June 24, 2007
The Road Back to Damascus

By SETH SHERWOOD
I FELT someone staring at me.

As I discreetly tried to photograph a Damascus sidewalk stand of militant Islamic religious posters — including the Hezbollah leader Sheik Hassan Nasrallah and his Kalashnikov-toting guerrillas — I looked around and realized that the young, rough-shaven salesman had spotted my camera.

“Where you from?” he said, in English, as women in headscarves battled for plastic shoes from an adjacent sidewalk dealer.

“New York,” I answered, lowering my lens and awaiting a tirade against my country — or worse. Instead, he broke into a smile.

“New York, great city!” he said. “Ahlan wa sahlan bi Sham.”

Ahlan wa sahlan bi Sham: Welcome to Damascus. During a weeklong visit in May — during which I explored the Old City of Damascus (including its proliferating nightclubs), the Silk Road bazaars of Aleppo and the ruins of ancient Palmyra — unexpected welcomes seemed to erupt from every corner of this ancient nation of Bronze Age, Classical, Biblical and Islamic history. No matter where I was or whom I encountered, local greetings were never long in coming.

Though most Americans might be wary of sojourning in a country whose authoritarian government stands accused of some serious charges — financing Hezbollah, allowing foreign fighters into neighboring Iraq and assassinating the former Lebanese Prime Minister Rafik Hariri — a week among the regular citizens of Syria and its cultural riches is eye-opening.

When I boarded Syrian Air in Paris, I knew only that Damascus claimed to be the oldest inhabited city on Earth and that some favorite writers — Mark Twain, Gustave Flaubert, Agatha Christie — had been swept away by the country’s lore-filled past and landscapes. Many people told me vaguely to be careful, though none had ever been to Syria. My few acquaintances who had braved the country despite its tarnished reputation assured me that all would be fine. Head straight to the legendary Umayyad Mosque in Damascus, they said. Fill up whenever you can on excellent grilled lamb, baba ghanouj and pomegranate juice. And leave your preconceptions at passport control.

The country I discovered, in addition to being friendly and largely free of crime and related hassles, even showed glimmers of creaking open to the West after decades of closure. Under its London-educated, 41-year-old president, Bashar al-Assad, Syria has instituted private banking, removed a number of long-standing import barriers and passed measures allowing foreigners to own property. A Four Seasons hotel opened in Damascus with great fanfare in 2005; a five-star Inter-Continental is under construction.

A huge two-panel billboard in central Damascus embodied the changes afoot. One side trumpeted the “3rd Annual Tourism Investment Market Forum.” On the other, the avuncular white-bearded face of Colonel Sanders, ringed in red Arabic script, heralded the arrival of Kentucky Fried Chicken in Syria.

GO back as far as you will into the vague past, there was always a Damascus,” wrote Twain, who visited in the 1860s. “To Damascus years are only flitting trifles of time. She measures time not by days and months and years, but by the empires she has seen rise and crumble to ruin. She is a type of immortality.”

He was scarcely embellishing. The Babylonians blasted through under Nebuchadnezzar, before the Persians did likewise under Darius and Xerxes. The Romans captured the country in 63 B.C., and Mark Antony campaigned there against the Parthians. It was on the road to Damascus, most famously, that the Jewish traveler Saul was blinded by the light, initiating his conversion to Christianity and a new identity as the Apostle Paul. And it was on the road to Damascus, six centuries later, that the Prophet Muhammad stopped in his tracks and refused to enter the city, saying that “man should only enter paradise once.” In succeeding centuries, the Egyptians, Ottomans and French all took their turns as occupiers before Syria became independent in 1946.

Today, the route to the inner sanctum of the eighth-century Umayyad Mosque — the spiritual and historical heart of Damascus’s Old City — seems culled from some time-worn star map. First you cross under the Roman archway, just south of the tomb of the fabled Islamic warrior Saladin, who defeated Richard the Lionhearted during the Crusades. Then you enter the vast gates of the mosque, whose stony expanses rest atop a former Byzantine church, which overlays a mostly vanished Roman temple to Jupiter, itself erected on the former site of a disappeared Aramaean shrine. Finally, you make a quick jog across the courtyard, past the mausoleum of John the Baptist and into the tomb of Hussein, a grandson of Muhammad and a martyr venerated by Shiite Muslims.

The afternoon I visited, the stone room echoed with clicking prayer beads, muttered Koranic verses and sobs. Men prostrated themselves, pressing their foreheads to the stone. Student-age girls and toothless, wizened old women in black veils wept openly. One bespectacled young woman cried uncontrollably, grabbing at the walls.

Places of powerful faith fill every corner of Damascus. In a small, silent street in the Christian Quarter of the Old City, I tracked down the Church of Ananias, the man who cured St. Paul of his blindness and baptized him into Christianity. Though entirely empty of worshipers, some handwritten notes and trinkets from visitors were stuck between the stones. “Clean and serene for 60 days,” read a green keychain, in English. Utterly different again, and equally haunting, was the reconstructed ancient Jewish synagogue in the National Museum, an evocative time capsule of relics from forgotten Bronze Age cities, vanished Roman outposts and other Ozymandian monuments pulled from Syria’s sands.

Found at the city-state of Dora Europos, a trade center decimated by the Persians in the third century, the towering stone walls of the synagogue glowed with painted panels of temple priests, strange animals, sad-eyed women, scrolls, menorahs, winged angels, horse dancers and serene-faced desert wanderers.

“It’s astonishing to find a synagogue that has paintings,” said Michel al-Maqdissi, the museum’s director of archeological excavations, speaking in French. A small radio filled his office with an opera aria. “The Jewish religion forbids painted representation, just like in Islam. It accepts decorative elements, but not the human form. That’s why it’s such a unique piece.”

Nearby, the lanes of the Old City brimmed with energy. Black-veiled women led teenage girls — some in loose robes, others in punishingly tight jeans — into fabric stalls. With chiming bells, bicyclists parted the crowds to deliver loaves of bread while old men rolled Sisyphean pushcarts of pastries and bottles of deep blue bilberry juice.

“Ahlan wa sahlan,” said Tony Stephan as he ushered me into his antiques and craft emporium along Souk al-Hamidiyeh, the most famous of Damascus’s venerable bazaars. Elderly and courtly, he gave me a tour of his store, which was stocked floor to ceiling with inlaid wooden boxes, elaborate backgammon sets, hammered urns, mosaics, Bedouin jewelry and rich textiles — many of them woven on a click-clacking loom in back.

“That’s Jimmy Carter, that’s Warren Christopher, and that’s Nancy Kissinger,” he said, pointing out photos of the famous figures who, in times of less fraught international relations — before the White House had declared the country a “rogue nation” and a member of the “junior varsity axis of evil” — had snapped up furnishings and fabrics in his shop. Much more recently, in April, the House Speaker Nancy Pelosi and her delegation had strode through the souk during an official visit — the first in recent memory by a top American official — prompting local talk of a possible rapprochement.

Twilight in the Old City evokes a certain wistfulness. As the final call to prayer echoes through the blue-black evening, strolling couples and families fill the paved lanes around the mosque, licking at ice creams from the venerable parlor Bakdash. In the cafes, old men in threadbare suits sip Turkish coffee and chat. I whiled away more than a few nights among those smoking narghiles, as water pipes are called there, and drinking mint tea at the old world Al Nafoorah coffeehouse, as the nightly pageantry of Damascus flowed past. It was the perfect place to meditate on the city, a great palimpsest on which so many peoples, faiths and empires wrote their stories.

To see the most famous of Syria’s crumbled cities, Palmyra, I set out at dawn. The bus rolled across the arid emptiness, past loping camels, past goatherds in checkered headdresses, past tents of Bedouin nomads. Finally, three hours later, the majestic, blocky ruins emerged. Corinthian columns, eroded archways, theaters, ornate hillside tombs and temples to forgotten gods — Bel, Nebo, Arsu, Baalshamin — spread across the landscape.

Here, in Syria’s largest oasis, an ancient Silk Road trade center flourished some two millenniums ago. Someone surveying the landscape then would have seen a thriving market city, echoing with talk in Aramaic and filled with arriving camel trains bearing ebony, dried foods, spices, perfume, ivory and silk from as far away as India and China. From Palmyra the exotic goods would be shipped westward to Rome — which for a time controlled Palmyra — where they fetched up to 100 times their original cost.

Today, a surreal Hollywoodesque scene was playing out among the ruins as hundreds of Syrian teenage boys dressed in gladiatorlike costumes prepared a tightly choreographed dance number for the annual Palmyra Festival, which was scheduled to kick-off at dusk. In the well-preserved amphitheater, workmen were deploying a stage, curtains and lighting banks to accommodate the Bolshoi Ballet and various orchestras on the festival program. This week, the dead city would live again.

The miles of stony passages and thousands of shops in the souks of Aleppo, another Silk Road stop that’s now Syria’s second-largest city, briskly destroy flimsy descriptors like “diverse” or “eclectic.” Such hollow words splinter under the tonnage of caftans, coffee beans, lutes, Teletubbies, silk cushions, mosaics, perfumes, gold, carpets, gumdrops and olive-oil soaps.

Dodging mule-carts and mustached men chewing pistachios — a local specialty — I flowed with the thick crowds past ornate Ottoman-era stone warehouses and the eighth-century Great Mosque, resting place of the head of Zachariah, the father of John the Baptist. Time seemed barely to exist. The stone arches, massive wooden portals and iron-barred windows appeared unchanged since their construction in the Middle Ages. Today, the only signs of 21st-century life were the schoolgirls in Barbie backpacks milling about the battlements of the storybook medieval citadel and the screaming schoolboys fighting unseen invaders.

A kind of phantom world lurks among the time-worn stones of Aleppo. Strolling the souks, I could not help thinking that I was walking in the footsteps of Mohamed Atta, the Egyptian leader of the Sept. 11 hijackers. As an urban planning student in the 1990s, he spent several months in Aleppo, writing a thesis that argued for the preservation of the age-old Islamic market against the threat of modernization. Later, sitting in a club chair in the bar of the Hotel Baron, a faded grande dame from the era of steamer trunks and ragtime, I half expected Charles Lindbergh, T. E. Lawrence, Teddy Roosevelt or Agatha Christie to descend from their old rooms.

Married to an archeologist who worked in Syria, Christie wrote some of “Murder on the Orient Express” while holed up here. The young Lawrence also worked on archeological digs in the area, though apparently he found time for less rugged and martial pleasures. “These three days have been frenzied rushes and bargains for antiques (we have spent nearly two hundred pounds) from breakfast till after dinner in the evening,” he wrote to his mother in 1912, gushing about having spotted “the loveliest painted and lacquered gilt ceiling that I ever dreamed of.”

BACK in the Old City of Damascus, midnight settled on the Christian Quarter and a slow-moving line of black S.U.V.’s and silver Audi sedans cruised slowly down the Roman-era Straight Street, depositing the well-heeled and the high-heeled at trendy new resto-lounges tucked in the surrounding labyrinthine lanes.

Famous as the place where Saul received his baptism and was christened Paul, “the street called Straight” (as it’s called in the Bible) and its environs are once again witnessing some astonishing conversions, as young, enterprising Syrians transform Old World buildings into 21st century D.J. bars, clothing shops and stylish small hotels.

“You can see renovation everywhere,” said Amjad Malki, a co-owner of the jet-set Villa Moda fashion boutique, as we dined on grilled meats and excellent mezze dishes at the stylish Al-Khawali restaurant. In what was a 17th-century stone stable, Mr. Malki’s shop has swapped hay and oats for Prada handbags, Jimmy Choo shoes and Dolce & Gabbana leopard-skin bikinis, as well as dresses by Kenzo, which was host of a fashion show in Villa Moda’s upstairs salon a few months ago.

“People are buying, and prices have tripled,” Mr. Malki said, ticking off a list of hotspots like Leila’s restaurant and the Talisman hotel, where Ms. Pelosi and President Assad lunched during her visit. “It’s the place to be.”

Inside the Marmar nightclub, a Damascus favorite of expatriates and the Syrian upper crust, evidence of the city’s elevating style quotient was all around — D.J.-remixed club beats, madly dancing bodies, low necklines, high hemlines, clinking bottles of German beer, a haze of Gauloise cigarettes, T-shirts reading “Rock Star” and “Tequila Lounge.” Even a few gay Middle Eastern men discreetly mingled in the global crowd, which showed no signs of flagging even as 4 a.m. approached.

“Five years ago, night life was not really a socially acceptable thing,” said Omar Barakat, an extremely tall Syrian electrical equipment importer, battling with the loud remix of “Sweet Dreams Are Made of This” shaking the dance floor. Now, he said, “the scene is improving so much.”

Surveying the blissful tumult, Firas Salem, a 20-something Syrian corporate lawyer, couldn’t suppress a grin. “We didn’t use to have people kissing in a public places,” he said. He added that he had once lived in London but was drawn back to his hometown.

“Damascus is becoming a cool place,” he said as throbbing electronica and chatter in a half-dozen languages spilled into the ancient streets. “Something strange is happening.”

VISITOR INFORMATION

HOW TO GET THERE

Because of United States sanctions against Syria, there are no direct flights from the United States to Damascus. Al Italia airlines (www.alitalia.com) offers flights to Damascus from Kennedy airport in New York with a connection in Milan for around $1,520. An alternative — and potentially cheaper — option is to fly to Europe independently and then use Syrian Air (www.syriaair.com) from any of several European capitals. Flights from London Heathrow to Damascus cost around £296 (about $592 at $2 to the pound) for departures in late June.

A visa is required for Americans entering Syria. It can be obtained from the Embassy of Syria, 2215 Wyoming Avenue NW, Washington, D.C. 20008; (202) 232-6313, ext. 106; www.syrianembassy.us; the fee is $100.

HOW TO GET AROUND

Traveling around Syria is extremely cheap. The Kadmous Transport company (963-11-331-1901; www.alkadmous.com) provides comfortable modern intercity buses all over the country. A trip from the Damascus bus station (called Mahata al-Pullman) to Palmyra costs 120 lira (as Syrian pounds are commonly called; about $2.25 at 53 lira to the dollar) and takes two to three hours. A trip to Aleppo, four to five hours away, costs 230 lira for the extra-comfy “V.I.P.” bus. There are several buses a day to and from each destination. Buy your ticket at the bus station about 30 minutes ahead.

Within Damascus and Aleppo, the abundant yellow taxis can be hailed on the street any time of day or night. A daytime journey within the city rarely costs more than 50 lira. By night, few drivers use the meter (il-adaad in Arabic). Just get in, announce your destination, and give 75 lira upon arrival. If you try to negotiate a price in advance, the driver will typically ask for much more.

SAFETY AND SECURITY

In the wake of a 2006 attack attempt on the American Embassy in Damascus — during which one Syrian security guard was killed before the attackers were killed or subdued — the online travel advisory of the State Department urges American citizens “to defer all nonessential travel to Syria.” (A full text of the advisory is at http://travel.state.gov/travel/cis_pa_tw/tw/tw_3036.html.) More recently, in April, a Canadian traveler, Nicole Vienneau, disappeared during a stay in the city of Hama and has not been found.

That said, Syria remains a tightly controlled society that is largely devoid of street and organized crime, due in part to extensively deployed police and undercover intelligence services. Militant groups such as the Muslim Brotherhood are officially banned and suppressed — sometimes very brutally — by the nation’s ostensibly secular Baathist leadership. For travelers, the risk of theft, attack or even harassment remains small. In my own travels, I never felt threatened and never once heard of any other tourists being accosted.

WHAT TO SEE

In Damascus, your best bet is to simply get lost in the truly ancient Old City, with its Roman arches, medieval citadel, venerable Islamic madrassas, and Ottoman mosques and palaces.

Built in the early eighth century, the imposing Umayyad Mosque (Muslim Quarter, Old City) is one of the holiest sites in Islam. Its grounds contain the tombs of three remarkable historical figures: the martyr Hussein, grandson of Muhammad; John the Baptist; and the fabled Islamic warrior Saladin. Free entry.

A 15-minute walk outside the Old City walls, Syria’s National Museum (Shoukri al-Quwati Street, 963-11-221-9938 ) contains relics from an amazing array of peoples and civilizations — Hittite, Canaanite, Assyrian, Babylonian, Aramaic, Roman, Byzantine — that flourished or set up camp in Syria. Entry 150 lira. Also in new Damascus is the excellent Atassi Gallery (Rawda, New City, 963-11-332-1720; www.atassigallery.com). It is run by the knowledgeable, multilingual Mouna Atassi, one of Syria’s leading authors on contemporary art, and specializes in the top Syrian artists of the 20th century.

In Aleppo, the gloriously ruined medieval citadel (Old City, admission 150 lira) offers sublime views from its crenellated ramparts. The Great Mosque, just north off the main east-west thoroughfare of Souk al-Atarin, was built in the eighth century and then rebuilt, after a fire, in the 12th. A kind of little brother to the Umayyad Mosque in Damascus, this one holds what is said to be the head of Zachariah, the father of John the Baptist. Free admission.

In Palmyra, exploring Syria’s most famous ruined city — a Silk Road stop that was founded around the second millennium B.C. and flourished under Roman control in the first few centuries A.D. — could take a couple of hours or a couple of days, depending on how keen you are to explore every temple, tomb and theater. The ancient city comes alive twice a year, for the Palmyra Festival in May and the Silk Road Festival in the fall.

WHERE TO STAY

The Old City of Damascus is witnessing a boom in boutique hotels. Near Bab Touma gate, in the thick of the dining and nightlife scene, the intimate eight-room Beit al-Mamlouka (963-11-543-0445; www.almamlouka.com) is loaded with Oriental carpets, impeccably chosen traditional Syrian furniture and even frescoes and mosaics. Doubles from $135. In the more tranquil Jewish quarter, the 16-room Talisman (116 Tal El-Hijara Street, 963-11-541-5379; www.hoteltalisman.net) is a neo-Sultanic conversion with a courtyard pool, a vaulted period-rich lounge and a hammam. Doubles from $175. Along Straight Street is Al Khair Palace (Bab Sharqi, 963-11-543-1716; www.alkhairpalace.net). The 12 rooms are smallish but tastefully furnished with Syrian inlaid wooden furniture. Doubles are $90.

The colonial-style Hotel Baron (al-Baron Street, 963-21-211-0880; www.the-hotel-baron.com) in Aleppo is more to be recommended for its history — Charles Lindbergh, Agatha Christie and T. E. Lawrence all stayed there — than for its somewhat worn and chipped time-warp décor. Doubles from $50. The cozy 14-room Beit Wakil (As-Sissi Street, Al Hatab Square, 963-21-211-7083; www.beitwakil.com) is in a nicely restored 16th-century mansion in the Al Jdeidah quarter; it also has one of the city’s best restaurants. Doubles are $100 and $130.

WHERE TO EAT AND DRINK

Unless otherwise noted, prices reflect a three-course meal for two, without wine.

In Damascus, in an old stone house refitted with slick contemporary furnishings, Al Dar 111 (Christian Quarter, Old City, 963-11-542-3232; www.aldar111.com) does excellent fatoosh (finely chopped salad with tangy grenadine, molasses and pomegranate), baba ghanooj (enlivened with sesame, tomato and lemon juice) and sujok (diced lamb sausages with peppers and spices). Around 1,000 lira. Carnivores will enjoy the mixed grill of skewered meats and the Tunisian sausages stewed in zesty tomato-onion sauce on offer at Leila’s Restaurant and Terrace (Muslim Quarter, 963-11-544-5900). In a stylishly modernized old courtyard house next to the Ummayed Mosque, the restaurant also does vegetarian-friendly baba ghanooj, hummus and burek (cheese pastries). Terrace tables have killer views. About 1,000 lira.

Just off the southeast corner of the Ummayad Mosque, Al Nafoorah is the ideal place to sip Turkish coffee (35 lira), smoke a narghile (100 lira) and watch Damascene life go by.

When in Aleppo, Bazar al-Charq (Karmel Street, 963-21-224-9120; www.bazaralcharq.com) and its Orientalist-fantasy décor merit a visit for the sublime lahmeh bi karaz (kebab in sour cherry sauce) alone. The hummus (with ground lamb and pine nuts) and chicken with sesame sauce are also worth indulging in. About 900 lira.

WHERE TO SHOP

Damascus’s Old City is a giant Aladdin’s lair of Middle Eastern treasures. In the main bazaar, Souk al-Hamidiyeh, Tony Stephan (963-11-245-1075) stocks an excellent selection of silver, carved wooden furnishings, hand-woven caftans and shimmering Damascene fabrics, some of them created on site. For contemporary styles, Anat (Bab Sharqi, 963-11-542-7878; www.anat-sy.org) sells modern folkloric-chic textiles, handbags and women’s clothing handmade by rural Syrian women using traditional techniques.

WHERE TO PARTY

Done up in kitschy Middle Eastern gothic décor, Oxygen (963-11-544-4396), a bar-restaurant in the Christian Quarter of the Old City (a few twisting streets southwest of the Bab Touma gate), is where young Damascenes go to pre-party. The local Barada lager (100 lira) is a crisp Syrian answer to Rolling Rock. After midnight, especially on Thursdays, head a couple of blocks north to Marmar (al-Dawanneh Street, 963-11-544-6425). The 600 lira cover charge gets you three drinks, D.J.-spun dance music and a spirited Syrian and international crowd.

SETH SHERWOOD, based in Paris, is a frequent contributor to the Travel section.

Changing Patterns in Social Fabric Test Netherlands' Liberal Identity
By Molly Moore
Washington Post Foreign Service
Saturday, June 23, 2007; A12

AMSTERDAM -- For years, W.B. Kranendonk was a lone ranger in Dutch politics -- the editor of an orthodox Christian newspaper in a nation that has legalized prostitution, euthanasia, abortion and same-sex marriage and allows the personal use of marijuana.

Today, with an orthodox Christian political party in the government for the first time, and with immigration anxieties fueling a national search for identity, the country that has been the world's most socially liberal political laboratory is rethinking its anything-goes policies.

And suddenly, Kranendonk no longer seems so all alone.

"People in high political circles are saying it can't be good to have a society so liberal that everything is allowed," said Kranendonk, editor of Reformist Daily and an increasingly influential voice that resonates in the shifting mainstream of Dutch public opinion. "People are saying we should have values; people are asking for more and more rules in society."

In cities across the Netherlands, mayors and town councils are closing down shops where marijuana is sold, rolled and smoked. Municipalities are shuttering the brothels where prostitutes have been allowed to ply their trade legally. Parliament is considering a ban on the sale of hallucinogenic "magic mushrooms." Orthodox Christian members of parliament have introduced a bill that would allow civil officials with moral objections to refuse to perform gay marriages. And Dutch authorities are trying to curtail the activities of an abortion rights group that assists women in neighboring countries where abortions are illegal.

The effort to rein in the Netherlands' famed social liberties is not limited to the small, newly empowered Christian Union party, which holds two of the 16 ministries in the coalition government formed this year. Increasingly, politicians from the more center-left Labor Party are among the most outspoken proponents of closing some brothels and marijuana shops -- known here as "coffee shops."

"Has the Netherlands changed? Yes," said Frank de Wolf, a Labor Party member of the Amsterdam City Council. "There is not only a different mood among our people and politicians, but there are different problems now."

The Netherlands is going through the same racial, ethnic and religious metamorphosis as the rest of Western Europe: Large influxes of black, Arab and Muslim immigrants are changing the social complexion of an overwhelmingly white, Christian nation struggling with its loss of homogeneity.

But here those anxieties are exacerbated by alarm over the international crime organizations that have infiltrated the country's prostitution and drug trades, the increasing prevalence of trafficking in women and children across its borders, and dismay over the Netherlands' image as an international tourist destination for drugs and sexual debauchery.

"There is an uneasiness about globalization that the Dutch don't have control over their own country anymore," said James C. Kennedy, professor of contemporary history at the Free University of Amsterdam. "There is a more conservative mood in the country that is interested in setting limits and making sure things don't get out of hand."

De Wolf, the Amsterdam councilman, is part of that movement.

"In the past, we looked at legal prostitution as a women's liberation issue; now it's looked at as exploitation of women and should be stopped," said de Wolf, sitting in the offices of the medical complex where he works as an HIV-AIDS researcher.

He said Amsterdam's police force is overwhelmed and ill-equipped to fight the sophisticated foreign organized crime networks operating in the city. Laws designed to regulate prostitution and brothel operators have instead opened the trade to criminal gangs, according to de Wolf and other city officials.

And de Wolf said he is fed up with the planeloads of British thrill-seekers who take cheap flights to Amsterdam each Friday evening for weekend binges of sex, drugs and alcohol in his city's red-light district, where scantily clad prostitutes stand behind plate-glass windows beckoning to potential customers.

"Amsterdam has a reputation that you can do everything here," de Wolf said. "That's not the way I want people to look at Amsterdam."

Those same concerns have prompted some cities to bar tourists from their marijuana and hashish shops. Some localities now require patrons of the shops to show Dutch identity cards to gain entry, and a new nationwide law forbids the sale of alcohol in shops that sell pot and hash. Some lawmakers have proposed requiring the shops to warn their customers about the dangers of cannabis, mimicking the warning labels on tobacco and alcohol products.

Ivo Opstelten, the mayor of Rotterdam, the second-largest Dutch city, announced this month that he will close all marijuana shops within 250 yards of a school -- nearly half of the city's 62 shops.

"We want to discourage the use of drugs among young people," said Opstelten, a member of the Labor Party. "Studies show soft drugs are detrimental to their health and brain development."

Michael Veling, 52, proprietor of an Amsterdam coffee shop where a marijuana joint sells for $5.50, said politicians increasingly are looking for any excuse to scale back the sale of soft drugs.

"This toleration policy goes back 35 years," said Veling, snapping the lids off plastic boxes of pungent marijuana blends marked Neville's Haze and White Widow. "Now the word 'coffee shop' has become a symbol of something we don't like about society."

But historian Kennedy describes the attitude as a national "weariness with moral squalor -- the Dutch have grown tired of it and unwilling to put up with it."

He said the rise of the orthodox Christian Union party, many members of which shun television as part of their strict religious code, has coincided with the changing public attitude.

Defense Minister Eimert van Middelkoop is a member of the Christian Union. He refuses to work Sundays and recently declined an invitation to participate in the U.S. Embassy's Memorial Day commemoration because it was held on the Sabbath, officials said.

Leaders of the Christian Union say they are not pushing to banish legalized prostitution or soft drugs. And no officials are discussing rollbacks on same-sex marriage, euthanasia or abortion, even though the party opposes all three.

Instead, the party and other leaders who agree with some of its stances are "copying from the United States," according to Rebecca Gomperts, founder of Women on Waves, an organization that provides Internet counseling on abortions and charters ships to provide off-shore abortion advice to women in European countries that do not allow abortions.

"They are chopping away at the edges so that people don't notice," Gomperts said, "resetting the norm of what is accepted practice."

Editor Kranendonk said his Christian Union party is realistic: "When you're a small party, you can't change everything in four years.

"If you had said to me in 1995 that one of the main orthodox Christian parties would be in the government today, I wouldn't have believed it," Kranendonk said. "The number of Christians is diminishing, churches are closing."

He paused and smiled, "But there are other ways of believing."

May 23: 2954

June 12 3195 11:45 p
June 13 3210 10:30p
June 14 3228 7:30p
June 15 3238
June 16 3249 11:45p
June 18 3274 8 a.m.
June 18 3288 10p.m
June 20 3350 11p.m
June 22 3371 8 a.m.
June 23 3381 10 a.m.

Bush Prods Vietnamese President On Human Rights and Openness
By Peter Baker
Washington Post Staff Writer
Saturday, June 23, 2007; A02

President Bush pressed Vietnamese President Nguyen Minh Triet yesterday to address human rights abuses and open up his communist nation's autocratic system, during the first White House visit by a head of state from Hanoi since the countries were at war.

Bush hailed the growing trade ties between the two former enemies and the signing of a new agreement that could lead to formal free-trade talks. But as flag-waving Vietnamese American protesters demonstrated outside the White House gates, Bush used the opportunity to urge Triet to permit opposition and end crackdowns on religious minorities.

"I also made it very clear that, in order for relations to grow deeper, that it's important for our friends to have a strong commitment to human rights and freedom and democracy," Bush said with Triet at his side in the Oval Office before hosting a lunch of black sea bass and gazpacho. "I explained my strong belief that societies are enriched when people are allowed to express themselves freely or worship freely."

Triet told reporters that he and Bush had a "direct and open exchange" on human rights but offered no indications that he intended to do anything as a result of the discussion. "We are also determined not to let those differences afflict our overall, larger interest," he said.

Triet's visit was the latest step in the evolution of U.S.-Vietnamese relations. President Bill Clinton normalized ties in 1995, later sent the first U.S. ambassador to Hanoi and, in his last two months in office, became the first American leader to visit the country since the war. Bush followed suit with a trip to Vietnam in November and has hosted the Vietnamese prime minister at the White House. The United States exported roughly $1 billion in goods to Vietnam last year and imported $8.4 billion, a tenfold increase since Bush took office.

But the growing links between the two nations often raise uncomfortable comparisons for Bush, as many politicians and pundits equate his troubled war in Iraq with the ill-fated conflict in Vietnam. Bush has said there are some parallels and some differences, but he usually avoids discussing the two in the same breath, acutely aware of the political hazards if the public increasingly sees them as similar.

The aftereffects of the war flavored yesterday's meeting, as the two leaders discussed continuing efforts to find missing remains of U.S. soldiers killed in Vietnam. Bush also told Triet that Congress recently passed a spending bill to help Vietnam deal with the effects of Agent Orange, a dioxin sprayed by U.S. forces to defoliate jungles during the war. Triet thanked him for the aid.

Human rights abuses shadowed the visit, though. Members of Congress and activist groups urged Bush to put more pressure on Triet. Reporters Without Borders, for instance, asked Bush to intervene on behalf of nine journalists and "cyber-dissidents" in prison. Religious groups are severely critical of Vietnam's record on religious freedom.

The State Department's latest human rights report criticized Vietnam for abuses: "Individuals were arbitrarily detained for political activities. Persons were denied the right to fair and expeditious trials. The government limited citizens' privacy rights and freedom of speech, press, assembly, movement, and association. The government maintained its prohibition of independent human rights organizations."

Amnesty International last month said more than 20 people have been arrested and detained since November in an ongoing crackdown on dissent, including three political activists sentenced to as long as five years in prison last month for "conducting propaganda" against the government.

Triet has dismissed the criticism. In a New York speech before arriving here, he asserted that everyone in prison in Vietnam is a criminal. And in an interview with the Associated Press after his session with Bush yesterday, he said Vietnam's human rights record does not need to be fixed. "Vietnam has its own legal framework," he said, "and those who violate the law will be handled."

To Be, or Not to Be . . . an Empire
By Gary J. Schmitt
Posted: Friday, June 22, 2007

NATIONAL SECURITY OUTLOOK
AEI Online
Publication Date: June 25, 2007

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June 2007

With the 2008 presidential campaign well under way, it is natural that discussion has turned to the question of what America's grand strategy will--or should--be after George W. Bush's presidency. The president's approval rating is hovering at around 30 percent, with much of the dissatisfaction clearly tied to the war in Iraq and the administration's foreign policy more broadly. When the next president--Republican or Democrat--assumes office, will America stay on the same general course? Or will we adopt a new approach to global security affairs?

We are likely to be disappointed with our presidential candidates' answers to questions about future U.S. strategy. Political scientists have long noted the tendency of successful presidential campaigns to adopt positions that, more often than not, tend to look like those of their opponents. Sometimes, there may be wide disagreement about a particular issue--such as now, with the war in Iraq--but on the whole, there will be more consensus than divergence on broad issues. And while we often pay a great deal of attention to the particular issues in dispute, it is not likely that we will see the candidates lay out vastly different visions for America's grand strategy.[1]

Those competing grand strategies will probably come from the world of think tanks and universities, where scholars and former government officials, freed from the pressures of politics and day-to-day governance, can reflect on history's lessons, the realities of the day, the nature of power and ideas, and the character of the American people and of our allies and enemies. It is especially helpful when distinct visions are juxtaposed and their different assumptions spelled out. Done well, the resulting contrast and debate can be a midwife to real strategic thought.

To that end, it is useful to examine a recent contribution to the debate about America's future role in the world, written by Christopher Layne, a professor at Texas A&M University's George Bush School of Government and Public Service, and Bradley A. Thayer, a professor of strategic studies at Missouri State University. Their book, American Empire: A Debate,[2] provides the kind of broad contrasts in strategic vision that elevate the debate by forcing one to think about first principles, not just today's headlines.

American Primacy: Worth It?

As the title of the book indicates, Thayer and Layne lay out, respectively, arguments for and against a U.S. foreign policy whose explicit goal is maintaining American primacy on the world stage--what both call the "American Empire." Layne and Thayer are professed realists, so having power, keeping it, and using it wisely are the key issues around which their debate takes place. What fundamentally divides them is their respective estimates of the costs and benefits of a grand strategy that rests on American global hegemony.

Thayer opens the book with his case for American primacy, arguing that America is indeed an empire, but not a traditional one: its influence is now mostly tied to the indirect sway and security provided by its military power, its economic muscle, and the soft power associated with its political ideals and dominant global cultural presence. Moreover, the spirit behind America's empire is the "spirit of 1776." From the get-go, Americans wanted to expand geographically, and--equally important--they saw their notions of political and economic freedom as "a light to the nations." In its bones, America has never been a status quo power.

That Thayer and Layne both admit the United States is not an empire in the traditional sense seems to suggest that the country is not, in fact, an empire.

But even if America has a hegemonic instinct, Thayer reasonably asks whether the country can carry it out. Can the United States retain its primacy, or will other powers, as most realists believe, react to such overwhelming power by challenging it? Of the available candidates for doing so--China, Europe, and radical Islam--only China presents a significant problem, according to Thayer. Europe is dying away; terrorism is a bloody but manageable nuisance. Thayer even doubts China's long-term prospects, given its own internal problems related to its demographics, corruption, fragile financial system, income inequality, environmental pollution, and so on.

Even if the United States can maintain global hegemony, should it? Absent another realistic alternative to keep peace and stability in the world, Thayer argues, it remains in America's interest to play the role of hegemon. It might not make us loved, but the general stability provided by the American security umbrella of alliances and military power has made the world much more peaceful than it would otherwise be. By standards both economic and humane, Thayer says, that is a good return on the U.S. investment.

Layne's argument is that there is, in fact, a realist alternative to the endless pursuit of primacy: a strategy of "offshore balancing" that amounts to a quasi-isolationist policy of selective diplomatic and military engagement. Indeed, the "offensive" realist argument for primacy rests, Layne suggests, on paying too much attention to the lessons supposedly learned from the security problems and strategies for dealing with them that arose from centuries of competition among the powers of continental Europe. Given America's geography and weak neighbors, the security model far more relevant to our situation is the one adopted by maritime Britain: a small army, a big fleet, and a willingness to find new allies quickly and dump old ones when necessary.

Today's primacy advocates couple it with a policy of democracy promotion, believing that the world is safer when there are more democracies, not fewer--a thesis Layne calls the most "over-hyped and under-supported 'theory' ever to be concocted by American academics."[3]

According to Layne, the advantage of his alternative grand strategy is that it avoids stimulating great power rivalries, eliminates the economically disastrous consequences of "imperial overstretch," and precludes the necessity of a "national security state" in which our rights and civic culture are put at risk. Finally, it avoids the messes of democracy promotion and nation-building (e.g., Somalia and Iraq).

Problems and Prospects

International security specialists will quibble that Thayer's and Layne's two grand strategies are not the sum total of strategies available to the "American empire." Nor will they be satisfied with the authors' loose use of the term "empire." That Thayer and Layne both admit the United States is not an empire in the traditional sense seems to suggest that the country is not, in fact, an empire. Hegemony and empire are not one and the same, although their attributes can at times overlap. That said, the book provides plenty of fodder for debate and thought.

Its biggest problem, however, lies in Layne's dyspeptic analysis of current policy opponents. Rather than taking the opposing argument as seriously as Thayer takes his, Layne resorts to unsubstantiated claims about "neocons," White House lies, and cabals (the "Blue Team") trying to foment a "preventive" war with China.[4] Similarly, his dismissal of the democratic peace theory is equally over-the-top. Even if one thinks that the theory is at times oversold, to claim that it has absolutely no merit leaves readers with the sense that there is as much anger as argument in Layne's case.

An additional problem, perhaps tied to the way the book is structured, is that Layne spends the majority of his time criticizing the argument for primacy without giving the reader much of a handle on the particulars of his own preferred strategy. As a result, we do not know whether his model of "offshore balancing" is more British in style--that is, fairly active in playing the
decisive power broker among the other competing states--or more passive in content, such as the United States in the 1920s and 1930s.

If the former, a key problem with the strategy is that it requires a far more calculating style of statecraft than the United States has ever had. And even if we had Henry Kissinger upon Henry Kissinger to carry it out, would the American people really let their government play this particular game of international politics, shifting partners based on power relations rather than on the character of the states themselves? The disappearance of the United States as a security guarantor is likely to lead to more competition among states and to the creation of a more chaotic and fluid international environment. Britain had a hard enough time playing this role in its day, finding itself in numerous conflicts regardless.

If the latter, the passive offshore balancing approach leads to the question of whether such a strategy results in putting off a security challenge until it may be far more difficult to deal with. Layne's bet, at least in the case of Iran and China today, is that if the United States would only get out of the way, other powers would naturally begin to meet the challenge. It is possible, but doing so might create even more destabilizing competition among other regional powers or lead those same powers to acquiesce to China or Iran's new hegemony, fueling their ambitions rather than lessening them.

The history of international relations suggests that most great crises result from neglecting to address more minor ones early on. As Thayer argues, it is probably less costly to nip these threats in the bud to than wait for them to become full-blown security crises.

And speaking of money, Layne's argument about looming imperial overstretch is itself a stretch. Even with all the problems in Iraq, a war in Afghanistan, and an emerging hedging strategy vis-à-vis China, the defense burden is still barely over 4 percent of the U.S. gross domestic product. The United States has had far higher defense burdens in the past while still retaining its status as the world's economic juggernaut. There may be plenty of reasons to worry about the U.S. economy, but "guns over butter" is not one of them.

Moreover, while pulling back from a forward-leaning defense strategy would undoubtedly save money, offshore balancing would still require the United States to have a major military establishment in reserve if it wanted to be capable of being a decisive player in a game of great power balancing. Is the $100 billion or so saved--or, rather, spent by Congress on "bridges to nowhere"--really worth the loss in global influence that comes from adopting Layne's strategy?

As someone who has been called a neoconservative, I read Thayer's argument in friendlier light. Nevertheless, his presentation suffers from its own problems. First, in response to Layne's argument that Iraq has been an unmitigated disaster, Thayer tries too hard to put a happy face on the problem. But a strategy of primacy does not rest on success in Iraq. It may tell us how prepared or unprepared we are for that role, but it does not necessarily vitiate the primacy strategy's general validity. That said, having a strategy dedicated to maintaining primacy puts a premium on preemption--not necessarily military preemption, but certainly a strong impetus to use all the tools of statecraft to shape the security environment and other states' behavior. As such, it is an inherently active and open-ended strategy that requires heading off challenges before they become threats.

The history of international relations suggests that most great crises result from neglecting to address more minor ones early on. It is probably less costly to nip these threats in the bud than to wait for them to become full-blown security crises.

Preemption can lead to misjudgments about what really needs doing and what only appears to need doing. But that is less a problem--and it is no less a problem for those who, like Layne, want to engage in balance-of-power politics--than the fact that the American people are not always willing to devote treasure and blood to deal with threats beyond the horizon. In the wake of the Soviet empire's collapse, the United States and its democratic allies were presented with a remarkable--perhaps unprecedented--strategic opportunity to shape the international security order. But not until the 9/11 attacks were the people and their representatives seized with a determination to think seriously again about what our security requires.

So, while Layne's preferred strategy of sitting above the international fray is not likely to fit well with the universalistic character of American liberalism, Thayer's problem is sustaining his strategy in the face of the other side of American liberalism, with its focus on "the pursuit of happiness." Contrary to what Layne imagines, the issue of sustainability is not one of material resources, or even the rise of great power competitors supposedly responding to U.S. primacy. As Thayer notes, America has never been more powerful, and never has a country been able to call so many nations of the world friends or allies. No, the key issue is one of public will and the quality of leadership necessary to sustain that will in the face of difficulties and the enervating consequences of primacy's own success.

Is America's Past Its Future?

This National Security Outlook began by taking note of the question of fundamental changes in America's grand strategy after the 2008 presidential election--a question of great urgency, given the problems the current administration has had in carrying out its declared strategy.[5]
A number of commentators have called for a return to a more "realistic" foreign and defense policy.[6] But this assumes that the Bush administration's policy has been a radical break from the past. Is this true?

Some of the key elements of the current strategy--preemption, democracy promotion, global leadership--are not unique to the Bush strategy. In the mid-1990s, the Clinton Pentagon seriously considered whether to strike North Korea's nuclear facilities preemptively.
And lest we forget, John F. Kennedy was on the verge of attacking Cuba during the Cuban Missile Crisis to head off the delivery of nuclear warheads to Fidel Castro. And promoting political liberalism abroad has been a central component of virtually every administration from
Harry S. Truman's on; it was Ronald Reagan, after all, who established the National Endowment for Democracy.

Nor has Bush broken new ground when it comes to the assertion of American power abroad. It was not Bush's secretary of state who declared the United States to be "the indispensable nation"--it was Bill Clinton's. It was not during the Bush administration that the French first referred to the United States as the "hyperpower"--it was during Clinton's.[7]

As former Reagan and Clinton administration official Stephen Sestanovich has argued, it is historically inaccurate to see George W. Bush's foreign policy as marking "a dramatic departure from that of his predecessors." When one examines "the primary security problems" facing the preceding three presidents--Clinton (Kosovo and the Balkans), George H. W. Bush (the end of the Cold War and German reunification), and Reagan (the East-West confrontation and the deployment of intermediate missiles in Europe)--one discovers an underlying continuity in policy: rejecting compromise, rocking the boat of conventional thinking, and ignoring the worries of key allies. In short, "to look at how the Bush Administration's immediate predecessors dealt with the most important international challenges of their time is to see the true maximalist tradition of our diplomacy. The current administration has put its own stamp on this tradition; it did not originate it."[8]

This does not mean that criticism of how the Bush team has carried out its strategy or criticism of the strategy itself is unwarranted. Nor does it mean that a new presidency should necessarily follow in its predecessors' footsteps. But traditions tend to exist for good reasons. They usually reflect a response to an underlying reality that is not easily overcome or ignored. As Robert Kagan notes in his groundbreaking history of America's early foreign policy, that tradition springs not from one man or one party, but largely from the character of the regime itself as it confronts the world around it.[9] From day one, Americans have been pushing outward, and their statecraft has always rested uneasily with the world as they found it. As often as not, circumstances permitting, Washington has been in the business of trying to change the status quo of international affairs.

It is possible, of course, that in 2008 we may see the election of a president who will take the nation in a direction substantially different from that of his pred-ecessors. But if recent history is any guide--and if the world remains as it is--it will be difficult for a new president, regardless of his wishes, to lay aside the mantle of American leadership. Both George W. Bush and Bill Clinton entered office hoping to reduce America's profile in the world, creating a more modest foreign policy; both will have left understanding just how difficult--if not impossible--a task that is.

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Notes

1. For perhaps the latest example of this, see Robert Kagan, "Obama the Interventionist," Washington Post, April 29, 2007, in which Kagan points out that--except for the war in Iraq--presidential candidate and Senator Barack Obama (D-Ill.) argues for a larger army, bigger defense budget, democracy promotion abroad, and, if necessary, intervention without United Nations sanction.

2. Christopher Layne and Bradley A. Thayer, American Empire: A Debate (New York: Routledge, 2007). The following two sections of this National Security Outlook are based on an earlier review of American Empire. See Gary J. Schmitt, "Pax Americana," The Weekly Standard, March 12, 2007, available at www.aei.org/publication25706/.

3. Christopher Layne and Bradley A. Thayer, American Empire: A Debate, 94.

4. Ibid., 58, 61, 72-73, 86-87.

5. See National Security Council, The National Security Strategy of the United States (Washington, DC: The White House, 2002 and 2006), available at www.whitehouse.gov/nsc/nss.html (accessed February 26, 2007).

6. See, for example, the list of signatories to statements of the Coalition for a Realistic Foreign Policy (www.realisticforeignpolicy.org). See also Anatol Lieven and John Hulsman,
Ethical Realism: A Vision for America's Role in the World (New York: Pantheon, 2006); Stephen M. Walt, Taming American Power: The Global Response to U.S. Primacy (New York: W. W. Norton, 2005); and Glenn Kessler and Thomas E. Ricks, "The Realists' Repudiation of Policies for a War, Region," Washington Post, December 7, 2006.

7. "To Paris, U.S. Looks Like a 'Hyperpower,'" International Herald Tribune, February 5, 1999.

8. Stephen Sestanovich, "American Maximalism," The National Interest, Spring 2005.

9. Robert Kagan, Dangerous Nation: America's Place in the World from Its Earliest Days to the Dawn of the Twentieth Century (New York: Knopf, 2006).