Can Mohamed ElBaradei Save Egypt?

The 2011 presidential election in Egypt is scheduled to take place roughly a year from now. But in Egypt, "election" is something of a relative term. Certainly, the last Egyptian presidential election, held in September of 2005, was a complete farce. President Hosni Mubarak, who has effectively ruled Egypt as a dictator since 1981, was "reelected" with a whopping 88.6% of the vote. International election observers were barred from overseeing the election, the government held complete control of the media, and reports of vote-buying, intimidation, and police breakups of peaceful protests were rampant.

One can judge whether or not the 2005 Egyptian election met democratic standards by looking at what happened to Ayman Nour of the el-Ghad, the leading opposition candidate. About nine months before the election, Nour was arrested and thrown in prison. Released two months later due to American pressure, he was registered by election authorities (controlled by Mubarak) as receiving only 7.3% of the vote. Immediately after the election was over, Ayman Nour was unceremoniously thrown back in prison.

President Mubarak, increasingly infirm at the age of 82, is unlikely to run for another term in next year's elections. Instead, in good dictatorial tradition, he is grooming his son, Gamal Mubarak, to run for president in his place. It's quite clear that, if Hosni Mubarak has his way, the 2011 election will be no different than the 2005 election, and his son will be "elected" by an overwhelming majority.

But Mubarak's plans for a family dynasty in Egypt may be upset by Mohamed ElBaradei, the Egyptian who lead the International Atomic Energy Agency between 1997 and 2009. He came into the global spotlight during the lead up to the American invasion of Iraq in 2003, when he directed weapons inspectors in Iraq and concluded that no Iraqi nuclear weapons program existed (he was right, but the Bush administration went forward with the invasion anyway). He has been equally outspoken in calling for negotiations with Iran rather than military action against it, believing that Iran is not an immediate nuclear danger but also that it has not been completely cooperative with the IAEA.

He has been an outstanding leader in the struggle against nuclear proliferation, calling for strong and legally binding inspections of nuclear facilities of all nations, ratification of nuclear reduction and test ban treaties, and an end to the production of fissable materials that might be used for nuclear weapons. For his efforts against nuclear proliferation, he was awarded the 2005 Nobel Peace Prize.

ElBaradei retired from the IAEA in 2009, and has now turned his attention to his homeland of Egypt. Since his return, there has been much speculation about whether or not he will run for president himself in 2011. He has not yet announced any candidacy, but he has held meetings with reformists and opposition figures, forming a pro-reform organization known as National Association for Change. It is not technically a political party, but clearly it has the potential to become one.

The National Association for Change is calling for strong international monitoring of the Egyptian elections, equal media time for all candidates, a limit of presidential tenure to two-terms, allowing Egyptians overseas to vote, and many other urgently-needed reforms. If these changes took place, Egypt would move a long way forward on the road towards becoming a democracy.

ElBaradei present a great problem for Mubarak. Since ElBaradei is a well-respected figure of global stature (they don't hand out the Nobel Peace Prize on street corners, after all), Mubarak cannot simply toss him into prison as he did Ayman Nour. The American government might have let him off with a few gentle protests back in 2005, when the person in question was virtually unknown outside of Egypt. If Mubarak arrested ElBaradei, the result would be a global firestorm, certainly a denunciation by the U.N. Security Council, and very likely a termination of the foreign economic and military aid that keeps Egypt propped up. But neither can Mubarak simply ignore ElBaradei, whose popularity both in Egypt and internationally is simply too great. Thus far, Mubarak has responded by unleashing a vicious smear campaign in the Egyptian press against ElBaradei, including disgraceful insinuations about his family.

Global Citizens can hope that ElBaradei's movement for political reform in Egypt continues to gather momentum. Egypt is not only home to one of the world's great ancient civilizations, but one of the centers of the Arab and Muslim world. Unlike most of its fellow Arab states, Egypt is at peace with Israel and enjoy full diplomatic relations with it. Egypt also has an increasingly sophisticated and growing economy, as well as abundant natural resources.

It may well be that the main problem holding Egypt back is its lack of proper political freedoms. If the Mubarak dictatorship were to be ended, Egypt could take its place as one of the great nations of the world, and would shine as a home-grown example to what the Arab people are capable of.

Is Mohamed ElBaradei the man to do it? We'll see.

Resolving the European Paradox in the U.N. Security Council

We've been talking a lot lately about the urgent need to reform the United Nations Security Council. Two weeks ago, we laid out the need for an expansion of its permanent membership, and suggested that India, Japan, Brazil and South Africa be given permanent seats. Last week, we explored the possibility of giving a permanent seat to a Muslim-majority nation, and determined that Indonesia would be the most ideal choice. This week, we'll be talking about the need to resolve the problems related to permanent European representation on the Security Council.

Currently, the United Kingdom and France both hold permanent seats on the Security Council, and it would be all but politically impossible to persuade them to give them up, even if that were determined to be a good idea. Germany has long been agitating for a seat of its own, and its immense economic strength and role in financing the United Nations gives its claim great weight.

But giving a seat to Germany raises problems. First, many other European nations (Italy in particular) are opposed to it, because the same criteria for giving Germany a seat could apply to other European countries, at least to some degree. Why, so the argument does, should Germany be considered more deserving of a permanent Security Council seat than Italy? After all, Germany cannot represent the whole of Europe.

This point is articulated by the rise of the supranational experiment of the European Union. In recent years, and particularly since the passage of the Treaty of Lisbon, the EU has been acting with a more unified voice in foreign affairs. Its immense economic strength, its innovative use of soft power, and its crucial role in global economic development make it obvious that it is going to be an important force in global affairs during the 21st Century. Indeed, as far as relations with the rest of the world are concerned, the EU is likely to be more important than individual European national governments.

Considering Europe's disproportionate role in global affairs, it does not seem improper for two seats on the Security Council to be held by Europe, as is presently the case. The problem is to give Europe an arrangement that adequately represents all the people of Europe as they become increasingly unified in a federation. Some have suggested simply abolishing the British and French seats and giving the European Union a representative on the Council, especially if the role the EU plays in foreign affairs becomes more decisive than the role played by national governments. This might work, but we must face the fact that persuading the the British and French to give up their individual, nationally-held seats at the Security Council is politically impossible. An innovative compromise must be found.

The seat held by the United Kingdom presents two other problems. First, there is no guarantee that the British will remain in the EU indefinitely. Unlike other major EU states, there are powerful political forces within the United Kingdom that want a complete British withdrawal from the organization. This is not only the rising UKIP party (which received the second largest number of votes in the last European Parliament election), but a strong faction within the Conservative Party itself. Opinion polls routinely show strong support for British withdrawal, so this possibility cannot be ruled out.

Also, there is the possibility, low but not nonexistent, that the United Kingdom itself could break up within the next few decades. The Scottish National Party is currently in control of the devolved Scottish Parliament, and continues to pursue its dream of an independent Scotland. Plaid Cymru does not have the same strength in Wales, but still yearns for an independent Wales. While the idea of a breakup of the United Kingdom may be rather far-fetched, it cannot be discounted altogether. If the United Kingdom is reduced merely to England, should it retain a permanent seat at the Security Council?

Here is a possible compromise that could attempt to straighten out these convoluted issues. Suppose that the two present seats, held by the British and the French, were combined into a single seat which the British and French would hold in annual rotation. This might be termed the Entente Cordiale seat. At the same time, a new seat could be created that would be filled by a European Union representative, with the stipulation that the EU representative would never be French or British. If the British ever withdrew from the European Union, it could still hold its half-seat, and if the United Kingdom ever broke up by Scottish and Welsh secession, the seat could fall to England, which would likely be the successor state to the United Kingdom under international law.

This arrangement may seem convoluted, but it or something like it may represent the best possible solution, balancing the need for significant European representation on the Security Council, while acknowledging political realities by preserving British and French influence on the Council. here are no perfect solutions for such problems as these, but we can always find the best possible option.

Putting what we have discussed over the past few weeks into a single package, then, the permanent membership of the United Nations Security Council should be expanded from five seats to ten, so as to include the United States, Russia, China, India, Japan, Brazil, South Africa, Indonesia, the European Union, and a seat in annual rotation by the United Kingdom and France. As it currently the case, ten nonpermanent members will continue to be elected to two-year terms by the General Assembly.

Such an expansion would be the most fundamental reform ever to be enacted within the United Nations. But as we have already discussed, it would make an already bad problem even worse. A major problem with the Security Council is the ability of any single permanent member to veto any resolution, which causes the Council to lock up completely whenever any permanent member believes it own interests would be threatened by a resolution. Doubling the number of permanent members obviously makes this problem twice as bad as it already was. Therefore, any expansion of the permanent membership of the Security Council must be accompanied by a reform of the manner in which the permanent members are allowed to use their veto power.

We'll talk about that next week.

Senate Foreign Relations Committee Approves New START

Good new on the nuclear disarmament front. Yesterday, in a 14-4 vote, the Senate Foreign Relations Committee voted to approve the New Strategic Arms Reduction Treaty (START) with the Russian Federation. As we have discussed previously, this treaty would require both sides to reduce their deployed nuclear arsenals by 30% and, perhaps more importantly, create a strict inspection regime allowing each side to verify that the other is fulfilling its treaty obligations.

The treaty will now be sent to the full Senate for a ratification vote. Considering the upcoming mid-term elections, it is unlikely that the vote will take place before early November, although not impossible. The most likely scenario at this point is for a vote during the lame duck Senate term, after the fall elections but before the new Senate has been seated. Democrats don't want to be accused of trying to gain a diplomatic victory for President Obama in the weeks leading up to the mid-term election, while Republicans don't want to be put in a position of placing politics before national security.

Prospects for ratification appear good. It requires a two-thirds majority to ratify a treaty in the Senate; if we assume that all Democrats and the two independent senators who caucus with them remain supportive, this means that eight Republicans will need to cast votes in favor. On the Senate Foreign Relations Committee itself, three Republicans voted with the Democratic favor in favor of New START: Senator Richard Lugar (R-IN), Senator Bob Corker (R-TN), and Senator John Isakson (R-GA). All three are to be commended for their favorable votes, and Senator Lugar in particular is to be commended for the outstanding work he has done on behalf of nuclear disarmament throughout his Senate career.

Assuming these three senators vote in favor of ratification when it comes to the floor of the full Senate, five additional Republican votes are needed. Of Republicans who do not sit on the Foreign Relations Committee, only Senator Bob Bennett (R-UT) has indicated that he is supportive of the treaty. But considering how nearly half of the Republican delegation on the Foreign Relations Committee ended up voting in favor of the treaty, we can rest easy that it will be successfully ratified if even close to that proportion of Senate Republicans comes out in favor of it.

All Global Citizens in the United States need to contact their senators immediately and let them know that ratification of New START is an urgent necessity both for the United States of America and for the world as a whole.

Battle of Britain Day

Today is Battle of Britain Day. Seventy years ago, courageous pilots, mostly British but also including Poles, Czechs, Frenchmen and Commonwealth fliers, were locked in a fierce aerial battle over England in a desperate effort to thwart the imperial ambitions of Hitler and the Nazis. Numbering only 2,332 men, they won the battle against long odds and helped save the world from Nazi despotism. As Churchill said, "Never in the field of human conflict was so much owed by so many to so few."

Global Citizens must never forget The Few.

Should a Muslim Nation Be a Permanent UN Security Council Member? If So, Who?

Last week, we discussed the urgent need for the expansion of the permanent membership of the United Nations Security Council. The current composition (the United States, Russia, the United Kingdom, China, and France) better reflects the geopolitical realities of 1945 rather than 2010, and if the Security Council is going to have the credibility necessary to fulfill its mission of ensuring peace and stability in the world, more nations need to be included.

In the previous article, we suggested that India, Japan, Brazil and South Africa be given permanent seats on the Security Council. In upcoming articles, we shall look into the issues surrounded giving a permanent seat to a Muslim-majority nation, resolving the problem of European representation (namely, how to give it adequate representation without concentrating too much power in Europe), and reforming the use of the national veto within the Security Council. This article will focus on the issue of a Muslim-majority nation.

The lack of Security Council membership for a Muslim nation is a dilemma. Muslims make up one-fifth of the world's population, and it seems absurd that such an important portion of the human family lacks representation on the most powerful political body in the world. And since many of the world's problems today stem from a perceived conflict between traditional Islam and the modern world, establishing Muslim representation on the Security Council would seem to be an important step in resolving the resultant problems.

But if a Muslim nation is to be granted permanent membership on the Security Council, what country should it be?

One candidate suggests itself immediately, but also immediately disqualifies itself. This is Saudi Arabia. The homeland of Islam, and the location of the two most important religious centers of Islam in the form of Mecca and Medina, the Saudi kingdom is also an economic power due to its immense oil resources. It is also a military power of some significance due to its large arsenal of American military aircraft, advanced tanks, and other equipment.

But Saudi Arabia is one of the most repressive nations in the world, ruled by a near-absolute monarch and treated by the al-Saud family as their own personal fiefdom. The criminal justice and educational systems are downright medieval, and anything approaching gender equality id a distant dream. There is absolutely no freedom of religion, nor is any political opposition tolerated. Such an autocratic government has no place on the Security Council.

Another possibility is Egypt. It is certainly one of the most important Muslim nations in a geopolitical sense, having a very large population, a developing economy, and a powerful military. Many of the most important Islamic institutions of higher education are to be found in Cairo, and it has played a central role in Islamic history. Equally important in terms of weighing its qualification for Security Council membership, Egypt is one of the few Muslim Arab nations to have signed a peace treaty with Israel and establish full diplomatic relations with it.

But Egypt is also a dictatorship, ruled since 1981 by President Hosni Mubarak. While not the repressive regime that reigns in Saudi Arabia, it is certainly bad enough, with political opponents routinely thrown in prison and nothing approaching a free press. Unless and until Egypt take genuine steps towards democracy, its political system probably disqualifies Egypt from permanent Security Council membership.

What about Turkey? It is an overwhelmingly Muslim nation but has a strictly secular constitution, demonstrating that Islam need not be incompatible with the concept of separation of religion and government. It also would seem to have Security Council qualifications in that it has a powerful military and a developing and increasingly sophisticated economy. Despite recent problems in their relations, Turkey has long maintained sound diplomatic relations with Israel. But there are many problems.

Firstly, while Turkey seems largely free of the Islamist militancy that infects many other Muslim states, there is a large and significant amount of extremist nationalism in many segments of Turkish society, including the military. Indeed, a large investigation into an alleged nationalist coup plot among the military, including hundreds of high-ranking officers, is ongoing in Turkey. This is no idle threat, as the military has forced civilian governments out of power on four occasions since 1960. The military not so subtly threatened to mount a coup against the ruling AK Party as recently as 2007. What if Turkey became a permanent member of the Security Council and then had its government overthrown by the military?

Turkey also has numerous other problems related to its treatment of its own Kurdish population, the issue of Cyprus, and relations with Armenia (including its refusal to officially recognize the Armenian Genocide). All of these are very likely to be on the agenda of the United Nations in the coming years, and giving a permanent Security Council seat to Turkey would make resolving these conflicts vastly more difficult and complicated.

Another possibility is Indonesia, which has the largest Muslim population in the world. Indeed, it is the world's fourth most populous nation, which by itself gives it a strong claim on permanent Security Council membership. It also has a strong economy and significant military power.

In the decades after it won independence from the Dutch in the wake of World War II, Indonesia was prevented from achieving its potential by successive periods of autocratic rule, first by the Sukarno regime and then by the Suharto regime. In 1998, however, as the Asian financial crisis wrecked havoc on the Indonesian economy, Suharto was forced from power. The following year, free and fair legislative elections were held across the country, followed by direct presidential elections in 2004. These actions brought Indonesia into the ranks of the world's democracies.

Indonesia is not without its problems. There are numerous separatist factions in parts of the country, and religious tensions run high in many places (although the constitution of the country is refreshing tolerant of non-Muslim faiths). Corruption within the government continues to be a problem. But considering what the situation had been under the Suharto regime, it is undeniable that Indonesia has made amazing progress in the decade since the advent of democracy.

Although it does not yet have diplomatic relations with Israel, Indonesia is relatively removed from the Israeli-Arab conflict that has absorbed so much of the attention of the United Nations over the years. Were it given greater influence and visibility on the international stage, we can expect Indonesia to use this greater power more responsibly than others might.

When looking over the résumés of the various contenders for a hypothetical permanent Muslim seat on the Security Council, no country is perfect. But the one which has the best combination of qualifications is Indonesia. If the decision is made to give a permanent Security Council seat to a Muslim-majority nation, Indonesia is clearly the best bet.

The Example of Cordoba

In recent months, religious tensions between Christians and the much smaller Muslim community in the United States have become a serious concern. The extreme reaction by many people to a relatively innocuous proposal to build an Islamic community center in southern Manhattan has sparked anti-Muslim sentiment around America. The construction site of a mosque in Tennessee was attacked by arsonists, while a pastor in Florida has threatened to hold public burnings of the Koran on the anniversary of the 9/11 terrorist attacks.

Global Citizens believe in universal religious tolerance, wanting a world in which people of good will from any and all religious backgrounds (including those who profess to no religious faith at all) work together for the common good of humanity. Consequently, we find the increasing anti-Muslim sentiment in the United States to be deeply disturbing.

The Islamic community center in southern Manhattan is to be called the Cordoba House, a reference to the historic city in southern Spain. During the Middle Ages, Cordoba experienced a golden age of tolerance and understanding between its Jewish, Christian, and Muslim peoples. The result was an amazing era of glorious achievements in science, poetry, philosophy, architecture, medicine, and other fields of human endeavour. People who followed the three monotheistic faiths lived together as peaceful neighbors, until their society was destroyed by religious fanatics invading the region from Christian Europe and Muslim North Africa.

Modern Americans should look to the golden age of Cordoba as an example of what their multiethnic and multireligious society could become in the 21st Century if it rejects the siren song of religious extremism and instead embraces the spirit of tolerance and understanding.

Below is a wonderful documentary, about two hours long, detailing the history of Cordoba during its heyday. Enjoy.

GRAIL Mission Expected to Launch a Year From Today

The exploration of the Moon is something that all Global Citizens should get behind. In the long-run, the future of humanity is to be found in space, and establishing a permanent human presence on the Moon is a necessary step in that great project. The Apollo Program, despite its Cold War context, represents one of the great achievements in world history, just as the failure to properly follow it up will be remembered as one of the great failures in human history.

Although current plans to return astronauts to the Moon have run into roadblocks in Washington, we can hope that there will again be a permanent human presence on the Moon within the next few decades. Before that happens, of course, the Moon needs to be subjected to an intense exploratory effort by unmanned spacecraft, in order to pave the way for future human expeditions.

The international community has stepped up to the plate in this regard, launching an unpredicted multinational effort of lunar exploration that has, unfortunately, been all but ignored by the global media. In just the last few years, the Moon has been visited by a veritable armada of orbiting spacecraft from the United States, the European Space Agency, Japan, China, and India, which have been accumulating scientific data that will keep the world's scientists busy for decades to come. And we are only just getting started.

The next major lunar exploration project will be the Gravity Recovery and Interior Laboratory (GRAIL) mission, scheduled to lift off one year from today. Part of NASA's highly successful Discovery program of smaller, less expensive projects, the GRAIL mission is designed to place two small spacecraft in orbit around the moon, using the Doppler shifts detected in radio waves passing between them and detectors on Earth to create a full "gravity map" of the Moon. This will allow scientists to gather unpredicted amounts of information about the Moon's interior, helping to answer questions scientists have been asking for decades.

We live in an age of severe budgetary pressures among nearly all nations of the world, so there will always be those who question whether resources should be expended on scientific enterprises like the GRAIL project. But these questions would be better directed towards the massive military budgets or the bloated bureaucracies of the various nations. The scientific enterprise is one of the things which makes us human, and it deserves full support.

Below is a video showing how the GRAIL mission will work. There's no vocal narration, but you're smart enough to figure it out.