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Ronald Reagan and Genocide: the Biography of an Ideal

Ronald Reagan has always been aware of the scourge of Genocide, notwithstanding his selective and politicized views. Certainly, Reagan was not a principled humanitarian, one who sought to objectively filter foreign policy through the lens of human rights. Rather, his views of human rights were highly inconsistent, depending largely on his ideological interpretations of the Cold War as they were represented in international relations. This helps to explain Reagan’s hands-off support of terrorism in Latin America and the direct sale of weapons to an acknowledged enemy of the state, Iran, as well as the invasion of Grenada and other international aggressions.

Nonetheless, Reagan was well aware of the scourge of genocide and it remained a part of his rhetoric throughout his years in office. On April 21, 1981, for example, Reagan issued proclamation 4838 creating a United States Holocaust Memorial Council. In his speech, Reagan also sought to remember the Armenian genocide that took place before the Nazi Holocaust and the Cambodian genocide afterwards. In fact, the Armenian community continues to hold Reagan in high esteem given it has long called for ratification.

But to grasp Reagan’s belief system and ideological constructions through which he filtered his public work as Governor and President, one has to discuss the life of Ronald Reagan as he experienced it, or as he saw it. Such a biographical approach highlights the consistent themes that dominated Reagan’s life and the extent to which they were in concord with the principles enshrined within the Genocide Convention.

Reagan throughout his years was concerned with the welfare of the average American. Entertaining others was a talent he discovered early on. But for Reagan, it always had a self-regenerative quality to it. Gary Wills discusses the rise of a new class of entertainers in post-war America, within which Reagan was exemplary, that responded to a demand by Americans for Escapism and the need to regain faith in the progress of History. This was the American renewal that Reagan had believed in and always sought out, a life-long political struggle to regain this idealized past – “it’s morning again” – a recapturing of the American spirit.

Whether it was “storytelling” during his days in the radio industry, or acting out scenes of courage and faith in Hollywood Western movies, or fulfilling his pledge to ratify the Genocide Convention, the infallible America as an example for all to follow was the Ideal that Reagan always kept close. There was no difference between Reagan’s goals as President and those that he had been striving for all his life; he was the constant motivational speaker. As Gary Wills reminds us, the “aim of the preacher's art is not demonstration but inspiration." Facts were not important for Reagan but the better tomorrow that is always in our grasp. When reporters asked Reagan about why he was so insistent about going to Bitburg despite the fierce opposition, he did not bother with just mere commemorations of “the liberation of Europe” but claimed to celebrate the entirety of “the rebirth of German freedom.” The Genocide Convention was finally ratified on November 4, 1988.

Doomed to Fail: The Story of the Camp David and Taba Negotiations


Introduction and Background

The Camp David negotiations in the year 2000 and the subsequent Taba discussions that were held, represent in many ways both the potential for a permanent negotiated solution to the Middle East crisis as well as the failed methods of negotiating that have haunted all sides in the conflict since the birth of the State of Israel. The Camp David meetings, which can only be summed up as an initiative that came too late and had involved too little on all sides, would ultimately fail and would come on the heels of a lot of other high-profile meetings that would become international disappointments, including Oslo in 1993 and the Wye River Plantation talks in 1998.

Previous Negotiating Experience

The parties involved in the discussions, the Israelis and the PLO, as hinted earlier, have engaged in numerous protracted negotiations in the past. The current chapter of this history can be said, to begin with the Oslo accords in 1993. After the election of a moderate Labour government under Rabin in Israel, serious negotiations would be given a boost. Secret backchannel discussion would begin between Israel and the PLO, under Norwegian tutelage, and an interim agreement would be reached by 1995. The next major negotiations would take place at the Wye River Plantation, with the Israelis now under the new leadership of Benjamin Netanyahu, and much distrust continued to exist between the two sides. For the Palestinian side, the ambiguous nature of the agreement would be problematic as well as the continued construction of settlements in the post-Wye period. For the Israelis, Wye would represent yet another failure of the Palestinian authority to live up to its agreements regarding security arrangements and plans. The final major negotiating chapter, in the lead up to Camp David, would climax on September 4, 1999 with the Sharm El-Sheik memorandum, signed by Arafat on the Palestinian side, and the new Prime Minster Ehud Barak for the Israelis. It must be said that many of these larger negotiations, while often seen as failures in the end, were interspersed with smaller and sometimes more successful negotiations, such as the Gaza-Jericho (1994) and Hebron agreements (1997).

Purposes and Motives

Despite the history of failures and contemporaneous feelings of distrust and dislike among many of the negotiators, there existed many motivations that would ultimately propel the many sides to join new negotiations at Camp David. For Ehud Barak, one major issue was domestic Israeli politics. He felt that the only chance of surviving as leader, especially after the reduction in the status of his party in the Knesset, was to try to achieve peace quickly with the Palestinians; in other words, offer the Israeli public an alternative to the death and destruction as well as the to the rhetoric of the hardliners.

Another motive for Barak, very clearly stated, was security. This was the primary concern of all the previous Israeli leaders. For Palestinian leaser Arafat, I would argue that he feared his own weakening status in Palestinian politics and society. He was making further threats about declaring statehood but yet knew that such a tactic, while popular back home, would not have been realistic internationally and would have received a prompt response from Israel. Therefore, the renewed negotiations became for Arafat a hope to save face among the Palestinians in a way.

Timing

The timing that prompted all the negotiators to commit to renewed discussions have been hinted to previously, such as the internal political turmoil in Israel. It also must be said that the larger Middle East political scenario was a fitting one. Israel would remove its troops from Lebanon, removing another potential source of strain and therefore improving any timing for further Israeli/Palestinian negotiations. Further, it could be argued that given the nearing of another change of administrations in the United States, as the political cycle for Clinton was coming to a close, this signaled an increased sense of impatience and spurred the negotiations.

Status of the Negotiators

The negotiators, depending on which side they were on, would often have all the necessary power to put words into actions, boosting the hopes at the Camp David talks. But on the other hand, some of the participating negotiators were working with one hand tied behind their back. One could easily illustrate this by referring to the PBS documentary Shattered Dreams in which Ehud Barak states that the Palestinian negotiators in Washington were not able to deliver on their promises given that they were continuously forced to seek the acceptance of Yasser Arafat for their decisions. Therefore, this would subsequently convince Barak that direct negotiations were necessary with Arafat. Of course, some have argued that even Arafat himself was in no position to deliver on any promises made. For example, the lead Israeli negotiator Gilead Sher would later argue that

“Arafat was never ready — mentally, personally, or historically, at Camp David or afterwards — to conclude a deal; he is a leader of a national movement and not a statesman.”

But this ought not to put the blame only on the Palestinian side. Ehud Barak would also have his ability to deliver on his promises undercut by Israeli realities. He was the leader of a coalition government and the leader of a divided country that contained a highly visible and influential settler movement that opposed any concessions. President Clinton also was doomed to fail given that his term was nearing, with no possibility of reelection.

Psychological Obstacles

The Camp David and the subsequent Taba amendments proposed reflected in many ways a psychological maturation among the negotiators themselves and the Israeli and Palestinian publics. The PLO had always been shunned by the Israelis until the first Oslo accords. But since then, with the changes that took place in the interim (for example the rise of Netanyahu), it had once become difficult to envision direct PLO/Israeli meetings. Thus, the Camp David accords, once they came to light, would move the psychological plane from one of disbelief to a more positive outlook. Once the leadership had broken down these mental barriers, it would be much easier for their populations to accept the new dynamism of the unraveling negotiations. By the same token, the Taba negotiations were doomed to fail from the beginning. The negotiators like Saeb Erakat for example, knowing full well that the Clinton presidency was nearing the end, had mixed feelings. Also, Erakat had been personally invested for so long in the peace process that his vantage point was one of continued success and failure. Further, the disappointment of Camp David would signal the faltering of hope, which often has a more devastating effect on morale than if no hope existed to begin with.

The Gap Between Proposals

The main proposal that was put at the table for Camp David involved the following main points: Israel would offer to withdraw from over 91% of the West Bank and 100% of Gaza while annexing the most contiguous and populous of settlements to Israel. In return, territory would be given to the Palestinians from elsewhere in exchange. Autonomy would be given to some East Jerusalem areas, which would become a capital for a new Palestine, but would not be sovereign. While this represented the basis of the deal being offered, the Palestinians would see major gaps that would ultimately prove unacceptable. For Arafat, he emphasized the need to have land that was in “value and in the area;” in other words, he did not want to receive desert. Ahmed Qureia, a chief Palestinian negotiator, had a different take on the basis of negotiations that was presented. He argued that the offer would have created a series of cantons in the West Bank and not a basis for a Palestinian country. Yasser Arafat would further elaborate on the gaps involved at Camp David: that the borders in the agreement must be those of pre-1967 and in addition, East Jerusalem must be under sovereign control of Palestinians.

In regards to the Clinton amendments and subsequent Taba agreement, a few important disagreements can be identified. These include the Palestinian right of return and the final status of the religious institutions in Jerusalem. The Palestinians argued that only portions of the Waling Wall were to be considered holy for Israelis whereby the rest of the adjacent tunnel systems were in fact part of the Haram Al-Sharif. The Israelis disagreed with the scenario. The Israelis proposed an interim solution regarding the refugees whereby there would be a fifteen year resettlement program for a number of refugees. The Palestinians insisted on respecting all previous agreements.

Role of Third Parties

The most important third party negotiator was the United States. Clinton would spearhead the Camp David and Taba talks by reaching out to both parties and inviting them for the meetings. Clinton would continue this tradition that was laid down by Carter whereby the United States president would take forceful charge of the situation in order to move the parties forward.

Conclusion

I would argue that this case study clearly demonstrates that the Palestinians and Jews are locked in an intractable conflict where two groups are vying for the same piece of land. But it also must be said that these two groups in many ways have been beholden to the interests of their respective minorities who have not been accepting of any compromise. While outside pressures have often been involved to the detriment of these two groups, both Palestinians and Jews face a situation of immense difficulty.

The Annales School of History

The writings and methods of history in the 20th century, in many ways, underwent a paradigmatic shift due in large part to a group of French scholars who are now universally identified as belonging to the "Annales school" of historians. This new shift in historical writing centered around the journal Annales d'Histoire Economique et Sociale, founded by Marc Bloch and Lucien Febvre in 1929, both professors at the University of Strasbourg. In later decades, names like Braudel, Le Goff and Ladurie came to represent both a crystallization as well as, subsequently, a fragmentation of the Annales school of historical interpretation.

More contemporary scholars like Iggers and Hunt have insisted on reducing the Annales historians' revolutionary ideas to a proper definable school, one that like any other, can be periodized and therefore be made historically fashionable - or not- depending on the moment in time we find ourselves in. I believe that interpreting the Annalistes in such a rigid fashion - which is itself symptomatic of the rigidity of the historical status quo - is to ultimately deny their greatest contributions to the field; namely, the ability to free ourselves from our own paradigmatic constructs and in doing so, remove any limit to historical imagination in serving a shared historical end.

The methodological imperatives of the Annalistes framework is best exemplified by analyzing the many classical texts produced by the historians themselves. In many respects, Lucien Febvre's History and Psychology (1938) solidified the themes that came to preoccupy the future Annalistes. It helped delineate between the history of the past and that of the future by identifying what he considered to be the maladies of the status quo and by proposing for the historian a new set of tools.
Febvre believed that traditional historians unknowingly projected their own beliefs and psychological peculiarities onto the subjects of their historical research and hence, misinterpreted historical figures. Given His belief that "an individual is only what his period and social environment allow him to be," Febvre argued for a re-application of a personal psychology - one that was part of a larger interdisciplinary approach to research - in order to enlighten the "mental processes" of the social groups in their own time. This was done by reassembling the physical, moral and intellectual existence of every generation that represent the object of our study, which could only then give credibility to the historical application of psychology.

Based on this recognition of the changeability of particular historical times, Fernand Braudel picked up the mantle of Febvre and further expounded a set of tools that the historian must utilize to better tell the story of history. Braudel sought to remove the impediments of "generational" history that his predecessor had described by introducing the concept of the Long Duree: a history of centuries, of the long-time span, of the more permanent realities that constrained a particular society. Braudel gave the example of Mercantile Capitalism, a coherent societal-level and structural paradigm that both defined and restricted the potential for action of that generation, notwithstanding the "ruptures and reversals" inherent in time. In this sense, Braudel argued for the predictability of history and time and thus represents, in my view, a strengthening of the historians profession: it begins to describe in concrete terms a larger set of goals for historians than simply describing the facts of the past.

By the 1970's, with Jacques Le Goff and others, the concept of Mentalites was introduced - or one can say reintroduced. Mentalites represented the unconscious patterns that guided the actions of individuals in society. This can be related to Braudel's three-tiered conception of time: the short-term events-oriented level of time, equivalent to the mentalites; the medium-length time span or the Conjenctures; and the Long Duree already discussed. These conceptual tools allow any historian to open new roads into historical research and represent a timeless contribution by the Annalistes to our field.

One example of the effectiveness and indeed, necessity, of such tools can be found by referencing Jacques Le Goff's 1982 work Merchant's Time and Church Time in the Middle Ages. In it, Le Goff uses Annalist conceptions of the multi-layering of time to explore the impact that medieval historical actors - the merchant class and the church - had on society, in view of their new conceptions of time. Le Goff is able to provide a feasible alternative explaining the rise and strengthening of the merchant class: by virtue of their new conceptions of time, they were able to free themselves from the restraining and "unpredictable time" of the natural environment imposed on them by the Church. Therefore, Le Goff's analysis managed to put into practice the Annalistes tool of time-dimensions in order to pioneer a new explanation of the fundamental changes taking place at the base of Medieval society, changes that from a modern vantage point, arguably have come to symbolize a new Long Duree, that of merchant capitalism.

Iggers and Hunt correctly outline the developments over time of the Annalistes and give concise summaries of their basic constituents and beliefs. The problem with their analysis, especially Hunt's, is their insistence on formalizing the Annalistes' diverse conceptions of historical methodology into a school of thought. A school involves specific common doctrines and methodologies, an inherent level of rigidity that certainly the Annalist thinkers never sought to enforce. One can only accuse the Annalist of failing to give institutions a central role in history (Iggers) if one defines them as a particular school of history, such as Marxism or any other. Historical interpretations can only disintegrate under their own weight (Hunt) if they are initially defined as a rigid and cohesive set school of ideas.

For the Annalist, then, we should only view them as a group of disparate historians and scholars who used a particular methodology for historical research as put forth by the likes of Braudel and others before him. A school is by nature constraining; the Annalistes put forth a set of tools that many historical schools can utilize in pursuit of their own interpretations. Therefore, these tools are timeless, beyond the limiting boundaries of any school. This, of course, is best reflected in the historical outputs of the Annalistes themselves. The constant shift over time in the emphasis of different social science disciplines; the variety in the subject matter; the emphasis on methodology; all these should discredit the attempts of the revisionist scholars at collapsing the Annalistes into a predictable school of history.

Herein lies the danger to the profession of History: in our haste to revise and discredit, the useful tools of writing history are lost to us and succeeding generations, until a new batch of enterprising historians learn, that they too, necessitate a new way of thinking in their profession, and the tools to make this happen. Otherwise, history will remain a simple compendium of fact, one that is written by the powerful and victorious.

Orientalism

One of the more influential works of the postcolonial historical approach is Orientalism by Edward Said. In his work, Said (who is of Palestinian origin and readily admits to wanting to compile "an inventory of orientalist traces and influences upon himself...") examines not so much the colonized as the colonizers themselves. Indeed, Said's definition of Orientalism, traditionally associated with the academic study of the Orient or as part of larger East/West dialectical thinking, becomes for him a representative organism of the west's hegemonic attempts at dealing with the Orient. As any organism, Orientalism is fundamentally "alive": it is actively shaped by western intellectuals for their ends but also develops to have agency of its own, as a perpetrator of ideology.

Said describes Orientalism as a functioning system, a science of representation that must be studied as a "live" discourse, one that is intimately connected to power mechanisms and that is self- defining and self-perpetuating (as opposed to a strictly utilitarian tool used by the power elite to obtain advantage); a self-delusionary yet wholly satisfying ideology agreeable with western imperialism that effectively institutionalizes the Orient as the "other," in a negative sense. Said went further by claiming that Orientalists represented the "other" (the Orient and its inhabitants) in their own image, a people and a culture who invariably aspired to Western standards and measures of progress and modernity.

Said's theories were self-admittedly informed from Foucault's analysis of relations between power and knowledge, and affirmed their inherent interconnectivity but nonetheless rejected Foucault's elaborations of omnipresent and mystified sources of power. Rather, Said reverted to a knowable and well-articulated power structure, giving back agency to the dominant orientalist discourse, one that, while was being manipulated by colonialists, was also a self-perpetuating and fundamentally repressive regime of representation that reinforces colonial perspectives. For Said, Western intellectuals had power and shaped the outlook of the Orient for their generations.

Why focus on discourse and representation of the Orient as opposed to the accuracy of the information that the British and the French were generating? Said acknowledges the material basis of Orientalism - of being rooted in real events in the region of interest - but argues that one must study the "exteriority of orientalist cultural output" because of "the reality of discourse; language is highly representative itself, an encoded and organized system" which transforms into a cohesive system that actively seeks to perpetuate itself.

Some criticisms can be levied against Said's conceptions of Orientalism as inherently a repressive and selfish tool. One can point to the breadth of British and French scholarship that portrayed the Orient in a variety of ways, ones that avoided Said's essentialist western characterizations of Orientals as being violent, exotic, static etc. Also, Said does not go into detail about why ideological constructions are made, whether they are necessary or necessarily negative. And what of the positive representations of the "Other" that Orientalists have produced?

One example is the British idealizations of the masculine and hardy Muslim in India as opposed to the effeminate and weak Hindu. Overall, Orientalism is a masterful theoretical abstraction of the ways in which knowledge can be appropriated and transformed into self-sustaining systems of power and end up furthering the Colonial hegemony, both for the object and the subject.

While the Diem coup in 1963 did not take place on the 25th as the CIA had warned, American ambassador Henry Cabot Lodge soon became deeply involved in the ongoing intrigue. In a memo to the Department of State, Lodge described a meeting that took place with a top Vietnamese general who intimated that “the U.S. has only to indicate to the generals that it would be happy to see Diem…go, and deed would be done.” Lodge then counseled the State Department to be patient: “Action on our part would seem to be shot in the dark…I believe we should bide our time.” In even considering giving the generals support for a coup, Lodge signaled a stark shift in U.S. policy at the Embassy level, dismissing the earlier approach of “graduated pressure” and strict support of Diem that was practiced by Nolting.

In response to Lodge, the State Department approved what became known as the “August memo,” a highly controversial shift in policy that elicited disagreements immediately after it was first drafted and denials years later. The memo, drafted August 24th, is quoted here extensively given its importance in narrowing the plane of possibilities and subsequent rhetoric, from tolerance of the Diem regime to a Coup as an only acceptable alternative:

"U.S. government cannot tolerate situation in which power lies in Nhu’s hands. Diem must be given chance to rid himself of Nhu and his coterie and replace them with best military and political personalities available. If, in spite of all your efforts, Diem remains obdurate and refuses, then we must face the possibility that Diem himself cannot be preserved…Concurrently with above, Ambassador and country team should urgently examine all possible alternative leadership and make detailed plans as to how we might bring about Diem’s replacement."

It did not take long before sharp disagreements erupted within the top echelons of the Kennedy administration, primarily from the military establishment. General Maxwell Taylor, Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff (1962-1964), thought the memo did not give enough opportunity for Diem to reform, that the various departments did not have enough input into the writing of the memo and finally, that the memo reflected “the well-known compulsion of Hillsman (assistant Secretary of State) and Forrestal (member of the National Security Council) to depose Diem.” Indeed, this memo hinted at a schism that would exist throughout the Kennedy administration’s involvement in Vietnam: the State Department and other civilian officials on the one hand, with the Military leaders and the CIA on the other.

Lodge himself addressed the memo later by offering a partial repudiation of it. Writing in his memoir The Storm Has Many Eyes in 1973, Lodge referred to a 1967 Defense Department study which quoted the August memo, concluding that the U.S. had “variously authorized, sanctioned and encouraged” a coup. Lodge denied this, claiming that that memo had not been approved “at the highest levels” and that in any case, a subsequent memo on August 30 had in effect cancelled any previous instructions about launching a coup. Lodge did not specify in his memoir which memo he was making reference to. But surveying the documents from the day in mention, one can find no such repudiation; in fact, one memo dated August 29th sent to Lodge from the DOS specifically stated that the United States government would support a coup if it had a good chance of succeeding. Furthermore, there really was no doubt whether the memo had been approved “at the highest levels,” given that President Kennedy himself subsequently regretted having approved it to begin with.

The August memo, in retrospect, was a point of no return. While concretely, it could have been easily reversed by a simple pronouncement from the President (this would never be forthcoming in any event), it had done its damage by legitimizing a Coup as a possible course of action to be taken. The rhetoric of a Coup had now been introduced and it served to remove any remaining psychological barriers to its use. The irrevocable slide towards the events of November 1st began and Ambassador Lodge wasted no time.

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