Old debate over new reality in Iraq
Henry A Kissinger

THE US presidential campaign has been so long and so intense that it seems to operate in a cocoon oblivious to changes that should alter its premises. A striking example is the debate over withdrawal of US forces from Iraq. Over the past year, setting a deadline for withdrawal has been put forward with the arguments that such a decision, by compelling the Iraqi government to accelerate the policy of reconciliation, would speed the end of the war; that it would enable the United States to concentrate its efforts on more strategically important regions, such as Afghanistan; and, above all, that the war was lost and withdrawal would represent the least costly way to overcome the debacle. (For full disclosure, I occasionally advise presumptive Republican presidential nominee Sen. John McCain.)
These premises have been overtaken by events. Almost all objective observers agree that major progress has been made on all three fronts of the Iraq war: Al Qaeda, the Sunni jihadist forces recruited largely from the outside, seems on the run in Iraq; the indigenous Sunni insurrection attempting to restore Sunni predominance has largely died down; the government in Baghdad dominated by Shias has, at least temporarily, mastered the Shia militias that were challenging its authority. After years of disappointment, we face the need to shift mental gear to emerging prospects of success.
Of course, we cannot tell at this moment whether these changes are permanent or whether, and to what extent, they reflect a decision by our adversaries, including Iran, to husband their forces for the aftermath of the Bush administration. But we do know that the outcome of the conflict will determine the kind of world in which the new administration will have to conduct its policies. Any appearance that radical Islamic forces were responsible for a US defeat would have enormous destabilising consequences far beyond the region. How and when to leave Iraq will therefore emerge as one of the principal decisions before the new president.
Whatever the interpretation of recent events, the Sunni part of Iraq has created local forces backed by several Sunni states to fight Al Qaeda and indigenous insurgents. These, in turn, have contributed to easing Sunni concern over being marginalised by the Shia majority. The Kurdish region has all along developed its own self-defence forces. In this manner, prospects for reconciliation among the three parts of the country, Kurdish, Shia and Sunni, have appeared not through legislation, as congressional resolutions applying the American experience imagined, but by necessity and a measure of military and political equilibrium. Since the need for American forces in dealing with a massive insurrection has diminished, they can increasingly concentrate on helping the Iraqi government to resist pressures from neighbours and the occasional flaring up of terrorist attacks from Al Qaeda or Iranian-backed militias. In that environment, the various national and provincial elections foreseen in the Iraqi constitution for the next months can help shape new Iraqi institutions.
A strategic reserve can now be created by the United States out of part of the forces currently in Iraq, some moving to other threatened areas, others returning to the United States. American deployment is transformed from abdication into part of a geopolitical design. Its culmination should be a diplomatic conference charged with establishing a formal peace settlement. Such a conference was first assembled two years ago on the foreign ministers’ level. It was composed of all Iraq’s neighbours, including Iran and Syria, together with Egypt and the permanent members of the UN Security Council. That conference should be reassembled and charged with defining an international status for Iraq and the guarantees to enforce it.
In addition, regional initiatives are under way to stabilise the situation in the Middle East. Turkey is seeking to mediate between Israel and Syria; a Qatari initiative has achieved an at least temporary pause in the fighting in Lebanon. Establishing a deadline for withdrawal of US troops from Iraq is the surest way to undermine the hopeful prospects. It will encourage largely defeated internal groups to go underground until a world more congenial to their survival arises with the departure of American forces. Al Qaeda will have a deadline against which to plan a full-scale resumption of operations. And it will give Iran an incentive to strengthen its supporters in the Shia community for the period after the American withdrawal. The establishment of a fixed deadline will dissipate assets needed for the diplomatic endgame.
The inherent contradictions of the proposed withdrawal schedule compound the difficulties. Under the fixed withdrawal scheme, combat troops are to be withdrawn, but sufficient forces are to remain to protect the American Embassy, fight a resumption of Al Qaeda and contribute to the defence against outside intervention. But such tasks require combat, not support forces, and the foreseeable controversy about the elusive distinction will distract from the overall diplomatic goal. Nor is withdrawal from Iraq necessary to free forces for operations in Afghanistan. There is no need to risk the effort in Iraq to send two or three additional brigades to Afghanistan (the numbers being talked about), which will become available even in the absence of a deadline. In a positive gesture, leading advocates of a fixed deadline have recently put forward the idea that both withdrawal and the residual force will be condition-based. But if that is the case, why establish a deadline at all? It would suggest shifting the debate to the conditions for withdrawal rather than its timing.
These considerations explain Iraqi Prime Minister Nuri Al Maliki’s conduct on the occasion of presumptive Democratic presidential nominee Sen. Barack Obama’s visit to Iraq. Maliki is engaged in a negotiation with the Bush administration about a status-of-forces agreement for the residual forces to remain in Iraq. Given popular attitudes and the imminence of provincial elections, he probably wanted to convey that the remaining American presence was not planned as a permanent occupation. The accident of the arrival of a presidential candidate, who had already published views on that subject, reinforced that incentive. To reject the senator’s withdrawal plan in front of a large Press contingent would have been to antagonise a candidate with whom Maliki might have to deal as president.
The American presence in Iraq should not be presented as open-ended because this would not be supported by either Iraqi or American domestic opinion. But neither should it be put forward in terms of rigid deadlines. To strike this balance is a way for our country to come together as a constructive outcome emerges. The next president has a great opportunity to stabilise Iraq and lay the basis for a decisive turn in the war against jihadist radicalism and for a more peaceful Middle East. Surely he will want to assess the situation on the ground before setting a strategy for his term. He should not be limited by rigid prescriptions to vindicate maxims of the past, no matter how plausible they once seemed. Withdrawal is a means; the end is a more peaceful and hopeful world.

—Khaleej Times

Intelligent national strategy
Feng Jianhua

CHINA’S State Council published the Outline of the National Intellectual Property Strategy in early June, taking on one of the country’s major bugbears. The plan aims to improve the use of intellectual property rights (IPR) by 2020 and consists of a preface, guiding principles and strategic goals, strategic focuses, specific tasks and strategic measures. Tian Lipu, Commissioner of the State Intellectual Property Office, said that the fundamental goal of implementing the strategy is to push for the effective use of IPR. That is, to improve the application of rights in the market, promote ownership, commercialization and industrialization of privately owned, or proprietary, IPR and enhance the value given to intellectual property. “The outline will ensure the realization of China’s important IPR goals, encourage enterprises to own proprietary IPR, and reduce IPR disputes with other countries,” said Zhang Qin, Deputy Commissioner of the State Intellectual Property Office.
Over the past decade, China has made significant progress in IPR protection, although it has been less remarkable than the speed of China’s social and economic development. For instance, currently, there is little privately owned IPR in China. Disputes over IPR occur frequently and counterfeits and piracy remain salient problems. IPR strategy has become central in many countries in their fight to remain competitive. Right now, China does not have strong capacity in innovation, nor does it own many core technologies or famous brands. The IPR system has not played a fundamental role in spurring technology and cultural innovation, promoting knowledge dissemination and standardizing market competition. These call for an IPR strategy in China.
In early 2005, a leading work group was set up under the State Council to formulate a national IPR strategy. A total of 33 organizations directly under the Central Government participated in formulating the outline, including the State Intellectual Property Office, the State Administration for Industry and Commerce, the National Copyright Administration and the Ministry of Science and Technology. On April 9, the outline was deliberated on and approved in principle at a meeting of the State Council Standing Committee. After further revision, it was officially published in early June. It spelled out the general goal of China’s IPR strategy, and specified seven special tasks and nine strategic focuses. According to the outline, the strategy will not only focus on improving the intellectual property regime, promoting the creation and utilization of intellectual property, and fostering an IPR culture, but will also strengthen judicial punishments for IPR infringements, increasing the cost of infringements and preventing IPR abuses by formulating relevant laws and regulations.
Zhang believes the launch of a national IPR strategy is a milestone in the development of intellectual property in China. At a press meeting on March 13, Zhang stated that the outline put forth an IPR early-warning and emergency-response system. Under the system, China will publish a progress report on key sectors, and work out contingency plans for disputes, conflicts or emergency situations on intellectual property that have a wide-ranging and significant impact, so that they can be dealt with in a proper way and any potential damage can be controlled or reduced.
In addition, China will further strengthen IPR law-making, and make timely amendments to relevant laws on patents, trademarks and copyrights. The outline requires all amendments be completed by 2020. Xu Chao, Deputy Director of the Copyright Administration Department of the National Copyright Administration, said that his agency will crack down on piracy using five measures, including improving relevant laws and regulations and boosting legal and administrative protection.
As China’s foreign trade develops rapidly and Chinese companies go global, it is increasingly imperative for Chinese enterprises to protect their intellectual property in overseas markets. Li Chenggang, Deputy Director of the Department of Treaty and Law in the Ministry of Commerce, revealed that China is going to establish and improve mechanisms to protect IPR in overseas markets. According to Li, China will do this by: setting up an information reporting system on protecting IPR overseas, and providing legal services within the responsibilities of the government; establishing a joint mechanism between the government, enterprises, industry intermediary service organizations, research institutes and legal services, supported by Chinese business operations overseas; delivering training in key sectors to Chinese firms so that they will be courageous and adept at protecting their rights overseas; and encouraging firms to actively adopt IPR measures. Meanwhile, relevant government agencies will use their resources to negotiate and communicate with their foreign counterparts at appropriate times, to create a fair environment.
 

—The Daily Mail-Beijing Review Articles Exchange Item
 

Let US revive LBJ’s war on poverty
Jonathan Power

THE cream of America’s black population has never done so well as in the last 10 years — two secretaries of state, a national security adviser, chief of the armed forces, heads of major companies from American Express to Time/Warner, the world’s largest media and entertainment conglomerate, congressmen and congresswomen, rectors of major universities, bishops, newspaper editorial writers. Perhaps later this year the list will be capped by the election of a black president. What a difference from as recently as the 1960s when only sport, the arts and preaching were open to ambitious blacks. Even in the 1970s, middle-class professional blacks in sizable numbers were beginning to roar ahead, closing the gap with their white peers.
But like America’s infrastructure, neglect has meant that the cracks and strains beneath are once again coming to the surface, if not, as in the past, in civil rights agitation or riots, but in the shearing of family, in educational failure and in its appalling state of health and morbidity. The “benign neglect” of Patrick Moynihan, social affairs adviser to President Richard Nixon, has moved to malign neglect. Not that recent presidents ignored the issue, but what they initiated paled before the ambitions of America’s one and only big presidential plan, Lyndon Johnson’s “War on Poverty¨, a farsighted plan of action, which was sabotaged by the Vietnam War. Another such war on poverty is now needed. The basic statistics have been thrown into relief by a new report, “The Measure of America”, published by the American Human Development Report.
The UN report was the brainchild of the late Pakistani economist Mahbub ul-Haq and based on the work of the Nobel laureate in economics, India’s Amartya Sen. Haq produced sophisticated tables in which countries were not ranked by income per head but by yardsticks more telling — longevity, knowledge and a decent standard of living. He called this the “Human Development Index”. Sweden and Norway come out top, with Denmark and Canada not far behind. The US is 12th. Among the Third World countries, some of those low in GNP outrank much more “developed” countries. Now America is being measured, not just in the round, as in the UN report, but in great detail. Northeastern states are way ahead, the South way behind. Broken down by race and ethnicity, Asians are at the top of the index. They live an average eight years longer than whites and more than 13 years longer than African-Americans. African-Americans have a life span shorter than the average American did 40 years ago, and worse than American Indians, the second most disadvantaged group. Huge disparities in human development can be found in groups that live only a few miles from each other. In health, those living in New York’s 16th Congressional District (the South Bronx) are at a level that those living in New York’s 16th Congressional District (Manhattan’s East Side ) were at 50 years ago.

—Arab News