Interview with Jivan Tabibian

Introduction by Richard Farson
Welcome to our interview with Jivan Tabibian. Jivan is known to some of you from the time that he was a faculty member of our School of Management and Strategic Studies, so you are already aware of what a deep and provocative thinker he is. He was born in Beirut, Lebanon, educated in French schools, speaks several languages, including Arabic, has lived in America since his college days, and is now a US citizen. A Princeton-educated political scientist, he became interested in social design, serving on the faculties at USC, UCLA and with me at the California Institute of the Arts. Armenian by family background, he is currently the Ambassador of Armenia to Austria, Czech Republic, Hungary and Slovakia. He is also the Head of Delegation to the Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe (OSCE) as well as to the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) and the United Nations Organizations in Vienna. It will be an education for us to get his perspective on world affairs as seen from the vantage point of a busy diplomat. He will be communicating with us from his home in Vienna, where he lives with his Korean- born wife, Isabella, who is a classical pianist. So, once again, welcome, Jivan. We look forward to this next week with you with great anticipation.

Richard Farson
Jivan, we are always wondering why, when we know what principles we want to live by as nations, we are so often unable to act on them. Although you have been a political scientist all of your career, and have no doubt wrestled with that issue often, can you tell us how your understanding of that phenomenon might have deepened as you confront these situations as a diplomat?

Jivan Tabibian
Dick, thank you for your invitation to engage in this dialog. And for the chance to reconnect with some old friends. Perhaps to make new ones.

Your first question to get the discussion going is a good one, more elegant in its formulation than the reality warrants.

I do not know if I would ever say that nations, any nation wants to live by principles, "its" principles, or much less "universal" principles. It may profess them, publicize them, display them, exploit them, instrumentalize them, but almost never pursue them as ends in themselves.

When principles are consecrated in written Constitutions or founding documents, there is an understandable tendency to exaggerate their influence. While they may constitute constitutive elements in a nation's self-identifying mythology, government's entrusted with the formulation and implementation of policy, think of these principles more as bothersome constraints or as instruments of self-legitimation.

Where more than one branch can effectively participate in power, principles become part of the discourse in the competition for relative advantage.

Incidentally, before we get to the second part of your question, may I ask you, who is the "we" you refer to as in "we want?"

Perhaps as discussion of the necessary distinctions between nation, people, State and government is too much of a tedious enterprise. As a diplomat, I must work daily with States and governments: abstractions transformed into institutions with the capacity to choose, decide, allocate, invest, discriminate, regulate, mobilize, legislate, execute but ultimately to enforce - by force - if necessary, with a "legitimacy" denied all others.

Participant
Jivan, it's great to be in your virtual company once again after so many years. My question is tangentially related to Dick's--at least I hope so--but please don't let it divert your line of thought.

The element of our previous work together at WBSI that sticks most firmly in my memory was your observation that the USA is unique among nations of the world in one respect: This is the only country wherein a naturalized foreign-born person from anywhere at all can say, in the presence of other citizens, "I am an American", and not be challenged, even subconsciously.

My question: Do you believe that this characteristic remains as true and as significant as it was nearly twenty years ago? Or are we changing our own "principles" in the face of a changing world in ways that make this less true than it was?

Participant
Hi , Jivan, I'm looking forward, with great pleasure, to this opportunity to hear from you. Two questions, if I might, in light of your response to Richard's opening question and the complexity of today's international arena.

1. How do you separate the posturing from the actual agenda? In a speech you gave in 2000 in response to Azerbaijani Foreign Minister Quliyev at the Special Permanent Council--Vienna, July 5, 2000, you said, "Realism in fact consists of knowing and somewhat empathizing with the constraints of your opponent's real political situation". What is essential to such knowing?

2. When you sit down to negotiate with a government representative what is most critical to success? Is there some specific attitude, skill, or ability that is more likely, in general, to lead to success?

Participant
Jivan, to bring in a "real political situation" as per the quote Kip has cited, I am wondering what observations and anecdotes you can share with us regarding the position of the US in the world today. As someone who knows the US from both the inside and the outside, how do you analyze the foreign policy path we are taking? And what are your predictions for their consequences with respect to diplomatic relationships and alliances?

Thank you for taking time to do this.

Gloria

Participant
Jivan, it is a pleasure to visit with you again--even in "virtual space."

In your various roles, particularly with the International Atomic Energy Agency, do you see any solution to a continuation of the "gulf wars" as we fight to gain and maintain control of oil as a major energy resource?

Participant
Jivan: as another old WBSI hand, I too have nothing but exciting memories of your participation back when we moved at the speed of 300 baud!

Since this is a time to pose questions to you, here is mine:

What do you see for the future of democracy?

What are we doing right, and what wrong, in seeking to spread it around the world?

Participant
Jivan: Greetings from South America, after many years of not knowing about your new endeavors. I worked in partnership with a well known Armenian in Argentina, Eduardo Eurnekian, and as such I met many of the large Armenian community in that country. Wonderful people. Congratulations on your new assignment.

I have two topics to pose to you. One is the Middle East. The second is developing nations and more specifically, Latin America. On both, my concern is the degree of anti-Americanism that has developed as a consequence of the Iraq war and of the apparent failure of the economic policies applied in the area by our IMF, WB, USA, etc. They have rejected the market economic policies, at least in public discourses, albeit they continue to apply them silently.

I travel constantly through Latin America and I am astonished to see that even in the higher elements of the socio-economic structure, this negative view is also shared and passionately advocated. I am sad to see it that way.

I have tried to educate myself as much as I can in order to understand this phenomenon. I read the brilliant essay by Robert Kagan on Paradise and Power; I read Bernard Lewis's books on the Arab world, and Fareed Zakaria's recent book on the Future of Freedom. I am left with one view only to then read Carlos Fuentes's virulent attacks on the current US international policies and behaviors, not to mention other lesser known columnists and writers. I am thrown into mental chaos. I follow vividly Thomas Freedman's biweekly columns in the New York Times, and I am still at odds about understanding public reaction to current events. What happened last night in Spain (where the socialists’ PSOE won to the PP, even under the tremendous prosperity Aznar's party has brought to his country) is something that defies any logic, except that passions are stronger than logic. On the other hand, watching on CNN the unfolding of the Palestinian and Israeli problem, one cannot but wonder why it has taken more than 80 years (since the partition of the area by the British) for the world to provide for a homeland and a State to the Palestinian people. Can you imagine the amount of troubles, suicide bombings and other demented acts we could have avoided if that "simple" (not so, but for this message it serves the purpose) event could have taken place many years ago?

You, coming from Beirut, understands this dilemma better than many of us. So my question to you is what is your vision of events in these two sensitive areas of the world and how to they relate to the more philosophical questions being discussed here with you today.....

Best personal regards, Rodrigo Arboleda

Participant
Jivan: It's wonderful to be in virtual contact with you again. You have been asked such comprehensive questions already that I am loath to add to the stack. But one puzzlement keeps bothering me. Almost everybody I know and read is sure that a Palestine state is some kind of end-game. Might it be the beginning of new troubles?

All round the world, the idea of wrapping a sovereign entity around an ethnic or religious group has turned out to be trouble. (Many political scientists compound the trouble by writing about "nation-States.") But every such State turns out to have minorities that prefer their own rights to the majority's righteousness. Is it too American a view to think that peace and civil order are more likely to be produced by pluralistic societies in which (a) rights inhere in individuals, not groups, and (b) the notion of "brotherhood" includes the realization that all brothers are different? Is a political philosophy of "different, yet together" destined to be always out of reach? .....Harlan.

Jivan Tabibian
In response to Ray's question:

Thank you to those who so quickly have picked up the thread, and jumped in to get our conversation going. Since the first two questions put to me are tangential to Dick's original query, but rather interesting in themselves, let me deal with them.

Ray's recollection of one of my previous observation is frighteningly accurate. When one's words are remembered so faithfully, one has to be careful. However, I welcome the chance to revisit the issue.

First, the phenomenon itself of a polity, a political community at the "national" level of accepting, not challenging the self-identification of a newcomer who chooses to integrate the host country and does so legally. There are now Canada and Australia, countries where in the last twenty years the American model of "incorporation" of the new is becoming more commonplace. (A social anthropological footnote: great territorial expanse, low population density, relatively recent immigration history, etc. An interesting comparison might be worked out with the success or failure of homo-Sovieticus, the role of coercive practices in a Utopian/totalitarian ideological framework.) Excuse this digression, though the subject may deserve some discussion elsewhere. But the drift of Ray's question is elsewhere. Let me address it.

As a characteristic of social relations, it still prevails, however, we have to make two caveats. This characteristic was never the result of a "principle" consciously adopted. Rather, it derives from the historical experience of a "nation constructed" rather than a "nation pre-existent" where citizenship rather than blood, race, ethnic/tribal or religious pre-qualifying traits distinguish the "original" from the "inauthentic" the "true" from the "fake". Given the history of migrations, such distinctions where sociologically unsustainable.

However, we also know that " automaticity" of acceptance can come under stress. External threats, real or imaginary, which are identified with certain ethnic/national immigrants’ country of origin or religion can disrupt the practice of unselfconscious acceptance. No need to illustrate the case of Germans in WW I, the Japanese in WW II, the "Russians" in the Cold War, and obviously a similar tendency towards Arabs and Muslims today. All this demonstrates that while overall the fabric is resilient and self-repairing, it can both fray at the edges and thin out and tear when not properly maintained. It is, of course, particularly worrisome, when those in charge of maintaining that fabric and managing its "health", look for "moths" imbedded in its weave.

Jivan Tabibian
A temporary response to the rest of you:

By the time I tried to organize my thoughts about Kip's question--a rather practical/strategic approach to negotiations, I had been flooded by a torrent of very pertinent further comments/questions. It helps that they come from people whom I know, with whom I am familiar. The level of earnest curiosity is gratifying. Forgive me if for very obvious reason I do not get too direct about US foreign policy, or the foreign policy of any specific country. Instead, I will try to deal with some patterns, trends, underlying themes. They crisscross your questions, and I am trying to group them into some clusters. Here is how I see them (not in any order):

a) the problematic/viability of nation-States, as givens or as goals.

b)  the intractability of certain conflicts given issues raised in (a).

c) Paradox, ambiguity, ambivalence, contradiction, incoherence where questions of free-markets, asymmetric power relations, uneven benefit/cost distribution of globalization and dominance vs. vulnerability create concrete conditions of unmanageable change, economic collapse, intrastate violence and an international legal political system whose capacity to adapt is seriously challenged.

d) What might all this do to Democracy, as ideal, as project, as applied political practice? --Its evolution, adaptability, relevance and "transplantability"?

Before I tackle these big bundles tomorrow since it is 2:00 a.m. here already, just a quick rhetorical—rabbinical--counter question to Doug: How come Japan, more dependent than almost anyone--absolute dependence--on imported energy resources, does not pose its problem or strategic challenge, as one of "fight to gain and maintain control of oil"?

What is the full geo-strategic and geo-political connotation in a post-industrial globalized economy, of the idea or necessity of "control"? I need help in this. I will continue tomorrow.

Participant
Jivan, our paths last crossed when I stumbled on you in the restaurant in Santa Monica, and we sat and had a most rewarding conversation.

Just to respond narrowly, Japan, I think, is different from the US because it still has an incredible balance of payments surplus, not only with the US but the world. Its problems are more what to do with wealth, and how to handle disemployment in a wealthy society than it is to be "productive." Japan purchased, at low prices, much productive capacity during the Asian Financial Crisis By contrast the US seems mostly broke and in deflationary danger with an undercurrent of raw political struggle.

Japan can, put simply, pay for its oil without account deficit and the US cannot.

I say all this tentatively because I am not sure if it is correct or swamped by other considerations and yet larger forces.

Jivan Tabibian
Part I.

Sorry for this delay in getting back to you. Let me see if I can tackle the issues raised by Harlan about "Nation-States". His skepticism may not be totally unjustified if one thinks that the US model of rights inhering to individuals can be universalized, or that it should be. Permit me to take issue first of all with that characterization. Certain individuals' entitlement to their individual rights went through the path of long politico-social conflicts and resolutions from disenfranchisement to enfranchisement in categorical terms of belonging to minorities. The transition from object to subject has not been always faithful to the legal-ideological-mythological norms of one man-one vote, a color blind justice or equal access to education or health or jobs.

Moreover, we must admit that while the notion of minorities/majorities is very much an accepted way of characterizing groups and recognizing their social/ethnic reality or status, in the context of the origin of such groups being traced to mostly voluntary immigration, their identity is essentially deterritorialized.

Except for Native-American reservations, ethnicity, minority and territoriality are not linked. Chinatown and ghettoes---even compact concentrations of early WASP settlers--do not define their identities as being based on inalienable, historical, collective or community consciousness inseparable from a presumed organic relationship with the land of the ancestors.

National minorities, unlike other minorities, are distinct in that their sense of their distinctive self and their claim to the preservation of that self are territorially rooted.

Forgive me again if we do not revisit the never-ending debate of nations and nationalism, and their role in the international political conflicts and transformations of the last 200 years.

Jivan Tabibian
Part II.

Instead, let me come at this from the other end. The quest or yearning for Statehood. Why do nations, or national minorities try to acquire Statehood and become Nation-States, that is, why do they want their own, rather than accept living within an existing one, where they are not the majority?

Facile and dismissive explanations may refer to such things as me-tooism, symbolism and mythology, the perks and privileges that may accrue to an elite by access to the leadership of State apparatuses, etc. There may in fact be elements of some of this; enough to make advocates of multiethnic, pluralistic societies think of the urge for secession as a reactionary, intolerant, atavistic throwback to VOLK and purity.

Such attempts at national self-determination are seen as futile attempts at "unscrambling the omelette," an infinite regression whose absurd conclusion is a collection of micro-States, ethnically pure and politico-economically non-viable. This fear and its projection are essentially caricatures. National groups seek Statehood because they believe, often with exaggerated confidence, that the sovereignty that comes with Statehood bestows on them a certain protection. It is the expression of a desire to emancipate a group from the rule of another, which claiming sovereign rights exercises its authority in an arbitrary, discriminatory or oppressive way. Our international system is based on an assumption that the State and its agents can exercise "sovereign" authority on a territory and its inhabitants.

How often does one hear a State claiming unchallengeable prerogatives to treat its citizens or subjects as it chooses, refer to the notion of "internal or domestic" matter--China in Tibet, UK in Northern Ireland, Spain in Basque country, India in Kashmir, Turkey in Kurdistan, Iraq in Kurdistan? The list is long. That is what Milosevic claimed in Kosovo.

Jivan Tabibian
Part III.

True, the presumed immunity that Statehood confers is not absolute. And the capacity to assert that sovereignty and keep outsiders out has always been dependent on not only international law and juridical claims, but also power, the politico-military power to tell others not to butt in. Also true, that in the last ten years both a theory and practice of the right to "interfere" is developing. Kosovo, Bosnia-Herzegovina, and now Iraq are offered as evidence of a shift in emphasis, examples where the right to do as you wish with your subjects is not unconditional, absolute.

Encouraging as that trend might appear at first, its selective application demonstrates that there are more than "humanitarian" principles at work, more than a uniform, evenhanded, sustained international practice to judge States' treatment of their subjects, especially minorities, consistently. The lack of evidence of that evenhandedness is discouraging. The fact remains that, given a choice, vulnerable national minorities would rather bet on Sovereign immunity that comes with Statehood than on the international community's willingness and capacity to compel an abusive majority in control of State institutions to reform its practices. There was after all much less hesitation in coming to the rescue of Kuwait--a State entitled to its territorial security-then to the Kashmiris, Kurds, Kosovars, the Southern Sudanese, the Palestinians, or any other victim of abusive or repressive rule.

Jivan Tabibian
Part IV.

Finally, Harlan, I do not believe there is any correlation between "wrapping a sovereign entity around an ethnic or religious group" and "trouble" as you call it. First, national groups are different from "ethnic" or "religious" groups, though sometimes they overlap. Armenians are a national group, though religious elements are part of that national identity. Similarly with Basques or Palestinians or Kurds. Let us assume we mean the same thing. Denmark is a nation-State; so are Portugal, Greece, Sweden, Norway, and Finland. Trouble or dysfunctionality or failure is not inherent in the idea. The troubles of India and Nigeria or Indonesia or Bosnia-Herzegovina or to a lesser extent Belgium, is not the sovereignty which is wrapped around religion or ethnicity but an invented idea of a nation, a constructed, derivative or putative identity wrapped around a multi-ethnic, multi-religious or multinational society. The separation of Slovakia from the Czech Republic--a friendly divorce--ended up causing less trouble than an unhappy marriage. Just because we generally do not believe in divorce, doesn’t mean it can’t sometimes benefit both parties.

Sorry this is so long. More later.

Participant
>>Vulnerable national minorities [would] rather bet on Sovereign immunity that comes with Statehood, than on the international community's willingness and capacity to compel an abusive majority in control of State institutions to reform its practices. <<

This thought opens up a new line of discussion that would be fun to follow. Can we imagine a practical alternative, i.e., one that would alter that choice?

Participant
OK, Ray, I'll play. How about a global coalition of vulnerable national minorities?

Participant
I truly think, like Churchill's view of democracy, that citizen participation is the worst safeguard against most governing ills except all others, like cheating, soaking the poor, hiding the truth, taking bribes. But it is also easy to describe all of the down-sides of citizen power. One is that, unless a large majority of the less well-off participate, the wealth of the upper income earners (and possibly their greater education and contacts, can swing more weight in steering decisions.

Jivan Tabibian
First, my apologies for this relative quiet on my part for the last two days. Things are very, very hectic, and I normally tend to this task between midnight and 3 a.m.

Sorry also, if my last comment sinned by density, length and elliptical argumentation. I will try to keep it shorter and may be even simpler.

Nevertheless I must quickly add a thought to the last item I dealt with, prompted by Ray's last reflection.

The alternative may lie in finding ways to dissuade the sovereign from mistreating--excluding, abusing, oppressing--a territorially anchored national minority. Nowadays, some will argue that a credible threat of direct military action of "regime change" may do the trick. Of course, one should wonder, how generalizable such an approach can be from Aceh to Kashmir. On the other hand, the risk of secession or separation, i.e., the risk of mutilating, fragmenting or simply losing territory as an ultimate consequence of misrule by a sovereign, should in principle act as a deterrent---something like: "Abuse them and lose them" or "respect their rights, treat them well, and keep them." And thus keep your territorial integrity intact.

Instead, by making territorial integrity a non-contingent attribute, sacrosanct, untouchable—non-negotiable, even—one removes a potentially effective leverage against misbehaving colonial, or dominant or oppressive majority favoring anti-minority sovereigns. One would have thought for instance that after East Timor, Indonesia would not make the same mistake; however, given the current International system bias, of equating stability with the immutability of borders, States, with restless sub-territorial minorities, can think they run little risk of amputation.

Jivan Tabibian
Let me return briefly, as I had promised, to the phenomenon of intractable conflicts. They are not new. Populations and territories have some back and forth between States sometimes for 100 years. We can all think of examples. The ones we are concerned with are those where today violence is present, or has been used, or is about to erupt--or even start anew. They are not those between states-not that they are not interesting or things of the past: Falklands, Afghanistan, the Iraq-Kuwait, US-Iraq I and II, several in Africa, NATO-Yugoslavia (Kosovo), etc, etc.

Since the collapse of the Soviet Union, as a diplomat in Europe, through the OSCE, the conflicts have to do with ethnicity/identity/nationality on one side, maintaining existing state border arrangement on the other, as my last notes elaborated.

The challenge for the so called International community is to accept that stability which is pursued as a primary goal is most threatened when the system has no capacity for managed change. Mary is not too far off the mark, when she casually talks about a "coalition of vulnerable national minorities." While it is not, I ssume a serious proposal, it points at a fact.

Those who want to change their political/territorial status, have no platform to present, advocate or promote their case. They are non-entities, technically non-State actors or groups who are a priori deligitimized. Generally they are denied representation; they are not members of multilateral organizations (in rare cases they may be granted observer status, as for Palestinians at the UN). Their challenge to a prevailing configuration, gets gradually radicalized, confrontational and ultimately defiant or even violent.

Unable to have an international audience by "legitimate" or non-violent means, they escalate their claims and their extralegal rebellion. Meanwhile of course, the threatened State order struggles very hard to portray the challenge as rebellion, separatism, ethno-warfare and insists on denying them "a voice" to make their case.

As we sit around our table of 55 member States at the OSCE, we have never been able to have a "representative," without official status, of a group trying to break away, to come and make their case. We may sent emissaries to find and talk to those people, but never have we had an Abkhazian, a South Ossetian, Karabaghi, a Chechen, a Basque, a Kosovar Albanian (before the NATO bombing) or a Kurd from Turkey come and talk to us, give their side of the conflict this "voicelessness" distorts reality. It exacerbates frustration. It leads to violent gestures to get attention. It artificializes the legitimacy of the embattled States monopoly of sovereignty. It is of course no better outside Europe.

This situation remains a serious deficiency in the International system: How to deal with voiceless, statusless non-State politico-military "identity" entities, and still construct interstate relations strictly based on the exclusive criterion of statal status.

As usual, I welcome helpful hints. Meanwhile, that is the way it is.

Participant
I like so much the general line of your thinking (and your tone of voice in expressing it) that I'm reluctant to pick nits. But this, I think, is not a nit.

In the picture you paint (3.21) of "intractable conflicts," it seems that only groups have standing. Where do you place individual rights in your philosophy? I have spent a lot of thought and ink on the rights of minorities--defined by ethnic, cultural, or religious likemindedness--so I resonate with much of what you say on that subject. But underlying all our philosophy about human rights (at least in the West and certainly in our Declaration of Independence) is the notion of each person born into the human race as inherently possessing some basic rights. And that notion is, I suppose, what's ultimately fundamental even to the rights of people-in-groups.

That notion seems to get lost in the emphasis on group rights. And that's of course what makes it hard to reconcile Western with some Eastern philosophies which give primacy to a person's membership in a defined community (racial, religious, or historical).

All sorts of wise people, from Confucius on down, have in effect defined wisdom as the capacity to hold two contradictory propositions in our heads at the same time. In thinking wisely about the rights of groups as well as individuals, how do you manage to do that?

Participant
Is there not a growing difference between the "phenomenon of intractable conflicts" in this century and the 20th? I will use the Israel-Palestine conflict as an example, but there are many more.

To oversimplify what I have in mind, I will describe it as "not enough food, space, and infrastructure to go around."

At the root of this are these ingredients:

• Increasing population growth. Contrary to the understanding of most, the next doubling is nothing like the last one. To further complicate this, Palestine’s birth rate is nearly twice that of Israel.
• Decreasing g per-capita environmental necessities including water, food and living space.

Even if the best of good will existed, it would be difficult to divide the above necessities in an acceptable way.

While the above may seem too obvious to mention, I believe that to ignore it minimizes understanding and maximizes antagonisms. While it is no panacea for resolution, I suggest that up-front confronting of these MUTUAL problems might result in greater understanding and some joint efforts to minimize them.

Participant
I think I hear Harlan saying: (3:22) Fundamental to our USA culture is the concept of each individual's having "certain inalienable rights". Were this concept to be accepted universally, as a goal (even if not realized fully anywhere), then the means to address the needs of "vulnerable national minorities" and "intractable conflicts" would be at hand and a rational approach to world peace would be possible.

Participant
Ray: Thanks for summarizing so succinctly the issue which I hope Jivan will address before this Interview runs out of time.

It's not only the inalienable rights of individuals that need universal acceptance. Group rights also have to be part of the mix. And, just as we who are brought up to give priority to individual rights have to accommodate to notions of group rights, so those whose education starts with group rights (the Confucian ethic, for one) need to find some elbow room in their worldview for the human rights of individuals.

Contradictory propositions? Let's make room for both of them.

Jivan Tabibian
Before I complete this cycle as I promised, let me tidy-up a few loose ends.

Fair, Harlan's taking issue is far from nit picking. From a certain perspective Ray is right in joining the counter-perspective.

Let me explain first, and then justify perhaps my not approaching the issue equally from the individual rights angle.

It is seldom the denial of the right of a single--or singular--individual that challenges the legitimacy of power and its distribution in a multi-component national/ethnic/religious society. It is discrimination, exclusion, marginalization, denial of opportunities in economic, language or political expression, harassment and punishment of individuals because they belong to an identifiable group with distinct characteristic.--especially if such a group is concentrated in a distinct geographic area.

True, it is particular individuals who experience the denial of a specific right, and if we were to fix it one individual at a time, the problem would hypothetically solve itself. The abuse of the personal rights of Mandela was mostly because he is black. The "criminalisation" of his act cannot be seen separately from his membership in an ethnic/racial group. It is by the same logic that Martin Luther King was jailed, and why there are a disproportionate number of black African-Americans on death row, even if they were condemned one at a time, as individuals.

The philosophy in the US Declaration of Independence, the value of "inalienable rights", "fundamental to our USA [political, moral, jurisprudential] culture as Ray puts it, is one of the constitutive myths substantiating the US's image of itself, a presumed justification for its claimed exceptionalism. An exceptionalism that paradoxically assumes the "universal" applicability of its distinctive belief system.

Why the necessary caution in accepting the "underlying" ethos, without subjecting it to a historical, sociological, juridical and culture-critical analysis or test? From the beginning, the application of the founders' conception of the individual citizen entitled to rights qua individuals, has been constantly filtered through various criteria for qualification. Freemen, property owners, literacy, racial characteristics and many other traits, some very subtle ones, have defined the limits of what constitute the necessary and sufficient preconditions of "individualhood". This process remains open-ended. In our most recent history, and putting aside the categoric disqualifications from entitlement based on race or gender, there is even the more pernicious criteria of national origin or citizen status or ethno-religious profile that constrain and narrow the sufficiency of being "born into the human race". In the name of national security, whether during WW I (German-Americans), WW II (Japanese-Americans) the Cold War (McCarthyism) and now the war on terrorism, it does not seem to be enough to be "born into the human race."

The distinctions between being born "American" and being naturalized, being a resident alien, or even a visitor on a tourist or student visa constitute enough bases to make the idea of ‘the universality of rights adhering to individuals’, regardless of what group or category one belongs to, more an idealized principle than an operating reality in application.

Recent developments in Europe, even in societies with relatively long traditions of tolerance and democratic institutions where individual rights are constitutionally safequarded, the exclusion of various categories of individuals from full entitlement of those individual rights is noticeable. Noticeable, and regrettable because they point to the fragility of the universal applicability of the "individual rights' principles. Countries like Denmark, Norway, the Netherlands, as well as France and Germany are all having to exclude immigrants, asylum seekers, refugees, individuals belonging to minority religious groups (e.g., the wearing of headscarves) from the full exercise of rights native-born citizens can take for granted. I am not even talking about the particularly onerous discrimination of Roma and Sinti (the Gypsies) all over Eastern and Central Europe, in countries aspiring to "Western" standards of universal human rights.

Please do not ascribe my disquisition to cynicism. Perhaps Harlan is right and we must struggle to hold on to the goal of actualizing the "positive"--legal and moral- ideals of seeing individuals beyond group membership. As the French poet Rene Char exhorted us to "always walk against the night" let us not abandon a philosophical conviction that puts the individual, his/her rights and security at the center of all our priorities.

However, we shall not win that battle if we minimize the weight of obstacles lurking everywhere.

Jivan Tabibian
A practical note addressed to all.

If you can bear with me, I will try to, at my speed, finish dealing with the remaining questions, beyond the formal week allotted to me.

Participant
Jivan: No more questions or arguments; you have already overfulfilled your obligation as an "interviewee." But I do want to thank you for dealing so thoughtfully with the questioned posed to you. You have certainly given me some raw material for rethinking -- which doesn't mean there aren't still a good many angles and nuances that would take longer than we've got here to sort out. THANKS!!

Participant
I do hope that we'll not have to wait another 15 years to visit with Jivan again! This has been a great pleasure!

Participant
We will indeed bear with you, Jivan. I'm with Harlan and Ray in wanting you to know how illuminating your responses have been. You surely have already fulfilled your obligation, but if you want to respond to a few remaining issues, we would love it. Frosting on the cake.

Jivan Tabibian
Donald, I don't mean to ignore the Malthusian preoccupations that lie behind your reference to population growth--uneven population growth and its consequences --for "not enough food, space and infrastructure to go around" as part of the intractability of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. While there may in fact be "absolute" measures of stress due to demographic/environment/resource ratios, they cannot mask the political decisions that create those unfavorable conditions.

The combination of massive immigration from the Soviet Union/Russia/post-Soviet Republics, and the importation of labor immigrants--from Thailand, the Philippines, etc.--variously estimated at between 200,000 and 300,000 people --into Israel, clearly exacerbate the population pressure. Incidentally, not all Russian-speaking immigrants are necessarily, strictly speaking, Jewish. (See a recent article in Haaretz on elements among some of these Russophone immigrants articulating neo-Nazi, anti-Semitic values.)

Fighting fire with fire, and "artificially" pursuing the growth of "Israeli" populations to counter the natural growth of Palestinian populations due to their higher birth rates, are the results of geo-political decisions. Balancing acts, upward, clearly create new dangers that further complicate matters. Palestinian territories cannot easily accommodate both the growing number of Palestinians and absorb excess populations from Israel in the form of settlements. Their numbers are not insignificant, and their claim to the very scarce resources specifically to water and infrastructure in the occupied territories clearly underpin a lot of the mutual recrimination, hostility, conflict and violence.

Demographic de-escalation should in fact be very much part of the overall search for defusing the "existential" dimension of the confrontation for both sides.

Post-script: It is not too far-fetched to speculate that following some kind of resolution, Palestinian institutions will modernize, stabilize and make possible the kind of socio-economic development which invariably lead to appreciable declines in birth rates. It has happened elsewhere, if can and will happen in Palestine, given a background of peaceful prosperity.

Participant
Jivan: I join others in expressing my delight in having you with us again.

One last comment re my "Malthusian preoccupations": One of the often hidden problems of demographic speculations in rooted in compound interest. Population changes of the past are not the same as those in the present. That is why I think your closing sentence "It has happened elsewhere, it can and will happen in Palestine, given a background of peaceful prosperity" needs further thought.

Participant
Dear Jivan,

I've been reading this whole wonderful discussion, even though I haven't signed on--because you are all so knowledgeable I have nothing to add. But I do want to thank you, and say how much I admire what you have become since our Cal Arts and early WBSI days. Good luck with your busy life, and again, many thanks.

Hallock

Participant
Jivan, let me add my thanks to all these other voices. It was generous of you to stay up into the wee hours to answer our questions--and to do so with such deep and illuminating responses. We are indeed grateful. You have helped us see things differently.