technocrats were not exactly opposed to democracy, but in their zeal to unify Europe’s diverse nation-states, they often appeared to ignore it. The Eurocrats knew what was best for Europe’s citizens, and they knew what needed to be done. Too much public debate, or interference from citizens and their political representatives, would only slow things down. Hence the typical EU language about “unstoppable trains” and “irreversible decisions”: citizens are not supposed to question the wisdom of great planners.
This emphasis on planning was one reason why the “European project” always appealed to the left – and not only in France. The technocratic belief in ideal models is inherently utopian. Those on the left also shared a deep aversion to nationalism, born of two disastrous European wars.

The British, whose Churchillian nationalism helped them to prevail against Hitler’s attacks, never shared this aversion. And their deep pride in Britain’s liberal-democratic tradition made them suspicious of meddling Brussels bureaucrats. Some of this is doubtless the result of chauvinism, even xenophobia. How can one possibly share political authority with foreigners?
But it would be wrong simply to dismiss British doubts about the European drive toward greater unity. It is not just a nationalist reaction. Many Europeans now resent the expanding powers of EU bureaucracy. British resistance to grand European plans is the democratic grit in an enterprise that could become authoritarian, despite having the best intentions, and should serve as a necessary corrective to the utopianism of the technocrats.

Those who favor European unification should take criticisms of its political flaws very seriously. Doing so is the only chance to ensure that a united Europe, whatever form it takes, will be democratic, as well as economically beneficial. That is why Europe needs Britain: not as an offshore center of banking and commerce, but as a difficult, questioning, stubbornly democratic partner.


Ian Buruma is Professor of Democracy, Human Rights, and Journalism at Bard College. He is the author of numerous books, including, most recently, Murder in Amsterdam: The Death of Theo Van Gogh and the Limits of Tolerance and Taming the Gods: Religion and Democracy on Three Continents.

Ian Buruma: The Pope’s Dangerous Sex Appeal

NEW YORK – Human sexual behavior can be perilous, as the ghastly rape of a 23-year-old woman by six men on a Delhi bus in December once again showed. After going to the cinema, she and her boyfriend were beaten, before she was brutally assaulted and attacked with an iron rod for more than an hour. Thirteen days later, she died from her wounds.

It is often claimed that rape is not really about sex, but about power. True enough. But it is not unrelated to sex. The sexual act is used as a form of torture, or even, in some cases, as a deadly weapon.

But that was not what Pope Benedict XVI had in mind when he spoke recently about the dangers of sexual behavior. In his pre-Christmas speech to the Roman Curia, the pope did not mention rape, let alone the sexual murder in Delhi. Instead, in his defense of the family – or, as he would put it, the sacred union between man and woman – he pointed out how sexual arrangements outside that union were a threat to human civilization. What he had in mind, without quite saying so, were same-sex unions.

It was a deeply confused speech. His disquisition on the dangers posed by same-sex marriage followed a passage deploring the modern tendency to avoid lifelong commitments in human relationships, as if that were not precisely what gay marriage is about. Of course, in the pope’s view, commitment in gay relationships is part of the problem: more and more people, especially in the Western world, now claim the freedom to choose their own sexual identities instead of sticking to the “natural” roles “ordained by God.”

The pope’s words suggest that homosexuality is a kind of lifestyle choice, a form of modern decadence – a secular, even blasphemous act against God and nature – rather than a fact of birth. This is a common belief among religious believers, be they conservative Catholics, Protestants, Jews, or Muslims. Tellingly, Benedict quoted Gilles Bernheim, the Chief Rabbi of France, who has expressed similar views on the threats to conventional family life.

Fear of sexual behavior is one of the main reasons why most religions establish strict rules concerning sexual relationships. Marriage is a way to contain our dangerous desires. Restricting sexual conduct to procreation is supposed to make the world safer and more peaceful. Because women excite the desires of men, they are thought to pose a threat outside the confines of the family home. That is why, in some societies, they are not allowed to emerge from those confines, or may do so only if fully covered and accompanied by a male relative.

Benedict is not so extreme. Nor does he advocate violence against homosexuals. On the contrary, he sees himself as a deeply civilized man of peace. But I would argue that his speech actually encourages the kind of sexual aggression that can result in the savagery that took place in Delhi.

The six rapists who killed the young woman were not modern decadents who chose to defy God and nature by claiming new secular freedoms, let alone heterodox sexual identities. From what we can surmise from this case – and many others like it – they are the semi-urbanized products of a highly conventional rural society where the roles of men, and especially women, are tightly regulated. Their victim, a well-educated physiotherapy intern, seems to have been a great deal more modern than her attackers. The men were not uneducated, but they were unable to cope with the freedoms of contemporary women.

For that reason, the six rapists saw her as a “loose” woman, a city slut, fair game. After all, she was out late with her boyfriend. That is precisely how the men taunted the young couple: What was an unmarried young woman doing out in the Delhi streets with a young man? She deserved what was coming to her.

The reaction in some quarters followed similar lines. When demonstrations against sexual violence erupted in Delhi, the Indian president’s son denounced the protesters as “dented and painted.” Some politicians have described rape victims as “adventurous.”

Violent hatred of homosexuals comes from a similar source. Just as women outside the family home – women who stake a claim to public space, working and living among men – are seen as dangerous temptresses, men who love men are often regarded as predators, ready to pounce on society’s children. What many people fear is not just uncontrolled sexual behavior, but sex itself.

But the more sex is repressed and people are made to fear it the greater the chance of sexual violence, because anyone who might possibly stir our sexual desires, man or woman, becomes a potential target of our rage.

This might help to explain what happened in Delhi, but it does not in any way excuse it. After all, most men in that city would not beat a young couple with metal pipes and rape the woman to death. Hundreds of thousands of Indians are demonstrating in the streets to show their loathing of such atrocities.

One wishes that the pope had said something about that, and had offered some words of encouragement to the men and women in India who have had enough of sexual violence coming not from modern libertines, but from deeply repressed men. But that is too much to expect from a man who appears to understand little about sexual life. That is why, instead of talking about rapists, he targeted peaceful homosexual men and women who wish to show their commitment to their lovers by marrying them.

Ian Buruma is Professor of Democracy, Human Rights, and Journalism at Bard College. He is the author of numerous books, including, most recently, Murder in Amsterdam: The Death of Theo Van Gogh and the Limits of Tolerance and Taming the Gods: Religion and Democracy on Three Continents.

Ian Buruma: The Observer State of Palestine / 巴勒斯坦觀察員國

NEW YORK – Palestine is no longer an “entity,” but a state – or, to be precise, a non-member observer state of the United Nations, just like the Holy See. The Palestinian bid received the support of 138 member countries (Germany, Britain, and 39 other countries abstained), while only seven, including the Marshall Islands, Palau, and Panama, joined the US and Israel in opposing it, leaving both more isolated than ever.

Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu was furious; he called Palestinian Authority (PA) President Mahmoud Abbas a liar, and gave permission for 3,000 new Jewish homes to be constructed on occupied Palestinian territory. His foreign minister, Avigdor Lieberman, had already threatened to crush the PA government on the West Bank if the UN vote went ahead.

But Israel has only itself to blame for what happened. Abbas and his prime minister, Salam Fayyad, have been more moderate, and more open to serious negotiations with Israel, than any Palestinian leaders before. The Palestinian police have cooperated with the Israelis to contain violence on the West Bank. Improving the economy, rather than violent confrontation, has been the PA’s main concern.

But, by continuing to build settlements on Palestinian land, the Israeli government has undermined the authority of Abbas and his Fatah government almost to the point of impotence. More and more Palestinians, fed up with the futility of what is still called the “peace process,” believe that Fatah’s fierce rival, Hamas, the Islamist movement that rules Gaza, has more effective ways to break the current impasse. The failure of Abbas’s peaceful methods has made the alternative of violence look increasingly attractive.

Hamas also emerged as the moral victor after the latest – but surely not the last – military clash. Far from intimidating the Palestinians by bombing Gaza and mobilizing troops, the Israelis made Hamas look heroic in its resistance. Once again, Abbas looked feeble in comparison. This is why he desperately needed his victory at the UN. The diplomatic promotion of Palestine offered him a lifeline.

Did the Israelis really want a resurgence of Islamist violence in Gaza, the potential collapse of peaceful politics on the West Bank, and now the right of a recognized Palestinian state to take Israel to the International Criminal Court for war crimes? If not, why are they so ham-fisted?

It appears that Israel is making the same mistake that others have made in the past. It has been proven repeatedly that military intimidation of civilians does not break their morale and turn them against their own leaders, however terrible the regime. On the contrary, shared hardship usually strengthens the ties between citizens and their rulers. So it was in bombed German cities during World War II; so it was in Vietnam; and so it is turning out to be in Gaza.

But there is another way of looking at the situation. To call the Israeli government clumsy is to miss the point. Israel has few illusions about Palestinians toppling their own leaders. In fact, a strengthened Hamas may play into the hands of the Israeli hardliners currently in power. They can point to the violent, anti-Zionist, and, yes, anti-Semitic rhetoric of radical Islamists, and argue that no deal with the Palestinians is possible. The threat of a large stick is the only language that the natives understand.

Keeping the Palestinians divided between Islamist revolutionaries and the more business-minded Fatah suits Israeli purposes admirably. As long as Fatah keeps things more or less under control on the West Bank, and all Hamas can do is periodically lob missiles across the Israeli border or occasionally blow up a bus, Israel can easily live with the status quo. Those Israelis who believe that a two-state solution cannot be achieved feel vindicated; those who simply do not want two states to coexist are equally well served.

From the current Israeli government’s perspective, then, the correct strategy is to keep the Palestinian government on the West Bank weak and off balance, without quite bringing it down, and to contain Hamas with periodic displays of military power (while destroying long-range missiles that can do serious damage to Israel).

Israeli policies are not genocidal, as some commentators, not always free from anti-Semitic animus, like to claim. Many Palestinians have been killed under Israeli rule, but their number is not even close to the number of Muslim civilians who are still being tortured, murdered, and maimed by Muslim governments every day. Israel is, however, a semi-imperial power, using traditional colonial methods: ruling by proxy, dividing potential rebels, rewarding obeisance, and punishing opposition.

Colonial history shows that this type of rule is fragile. Humiliation is not a firm basis for long-term stability. There comes a point when promises of independence no longer convince anyone. Fomenting violent resistance by demoralizing those who might still listen to reason is an invitation to disaster. The chances of a peaceful settlement vanish. Violence is all that is left.

It is one thing for colonies to blow up on the other side of the world. It is quite another if the colony is just next door, and the colonial power is surrounded by countries with limited sympathy for a mess that is largely of its own making.

Ian Buruma is Professor of Democracy, Human Rights, and Journalism at Bard College. He is the author of numerous books, including, most recently, Murder in Amsterdam: The Death of Theo Van Gogh and the Limits of Tolerance and Taming the Gods: Religion and Democracy on Three Continents.

巴勒斯坦觀察員國

紐約—巴勒斯坦不再是一個“實體”，而是一個國家——確切地說，是聯合國非成員觀察員國，和梵蒂岡一樣。巴勒斯坦的議案得到了138個成員國的支持（德國、英國和其他39國投了棄權票），只有7個成員國表示反對，馬紹爾群島、帕勞和巴拿馬加入了美國和以色列的反對行列，後兩個國家的孤立愈加深刻了。

以色列總理內塔尼亞胡怒不可遏，他稱巴勒斯坦權力機構主席阿巴斯為騙子，並批准在巴勒斯坦被佔區建設3 000個新猶太新家園。他的外交部長利伯曼（Avigdor Lieberman）威脅說，如果聯合國舉行投票，以色列將摧毀約旦河西岸的巴勒斯坦權力機構政府。

但以色列才是現狀的罪魁禍首。阿巴斯及其總理法耶茲（Salam Fayyad）比他們之前的各任巴勒斯坦領導人都更加溫和，對與以色列展開嚴肅對話的態度也更開放。巴勒斯坦警察與以色列人展開合作阻止約旦河西岸暴力。巴勒斯坦權力機構的主要關注點是改善經濟，而不是武裝沖突。

但是，通過繼續在巴勒斯坦土地上建設定居點，以色列政府已經讓阿巴斯及其法塔赫政府威信掃地。越來越多的巴勒斯坦人領教了仍被稱為“和平進程”的東西的無能，他們認為法塔赫的死對頭哈馬斯——統治加沙的伊斯蘭運動——更能打破當前僵局。阿巴斯的和平方式讓暴力替代方案變得越來越有吸引力。

哈馬斯也是最近——顯然絕不會是最後一次——軍事打擊的道德勝利方。以色列轟炸加沙和動員軍隊的動作並沒有嚇倒巴勒斯坦人，反倒讓堅持抵抗的哈馬斯披上了一層英雄色彩。在這裡，阿巴斯再一次相形見絀。這就是為何它急切地需要在聯合國的勝利。巴勒斯坦外交地位的提升給了他一線生機。

以色列真的願意看到加沙伊斯蘭暴力重新抬頭、約旦河西岸和平政治遭受崩潰危險、而如今得到承認的巴勒斯坦國有權以戰爭罪將以色列送上國際刑事法庭？若非如此，以色列為什麼如此魯莽？

以色列似乎在重蹈其他人在過去犯過的錯誤。歷史一再証明，對平民的軍事恐嚇並不會讓他們嚇破膽，讓他們反對自己的領袖，不管他們面臨怎樣的體制。相反，共患難通常能夠加強公民與其統治者的聯系。在二戰中遭到轟炸的德國城市是如此﹔越南是如此﹔這一回，加沙也是如此。

但我們可以換一個方式看待局勢。說以色列政府愚鈍顯然不適合。以色列並不幻想巴勒斯坦人會推翻他們自己的領袖。事實上，實力增強的哈馬斯也許正是目前掌權的以色列強硬派所故意培養的。他們可以把矛頭指向暴力的反猶太復國主義者——以及的確存在的激進伊斯蘭教徒的反閃族論調——指出與巴勒斯坦達成協議是不可能的。大棒威脅是唯一能夠讓本地人明白的語言。

讓巴勒斯坦人在伊斯蘭教革命分子和更具商業頭腦的法塔赫之間分裂最符合以色列的目的。只要法塔赫或多或少掌握約旦河西岸的局面，哈馬斯所能做的充其量無非是不定期地向以色列境內射幾枚火箭，或是偶爾引爆幾輛公交車，而以色列可以在現狀中逍遙存活。相信兩國方案無法實現的以色列人自認無責﹔而不願看到兩國共存的以色列人也能滿意。

因此，從當前以色列政府的角度看，正確的策略是維持約旦河西岸的巴勒斯坦政府的弱勢和無序，但不讓它垮台，同時以不定期的武力炫耀遏制哈馬斯（與此同時，要摧毀可能給以色列帶來重大傷亡的長程導彈）。

以色列的政策不是一些評論者所說的大屠殺，也從未擺脫過反閃族敵意。許多巴勒斯坦人死於以色列統治，但其數量遠低於被穆斯林政府虐待、謀殺和致殘穆斯林平民。不過，以色列算得上半帝國主義，它使用的是傳統殖民伎倆：用代理人統治，分裂潛在叛亂者，獎賞合作者，懲罰反對者。

殖民歷史表明，這種類型的統治是脆弱的。羞辱感絕非長期穩定的堅固基石。總有一天，獨立的承諾無法讓任何人相信。通過讓仍相信理性之人泄氣來煽動暴力抵抗不啻制造災難。和平解決的可能由此灰飛煙滅。剩下的唯有暴力一途。

殖民統治在世界另一頭被推翻是一回事。但殖民地就在隔壁、殖民者被對其自己造成的混亂同情有限的國家包圍是完全不同的另一回事。

Ian Buruma: American Presidential Beauty

NEW YORK – What is the point of a presidential debate? In the context of American presidential elections, “debate” is something of a misnomer. When former French President Nicolas Sarkozy faced his Socialist challenger, François Hollande, that was a debate – addressing substantive issues and lasting more than two hours. By contrast, presidential debates in the United States are more like staged performances, where the answers to every possible question have been rehearsed endlessly with teams of coaches and advisers.

The candidates in US debates address carefully selected journalists who rarely follow up on a question. And the candidates’ performances are scrutinized less on the substance of their arguments than on their presentation, body language, facial tics, unguarded sighs, smiles, sneers, and inadvertent eye rolling. Does the candidate come across as a snob, or a friendly guy whom one can trust? Do the smiles look real or fake?

These “optics” can be of great importance. After all, Richard Nixon’s race against John Kennedy in 1960 is said to have been lost on television: Kennedy looked cool and handsome, while Nixon scowled into the camera, with sweat trickling down his five o’clock shadow. In his debates with Ronald Reagan in 1980, Jimmy Carter came across as smug and humorless, and Reagan as a friendly old uncle. Carter lost.

In 2000, Al Gore, was unable to make up his mind about which role he wished to play in his debates with George W. Bush, so he looked shifty and inauthentic, changing from arrogant to patronizing and back again. He had the better arguments, but he lost the “debates” (and the election) nonetheless.

We are told that the debates this month between President Barack Obama and the Republican challenger, Mitt Romney, might decide the election. It is, according to the pundits, Romney’s last chance. If Obama comes across as an elitist professor, he might lose. If Romney gets angry, or makes a bad joke, his chances could be blown. Again, this is not a question of who has the best policies, or the soundest ideas; it is all about presentation.

More than 67 million Americans watched the first of this year’s three debates. According to public-opinion polls, only about 17% of eligible voters have not yet made up their minds about which candidate to support. That is surprising, given the widening political gap between America’s two main political parties. In private, Obama and Romney may be able to agree on many things. But the Republican Party has moved far to the right of Obama’s moderate liberalism, and Romney has been pulled along with it.

Then there is the great unspoken factor of racial prejudice, something even hard-core right-wing Republicans try not to express openly. A certain percentage of American voters will not vote for a black man, whatever he says, or however good he looks in a debate.
If policies or prejudices have not persuaded that undecided 17% of voters, they must be looking for something else. They want to see whether they like one man better than the other. To them, one can only assume, the debates are nothing more than a personality contest.

In past elections, when there sometimes really was not much political difference between Democrats and Republicans, this made a certain sense. Broadly speaking, on economics and foreign policy, the candidates often would be in accord, with Republicans more inclined to favor the interests of big business and Democrats defending the interests of labor. So voters could not always be blamed for finding it hard to make up their minds. Since they could not make a rational choice, they followed their instincts and voted for the candidate they found most sympathetic.

This time, there seems to be much less justification for such arbitrary choices. The political differences are too stark. And yet there is a reason not to dismiss the personality contest entirely. After all, the US presidency is a quasi-monarchical institution, as well as a political one. The president and First Lady are the king and queen of the American republic – the official faces that the US presents to the outside world.

It is not utterly absurd, therefore, that voters want to like the look of their presidents, quite apart from the merit of their policies. Choosing the country’s most powerful politician on the basis of his presentability on television might seem arbitrary, even frivolous. But it is no more arbitrary than the accident of birth, which determines the right of kings and queens to reign over their countries.

The difference is, of course, that most modern kings and queens are constitutional monarchs with no political power. And the man whom US voters choose to lead their country will affect the lives of everyone, not just Americans. Because non-Americans cannot vote in US elections for him (a pity for Obama, who would probably win a global vote by a landslide), we have to depend on the judgment of that 17% of undecided voters watching television this month.

That is not exactly reassuring. But the American republic has one merit that monarchies lack. Good or bad, the quasi-king can be booted out every four years. Then the competition – part ideological, part beauty contest – can start all over again.

Ian Buruma is Professor of Democracy, Human Rights, and Journalism at Bard College. He is the author of numerous books, including, most recently, Murder in Amsterdam: The Death of Theo Van Gogh and the Limits of Tolerance and Taming the Gods: Religion and Democracy on Three Continents.

Ian Buruma: East Asia’s Nationalist Fantasy Islands

TOKYO – They don’t look like much, those few uninhabited rocks in the East China Sea between Okinawa and Taiwan, and a couple of tiny islets in the Sea of Japan, inhabited by a few token fishermen and some South Korean Coast Guard officials. The former, called the Senkaku Islands in Japan, and the Diaoyu Islands in China, are claimed by China, Japan, and Taiwan; the latter, called Takeshima in Japan, and Dokdo in Korea, are claimed by South Korea and Japan.

These tiny outcroppings have little material value, and yet the dispute over their ownership has led to a major international dustup. Ambassadors have been recalled. Massive anti-Japanese demonstrations have been held all over China, causing damage to Japanese people and properties. Threats fly back and forth between Tokyo and Seoul. There has even been talk of military action.

The historical facts actually appear quite simple. Japan grabbed the islands as part of its empire-building project after the Sino-Japanese war in 1895 and the annexation of Korea in 1905. Prior sovereignty is unclear; there were fishermen from Japan in Takeshima/Dokdo, and some awareness of the Senkaku/Diaoyu in imperial China. But no formal claims were made by any state.

Things became more complicated after World War II. Japan was supposed to return its colonial possessions, but the United States took over the Senkaku Islands along with Okinawa, before returning both to Japan in 1972. The Koreans, still enraged at Japan for almost a half-century of colonization, took the Dokdo islands without worrying about the move’s legality.

Given the brutality of the Japanese occupations of Korea and China, one is naturally inclined to sympathize with Japan’s former victims. The fiery emotions inspired by this dispute – some Koreans even mutilated themselves in protest against Japan – suggest that the wounds of the Japanese war in Asia are still fresh. Indeed, South Korean President Lee Myung-bak has used the occasion to demand a formal apology for the war from the Japanese emperor, and financial compensation for Korean women who were forced to serve Japanese soldiers in military brothels during the war.

Unfortunately, the Japanese government, despite much circumstantial and even documentary evidence supplied by Japanese historians, now chooses to deny the wartime regime’s responsibility for this ghastly project. Not surprisingly, that stance has further inflamed Korean emotions.

And yet it would be too simple to ascribe the current dispute entirely to the open wounds of the last world war. Nationalist feelings, deliberately stirred up in China, Korea, and Japan, are linked to recent history, to be sure, but the politics behind them is different in each country. Since the press in all three countries is almost autistic in its refusal to reflect anything but the “national” point of view, these politics are never properly explained.

The Communist government in China can no longer derive any legitimacy from Marxist, let alone Maoist, ideology. China is an authoritarian capitalist country, open for business with other capitalist countries (including deep economic relations with Japan). Since the 1990’s, therefore, nationalism has replaced Communism as the justification for the one-party state, which requires stirring up anti-Western – above all, anti-Japanese – sentiment. This is never difficult in China, given the painful past, and it usefully deflects public attention from the failings and frustrations of living in a dictatorship.

In South Korea, one of the most painful legacies of the Japanese colonial period stems from the Korean elite’s widespread collaboration at the time. Their offspring still play an important part in conservative politics in the country, which is why Korean leftists periodically call for purges and retribution. President Lee is a conservative, and relatively pro-Japanese. As a result, the Japanese view his recent demands for apologies, money, and recognition of Korean sovereignty over the islands in the Sea of Japan as a kind of betrayal. But, precisely because Lee is regarded as a pro-Japanese conservative, he needs to burnish his nationalist credentials. He cannot afford to be tainted with collaboration. His political opponents are not the Japanese, but the Korean left.

The use of the war to stoke anti-Japanese feelings in China and Korea is annoying to the Japanese, and triggers defensive reactions. But Japanese nationalism is also fed by anxieties and frustrations – specifically, fear of rising Chinese power and Japan’s total dependency on the US for its national security.

Japanese conservatives view their country’s post-war pacifist constitution, written by Americans in 1946, as a humiliating assault on Japanese sovereignty. Now that China is testing its growing power by claiming territories, not just in the East China Sea, but also in the South China Sea, Japanese nationalists insist that Japan must act as a big power, and be seen as a serious player, fully prepared to defend its sovereignty, even over a few insignificant rocks.

China, Korea, and Japan, whose economic interests are closely entwined, have every reason to avoid a serious conflict. And yet all three are doing their best to bring one about. For entirely domestic reasons, each country is manipulating the history of a devastating war, triggering passions that can only cause more damage.

Politicians, commentators, activists, and journalists in each country are talking endlessly about the past. But they are manipulating memories for political ends. The last thing that interests any of them is the truth.


Ian Buruma, Professor of Democracy, Human Rights, and Journalism at Bard College, is a recipient of the Erasmus Prize, awarded to those who have made “an especially important contribution to culture, society, or social science in Europe.” He is the author of many books, including Murder in Amsterdam: The Death of Theo Van Gogh and the Limits of Tolerance and Taming the Gods: Religion and Democracy on Three Continents.

Ian Buruma: Monnet’s Ghost

LONDON – Some fine ideas are rather like a beautiful object with a time bomb inside. The ideal of a unified Europe, though not designed to explode, could well disintegrate nonetheless. To understand why, it helps to revisit the intellectual origins of the European Union.

One of the EU’s main architects, Jean Monnet, a French diplomat and economist, spent much of World War II in Washington, DC, as a negotiator for the European allies. After Germany’s defeat, he was convinced that only a united Europe could prevent another devastating war in the West. “There will be no peace in Europe,” he wrote in his memoir, “if states are reconstituted on the basis of national sovereignty.”

Almost everyone on the European continent, exhausted by war, and faced with the shattered institutions of their ravaged nation-states, agreed. Only the victorious British, with their old institutions more or less intact, voiced skepticism, not so much about continental unity as about their own participation in Europe’s ambitious project.

Of course, the ideal of a united Europe is much older than Monnet’s scheme. If not as old as ancient Rome, it certainly goes as far back as the tenth-century Holy Roman Empire. Since then, the European ideal has gone through many changes, but two themes remained constant.
One ideal was that of a unified Christendom, with Europe at its center. The Duke of Sully (1559-1641) conceived of a Christian European republic, which the Turks could join only if they converted to Christianity.

The other ideal was eternal peace. In 1713, another Catholic Frenchman, Charles-Irénée Castel, abbé de Saint-Pierre, published his Project for Perpetual Peace in Europe. There would be a European senate, a European army, and the larger member states would have equal voting rights.

In fact, the ideals of eternal peace and Christian unity were identical in the minds of the early pan-European thinkers. Peaceful unification was a religious notion, a Christian utopia. Never meant to be confined to the European continent, it was, like Christianity itself, a universalist aspiration. National borders ought to be abolished in God’s earthly kingdom.

After the Enlightenment, the rationalists easily adopted religious universalism. The French nineteenth-century statesman Alphonse de Lamartine wrote an ode to European unity along rationalist lines, entitled the Marseillaise of Peace: “In the course of enlightenment, the world rises to unity/I am the fellow citizen of every thinking person/Truth is my country.” As France’s foreign minister in the revolutionary year of 1848, Lamartine published his Manifesto for Europe, promoting not just European unity, but that of mankind.

The European ideal has parallels in other parts of the world. Chinese rulers, to this day, have been obsessed with central control, continental unity, and social harmony – that is, a society without political conflict. The idea that people’s interests can and do naturally conflict is not readily admissible. Mao’s idea of permanent revolution was an aberration in the history of Chinese political thought.

It is not difficult to imagine why the notion of a borderless, peaceful world in which political divisions and conflicts were overcome was deeply appealing after WWII. Many blamed nationalism as the ultimate evil that had almost destroyed Europe. A world without political strife seemed like a recipe for bliss.

Monnet was a born technocrat, who hated political conflict and almost made a fetish of unity. (In 1940, when Hitler seemed indomitable, Monnet suggested to Winston Churchill that France and Britain might be rolled into one country.)

Like all technocrats, Monnet was also a born planner. In this, too, he was a man of his time. Many people believed already before the war that economies and societies should be planned as much as possible. Franklin Roosevelt’s New Deal was one example; so, in a much more sinister way, was the fascist state. And so, still, is China, ruled by engineers and other faceless technocrats.

The post-1945 ideal of a united Europe was very much a planner’s archetype, a technocratic Utopia. And, certainly for Monnet and the other founders of postwar Europe, it was an entirely benign, even noble, ideal.

The problem with technocrats, however, is that they tend to be oblivious to the political consequences of their own plans. They proceed as if politics did not exist or did not really matter.

Christine Lagarde, Managing Director of the International Monetary Fund, is a case in point. Her recent statement that she feels no sympathy for the suffering Greeks, because they should have paid their taxes, has been widely criticized for being not just unfeeling, but hypocritical (as a diplomat she pays no taxes herself). In fact, it is the typical sentiment of a technocrat who lacks political sense.

Crippling economic austerity, imposed by unelected bureaucrats in Brussels and Washington, is not only a social calamity; it is also poses a dangerous threat to democracy. When people lose faith in democratic institutions to protect them, they will reach for extremism.
And so, barring a miracle, the time bomb within post-war Europe’s beautiful ideal is about to explode. The limits of technocratic utopianism have been reached. Fiscal union – that is, more imposed unity – may well be the rational answer to the current financial crisis, but it is a technocratic answer which would do nothing to make Europe more democratic, and would most likely provoke an extremist backlash.

Technocracy, it seems, can work well as long as most people feel that they are benefiting materially, as was true in Europe for almost 50 years, and might still be true in China. But its legitimacy cracks as soon as a crisis erupts. Europe is feeling the consequences today. Who knows what might happen in China tomorrow.

Ian Buruma, Professor of Democracy, Human Rights, and Journalism at Bard College, is a recipient of the Erasmus Prize, awarded to those who have made “an especially important contribution to culture, society, or social science in Europe.” He is the author of many books, including Murder in Amsterdam: The Death of Theo Van Gogh and the Limits of Tolerance and Taming the Gods: Religion and Democracy on Three Continents.