Daniel Kurtzer

Daniel Kurtzer, who was ambassador to Egypt during President Clinton’s second term and ambassador to Israel during the first half of George W. Bush’s presidency, discussed the Arab Spring (or, as he called it, the “Arab Awakening”) from Israel’s perspective. But he also used the podium to voice his support for a two-state solution to the Israel-Palestine question, and state his opposition to Israeli settlements in occupied territories.

Now a professor in Middle Eastern policy studies at Princeton University, Kurtzer is no longer expected to be a reserved, circumspect diplomat, and he certainly didn’t disappoint his standing-room-only audience in the conference room of the Robert A. Jones ’59 House on April 17.

The visitor said Israel is “one of the few nations in the world largely surrounded by countries that deny its existence diplomatically,” and he skillfully placed Israel’s Arab neighbors in three distinct “baskets: democratizers, repressors, and monarchies.”

On how Israel has responded (or not responded) to the Arab Awakening, Kurtzer said, “Most interesting in this respect is in a society where you normally can’t get people to shut up, Israelis have been uncharacteristically quiet because they have understood over the course of the past year that, to the largest extent, they were not the subject matter of Arab discourse.”

Kurtzer examined Israel’s strategic position in response to the Arab Spring using the three “core challenges” that the State of Israel has faced since its founding in 1947: security, economics, and immigration. And while the basic challenges haven’t changed, he said the Middle East landscape has been transformed dramatically: “The secular pan-Arab nationalism of the mid-20th century is now driven by Islamic fundamentalism.”

The major forces in the region aren’t states anymore, Kurtzer explained. “It’s regional players and non-state actors” that threaten Israel’s security, and he listed Hamas, Hezbollah, and the Palestinian Authority, among others. He also named Iran and Turkey as two countries beyond Israel’s border that now play a role in the region’s politics.

During his 40-minute lecture, which was initiated by Sarah R. Cohen ’15 of Middlebury’s Hillel chapter, the Princeton professor touched briefly on the second “core challenge”—the development and expansion of Israel’s economy—pointing to the country’s shift from an agricultural economy to a technological one.

On the assimilation of immigrants, the former ambassador said there are now 10-plus million people living between the Mediterranean Sea and the River Jordan including the non-Jewish residents of the West Bank and Gaza Strip. Demographers project that the population of the region will shift to an Arab majority sometime about the middle of this century, which prompts Kurtzer to advocate for a two-state solution. “The crux of the issue [is] whether the two sides really believe in partition, in sharing this land they both claim exclusive control over.”

Ambassador Petr Gandalovic of the Czech Republic addressed the topic of “The Velvet Revolution and Lessons for the Arab Spring” as the guest of Middlebury’s Rohatyn Center and the Vermont Council on World Affairs on April 23.

Petr Gandalovic

Gandalovic, who ascended to his diplomatic post in 2011, delivered 10 minutes of prepared remarks and took questions from Middlebury students and faculty for the rest of the hour. Comparing the events of 1989 among the Warsaw Pact nations to current actions in North Africa and the Middle East, the ambassador noted these similarities: the geographic scale of events, the unpopularity of existing regimes, the “powerful will of the people” demanding democratic change, and the unlikelihood that unrest will stop once it has started.

Similarities aside, he acknowledged that there are numerous historic, cultural, religious, and economic differences between the region where Communism fell and the Arab countries where totalitarianism is being challenged today. Two major forces that shaped the course of the Velvet Revolution—the emergence of popular leaders and support from western Europe—appear to be less influential in the Arab Spring.

During the Velvet Revolution “intellectual leaders played a very prominent role,” he said. “Thinkers like the late President Václav Havel helped provide a unified vision and became symbols for the people. Havel steered the revolution in a civil direction, much as America’s founders. He envisioned a civil society and his writings have become a source of inspiration for other pro-democracy movements around the world.”

The Arab Spring does not have charismatic leaders like Havel or Lech Wałęsa, the ambassador explained. It is a revolution “driven by social media,” which Gandalovic recognized to be a “powerful platform” for organizing uprisings and for communicating both inside and outside the region, but social media itself will never “offer the vision and sense of direction” like strong leadership.

In 1989, “the countries of central and eastern Europe could rely on support from the rest of Europe, which was keen for them to return to the family of democratic European nations. Existing European and trans-Atlantic structures served as a great incentive for further reforms in Czechoslovakia and elsewhere. In the case of the Arab countries now undergoing transition, the situation is different,” the ambassador stated, and the relationship between Arab nations and the EU countries is more “complex.”

Nevertheless, the Czech Republic’s foreign minister just returned from an official visit to Egypt, and Ambassador Gandalovic asserted that his country “stands ready to work with the newly elected representatives who want to respect human rights and take their [Arab] nations in the direction of freedom and democracy.”

Photo of Daniel Kurtzer courtesy Jon Roemer.

Claudia Fritsche, Ambassador of the Principality of Liechtenstein

The tiny Principality of Liechtenstein may seldom be on people’s minds, here in the U.S.—a fact driven as much by its size (62 square miles) as its location (tucked away in the Alps between Austria and Switzerland). Yet, when Liechtenstein’s ambassador, Claudia Fritsche, spoke at an International Studies Colloquium at the Rohatyn Center last week, she presented a vivid reminder that the best gifts sometimes come in small packages.

Addressing a well-attended gathering about Liechtenstein’s relationship to Europe and the U.S, Fritsche described a country filled with energy and drive. With a population of 36,000, Liechtenstein has the second lowest unemployment rate in the world. This small powerhouse generates so many jobs that half the workforce comes from neighboring countries.

“We’re a nation of entrepreneurs,” Fritsche said. Successfully transitioning from a poor agrarian society, the country now gets its largest share of GDP from manufacturing, with financial services following closely behind. Many Liechtenstein companies are internationally known for their high-quality products; yet, according to Fritsche, most people aren’t aware that Liechtenstein has a presence in their lives.

If you drive a Ford, the steering components were most likely made in the U.S. by a Liechtenstein company. Hilti, a global Liechtenstein manufacturer, makes the precision tools widely used in North America in construction and demolition. And anyone who goes to the dentist has probably had dental products used on their teeth that were made by a Liechtenstein corporation. The list goes on, even to include beautiful cut crystal used in jewelry.

But Liechtenstein’s strength doesn’t stop at its economy. Fritsche described how the Principality has been vigorously supporting international humanitarian cooperation to fight against torture and for the rights of women and children through its work in the UN and elsewhere. Women are an “untapped resource” she explained, with a lot to offer in peace making and conflict resolution. “The fact that the Nobel Peace Prize went to three women this year,” she said, “shows that people are beginning to understand that.”

But the Principality’s small size does come with disadvantages in the rough-and-tumble world of diplomacy, according to Fritsche. “You are looking at 30 percent of the embassy,” she joked. “I’m the only diplomat.”

Although she’d served in New York for years as the UN representative of Liechtenstein, the level of networking necessary in Washington surprised her. (It’s not done in her country.) “In my humble opinion, Washington, D.C., is the most competitive diplomatic environment you will ever find,” she said.  “We all want access. We’ve been sent there to represent our country’s interests; it’s the only reason we are there.”

She explained how she learned to cope—for example, by hiring an American on her staff who understands the D.C. culture. “When you are under the radar screen, you can’t get appointments,” she said. “You have to make sure you know people who have access. You have to be out and about all the time. . . . But first and foremost, you really, really have to love your country.”

Hardy Merriman (in silhouette, right) shows how the movement in Egypt conveyed that the police and the people were united. Click on image to enlarge.

These are heady times to study the dynamics of nonviolent grassroots movements.

With the recent developments in Egypt and Tunisia, and with other people rising up to stake their claim to freedom, the Rohatyn Center for International Affairs hosted a slide lecture by Hardy Merriman, a senior adviser at the International Center on Nonviolent Conflict (ICNC), on April 7.

For many of the 50 people in attendance, Merriman’s talk hit home. Middlebury College has students and faculty from Afghanistan, Iran, China, Nepal, India, Pakistan, Sri Lanka, and other struggling nations. Middlebury also has been touched by uprisings in recent months, first when the 17 students enrolled in the College’s study-abroad program in Alexandria, Egypt, were advised to pack up and go home, and later when junior Pathik “Tik” Root was detained in a Syrian prison for 15 days for taking photos of a demonstration in Damascus.

Merriman has nine years of experience at the Washington, D.C.-based center that studies nonviolent struggles such as the Solidarity Movement in Poland and the Otpor in Serbia, and he strives to make sense about today’s resistance movements from Burma to Kenya to Madison, Wisconsin.

Researchers at the ICNC have turned the study of nonviolent conflict into a science by quantifying issues (e.g., dictatorships, corruption, poverty) and tactics (e.g., boycotts, mass demonstrations, digital activism). As Merriman explained, “At the ICNC we try to figure out what makes grassroots movements tick. Why do some work and others fail? What strategies are most effective? And how on Earth do movements defeat armed adversaries who seem to have all the advantages?”

Merriman then turned to Egypt and spent about half his lecture “contextualizing” the events that occurred there between January 25 – the “day of rage” when thousands marched in Cairo – and February 11, when Hosni Mubarak resigned as president.

“What we don’t know about what happened in Egypt probably exceeds what we do know at this point, both in terms of what activists were thinking and doing, and in terms of what members of the regime were thinking and doing. Why did the security forces defect? What other interactions were meaningful and played a part in the outcome in Egypt?

“There are probably 10 or 20 or 100 different [doctoral] dissertation proposals being written right now that will study it,” Merriman hypothesized, “and that’s great because that’s how we’re really going to learn” what took place in Egypt and why it happened that way.

The speaker traced the time line of events in Tunisia and Egypt for the audience, reviewed the key players in both struggles, and explored the concept of power in society by paraphrasing political theorists Hannah Arendt and Gene Sharp.

“Power is a transaction that comes from the consent of people, and the side that has the most money and the most guns is often in a position to compel consent and obedience. But,” Merriman said, “that is not always the case. When people stop obeying systematically, when they withdraw their consent and shift their behavior patterns to something new, it shifts the balance of power in that society.”

That shift in power generally occurs as a five-step process, the expert on nonviolent conflict explained. Often the first reaction to disobedience is repression. Second, if repression fails, the regime (or organization in power) resorts to offering concessions. Third, if the masses still are not appeased, splits emerge among those in power. Fourth, the most ardent supporters express doubt in the ruling class. And fifth, defections occur and power changes hands.

Merriman also took his audience through the “structures or conditions” that affect the outcome of a movement but are out of the movement’s control. They include the oppressor’s willingness to use violence, the presence of an independent media, and both the education and poverty levels within a society.  He also explained the “skills or agency” that a movement has under its control, like its vision, its degree of organization, the effectiveness of its communication, and its understanding of its people’s loyalties.

For Merriman, communication is a critical element of 21st-century movements. Just look at what happened in Egypt, he offered. When the regime turned off the Internet and shut down cellular phone service, the people needed to know what was going on. So what did they do? They went out into the streets, which had the effect of fomenting more demonstrations and more unrest. And that, in Merriman’s view, is when David got the upper hand on Goliath.