Global Brief #12

The Glendon School of Public and International Affairs | L'École des Affaires Publiques et Internationales de Glendon

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WINTER 2013

L'AVENIR DE L'AVENIR L’EUROPE PUISSANCE

DE L’EUROPE ZAKI LAÏDI

PUISSANCE CANBERRA ZAKI LAÏDI PIVOTS TO ASIA RAMESH THAKUR

INDIA DOES

CANBERRA PÉKIN ET WASHINGTON

PIVOTS TO ASIA

GRAND

SYNCHRONISÉES

RAMESH THAKUR BARTHÉLÉMY

STRATEGY

COURMONT

PÉKIN ET

K A N T I B A J PA I

PORTUGAL’S

WASHINGTON BAZAARI DIPLOMATS LUIS MAH SYNCHRONISÉES

BARTHÉLÉMY SOUTH SUDAN

COURMONT IN PROGRESS MATTHEW ARNOLD & MATTHEW LERICHE

PORTUGAL’S CHINA DOES BAZAARI

AFRICA

RICHARD ROUSSEAU

DIPLOMATS

VS WENRAN JIANG

LUIS MAH

PERSIAN

MIDDLE EASTERN

SOUTH SUDAN

GULF

IN PROGRESS

FUTURES

HEROISM

SVEN SPENGEMANN

MATTHEW ARNOLD JAMES M.

& MATTHEW LERICHE CHINA DOES AFRICA RICHARD ROUSSEAU

VS WENRAN JIANG MIDDLE EASTERN HEROISM SVEN SPENGEMANN

DORSEY

BRIDGES & MOATS OPEN MINDS AND STRATEGIC PROMISCUITY

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S T R AT E G I C F U T U R E S

THE DRC IN 2020

B U S I N E S S T I TA N P S YC H E S

DOMINIC BARTON

I RV I N S T U D I N A S I A N A LG O R I T H M S A N D A R G U M E N T

G W E N D O LY N MIKELL JOHN C.

CAPITAL FROM LIMA TO CAIRO

HERNANDO DE SOTO

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B R A D S H AW CALESTOUS JUMA

Open minds create bridges, closed minds create moats

EDITORS’ BRIEF

Promiscuity is strategically good, and the opportunities – and duties – for learning in the West, the East and the interstitial world are growing

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COVER ILLUSTRATION: EDUARDO RECIFE

monarchies and republics. Barthélémy Courmont sees indubitable political ‘mirroring’ and intensifying political interdependence between Beijing and Washington DC, as Xi Jinping takes the helm in the Middle Kingdom and Obama’s second term gets started. Finally, Australian National University’s Ramesh Thakur reflects on whether Canberra really means business in its vaunted pivot to Asia.

In Tête à Tête, GB sits down with Dominic Barton, global head of McKinsey & Company, in order to better understand the psyches of the business leaders who are plying their trade globally, but who nevertheless bring with them cultural and intellectual instincts and gifts that are peculiar to different parts of the globe. GB discusses the strengths and weaknesses of Latin America’s variegated economic and commercial picture with Peru’s Hernando de Soto, president of the Institute for Liberty and Democracy.

In Query, Sciences Po’s Zaki Laïdi explains why European grand strategy may never happen. Canadian analyst Sven Spengemann sees a desperate need for individual agency and heroism – both at the leadership and citizen-activist levels – in order to condition the course of the post-Arab Spring Middle East and North Africa such that it avoids the worst possible political and societal excesses. In Nez à Nez, Richard Rousseau of the Azerbaijan Diplomatic Academy and the University of Alberta’s Wenran Jiang debate whether Beijing’s ‘pivot to Lagos’ is a good thing for Africa. In The Definition, we ask international consultant Mariama Conteh, Mohamed Kheir of the Office of the UN High Commissioner for Human Rights, and the Wilson Center’s Steve McDonald to tell us whether the African Union is up to the job of stabilizing Africa. In Strategic Futures, the Kennedy School’s Calestous Juma, John C. Bradshaw of the Enough Project, and Georgetown University’s Gwendolyn Mikell imagine the Democratic Republic of the Congo in 2020. In Situ reports come to us from Matthew Arnold and Matthew LeRiche in Juba, South Sudan, where much work clearly remains to be done, even if things are not as bad as they appear; and from Luis Mah in Lisbon, where a young coalition government is recasting its diplomatic class as travelling salesmen. GB visits Hanoi’s Cabinet Room to mark the moment that Vietnam’s population passed the 90 million mark. Douglas Glover concludes in Epigram.

Enjoy your Brief. | GB

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he East, even if not as a totality, is not only rising, but is far more strategically and intellectually promiscuous than today’s West. This is to its net advantage. It is taking lessons with and from whichever dance partner will requite its seductions, constantly revising its mental maps and torquing its toolkit in preparation for the next go-around. The advanced West has to date often been the preferred dance partner. But it is not altogether clear that the West has been seriously studying the East even as the two tangoed.

Why would it? The West was more advanced.

What did it have to learn?

This issue is not a hagiography of Eastern promise and energy. Its compass is far more modest. Instead, it is a ‘promiscuous’ survey of what East can teach West (if West is open-minded), and what West can still teach East (if East is willing to reinvent its systems). Indeed, this issue posits that some of the most important lessons from East and West alike will be learned in theatres that are not, strictly speaking, aligned with either pole – to wit, in ‘voyeur’ theatres that are in transition, and for which the strategic and intellectual telos and vocation have not yet been made plain. These ‘voyeur’ theatres are Latin America, Africa, the post-Arab Spring Middle East, and the vast post-Soviet space. This issue of GB is first and foremost for them.

Parag Khanna, director of the Hybrid Reality Institute, fronts this number in the One Pager, making the case for the apparent rise of so-called ‘info-states’ as a possible 21st century ‘sweet spot’ for governance – somewhere between the ideal-types of popular democracy and authoritarian technocracy. In the lead Feature, GB Editor-in-Chief Irvin Studin argues that today’s ‘Eastern’ governance, rooted in algorithmic logic, is in some cases no less legitimate (although perhaps more inherently unstable) than ‘Western’ governance, rooted in argument and reason, and that the lessons distilled for ‘voyeur’ regions very much depend on time and place and circumstance.

Kanti Bajpai of Singapore’s Lee Kuan Yew School of Public Policy shows that India, for all of its internal messiness, does have a tradition of grand strategy, and that so-called ‘neoliberals’ are now in the ascendant. Former New York Times dynamo James M. Dorsey assesses the various futures of the Persian Gulf theatre in the context of the region’s precarious

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EDITOR-IN-CHIEF & PUBLISHER Irvin Studin

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WINTER 2013

D E PA R T M E N T S

MANAGING EDITOR Sam Sasan Shoamanesh ART DIRECTOR Louis Fishauf ASSOCIATE EDITOR Michael Barutciski

EDITORS’ BRIEF. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 1

ASSISTANT EDITOR Marie Lavoie JUNIOR EDITORS Roxanne Hamel,

ONE PAGER

Iulia Hanganu, Salim Idrissi, Milos Jankovic, Avalon Jennings, Stephanie Kot, Jolie Lemmon, Jaclyn Volkhammer ASSISTANT PUBLISHER Ernest Chong WEB MANAGER Aladin Alaily VIDEOGRAPHER Duncan Appleton WEB DESIGN Dolce Publishing PRINTING RJM Print Group

Parag Khanna | Rise of the info-states . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 5

ADVISORY COUNCIL

IN SITU

M. Arnold & M. LeRiche | To live and die in South Sudan. . . . . . . . . 6 Luis Mah | Portugal's diplomats and global bazaars . . . . . . . . . . 48 TÊTE À TÊTE

Kenneth McRoberts (Chair), André Beaulieu, Tim Coates, David Dewitt, Paul Evans, Drew Fagan, Dan Fata, Margaret MacMillan, Maria Panezi, Tom Quiggin

Dominic Barton | Asian business psyche and strategy. . . . . . . . . . . 8

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Zaki Laïdi | Pourquoi l’Europe n’a-t-elle pas de grande stratégie? . . . . 26

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Hernando de Soto | Capital and equity from Lima to Cairo. . . . . . . 38 QUERY Sven Spengemann | What role for heroism post-Arab Spring? . . . . . 36 IN THE CABINET ROOM Dusan Petricic | Vietnam’s population passes 90 million. . . . . . . . 35 NEZ À NEZ Richard Rousseau vs. Wenran Jiang China is good for Africa. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 56 THE DEFINITION “Can the African Union stabilize Africa?”. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 60 STRATEGIC FUTURES “In 2020, the Democratic Republic of the Congo...”. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 62 EPIGRAM

Douglas Glover | On humanity’s moats & bridges. . . . . . . . . . . . . 64

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Glendon School of Public and International Affairs The Glendon School is Canada’s first bilingual (English and French) graduate school of public and international affairs.

It combines a comprehensive bilingualism with a focus on both public and international affairs. Adopting a global perspective, the School explores the relationship between public institutions and their larger environment. Its purpose is to advance research on public and international affairs; provide a high-quality bilingual master’s programme; and offer innovative professional development programming.

L’École de Glendon est la première école bilingue d’affaires publiques et internationales au Canada. Établissement d’études supérieures unique en son genre, l’École est axée sur le bilinguisme anglais-français et spécialisée à la fois dans les affaires publiques et les affaires internationales. On y explore, dans une perspective mondiale, les relations entre les institutions publiques et le contexte général dans lequel elles fonctionnent. Le mandat principal de l’École consiste à faire progresser la recherche sur des questions d’affaires publiques et internationales, à offrir un programme de maîtrise bilingue de grande qualité ainsi qu’un programme de développement professionnel novateur.

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F E AT U RES

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ALGORITHM, ARGUMENT AND PROMISCUITY What East can teach West, and vice versa, as ‘voyeur states’ take notes BY IRVIN STUDIN

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INDIA DOES DO GRAND STRATEGY On three key fronts – relations with Pakistan, China and the US – the neoliberal school is in the ascendant BY KANTI BAJPAI

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PERSIAN GULF FUTURES Rocky monarchies, strategic pressures, and threats to international shipping and energy BY JAMES M. DORSEY

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PÉKIN ET WASHINGTON SYNCHRONISÉES Les relations sino-américaines sont marquées par l’omniprésence de l’«autre» dans les décisions politiques PAR BARTHÉLÉMY COURMONT

IS AUSTRALIA SERIOUS ABOUT ASIA? The good, the bad and the ugly of Canberra’s attempted pivot BY RAMESH THAKUR

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Rise of the Info-States Edging toward the sweet spot of new-century governance BY PARAG KHANNA

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connectedness is potentially the info-state’s most prominent vulnerability.

Already there are notable info-states across several continents and cultural zones, underscoring how this is already a worldwide phenomenon set to grow at the intersection of technological spread and pragmatic governance. New York City, for example, has long been a global hub due to its financial sector. But only in the past decade, as a consequence of 9/11 and the global economic crisis, has New York undertaken to bolster its own security and intelligence capabilities, and then to diversify into IT and bio-sciences research – thereby becoming the US’s second technology hub after Silicon Valley. Switzerland is in effect a ‘cities-state’ – a conglomeration of specialized centres in banking, research, engineering, hospitality and other sectors. Israel has also made economic diversification into technology sectors a national priority, distributing so much funding for small-scale entrepreneurs that it has earned the title ‘start-up nation.’

Estonia and Dubai are two far newer info-states.

Emerging from the Soviet shadow, Estonia’s outsized IT industry exports have earned it the nickname ‘E-stonia.’ The country’s digital culture is so embedded that, as of this year, many primary school students will begin learning computer programming. And the UAE emirate of Dubai – the flagship economic anchor of which is the Dubai International Financial Centre (DIFC) – actively uses social media and e-government initiatives to canvass popular sentiment, having invested heavily in knowledge clusters for both international entities and local benefit.

The most evolved info-state is likely Singapore.

The tiny Southeast Asian republic is pioneering a new governance model based on a dynamic combination of data and democracy. In no other society is the efficient delivery of public services so diligently monitored through information gathering and key performance indicators. The SingPass system already puts all government functions within reach online, and a nation-wide fibre optic Internet rollout is scheduled for completion by 2015. With a physical sensor network that offers dynamic road pricing and detailed ecosystem monitoring, the city-state that calls itself a ‘living lab’ is itself a complex adaptive system of constant feedback loops resulting in continuous policy innovation.

As democratic governance competes with raw metrics of social welfare and outcomes, the end game for debates on good governance may yet see the info-state play an important bridging role. | GB

Parag Khanna is a Senior Research Fellow at the New America Foundation and co-author of Hybrid Reality: Thriving in the Emerging Human-Technology Civilization.

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nter the info-state. The info-state – today one of a growing number of dynamic and entrepreneurial cities, city-states or small nations scattered around the world – governs as much through data as via democracy.

Scholars have for decades appreciated political mutations that drive international competition and result in new forms of governance. In 1941, Harold Lasswell emphasized the rise of politico-military elites, such as in Imperial Japan, that shaped the ideology of ‘garrison states.’ In 1996, Richard Rosecrance forecasted a transition toward ‘virtual states’ that downsized geography and outsourced production, while investing more in human and portfolio capital than territorial expansion. Building on this logic of the economic over the political, Philip Bobbitt’s Shield of Achilles (2002) traced the advent of the ‘market state’ era, in which the maximization of individual commercial opportunity defines national power and success.

Japanese business strategist Kenichi Ohmae then set the stage for the info-state era in The Next Global Stage (2005), which argued that urban agglomerations of city-states resembling the medieval Hanseatic League would become the world’s power centres.

The info-state draws on numerous important attributes of these previous – and still co-existing – units. The economic footprint supersedes the territorial, the urban industrial core and its human capital pool are the locus of value, and diplomacy is practiced by commercial and knowledge centres as much as by national capitals.

But the info-state also presents new mutations that were not conceivable in previous technological periods – a peculiar convergence of the Information Age and the devolved authority of city units and clusters. The critical shift lies in the manner of policy-making enabled by new technologies: governance is practiced in ‘real time’ – through constant consultation, rather than through traditional, staggered democratic deliberation. In a sense, this is a post-modern democracy – or even ‘post-democracy’ – that combines popular priorities with rationalist or technocratic management. On this logic, data-driven policy might mean more objective measurement of progress, more evidence-based policy, and more accountability of leadership.

In order to thrive, an info-state must provide both the security of the garrison state model and the connectedness of the virtual state. In other words, the essence of the info-state is secure connectedness.

And, to be sure, this existential reliance on secure

ONE PAGER

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To Live and Die in South Sudan

IN SITU

It’s not as bad as it looks, considering the starting point and the enemy at the gate. The game can only be long.

MATTHEW ARNOLD and MATTHEW LERICHE report from Juba

T Matthew Arnold and Matthew LeRiche are co-authors of a new book, South Sudan: From Revolution

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to Independence.

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he world’s newest state has not had an easy time of it. After decades of struggle against dictatorship and marginalization by successive regimes in Khartoum, independence in July 2011 brought a profound moment of joy to South Sudan’s war-weary population of roughly 10 million (the next national census is scheduled for 2014).

However, the euphoria has not lasted. The new state has faced serious crises, ranging from largescale border frictions with the Republic of the Sudan, to ever-deepening economic weakness after oil exports were temporarily shut down due to disputes with Khartoum, and significant social and ethnic unrest. Such grim challenges have raised questions about the new state’s viability, with many analysts wondering whether South Sudan has in fact been born a ‘failed state’ – created through misguided Western support and a flawed peace process – destined for the twin curses of oil and aid dependence, compounded by perpetual domestic violence and Khartoum’s bullying.

The widespread hope of the Southern Sudanese public was that a vote for independence would bring better roads, health care, education and a general sense of rising living standards. For many, this has been true, while for many more, progress feels desperately slow. South Sudan’s President, Salva Kiir, has himself publicly lamented the inability of his government to fully satisfy his people’s expectations.

The international media have presented an overly dystopian reality of manic violence, exceptional government incompetence, and endemic corruption in South Sudan. At the same time, the country has quickly become an aid darling of the West and the UN system. In the face of aggression by a Khartoum regime led by a president wanted in The Hague for war crimes and genocide, Western donors have been keen to back the Kiir government and ensure that hundreds of millions in aid continues to flow to Juba, despite strong concerns about corruption and mismanagement.

Of course, to say that South Sudan has already become a failed state obscures the fact that its previous existence as part of Sudan was not dissimilar – marked by dysfunctional governance, economic underdevelopment, and widespread violence. Indeed, its preceding condition – that of near-perpetual civil war – was often much worse than its post-in-

dependence reality. As such, there is a need to strike a balance between recognizing the very real challenges that confront the new country and acknowledging that South Sudan is a new state starting from a peculiarly disadvantaged position. Surviving 50-plus years of misrule from Khartoum would have been a burden for any population and government. Recovering from such origins will take time and, to be sure, significant international support.

Looking ahead, myopic hopes and jaded cynicism must not overwhelm thoughtful understanding of this young African state. The current problems of South Sudan have been compounded by poor decisions, corruption and mismanagement by an inexperienced government in Juba. The institutionalization of a governance culture relatively accommodating of corruption is particularly worrisome. (It is not clear that the centralization of public power in the presidency under the current temporary constitution will remedy these ills.) And, to be fair, Western governments have at times been overly enthusiastic, if not outright permissive, in their support for Salva Kiir’s government.

On the other hand, some progress is being made on the ground, and South Sudan does have a viable path ahead – even if we should not expect it to be an easy one. The country’s history dictates that the war-ravaged country will need to be built from the ground up. The near future is therefore likely to be similar to the country’s first year and a half: tensions and at times violence along the border with the Republic of the Sudan, the manipulation of proxy militia forces by Khartoum in South Sudan’s rural areas, and a weak economy largely dependent on Western aid and oil.

However, there will also be positive dynamics.

From a social and political perspective, the peace process begun in 2005 was ultimately concluded through a democratic vote for secession by the South Sudanese in January 2011. This normative foundation should be appreciated – whatever wider doubts may exist about South Sudan’s strategic vocation in the world. As a historic moment of national liberation, the referendum on independence and independence itself provide significant reference points for social and political cohesion and legitimacy across the territory of the new state (see John Fung’s Feature article “South Sudan’s Jittery Peace” in GB’s Winter 2010 issue).

While many critics domestically and abroad have cautioned that the Sudan People’s Liberation Movement (SPLM) has too much power in the country’s political space, and while the SPLM has shown some evidence of administrative incompetence, it remains a party committed to secular democracy. Its natural instinct is not for brutal authoritarianism. Compared to what it replaced – revolving dictatorships in Khartoum – the SPLM should be given the benefit of the doubt, for the time being. Khartoum today, even after losing its southern third, still faces multiple insurgencies in i t s p e r i p h e ry, rag i n g against the same dynamics – exploitation and marginalization by dictatorial regimes – that for so long provoked war in Sudan.

In terms of economic prospects, there is major potential for spurring development in South Sudan through the exploitation of oil and other natural resources. While foreign investment is still small, there are now active initiatives in the country to build micro-refineries in order to provide fuel for domestic and regional markets. These smaller efforts, rather than mega-pipeline projects and oil export deals, are more likely to grow the economy.

Over the longer-term, substantial economic growth will need to be based on agricultural production as well as oil. For now, South Sudanese agriculture is very limited in scope. Investments in infrastructure – particularly with foreign aid – have helped to boost connectivity in the country, though as a country the size of France it remains direly lacking in roads (see the Nez à Nez debate on China in Africa between Richard Rousseau and Wenran Jiang at p. 56).

PHOTOGRAPH: THE CANADIAN PRESS / AP / JACQUELYN MARTIN

arms of Salva Kiir’s own SPLA – remains a particular cause of tension between Juba and Khartoum.

South Sudan’s war for independence was a justifiable struggle against dictatorship and exploitation.

Spread over decades, the South Sudanese endured exceeding brutality and deprivation in order to secure a better future. Independence was always going to be challenged by the expectations of a population desperately in need of the most basic social services, security, infrastructure and governance. Moreover, the international community has to a good extent facilitated and encouraged such high hopes through promises of quick transformations via development aid and democratization. Given the starting point, the reality was always going to be messier. South Sudan’s present is therefore correctly defined by some successes, some failures and, to be sure, non-negligible progress. | GB

Former US Secretary of State Hillary Clinton meets with South Sudan President Salva Kiir in Juba, South Sudan, August 2012.

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ecurity challenges will remain dominant preoccupations for the new state, and a major burden for an already traumatized population. Without question, the country’s security situation is fragile – both in terms of its relations with its larger neighbour to the north, and across its very diverse population. (The Addis Ababa agreements of September 2012 included provisions

to demilitarize the border and launch new discussions on its demarcation.) Ethnic violence – notably in the eastern state of Jonglei – is unfortunately widespread, and any ‘peace dividend’ for much of the rural population has been modest at best.

Fighting in the southern part of Sudan between the Sudanese army and the Sudan People’s Liberation Army-North (SPLA-N) – the former comrades-in-

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Dominic Barton is global managing director (chief executive) of McKinsey & Company.

Asia’s New Titans Nervously Play the Long Game GB examines Asia’s business psyche and the state of business talent the world over with McKinsey global head DOMINIC BARTON

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GB: What is the major difference today between the business world in the East and in the West (see Definition in GB’s Fall 2012 issue)?

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DB: Let me speak to the top three differences. The first one is the very strong sense of optimism in the East – particularly in the business world – about the future. People generally think that tomorrow will be better than today. The fundamentals, all of the drivers, and the gravitational forces are all strong. Asia has somewhere in the neighbourhood of a billion middle class consumers. It has ever-intensifying urbanization, and also generally good demographics. So the tail winds are strong. The second major difference is that the Asians and Asian companies have long-term perspectives. They think in 10- to 20-year timeframes – at least – and some even as

far as 50 years ahead. This is not just because Asia has many more big family-owned businesses; it is a mindset. Asian governments are also generally thinking in this way. For instance, when I worked with former South Korean President Lee Myung-bak at the start of his term, he wanted to do a 60-year plan for the country. I initially thought that he meant six years. I recall asking, “Why would you do that?” He evidently wanted to leave a legacy. The Chinese, of course, also operate in this way, as do the Japanese.

I feel a little nervous generalizing about this longtermist disposition in Asia, because there are clearly some Western companies that are also long-termist in their thinking and strategies. But this is arguably the exception in the West and the rule in the East.

And it puts Western companies, in my view, at a distinct competitive disadvantage.

PHOTOGRAPH: CHINAFOTOPRESS / GETTY IMAGES

Third and last, Asian business and government are today doubling down – that is, they are investing, very pragmatically, and very ambitiously. There is a more aggressive approach to building behind opportunities. If one compares Western multinationals with the emerging Asian multinationals, some 179 of today’s Fortune 500 companies are Asian companies. This ratio is bound to grow. And these Asian companies are investing roughly double the amount of their Western counterparts – in sectors ranging from consumer goods to airlines, and indeed in third markets like Africa. Take Nigeria as a case study: what one sees there is Asian companies investing double the amounts of their Western analogues, and also hiring at least twice the amount of local (African) talent and labour in support of these investments (see the Nez à Nez debate between Richard Rousseau and Wenran Jiang at p. 56).

GB: What is the psyche of today’s leading Asian businessmen and business women, as compared with their Western counterparts? What are their assumptions? What is their worldview? How serious are they?

Some 179 of today’s Fortune 500 companies are Asian companies.

This ratio is bound to grow.

And these Asian companies are investing roughly double the amount of their Western counterparts.

GB: What are some of the key emerging industries and companies to watch in Asia at large, or in specific Asian countries?

DB: Food is going to be a very big business. As I mentioned, there are now over a billion middle class consumers to feed. We are going to need more food globally, and a big chunk of that is going to come from Asia. More than 70 new Procter & Gamble-size companies are going to have to be created over the next 15 years just to feed the world. If one looks at China, there is, for instance, COFCO. There is the Salim Group in Indonesia. Electronics is probably a no-brainer: there is Samsung, as well as LG Electronics. Among the Chinese players, of course, Lenovo is the giant.

Some of these companies are currently Asian multinationals, although not yet global multina-

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DB: Asia’s business champions are highly talented, very successful people who are, frankly, to some extent, surprised to suddenly find themselves as major players. They are still getting their minds around this new reality – girding themselves psychologically, as it were, to really lead. Until now, they were used to following Western companies. They would go to Oxford and Harvard to learn the methods of the West, and to network with Western business leaders. Now they are being expected to lead – in some cases by the West, but in many cases by other parts of the world, including Africa.

Of course, there are country-specific variations among Asian businesses and business people. The Koreans, for instance, are just very aggressive. I love that. I lived and worked in Seoul for six years. There is nothing that the Koreans will not do or go for. I have a picture of Park Chung-hee – former president and dictator of South Korea – in my office in London.

The picture is from 1969, and shows a dark pit, which was the pit for what would become POSCO – today one of the world’s giant steel-making companies. I keep the picture as an inspiration because the South Koreans built POSCO against the stern advice and protestations of the World Bank. The World Bank told them, in no uncertain terms, not to do this, because South Korea has no natural resources, and no energy. Why, then, would the Koreans try to build a steel company? I am certain that if McKinsey were advising at the time, we would have agreed with the World Bank brief. But the Koreans went ahead anyway, building what is today the world’s most efficient steel company. POSCO has done very well.

The POSCO case is emblematic Korean behaviour.

Once they decide – take the auto industry (remember how Korean cars were once perceived?), or even electronics (Samsung was a joke in 1998) – they power ahead. There is just this drive and cohesion among Korean business leaders and among the Koreans more generally. Other Asian leaders recognize this drive and cohesion also. This is why I would say that a perfect Asian merger would involve a Singaporean bank and a Korean bank. With the Singaporean bank (see the One Pager by Parag Khanna at p. 5), you would get all of the i’s dotted and t’s crossed. Everything would be done extremely well from a transparency or regulatory point of view. However, the Koreans would bring real ambition and daring to the table.

If one looks at Japan, the country has some incredible companies that have simply not gone global.

People are wondering when the country is going to open up more, because Japanese companies are underrepresented in the booming economic and commercial dynamic in the region.

In China, private sector leaders are an underappreciated leadership source. They are building massive businesses. We always hear about Jeff Bezos at Amazon, or Jamie Dimon at JPMorgan Chase. Those guys are phenomenal, amazing people. But we do not hear enough about some of the remarkable private sector leaders in the Middle Kingdom – all of whom are playing a very long game.

In Indonesia, there are some very good entrepreneurs – again, all long-term players. Agus Martowardojo, the current minister of finance in Jakarta, used to run Bank Mandiri. He is a very impressive leader, in my view. The same goes for some of the people running the infrastructure businesses, and even some of the food businesses. Of course, Indonesia is a place that is still perceived as it was in the 1990s – as having incredible corruption. The reality on the ground today, however, is much better than the perception.

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tionals. But if one looks at what they are doing on research and development, one will see that it is off the charts – pointing to significant global ambitions and prospects in the coming years.

Shenzhen is a place that does not get the profile that it deserves. To be sure, it started the whole programme of Deng Xiaoping (see Feature article by Irvin Studin at p. 12) – with the creation of high-tech companies. Think about things like big data. There are going to be countless businesses built off of the data that is being made available from being able to digitize. We have only seen the beginning of this trend. China is going to be a major centre in this area – in Shenzhen or in some other part of China (and probably in several parts of China) – simply because of the sheer amount of data that it has as compared with smaller countries, including the US.

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We are going to need more food globally, and a big chunk of that is going to come from Asia. More than 70 new Procter & Gamble-size companies are going to have to be created over the next 15 years just to feed the world.

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GB: What about the quality and prospects of today’s Indian business class?

DB: India has a highly impressive group of global business leaders – top talent, really. Look at Tata, or Bharti Airtel. There is a long list. I recall a discussion that we had at McKinsey about a decade ago: we were doing a strategy for our India practice. We invested in India well ahead of time. We had a lot of people building relationships on the ground before India was popular. And we had quite a sizeable office.

There was a bit of debate about the target size of the office, as there were not that many large Indian companies at the time. There was fear that we might not grow. So it is staggering to see, in 2013, the number and the size of the institutions from that country, as well as the calibre of their leadership.

The Indians, out of all the countries in Asia, have done mergers and acquisitions very constructively – whether it be Mahindra, Strata, Land Rover, or other companies. Of course, people need to understand the cultural challenges and issues. The Indians, for their part, are very good at this: language obviously helps – they speak the natural global business language, but there has also been a longer established record of people being at the right schools together. There are many groups of very strong Indian business leaders in almost every sector – telecomm, banking, food, healthcare, auto. The Indians are probably a little more service-oriented than other people.

GB: Do you see any great vulnerabilities – generally, or by country – for Asia’s business classes over the next five to 10 years?

DB: The secular trends are clear to the effect that Asia is going to be a significant growth area no matter what. This growth will evidently not be linear. There will be bubbles, and Asian economies will be up and down. There will be asset bubbles. I personally

think that this is going to happen in China. And it will happen, to some extent, in India. There will be extremes. And so one has to be careful to know when there is excess, because it is very difficult, given the size of these economies, to manage them in a very surgical way.

There are some longer-term challenges to be dealt with, such as the ageing demographics in North Asia in particular. Japan, South Korea and China are all going to have some big challenges on that front. That is going to have severe consequences for government deficits and debts, and on the future social contracts in these countries. I remain, however, generally optimistic about these countries.

India is a place that grows in spite of itself (see the Feature article by Kanti Bajpai at p. 20). Some of the businesses in that country would argue that they grow in spite of what government does. It is quite amazing that, with all of the mayhem in India, and even with governmental stasis, they still had almost six percent growth last year.

Korea is a place on which I would always bet. As I said, the Koreans are just determined; there is a national will to survive. Most of the challenges for that country are external. The political tensions on the Korean Peninsula could blow up. (North Korea is still a renegade state.) The same thing goes for the China-Japan tension, and the tensions in the South China Sea. What I worry about most is mistakes, rather than anything deliberate – that is, something that flares up and might spin out of control. That is why we need deeper relationships at the political, business and societal levels – in order to have circuit breakers in the event of such mistakes or miscalculations.

We should also be concerned about health pandemics. SARS was a decade ago, but there are still millions of people in Asia living in abject poverty – living with pigs and chickens. We have not fully addressed or even mapped the health risks associated with this reality.

Finally, there is the growing problem of income inequality. That is going to be critical for the future of Asia. We are seeing more unequal societies in many Asian countries. In South America, Brazil has actually begun to decrease its income inequality. But in Asia, the trendline may be going the other way.

China is one country that is acutely aware of this, and is beginning to deal with this challenge in its periodic national plans.

GB: What do you foresee for Japan?

DB: At the government level, I just get very depressed with Japan. It is somewhat like India in this regard: business is able to operate in spite of government.

How can one have any sense of continuity in policy settings when a country is changing prime minisPHOTOGRAPH: COURTESY OF DOMINIC BARTON

ters so often? I hope that this will begin to change.

The demographics, of course, are a big issue: who is going to take care of all of those elderly people?

You are going to see a declining population, as well as significant productivity challenges. That said, there is a very underestimated and vibrant business base in Japan. And let me say that Japan has the best hardware technology in the world.

In miniaturization, in attention to detail, and in pure quality, the Japanese are in a league of their own. When one considers the remarkable calibre of companies like Komatsu, Nippon Steel, and the ship-building companies, and sees the high cost of Japanese labour, coupled with an unbelievably high yen, one wonders how these concerns could ever be competitive. Answer: Japanese technology. The technology is just unbelievable. I am therefore a big fan of a lot of the Japanese companies, from Komatsu to Shiseido to Kirin. Many of these companies have been around for hundreds of years.

In short, on the business side of the ledger, the Japanese should never be underestimated, for they have some real titans. (The sense of collective responsibility among the Japanese, too, is very strong, as with the Koreans. Look at what happened with last year’s earthquake and tsunami – how the Japanese stood together.) Still, I am always a little surprised that Japanese business leaders are not more aggressive globally. The latent potential, globally, is huge.

On the other hand, there are fewer people today in Japan who have gone to Western business schools than was the case some 10 years ago. When you compare this with what is happening in Korea, India and China, a less global national business class may be suggested for Japan in the coming years.

GB: What about America? Are you optimistic about American business?

GB: Outside of Asia and the West, is there one country in the ‘transitional world’ – say, in Africa, the Middle East, the former Soviet space or the Americas – that has a rising and hungry business class that could make big news in the coming years?

DB: I would put Nigeria at the top of the list. GB readers may think me crazy for doing this. But there are some remarkable business leaders in that country – in banking, in retail, in oil and gas, in cement and in many other sectors. These leaders are mostly Western-trained – in the US and the UK. Note that there will be more babies born in Nigeria this year than in all of Europe combined. So we underestimate the scale of that place, even though we often see and talk about the immense socioeconomic problems of the country.

Another place not to be underestimated is Saudi Arabia. There are some very good companies there.

Some of them are government-run or dominated.

Look at Ma’aden, the Saudi mining concern. There is Saudi Aramco, of course. These are all very wellrun institutions. You talk about governance – they could teach governance. That may seem counterintuitive, but it is a fact that is underappreciated in conventional analyses of business talent around the world. Evidently, I do worry about political stability in Saudi Arabia and in the Middle East (see the Feature article by James M. Dorsey at p. 30). From a company point of view, however, there are some exceptional business leaders in Saudi Arabia.

GB: Why do you think that the Saudis could teach governance well?

DB: Because they study it so much. Consider Aramco: Aramco was created from four of the major oil companies in Saudi Arabia. The company is, in many ways, the entire country’s future – so the Saudis are incredibly focussed on how to run things properly, and how to acquire the best practices. There is an extraordinary amount of attention and time spent on these challenges. I have seen this first-hand.

We know about oil, but we forget about the other mineral resources that Saudi Arabia has. These reserves, including gold and aluminum, are not insignificant. So you will see some very important and serious players in the materials sector – including Ma’aden, which I mentioned. (continued online) For the rest of the interview with Dominic Barton,

Think about things like big data. There are going to be countless businesses built off of the data that is being made available.

We have only seen the beginning of this trend.

China is going to be a major centre in this area.

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DB: I am quite bullish on US companies. They actually adapt quickly; their metabolic rate is very high. American companies are very aggressive in the growing parts of the world: in Asia, in Africa, in Brazil, and so forth. There is an exceptional entrepreneurialism and dynamism at the heart of American society and in America’s business classes. Look at the way in which boards work. Look at the capital markets. Then there is Silicon Valley, which is like a totally different country. The optimism that I always feel when in Silicon Valley is diametrically opposite to some of the pessimism or cynicism one feels in Washington DC today. (I do, of course, worry about the government side in America.) In the American Midwest, there are some phenomenal food companies, phenomenal electronics companies, and phenomenal retailers. We underestimate the adaptability of these and other American companies at our peril.

More broadly, if one considers where the best

talent in the world goes to study and also work, then the US can obviously not be written off. Just look at the universities: by any measure of the top 100 universities in the world, the Americans dominate, with huge endowments and incomparable investment in, and seriousness about, research and development.

visit: www.globalbrief.ca

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What East can teach West, and vice versa, as ‘voyeur’ states take notes BY IRVIN STUDIN

ALGORITHM,ARGUMENT AND PROMISCUITY Irvin Studin is Editor-in-Chief and Publisher

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of Global Brief.

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ho, as between Reagan and Gorbachev, won the Cold War? Answer: Deng Xiaoping. The various ‘pivots’ currently being effectuated by serious countries on all continents testify to this victory. All of these pivots are, to be sure, China-driven, even if some pivots are more Chinese than others.

Australia’s Asia pivot, articulated in the recent white paper of the Julia Gillard government, is arguably the most comprehensive and serious. Canberra at least says that it is going where no other more capacious federation – Canada, the US, Germany or Brazil – is constitutionally able or politically willing to go: deep into the bowels of the country’s educational systems – run by the states, not the national government – in order to prepare an ‘Asia-literate’ society, across the sectors, including through the study of priority Asian languages (a vision first advanced by future Prime Minister Kevin Rudd in his 1994 report to the Council of Australian Governments). But then again, Australia’s game is Asia or bust: its strategic footprint is nugatory on every other continent. And, of course, whether Gillard and future prime ministers can really make the descendants of British ‘convict’ stock more ‘Asian,’ whatever the muscularity of the pivot, is very much in dispute (see the Feature article by Ramesh Thakur at p. 50).

North America’s and Europe’s geopolitical games are manifestly more global than those of Australia (see the Feature article “Canada’s Four-Point Game” by Irvin Studin in GB’s Spring/Summer 2012 issue). Partly as a result, but also because Asia still figures little in the national imaginaries of North American and European states, their pro-Asian pivots have thus far been only partial and unenthusiastic. As for Africa and Latin America, their pivots are largely unrequited – that is, they are effectively ‘pre-empted,’ as it were, by general Asian strategic disinterest in, or ignorance about, these theatres. (Beijing is a notoriously notable exception – see the Nez à Nez debate between Richard

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ILLUSTRATION: EDUARDO RECIFE

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Rousseau and Wenran Jiang at p. 56.) In other words, imagined tyranny of distance oblige, strategists in key capitals in Asia will concede, sotto voce, that they still do not have a firm strategic impression of Africa and Latin America, and of what’s to be done with and to them (see the Tête à Tête interview with Hernando de Soto at p. 38).

The pivots of the post-Soviet space are highly eclectic. Countries like Ukraine, Belarus, Georgia and Kazakhstan are all carefully studying Asian countries, starting with the likes of Singapore, for lessons in ‘governance’ – to wit, how to reconcile reasonably competent, quasi-authoritarian government with strong economic performance (see the One Pager by Parag Khanna at p. 5). Each of these states is struggling to recast its national ‘mental map’ such that Asia, for all intents and purposes, becomes a ‘third way’ between a moralizing Europe and an irredentist Russia (with both Europe and Russia also systemically suspect).

In the weak states of the Arab Spring (see the Feature article by James M. Dorsey at p. 30), the pivot from West Asia to East Asia is highly embryonic and as yet indecisive. Like the post-Soviet states, they are in many cases still trying to ‘choose’ their alignment or intellectual affinities, with varying degrees of competence and clear-headedness from country to country.

Of course, the rise or, better still, return of China, and with it, some parts of Asia, may still end in tears. China is huge – territorially and demographically – and there is no one in the leadership classes in Beijing who could possibly have a ‘synoptic vision’ that captures the country’s myriad complexities and vulnerabilities (see the Tête à Tête interview with Dominic Barton at p. 8).

No surprise, then, that China’s communist cadres are today, in the context of the coming to power of Xi Jinping, required to read Alexis de Tocqueville’s L’Ancien Régime et la Révolution (1856). And so humility, not hagiography, is the order of the day in evaluating the undeniable lessons of the recent performance of the Middle Kingdom.

But what’s to learn, in effect? What does the rising East have to teach today’s West? What about vice

versa? And which lessons from East and West should be applied by ‘voyeur’ states in the developing or transitional world, from Africa to the former Soviet Union and the post-Arab Spring Middle East? The rise of Deng’s China through to that of Lee Kuan Yew’s Singapore would seem to suggest that the East has at least to date done its homework on the West: its leaders have mastered the West’s languages, studied en masse in its best universities, and reverse-engineered its products and systems, in countless cases improving on them. But what about the reverse: has the West yet begun to take lessons from the East? Is today’s Western mind sufficiently open and strategically promiscuous to do so, or is it more dogmatic and dated than it may realize in presuming the superiority of its ways, if not the very incommensurability of its civilization with others? If the Western mind is open, might this lead to new sets of agreed wisdoms on how best to govern – ones befitting a more complex century?

And will these new sets of agreed wisdoms play themselves out first and foremost in the aforementioned ‘voyeur’ space?

First, definitions. What is the East? In the only relevant sense, we speak here of that part of Asia that is ‘ramified’ by China’s boom, which is by far the single most important causal factor or driving force in Asia’s strategic rise (or return). In this sense, the elegant Tel Aviv to Tokyo paradigm favoured by Kishore Mahbubani (see his Tête à Tête interview in GB’s Fall 2012 issue) is overinclusive. Even the inclusion of South Asia in the relevant ‘Asia,’ for purposes of policy pedagogy, should be contested.

India, for instance, is not as tied to Chinese strategic and economic growth as some may fancy. Rather, it is New Delhi’s performance or non-performance – still very much an open question – that will overwhelmingly determine India’s future, and not the China factor (see the Feature article by Kanti Bajpai at p. 20). By contrast, Northeast Asia and, even more so, Southeast Asia, are far more ramified – strategically, economically, in governance terms, and even ‘spiritually’ – by the performance of the Middle Kingdom. This means that the character and quality of Chinese governance – and with it the fate of this century’s China – will in large measure dictate the fates of the various states of these sub-regions. If China rises, so will much, although not all, of these sub-regions. If China falls or, say, becomes unstable or destabilizing, then the vast majority of the states of these sub-regions will fail. It is difficult to foresee, on perhaps an extreme example, a city-state like Singapore, for all of its military preparations and investments, surviving strategically should it be embroiled in a serious war that pits its alliances against today’s or tomorrow’s China. And over the course of a century-long rise or return for China, such a major war, involving major countries,

can evidently not be ruled out.

The composition of the ‘core’ West is far less controversial. It includes North America, the EU, Australia and New Zealand. (We may throw Israel into this category, for good measure – although a determination on its inclusion or exclusion is not imperative for purposes of our analysis here.) The primary lesson for today’s ‘core’ West from the new East pertains to political and strategic legitimacy.

Evidently, the legitimacy of the governments and legislatures of the advanced states of the West comes from electoral competition (‘narrow’ democracy) and, perhaps more importantly, the ability of other constituencies and ‘estates’ in society, from political oppositions to media, lobbies, intellectuals and lay citizens alike to input into and, where necessary, resist and even outright protest governing regimes, decisions and laws on the strength of robust constitutional structures, democratic institutions and, to be sure, deep democratic norms, customs and values (‘thick democracy’).

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China’s communist cadres today are required to read Alexis de Tocqueville’s L’Ancien Régime et la Révolution.

Humility, not hagiography, is the order of the day in evaluating the recent performance of the Middle Kingdom.

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owever, if we agree that China is currently ‘winning’ the postCold War – that is, that China-driven performance, at least on the economic front, if not the broader strategic front, is excelling that of the West, which between the EU’s and the US’s considerable fiscal and monetary woes currently appears systemically non-vital – then we must allow that strong administrative performance and practical (real) social welfare outcomes, as in contemporary China, also provide a serious source of legitimacy for government, even if the democratic underpinnings of such government are manifestly deficient. In other words, it is not just the ‘process’ of government that matters for its legitimation, as per classical democratic models, but the very ‘outcomes’ of government as well. In this sense, the rise of China and China-dependent Asia puts paid to specifically North American and Anglospheric debates about whether ‘government matters.’ It shows ‘voyeur’ states, from Africa to the former Soviet Union, that government clearly does matter. And competent government – democratic or less democratic – matters even more. Generally ‘good’ (Eastern) government, as in Singapore or, yes, even China, matters to the outcomes of that state, just as mediocre (Eastern) government, as in Vietnam, Cambodia, Laos, Malaysia, Indonesia and the Philippines, matters to the less impressive socioeconomic outcomes of those states.

The results-based legitimacy or social contract underpinning ‘Asian’ government is today supplemented by several other related legitimating factors that also commend themselves as corresponding weaknesses, in virtue of their growing absence, in

the core West. These legitimating factors include the national capacity and temperament to strategize and plan (and to iterate and see and wait out the results of such plans, accept partial wins, and not be overly exercised by the insolubility of certain problems), specialization and expertise (technical professionalism) at the highest levels of government (and compensation and high societal regard for such expertise), and, signally, a pioneering, building spirit; that is, at their best, many Asians today – old, but especially young – understand full well that their states, societies and individual and collective futures are actively being built and have yet to be built, and that the fact, quality and durability of the building project very much depends on their agency as Asians.

Of course, such ‘Eastern’ governance has its share of important vulnerabilities – vulnerabilities that also threaten its longer-term legitimacy, and therefore the stability of a number of Asian governments and states. First and foremost, the same administrative and decision-making structures – in many cases, algorithms – that allow for long-term planning and strong, results-based delivery of plans have notoriously poor feedback mechanisms that prevent key information from influencing such decision-making. This means that correctives to mistakes – mistakes of which, by implication, state planners and strategists may be variously cognizant – are often inadequate or altogether missing, and that, over the long-term, erroneous fundamental suppositions about what is ‘right’ in given policy situations may lead not just to sub-optimal or unacceptable outcomes, but indeed to the very collapse of the entire governing system (see the Tête à Tête interview with Fareed Zakaria in GB’s Fall 2009 issue).

The infamous Soviet ‘power vertical’ that, due to poor feedback mechanisms from the ground levels to the Kremlin, eventually led to Moscow (never run by foolish men) not being completely aware of the impending breakdown of the entire Soviet system of 15 republics and nearly 300 million citizens (from Kaliningrad to Vladivostok), is today still very much alive in unitary Asian states like China and Vietnam (not to mention North Korea or even a hyper-unitary, although quasi-democratic state like Singapore). Even if China is by far the most serious Asian country in strategic terms, with perhaps the most talented national administrative class, both it and Vietnam, much like the former USSR, undertake rolling five- and 10-year plans that are today largely foreign to the democratic systems of the West. The power verticals from, respectively, Beijing and Hanoi, allow each country to drive a large number of national goals – economic, educational, environmental and other – through their national administrative systems effectively by centralized diktat or promulgation. Strategy and plans are punctiliously developed at the executive

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We must allow Antis eos that strong cusant labo. administrative Lic temque performance idel practical int quo and exeribus eat social welfare emque verfer outcomes mquodig also provide enimusa a serious pis que none source of stiusam susfor legitimacy molescit eles government, sitint if apers even the perum fugitio democratic nsequi officte underpinnings sam ndipis of such

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government are manifestly deficient.

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centre and driven out and down from this centre, fastidiously, to become on-the-ground realities. To be sure, provincial and regional authorities do feed into the national plans made at the centre, and they clearly must and do adapt and tailor these plans when implementing them locally. But there is good reason to be skeptical about the efficacy of such ‘feedin’ or feedback – structurally and culturally – into the central decision-making loci of these systems.

That “the Emperor is far away,” as the Chinese are wont to say about Beijing, means that even the best central planners in large Asian countries cannot entirely assimilate the highly variegated and particular realities of their citizens in the context of a constitutional tradition that demands such extreme discipline and deference to the centre, and in which there is no sustained record of, and few institutional channels for, individual extroversion and expression that may ‘bend’ the best laid plans of the capital to the messy conditions of Asian ‘mice and men.’ As such, we might posit that to the extent that such feed-in and feedback is systemically compromised, there is every danger, over the long-run, that these systems of governance will destabilize because of poor or improper decision-making.

We might loosely call the technical efficacy and professionalism of governing in today’s China and China-dependent Asia ‘rule by algorithm.’ Serious technocrats or planners – in principle, the smartest men and women in the land – establish and iterate rules and frameworks – algorithms, as it were – to address a very large spectrum of state and societal problems through various combinations of state and societal instruments and capabilities. If an identified problem morphs or is not properly solved, then the algorithm is changed; indeed, the algorithm may be changed on an ongoing basis – if only to perfect it.

And indeed, these algorithms set the rules of the game for state and society, and all social behaviour is essentially subsumed thereto – often unquestioningly, both by culture (including through self-deterrence) and because the rules themselves so demand.

In the West, the ‘rule of reason’ (or ‘rule of argument’) prevails. The inflexibility of the algorithmic approach in the East is mitigated not just by the reactivity of government and planners to electoral pressures, but by the existence, protection and even encouragement of ‘estates’ of argument and challenge in most layers and quarters of society.

(An abiding culture of debate and contestation of ideas, and far greater parity of education between the governors and the governed, clearly abet the protection and promotion of these estates.) This ‘argument’ feeds contrary and, in many cases, corrective impulses into state decision-making structures – from the ground level and the peripheries to the centre – in ways that are largely alien to Eastern algorithmic paradigms. These corrective impulses

may be said to have a long-term stabilizing effect on the governance of Western states, causing them generally to avoid extreme or dramatic mistakes in governance – or to avoid allowing these mistakes to go undetected or unaddressed for too long – just as they may, to be fair, also lead to far greater stasis and internal incoherence in governance than one might find in the most competent of Asia’s algorithmic states. These corrective impulses also arguably immunize today’s Western states, to a large extent, from the need for continuous ‘excellent’ governance or leadership – just as they may make these states generally resistant to sweeping reforms, even in the service of great public problems.

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ust as the Eastern rule by algorithm commends itself to numerous strengths or atouts that may be attractive to ‘voyeur’ states, so too, in other ways, does the West’s rule of reason or argument. For instance, federalism, a style of governance practiced and celebrated mostly in advanced Western states, from Canada and the US, to Germany, Switzerland, Belgium (dysfunctional though it may be), Austria and Australia, has, by design, a notorious blunting effect on centralized power – one that, at its best, allows putative local realities to be addressed by local levels of government, just as there is continuous, constitutionalized ‘argument’ between local and central governments about jurisdiction and policy responsibility. Only Malaysia has a federal system in the East, as we have defined it.

And, of course, India (or even Pakistan or Nepal), not strictly in this same China-dependent East, also has a federal system. But the key insight – one posited

by James Madison and Alexander Hamilton, through to John A. Macdonald and George-Étienne Cartier, and even Henry Parkes – is that the federal system of governance, as opposed to unitary governance, exists specifically in order to allow for more or less autonomous regional or local public authorities to determine their own specific plans and fates in relation to those realities that are ‘reasonably’ deemed regional or local. The planning capabilities or sweep of national authorities in the federal system is therefore naturally limited or mitigated, and is primary or exclusive only in ‘reasonably’ designated areas of national life and policy. The ‘feedback’ mechanism so absent in Eastern algorithmic systems comes from the inherent or built-in legal and policy intersections of the activities of national and regional authorities.

And, of course, the highly protected courts in federal systems supplement this feedback-by-argument through a continuous and evolving jurisprudence that clarifies the constitutional division of powers between levels of government, as the world turns and changes.

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The infamous Soviet ‘power vertical’ that eventually led to Moscow not being completely aware of the impending breakdown of the entire Soviet system, is today still very much alive in unitary Asian states like China and Vietnam.

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Another manifestation of the ‘rule of reason’ in the West that is largely absent from today’s East is the existence of very robust – indeed, nearly absolute – constitutional and cultural bulwarks of protection for individual life – not just protection of rights, but life itself. In most countries of the East, individual life is, as a rule, in the public space, still treated as an instrumentality in the service of the preferred Asian freedom – not freedom from governmental repression, but rather freedom from chaos. (The Singaporeans and Malaysians often refer to the corresponding fear of chaos and death, in the Hokkien idiom, as kiasi, in response to which sometimes extreme or radical private or public measures may need to be taken.) An individual life, or short of that, what Westerners view as fundamental rights, may, on this logic, need to be compromised or traded in the service of the more important general protection and freedom from chaos. This may lead to swifter and less compunctious resort to peremptory punishment (like the death penalty) for what might, in the rule-of-reason countries of the West, be considered micro-torts (including some drug offences) or to draconian emergency laws and prerogatives in response to perceived threats of a political ilk (including terrorism).

True enough, states in the West do occasionally and readily resort to draconian measures – including through emergency laws or extreme uses of executive or political prerogatives – when threatened internally or externally. In such cases, the individual life may also, even if on a time-limited basis, be treated instrumentally – or have instrumental or contingent, rather than absolute, value – by Western governments. Nevertheless, the spirit of governing in today’s West, in which great war has not been seen in nearly 70 years – and where, contra today’s East, as Kishore Mahbubani has argued, there is also no obvious prospect of great war – and in which there is a sustained tradition of rights activism in all branches of government, still commends itself to the view that such cases and periods are exceptional rather than instinctual.

By extension, majority-minority relations in today’s ‘reasonable’ West are in many cases characterized by ethnic, linguistic or religious majorities that are culturally and, through legal strictures, more porous than Eastern majorities. This cultural-legal porousness of the majority is more apposite, for our purposes, than only legal protection of minorities, which has been in place for many decades now in the West and is also extant in many Eastern states. A black man (or woman) may today become President of the US, a French-Canadian Prime Minister of Canada, a child of Hungarian immigrants President of France, and a Jew (potentially) Prime Minister of the UK (for the second time). In the more advanced cases, as in Canada or even New Zealand,

this majority-group porousness has evolved from express political-constitutional resuscitation of minority groups that were, for all practical intents and purposes, the ‘losing’ parties in historical battles (in the event, French Canadians and, more controversially, the Maori), into effective co-equals in the governance of these countries. By contrast, the power balance – or ‘argument’ – between majorities and minorities in Eastern states is today still conditioned by an ‘iron cage’ in which the rules of the game and one’s vocation and telos are largely set – but for some heroic exceptions – by membership in a state’s majority or minority. We are therefore quite far removed from the prospect of a Chinese or Indian head of government in Indonesia or in Bumiputra-majority Malaysia, even if the prospect of a Tamil or Malay prime minister in Chinese-majority Singapore is slightly more conceivable in our lifetime.

Of course, in the ‘thick’ majority Eastern societies of China, Vietnam or Thailand, there is absolutely no prospect of minority penetration into executive political power. And, to be sure, the algorithmic logic of Eastern governance would view this state of affairs as natural and otherwise consistent with the preservation of a stable social order.

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hat lessons, in closing, for the so-called voyeur states and regions of our world? Will they be able to combine, promiscuity oblige, the best of East and West – that is, the best of algorithms and argument – in such a way as to engineer the new ‘sweet spots’ of governance for this century? Does the former Soviet space, for instance, need better algorithms or more argument?

Answer: for now, both; over time, perhaps one more than the other. The same goes for the post-Arab Spring Middle East and much of Africa. Many of Latin America’s states may need more algorithm than argument – again, for now. And still, we generalize, of necessity. But we can say with some certainty that the increasing complexity of the world and the inherent instability of these voyeur regions and their respective states will not permit of a purely or paradigmatically Eastern or Western idiom in their governance. Their approaches will necessarily be hybridic, always seeking to stabilize and improve at the margins, just as today’s East and West may themselves before long be seeking to improve at the margins – more reason for the former, more algorithms for the latter – always in the general paranoia that these attempted improvements could destabilize the very edifices they purport to reform. | GB

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ILLUSTRATION: CHRISTIAN NORTHEAST

G LO B A L B R I E F • W I N T E R 2 0 1 3

On three key fronts – relations with Pakistan, China and the US – the neoliberal school is in the ascendant

BY KANTI BAJPAI

INDIA DOES DO GRAND STRATEGY Kanti Bajpai is Professor

community of interests between states and societies is disclosed and made apparent by transparency and interaction. In short, Nehruvians are classic internationalists who place their bets on diplomacy and transnational understanding.

India’s hyper-realists are at the opposite end of the grand strategic spectrum. For them, the verities of Thucydides, Machiavelli, Hobbes, Morgenthau and, to be sure, the Indian classics of statecraft, including the Arthashastra, are immutable across time and geographical space. States need to look after themselves in a dangerous world, and power, force and war are the essence of international relations.

Security comes from strength – military strength, in particular – a balance of power is the basis for international order, and all the rest is strategic illusion.

In other words, no amount of communication and contact between states and societies can overcome the dangers of an international anarchy.

Neoliberals base their view of grand strategy on the primacy of economics in international relations.

In an ever-globalizing world, trade, investment flows and technology are the keys to economic growth, internal social and political resilience, as well as relative national power. Grand strategy in such a world must be built around a robust free market economy that is receptive to open trade, the flow of capital, and the diffusion of technology. In dealing with other countries, a state must look to the impact of its policies on trade, investment and access to technology. Neoliberals argue that economic rationality encourages grand strategy pragmatism, and that governments must constantly be attentive to the economic costs and benefits of policy choices.

Any grand strategic disposition must have a macro-historical view of the world – in respect

and Vice Dean (Research) at the Lee Kuan Yew School of Public Policy, National University of Singapore.

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ndia has been described as a major power without strategic thinking. This, of course, is not true. But how does India – one of the future possible great powers of this century – operate in the world? Contrary to the view that India lumbers along without any great reflection, calculation and direction, successive governments in New Delhi have adopted an increasingly ‘neoliberal’ course, avoiding the temptation of lapsing back into pure ‘Nehruvianism’ or pursuing a potentially dangerous hyper-realism. This is clear enough from the way in which India has dealt with its three greatest strategic interlocutors: Pakistan, China and the US. India has a very lively strategic debate between three major schools of thinkers – Nehruvians (followers of India’s first prime minister), neoliberals and hyper-realists. After the Cold War, Indian strategists took aim primarily at the reigning grand strategic orthodoxy – Nehruvianism. Some 20 years later, Nehruvianism no longer rules the strategic landscape with the imperiousness it enjoyed from 1947 to 1989. Indeed, it is being supplanted by a new orthodoxy – neoliberalism. To make sense of what India has been doing in the world since 1989, one has to understand how India’s neoliberals think, and how they differ from members of the other two schools.

Nehruvian grand strategy is premissed on the view that relations between states depend on the nature of communication and contact between governments and peoples. The Nehruvian formula is a simple one: the greater the degree of communication and contact, the fewer the misunderstandings and misperceptions, and the greater the chances of stability, cooperation and peace. The inherent

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of where the world is at the present, how it got to where it did, and where it is going. Of course, Nehruvians, hyper-realists and neoliberals differ on this macro-history. Nehruvians see the globalizing world as the latest stage of a rampant, ugly capitalism. Hyper-realists, on the other hand, regard the world as timeless: the relations of states are always more or less the same, in every historical epoch and in every geographical theatre, and are marked by competition and contention between the great powers. Globalization benefits some powers and hurts others. For these hyper-realists, all great powers are imperialists. Neoliberals, for their part, accept that the present era is a global capitalist era par excellence, and that capitalism is the basis for human prosperity and emancipation – if only states would recognize and work with the power of the market. Imperialism in the classical sense is therefore over, and it is folly to use the term in an era of globalization, since even the imperial powers cannot altogether control their economic destinies. Bref, Nehruvians are suspicious of capi-

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Successive governments in New Delhi have adopted an increasingly ‘neoliberal’ course, avoiding the temptation of lapsing into pure ‘Nehruvianism’ or pursuing a potentially dangerous hyper-realism.

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talism, hyper-realists are ambivalent toward it, and neoliberals are enthusiastic capitalist ‘roadsters.’

Nehruvians, hyper-realists and neoliberals differ significantly over India’s policies toward Pakistan, China and the US. Nehruvians see Pakistan and China as ‘brother enemies’ – that is, as fellow Asians with whom there has been a terrible mix-up. On this logic, communication and contact, relentless diplomatic negotiations, and a correct appreciation of the historical context are the ways to end these largely fraternal quarrels. The US, on the other hand, is an imperialist power that must be held at bay and brought around to more progressive policies and stances. In a world where capitalism is rampant, and where the Western powers still rule the world, Pakistan and China are potential allies in a coalition of resistance that also includes the non-aligned nations and enlightened Europeans.

Hyper-realists take a quite different view. For them, Pakistan and, even more so China, are the main antagonists. Pakistan is fading as a strategic threat, as it increasingly falls behind India econom-

ically. But China is rising to great power status, and like all great powers is manifestly imperialist in its ambitions. For hyper-realists, India must pivot to take account of China (see the Feature article by Irvin Studin at p. 12). In a world where China’s rise is seemingly unstoppable, the US is a possible ally.

But given the US’s frailties and its physical distance from Asia, India must possess sufficient military strength to hold its own against China. Since the US will first and foremost look to its own security, and will eventually leave Asia to its own devices, India must build a coalition of resistance against China – with Japan, South Korea, Vietnam and others in Southeast Asia.

Neoliberals differ with both Nehruvians and hyper-realists. For them, as for the hyper-realists, Pakistan is a secondary threat, and negotiation and compromise with Islamabad is a rational policy. On the other hand, globalization has made China a colossus – one that will soon rival and most likely overtake the US in real economic terms. The US held the key to India’s entry into a globalized world after the Cold War. It was also a quasi-ally against Islamic extremism and terrorism, a mediator with Pakistan, and a potential check to Chinese power.

The US remains a strategic prop against Pakistan, China, and Islamic extremism and terrorism. India’s policies toward Pakistan, China and the US must, in the end, be based on a correct reading of world history. Contemporary history suggests that national power and security depend on high levels of economic growth. Until India attains self-sustaining growth in the way that China did from the late 1970s onward, it will remain a second-rank and vulnerable power. Economic growth and economic instruments in diplomacy are vital. India must find a way to manage its quarrels such that these do not impede its growth prospects, and New Delhi must use economic linkages as a tool of conflict management. Negotiating with others without economic strength is futile, just as the use and threat of force against competitors, particularly China, is infeasible when China is India’s largest trading partner.

Neoliberals thus conclude that India should follow Deng Xiaoping’s dictum of keeping a low profile and not giving offence in international relations when one is relatively weak and dependent.

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he ideas of the three Indian schools are today dispersed, if unevenly, across India’s strategic community – among officials and politicians, in the armed forces and intelligence agencies, within think tanks and the media, and in the general public. In recent years, however, the neoliberals have steadily gained ground, such that India is today in a Neh-

for Regional Cooperation (SAARC), the Shanghai Cooperation Organization (SCO), BRICS, the G20 and the UN. The two sides have made common cause on climate change, global economic reforms, and intervention in the Arab world, where their interests have more or less coincided. Of the four pillars, it is trade and investment that has shown the greatest dynamism: bilateral trade grew from a mere US $200 million annually in the middle 1990s to nearly US $75 billion in 2011, and is slated to easily exceed US $100 billion by 2015. China is already India’s biggest trading partner. New Delhi now wants Chinese investment, particularly in infrastructure, transport and alternative energy – areas in which China leads in global terms (see the Nez à Nez debate between Richard Rousseau and Wenran Jiang at p. 56). Above all, India has refused to be provoked by Chinese actions or statements, and in the manner of Deng Xiaoping, has kept its head down and literally got on with business. Put differently, India is pulling a China on China.

India’s relations with the US have been trans-

Until India attains self-sustaining growth in the way that China did from the late 1970s onward, it will remain a second-rank and vulnerable power.

Economic growth and economic instruments in diplomacy are vital. formed since the end of the Cold War and, ironically, particularly after the nuclear tests of 1998. While India will not sign up as a formal ally of the US, it now sees the US as a strategic asset – in South Asia, in the rest of Asia, and indeed globally (particularly in relation to Islamic extremism and terrorism).

After 50 years of suspicion and worry about the US’s policies toward South Asia – and Pakistan specifically – New Delhi today views Washington’s influence in Islamabad and the region as a huge benefit. Having for years hoped that the US would largely withdraw from Asia, its current anxiety is that the US might actually do so, thereby allowing China to dominate the continent. Globally, the US was the great imperialist. In India’s new thinking, America’s fight against extremism and terrorism is crucial to India’s security – even if India considers the last Iraq war and some of the US’s methods questionable, even counterproductive. India has been pragmatic and business-like with the US over the past 15 years – from the nuclear dialogue begun in the immediate aftermath of its 1998 tests, to the

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ruvian-neoliberal transition, with neoliberalism increasingly in the ascendant. Government policies are not exclusively neoliberal, but neoliberalism does describe the commanding heights of Indian grand strategy, if not every turn and nuance.

India’s Pakistan policies certainly bear the marks of both Nehruvianism and neoliberalism. Since the 1990s, despite the scourge of cross-border terrorism (and despite the early 2013 Kashmir clash), New Delhi has maintained communication and contact with Pakistan. The six-plus-two formula with Pakistan dates back to the mid-1990s. The formula focusses on Kashmir and security, but also on trade, river waters, the smaller territorial disputes (Sir Creek, Siachen), and normalization (visas, tourism, culture, sports). From the early 2000s, India has engaged in both public and secret diplomacy over Kashmir – to the point of near agreement back in 2008. Most importantly, New Delhi has emphasized economic engagement – particularly trade. The insistence on trade may have finally paid off when Pakistan announced last year that it would give India most favoured nation status and reduce the number of goods that could not be traded between the two countries. For its part, New Delhi has quietly encouraged its border states to develop better relations with their Pakistani neighbours. Indian pragmatism was also evident after the Mumbai terrorist attacks in 2008: New Delhi refused to be provoked into a confrontation with Islamabad (unlike in 2001 when, after the attack on the Indian Parliament, India mobilized all of its forces along the Pakistan border). Instead, India has insisted that, in spite of terrorism, it will continue to talk to Pakistan, and to push the process of bilateral trade and normalization.

India’s China policy also clearly bears the imprint of the Nehruvian-neoliberal approach. Here again, while there have been ups and downs in the relationship, India’s broad approach has been consistent. In 1988, India dropped its insistence that a more fully normalized relationship must await resolution of the border conflict. With the end of the Cold War, New Delhi deepened the relationship, broadening it to encompass four pillars: border negotiations, confidence building, summits and trade. The border negotiations, begun in 1981, were continued – even intensified – as more senior officials on both sides took charge. By 2005, the two governments had agreed on the protocols and principles that would form the basis for a final agreement. In 1993 and 1996, the two countries signed into existence a series of confidence-building measures in order to stabilize the line of control. Summits and foreign ministers’ meetings between the two sides increased in frequency – bilaterally, as well as in various regional settings, including the ASEAN Regional Forum, the East Asia Summit, the South Asian Association

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G LO B A L B R I E F • W I N T E R 2 0 1 3

In India’s new thinking, America’s fight against extremism and terrorism is crucial to India’s security, even if India considers the last Iraq war and some of the US’s methods questionable, even counterproductive.

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India-US nuclear deal a decade later, and also increasing military cooperation (exercises, dialogues, intelligence sharing, arms purchases, technology co-development, and military support during the first Gulf war and after 9/11). The economic relationship has flowered, even though there are concerns on the US side about India’s lack of openness to trade and investment. While China remains India’s biggest trade partner, the US is one of India’s biggest investors. Indian positions on various global issues are certainly in tension with US preferences – on Palestine, on Iran, on intervention in Libya and Syria, on humanitarian intervention generally, on climate change, and on the Doha Round of trade talks. Still, the two sides continue to see each other as strategic partners. In sum, India no longer regards the US as an imperial power; rather, the US has become a de facto ‘natural ally’ – so natural in terms of parallel interests that it need not be a formal ally.

What of achievements? What has India’s Nehruvianism-transitioning-to-neoliberalism achieved?

First, India’s relations with Pakistan have scarcely ever been more stable. The steep reduction in violence in Kashmir and the perceptible decrease in cross-border incursions are at least in part due to the policy of pragmatic engagement with Pakistan.

The two militaries continue to be watchful of each other, but since the confrontation of 2001-2002, they have returned to normal peacetime positions and deployments. While the six-plus-two formula has not produced any breakthroughs on the big issues, it has led to two significant changes: a more sensible visa regime between the two countries, and steadily increasing trade. The effects of these changes will only be known in the long-term, but they will surely enlarge the constituencies within Pakistan for better relations and more rational policy. Indeed, there has already been an evolution in Pakistani attitudes.

Pakistan’s own internal troubles, but also India’s policies of restraint and engagement, have led to far more moderate Pakistani public opinion on the Kashmir dispute and on overall relations with India than at any time since the 1970s.

Second, with Beijing, New Delhi has made greater progress toward stability and resolution of the basic disputes. While there are latent tensions – over Tibet, the border, increases in military deployments, China’s Indian Ocean and India’s South China Sea presence – the relationship has never been better in terms of the tone of pronouncements, the bonhomie at official meetings, and the exchange of information and goods. Concretely, India has achieved several things. The 2005 agreement laid out the broad contours of a final agreement on the border conflict. The two sides have exchanged maps on the so-called middle sector of the border as well.

They have instituted a bilateral strategic dialogue, allowing them over time to develop a better sense

of each other’s security concerns and policies. China has gradually taken a more neutral stance on the Kashmir dispute. It has also begun to affirm India’s much greater international status: Beijing has stated that the UN must be reformed, and that India will necessarily play a greater role in international affairs.

While this evidently falls short of endorsing India for a permanent seat on the UN Security Council, it is moving China in that direction. A long-term worry for India is the diversion of China’s southern rivers, which curl around into northeastern India, to its northern provinces. The Chinese leadership has been made aware of Indian concerns, and China has shared some information on river water matters with India. Beijing has publicly refuted the notion that it seeks to divert the rivers.

Third, setting aside its ideological view of the US, New Delhi has helped to bring Washington around to a more positive view of Indian power.

Clearly, this has been helped by the rise of China and the opening of the Indian economy after 1991.

Not only does the US take a more positive view of India’s role in international politics, but it is also far more tolerant than it was during the Cold War of India’s desire for strategic autonomy on global and regional issues. Washington’s investments in Indian power include the nuclear deal, arms sales, as well as high-technology cooperation in various fields – including nanotechnology and bio-pharmaceuticals. Diplomatically, the Americans have leaned on Pakistan (though India would like Washington to do more), endorsed India’s candidacy for a permanent seat on the Security Council, and urged India to play a bigger role in East and Southeast Asia.

I

ndia’s grand strategic shift from a deeply rooted Nehruvianism to an increasingly neoliberal posture is apparent in both ideational and policy changes since the late 1980s. Contrary to the view held by many Indians and foreigners in respect of India’s security, the country has proceeded consistently along a more pragmatic path, has adjusted to the post-Cold War environment, and has successfully engaged its most important interlocutors. Of course, a neoliberal grand strategy has not solved all of India’s security problems, and has not resolved the long-enduring quarrels with Pakistan and China.

However, it has stabilized relations and set in motion trends that could soften the rough edges around those quarrels, leading to eventual resolution. And it stands to reason that an India that is more secure and confident in respect of Pakistan, China and the US will be in a position to play a bigger role in global governance and international security. India’s neoliberal grand strategy may therefore in the end serve not only the national interest, but also more cosmopolitan purposes. | GB

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QUERY

Un véhicule blindé

Pourquoi l’Europe n’a-t-elle pas de grande stratégie?

de l’armée française passe à côté des résidents rassemblés pour accueillir le

Il faut admettre une fois pour toutes que l’UE s’est construite contre l’idée de puissance PAR ZAKI LAÏDI

président François Hollande lors de sa visite à Tombouctou en février 2013.

G LO B A L B R I E F • W I N T E R 2 0 1 3

I

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l y a 10 ans, l’UE, traumatisée par son incapacité à s’unir face à l’intervention américaine en Irak, acceptait sous l’impulsion de la France de se doter d’un instrument définissant une Stratégie européenne de sécurité. Cette dernière, plus connue depuis cette date sous le nom du rapport Solana, définit les grands enjeux auxquels est confrontée l’Europe sur le plan international et les moyens d’y faire face. Les menaces, ce sont les conflits régionaux, les armes de destruction massive, la prolifération nucléaire, les déséquilibres économiques, les trafics illicites, les migrations non contrôlées et ainsi de suite. Les réponses résident selon le rapport Solana dans l’activation des mécanismes de régulation multilatérale, et cela en conformité avec une philosophie européenne qui a toujours privilégié la norme plutôt que la force. Quelles leçons tirer de ce rapport une décennie après sa publication, et cela au moment où l’UE doit faire face à plusieurs crises:

la Syrie, l’Iran, le Mali, sans parler des inquiétudes croissantes que soulève l’évolution despotique du régime russe (voir l’article Feature de Leonid Kosals dans le numéro d’automne 2012 de GB)?

En réalité, le rapport Solana avait les défauts de ses qualités. Le jugement global qu’il portait sur la situation internationale était assez juste. En revanche, il n’offrait à peu près aucune piste opérationnelle pour permettre à l’Europe d’atteindre des objectifs communs. Il en découle un discours dominé par de bonnes idées et de bons sentiments, mais esquivant habilement les difficultés auxquelles se heurte l’Europe pour agir sur la scène internationale en tant qu’acteur global. En réalité, si le rapport Solana ne va pas très loin et se contente de généralités, c’est pour une raison simple: alors que les Européens se mettent aisément d’accord sur des principes généraux d’action, leur mise en œuvre fait éclater les divergences au grand jour.

PHOTOGRAPHIE: LA PRESSE CANADIENNE / AP / HAROUNA TRAORE

d’y contribuer. Tout cela renvoie au fait fondamental et historique que l’Europe n’est toujours pas la garante ultime de sa sécurité. Tant que l’on n’aura pas compris ce facteur capital dans l’équation européenne, tous les débats relatifs à la conversion de la puissance européenne en hard power tourneront court. Il faut admettre une fois pour toutes que l’UE s’est construite contre l’idée de puissance. Et ce n’est pas la gravité de la crise des finances publiques que traverse la quasi-totalité des pays européens qui pourra les faire changer d’avis.

U

n autre facteur doit aussi être pris en considération quant à la difficulté de l’Europe à définir une grande stratégie. Il tient au fait que les cultures stratégiques nationales demeurent encore très prégnantes et ont du mal à se fondre dans une vision commune, au-delà de la réaffirmation de principes généraux.

D’une certaine manière, cela n’a rien d’étonnant.

En effet, qui pourra empêcher la Pologne ou les États baltes de nourrir une méfiance viscérale vis-à-vis de la Russie de Vladimir Poutine? Mais qui, à l’inverse, peut obliger l’Espagne, le Portugal ou l’Italie à partager cette crainte? Or, à ces questions il est extrêmement difficile de répondre, si on laisse de côté les réponses convenues sur la nécessité pour l’Europe de s’unir.

En réalité, pour surmonter ces contradictions inévitables, il ne faudrait pas seulement que les Européens aient une culture stratégique commune.

Il faudrait que l’Europe devienne la garante ultime de sa sécurité; c’est-à-dire que les États européens se donnent les moyens de garantir leur sécurité mutuelle. Or comment imaginer que l’on mutualise la sécurité alors que l’on n’est pas disposé à mutualiser les dettes? À cet égard, il ne suffit pas de jeter la pierre aux Européens en les jugeant incapables de s’unir. Il faut pousser le raisonnement un peu plus loin et voir que l’une des raisons pour lesquelles ils ne parviennent pas à s’unir tient au fait qu’ils constituent un ensemble de peuples partageant certes des aspirations communes, mais continuant néanmoins à vivre comme des peuples nationaux et non comme les membres d’un même peuple européen.

Là encore, la crise de l’euro a clairement mis en évidence le potentiel de divergences entre les États européens dès que surgit un problème majeur. Certes, le propre des réalités politiques est qu’elles ne sont pas intangibles. D’une certaine manière, l’UE est parvenue à garantir la paix entre ses États membres – une réalisation qu’on aurait tort de sous-estimer au regard de ce qui se passe, par exemple, en Asie, où la Chine, le Japon et la Corée du Sud sont aujourd’hui encore incapables de solder les comptes de la Deuxième Guerre mondiale (voir l’article Feature de Barthélémy Courmont à la page 42). Il faut cependant renoncer à une vision téléologique de la construction européenne, où l’UE déboucherait forcément sur une

Zaki Laïdi est professeur à l’Institut d’études politiques à Paris et auteur des ouvrages La norme sur la force, l’énigme de la puissance européenne (2008) et Le monde selon Obama (2010).

L’intervention française au Mali montre que les Européens soutiennent la France, mais ne sont pas disposés à l’assister militairement sinon à travers un très léger soutien logistique ou une participation à un programme de formation de soldats maliens dont l’incapacité est notoire.

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Parmi ces divergences figurent notamment la question centrale de l’opportunité du recours à la force.

Au moment de la crise libyenne, seuls la France et le Royaume-Uni manifestèrent une volonté politique d’agir sur le plan militaire sans attendre le feu vert de qui que ce soit. Les autres pays européens furent soit attentistes, soit hostiles à toute idée d’intervention militaire. Ce fut notamment le cas de l’Allemagne, qui est allée jusqu’à s’abstenir au moment du vote à l’ONU sur la résolution 1973 autorisant l’usage de toutes les mesures nécessaires pour protéger les populations civiles en Libye. Par ailleurs, plusieurs pays engagés dans le conflit limitèrent drastiquement les conditions d’utilisation de la force. Et tous exigèrent que l’intervention prenne place dans le cadre de l’OTAN et non dans celui de l’UE. C’est la raison pour laquelle cette dernière refusa de s’impliquer politiquement dans le règlement de la crise, alors qu’elle disposait manifestement d’instruments de planification politique et militaire pour le faire. Mais encore une fois, cela n’a rien d’étonnant. Quand les États européens ne sont pas d’accord, ils se neutralisent et l’UE en pâtit. La neutralisation conduit alors au neutralisme.

L’intervention française au Mali montre que ces difficultés ressurgissent. Les Européens soutiennent la France, mais ne sont pas disposés à l’assister militairement sinon à travers un très léger soutien logistique ou une participation à un programme de formation de soldats maliens, dont l’incapacité est notoire. Les États africains sont totalement incapables de prendre en charge leur sécurité, et les Européens le savent très bien. L’appel aux Africains n’est, de ce point de vue, qu’un prétexte à l’inaction européenne.

Le plus préoccupant est que les Européens ne semblent pas avoir été en mesure de tirer une leçon de cette affaire. Aujourd’hui, sur la Syrie, les Européens ont adopté une position commune. Mais si demain une intervention militaire était mise en œuvre, il est fort probable que les vieux clivages finissent par resurgir.

Lors du débat onusien sur la reconnaissance de la Palestine, les Européens n’ont pas réussi là encore à adopter une position commune. Catherine Ashton a plaidé pour l’abstention, ce qui est en soi une curieuse façon de se prononcer sur un sujet où l’on attend précisément de l’Europe qu’elle prenne clairement position.

Le clivage qui oppose les Européens sur la question du recours à la force n’est cependant pas le seul. S’y ajoute un rapport très différencié sur la question de la sécurité européenne. Les Britanniques, par exemple, ont, sur le fond des questions stratégiques, un regard très proche de celui des Français (voir l’article Feature de Frédéric Charillon dans le numéro d’automne 2012 de GB). Cela dit, ils ne veulent en aucune façon transformer cette convergence de vues en une force de frappe européenne. À l’inverse, la plupart des États membres de l’UE sont favorables à l’idée de défense européenne, mais n’ont guère les moyens

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union politique ou stratégique.

L’Europe n’est donc pas en mesure de construire une grande stratégie. Mais est-ce que l’Europe est pour autant condamnée à l’inexistence stratégique? Non. Car entre une grande stratégie qui ferait de l’Europe une superpuissance, dont l’immense majorité des Européens ne veut pas, et l’absence totale de stratégie commune, il existe très certainement des potentialités d’actions communes. Cela est d’ailleurs d’ores et déjà le cas au travers des opérations militaires de maintien de la paix conduites par l’Europe dans de nombreux pays – le succès le plus récent étant son intervention dans la Corne de l’Afrique pour lutter contre la piraterie maritime. Dans cette affaire, on voit bien que la capacité de l’Europe à agir est efficace parce que presque tous les pays européens ont conscience que leurs intérêts économiques sont menacés par la piraterie, et qu’une telle opération comporte peu de risques d’enlisement.

Mais la reproduction d’une telle intervention, qui demeure d’ailleurs de portée limitée, n’est pas du tout acquise. On voit bien, à propos du Mali, que les Européens ne sont pas tous favorables à une intervention militaire dans ce pays.

Au-delà de la question des interventions militaires et de la projection des forces européennes, l’une des pistes de renforcement de l’Europe est de mutualiser ses forces autant qu’elle le peut – comme cela est d’ailleurs déjà le cas dans le cadre de l’OTAN. Elle est aussi de doter l’Europe d’une véritable industrie militaire qui permettrait d’amortir considérablement les coûts d’investissement et accroître son poids économique sans remettre en cause la souveraineté de ses États. Mais même dans ce domaine, les difficultés ne manquent pas, car les États raisonnent trop souvent à court terme. Dans cette optique, les Britanniques ont préféré commander un avion américain embarqué plutôt qu’un appareil européen, qui leur aurait pourtant permis d’utiliser les porte-avions français – une option ouverte par les accords de Lancaster House entre la France et le Royaume-Uni. Les Allemands, quant à eux, se sont très clairement opposés à la naissance d’un géant militaire européen à travers la fusion de BAE et EADS. Il existe donc des inquiétudes fondées quant à la capacité de l’Europe à s’unir et à agir collectivement, d’autant plus que le monde qu’elle imaginait au lendemain de la Guerre froide n’est pas du tout celui qui se dessine.

En effet, l’Europe a cru qu’avec la fin de la Guerre froide, la logique classique de puissance irait en s’affaiblissant, et que les dynamiques d’interdépendance iraient en se renforçant. Ce n’est pas du tout ce que l’on constate aujourd’hui. Certes, l’interdépendance des États n’a jamais été aussi forte, notamment sur le plan économique ou commercial. Mais simultanément, cette interdépendance a donné lieu à la montée en puissance des logiques nationales, comme en témoigne éloquemment le blocage des négociations commerciales multilatérales à l’OMC ou des négociations sur les changements climatiques sous l’égide de l’ONU. Pour l’Europe, il n’y a donc pas de tâche plus urgente que de s’interroger sur la meilleure façon de s’insérer activement dans un monde multipolaire dont l’inspiration n’est plus forcément multilatéraliste. | GB

Nation-building is in America’s DNA FULL PAGE, FULL BLEED

“‘Nation-building Trim size: can only work when size: the peopleBleed own it.’

8.5” wide x 10.875” high 8.75” wide x 11.125” high

Jeremi Suri argues that the United States has too often forgotten this truth over the course of its nation-building history— including the American Revolution and Reconstruction as well as efforts in the Philippines, Germany, Japan, and Vietnam. Suri draws lessons from all these efforts that are particularly valuable today.”

—Anne-Marie Slaughter, Bert G. Kerstetter ’66 University Professor of Politics and International Affairs, Princeton University

Pick up or download your copy today

www.simonandschuster.com

PERSIAN GULF FUTURES James M. Dorsey is a former New York Times foreign correspondent and author of the blog, The Turbulent World

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of Middle East Soccer.

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Shaky monarchies, strategic pressures, and emerging threats to energy and shipping BY JAMES M. DORSEY

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he failure to date by oil- and gas-rich states in the Persian Gulf to seriously respond to the demands for governance reforms sweeping the Middle East and North Africa poses, alongside potential hostilities with Iran, the most immediate threat to the security of the region’s energy production and international shipping. It raises the question of when – rather than if – revolts that have already driven the autocratic leaders of Tunisia, Egypt, Libya and Yemen from office, pushed Syria into civil war, and are simmering in Jordan and Algeria, will disrupt domestic politics in the Gulf and, consequently, oil and gas production in the region. With US and other policy-makers focussed on terrorist threats and region-wide trends, rather than intra-state, domestic threats – not least because they realize that they have little influence in shaping the Gulf states’ internal policies – we now face the spectre of the international community being caught off guard and unprepared for significant turmoil and far-reaching change in the region.

The lack of focus on potential change has allowed Gulf leaders to perpetuate the myth that Arab monarchies are more immune to popular uprisings than their republican counterparts. The region’s oil- and gas-rich unelected, neo-patriarchal royals pride themselves on having so far largely contained widespread discontent bubbling at the surface with a combination of financial handouts, artificial job creation – parPHOTOGRAPH: THE CANADIAN PRESS / AP / MOHAMMAD HANNON

and put current levels of oil and gas production at risk.

That risk is amplified by the rulers’ encouragement of sectarian tensions through the identification of their Shiite populations with predominantly Shiite Iran in a bid to rally people against a perceived common enemy, and to ensure support from an international community worried about Tehran’s nuclear ambitions.

To be sure, the situations in Saudi Arabia, Bahrain, the UAE, Oman, Jordan and Kuwait differ substantially. Yet, individually and taken together, they feed the worst fear of monarchs and their Western backers – to wit, that a successful popular revolt in one monarchy will open the door to serious challenges to autocratic royal rule in the rest of the region’s mostly energy-rich monarchies. Underlying

PHOTOGRAPHS: THE CANADIAN PRESS / AP / TOP: GUSTAVO FERRARI / BOTTOM: JAMEJAM ONLINE, AZIN HAGHIGHI

ABOVE LEFT: Jordanian protesters chant anti-government slogans during a demonstration against corruption in the Jordanian government in Amman, November 2012.

TOP: Gulf Cooperation Council oil ministers pose for photographers before meeting to discuss crude output policy in Kuwait City, October 2010.

ABOVE: An Iranian Ghader missile is launched from the shore of the Gulf of Oman near the Strait of Hormuz during an Iranian navy drill, January 2013.

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ticularly in the security sector – and social investment. The exceptions are the two monarchies – Jordan and Morocco – that have not been blessed with energy riches. They have instead resorted to elections and a modicum of reform (on which the jury is still out) in a bid to avert mass protests.

It is, however, only a question of time before politically unreformed monarchies like Saudi Arabia, Bahrain, the UAE (see the One Pager by Parag Khanna at p. 5), Oman, Jordan and even Kuwait, in charge of increasingly liberalized economies, move into the front lines of the region’s convoluted transition from autocracy to more open societies and political systems. The indications thus far are that, with the exception of Jordan, these monarchies will resist rather than embrace change. In doing so, they are likely to fuel rather than calm tensions,

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It is only a question of time before politically unreformed monarchies like Saudi Arabia, Bahrain, the UAE, Oman, Jordan and even Kuwait, in charge of increasingly liberalized economies, move into the front lines of the region's transition from autocracy to more open societies and political systems.

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the differing circumstances is a deeply felt sense of social, economic and political disenfranchisement that Gulf citizens share with those in the larger Arab world who have succeeded in ridding themselves of the yoke of autocratic rule. This discontent cannot be exclusively addressed by increased employment in the police and security forces, handouts and social investment (see the Tête à Tête interview with Hernando de Soto at p. 38). Warns Saudi journalist Abdul Rahman Al Rashed: “Oil-producing countries have greater responsibilities, for they have no excuse when one of their citizens has no job, or when a citizen is sick but cannot get treatment, or when a citizen lacks insurance or does not feel safe in his home.

It is the government’s duty to provide citizens with these services. When officials are upset [about] being criticized, they forget that it is their job to serve the people and the budget is how a government expresses its plans to serve the people.”

The facts on the ground contradict the notion that Middle Eastern and North African revolts threaten republics more than monarchies. Indeed, that notion would be true only if monarchs were able to lever the one real asset that they have: a remaining degree of legitimacy that comes from truly addressing real, practical concerns, rather than hiding behind security forces and repressing political expression. This is in contrast to the republican leaders in the region, who have so far been deposed in part because they lost all legitimacy, and protesters were unwilling to give them a last chance.

At this point, the writing is on the wall. Bahrain is a revolt calling for regime change in waiting. The country has arguably passed the point of no return in the protesters’ call for regime change. Saudi Arabia is headed for a similar fate in oil-rich, largely Shiite Eastern Province, the country’s most vital economic region. (Social media analysis shows that deep-seated criticism of the Saudi royal family goes far beyond the Shiite minority.) Kuwait is hanging in the balance, with the position of the emir increasingly dependent on whether he can credibly demonstrate his sincerity in wanting to root out corruption. Jordan, for its part, has said that it acknowledges the need for substantive reform, but has yet to say what concrete reforms will be put into place.

Riyadh has sought to fend off popular protest with a US $130 billion programme to shore up public services (including housing) and create employment – particularly in the security sector. In a commentary in Arab News, columnist Khaled al-Dakheel warned that economic reform and addressing social needs should “be followed by other steps of reform dealing with political issues, such as elections, representation, the separation of powers, activation of the Allegiance Commission, freedom of expression, the independence of the judiciary, and equality before the law. The necessity of political and constitutional

reform [stems from] the fact that the positive impact in people’s economic reforms, especially financial, is usually temporary because of the variable nature of their economic and social circumstances.” Al-Dakheel laid out a programme for political and constitutional reform in a country that identifies the Koran as its constitution. The programme called for overhaul of the country’s bloated bureaucracy; longevity and tenure for long-serving officials – many of whom are members of the royal family – to be based on merit; expansion of the powers of the country’s toothless Shoura or Advisory Council in order to gradually transform it into an elected legislature; tackling issues of unemployment, foreign workers’ rights and corruption; and diversification of the Saudi national economy.

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he cautionary warnings notwithstanding, in December of last year, Saudi authorities arrested prominent novelist Turki al-Hamad for criticizing Islamists and calling for reform in a series of tweets. Al-Hamad charged that the Islamists “have distracted us with nonsense [such] that we forgot the important issues.” He effectively called for reform of Islam, tweeting: “Our Prophet has come to rectify the faith of Abraham, and now is a time when we need someone to rectify the faith of Mohammed.”

Activist and website designer Raif Badawi was arrested in June 2012. He is on trial for violating Islamic values, breaking Sharia law, blasphemy, and mocking religious symbols on the Internet. Badawi allegedly insulted Islam by allowing debate on his website – Free Saudi Liberals – about the difference between popular and political Islam.

Similarly, the UAE ushered in 2013 with an announcement that it had arrested 10 people on suspicion of being members of the Muslim Brotherhood. In late December of last year, the UAE said that it had arrested a group of Emiratis and Saudis on charges of belonging to a terrorist group. And in July of last year, Abu Dhabi said that it was questioning an unspecified number of people for having formed “a group aimed at damaging the security of the state[,]” “rejecting the constitution and the founding principles of power in the Emirates[,]” and having links with foreign organizations.

Even Qatar, widely viewed as the most progressive state in the region, is cracking down. In November 2011, a Qatari poet, Muhammad Ibn al-Dheeb al-Ajami, was sentenced to life in prison in what legal and human rights activists said was a “grossly unfair trial that flagrantly violates the right to free expression” on charges of “inciting the overthrow of the ruling regime.” Al-Ajami’s crime appeared to be a poem that he wrote, as well as his earlier recitation of poems

how committed the US will be to ensuring regional security as it becomes ever less dependent, in the coming years, on Gulf energy and emerges as the world’s largest oil exporter.

Gulf rulers perceive the Iranian dynamic – the nuclear question, and also Iran’s growing strategic footprint in the region – primarily as a threat to domestic stability, and only secondarily as a threat to energy production and international shipping. These threats have the potential of becoming self-fulfilling as a result of the rulers’ refusal to accept certain realities on the ground. Gulf opposition to perceived Iranian nuclear ambitions, for instance, is tempered by concerns about the possible domestic fallout of military action against Tehran. In response, Gulf states have responded to Shiite unrest with force, and to Iran’s nuclear posture by opting for international and regional security arrangements, as well as through massive arms purchases. Both approaches have thus far aggravated rather than alleviated the threats.

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he ability of the US to act as the region’s defensive umbrella by emphasizing defence and deterrence could further be affected by an eruption of popular discontent in the Gulf. Gulf leaders are proving increasingly reluctant to reinforce perceptions that they are out of touch with public sentiment, and therefore dependent on the US to maintain their grip on power. This is all the more true given that the US will have to balance its interests in the Gulf with those in the wider Middle East and the Muslim world – especially because unrest in Saudi Arabia, Islam’s heartland, will resonate more than events in other Middle Eastern countries and across the Arab and non-Arab Muslim world. The most obvious way of compensating for political vulnerabilities would be the expansion of the Gulf’s security umbrella to include other interested parties, such as China and India. However, these parties are, in terms of military capabilities and focus, years away from being able to contribute significantly (see the Feature article by Sam Sasan Shoamanesh in the Fall 2012 issue of GB).

For its part, Iran is not oblivious to opportunities created by domestic Gulf policies. Tehran has sought to pressurize Gulf states into adopting a neutral stance in respect of its dispute with the West and Israel, as well as a more conciliatory attitude to their Shiite populations. Iran’s war games in April 2010 highlighted the threat that the country could pose to international shipping in the event of

Kuwait is hanging in the balance, with the position of the emir increasingly dependent on whether he can credibly demonstrate his sincerity in wanting to root out corruption.

Jordan has said that it acknowledges the need for substantive reform, but has yet to say what concrete reforms will be put into place.

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that included passages disparaging senior members of Qatar’s ruling family. The poem was entitled “Tunisian Jasmine.” It celebrated the overthrow of Tunisian president Zine El Abidine Ben Ali. A draft media law approved by the Qatari cabinet would prohibit publishing or broadcasting information that would “throw relations between the state and the Arab and friendly states into confusion” or “abuse the regime or offend the ruling family or cause serious harm to the national or higher interests of the state.”

Violators would face stiff financial penalties of up to one million Qatari riyals (US $275,000).

Of course, the Gulf states’ unwillingness to separate domestic Shiite concerns from the interests of Iran is a misreading of a reality in which Shiites view themselves, first and foremost, as nationals of the states of which they are citizens. That fact was more than evident in the 1980-1988 Iran-Iraq war, in which Iraqi Shiites were the ones that fought Saddam Hussein’s war against Iran. Indeed, Shiites occupy a strategic geography in the Middle East, where the region’s energy and water resources are concentrated.

Addressing their justified grievances – including an end to job and religious discrimination – is a key pillar in ensuring energy security and the safety of international shipping. The same is true for Jordan, where preoccupation with security and counter-terrorism – including the discovery of a major terrorist plot in the fall of 2012 – threatens to undermine the equally important emphasis on reform.

Leading up to January’s parliamentary elections, Jordan saw protests in a number of cities demanding that King Abdullah step down. The King responded with a series of discussion papers urging citizens to be politically more involved in the electoral process, and also to judge candidates on their merits, rather than on their tribal and family affiliations. However, the general refusal by the Gulf states and Jordan to address head-on genuine popular concerns, and to treat Shiites as full citizens rather than as a fifth wheel, highlights the underlying strategic dilemma of the US and the international community: the concurrent need to ensure energy security and safe shipping in the short- and medium-term based on the status quo in the Gulf, the need to be prepared for likely disruptions to the flow of oil and gas as a result of domestic and regional developments, and the need to anticipate longer-term significant political change in the region. This basic strategic dilemma makes the linkage between Iran’s dispute with the West and Israel over its nuclear programme and domestic stability in the Gulf even more intractable than it already is. And the dilemma is sharpened for most Persian Gulf states by uncertainty about

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Gulf rulers perceive the Iranian dynamic – the nuclear question, and also Iran's growing strategic footprint in the region – primarily as a threat to domestic stability, and only secondarily as a threat to energy production and international shipping.

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an Israeli and /or US military attempt to take out Iranian nuclear facilities. During the games in the Gulf and the Strait of Hormuz, the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC) swarmed, seized and destroyed hypothetical enemy vessels. Moreover, Iran has made clear that, in case of real conflict, it could target tankers with coastal anti-ship Silkworm missiles, patrol boats and short-range aircraft launched from nearby bases, or even fast in-shore attack craft packed with explosives.

The assumption that Iranian verbal threats to shipping in the Gulf and the Strait of Hormuz as a response to a possible Israeli and /or US attack may be little more than bluster because of Tehran’s interest in keeping sea lanes open for its own exports is questionable. US and European sanctions have already reduced Iranian oil exports by about two thirds, and could force further cutbacks. Iran’s vested interest in keeping shipping lanes open has therefore been considerably diminished. By the same token, the effect of an Iranian attempt to shut down shipping lanes is to some extent counterbalanced by the building of new pipelines and the conversion and expansion of existing ones in the Gulf that circumvent the Strait of Hormuz. More serious, however, may be the likelihood of Iranian retaliation against Gulf oil and gas facilities using both its conventional military and cyber capabilities (see the Feature article

by Wesley Wark in GB’s Fall 2012 issue).

The risk of military conflict with Iran (and with it the risk to international shipping, as well as the fear of Tehran exploiting Gulf discontent) is linked to the fact that efforts to achieve a negotiated solution to the nuclear issue are undercut by deep-seated prejudices on both sides. Iran is convinced that the strategic goal of US Iranian policy is regime change.

It views past offers to reward Iran for agreeing to comply with international demands as efforts to portray it as weak, and as having caved to pressure, rather than as an incentive to reduce its international isolation. For its part, the US believes that Iran is not serious about negotiations, and also that it has Iran increasingly cornered. Washington further assumes that the US can succeed with a big stick and limited carrot policy, and that Iran will ultimately only succumb if it has no choice.

Washington’s analysis could prove correct. The question is whether the Americans’ purposes could be achieved in a more equitable way – that is, one that would allow Iran to save face, help put US-Iranian relations on a healthy long-term footing, avert the potential fallout of relying primarily on a stick, reduce the cost to ordinary Iranians, and remove at an early stage the threat to energy security and international shipping. The proof will be in the pudding if and when the threat of a US (and/or Israeli) attack becomes imminent. At that very last oneminute-to-twelve moment, Iran is likely to concede.

Governed by middle-aged revolutionaries with vested interests that have been accumulated in the more than three decades since the overthrow of the Shah, Iranian leaders effectively maintain, at best, a revolutionary façade with their provocative hostility toward Israel and their anti-American and anti-Western rhetoric. Traditionally a nation of traders, Iranian leaders, when faced with the real and imminent threat of losing their grip on power or accepting humiliation, will most likely opt for the latter.

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hether the Ameri c a n s t i ck w i l l truly remove the threat to Gulf energy production and international shipping is debatable. Military action would deepen anti-Western resentment among Iran’s elite. Popular sentiment would be split between those who share that resentment and those who see opportunity to exploit the regime’s weakness. This could make potential change messier and ultimately more dangerous. Alternatively, an international effort to resolve the nuclear issue such that Iran is allowed to save face – rather than one aimed at weakening Tehran – could avert the prospect of Iran turning into a cornered cat that jumps in unexpected ways. This could potentially ease and usher in a process of change.

Resolving the nuclear dispute with Iran and addressing popular concerns in the Gulf are two sides of the same coin. Evolutionary transition in the Gulf is feasible, provided rulers address political, and not only economic and social concerns. A first step would be a more inclusive approach by Gulf rulers toward all segments of the population, and a liberalization rather than a crackdown on freedom of expression. Simultaneously, the US would have to adopt a policy that convinces Iran with deeds that it is serious about achieving a negotiated solution – rather than regime change.

Of course, changing policies among Gulf states and in Washington will not be easy. The alternative, however, is less palatable. It would involve a festering of popular discontent in the Gulf to the point that the region’s rulers lose all legitimacy, and are confronted with demands for their demise.

Popular agitation for change would intensify, as would violence fuelled by Iranian exploitation of opportunities. Forceful governmental repression would soon follow, and the cycle would resume, with escalating consequences. The bitter pill that Gulf rulers and Western leaders would have to swallow now in order to avert escalation is likely to be a lot less painful than the consequences of failing to grab the bull by its horns. | GB

IN THE CABINET ROOM

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ILLUSTRATION: DUSAN PETRICIC

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What about the individual in the future of the Middle East?

QUERY

Progress and pluralism lie at the intersection of courageous leaders and activist citizens who speak out BY SVEN SPENGEMANN

Sven Spengemann teaches international politics at the Glendon School of Public and International Affairs.

From 2005 to 2012, he served with the UN Assistance Mission for Iraq (UNAMI), most recently as head of the Mission's constitutional

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support team.

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he most recent developments in the Middle East and North Africa (MENA) raise new and pressing moral questions about the fundamental qualities of government – most prominently, whether a national constitution should allow religious pluralism, if not outright defend an entirely secular approach to statecraft.

These questions – highly political in nature – have pushed to the background a slew of more technical issues relating to governance, best practices and development in the post-Arab Spring context (see the Tête à Tête interview with Hernando de Soto at p. 38). These questions also suggest that the transformation of the region has come to a fork in the road. Instead of largely secular autocrats and affiliated elites, there is today a serious risk that a new set of autocratic religious parties – also opposed to pluralism, but for different reasons – may begin to oppress political and ethno-religious minorities, including secular liberals, Assyrian Christians, Coptic Christians, Kurds, Jews, Shiite sects, Yazidis and others.

There is a relatively simple answer as to what must happen and be done next if the MENA region is to avoid future waves of oppression, violence and revolt. First and foremost, the new heads of state in the Arab world must show the personal moral courage to deliberately and systematically open their societies to competing political views through constitutional and constitutionalized debate and reform, and to protect political and ethnic minorities. This will obviously require them to stand up to radical, conservative elements within their own constituencies. Second, individual citizens from all parts of the ethnic and political spectrum – particularly civil society leaders and organizers – must become active in supporting their elected leaders in this task, by having the courage to speak out against extremist, radical views and the incitement of sectarian oppression.

Neither component – top-down leadership or bottom-up support – will alone be sufficient to move the region. No rational leader in the region will take the political risk of defending a pluralist system when there is no evidence of public opposition to an elected, non-pluralist majority. Similarly, pluralist minorities cannot reach their goal of seeking protection from violence without strong leadership at the executive level. Should these two levels – the

governing elites and governed individuals – fail to connect politically, the pre-Arab Spring status quo of oppression and systemic susceptibility to future revolt will endure, albeit in a distinctly 21st century socioeconomic integument.

The wave of elections that followed the Arab Spring led to increased political support for Islamic movements in a number of countries, including Egypt, Libya – which is currently led by a liberal majority – and Tunisia. Iraq remains governed by a Shiite majority that has been in place since 2005.

In Syria, the Assad regime is steadily losing ground amid continuing carnage and sharply increasing violence against the civilian population. Once this regime falls and the political transition begins, the Muslim Brotherhood will stand to gain influence among the opposition forces currently unified within the National Coalition of Syrian Revolutionary and Opposition Forces. In all of these countries, political and ethnic minorities remain exposed to a high risk of future violence.

In the midst of these developments, anti-Western sentiment remains strong. Radical elements in the Middle East reacted to the July 2012 YouTube release of the “Innocence of Muslims” with mass demonstrations, while moderate elements continue to condemn the West for not taking enough action – politically and economically – to help the civilian population caught in the crossfire of the Syrian war.

At the same time, as the energy-rich Middle East remains embroiled in violence, and opportunities for stability and prosperity continue to shrink, members of the moderate, educated elites continue to leave the region for a better life elsewhere – leaving the remainder of the population, increasingly composed of the poorer and less-educated strata, exposed to radical and militant elements. In this setting, the challenges that confront local, earnest political reformers are quite formidable.

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n the Spring/Summer 2011 issue of GB, I argued in favour of a new, post-Arab Spring governance framework for the MENA region – one characterized by a shift in attention from state-to-state interaction to civil society-oriented efforts at the sub-state level, mediated by a virtual, transnational mechanism called the ‘civic action network.’ This mechanism was focussed on the dynamics of the Arab Spring and the street protests that demanded more open government

PHOTOGRAPH: THE CANADIAN PRESS / AP / SAMI WAHIB

be coopted by sectarian interests, no open political system can be established without a vibrant and supportive social foundation. Civil society leaders therefore remain at the fulcrum of social progress.

To build such a foundation, citizens in the MENA region, together with their counterparts across the international community, need to begin to speak out against the incitement of hatred and the kinds of extremism that have allowed local political leaders to

maintain sectarian, exclusionary policies. Indeed, the isolation of radicals and extremists not only requires political courage on the part of those individuals who choose to speak out, but also becomes a necessity if political pluralism and minority rights are to be protected in daily life. And because of its accessibility and impact, it can be argued that all participants in the virtual global commons now have a moral responsibility to become active in condemning extremism, incitement and sectarianism. Only then could it be expected, if brave political leaders meet brave citizens halfway, that a sustained, moderate pluralism will be able to occupy the centre of the political spectrum in the post-Arab Spring MENA space, and that the risk of future political violence can be systematically reduced. | GB

Pope Tawadros II, spiritual leader of Egypt's Coptic Christian community, casts his vote during the national referendum on the constitution in Cairo, December 2012.

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and greater economic opportunity (see the Tête à Tête interview with Hernando de Soto at p. 38). The article gave the benefit of the doubt to an unprecedented moment of opportunity in favour of substantive region-wide reform – a moment in which citizens in the Arab world could gain a voice and begin to participate in shaping their futures. It was a moment during which – or so it seemed – international technical expertise in the (re)construction and organization of civil society might be welcome by reformers in the region. Today the message is: not so fast.

In post-Mubarak Egypt, President Morsi and the Muslim Brotherhood remain locked, in key cities, in a standoff with secularists and liberals, about whether Egypt should become an ideologically and politically unitary Islamic state or a pluralist society with effective minority rights protections. In the latter case, if such minority rights are not secured, the risk of oppression and subsequent revolt remains high. Will President Morsi, whose state remains at the forefront of the MENA-wide debate, become part of a new cadre of morally courageous leaders who are able to move their own constituencies toward a more progressive future? Or will he be too constrained by the conservative elements that brought him to power to be able to step outside of this shadow?

From the bottom up, of course, civil society organizers across the MENA region need to demonstrate that a functional, pluralist society can indeed be established in their respective countries. Civil society organizations remain quintessential vehicles in the quest for a sustained political pluralism, as they alone offer the means to build a genuinely trans-sectarian culture – in the communities; through sports and youth clubs; through non-denominational charities; in parent-teacher associations; in professional associations; among retirees; through the trade unions; and so on. While these organizations and associations can and often will

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TÊTE À TÊTE

As Capital Moves From Lima to Cairo GB discusses wealth creation, the state of the Americas, and lessons for the states of the post-Arab Spring with Peru’s HERNANDO DE SOTO

Hernando de Soto is President of the

GB: Why does Peru today have the second fastest-growing economy in the Americas (after Panama)?

Institute for Liberty and Democracy in Lima, Peru. He is the author of The Other Path and The Mystery of Capital: Why Capitalism Triumphs in the West and Fails Everywhere Else.

HDS: What is good about Peru today is that a macroeconomic model that was designed in the early 1990s has endured and been protected, quite systematically, across different governments – all of different political stripes. The result has been, ultimately, Chinese-type growth rates. Of course, Peru does not profit from the type of canal that has made Panama so vital; otherwise, we would have the top growth rate in Latin America.

Most of the economic and legal reforms have favoured Peru’s urban centres, in which some three-quarters of the national population lives.

The rural sector – in the Amazon, in the Andes – has been less favoured. Our indigenous people do not have the same rights as those enjoyed by urban Peruvians, and inequality between rural and urban Peru – particularly in the context of high commodity prices – is really a major social problem.

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GB: Can you elaborate on Peru’s economic model?

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HDS: The model is a hybrid. Macroeconomically, it is essentially the Washington Consensus. It was first instituted by President Fujimori, but it has endured all the way to President Humala, who was originally opposed to it, but who has stuck to it since his election in 2011. Fujimori introduced the model alongside many social programmes, the purpose of which was to integrate people institutionally.

These programmes emphasized property rights and also political participation. And we made it easier for people at the lowest levels of society to do business. That is about it.

I would be negligent not to note that this economic model was ushered in just as we ended an internal war with the Shining Path. This was a short, messy war, but one that was relatively successful for the Peruvian state, and that allowed us to get a lot of our problems behind us.

GB: Which are the countries to watch in the Americas over the next 10 to 15 years?

HDS: From your point of view, probably the big countries. Peru is a small country compared to either Mexico or Brazil, so it is obvious that these countries will dominate. These big countries may not be growing as fast as Peru and Chile, but they will certainly have greater influence on the continent’s future simply because of their size.

Peru, Chile, Colombia and Brazil, however, are closest among themselves in their economic philosophies: they all operate today along the basic lines of the Washington Consensus – governed by what Americans and Canadians would call fiscal conservatives, or what Europeans would call economic liberals. All of these four countries have broadly similar economic frameworks, policies and preferences.

Of course, these countries came to adopt the Washington Consensus at times of peculiar authoritarianism in their respective histories. Take Pinochet in Chile: Chile was the first Latin American country to essentially move from developing to developed status – even if under dictatorship.

So the model is not exportable without the strongman leaders who drove it through their systems.

GB: What is your assessment of the current state of the Chavez-inspired Venezuela or Bolivian model?

HDS: These countries have undertreated, if not altogether neglected, the entrepreneurialism that is needed for a society to prosper. Everyone wants equality. And there clearly is a lot of inequality in that part of the world. But you cannot get off the ground – economically – simply through rhetoric.

You have to move beyond electioneering in order to mobilize economic forces. The only way in which you can beat poverty is through greater wealth and better distribution of wealth. There does not seem to be much of either today in Venezuela and Bolivia.

Capital is not freed up in these countries, and the governments do not allow individuals to accumulate capital. Private property is not fungible – that is, it cannot be used as collateral, to generate credit, to form capital, or to guarantee a supply of basic services. In other words, assets in the country are not put toward what Marx called surplus value. If that does not happen, I do not see how wealth can be generated. And so I believe that these countries

I do not think that Latin America has anything special to teach the world in terms of macroeconomics.

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PHOTOGRAPH: PAUL RICHARDS

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are headed in the wrong direction – even if I may sympathize with the social grievances that have motivated their methods and doctrines.

GB: What, if anything, is to be emulated among countries in Central America?

HDS: Panama, as mentioned, looks like it is on the right track; Costa Rica also. That said, I do not think that Latin America has anything special to teach the world in terms of macroeconomics. For the last 20 years or so, we have effectively been perfecting the basic framework under which Western countries have been operating for some time now – playing with wealth redistribution and democratic imperatives. We have nothing to teach anybody, except that we have found ways – at least in the case of Peru – for dealing with political violence in a more or less civilized manner. We have found ways of empowering people – through microfinance, strengthening property rights and, among other things, facilitation of business. But in macroeconomics, we are definitely followers.

GB: Is Latin America looking to Asia for any lessons?

HDS: Fujimori was probably a very big admirer of Singapore. The Chileans were too. But the models that they implemented were strongmen models. This was also true of Singapore and Lee Kuan Yew. Politically, the times have changed in Latin America, and so the strongman methods that lubricated the introduction of those economic paradigms would probably be unacceptable today.

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GB: What is the state of the indigenous people in today’s Peru?

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HDS: First things first: most Peruvians are indigenous people. Moreover, you would not find one Peruvian today, in the urban centres, insisting on some description of tribal sovereignty. All of the indigenous people in Peru’s urban centres are actively integrated into the private economy. And unlike, say, Canadian Aboriginals, Peru’s indigenous people form the country’s majority. President Humala is himself at least half indigenous. Toledo was an indigenous president.

In Peru, the market economy is no longer associated only with white people, but rather with people of all races. There is no artificial reserve system that separates indigenous people from the political economy of the rest of the country. And when indigenous people from Peru travel to the US and other Western countries – whether they are Aztecs,

Mayans or Incas – they want to be assimilated into some form of modern, Western organization.

GB: Are you impressed with anything that is happening – at least on the economic front – in the post-Arab Spring Middle East?

HDS: We have to start with a key question: what was the Arab Spring all about? Our organization actually worked to determine who the people were who self-immolated and got everybody to rise up in the streets. So far, we have been able to determine that, in the first two months of what has been called the Arab Spring – that is, from December 17th, 2010 (when Mohamed Bouazizi self-immolated in Tunisia) through to February of last year, by which time four strongmen had been toppled – some 64 people self-immolated across the Middle East. All of these people were business people, or what we might otherwise call budding entrepreneurs. They were street vendors, small restaurant owners, and so on.

And all of them committed suicide or attempted to commit suicide in the aftermath of expropriation of their property by the state.

In the end, an average of two or three people self-immolated per Middle Eastern and North African country. Some 40 percent of those who self-immolated did not die – that is, they were saved by people around then. But in all cases, these people were protesting against some species of expropriation. Their property was being taken away from them, as was their right to do business. In the case of Bouazizi, for instance, one might have expected that there would have been a political declaration from his family – after the fact – or perhaps a religious declaration. Instead, in their interview with us, the family said: “The poor also have the right to buy and sell.” This is about as commercial as one can get; one might have expected something far more romantic.

Another word that came up in at least 70 percent of the cases was ‘hogra,’ which, loosely translated from the Arabic, means ‘contempt’ – that is, contempt for the small businessman or woman, contempt for the bazaar, for the souk, and for the peddler.

GB: What do you conclude from your study?

HDS: For all practical intents and purposes, the people who self-immolated – in other words, the people who were called the martyrs, and who triggered the Arab Spring – had essentially economic views.

Beyond that, we have been keen to determine how many people in the Middle East and North Africa today work within the bounds of the legal economy. In other words, how many people do not have clear property rights or access to credit, PHOTOGRAPH: STAN HONDA

and are fundamentally unable to compete in the global economy? After studying the region over the last 12 years at the request of governments and international organizations, we have determined that anywhere between 70 and 80 percent of all enterprises in the countries of this region operate outside of the law. Those who self-immolated were in most cases the managers or owners of these extra-legal businesses. As such, the Arab world is only about to discover the reasons for which its people rose. The very spark that lit the fire has not yet been properly diagnosed.

GB: If the Arab Spring is primarily an economic story, then what is to be done in policy terms to react to it?

HDS: The first dimension must be intellectual.

There is no path dependence here. The region must not resign itself to historical determinism – a way of thinking that applies in the Middle East just as it does in some parts of Latin America. I think that what happened in the West, starting in the late 18th century, through the 19th century, and even through to the last century, had little to do with historical determinism: it is simply called the Industrial Revolution. That was when people discovered that the only way to get to prosperity was by collaborating with other people according to a set of rules developed over time by Europeans and North Americans. In other words, once you discover that capital exists – that entrepreneurship exists – this cuts right through any historical trend that may seem predominant. The Arab experience should absolutely not be an exception in this regard.

GB: Practically, if you were to advise Mohamed Morsi and his team in Cairo today, what would you propose?

What we tell Arab governments is that it is only 10 to 20 percent of the population that have the rights and the tools to go global, economically. The majority of the population simply cannot compete – no matter how many free trade agreements may be in place. tarians. By contrast, in the Middle East, not one person is elected by district. And so there is no local accountability.

One more example: in Japan, everything looks quite centralized. The Diet seems to have all the powers. But you soon realize that it cannot approve a law of any import unless it holds a popular assembly that is actually supervised by the press. Once the laws are approved, they have to be looked at by the press. There are at least 40 newspapers per press room. And then, of course, there is electoral accountability for Diet members in their local districts.

All of this tells me that the key lesson of democracy for the new Middle East is not just that electoral pressures matter, but that the manner in which decisions are made – indeed, what goes into decision-making – is by far the most important aspect of good governance. (continued online) For the rest of the interview with Hernando de

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HDS: We have been in conversations with all of them. We have told them the same things that I am saying here. In Egypt, the red tape is crippling. The amount of time that it takes to have some kind of control over land so that you can build is 17 years of red tape. Add to this the time spent fending off more powerful people who want to dispossess you of whatever you may own – formally or informally.

If you look at many of the people today in Egyptian jails, they are, frankly, people who have not been able to pay their debts, and have essentially been exploited financially.

In most of the region, the majority of the people are still living in what I call the mercantilist system, which is capitalism for only a few. What we tell Arab governments is that it is only 10 to 20 percent of the population that have the rights and the tools to go global, economically. The majority of

the population simply cannot compete – no matter how many free trade agreements may be in place.

In fact, most of these governments really have no idea about why it is that they are poor. Now they are slowly realizing that much of it has to do with the fact that their citizens are not economically protected, and not equal before the law.

Politically, my advice for Morsi would be to listen to his own people. That sounds too broad and simple, of course. Every time that I have tried to figure out what is meant in Western systems by listening to one’s own people, I get a different answer, depending on the country or even province or state in question. Switzerland has its referenda.

In the US, Congress cannot pass a law without pre-publishing the draft and passing through comment and notice periods. Congressmen and women are elected by district. The same goes for Canadian and British and Australian parliamen-

Soto, visit the GB website at: www.globalbrief.ca

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Les relations sino-américaines sont marquées par l’omniprésence de l’«autre» dans toutes les décisions politiques – domestiques ou internationales PAR BARTHÉLÉMY COURMONT

PÉKIN ETWASHINGTON LE TEMPS DE L’INTERDÉPENDANCE POLITIQUE

Barthélémy Courmont est professeur à Hallym University (Corée du Sud), chercheur-associé à l’IRIS et rédacteur en chef de Monde chinois, nouvelle Asie. Il vient de publier, avec Emmanuel Lincot, La Chine au défi et Chine: le temps de la superpuissance, et sort prochainement

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Une guerre pacifique.

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ans un monde utopique, les régimes politiques sont interdépendants les uns des autres, privilégient le dialogue et la coopération sur la confrontation, et s’accordent pour définir leurs orientations économiques, sociales et de toute autre nature.

Mais en ce début de 21e siècle, si l’interdépendance s’installe entre les deux premières puissances mondiales, les États-Unis et la Chine, elle se définit par la méfiance, la crainte et des manœuvres politiques déstabilisatrices.

Retour sur les faits récents. Il est notoire que les démocraties sont supposément ouvertes au changement, tandis que les régimes autoritaires, par nature plus conservateurs, seraient d’ardents défenseurs du statu quo (voir l’article Feature d’Irvin Studin à la page 12). Aussi est-il intéressant, presque ironique, de comparer les deux événements politiques majeurs de novembre 2012: l’élection présidentielle américaine et le 18e Congrès du Parti communiste chinois (PCC). Aux États-Unis, les électeurs se sont d’une certaine manière prononcés en faveur du statu quo, en reconduisant Barack Obama pour quatre ans à la Maison-Blanche, mais aussi en maintenant la majorité démocrate au Sénat et la courte avance des Républicains à la Chambre des représentants. À l’inverse, le système non-démocratique chinois a officialisé, lors de son Congrès, la transition de leadership et l’arrivée au pouvoir d’une nouvelle génération de dirigeants, la cinquième depuis Mao Zedong. Ce rituel tenu secret, désormais fixé tous les 10 ans, est le plus important moment politique en Chine.

Et comme ce pays est en passe de devenir la première puissance économique

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ILLUSTRATION: HENRIK DRESCHER

mondiale, il s’agit désormais d’un enjeu de portée manifestement internationale, comme l’élection présidentielle américaine. Les deux événements politiques sont ainsi, à des niveaux pratiquement égaux, susceptibles d’influencer les positionnements de part et d’autre de cette nouvelle bipolarité et, en même temps, d’avoir un impact décisif sur le reste du monde.

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u-delà de ce chassé-croisé entre les deux superpuissances, désigné par certains de duel du siècle, il convient de s’interroger sur l’émergence d’une nouvelle forme de relation bilatérale. Ainsi, souvent qualifiés à tort ou à raison d’interdépendants économiquement, les États-Unis et la Chine sontils entrés dans une nouvelle phase de leur relation

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Hu Jintao prononça le discours inaugural du 18e Congrès du PCC moins de 24 heures après la réélection de Barack Obama. La rencontre de ces deux événements politiques très différents n’est pas anodine.

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à la fois distante et étroite, mais incontournable, au point que l’on puisse la qualifier d’interdépendance politique? Chaque pays détermine tant les positionnements politiques de l’autre, à l’international comme à l’interne, qu’il est difficile de ne pas y voir une nouvelle forme de relation, inédite entre deux puissances de ce niveau, et porteuse d’incertitudes. Et si, pour cette raison, les jours de ce temps de l’interdépendance étaient-ils, bien qu’à peine consommés, déjà comptés?

Hu Jintao prononça le discours inaugural du 18e Congrès du PCC moins de 24 heures après la réélection de Barack Obama. La rencontre de ces deux événements politiques très différents, mais dont l’importance est désormais quasi égale pour l’ensemble de la planète, n’est pas anodine. Au départ annoncé en octobre, le Congrès du PCC a été décalé de quelques semaines sans raison officielle, l’État-parti ayant visiblement attendu que les Américains choisissent leur président pour se lancer dans une session dont le double objectif était de désigner la nouvelle équipe dirigeante

et de définir les grandes orientations politiques et stratégiques des cinq prochaines années. Sans doute Washington aurait-elle aimé conclure cette séquence politique, mais comme le futur dirigeant chinois était déjà connu, on peut véritablement parler de simultanéité.

Les deux premières puissances économiques mondiales, qui sont à la fois des partenaires et des compétiteurs, sont entrées dans le temps de l’interdépendance politique – un temps marqué par l’omniprésence de l’autre dans toutes les décisions politiques, fussent-elles domestiques ou internationales. Rien ne se décide sans anticiper les réactions de l’autre, rien ne se fait sans avoir au préalable pris connaissance des effets sur la relation bilatérale. Lors du Congrès du PCC, ni Hu ni son successeur Xi Jinping ne firent directement mention des États-Unis, axant leurs discours sur la nécessaire lutte contre la corruption et la relance de la consommation intérieure. De la même manière, le discours de victoire de Barack Obama (tout comme son discours d’investiture fin janvier) n’a pas fait référence à la Chine, mais s’est concentré sur la situation économique et sociale des États-Unis. D’un côté comme de l’autre, cependant, cette relation est au centre des postures politiques, et s’invite dans l’agenda des deux dirigeants des plus grandes puissances économiques, militaires, et diplomatiques mondiales, qui sont également des rivales idéologiques et des compétiteurs sur quasiment tous les sujets. Et toutes deux sont confrontées à de multiples difficultés, différentes par nature et intensité, mais dont les fondements sont intrinsèquement liés: économie en berne, chômage persistant, désindustrialisation; déclin pour les États-Unis; ralentissement des exportations et de la croissance; défis sociaux, corruption et incertitudes quant à la posture internationale de la Chine.

Xi et Obama auraient pu ainsi tout aussi bien se renvoyer la balle en s’accusant mutuellement de la responsabilité des défis auxquels ils font face. Ce temps de la rivalité assumée et officielle viendra d’ailleurs sans doute tôt ou tard.

La simultanéité des deux événements ne fait que consacrer une tendance déjà observée, et qui est de plus en plus nette. Jamais dans l’histoire américaine la Chine n’avait autant été mentionnée lors d’une campagne présidentielle. Critiques acerbes de la part de Mitt Romney, accusant la Chine de «tricher»; réponses toutes aussi musclées d’Obama, annonçant une plus grande fermeté sur la réévaluation du yuan.

Pendant une campagne hantée par la crise et la peur du déclin, la Chine fut jugée responsable de tous les maux dont souffre l’Amérique, au premier rang desquels se classent ses difficultés économiques et sociales. Inédite fut aussi la posture de Pékin qui, sortant de sa torpeur habituelle et justifiée par la non-ingérence chère aux dirigeants chinois,

a officiellement dénoncé la campagne de déstabilisation orchestrée tant par les Républicains que les Démocrates. La Chine ne s’est pas simplement invitée dans la campagne présidentielle américaine, elle s’est manifestée, augurant ainsi de ce que sera sans doute désormais l’attitude de Pékin sur la scène internationale: un engagement accru et justifié par sa puissance, le rejet des critiques, et à l’occasion une ingérence de plus en plus marquée. La Chine est du coup un acteur décomplexé, qui regarde avec autant de méfiance les mouvements de Washington que réciproquement. Les deux géants s’observent, se traquent, et se testent.

Les attentats du 11 septembre 2001 ont précipité la création d’un département de la Sécurité intérieure aux États-Unis, chargé de coordonner les réponses aux défis posés par le terrorisme, et de renforcer la sécurité du territoire américain. De la même manière, on pourrait se demander si le Pentagone n’est pas en train de devenir un département des Affaires chinoises, étant donné l’attention que les experts américains de la défense portent sur l’émergence militaire de la Chine. La même remarque pourrait s’appliquer aux départements du Trésor, de l’Énergie, des Transports… Ironiquement, le seul ministère américain qui ne semble pas totalement obsédé par la question chinoise ou plus exactement où cette obsession ne va pas crescendo, compte tenu des multiples autres défis auxquels il fait face, est le département d’État, pourtant en charge de la politique étrangère de Washington, mais qui fait face à tant de défis simultanément (voir l’article Feature de James M. Dorsey à la page 30).

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Le scénario d’une nouvelle bipolarité semble ainsi exclu, d’autant qu’il supposerait que le reste du monde, de l’UE aux BRIC, en passant par les pays en développement, choisisse son camp. Reste donc la multipolarité. de dissidents, et critiques sur la situation des droits de l’homme et des libertés individuelles… La smart diplomacy d’Obama, mise en ordre de marche par Hillary Clinton, a clairement fait de la Chine une priorité absolue, mais aussi un pays avec lequel on ne peut plus se permettre de transiger, au risque de perdre irrémédiablement du terrain. Côté chinois, le temps de l’humilité de Deng Xiaoping a vécu.

Arrogance, critiques tous azimuts, mais aussi et surtout défense des intérêts nationaux sont désormais au menu de la politique étrangère d’une Chine superpuissance et qui souhaite, sinon assumer son statut, du moins l’affirmer haut et fort.

L’ampleur de la rivalité faite de compétition et d’interdépendance entre les États-Unis et la Chine a bien sûr des incidences internationales, mais elle déterminera aussi et surtout le format des équilibres internationaux futurs. En ce sens, si on peut la qualifier de duel, cette relation ne porte pas nécessairement en elle les germes d’une nouvelle Guerre froide, et ce pour de multiples raisons. D’une part, la bipolarité est le résultat de la

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n Chine, c’est un peu l’inverse.

Les États-Unis furent historiquement une obsession pour Pékin depuis la formation de la République populaire. Soutien à Taiwan, guerre ouverte en Corée, conflit idéologique, puis partenariat, relations diplomatiques… L’histoire de la Chine contemporaine est ainsi marquée par l’omniprésence de Washington. Cette tendance est cependant à la baisse. Tandis que la Chine monte irrésistiblement en puissance, sa dépendance économique aux États-Unis est de plus en plus chahutée par l’émergence de nouveaux marchés.

Il reste toutefois l’obsession politique, alternant fascination et rejet, dans un grand écart auxquels les dirigeants chinois nous ont habitués, et qui ne fait que traduire leur désarroi face à un pays dont ils s’interrogent encore s’il faut l’admirer ou le craindre. Les deux capitales ont 12 heures de décalage horaire, mais elles vivent bien à la même heure.

Associée à son volet économique (même en redéfinition, comme nous l’avons vu), étroitement liée à son alter ego stratégique, cette interdépendance

politique détermine de plus en plus les relations internationales de ce nouveau siècle. Que ce soit dans les réponses à la crise économique, dans la gestion des grands défis stratégiques actuels (la Syrie, l’Iran, mais aussi l’environnement ou l’énergie), ou encore dans la formulation de politiques économiques et sociales, la cohabitation des deux superpuissances est incontournable, là où elle était hier encore accessoire. Interdépendance ne signifie cependant pas nécessairement vision commune, et encore moins alliance. Cette cohabitation sera difficile, conflictuelle même parfois (voire souvent), mais elle sera bel et bien omniprésente – c’est-à-dire une sorte de guerre pacifique où chacun s’observe, et cherche à influer sur les orientations politiques de l’autre.

En matière de politique étrangère, la première administration a donné un avant-goût de ce que sera la seconde: stratégie du pivot, redéploiement en Asie-Pacifique, recherche de nouveaux partenaires, mais aussi visite à Washington du dalaï lama, accueil

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Building linkages with Chinese academic institutions Conducting research on Canada-China relations, especially in the investment and energy sectors

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Fostering scholarship and joint research on China’s global role

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www.china.ualberta.ca

china@ualberta.ca

division, voire du mépris. Et la relation interdépendante Washington-Pékin ne peut se permettre le mépris. Les deux pays s’épient, s’observent, mais ils sont également contraints de vivre ensemble. Le scénario d’une nouvelle bipolarité semble ainsi exclu, d’autant qu’il supposerait que le reste du monde, de l’UE aux BRIC, en passant par les pays en développement, choisisse son camp.

Reste donc la multipolarité. Mais à quelle multipolarité faisons-nous référence? Concert dissonant des nations, petits arrangements entre amis (ou adversaires) ou un troisième scénario, plus utopique, qui verrait la reconnaissance unanime et universelle d’une gouvernance mondiale basée sur les équilibres? Les paris sont ouverts, mais gageons que les divergences de vues dans la définition de la multipolarité telle qu’elle se pratique à Washington et à Pékin ne plaident pas pour un dialogue harmonieux, serein et sans arrière-pensée.

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e partenariat existe, mais il est de façade, de circonstance, par obligation plus que par choix. Pour cette raison, évoquer un G2 revient non seulement à nier l’importance d’autres acteurs (après tout, le poids économique combiné de la Chine et des États-Unis représente moins de la moitié de l’économie mondiale), mais aussi à supposer qu’ils seraient presque complices, unis à la vie comme à la mort. C’est sans doute exagéré, car après le temps de l’interdépendance viendra nécessairement une autre période de la relation entre les deux pays, et elle est incertaine. Serat-elle placée sous le signe de la confrontation? On peut en douter à la lecture des faits actuels, compte tenu des conséquences catastrophiques pour l’un comme pour l’autre, ce qui invite à une modération par crainte d’une nouvelle forme de destruction mutuelle assurée – le seul parallèle possible avec la Guerre froide. Mais la possibilité d’un conflit à grande échelle, conséquence d’une transition hégémonique mal acceptée par Washington et donnant des rêves de grandeur à Pékin, n’est pas à exclure totalement – surtout si les décideurs politiques américains en viennent à la conclusion qu’il s’agit du seul moyen d’enrayer un déclin relatif, mais réel.

Reste la possibilité d’un G0 («G-zéro») – un monde privé de leader, dans lequel les grandes puissances refusent d’assumer leur statut, fustigeant l’autre pour les désordres de la planète, bataillant pour faire avancer des projets condamnés à l’avance, et se renfermant dans une défense de l’intérêt national tout en tentant de l’ériger au rang de bien pour l’humanité. Compte tenu du refus de Pékin de s’impliquer dans la gestion des défis internationaux – pour l’heure du moins – c’est un peu le monde dans lequel nous vivons actuellement. En attendant de pencher pour l’une ou l’autre de ces options (ce qui inclut également le maintien du G0), les deux pays – les ÉtatsUnis et la Chine – doivent apprendre à vivre au temps de l’interdépendance politique, et le reste du monde n’a pas d’autre choix que d’en prendre acte. | GB

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CHANGE THE WHOLE WORLD

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Portuguese Diplomats and Global Bazaars

IN SITU

Austerity has turned a once classical foreign service into travelling salesmen LUIS MAH reports from Lisbon

P Luis Mah is a research fellow at the Centre for African and Development Studies at the Technical University of

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Lisbon.

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ortugal’s centre-right coalition government, elected in 2011, in the context of a 78 billion euro IMF-EU bailout programme that expires in June 2014, has turned decisively – it would say ‘pragmatically’ – to so-called economic diplomacy in order to revive the country’s deeply injured national economy and pay down the national debt. All pretensions to grand strategy or fealty to Lisbon’s past imperial traditions have been cast aside (see the Query article by Zaki Laïdi at p. 26).

Portuguese diplomats are now expected to become the finest salesmen of ‘made in Portugal’ products and services. Embassies are to become ‘business centres’ for Portuguese companies and ‘tour agencies’ advertising the joys and beauty and investment opportunities of the country. The Minister of Foreign Affairs, Paulo Portas – former director of O Independente, once one of Portugal’s leading papers – has enthusiastically transformed himself into the national champion of, and spokesman for, Portuguese exports, making it clear that it “is fundamental that Portuguese companies do not lose business opportunities abroad for lack of access to political decision-makers in [foreign] countries.”

Portugal has been long highly dependent on three export markets – all in the EU: Spain, Germany and France. The latest statistics suggest that these three countries account for half of Portugal’s exports. The EU as a whole accounts for nearly three-quarters of Portugal’s exports – down from approximately 80 percent in 2005. Non-EU markets, for their part, account for over a quarter of Portuguese exports – up from 20 percent six years ago. These numbers suggest that the significance of non-EU markets for Portuguese exports began to grow even during Portugal’s last Socialist government – that is, that the government of then-Prime Minister Jose Socrates was already pushing economic diplomacy as a means of diversifying the country’s export markets.

The current ruling coalition, under Social Democratic Prime Minister Pedro Passos Coelho, has pursued a major reorganization of the public service in general, and the foreign service in particular, in order to consolidate all of the national government’s foreign trade, foreign investment and tourism functions under the sole control of Portas. National representatives or emissaries abroad are now required to meet quantifiable targets in terms of trade promotion, sales and foreign investment. Each diplomatic mission would be required to have a ‘business

plan’ – including road shows – to promote Portuguese exports and attract new investment to the country.

Each business plan is to be approved formally in Lisbon. Bref, commerce has fast become the new narrative within Portugal’s diplomatic service.

Economic diplomacy has been warmly welcomed by many of the country’s political and business elites, who view it as a necessary step to rebalance the economy. Currently, some 18,000 companies form the basis of the country’s export machine. Only about 100 companies, however, are responsible for a full half of national exports – specifically in the automobile sector, energy, pulp and paper, and construction.

Business leaders and commentators have already advised the government to expand the number of exporting companies – especially SMEs – diversify the markets outside the EU, and support potential exporting sectors in order to gain international competitiveness. In the meantime, export growth (and rapid decreases in imports) is actively contributing to rising current account surpluses: 900 million euros in the third quarter of 2012, a turnaround from the current account deficit of well over a billion euros registered a year prior.

Still, a number of factors will likely complicate, if not altogether undermine, Portugal’s capacity to achieve its ends through economic diplomacy alone.

First and foremost, the Ministry of Foreign Affairs has a greatly diminished budget in 2013, as the country continues with austerity measures. Without any tailored programme to train diplomats for economic diplomacy, and with a demoralized and overburdened diplomatic corps now subjected to steep salary cuts, it will be challenging – to say the least – for the foreign service to deliver its sales targets. Portas has said that ambassadors “will be scrutinized, measured and will have to produce results” – but it is still not clear when and how ambassadors are to be held accountable for good or bad performance. In the meantime, the turf battles between the consolidating foreign and trade departments in Lisbon will surely test the political and policy mettle of Portas.

Second, the success of economic diplomacy depends on the government’s ability to foster a credible domestic economic environment that promotes business creation, innovation and employment. This will evidently not be an easy task. (Portugal’s unemployment rate is over 15 percent, while youth unemployment is over 30 percent.) The 2013 Doing Business report from the World Bank ranks the

PHOTOGRAPH: THE CANADIAN PRESS / AP / ARMANDO FRANCA

diplomats who are able to credibly engage with, and influence, local politics, laws and decisionmaking.

Lisbon’s economic strategy is following a pattern now familiar among many other developed countries – to wit, focussing on building strong bilateral ties with this century’s emerging economies in Africa, Latin America, the Middle East and Asia. There seems to be no space in this economic diplomacy for what have been Portugal’s traditional economic partners – particularly in the EU. In this sense, Portas seems to have forgotten that the EU remains crucial to Portugal’s present and future strategic interests and prospects. To be sure, the EU is now undergoing major realignments – just as it is negotiating free trade agreements with a number of major countries – but Portugal has been absent from this debate. It does not have an agenda, and appears not to have a firm view or doctrine on how to actively take part in the continent’s transformation in support of identified national and global interests.

In the meantime, Portugal’s equivalent to the Alliance Française, the Instituto Camoes, has been merged with the Portuguese development aid agency, IPAD, in order to rationalize services. There will be near-term economies, but all this again signals a clear Portuguese retreat from its grandest traditions of engagement in the world, and indeed a shrinking of the national strategic imagination. | GB

Portuguese Prime Minister Pedro Passos Coelho, left, and Foreign Minister Paulo Portas in Lisbon, July 2012.

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country 30th in the world in terms of ease of doing business – the same spot it occupied last year. But in the Global Competitiveness Index for 2012-2013 from the World Economic Forum, Portugal fell four positions to 49th out of 144 ranked countries. In a recent interview, the head of the Portugal Global – Trade and Investment Agency (AICEP), Pedro Reis, did not shy away from blaming the country’s red tape for making it difficult to invest in Portugal.

Third, and most important, it is unlikely that trade deals alone will be sufficient to strengthen and improve the country’s image abroad. Portugal lacks a public diplomacy capacity that can promote Portuguese culture and values globally – including how this culture and these values are an inherent part of the products and services that the country sells on global markets. Yes, products are sold under the ‘Marca Portugal’ (‘Portugal Brand’), but no one seems to know what that actually means. In an extremely competitive international market, why would someone wish to buy Portuguese olive oil instead of Spanish olive oil?

There is no strategic vision for the country’s image and influence in a rapidly changing world.

The catchword is ‘pragmatism’ in foreign affairs.

That seems to mean increasing Portuguese exports and attracting foreign investments. But foreign affairs is not only about trade, and no amount of trade can happen if there is a lack of well-trained

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ILLUSTRATION: JEAN TUTTLE

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The good, the bad and the ugly of Canberra’s attempted pivot

BY RAMESH THAKUR

ustralia’s national identity is at risk of a double bipolar disorder. Its cultural identity is transatlantic, but it is located geographically in Asia-Pacific. Its chief security guarantor is the US, but its biggest trading partner is China. The process of reconciling these twin tensions can be emotionally and intellectually wrenching, resulting in policy incoherence: witness the inconsistent defence and foreign policy white papers periodically coming out of Canberra. A new defence white paper is due this year. And a white paper on Asia, Australia in the Asian Century, was published in October of last year.

Australia’s fortunes are shaped and determined by the broader political, economic and social forces at work around Asia and the Pacific. The historical origins and cultural roots of most of the country’s people are in Europe, its primary strategic alliance is with the US, its primary security focus is Southeast Asia, and its major trading partners are in Northeast Asia. During the Howard years (1996-2007) (see the Tête à Tête interview with John Howard in GB’s Fall 2010 issue), the dominant mantra was that Australia did not have to choose between history and geography. Now Labor Prime Minister Julia Gillard has emphatically affirmed that Australia’s geography is indeed its destiny. In Australia in the Asian Century, the government sets out 25 national objectives to be met by 2025, with targets ranging from improving trade links and increasing scholarships, to teaching Mandarin, Hindi, Japanese and Bahasa Indonesia to young Australians as priority languages.

For most of Australia’s history as a European settler society, Asia as the ‘other’ was the point of reference for defining Australia as the ‘self.’ Australia’s historical memories and the ideas on which Australian Australia’s usefulness to other Western states. society has been constructed are all European. But Multicultural diversity at home underpins the Australia is not part of Europe, and its distinctive breadth and depth of these relationships abroad. It identity can only be interpreted with reference to gives Australia some European and Asian language its geographical dislocation from Europe at the skills, cross-cultural expertise, and international edges of Asia. family and social connections. To many Asians, it In a lecture at the Australian National University is precisely the European heritage of Australia that last year, Singapore’s Kishore Mahbubani noted that is most attractive: the rich texture of civil society, “[t]he logic of cultural identity cannot” indefinitely the impersonal workings of the law, the respect “trump hard geopolitical considerations” (see the for – and institutional protection of – human rights, Tête à Tête interview with Kishore Mahbubani in and, to be sure, the transparency and robustness GB’s Fall 2012 issue). In the aggregate, Australia of parliamentary politics (see the Feature article by has successfully navigated the gravitational pull Irvin Studin at p. 12). of a resurgent Asia with the civilizational pull of From the 1950s to the 1980s, the primary focus European cultural and political heritage. Where in of Australia’s engagement with Asia was Southeast the past Australians fought against their geographic Asia: managing the independence of Indonesia, reality in seeking security from Asia in defence, trade the Malayan Emergency, the Malaysian-Indonesian and immigration, they have since the 1990s sought Confrontation, the Indochina wars and refugees, security in Asia through cooperative arrangements. the triumph of communism in Indochina, the conAustralia’s historical and cultural links to Europe solidation of Southeast Asian identity under the and North America enhance the country’s value newly created ASEAN, and the rise to middle income to Asian states, and propinquity to Asia increases prosperity of millions of people in that region. This

Ramesh Thakur is Director of the Centre for Nuclear Non-Proliferation and Disarmament, and Professor in the Crawford School of Public Policy, Australian National University. He is the co-author of The Group of Twenty (G20) and co-editor of The Oxford Handbook of Modern Diplomacy.

IS AUSTRALIA SERIOUS ABOUT ASIA?

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The recent white paper produces a hedging strategy of deepening US defence links, while consolidating commercial relations with Asia and encouraging confidence and trust-building through regional institutions.

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focus changed at the end of the 1980s, and Ross Garnaut’s report, Australia and the Northeast Asian Ascendancy (1989), guided and shaped Australian policy parameters toward Asia-Pacific through the 1990s. By the end of the last century, Australia stood at the crossroads of its history and geography.

Meanwhile, Asia was experiencing its own massive changes. Until the 18th century, China and India were among the world’s great powers.

Europe rode to world dominance through the Industrial Revolution, innovations in transport and communications, and the ideology and practice of imperialism. The eminent Indian economist Deepak Nayyar has shown that from 1870 to 1950, Asia’s per-capita income plummeted from one-half to one-tenth that of the combined per-capita income of Western Europe, North America and Oceania.

Asia’s economic output, industrialization and trade have been on the rebound since colonialism ended, and the process accelerated after the end of the Cold War. China’s and India’s future economic potential is increasingly translating into political clout discounted to the present.

The recent US National Intelligence Council quadrennial report on global trends, Global Trends 2030: Alternative Worlds, maps the world out to 2030. It posits that in a radically transformed world, power will be dispersed among states, and diffused from states to informal networks and individuals (see the Query article by Sven Spengemann at p. 36). The era of general Western ascendance since 1750 – and of specific US ascendance, or Pax Americana, since 1945 – is coming to an end. By 2030, Asia will be bigger in economic size and strategic weight than Europe and the US combined. But the report reminds us that the US will still, by 2030, remain the first among equals, with an unmatched edge in its ability to form coalitions of allies and friends, and to mobilize networks of civil society actors and individuals.

This is the historical and current strategic backdrop against which Australia’s Asia white paper was produced. The paper powerfully maps the magnitude of change across Asia. The staggering scale and pace of change are described as “transformative” for the continent, the world and Australia’s “economy, society and strategic environment.” Asia’s middle class is accurately characterized as expanding in size and growing increasingly wealthy and mobile.

The continent is set to become both the world’s largest producer and consumer of goods and services. In drawing a whole-of-Australia “roadmap” – for governments, business and broader Australian society – the paper points out that Australia has much to offer Asia: world-class institutions, a skilled and multicultural workforce, an open, productive, robust and resilient economy, a cohesive society, and a growing population.

To profit from the transformations in Asia, Austra-

lia is enjoined to become Asia-savvy, build pro-Asian links in all sectors of life – including the creative arts – invest in Asian languages and people-to-people relationships, and promote fairer representation of Asian voices and interests in international organizations. The engagement with Asia is also notably part of domestic policy reforms to enhance Australian productivity and competitiveness, strengthen education and innovation, improve infrastructure, and advance tax and regulatory reforms, as well as broaden and deepen Asia literacy in order to lift average national income from AUD $62,000 today to AUD $73,000 by 2025.

The strategic complexity and regional flashpoints based on territorial disputes, maritime claims and resource competition are acknowledged, as is the risk of conflict arising from accident and miscalculation.This produces essentially a hedging strategy of deepening US defence links in case the security situation turns dramatically worse, while consolidating commercial relations with Asia and encouraging confidence and trust-building through regional institutions in order to try to ensure that it does not.

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he numerous strengths described above notwithstanding, the Gillard white paper has five notable shortcomings. First, Australia’s embrace of Asia is manifestly transactional, not familial: Asia is set to grow economically; this will create a large consumer class; Australia would like the growing middle class to spend its money in Australia and on Australian products. The core question addressed is not: Australia is no longer a European transplant – the oddity on the continent – but an inalienable member of the Asian family, and so how do we give this reality deeper meaning in our daily lives? Instead, the core question is: given that Asia is increasingly prosperous, how can we position ourselves to exploit this prosperity, and indeed to ensure that Australia remains a high-skill, high-wage economy? In other words, the tyranny of distance is to be displaced by profits extracted on the strength of relative proximity.

But economic geography by itself is not enough to deal with the cultural identity conundrum at the heart of Australia’s Asia pivot. And the white paper offers no deep reflections on Australia’s place in Asia-Pacific, nor does it provide a coherent, cohesive and compelling narrative that can anchor Australia intellectually, culturally and emotionally in Asia.

Second, the dominance of trade and economics in structuring the Australia-Asia relationship is reinforced in the white paper by the cold language of business school metrics. (Tellingly, the chair of the task force that wrote the white paper is

as theatres of competition.

Fifth, there is a serious risk of slippage between ambition and delivery. It is disconcerting to read of plans to expand Australia’s diplomatic footprint to parts of Asia against the practical backdrop of a continuing drawdown of resources to the chronically under-funded Australian foreign ministry, and in the recent context of non-negligible defence cuts.

Asia’s destiny will arguably be shaped by China, India and Japan. (Indonesia, at almost 250 million people, also increasingly sees itself as a major Asian and even global player.) China’s billion-plus population and growing strategic power and wealth set the overarching strategic context for regional security and economic relations (see the Feature article by Barthélémy Courmont at p. 42). The other key strategic parameters within which regional countries must calibrate their foreign and security policies include India’s rising power and wealth (shadowing China’s by a dozen years), Japan’s prolonged economic slump and dysfunctional politics, the US promise of a pivot back to Asia, and ASEAN’s position as the only standing regional organization that can facilitate and underwrite security dialogues in Asia-Pacific.

Australia’s key bilateral relations in Asia, not surprisingly, are with the continent’s major powers.

Four propositions are worth recording in this regard.

First, China has no historical, philosophical or literary tradition or discourse of acting as a great power in a system of great powers. Rather, its inheritance is that of the Middle Kingdom, with tributaries accepting its suzerainty and paying tribute in return for not being attacked. Second, the unique feature of the contemporary international transition is the simultaneity of the rise-and-decline dynamic within the China-US dyad on a global level, and in Asia within the China-India dyad. Third, China is a continental power whose maritime interests and activities are ever-growing. Fourth, for China, matters of status and identity trump calculations of economic gain and pain.

Plainly, ‘they’ do not think like ‘us.’ Many Asians may be too busy making money to think of making war. But not all Asians privilege money-making over wounds to national pride. Analysts’ neglect of politics in the belief that geo-economics dictates geopolitics is patently strange considering the clear evidence that political risk has been driving world financial markets for the last several years. It would therefore be foolish to underestimate the power of raw politics to inflame nationalist passions – even to the point of destructive conflagration.

Australia’s relations with China are conditioned by several verities. There has been a massive expansion in two-way trade. China is the main market for the commodities boom that has underpinned Australia’s continued prosperity and economic resilience through the global financial

The core question in the paper is: given that Asia is increasingly prosperous, how can we position ourselves to exploit this prosperity, and indeed to ensure that Australia remains a high-skill, high-wage economy?

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the former head of the Australian Department of the Treasury – something that also supports the aforementioned impression that the pivot to Asia is purely transactional.) There are timetabled and measurable performance indicators across the board. Moreover, entrapment by business school boosterism means that major potential fault lines are ignored and discounted. For understandable political reasons, the risks of economic slowdown are understated. How much longer is the growing divergence between continuing political centralism and expanding economic freedoms sustainable in China? What of Japan’s shrinking and ageing population, and China’s own greying work force?

What of the structural and political obstacles to India’s economic reforms (see the Feature article by Kanti Bajpai at p. 20), or of the unresolved Korean partition? Straight line projections of growth trends are as flawed as they might be unavoidable: India, for example, has an unmatched capacity to look opportunity firmly in the eye, turn around, and walk off resolutely in the opposite direction.

Third, the paper fails to pay full homage to Asian-Australians – to the point of disrespecting them. The Asianization of Australia is evidenced by the profiles of incoming migrants and tourists, with Indians and Chinese increasingly displacing traditional arrivals. The vibrance of contemporary Australia owes something to the presence of Asians in the demographic mix; it would be nice to see some of this reflected in public life. (The contrast between the prominent role of overachieving Asians in Canada and their invisibility in Australian public life is striking.) For a country still struggling to overcome the legacy of a White Australia policy, this is especially unfortunate. That the white paper task force did not include a single Asian-Australian is proof of how far Australia still has to travel before reaching ‘Destination Asia.’

Fourth, Mahbubani argues that ASEAN suffers from benign neglect in the white paper. To be sure, ASEAN has enhanced Australian security by keeping Southeast Asia at peace, keeping Asian powers like China and India at arm’s length, and increasing multilateral webs of cooperation across the territory of the continent. Yet the criticism might be overstated. ASEAN has been ineffectual in addressing the occasional minor skirmishes involving China, Taiwan, Japan, South Korea, Vietnam and the Philippines. The ‘ASEAN way’ has been resistant to ceding authority from member states to regional organizations. On top of conflicting territorial claims, Asian states have a long history of uneasy relationships, and tend to have exceptionally long memories of historical slights and perceived grievances. The smaller countries might see in the regional institutions vehicles for cooperation; the big Asian powers, however, have often treated them

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In the end, Australia will continue to need Asia more than Asia will need Australia.

As an actor of modest means and influence, Australia can but try to mould the contours of great-power economic and security interactions.

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crisis since 2008. The relative US decline under the impact of long-term structural changes, as well as the financial crisis, heightens the impact of the changing balance of importance between China and the US for Australia (and all other Asians). As intimated, Australia is unique in the acuteness of the disconnect between its largest trading partner (China) and its chief security guarantor (the US).

The unease with this disconnect in Canberra and Washington alike is deepened by China’s sustained military modernization and expansion, and also by the accompanying rise in regional tensions.

China is dependent no longer on US power (to offset superior Soviet power), markets, managerial know-how and technology. It has become notably more assertive in its territorial disputes in the East and South China Seas, through which more than half of Australia’s trade passes. An outbreak of armed conflict to Australia’s north would destabilize its strategic backyard, while restrictions on US naval presence and movement in the Seas would degrade the strategic balance in the Pacific – to Australia’s net disadvantage.

Conversely, an Australian policy of containment would become self-fulfilling by provoking China’s hostility. Former Prime Minister Malcolm Fraser and others today actively worry that, under the rhetorical rubric of a strategic pivot to Asia (a pivot that has to date had disproportionate military trappings), and with Australian complicity – if not collusion – Washington is turning China into an enemy that Australia does not need, and that China does not wish to be.

There is more historical depth and texture to the Australia-India bilateral relationship than commonly appreciated, encompassing military forces fighting alongside one another in the two world wars, trade, government and people-to-people relations, including through a shared erstwhile colonial link to Britain. In addition to the persistent Non-Proliferation Treaty (NPT) irritant in general, and the ban on Australian uranium sales to India in particular, problems in the recent past between Australia and India have included on- and off-field controversies in cricket, the safety and welfare of Indian students, and occasional assaults on Australian tourists and missionaries in India. To be sure, the noisy media in both countries can inflame popular passions and prejudices and complicate political relations India’s attraction to Australia has grown in the context of their diplomatic approaches to shared major global problems and challenges – as policy and operational partners in managing the global commons of the high seas (India has a longstanding and prominent role in combatting piracy in the Gulf of Aden and the Strait of Malacca); on climate change; on disaster relief (as in the 2004 tsunami); and in fighting international terrorism and Islamic

fundamentalism. Australia also greatly values India as a strategic counterweight to China; as a market for primary resources and services; and as a growing source of tourists, immigrants and investments. The two countries have a common strategic interest in a stable Indo-Pacific Asia that links them to Indonesia and South Africa around the Indian Ocean rim. Bref, Australia’s abundant natural resources and its word-class service sector, combined with its small population, complement India’s billion-plus population, youthful demographic profile, growing middle class, vibrant private sector, and voracious appetite for energy and infrastructure development.

Institutional memory as a key carrier of grievances within government bureaucracies is an insufficiently understood and theorized phenomenon. In Canada, two generations of officials were soured on India: first, in the Indochina control commissions that India chaired from the mid-1950s to the early 1970s; and second, by India’s nuclear explosion in 1974 – an explosion that betrayed the trust on which rested Canada’s original assistance in the development of India’s nuclear power sector. Similarly, Peter Varghese, Australia’s new foreign secretary, argues that, even if relations have now improved, the history of trade and non-proliferation differences between Canberra and New Delhi “soured a generation of Australian and Indian diplomats toward each other.”

In this sense, the decision, late last year, by the Labor Party to lift the ban on uranium exports to India removes a major impediment to the elevation of the bilateral relationship to a priority level.

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ustralia and Japan, among a small number of fullfledged industrial liberal democracies in Asia-Pacific, are the northern and southern anchors of the Western alliance system.

Within the alliance, both pursue ‘good international citizenship’ in international peacekeeping, human rights, foreign aid and so on. In the last few decades, Australia and Japan have continually reinvigorated and reinterpreted their separate military alliances with the US, and also extended the scope of their own bilateral military relationship.

Like the nascent but growing Australia-India relationship, the strengthening security cooperation between Australia and Japan might be seen by some observers as anti-Chinese. Such a perception would be erroneous. Neither Australia nor Japan has given any indication of interest in a formal military alliance. From Canberra’s perspective, deepening the bilateral security relationship with Tokyo will strengthen overall regional security. Japan could well be an anchor of regional stability and, beyond

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that, provide practical contributions to the promotion of regional peace and prosperity. The alternative – especially after the 2012 general election – is that Japan retreats inward, turns to the hard right, remilitarizes, and perhaps even acquires nuclear weapons. The choice between this scenario and that of like-minded and trusted friends helping Japan to acquire the self-confidence and poise to play a more ‘normal’ role of regional heavyweight should be uncontroversial.

For reasons of geography and demography, Indonesia is no less important to Australia than the big three in Asia.

It is the largest and most populous country in Australia’s immediate neighbourhood, and occupies a strategic position astride its northern approaches. Its GDP has overtaken that of Australia in purchasing power parity dollars, and its population is more than 10 times bigger (see the Nez à Nez debate between Hugh White and David Skilling in GB’s Fall 2012 issue). Links between Australia and Indonesia have been growing in volume and range, encompassing technical, economic, cultural, defence and educational exchanges. After a decade of economic and social volatility and post-Suharto political consolidation, the Indonesia relationship requires careful management, as well as a new governance construct to underpin the breadth of necessary consultation and cooperation. Still, it is not clear that the present Australian government has been as attentive and sensitive to Indonesian concerns and interests as it should be.

Former Australian army chief Peter Leahy argues that Australians have been xenophobic in imagining threats emanating from the sea-air gap to their north. In fact, this is a “land-sea-air-land bridge” (not a “gap”) that needs reinforcing, because “[a] secure northern border would be firmly in Australia’s national interests” – just as a secure southern border would be in Indonesia’s national interests. Indonesia has successfully made the transition from dictatorship to democracy, is engaged in the momentous effort to balance Islam with modernization, has strong growth prospects, and is a leader in ASEAN. It also sees itself playing a bridging role between ASEAN and the rest of the world. (It is the only member of ASEAN to have joined Australia, China, India, Japan and South Korea in the G20.) In addition, according to Varghese, Australia, India and Indonesia are moving to establish a troika within the larger configuration of Indian Ocean countries.

In the end, Australia needs and will continue to need Asia more than Asia will need Australia. The burden of adjustment falls unevenly in the Australia-Asia relationship.

As an actor of modest means and influence, Australia can but try to mould the contours of great-power economic and security interactions – hence the twin emphases in Australian foreign policy on coalition-building and concentration of efforts on areas and issues where Australia can make a difference. Australia is so isolated geographically that it cannot be isolationist in foreign policy. Regional engagement is the solution to this dilemma – the path to salvation from economic marginalization, political loneliness and, ultimately, strategic irrelevance. | GB

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NEZ À NEZ When Beijing Pivots to Lagos PROPOSITION:

Africa should welcome China

RICHARD ROUSSEAU vs WENRAN JIANG

Richard Rousseau est professeur adjoint à l’Azerbaijan Diplomatic Academy à Bakou. Il enseigne la géopolitique de l’Eurasie, l’économie politique internationale, ainsi que la mondialisation.

Wenran Jiang is Associate Professor of Political Science, Mactaggart Research Chair, and former director of the China Institute at the University

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of Alberta.

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Richard Rousseau (contre): Au-delà de l’argumentaire des partisans et des détracteurs de la présence grandissante de la Chine en Afrique, l’impact à long terme des investissements chinois est incertain.

Les contrats de type «matières premières contre infrastructures» sont susceptibles de développer considérablement les économies des pays africains et de transformer pour le mieux la vie de millions de gens sur tout le continent. Toutefois, dans de nombreux pays africains, la Chine est de plus en plus vue, et avec raison, comme une puissance néocoloniale qui agit de connivence avec des gouvernements kleptocrates. Le problème principal est qu’elle porte fort peu d’attention au «développement durable» et social des nations.

En surface, les investissements «matières premières contre infrastructures» sont décrits par les Chinois en termes simples: en échange de l’accès aux ressources africaines, Pékin garantit le financement de grands projets d’infrastructures jugés nécessaires au développement économique.

Les accords d’État à État sont fondés sur quatre principes fondamentaux dans la coopération Chine-Afrique, à savoir les principes de l’égalité, du bénéfice mutuel, du pragmatisme et de l’ouverture. La coopération économique et commerciale entre la Chine et l’Afrique peut, dans certains cas, mener à des situations de profitabilité mutuelle et de gagnant-gagnant, mais les investissements massifs de la Chine ont soulevé des inquiétudes profondes sur les bénéfices réels qu’en retireront les Africains. À moyen et à long terme, les relations Chine-Afrique sont en effet vouées à se détériorer, car le développement des infrastructures est, en réalité, mis au service de la géostratégie et de la géoéconomie chinoises. La présence chinoise sur le continent africain est avant tout motivée, comme ce fut le cas avec les puissances européennes du 19e siècle, par la Realpolitik.

La coopération Chine-Afrique rencontre les trois problèmes suivants. Premièrement, les infrastructures construites par les Chinois sont très souvent de piètre qualité. En juin 2006, le Premier ministre chinois Wen Jiabao procède à

l’ouverture d’un nouvel hôpital à Luanda, Angola, et se fait photographier alors qu’il regarde dans un microscope, tout en étant entouré de médecins en blouses blanches. L’hôpital général, un vaste complexe de 80 mètres carrés, a été construit avec des fonds chinois et symbolise le partenariat croissant entre Pékin et Luanda. Quatre ans plus tard, l’hôpital présentait déjà de sérieux risques d’effondrement. Même chose avec le nouveau siège de l’Union africaine à Addis-Abeba, inauguré en janvier 2012 et salué comme étant un exemple du partenariat Chine-Afrique.

Deuxièmement, les allégations faisant état de violations des normes du travail abondent. Les investissements chinois dans l’exploitation minière sont importants en Afrique. En Zambie, l’exportation de cuivre a généré des revenus de 2,2 milliards de dollars américains en 2010, mais non sans controverse.

Human Rights Watch a signalé que des gestionnaires de sociétés d’État chinoises forçaient des mineurs à travailler entre 12 et 18 heures par jour, 365 jours par année, et dans des conditions dignes du 19e siècle colonialiste. Encore ici, les exemples pourraient être multipliés par cent.

Troisièmement, l’aspect le plus troublant de la politique chinoise en Afrique est la volonté de Pékin de passer des ententes avec certains des dirigeants les plus autoritaires du continent et de la planète, dont la Namibie, l’Angola, l’Érythrée, le Zimbabwe et la République démocratique du Congo (voir Strategic Futures à la page 62).

L’Afrique, comme tous les autres continents, doit émuler l’Amérique du Nord et l’Europe, c’està-dire de développer la démocratie, d’établir la séparation des pouvoirs, de faire germer la méritocratie et les institutions des droits humains, et de lutter contre la corruption (voir l’article In Situ de Matthew Arnold et Matthew LeRiche à la page 6).

Wenran Jiang (in favour): China’s relations with Africa are very complex and multifaceted, with a fast-evolving dynamic that requires careful study and analysis. These relations cannot be categorically described as either beneficial and win-win or

PHOTOGRAPH: THE CANADIAN PRESS / AP / ANDY WONG

make large investments have together fuelled economic growth in many African countries over the past decade.

Consider, also, your negative characterization of the quality of Chinese infrastructural building in Africa. Again, we can find many counterexamples of well-built hospitals, schools, roads, stadiums, airports, train stations, etc. I have personally observed many roads constructed by Chinese companies in the Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC) and other countries. The Central Boulevard in Kinshasa and the road systems that I travelled in South Congo are of excellent quality. It is a well-told story that Chinese and Africans worked side by side to complete some of the roads and infrastructure projects in 2010 to mark the 50th anniversary of the DRC’s independence (see the Tête à Tête interview with Dominic Barton at p. 8).

Of course, there are some projects of low quality, as you note, but these are not the main trend. Most Chinese construction in Africa has enabled the local population for the first time to get access to some of the critical infrastructure that they have badly needed for decades – infrastructure that had never been built under the old colonial powers. Western countries poured into Africa

At the Fifth Ministerial Conference of the Forum on China-Africa Cooperation in Beijing, former Chinese President Hu Jintao pledged African governments US $20 billion in credit over the next three years, and called for more China-Africa coordination in international affairs, July, 2012.

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neocolonial and exploitative, for they depend on the particular part of the African continent at play, the timing and length of relevant interactions, tertiary parties, and so on. In my extensive travels in both China and Africa, and in the case studies that I have conducted on Chinese investment in African countries in recent years, I have found generalizations and stereotypes commonly seen in the Western media (overwhelmingly negative) and in mainland Chinese media (mostly positive) to be not an inaccurate reflection of the reality on the ground.

Take your point about China’s overall presence in Africa as not promoting the continent’s sustainable development. What is the empirical evidence to support such a charge? What I have heard from many African leaders and ordinary people is that China’s engagement with Africa is quite different from that of the old colonial powers – precisely because the Chinese government has emphasized a mutually beneficial, sustainable development model that goes beyond simple resource extraction. We can debate whether Beijing has achieved its goals in this regard, and whether it has done enough to present a different model, but it is commonly acknowledged that Chinese demand for commodities and its willingness to

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hundreds of billions of dollars over the last 50 years to build infrastructure, but the results were evidently not exemplary.

Regarding Chinese treatment of African workers, there are some bad apples, which is inevitable given the fast pace of Chinese investment in many African countries. But these bad examples are neither the majority of cases, nor are they linked exclusively to Chinese investment. China is undergoing major transformations domestically, just as it is building in Africa, such that many of its practices – good and bad – are transplanted to Africa when Chinese companies carry out their work abroad.

Finally, China is not alone, nor is it worse than Western countries when it comes to making bedfellows with some of the oppressive regimes around the world. Other than economic interests involved, Beijing truly believes that the best way to change a country’s development path is not through the export or the imposition of another country’s ideology and political system, but to

À moyen et à long terme, les relations ChineAfrique sont en effet vouées à se détériorer, car le développement des infrastructures est, en réalité, mis au service de la géostratégie chinoise.

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let the country in question go through its own gradual reform process – much like China has over the past three decades.

We therefore need to be careful about excessive generalizations when it comes to Africa-China relations. There are many ‘Chinas’ operating in Africa. But in the net, the Chinese impact on Africa has been positive in recent years.

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RR: Depuis que la Chine fait de gros investissements en Afrique, les indicateurs économiques de plusieurs pays africains montrent des résultats extraordinairement positifs. Cela est particulièrement évident dans les pays qui possèdent des gisements de pétrole et de gaz naturel importants. Le Nigeria est le cas le plus patent. Le pays enregistre des taux de croissance annuels avoisinant les six pour cent (sinon plus) par an depuis le milieu des années 2000.

Certains disent que les peuples d’Afrique ont besoin de partenaires pour faire des investissements qui auront un impact direct sur l’amélioration de leur vie, indépendamment des conditions politiques et sociales. La meilleure façon de répondre aux besoins des Africains consiste à tisser des liens plus étroits avec la Chine car, contrairement à l’aide économique et financière fournie par les États-Unis et l’UE (voir

l’article Query de Zaki Laïdi à la page 26), celle-ci ne s’embarrasse point à inclure dans ses contrats des conditions liées à la bonne gouvernance ou à l’impact des investissements sur l’environnement, ce qui rend les échanges économiques avec la Chine plus attractifs pour bon nombre de pays africains.

Je crois qu’il s’agit d’une grave erreur et qu’elle aura des répercussions à moyen et à long terme.

Le discours sur les besoins criants en nouvelles infrastructures n’est pas nouveau, comme vous le notez. Dans les années 1970 et 1980, les Occidentaux avaient aussi mis l’accent sur les investissements en infrastructures de nombreux pays africains. Quels furent les résultats? Vingt ou 30 ans plus tard, presque tout est à refaire parce que les régimes politiques en place ne se sont pas souciés de l’entretien de ces infrastructures à long terme. Ces régimes, gangrenés par le clientélisme, le népotisme et le crime organisé, pensent davantage à leur survie et à s’en mettre plein les poches qu’à soutenir le développement durable de leurs pays. Ceci ne les a pas empêchés, néanmoins, de développer une certaine expertise dans la gestion de grands projets; des mécanismes de transparence ont été aussi mis en place. Mais ils restent inadéquats, pour la plupart.

La «méthode» chinoise en Afrique fait en sorte que de plus en plus de pays, dont l’Inde, les membres de l’UE ou les États-Unis, laissent tomber l’exigence de la bonne gouvernance afin de s’assurer certaines parts de marché face à la concurrence chinoise. Comme dans les années 1970 et 1980, les conséquences seront vraisemblablement catastrophiques à moyen terme pour le continent africain, lequel risque encore une fois de sombrer dans le chaos et le désordre, sans oublier le pillage de ses ressources.

Beaucoup de spécialistes de l’Afrique s’accordent pour dire qu’il y a un manque de transparence de la part de la Chine sur ses activités en Afrique.

Par exemple, les autorités chinoises n’ont jusqu’à maintenant pas dévoilé les chiffres concernant l’aide versée et le nombre de citoyens chinois établis en Afrique.

Le Sahel, où la Chine investit de plus en plus, est une poudrière, un territoire de trafic et de non-droit depuis de longues années. La corruption endémique qui, malgré de longues années de lutte, continue à miner l’Afrique, doit être contenue. Ce n’est pas une mince affaire. Cependant, la stratégie chinoise n’améliorera pas les choses. Par exemple, la grande majorité des compagnies occidentales présentes en Afrique respectent les normes internationales de l’environnement, ce qui a pour effet de réduire les externalités environnementales.

Pour leur part, les entreprises chinoises n’ont pas adopté à ce jour les normes internationales de l’environnement; elles préfèrent plutôt suivre

les leurs. La logique est simple: plus les normes environnementales demeurent minimales, plus la compétitivité des entreprises chinoises augmente sur le marché africain.

La Chine et la communauté internationale, plus généralement, doivent adopter le concept de «conditionnalité positive», que l’UE a mis en œuvre avec succès vis-à-vis des pays candidats à l’intégration (la Pologne, la Hongrie, les pays baltes, etc.). Cette «méthode de la carotte» consiste à octroyer des moyens financiers supplémentaires à un pays, dans le sens d’une récompense, seulement au vu d’améliorations significatives dans sa gouvernance interne, son système de justice et son respect de la règle du droit. Il faut amener les gouvernements africains à se comporter de façon prévisible pour les entreprises. C’est cette même méthode qui fut utilisée par les pays vainqueurs de la Deuxième Guerre mondiale à l’égard de l’Allemagne. Cette méthode peut donner une impulsion remarquable à la modernisation et au développement réel. S’ouvrir à la deuxième puissance mondiale est certes très avantageux, mais les pays africains et l’Occident doivent sortir de leur aveuglement et absolument faire preuve de discernement et de vigilance.

Take your point about China’s overall presence in Africa as not promoting the continent’s sustainable development. What is the empirical evidence to support such a charge?

that are lacking transparency, but these operations are no less transparent than those of other international operators in the same locations or in similar circumstances. I have also found that most large-scale Chinese companies – especially state-owned enterprises – are doing quite well in terms of transparency, local engagement and long-term sustainability. These companies have strong incentives to get local support for their projects. Many of them have followed the standard that local workers should comprise at least 80 percent of the labour force in Chinese-operated projects – or at least in projects that are past the initial stages (stages at which higher-skilled labour, often Chinese, might be preferred or necessary).

Where Chinese operations do face some criticisms, such as those you level here, broader and more positive praise of China’s role in Africa by African leaders, local communities, and NGOs alike can be cited. As such, when it comes to China’s role in Africa, we need to be more nuanced and far less absolute about a complex, still young, and still evolving relationship. (continued online) To read the rest of this debate, visit the GB website

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WJ: Chinese aid to African countries – now equivalent to, or more than, World Bank aid to the continent – emphasizes economic development, infrastructure building, and improvement of livelihood. This is in contrast with aid from Western countries that puts a greater stress on governance and policy transparency. This difference is a reflection of two philosophically different ways of looking at managing state-to-state relations (see the Feature article by Barthélémy Courmont at p. 42). Beijing believes that economic development will lead to a better life, and that the political systems of a given country must go through eternal evolution, instead of being imposed from the outside.

A more important question regarding Africa-China relations is whether the two approaches – the Sinophilic and Western approaches – should be seen as mutually confronting or contradictory.

Rather than dismissing the other’s approach, as it is often the case today, perhaps we can think outside of the box by combining the two approaches (see the Feature article by Irvin Studin at p. 12): for instance, noting that while Western aid expertise can bring to African countries good governance and transparency, Chinese aid can bring them much-needed economic development assistance. The two types of aid, on this logic, can complement each other. This was something that I personally discussed with Chinese and Canadian diplomats in Kinshasa two years ago. The initial responses to exploring such a positive-sum game were positive.

Even going back to Chinese infrastructure building projects in Africa in general, I have found, through my field research in Africa, that the Chinese approach is different from that of traditional Western countries. Studies have firmly established that old colonial powers focussed on resource extraction in Africa for the sake of extracting resources, with little else that could benefit local communities. Chinese infrastructure building efforts go well beyond resource extraction. They include building hospitals, schools, road and rail systems, ports and airports that are not directly linked to particular Chinese energy or mining projects. These new types of infrastructure projects, despite some isolated quality problems, are largely beneficial to local communities.

It is not quite accurate to so generalize about Chinese operations in Africa as being non-transparent. For there are so many, and so many varieties of, Chinese projects on the continent. I have observed some operations by (mostly) Chinese medium and small enterprises on the continent

at: www.globalbrief.ca

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THE DEFINITION Can the African Union stabilize Africa?

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For now, the answer is: yes it can.

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But the real issue becomes: to what extent? In one sense, the African Union (AU) is unquestionably playing a stabilizing role on the continent. It will likely continue to do so. Of course, things could be better, but imagine Africa without the AU. Would it really be more stable? Probably not.

Nkosazana Dlamini-Zuma, the new chair of the African Union Commission, provides some hope of reform for the organization – such that it may play a more effective role in Africa’s stabilization.

Hopes placed in her abilities to make the institution more effective do not turn merely on the fact that she is a woman, or that she comes from one of the superpower nations of Africa (South Africa). There is a lot more. It is about her track record over the years: as part of the ANC Executive Committee, as South African minister of foreign affairs, as minister of home affairs and, very importantly, as part of the team that drafted the AU’s Constitutive Act.

Can this really be enough? Unfortunately, not enough to make a real difference – that is, not the type of difference that will result in dramatic changes in the AU’s capacity to truly stabilize Africa. We ought not to forget that, at present, the AU functions against all odds. It is a wonder that it is even able to achieve what it does. Representing 54 countries, it has a staff of approximately 1,300 people. Contrast this with the EU, which represents 27 countries and has a staff of about 40,000. It seems unfair to expect much of such an institution – and especially in such a difficult theatre.

We are asking for miracles. This is an organization that has as part of its decision-making structure 54 heads of state.The conditions in many of these member states and the roles that their leaders often play in instability or destabilization is notorious. One individual’s desire to change the AU will evidently not weather the accumulated powers of this mass of leaders.

All of this seems to beg a critical question: how African is the AU? Perhaps a real AU could stabilize Africa, but not one that is reportedly 97 percent-funded by Western nations. How can such an organization really be independent, and take ILLUSTRATION: LISA HANEY

decisions that better the nations and continent that it represents? Some donor nations – sometimes understandably – block and stifle processes of change that may be necessary for stronger democracies on the continent, often in ignorance of the types of painful experiences through which these nations themselves lived in order to ‘develop.’

It could well be that we are looking for stability in the wrong places. It is primarily the role of national governments (and their people) to ensure stability.

Let us not reduce their responsibility in this regard.

It would certainly ease the work of the AU. Mariama Conteh is an independent consultant on peace and security in West Africa, and an adviser to Martti Ahtisaari’s Crisis Management Initiative. The views expressed herein are those of the author alone in her personal capacity.

The promotion of peace, security

Mohamed Kheir is a Human Rights Officer in the Middle East and North Africa Section of the Office of the UN High Commissioner for Human Rights in Geneva, Switzerland.

Yes, it can – with a lot of help from its friends. The AU, since its inception in 2002 in Durban, South Africa, has been moving to distance itself from its predecessor body, the Organization of African Unity (OAU), and to move toward greater member state accountability, rapid response to crisis, economic integration and advancement, and zero tolerance for the old autocratic, coup d’état mindset that once hid behind assertions of national sovereignty. The Constitutive Act of the AU, promulgated in 2000, has as an objective the promotion of “peace, security, and stability on the continent[.]”

Stabilizing Africa would be a multi-dimensional effort, requiring the resolution of inter- and intra-state conflict; the achievement of equitable standards of living to thwart poverty, malnutrition, and disease; the provision of education, training and opportunity to expand the continent’s middle class; the elimination of corrupt and inept governance to ensure accountability and responsive government; the opening up of trade and investment within the continent and on a global scale; and the establishment of security mechanisms to prevent terrorist incursions and destabilization. This is a huge menu.

The AU, since its inception, through the New Partnership for Africa’s Development, the Peace and Security Council, Regional Economic Communities, the African Peer Review Mechanism (APRM), the Economic Social and Cultural Council, the African Commission on Human and Peoples’ Rights, and the African Union Standby Force, has been trying to address these many issues. (continued online) For the rest of the answer from the Wilson Center's

In the wake of the Arab Spring, which started in the African country of Tunisia and quickly spread to neighbouring Egypt and Libya, it is undeniable that stability in Africa, as elsewhere, can no longer be guaranteed by the sheer absence of conflict.

Instead, it must be nurtured with continued systemic and institutional reforms.

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and stability is one of the AU’s declared objectives.

In line with these lofty goals, the AU has been increasingly engaged in peacekeeping efforts in African conflicts.

In Somalia, AU peacekeepers played a commendable role in rooting out Al Shabab from its last stronghold of Kismayo. They have helped to set up medical centres to assist injured civilians in areas liberated from the radical Islamist group. In Darfur, on the other hand, where it played a central role in the international response to the conflict, the AU reaped only limited success (see the In Situ report by Matthew Arnold and Matthew LeRiche at p. 6). The presence of AU peacekeepers on the ground undoubtedly contributed to the protection of internally displaced persons and humanitarian delivery; nonetheless, its peacekeepers were insufficiently effective in protecting civilians, and its diplomats were unable to commit the parties to accept a lasting peace agreement.

In order to build confidence in its own capabilities and enhance its legitimacy among communities affected by violence, the AU must be seen to be diplomatically and militarily effective in those contexts where it chooses to intervene. For this, the international community must do more to support the AU’s peacekeeping efforts not only financially, but also in the form of logistics, equipment and training.

Where the AU appears to be faltering is in accountability for serious crimes and the implementation of transitional justice. Since 2009, the AU has refused to cooperate with the International Criminal Court (ICC) – though individual African states continue to cooperate with the Court – despite the fact that the ICC is currently investigating eight situations in Africa. Meanwhile, the AU’s African Court on Human and Peoples’ Rights has made little or no progress in delivering justice. Failure to deliver justice, to compensate victimized communities, and to address the humanitarian needs in

areas ravaged by violence will perpetuate conflict in countries and regions on the continent that have been intermittently at war since their independence.

The AU will need to devise programmes aimed at accelerating the pace of democratic reforms among its member states. In the wake of the Arab Spring, which started in the African country of Tunisia and quickly spread to neighbouring Egypt and Libya, it is undeniable that stability in Africa, as elsewhere, can no longer be guaranteed by the sheer absence of conflict. Instead, it must instead be nurtured with continued systemic and institutional reforms (see the Feature article by James M. Dorsey at p. 30).

Increasing citizen participation in the form of free elections and free expression, consolidating the rule of law, and protecting the independence of judicial institutions are but some of the crucial advances that the AU must seek in order to signal its seriousness about promoting stability on the continent.

Steve McDonald, visit: www.globalbrief.ca

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STRATEGIC FUTURES “In 2020, the Democratic Republic of the Congo...

the DRC’s geographical centrality on the continent.

Of course, this same geographical centrality means that stabilizing the DRC is key to the future peace and prosperity of the rest of the continent.

The road ahead is long and rugged. But with peace, competent leaders, investment in infrastructure and regional integration, the DRC will put itself on a path to prosperity by 2020. An alternative path is too horrible to contemplate.”

Calestous Juma is Professor of the Practice of International Development at the John F. Kennedy School of Government at

…will be on a new path of economic

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A successful peace process would be based on shared economic development and investment for regional stakeholders – including infrastructure development and legitimate, conflict-free resource extraction.

It would be far more inclusive than past regional processes.

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renewal, having endured decades of war and centuries of instability. The road to such a future must commence now through the containment of armed conflict, followed by the election of competent leaders who can focus on laying the foundations for economic growth. The DRC epitomizes Africa’s centuries of suffering. Violence, going back to the brutal Belgian colonial rule, continues to haunt the country. Internecine wars have claimed more than 5.5 million lives in the last decade alone.

The most immediate task for the DRC is to bring peace to the country – especially in the more troubled eastern part of the country. It is in the interest of neighbouring countries working through the relevant regional bodies, as well as the African Union (AU) (see Definition at p. 60) and the UN, to help to bring peace to the region. Little will happen without robust regional and international efforts to press for peace. Peace in the DRC should pave the way for free and fair elections in 2016. The next government should have legitimacy at the national, regional and international levels. But equally important is leadership that has the competence and acumen to help the DRC to transition from peace to nation-building and development. A more technocratic and accountable leadership that can address critical issues related to the management of the country’s vast natural resources is a must.

The DRC is an ethnically diverse country, and a variety of compromises would need to be made.

The post-election era will require economic construction. Much of this will start with building essential infrastructure needed for growth – especially in transportation, energy and in telecommunications. The World Bank estimates the DRC’s infrastructure needs at over US $5 billion a year over the next decade. After all, the country is the size of Western Europe, but has only 2,800 kilometres of all-weather paved roads running through it. This is about the same as Rwanda’s networks of roads – even if Rwanda is some 90 times smaller than the DRC. The DRC also has extensive potential navigable waterways that need to be developed. And massive investment in air transportation infrastructure could make the country a hub for the rest of Africa, given

Harvard University, co-chair of the African Union’s High-Level Panel on Science, Technology and Innovation, and the author of The New Harvest: Agricultural Innovation in Africa.

…will still have many major problems that are not fully resolved or fixed. However, with the right mix of initiatives that address fundamental economic and governance issues, positive scenarios are possible. If led by responsible Congolese reformers in both government and civil society, and creatively supported by regional and international actors, the DRC could, by 2020, be in the midst of a hopeful transition period.

A key turning point could come this year if a broad and comprehensive peace process to address the root causes of crisis in eastern Congo replaces the kind of stop-gap power-sharing arrangements that have perpetuated cycles of conflict in the region since the early 1990s. As this process moves beyond a focus on short-term security and stability, a comprehensive regional peace agreement could take shape and be finalized by 2014. A successful peace process would be based on shared economic development and investment for regional stakeholders – including infrastructure development and legitimate, conflict-free resource extraction.

It would be far more inclusive than past regional processes – creating an intra-Congolese dialogue to address long-standing flash points like decentralization, protection of minorities, land tenure, refugees and electoral reform.

Under the regional peace accord, full-scale conflict in eastern Congo will come to an end by 2020, regional politics will be demilitarized, and the international community, led by the UN, will carry out a reform and reconstruction initiative. That initiative will assist in the building of institutions in the east, and cement a political framework that provides more autonomy to local lawmakers and leaders. After 2020, the plan is for that political framework to be codified into law in Kinshasa, and used as a model for democratic transformation and institution building throughout the country.

In the east, under this scenario, dividends from the past six years of peace in North and South Kivu provinces are taking shape as infrastructure development, justice sector reform, and security

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underway, and is born of a recognition that both Congolese and international actors are eager to break the cycle of violence that has so long plagued a country so rich in potential.”

John C. Bradshaw is Executive Director of the Enough Project.

… could have one of the following two futures. Trusting that human societies will ultimately move in directions that reflect their own interests, stock is placed in the second option. The first future is one that has been much bandied about in the press of late. It reflects international pessimism about whether the DRC can move out of its present condition as a ‘failed state,’ site of ethno-nationalist conflicts, and of lengthy, unproductive UN peace missions, without some external intervention that divides it into smaller, more governable states. The idea is that these mini-states would be composed of groups that share stronger primordial interests, or that are more likely to govern based on an ideal of the common good and the recognition of human rights and the rule of law. (continued online) For the rest of Georgetown University Professor

Congo government policemen hold back civilians gathered at an M23 rally in Goma after the rebel group seized the North Kivu provincial capital, November 2012.

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sector reform are becoming institutionalized in the provincial capitals of Goma and Bukavu. Significant progress in livelihood development and economic diversification will also be apparent in the eastern provinces. This will take place under a framework for regional economic integration in the extraction and processing of minerals, oil, gas, timber and other natural resources – a framework also created by the 2014 comprehensive regional peace accord. The centrepiece of this regional economic integration model will be a legitimate, conflict-free mineral supply chain that links eastern Congo’s vast mineral wealth with processing, transport and export businesses in neighbouring countries and throughout the region. Yet, despite all of this progress in the minerals sector, smuggling continues – especially in gold – and efforts continue to completely stamp out armed groups funding themselves through conflict minerals. Mines across eastern Congo are now becoming industrialized, which is an improvement on illegal exploitation – although this has, to be sure, promoted some corruption.

While this is an admittedly optimistic scenario that faces numerous obstacles to becoming reality, it is premissed on initiatives that are already

Gwendolyn Mikell's answer, visit: www.globalbrief.ca

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EPIGRAM

On Humanity’s Moats & Bridges Between identity and difference, the impulse for identity has proven more destructive BY DOUGLAS GLOVER

T Douglas Glover is a Governor-General’s Award-winning novelist and short story writer. His most recent book is a collection of essays, Attack of

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the Copula Spiders.

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wo principles rule in human affairs: identity and difference. We yearn for home, comfort and familiarity (self, family, tribe, city, country, language, culture), and yet we are always engaging with difference (through simple curiosity – one of the most endearing human traits – or need, or love, which is the aesthetic attraction). This sets up a paradoxical oscillation between paranoia (excessive fear of pollution coming from outside) and schizophrenia (an inability to distinguish self from other; all messages are the same).

Moats and bridges are perhaps unhappy metaphors for thinking about inter-state relations – except that, of course, that is the way in which we tend to think of them. We are always digging moats, and simultaneously building bridges to get over them. This begs the question: why dig the moat in the first place?

It is indeed strange that in an age in which the concept of the individual as a philosophical entity dwindles to a spectral absence, we find ourselves – as states – in paroxysmal identity crises. We deploy fences, security cameras, drones, radar and digital monitoring to guard against the influx of the alien – that is, to guard against improperly processed immigration. This is a complete turnabout for, say, America, which has long prided itself on accepting the poor and outcast of Europe, along with manual labourers from China and slaves from Africa.

These moats, excavated between country and country, between first world and third, between opposing ideologies, between Israeli and Palestinian, between Asian and Westerner, offer a nostalgic fantasy of security and purity prefigured in the Old Testament, where the Hebrews conquer the Promised Land and immediately begin to obsess about ritual difference and contamination by followers of Baal in their midst. We are mired, it seems, in an ancient and antiquated concept of identity that is fearful, suspicious and even, yes, paranoid – one that prioritizes protection (moats) from foreign contagion (illegal immigrants, refugees, ambiguous foreign workers, terrorists) over discovery, translation and exchange.

To be sure, we do not mind the exchange of currency, real or virtual, as long the balance of payments tends to our advantage (and, again, the balance of payments idea reprises an old-style essentialism or its parody – to wit, we have to preserve our vital essences). But currency is phantasmal: we do not even see it crossing the border, flowing like the whispering of an underground river through electronic ether. Even in war, commerce is often blind to sides.

Think of the way in which many oral cultures once took great pains to categorize identity – a family, clan, tribe – while also invoking the incest ban and embracing exogamy (along with the prosecution of war as a means for acquiring prisoners for adoption).

The incest taboo is one of the most peculiar and paradoxical of human ideas. The notion that too much sameness is a bad thing (who among the first proto-humans thought this up?) is so peculiar and basic that the great French anthropologist Claude Lévi-Strauss posited it as the institutional foundation of culture itself. Which is to say, once again, that all human relations are inflected with an interlocking system of paranoid and schizophrenic impulses in tension with one another. We call this system civilization (Freud was very dubious).

Of the two impulses, perhaps the yearning for identity is historically the most destructive. Many notable crimes against humanity were committed in our last century in the name of racial or ideological purity. All of this is, again, prefigured in the Old Testament – a textbook of cultural purity and paranoia warring against the opposite human impulse to embrace difference mostly through love; hence the constant hectoring against marrying foreign women (Jezebels) who might lead one to embrace cultural syncretism.

Yearning for difference is the root of comedy.

Mixing with the other promotes confusion, love, misunderstanding, heartache, trade, hybrid-vigour, and new ideas. Travel and translation (bridges) are the operative sub-metaphors. Alexander the Great and Genghis Khan were notable East-West tourists creating much cultural interchange intermixed with the usual collateral damage. Nowadays, the East-West axis builds bridges in the form of package tours, but more importantly through investment and trade:Toyota builds cars in Tennessee; Apple builds iPads in China.

Despite the use of Internet blocking techniques and no-fly lists, ideas mostly whiz back and forth at the speed of light. When we think in terms of money and ideas, the moats all but disappear, and the metaphor of the bridge gives way to the idea of diffusion vectors, pipes, tubes and fields. At the same time, the moat-building industry (arms, security and surveillance, border fences, fifth-generation fighters, and carrier fleets) expands apace – both aspects growing on a scale that dwarfs the individual human understanding. We seem, therefore, to be locked on contradictory trajectories – reaching toward, perhaps, some cataclysmic and demoralizing climax. | GB