实现对伊斯兰国斗争的统一

Jan 6, 2016 Frank-Walter Steinmeier

柏林——11月13日巴黎发生的恐怖袭击事件已经使伊斯兰国造成的恐怖威胁（上述威胁冲击了法国和整个欧洲）成为重要的外交议程。在我看来，应对这样的袭击既不能紧锁大门，也不能钉死窗户。放弃我们的生活方式、放弃开放社会恰恰符合恐怖分子的意图。

但我们的对策首先必须涉及政治领域：在国内提高警惕的同时，加强与各伙伴国安全部门的合作。西方民众必须表现出与滋生异化的社会排斥力量斗争到底的决心，加强各级穆斯林和其他移民的融合工作。与此同时，我们必须在伊拉克和叙利亚这样的邪恶起源地对抗伊斯兰国。

巴黎袭击当晚，德国承诺将全力支持法国。我们最近决定兑现诺言的责任包括尽自己的力量军事对抗伊斯兰国。

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0 Comments on this paragraph, 9 Comments on this article

ron smith Jan 11, 2016

What is needed is straight-forward. How to get from here to there is not at all a straight line, nor is the road well-signed or well-lit.

The easy part: What is needed.
1. Safety for the polity
2. Food for the polity
3. Safety for the polity
4. Jobs for all the many reasons jobs are useful
5. Safety for the people, while they eat, while they sleep and while they do their jobs.

ISIS was encouraged when W/Rumsfeld/Cheney simply destroyed the existing political and economic structure with no thought to how the people would survive without the above five items, even if condensed to three.

Herr Steinmeir has rightly proposed a way to think about getting from here to there.
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John Brian Shannon Jan 9, 2016

Hi Frank-Walter,

I appreciate your very fine essay, while wanting to respectfully challenge a couple of points.

ISIS and other terror groups (one man's 'terrorist' is another man's 'freedom fighter') did not suddenly appear out of thin air -- nor did they appear for no reason.

During and following the Iraq War (as in all wars) power vacuums form, and unless the situation on the ground is firmly managed during and long after the conflict, such vacuums give place for narrow interest groups to form.

People then take full advantage of this power vacuum.

Hitler rose to prominence due to the political power vacuum in post-WWI Germany, for example. Osama Bin Laden and other Islamist groups took advantage of the power vacuum in the aftermath of the Soviet/Afghanistan War. And the PKK and ISIS are fully exploiting the present power vacuums in Iraq and Syria, respectively.

Vision, overriding and shared goals, strong leadership and diplomacy -- these are the antidotes to power vacuums. Without those necessary ingredients, the formation of terror groups is guaranteed. Every time.

If country 'A' doesn't realize this, then country 'A' has no business involving itself in another nation's business in the first place.

And if it does know about power vacuums (and the likely consequences) and still allows such groups to form, then such lack of proper conflict zone management can only be characterized as incompetence.
_____

"We all know, of course, that terrorism cannot be defeated by bombs alone." -- Frank-Walter Steinmeier

Terrorism can never be defeated by bombs.

Bombs merely create more terrorists.

To wit: Each person on the Earth knows, or is related to, about 250 people.

Each time a Western nation (in this example) drops a bomb and people are killed, we have now made an enemy of 250 people/per each person killed or injured in the attack.

Whether we killed terrorists or innocent victims, when we kill 100 people we create 25,000 enemies, which sooner or later, will do what they can to repay us...

That's something to think about.

If we kill 100,000 people in conflict, we have now created 25,000,000 enemies.

In an interconnected world, we can't win!

This is worse than a zero-sum game, it's us going backwards every time we strike.

How many of the world's 1.5 billion Muslims do we want angry with us? (Soon to be 2.1 billion, in 2025)

There is a better way.

1. People who have allowed power vacuums to form, must be held accountable. *These people are the cause of the problem.*

2. People who become terrorists, that is, those who commit terror attacks against innocent civilians, especially in another country, must be named, shamed, and held accountable in a recognized court of law (publicly) *These people (the terrorists) are symptoms of the original problem.*

Even if that alleged terrorist isn't able to be apprehended, their charges can proceed at the ICJ for example, and a trial can occur.

If the evidence permits, an in-absentia conviction and sentence can be handed down by the judge or judicial panel.

Yes, it seems a lot of trouble.

But it squarely puts the blame on an individual -- where it belongs -- as opposed to fielding the blame by Western government officials who must explain why they have hit a civilian target (again) by mistake. This happens time after time. And surely more occur than we hear about in the media.

Until we stop creating power vacuums (which practically begs terror groups to form) and until our (in this case, Western) leaders realize that bombing purported terrorists only brings us more of the same (X250/per capita) and until we begin charging (in absentia, if necessary) convicting, and sentencing terrorists (with a high level of publicity and transparency) carrying out those death-penalty sentences 'in the field' where necessary, we are the cause of the problem.

As I said at the outset, these groups don't form out of thin air. They form in response to our lacking diplomacy and our mangled management of conflict zones -- where the most important goals (creating a grand, overriding vision with broad appeal and preventing power vacuums, etc) are valued the least, instead of the most.

We in the West, keep shooting ourselves in the feet, and blaming everyone else for our problems.

And that's not diplomacy, it's not sustainable, and it's not good enough for the people of the 21st-century.

While I agree with many of your points and look forward to reading all of your fine essays (and thank you again, for posting them publicly at Project Syndicate) I fear that vision, leadership, diplomacy, battlefield management, and use of the international legal system to prosecute terrorist criminals, are vastly under-utilized and vastly under-appreciated thus far, in our 21st-century civilization.

These are huge windows of (so far, missed) opportunity for us.

As always, very best regards, JBS
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j. von Hettlingen Jan 8, 2016

In his commentary Frank Walter Steinmeier, Germany's foreign minister, reveals the fruits of his country's diplomatic efforts in securing peace in the Middle East. No doubt his boss, Chancellor Angela Merkel had impressed leaders in the region, by letting in migrants fleeing the war in Syria. He, as a third party, may succeed, where his American and Russian counterparts, John Kerry and Sergey Lavrov have failed, because the US and Russia, two former Cold War adversaries, support the opposite sides in the Syrian war.
Steinmeier is calling for more support "to tackle the evil of ISIS in the places where it began: Iraq and Syria." Since the attacks on Paris, Germany has stood by France and made "a military contribution" to fight terrorism. Although this war can't be won militarily, Steinmeier also sees "military means" as indispensable to counter ISIS, or else "there may well be nothing left on which to build a political solution for either Syria or Iraq." The political battle at home is to raise public awareness, increase vigilance and intensify cross-border cooperation with neighbouring security forces. He sees the mentality of locking doors, closing borders as a "surrender /of/ the way we live" and of "our open societies." Moreover he urges for "efforts to integrate Muslim and other immigrants," because the failure of including them "breeds alienation." This would only "play into the terrorists' hands."
Steinmeier highlights "three components" that are "crucial" to his successful strategy. First of all Germany supports those, who fight ISIS. The Kurdish Peshmerga receives arms and munitions from Berlin and they had freed the city of Sinjar, with help of air strikes, launched by the US-led coalition. Secondly, Germany invests in the stability of the regions, "rebuilding police forces, schools, electricity grids, and water supplies." Some "150,000 people were able to return to their homes" in Tikrit. The "third component" is a daunting task, but "the most important." It requires a long term commitment - to instil a sense of belonging in the "population groups in Iraq and Syria," so that they "have a shared political perspective." The absence of national unity and interfaith dialogue had enabled ISIS to thrive in the first place.
His shuttle diplomacy last year took him to "Riyadh, Tehran, Ankara, Beirut, Amman, and Vienna" and helped "bridge the divide between countries in the region – and thus rein in their proxy forces battling one another in Syria." He is "heartened" by Haider al-Abadi's effort to reach out to the Sunnis. More importantly the mediators have been able to bring Iran and Saudi Arabia, as well as "all key states to the negotiating table in Vienna and agreed on a road map for a ceasefire and a political transition process." However the West has no control over the outcome of the peace talks, because some participants have their very own agenda, while others "are at loggerheads with one another."
It is true that "complaining about the complexity of the situation in Syria is no substitute for action." He sees the risk of Syria's disintegration, with "no institutions left to save," if the West chooses to "sit back and wait until the region’s antagonisms and conflicts in the resolve themselves." To fight ISIS and the threat it poses, "pulling up the drawbridge" is no option. He urges for "persistence and a political strategy that carefully integrates military, humanitarian, and diplomatic engagement."
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Steve Hurst Jan 7, 2016

Sorry, you dont sound like you have any idea what you are doing and are simply busy doing something because you dont know what to do

You are trying to mix all these disparate entitiies into two pacts. The first is in Syria where there is a commonality problem. The second is in Europe where the only commonality is adverse public reaction.

The first is a plead for war is peace. The second is a plead for peace is war. This is true doublethink. An outstanding acheivement
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Bernhard Kopp Jan 7, 2016

The ideology behind ISIS cannot be bombed away. The cynically called collateral damage of the ongoing bombing - also called the mindless killing of Arabs by the evil Western powers - creates more new terrorists than it eliminates ISIS-fighters. If anybody wants to defuse the problem - stop the killing of Arabs with Western bombs.
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Zsolt Hermann Jan 6, 2016

Since unity and mutually complementing cooperation is the only way of survival in a global, fully integrated world any kind of unity is good.
Still when uniting against another such unity is only temporary and is not complete.

Thus we should instead of uniting against a common enemy should unite from the understanding that it is the most fundamental law in nature that all elements of a global, integral system interconnect in a positive way.
These elements complement each other and make calculations primarily towards the well-being of the whole collective to safeguard the balance and homeostasis that is crucial for life and positive development.

Human society cannot disconnect itself from the natural system we evolved from and still exist in. The natural laws safeguarding the whole of nature are binding for us too. By following such laws, building our societies on natural laws instead of illusory "human laws" we could not only defeat ISIS and other forms of extremism but we could prevent them recurring while also solving each and every other crisis, problem plaguing our global human society today.
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Cary Fraser Jan 6, 2016

Religion as inflammatory political rhetoric will also have to be addressed in order to promote a shift within the region's cultural dynamics. The Middle East and Persian Gulf, as a crossroads of history, simply cannot afford the cost of abandoning the religious pluralism that has defined it. Space should also be made for the major religious institutions within and outside the region to create a framework for exploring a transnational modus vivendi for all religious communities that populate the region.
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stephan Edwards Jan 6, 2016

Anyone who thinks the government of Iraq will the slightest amount of real power to the Sunni minority is at best deluded. They may get title and appointments but no real power or influence. This of course means ISIS or a successor will be back.
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M M Jan 6, 2016

It is interesting to note this sudden fight back by the political / financial establishment to justify its utter incompetence since 2005. It is somewhat late now to defend one’s meddling in some international matters and selective inaction in some others. The whole world was a much better place, when the Germans were minding their own business (and this was for a very short while only) and when they stayed out of everybody else's affairs, from the EU, to the ME, etc. The foreign policies of the EU member states and of the US are dismal to say the least and it is these same policies that have contributed to the rise of the like of ISIS, Al-Qaeda, religious extremism, racism, discrimination in all its forms, etc. A short “sightseeing” trip here and there can never justify one’s incompetence.
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