GLOBAL BRIEF #2

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

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FALL 2009

C A NADIAN ST RAT E GIC POWER I RVIN ST UDI N I R A NIAN DIASPORA SA M S. SHOAMA NESH

THE LAST

T H E GENE R ALIST AS L EAD ER

DROP OF OIL

J O H N W. M c ARTHUR R EIN VENT ING

G W Y N N E DY E R

B ISMAR C K MOSHE A. MILE VSKY C HINA'S AR TISTS D I ANA F U R USSIAN IDEOCR ACY

NEZ À NEZ

L E ONID KOSALS T H E HAIT IAN STRE ET C A R O LINE K H E B OUSSARIAN E PIG RAM G E O R GE E L L IOTT C L A RKE

LE QUÉBEC, LE CANADA ET LES AFFAIRES ÉTRANGÈRES BERNARD LANDRY VS NORMAN SPECTOR

Strategy, Culture and Chutzpah in a Complex World

JAMES ORBINSKI PRECONDITIONS FOR LEADERSHIP O N S T R AT E G I C C U LT U R E S FA R E E D Z A K A R I A

LOUISE ARBOUR L E A D E R S A N D T H E I R M E T T L E

AFGHAN FUTURES CHRISTOPHER

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EDITOR’S BRIEF

GB is Back And the world remains a fascinating place

Photograph: jim allen

(great men and women) in our second Tête à Tête.

In our Features section, past French foreign minister Hubert Védrine assesses the prospects for serious strategic leadership, going forward, from the EU (à la 27). Christopher Alexander, former UN Deputy Special Representative of the Secretary-General in Kabul, writes about Afghanistan’s complicated possible futures. One-time international President of Médecins Sans Frontières James Orbinski meditates directly on our theme, ‘who’s to lead?’ Sam Sasan Shoamanesh, associate editor and GB co-founder, analyzes Iran’s dynamic global diaspora. And John W. McArthur, CEO of Millennium Promise, makes the case for the ‘deep’ and ‘flexible’ generalist as the ideal-type for the leaders of the 21st century. In Situ reports come to us from Diana Fu, just outside Beijing, writing about the Chinese art scene in the context of the Great Recession. Leonid Kosals reports from Moscow on Russia’s emerging ‘ideocratic’ state. And Caroline Kheboussarian, writing from Port-au-Prince, describes the vivid and paradoxical streets of Haiti’s capital. Schulich School of Business professor Moshe A. Milevsky looks for future ‘Bismarcks’ (in the pensions game) in our first Query, while I explore the strange question of Canadian strategic power in the second Query. Former Québec premier Bernard Landry and past Canadian prime ministerial chief of staff Norman Spector go Nez à Nez over the due division of powers and responsibilities in foreign affairs between Ottawa and Quebec City. GB asks “Who is the World’s Most Strategic Leader?” in The Definition, and then, in Strategic Futures, shifts to the question of where the cars of the next 10 years will be made. Virtuoso poet George Elliott Clarke closes things off in style for this issue in Epigram.

Special thanks to Sam Sasan Shoamanesh (my brother in arms), Louis Fishauf, Fernando Zerillo, Steve Bruno and the entire GB team for a job well done, and to Kenneth McRoberts, Alex Himelfarb, Brian Desrosiers-Tam, David Dewitt, Fred Lazar, Tom Quiggin and all of GB’s supporters the world over.

Enjoy your Brief. | GB

Irvin Studin Editor-in-Chief & Publisher

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So US President Obama has the Nobel. But that, almost certainly, is prospect – and it still begs the central question that we are asking in this issue of Global Brief: Who’s to Lead? And what’s to be done?

Indeed. All this heady talk of leadership presumes that there are great problems to be solved in this world of ours. Is there any greater tautology in political life? Problems abound as ever before: a nuclear North Korea and an (almost?) nuclear Iran; an imploding Pakistan and an inscrutable Afghanistan; a broken Iraq; an increasingly difficult-to-defend Israel no closer to détente with its neighbours; a nearly constitutionalized Europe still in search of strategic identity; a Russia obsessed with its Russianness; multiethnic federations – Canada among them – struggling to bolster the ‘centre’ against mounting centrifugal forces; inexorable climate change, international economic uncertainty, rambunctious migrations and multiple species of dire want – want for food, water, energy and, yes, dignity. The state is once again the prime mover in global affairs (let there be no doubt), but older, more classical forces like religion, nationalism and tribalism are clearly back in play. Despite the best intentions of man, there is still no real ‘global community’ – only the raw complexity of a world that must be managed (at best) and tamed (at worst).

If Obama has begun to move the global narrative – if ever so slightly – then the world still nervously awaits the content and strategy of this new century’s major leaders. Who are they? And what will they do to make their mark? If the governing trait of our age is said complexity, then the leadership – heads of state or government, captains of enterprise, academic supremos, governments and groups of governments, sophisticated movements, and indeed countless other types of human organization, many of these yet to be devised – must understand this complexity, be comfortable in its midst and negotiate it with aplomb. Winning, or even survival, will be a function of two key variables: luck and culture (strategic culture).

A world-beating roster once again joins GB to tell us how it is. In the One Pager, best-selling writer and journalist Gwynne Dyer predicts a collapse of oil and the corresponding descent of the Middle East into strategic irrelevance. American ‘geocrat’ Fareed Zakaria waxes on strategic culture in our first Tête à Tête. Former UN top woman, Canadian jurist and current President and CEO of the International Crisis Group Louise Arbour talks brute leadership

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Editor-in-Chief & PUBLISHER Irvin Studin

D E PA R T M E N T S

Associate Editor & special advisEr

Sam Sasan Shoamanesh Art Direction Louis Fishauf Design Assistant Editors

Michael Barutciski, Marie Lavoie junior Editors Michelle Collins,

EDITOR’S BRIEF . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 1 ONE PAGER Gwynne Dyer | The End of Global Oil Demand. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 5

Alice Gheorghiu, Marie-Anitha Jaotody, Mary Elizabeth Simovic Special projects Brian Desrosiers-Tam web manager Aladin Alaily Web Design Dolce Publishing PriNting RJM Print Group

IN SITU Diana Fu | Chinese Art and the Financial Crisis . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 6 Leonid Kosals | Russia’s New Ideocratic State. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 27 Caroline Kheboussarian | Elections and the Haitian Street. . . . . . . 45

Advisory Council

Kenneth McRoberts (Chair),

tÊte À tÊte

André Beaulieu, Tim Coates, David Dewitt,

Fareed Zakaria | On States, Strategy and Strategic States . . . . . . . 12

Paul Evans, Drew Fagan, Dan Fata, Margaret, MacMillan, Maria Panezi, Tom Quiggin Mailing Address Global Brief Magazine Glendon Hall, Room 301 Glendon Campus, York University 2275 Bayview Avenue Toronto, ON M4N 3M6, Canada Tel: 416-736-2100 ext. 88253 Fax: 416-487-6786 General Enquiries, Feedback & Suggestions globalbrief@glendon.yorku.ca

Louise Arbour | On Great Men and Women. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 57 QUERY Irvin Studin | What About Canadian Power? . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 17 Moshe A. Milevsky | Are There Any Bismarcks in the House? . . . . 36 nez À nez Bernard Landry vs. Norman Spector Le Québec, Ottawa et le monde : qui mène ?. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 52

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PM Agreement No. 41914044 ISSN: 1920-6909

THE DEFINITION “The most strategic leader in the world today is...”. . . . . . . . . . . . 60 strategic futures « Ma prochaine voiture sera produite... » . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 62 epigram George Elliott Clarke | Artists and Revolution. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 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.

www.glendon.yorku.ca/gspia

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CONTENTS

F EATUR ES

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L’europe DE 2020: leader stratégique? Sur les perspectives d’une Europe «hyper-puissante» dans ce nouveau siècle PAR Hubert Védrine

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AFGHAN FUTURES Peering, head above the parapet, into Afghanistan’s

next 10 years BY christopher alexander

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who’s to lead? A strategic meditation on the new century’s troubles and what’s to be done BY JAMES orbinski

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IRANian diaspora Iran is a riddle, wrapped in a mystery, inside an enigma. But what of its diaspora? by Sam Sasan Shoamanesh

The great generalists On technical specialists and the non-technicians who must master them BY john w. mcarthur

cover illustration: BRAD YEO

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THIS IS NOT BUSINESS AS USUAL.

This is the ground-breaking, integrated and global approach to business from McGill University’s Desautels Faculty of Management. Our curriculum dissolves barriers between disciplines, giving you the expertise to work across managerial boundaries anywhere in the world. We also bring together the world’s brightest students, global industry leaders and renowned professors.

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Besides, who else has two or more professors of diverse disciplines co-teaching in one class?

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This is integrated management for a complex world. www.mcgill.ca/desautels/mba www.mcgill.ca/desautels/executive

Global Oil Demand by 2015 On oil’s collapse and the Middle East’s plunge into irrelevance – maybe BY Gwynne Dyer If the Middle East did not sit on half of the world’s remaining oil reserves, most of us would take no more interest in its local politics and wars than we do in Central Africa’s travails. So if the demand for oil collapses, we will stop caring much about the Middle East – and demand is quite likely to collapse.

cally, because most of these countries import much of the oil they burn, and cutting oil imports reduces both foreign exchange costs and political vulnerability.

Consider, for example, what is already happening in the US, even without the spur of a post-Kyoto deal. The average fuel efficiency of US motor vehicles has virtually stagnated since 1990: it is currently 21.4 miles per gallon. Three years ago, however, California passed legislation demanding a 30 percent cut in the emissions of new vehicles by 2016, which translates in terms of fuel efficiency to about 36 mpg.

This legislation was then blocked by the Bush administration, which refused to let California exceed the much laxer ‘national standards’ set by the Clean Air Act. President Obama has already requested that the US Environmental Protection Agency review (i.e., revoke) that decision. In 16 other states – accounting for about half of all US cars and SUVs – laws similar to California’s have passed or are pending.

Obama has not changed the existing federal target, which mandates an average fuel efficiency of 35 mpg only by 2020. However, by letting so many large states set an earlier deadline, he effectively imposes it on the entire US automobile industry – without having to fight a bill through Congress.

If the US also offers tax credits for drivers who scrap ‘gas-guzzling’ older cars, this strategy could cut US oil consumption by as much as 25 percent in 10 years. The US currently imports about half the oil it burns, and the 25 percent savings would come right off the top of these imports, which would mean almost a halving of total US oil imports.

There is plenty of room for further improvement: China’s current requirement is 43 mpg, and the EU’s target is 47 mpg by 2012. So even with a continuing expansion of car ownership in the BRICs, fuel efficiency improvements alone could produce a fall in oil demand of as much as two percent a year by the mid-teens of this century.

The impact on oil prices would be dramatic, and major oil exporters would be hit by the double whammy of falling price and declining demand. The Holy Grail of ‘energy independence’ would be within reach for many countries, and the importance of the Middle East in world affairs would plummet. It may not happen – but it certainly could. | GB

Gwynne Dyer is a Canadian-born, London-based, independent journalist. His self-syndicated, twice-weekly column appears in some 175 newspapers in 45 countries.

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This is not the orthodox wisdom. As the BRICs (Brazil, Russia, India and China) move toward mass car ownership, their demand for oil is ramping up, while in the older industrial countries it remains fairly constant. The usual forecast, therefore, is for ever-fiercer competition for a static or even slowly declining supply of oil. But what if the demand for oil started falling?

The missing factor in the conventional calculations is the likely response of major oil consumers to the threat of climate change. The shift in public opinion over the past two years has been dramatic, and the major states now accept that strong measures are needed to avoid runaway global warming. At the G8 summit in Italy in July, the 18 biggest emitters of greenhouse gases agreed that the rise in average global temperature must never be allowed to exceed two degrees Celsius.

They wish the end, but they have not yet willed the means. Some sort of post-Kyoto deal on cutting greenhouse gas emissions will emerge from the current negotiating process

by December, but it certainly is not going to deliver 50 percent cuts in global emissions by 2050, let alone by 2030 (which is probably the right target). Nevertheless, cuts will be mandated, and they will be much deeper than before.

Logically, the brunt of such cuts should be borne by coal – the most polluting fossil fuel by far. In practice, this will not happen, because the replacement cycle for large power plants – coal, gas or nuclear – is around 40 years long. National automobile fleets, by contrast, turn over in as little as 10 years – and long before one commits oneself to major technological shifts like fuel cells, one can already get big incremental emissions cuts simply by improving fuel efficiency.

One of the first big impacts of a new international deal on climate change (see the Landry-Spector Nez à Nez at page 52), therefore, will be a strong focus on improving fuel efficiency in all the big car-owning countries. It will be especially attractive politi-

ONE PAGER

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IN SITU

Chinese Art and the Financial Crisis The international financial crisis has China’s bohemian class rethinking not the state, but their craft DIANA FU reports from Xiaopu village, just outside Beijing

Diana Fu is a Doctoral Candidate in Politics and a Rhodes Scholar at the University of Oxford.

She is currently researching the development of civil society

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in China.

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In the midst of farmlands, a cluster of low-lying concrete buildings breaks the otherwise rural landscape. The dust kicks up as a truck carrying livestock rumbles by one such concrete structure – a local contemporary art museum. Xiaopu village is one of several artists’ villages in the East suburb of Beijing that boasts a rich cultural industry, a development priority of the local government. For local farmers, the land is sustenance. For artists, the village is a creative refuge from the chaos of the cities. They may be itinerant painters who moved from the cities to the countryside, but just like rural-urban migrants, Chinese migrant artists are feeling the weight of the global financial crisis. However, Shin, a 26 year-old migrant artist from Jiangsu Province, sees light accompanying darkness: “The credit crunch is a kind of blessing; it rids the village of artists who came to Beijing to get rich quick in the Chinese art market bubble. Those who care about art for art’s sake stayed.” She has a point. On the macro level, the economy is driving up the US misery index, but for idealists, the credit collapse may spur some collective moral reflection over personal and societal values.

Shin moved to the artists’ village at a time when top Chinese contemporary art pieces were auctioning at higher prices than Warhol’s Marilyns. Now, Shin is scrambling. Turning down a position as arts editor for a Beijing magazine, Shin gritted her teeth, took up a part-time job at the local gallery, and picked up her paint brush again. She is one among a minority of art students who rejected further cooptation into state institutions, such as the Central Academy of Fine Arts. Upon graduation, she moved with her artist boyfriend to Xiaopu, where she has a chance to mingle with Chinese contemporary art giants like Gao Minlei.

Her village is a typical rural village, except that artists outnumber farmers. Side by side, these two types of economic migrants struggle to make it through the tight days. The first sign of the credit crunch in the village was vacancy posters for farmers’ flats, which are usually rented to artists at a hiked rate. Then, just before the Lunar New Year, an estimated 30 percent of the village’s young artists packed up and went home to teach or to study for entrance exams into state art institutions. Shin and her boyfriend were able to stay because of a

combination of family support and part-time jobs.

They settled into a bigger studio because of rent drops, but tightened their food budget.

The village was hit hard by the crisis, and Shin laments the dwindling number of buyers and art collectors. But she remains adamant about not pandering to the state, as others have done.

According to her, artists affiliated with state institutions can make it through the rough times because the state regularly commissions artwork that sings the praises of the motherland. In fact, officials from the Ministry of Culture and the Ministry of Propaganda make regular rounds in artists’ villages and their galleries to purchase paintings. The Beijing government recently named the villages “a major site of cultural production.”

Translation: the state is on a drive to remake Beijing into a world cultural centre. Untethered economic growth may have slowed, but Beijing’s ambition to transform itself into a cultural

centre on par with Paris has not been dampened.

There is just one slight problem: how to encourage freedom of expression, while ensuring that artists do not step out of line and start caricaturing the Communist Party? This is a sensitive issue, but according to Shin, many artists of her generation simply stay out of politics. She does not transgress, nor does she cater to the state by painting the ‘harmonious’ Chinese nation. She wants a space

for Chinese contemporary art in May 2008, selling for US $9,703,490. Middle: Discussing the Divine Comedy with Dante, a 2006 painting by artists Dudu, Li Tiezi, and Zhang An has become a viral internet hit. Above: Zhang Xiaogang’s The Big Family No. 3 was sold for over US $6 million at Sotheby’s Hong Kong, a world record for the artist at auction. paintings: courtesy of chinesecontemporaryart.COM / SOtheby’s

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Top: Zeng Fanzhi’s Mask Series 1996 No. 6 set a record

of her own, independent of the state. And she is paying the price. Two years after giving up city life, she has not sold a single painting. But she is not disillusioned. She is sustained by the belief that to become a true artist, one must labour hard, just like peasants till their land, hoping for a plentiful harvest. Shin’s harvest will come when her piece is picked up by a foreign collector, which will instantaneously make her a baofahu (a colloquial term literally translated as ‘explosive wealth’). But until then, the road is dusty and winds unpredictably.

For the moment, Shin is concentrating on her craft, trying hard to distinguish herself from artists who bid for their own paintings in order drive up the market price. ‘The economic bust has burst some of those bubbles and “purified” art,’ she says. The Chinese character for crisis (weiji) captures this dualistic thinking: Wei (danger) combined with ji (opportunity) is not an oxymoron; it reflects the ying and yang of life itself. | GB

Beijing’s ambition to transform itself into a cultural centre on par with Paris has not been dampened.

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Hubert Védrine, ancien ministre français des affaires étrangères, préside l’Institut François Mitterand depuis 2003.

Sur les perspectives d’une Europe «hyper-puissante» dans ce nouveau siècle PAR Hubert Védrine

L’Europe de 2O2O leader stratégique?

a question du leadership européen dans les 10 à 15 prochaines années se décompose en deux questions distinctes : quelle institution ou quel pays exercera le leadership stratégique au sein de l’UE ? Est-ce que l’UE, en tant que telle, exercera un jour un leadership stratégique en ce monde ?

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1) Il y a eu à partir des années 50 en Europe un important courant de

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pensée fédéraliste, influent chez les élites, qui voyait l’Europe engagée dans un processus téléologique de création d’États-Unis d’Europe un peu à l’imitation des États-Unis d’Amérique. C’est ce courant qui affirmait « l’Europe c’est la paix », alors que chronologiquement c’est plutôt l’inverse : la construction européenne a profité de la paix imposée en Europe à partir de 1945, garantie ensuite par la dissuasion nucléaire. Ces fédéralistes ne voyaient d’avenir à l’Europe que dans le dépassement voire la négation de ses nations, assimilées au nationalisme et à la guerre. En fait, il y a toujours eu une différence fondamentale entre la constitution des États-Unis d’Amérique et la construction européenne. Le président George Washington soulignait en 1798 que la force des États-Unis était que tous les Américains étaient les mêmes : même langue, même religion, même origine, même mode de vie. Ce n’est évidemment pas le cas des Européens. On ne peut pas comparer l’unification des premiers Américains déjà homogènes, quoiqu’ils soient répartis dans 13 états fédérés, avec celles d’une trentaine de nations européennes séculaires très

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ILLUSTRATION: NOAH WOODS

différentes et longtemps antagonistes. Ce mythe a eu la vie dure parce qu’il était beau et mobilisateur.

Mais il s’appliquait à l’unification des Allemands par Bismarck ou à celle des Italiens par Cavour, pas à celle des Européens en général. A un moment donné, un fossé entre élites et populations est apparu. Les Européens modernes apprécient énormément de vivre en paix et en sécurité, dans la prospérité et la liberté, et de se voir garantis des droits de plus en plus nombreux et nouveaux.

Ils n’imaginent plus vivre autrement. Mais le fait identitaire national résiste aux traités, aux discours, aux illusions et aux théories post nationales. Les Européens se sentent Européens en plus d’être

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Dans chaque pays de l’Europe, l’intérêt pour les pays voisins (culture, langue, vie politique, géographie) est faible, beaucoup plus faible que pour le reste du monde en dehors de l’Europe.

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Français, Allemands, Espagnols, etc., une identité ne se substituant pas à l’autre. D’où il découle que l’Europe gardera la forme originale qu’elle a atteinte, celle d’une « confédération » (les 27) ou d’une « fédération » (la zone euro) d’états nations.

La négociation institutionnelle poursuivie de façon quasi ininterrompue depuis près de vingt ans pour élaborer les traités d’Acte unique, de Maastricht, d’Amsterdam, de Nice, le Traité Constitutionnel, le Traité de Lisbonne, confirme ce fait. Chaque traité, laborieusement négocié, a comporté des améliorations, mais pas de révolution. Il y a toujours trois pouvoirs principaux qui s’équilibrent à quelques nuances près : le Conseil, encore plus le Parlement européen et la Commission, mais au gré des traités ce sont plutôt le Conseil et le Parlement qui ont été renforcés. Il est clair en 2009 que la Commission ne deviendra pas le gouvernement fédéral et supranational de l’Europe qu’elle pensait préfigurer, même grâce à des alliances circonstancielles avec le Parlement et la connivence de la Cour de Justice.

Dans le traité de Lisbonne, le pouvoir des parlements nationaux est même renforcé. Le plus probable est donc la perpétuation de la situation institutionnelle actuelle, sans leadership clair, sauf par éclipses lorsque le dirigeant d’un pays fort exerce énergiquement la présidence semestrielle : présidences Merkel en 2007 et Sarkozy en 2008 et cela même dans le cadre du traité de Nice.

On peut néanmoins imaginer d’autres hypothèses.

Le saut fédéraliste. On entend souvent dans les milieux fédéralistes ou européistes, chez les militants

européens en général : « l’opinion n’est pas encore prête (au passage à un vrai fédéralisme). Ce sera le fait d’une nouvelle génération, d’un futur traité, etc... ».

L’analyse des tendances historiques ne confirme pas cette espérance. Les jeunes générations sont européennes comme une évidence, pas par mystique ou ferveur. Dans chaque pays de l’Europe, l’intérêt pour les pays voisins (culture, langue, vie politique, géographie) est faible, beaucoup plus faible que pour le reste du monde en dehors de l’Europe : intérêt passionné pour l’élection présidentielle américaine, « obamania », intérêt inquiet pour la Russie, la Chine, le monde arabo-musulman, intérêt compassionnel pour l’Afrique. Au référendum de 2005 sur le traité « constitutionnel » les électeurs français de moins de 30 ans ont voté « non » en plus grand nombre que les plus de 60 ans.

A l’inverse, il y aurait l’hypothèse du leadership d’un des grands pays. Le leadership de la construction européenne a longtemps été français, puis franco-allemand. Qu’en est-il maintenant ? Même si l’Allemagne est pour le moment le pays le plus peuplé, même si le traité de Lisbonne renforce dans le calcul des votes la prise en compte de la démographie (ce qu’Helmut Kohl n’avait pas voulu demander comme trop nationaliste, et que Schroeder a imposé, et que la France a curieusement accepté en 2003, sans contrepartie, ce qui donnera à l’Allemagne 18 pour cent des voix au Conseil européen au lieu de neuf pour cent et la France passant de neuf pour cent à 13 pour cent), un pays, même le plus peuplé (80 millions d’habitants), ne peut plus exercer seul ce leadership. L’Allemagne et la France le peuvent-elles conjointement ?

Même quand ses leaders s’entendent à nouveau (Chirac et Schroeder dans leur deuxième mandat, Merkel et Sarkozy à partir de 2008), ils n’ont pas, loin de là, sur l’Union à 27 l’autorité extraordinaire que Mitterrand et Kohl ont exercé ensemble sur l’Union (ou bien la Communauté) à 10, 12 puis 15, de 1984 à 1995, complété par le rayonnement de Delors, devenu Président de la Commission à partir de 1985.

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éanmoins, si sur les grandes questions européennes et stratégiques la France, l’Allemagne et la GrandeBretagne réussissaient à adopter une ligne commune (combinaison de Blaesheim et de Saint-Malo), elles constitueraient ensemble ce leadership. Cela ne s’est jamais produit et serait peu prévisible à court terme, bien que l’hypothèse ne puisse être écartée.

Reste l’hypothèse d’une sorte de cercle vertueux qui pourrait s’enclencher comme suit.

Le traité de Lisbonne est finalement ratifié suite à

un nouveau vote « positif » des électeurs irlandais (fait déjà accompli). Un Président « durable » et crédible du Conseil est désigné pour deux ans et demi. Il trouve un compromis intelligent avec Merkel, Sarkozy, le Premier ministre britannique, le Président de la commission (Barroso ou son successeur), le Haut représentant pour la Politique Étrangère et de Sécurité commune (Solana ou son successeur) pour l’exercice de sa prééminence dans un leadership collectif. Il est aidé en cela par l’évolution de l’opinion politique qui comprend que dans la bagarre multipolaire les Européens – tout en gardant leurs identités propres – doivent faire de l’Europe un vrai pôle de pouvoir qui veille à leurs intérêts de façon plus pugnace. Ce Président durable, appuyé sur un consensus des leaders européens qu’il aura aidé à formuler, devient, pour l’administration américaine, un interlocuteur et un partenaire naturel dans la grande redéfinition stratégique en cours. Cela ressemble à un rêve européen ? Rien ne prouve que ce ne soit pas possible. A défaut, il faut revenir à l’hypothèse du leadership à inventer à trois (Allemagne, France, Grande-Bretagne).

2) La question d’un éventuel leadership

Bien sûr, les Américains auront toujours tendance à voir l’Europe comme un sousensemble économique de l’OTAN (ce qui est un contresens complet), et la « défense européenne » comme une sous-traitance, ce qui est malheureusement moins faux. j’ai appelé « l’idiot du village global ». Des événements extérieurs pourraient les y pousser, par exemple une pression chinoise et autre, pour remettre en cause le rôle du dollar.

Une Europe capable de se comporter en puissance responsable et partenaire des États-Unis exercerait directement et indirectement dans le monde une immense influence, ce qui serait une première pour une Europe unie : paradoxalement, les Européens n’ont jamais tant influencé le monde jusqu’ici (en bien ou en mal) que quand ils étaient divisés et en concurrence entre eux… Leur influence était anglaise, française, espagnole, allemande, etc. pas européenne.

Et depuis qu’ils sont unis les Européens suivent pour l’essentiel les États-Unis à quelques soubresauts près.

Il serait intéressant qu’ils surmontent ce paradoxe !

Cela changerait la face de l’Occident et le rendrait plus acceptable pour les autres, et plus fort, mais cela suppose qu’ils soient capables de constituer un pôle dans le monde multipolaire. | GB

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européen dans le monde est étroitement liée à cette question du leadership interne à l’Union, mais elle est encore plus problématique. Elle est même en théorie sans objet: les pays d’Europe de l’Ouest ne se sont-ils pas rangés après la Seconde Guerre mondiale de facto et par le traité de 1949 sous le parapluie américain ? De ce fait, n’ontils pas renoncé, instruits et causés par les deux tragiques guerres mondiales, à toute politique de puissance, de défense, et à toute vraie politique étrangère globale autonome ? Et cela, même si la Grande-Bretagne a poursuivi un effort de défense significatif et, même si la France a poursuivi, pendant longtemps, une politique étrangère loyale à ses alliés mais spécifique, d’abord gaulliste puis gaullo-mitterrandienne, dans un contexte où les deux pays ont mis l’accent sur la dissuasion nucléaire. Pourtant, la question mérite d’être posée, pour plusieurs raisons : la solidité protectrice de l’euro, à la réussite duquel les États-Unis ne croyaient pas, ce qui fait qu’ils ne l’ont pas combattu et qui est manifeste dans la crise économique actuelle. Parce que, dans le domaine commercial et au sein de l’Organisation mondiale du commerce, les Européens se sentent moins restreints à défendre leurs intérêts.

Et parce qu’une administration Obama qui aura tant de soucis ailleurs, avec la Russie, la Chine, le Moyen-Orient, et l’Asie centrale et bien sûr la crise financière, pourrait ne pas voir trop d’inconvénients à ce que l’Europe s’affirme plus, y compris au sein de l’Alliance, le fameux « pilier européen » !! Si les Européens l’osent.

B

ien sûr, les Américains auront toujours tendance à voir l’Europe comme un sous-ensemble économique de l’OTAN (ce qui est un contresens complet), et la « défense européenne » comme une sous-traitance, ce qui est malheureusement moins faux.

Rien n’empêche cependant d’imaginer une Europe qui développe sa propre vision (après avoir surmonté ses divergences) sur ce qu’il faut faire à long terme avec la Russie (combiner partenariat et vigilance); comme avec la Chine ; comment il faut méthodiquement désamorcer l’antagonisme Islam-Occident; ce qu’il faut faire pour résoudre le problème israélo-palestinien et les perspectives extraordinaires que cela ouvrirait par la suite ; comment il faudrait concevoir un partenariat Europe-Afrique, non pas au bénéfice des Africains, mais avec eux ; comment il faut organiser la mutation de l’économie prédatrice en croissance écologique durable; quelle combinaison à trouver entre des systèmes militaires offensifs, défensifs (boucliers ?) et dissuasifs ; etc. C’est le scénario optimiste que je développe à propos du « Président durable » du Conseil européen. Il nécessite que l’Union européenne sorte de l’ingénuité béate et conjure le risque d’être ce que

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Canada has

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the raw materials to very successfully thrive in this new world.

Will it develop the kind of strategic culture that allows it to punch at or above its weight?

Canadians seem less interested in that, and I wonder why that is.

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PhotographS: Damien Donck for Newsweek

On States, Strategy and Strategic States

TÊTE À TÊTE

Global Brief talks power and culture with American ‘geocrat’ fareed zakaria Q: Which country has the deepest and most sophisticated strategic culture?

A: Well, it’s a very interesting question. I think that there are several models. I don’t know that there is one that is better than all the rest, but you look at China, for example, and they are beginning to develop a strategic culture – an interesting one.

Chinese decision-making – because this is basically a dictatorship – has an enormous amount of stability and continuity. It is also a strategic elite that is almost entirely technocrats: China is run by engineers. So it tends to be very fact-driven, very pragmatic and there’s little idealism, ideology or vision in that sense. And so what you see developing is a kind of very straightforward, pragmatic, long-term-oriented decision-making that prizes a set of objectives that might be pursued over a long period of time; objectives that are fairly narrowly defined. Chinese national interests are fairly narrowly defined. One could even facetiously say that China’s only foreign policy as far as one could tell right now is raw materials and Taiwan. They want to secure raw materials, and they want to secure Taiwan. They don’t really care about everything else. If you push them very hard, they will do it.

But the truth is actually broader than that. They have a very clear interest, and have maintained a very clear interest, in having good relations with the US ever since the late 1970s, and they have seen that as their path into the world economy and international system. Now, there is clearly some debate about this developing in China, but my sense is that this is still the dominant interest. They are beginning to move somewhat more slowly and cautiously on some broader issues of global order, one might say – with North Korea being the best example. But it is still a fairly tightly circumscribed national interest, pursued in a fairly consistent, bloodless way.

A: I don’t see it at all. First of all, when people talk about the great texts, it sort of sounds good, but great Chinese texts, like Confucius – all Confucius says is be pragmatic – are an incredibly practical kind

Fareed Zakaria is editor of Newsweek International, host of CNN’s Fareed Zakaria GPS, and the best-selling author of The Post American World.

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Q: So you don’t think there’s a broad strategic imagination or room for a strategic imagination that’s rooted in the great Chinese texts?

of guide. Maybe they will provide you with some sense of Chinese negotiating strategies, but I don’t think that Chinese strategies are that much different from Iranian negotiating strategies. I think that the structure of the regime tells you a lot more than the Chinese culture does. There is one layer that I would add to this analysis, and that is culture – that is, China does not have a monotheistic tradition. In fact, basically, the Chinese don’t believe in God. That means that there is much less of an impulse toward proselytization and universal conversion, which is at the heart of the great monotheistic traditions – certainly Christianity. And I think that you see this translate into Chinese foreign policy. China does not fulfill its world-historical mission by making the rest of the world like itself. It fulfills it by being Chinese, and by creating a great China. So then you look at the other model I’m really struck by – the Anglo-American one – which is deeply influenced by its high Protestant tradition. It is expansionist, universalist, moralizing and visionary, suffused with idealism, suffused with ideas, suffused with a kind of sense of responsibility for the world. It is also executed by democratic systems. And these systems tend to be much more decentralized, with much less of a sense of very long-term planning, and much less of a sense of unified decision-making. But there is a broad strategic elite – if you include people beyond just the government: people in think tanks, the media, and things like that – a broader strategic elite that is actually very well versed in the world, very aware of trends around the world, constantly criticizing and critiquing policy. People will often belittle the US government for not knowing much about this or much about that. At the end of the day, however, given the scope of what the Americans are dealing with, I think it’s fair to say that it’s actually breathtaking how many experts there are, and how much knowledge has developed, in Washington on a wide variety of countries. You want to find the best experts on Pakistan? They’re likely to be in America – outside of Pakistan. The best experts on China? Likely to be in America – outside of China.

The best experts on the Congo? Again, likely to be in America – outside of the Congo. And this is because it is a much broader phenomenon than just a narrow decision-making elite. It’s almost a societal interest that has developed – and it developed, by the way, in Britain in the 19th century, when London was

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the capital of the world. Everything I’ve said about experts in America would have been true in London.

Q: So this is the thesis of the ilk of Niall Ferguson – that Oxbridge people used to go and populate the missions abroad, and that there was a deep talent pool to export in order to run world affairs?

A: Precisely. And I think that in Britain it had to be kind of an imperial function, as opposed to pure technocracy. In Britain, I think it had to do with the peculiar structure of Britain’s class system, where the second sons and third sons didn’t have anything to do, and middle-class families would end up finding great glory in places like India. But at heart it was the same thing, which is that the society got interested in this much broader view. It remains to be seen whether that’ll be true in China, but I think that the strategic elite in the US is much looser, more diffuse, more short-term, but in many ways more inventive, more imaginative, more likely to correct mistakes. So each one has its strengths. I don’t think that one is better than the other.

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Q: How do you square this democratic function that forces creative and strategic elites into a little bit of a box, with really robust constraints on what they can do, with these same elites’ strategic coverage and imagination? How does this ‘squaring’ compare with that of elites in, say, Russia, who are less constrained by the democratic function? What are the tradeoffs there – the pros and cons in the two types of strategic traditions?

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A: I think that there’s a tendency, from the time of Tocqueville, to say that democracies can’t make good foreign policy: they tend to be emotional, short-term-oriented and, as a result, prone to policy blunders. I tend to think that the reality is actually more complicated. Look at the Cold War: the US was never able to execute the kind of ruthless, brutal, consistent policy that the Soviet Union was able to, but American policy was constantly subject to external checks, to critiques, to people second-guessing everything from the missile gap to the war in Vietnam to the deployment of troops in Lebanon. And, as a result, I think that there’s a very healthy, self-correcting aspect to it. The Soviet Union, on the other hand, drove itself off a cliff, because who was going to tell Leonid Brezhnev that the Soviet Union was wildly unpopular, despised, that its economic system made no sense, and that it needed fundamental change? This is not easy to explain in a dictatorship, whereas George W. Bush

heard from large, influential segments of the US population and from American strategic elites about the necessity for fundamental change in his Iraq strategy every single day, and every week.

And that surely had some influence on the course correction that took place in Iraq. So I tend to think that the American system has enormous virtues in that you have a porous elite – lots of criticism, and lots of second-guessing, which is very useful.

The danger for the American system is really less about the system than about the lack of any checks or balances internationally. The US is so powerful today that it can afford a series of silly policies – such as the Cuban embargo, such as various sets of sanctions on countries like Burma, which are not doing anything, and not changing the situation on the ground, but make you feel good in Washington. This is certainly fuelled by the democratic system: emotional foreign policy is something that democracies love to do because it gives them a sense of great moral satisfaction and selfrighteousness. And then you move on to something else and forget about the fact that the policy in Haiti remains exactly as it was, and that Burma remains exactly as it was, and that your policies have done virtually nothing – perhaps even making things worse by isolating the country. The real problem, then, for democratic foreign policy is the danger of a kind of special interest-driven foreign policy, where special interests care more about the issue than the country as a whole, and are, as a result, able to drive policy.

For instance, regarding Cuba, 70 percent of the American people think that the Cuban embargo should be relaxed or abolished, relaxed or repealed.

But it persists – even under Obama – because the Cubans in Miami are a strong enough group that they can wrest control of that policy.

Q: Let’s move to your country of birth – you are a Mumbaikite. What do you think about Indian strategic tradition and the different strategic futures for that country?

A: India, in cultural terms, actually has some similarity with China in the sense that there isn’t a monotheistic, proselytizing impulse in Indian strategic culture – in spite of the fact that, while the Chinese don’t believe in God, the Indians believe in thousands of gods. The essence of Hinduism is really to live and to let live. Hinduism embraces everything – every possible orientation. You can be vegetarian and be Hindu; you can be non-vegetarian and be Hindu; you can believe in one god, 20 gods or even 2,000, which is a very eclectic worldview.

The Rig Veda, which is the great central Veda at the core of Hinduism, basically asks: “How is the world created?” And it says that we don’t know. Maybe the creator knows, but maybe he doesn’t. It’s a masterfully ambiguous philosophical statement.

And compare that to the moral fortitude of the book of Genesis. This is exactly how it happened, and this is why it happened. So I think that this leaves the Indians, again, without a very, very powerful kind of proselytizing core. But the real determinant of Indian foreign policy might actually not be the millennial Hindu culture as much as something related – the deep decentralization of the Indian state and nation. What was Churchill’s expression?

He said that India was a geographical expression, not a country. Maybe extreme, but it’s certainly true that it is a civilization masquerading as a state.

Q: That’s just Mumbai alone, no?

A: Yeah, exactly. And if you look at the last Indian elections, you’ll see that these were really a series of regional elections, which had entirely local issues that were totally unrelated, so that what was happening in Tamil Nadu had nothing to do with what was happening in Uttar Pradesh, which in turn had nothing to do with what’s happening in Punjab. So you have that reality, which then limits the degree to which there is a purposeful, coherent, strategic kind of worldview. You get that sense of coherence when you go to China. You feel like the whole country is on a kind of Chinese national team trying to host the Olympics, or to move ahead economically.

In India, you get the sense of a very decentralized, disparate population: enormous vitality and diversity, but also very much a sense of a lack of central direction and a degree of chaos. But I do think that every country has to have a strategic direction, and maybe New Delhi will be able to do it, despite the fact that it has a very decentralized tradition. The US in some ways was very similar – certainly before the two world wars – and was finally able to create a kind of strategic culture.

Q: Any reflections on Canadian strategic culture or potential?

It’s actually

Q: So should a country think about changing the world or is its first imperative necessarily to care for its immediate population?

The best experts on China? Likely to be in America.

A: We’re moving into a system where power is going to be shared: the US will have to get more countries to the table – to include them – to help shape global institutions and global order. And Canada would be a natural partner and powerful player. Its ideas about almost every issue are actually very close to those of the US. It would be a very useful ally – a partner – and so I think that it’s unfortunate that Canada does not have a more vigorous desire to have a greater global influence. Perhaps it will change; perhaps it can be persuaded to become more of a stakeholder in the system, and less of a free rider.

I say this with the full understanding that Canada has contributed significantly.

Q: Finally, what about the strategic cultures of Russia and Iran?

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A: Canada, I think, is positioned very well in this evolving world, and it is an advanced industrial country that has a highly skilled population, but also has enormous natural resources. It has managed to maintain a political-economic system that is basically very healthy and robust. I think that it is benefiting from two great friends, at the moment – one of which is the great global financial crisis.

It’s benefiting because it wisely chose to maintain some of the shock absorbers on its financial industry, while the rest of the Western world dismantled

them. And the second one is, of course, global warming, which is making – or will perhaps make over time – parts of Canada that were inhabitable far more habitable. I think that its pensions, health care and immigration systems are increasingly seen as extremely sensible. So I think that Canada has the raw materials to very successfully thrive in this new world. Will it develop the kind of strategic culture that allows it to punch at its weight or above its weight? The Canadians seem less interested in that. There does not seem to be a powerful desire to do that. And I sometimes wonder why that is. Is it living in the shadow of the superpower? Is it the fact that it was always – for so long, for so many decades – ruled from London? But there does seem breathtaking how to be some sense of comfort in many experts there Canada in being a little bit off the radar screen – following, are in Washington, rather than leading. I honand how much estly don’t see any indication knowledge has that this is changing. It’s up to Canadians to decide whether developed, on a wide they want it to, but my sense variety of countries. is that there is a contentment You want the best in Canada with being prosperous, being successful, having experts on Pakistan? a strong social market as well They’re likely to as a dynamic economy, but be in America – no great desire to have global influence. outside of Pakistan.

A: I think that, in the case of Russia, you have a 15

V IENT DE PAR A Î T RE

CHAIRE RAOUL-DANDURAND

L’Observatoire sur les Missions de paix de la Chaire Raoul-Dandurand en études stratégiques présente :

Afghanistan, Haïti, Darfour

Les missions de paix sont-elles encore possibles ?

SOUS

LA DIRECTION DE

CHARLES-PHILIPPE DAVID

Dans nombre des missions de paix de l’ONU, les espoirs semblent très souvent déçus et les réalisations mitigées. De nouveaux concepts et de nouvelles méthodes ont depuis été développés pour combler ces lacunes, mais ces missions sont-elles davantage efficaces que les missions dites plus traditionnelles? Donnentelles des résultats tangibles sur le terrain ? Le rôle de l’ONU en est-il diminué ? C’est à ces questions que répondent les auteurs de cet ouvrage, à travers les cas riches en enseignements de l’Afghanistan, d’Haïti et du Darfour.

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dominant state elite – a statist tradition that I think is somewhat divorced from Russia as a culture. But it is a very strong state that has always controlled this vast territory through a very powerful capital. And I think that what you see in the case of Russian strategy is the desire of Moscow and of Russia and the Russian state to assert control over the country – over the neighbourhood – and to do it in a fairly old-fashioned way: the use of hard power. The Russians seem to have no interest in, or understanding of, the idea of soft power. They also, I think, have very little sense of the complications of the exercise of power, such that the exercise of muscle in, say, Georgia might produce anti-Russian sentiment along its entire European border – which might be far more damaging than whatever little gain they might get in Georgia.

I find Russian strategy rather unsophisticated. It is the brutish strategy of a strong state. The Iranians, however, have perhaps one of the great, most misunderstood strategic cultures. The popular impression is of the mad mullahs running around, willing to commit a celestial act of hara-kiri in getting nuclear weapons. I think, however, that this is actually an old, bazaar culture, based on centuries of bargaining and negotiating. The Iranians are in the centre of a very complex world, and always have been. This is a place at the crossroads of great powers – a crossroads of trade routes. The Iranians have always had to deal with foreigners, and they are actually playing a very, very shrewd game in the exercise of Iranian influence in various ways. And I think that they view nuclear power as one more weapon in the arsenal that will allow them to exercise influence in complex ways; whether it’s through Hezbollah and Lebanon, through Shiite religious parties in Iraq, through their appeal to the street in the Arab world, or through the support for the Palestinian cause. The Iranians are playing a very complex game of chess – perhaps even more than that – and we in return have a hammer, and just keep banging away at the table.

It’s kind of a perfect case of a lack of understanding of a very complex strategic culture.

Q: Will Iran acquire the nuclear weapon?

A: I think that it’s a more complex question than people realize. I’m sure that Iran wishes to acquire nuclear technology and nuclear power. That seems to be an absolutely core national goal. They may, however – in keeping with this very clever, sophisticated tradition – decide that they want to stay just under the radar screen, and just within international law. Therefore, they will develop a very sophisticated missile programme, and a very sophisticated nuclear power programme, but they will not marry the two together; that is to say, they will not weaponize. Now, everybody knows that you can weaponize the programme in a matter of months – that you have breakout capacity. But I’m not as convinced that they are absolutely dead set on building nuclear weapons. And this actually makes the problem more complicated – not less. | GB

What About Canadian Power?

Canadian power in the world is more a cultural question than one of ideas and Canada’s innate ‘smallness’ BY IRVIN STUDIN

QUERY

Irvin Studin is Editor-in-Chief and Publisher

A illustration: anson liaw

(indeed, destruction) of nearly all of the European Continent’s major powers.

This, the story goes, was a time when, in strategic affairs, Canada apparently ‘punched above its weight.’ True though this may have been, the claim also arguably betrays a larger truth – to wit, that only a self-consciously small power talks about ‘punching above its weight.’ Serious or great powers speak only about punching; the weight of the punch speaks for itself. And this larger truth about Canada has genetic roots – roots to which modern and emerging Canadian strategic elites seem completely oblivious; that is, that the modern Canadian federation, constitutionally speaking, was never made with the intention that it play a meaningful role whatever in international affairs. The old British North America Act, 1867 – the key document in Canada’s Constitution – states that the Canadian federation would “conduce to the welfare of the provinces and promote the interests of the British Empire.” Not another word is mentioned about matters external. In short, Canada at its creation

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n unlikely question. But it demands a serious answer, for Canada, as Fareed Zakaria rightly observes in his Tête à Tête (page 15) is at present underperforming; that is, in strategic terms.

The conventional wisdom within Canada is that things were once better – if not prior to the current, domestically-focussed Conservative federal government, then certainly in the era of Lester Pearson (Nobel Peace laureate; see Andrew Cohen’s Query in GB’s inaugural issue) and even under the leadership of the cosmopolitan, citoyen du monde Pierre Trudeau. Indeed, this may have been the so-called ‘golden age’ of Canadian diplomacy, when, post-WW2, Oxbridge-educated men populated Canada’s diplomatic service and the Canadian military was among the more esteemed in the world – in various parts due to valiant wartime performance, strategic integration with the US (the new major power), and the relative decline

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was, in ‘power’ terms, a tactical colony, with serious strategy outsourced to Westminster.

By the third and fourth decades of the 20th century, Canada would indeed acquire all of the formal trappings of a proper foreign affairs player – the autonomous capacity to declare war and broker a peace; an independent diplomatic instrument; and a bona fide legislative power on foreign policy. All of these major formal transformations in Canadian strategic life ushered in the said ‘golden age’ of Canadian international affairs. However, form has not radically altered what has always been, and still remains, an essentially domestic gravity in Canada’s political discourse and identity. The trappings of strategic power, or potential strategic power, are there, but they are nary supported by a meaningful and deep strategic or foreign affairs culture.

And, of course, in the absence of such a strategic culture, talk of sustained Canadian leadership in the world is largely a narcissistic conceit.

This is not at all a denigration of the country; far from it. For Canada is an immensely successful and complex state – indeed, one that excels in the very domain in which it was intended to excel: federalism. (Recall: the federation was to “conduce to the welfare of the provinces.”) Strategy, of course, is an altogether different beast.

Does this necessarily mean that Canada is destined only to produce ‘accidental’ or ad hoc strategic successes or leaders; that is, leaders who issue against all odds from an astrategic national culture? (Some of these ‘accidental’ or ‘countercultural’ leaders write for GB: John de Chastelain; Louise Fréchette; Louise Arbour; James Orbinski; Christopher Alexander; and Philippe Kirsch, who contributes to our next issue.) Hardly.

But this would mean a very sober and brutally honest reassessment of the very building blocks that would inform any future claims to Canadian strategic leadership: among other things, the size of the national population; the size of the economy; the size of the military; the size of the diplomatic service; and indeed the nature of Canadian education.

Cultures are not easily moved, and they seldom recognize their own blind spots. And so it follows that the outsider – apocryphally, apparently, even Winston Churchill, and, more recently, Tony Blair – may observe that Canada, with its immense geography, natural resources and fortuitous physical location, should be a world power. The Canadian leader, however – not having been raised to think about strategic power, or about Canada as a power – either does not see such prospects at all, or thinks them (countercultural as they are) too difficult to realize. And so the domestic gravity of the national conversation endures.

Strategic power in itself has no moral quality: it is neither good nor bad. Rather, it is the means to getting things done in the world – things that are in turn either good or bad. Without such power, however, a country can do little of great and deliberate consequence outside of its borders.

And so Canada must park the debate about what it wishes to accomplish in the world (stanch genocides, broker peace, lead a region or even prosecute a just war), and focus for some good time on the requisite strategic (indeed, cultural) capabilities for getting anything done. | GB

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Peering, head above the parapet, into Afghanistan’s next 10 years BY christopher alexander

AFGHAN FUTURES Christopher Alexander was Canada’s first resident Ambassador to Kabul, and then Deputy Special Representative of the UN Secretary-General

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in Afghanistan.

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n Firdausi’s Shahnameh – completed at the start of the 11th century at Sultan Mahmud Ghaznavi’s court, a two-hour drive south of Kabul – the hero Rostam lives near the Helmand river, in lands granted by Iran’s king Manuchehr to Sam and Zal. This grant is “a charter full of celestial praise,” including overlordship of “Kabol, Danbar, Mai, and India, the Sea of China as far as the Sea of Send, as well as Zavolestan as far as Bost.” Sam receives rich gifts, reflecting the prosperity of this wide realm. In Rabindranath Tagore’s short story Kabuliwala (1892), the narrator – a cloistered but “well-born Bengali gentleman” – chats to beturbaned fruit peddler Rahamat about “Abdur Rahman and the Frontier Policy of the Russians and the English” before realizing that “talking to the Kabuliwala served me in lieu of travel.”

The news about Afghanistan this fall is once again relentlessly negative. It has tracked an imperfect election, with alleged fraud by leading candidates of as-yet unmeasured dimensions. Deeper lies the unresolved issue of nation-building, a project pursued only fitfully by Afghans and their international partners since 2001, and without which neither peace nor recovery is a serious prospect. Then there is the continuing conflict, still eluding easy categorization: is it a nascent Pashtun revolt, born of a lopsided bargain at Bonn? Or is it a consequence of Pakistan’s unquenched drive for ‘strategic depth’ – their version of the old Frontier Policy under the Raj – an imperative for officers and political leaders since Zulfiqar Ali Bhutto in 1971, after Bangladesh had been lost and rivalry with India began to take on ‘asymmetric’ form?

This article does not tackle any of these issues. Rather, it is about the backdrop to Afghanistan’s existential questions: electoral legitimacy, massive institution-building, regional peace. Afghanistan has been a crossroads – both entrepot and emporium – from time immemorial. For its region, for Asia and for the world, it exercises a powerful imaginative hold – an influence rooted in literature, dynastic history, and successive civilizations on the Iranian plateau, in South and Central Asia. This resonance is in turn founded on its lynchpin role in trade and exchange. Thirty years of conflict have blurred this

illustration: clayton hamner

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legacy. A passerby in the streets of Tabriz, Kolkata or Hamburg can be forgiven for not seeing Afghanistan as a cultural hotbed, much less an economic oasis. But it is far from extinguished. After eight years of post-Taliban transition – despite suicide attacks and electoral complaints – Afghanistan is re-emerging at centre-stage.

Afghanistan is reconnecting itself to Asia. Since 2002, 90 percent of the highway circling the Hindu Kush – linking Mazar-e Sharif, Kabul, Kandahar and Herat – is rebuilt, with only the hilly northeast quadrant still unfinished. This ‘ring road’ is now linked by asphalted arteries to key border crossing points: Torkham and Spin Boldak (Pakistan), Zaranj and Islam Qala (Iran), Torghundi (Turkmenistan), Hairatan (Uzbekistan) and Sherkhan Bandar (Tajikistan). The donors are all potential trading partners – the EU, India, Iran, Pakistan and the US. Most epoch-making has been the torrid pace of provincial and rural road-building – the network driving Afghanistan’s trade rebound since 2001 and the uplift of its farm economy. This road-building is a warrant for more ambitious transit arrangements linking Chinese, Russian and Central Asian entrepots with Karachi and Gwadar (Pakistan), Chahar Bahar and Bandar Abbas (Iran) ports. Through the Central Asian Regional Economic Cooperation (CAREC), established by the Asian Development Bank (ADB) in 1997, these projects are embedded in Asia-wide transportation corridors.

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fghanistan’s reconstitution began with massive refugee returns – over five million citizens have been repatriated since 2001. But economic drivers have been equally critical.

Regional trade has blossomed: according to the Economic Cooperation Organization (ECO), total trade among the 10 ECO members rose from US $10.8 billion in 2002 to US $38.7 billion in 2006. Iran, Turkey, Kazakhstan and Afghanistan account for most of this growth; Afghanistan’s total trade with ECO partners (adjusted for national reporting deficiencies) was close to US $4 billion in 2006 – a dramatic rise from virtual standstill under the Taliban regime. Over the same five years, ECO countries averaged eight percent annual GDP growth. From 2002 to 2007, Afghanistan had 14 percent annual GDP growth. In spite of continuing global economic crisis, the IMF projects nine percent GDP growth for Afghanistan in 2009.

The 10 ECO economies – which include Afghanistan and all of its neighbours except China – went from 1.2 percent of world GDP in 2002 to 1.9 percent in 2006. Is this surprising? Such rapid growth is remarkable, even by global standards.

But its causes are not difficult to find. When the Taliban started as a movement in 1993 and 1994, with Pakistani assistance, their first priority was to reopen the highway system – then pot-holed and beset by factional checkpoints due to civil war.

The goal was to open traffic between Pakistan and Central Asia, thereby securing access to five new states. In the end, Afghanistan’s continuing conflict from 1994 to 2001 – aggravated by diplomatic and economic isolation – undid the mercantilist vision of ‘strategic depth.’ But the post-Cold War potential for trade linking Central Asia, China, Gulf, Russia and South Asia is real.

It is already transforming communities. Along the Pyanzh river separating Afghan Badakhshan from Tajik Gorno-Badakhshan, three new bridges have changed life for four Afghan districts: Wakhan, Ishkashim, Shugnan and Darwaz. They have restored family ties sundered by demarcation in the late 19th century. ‘Border bazaars’ have flourished – with weekly events becoming almost daily. From Badakhshan, there is potential to broaden these linkages to communities in Chinese Xinjiang and Pakistani Chitral.

Afghanistan’s new regional affiliations are mutually reinforcing. Formed in 1985, ECO received Afghanistan as a member in 1992; the ECO Council of Ministers met for the first time in Afghanistan – from 16 to 20 October 2007 in Herat. ECO now seeks to bring about a free trade area among its members by 2015. In 2007, Afghanistan joined the South Asia Association for Regional Cooperation (SAARC), also formed in 1985: SAARC is now pursuing the South Asia Free Trade Agreement (SAFTA).

On March 27, 2009, in Moscow, the Shanghai Cooperation Organization (SCO) held a first-ever special conference on Afghanistan. Its theme was cooperation against terrorism, narcotics and organized crime. UN Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon, the US, the EU Presidency, the European Commission, NATO, major European states and Canada – all taking part for the first time – supported a joint declaration, while SCO members issued a statement and action plan.

The new ECO Secretary-General is Mohammad Yahya Maroofi, an Afghan diplomat who was Ambassador to Tehran and Oslo and diplomatic advisor to President Karzai during the Bonn process. The US has committed itself to ensuring that Afghanistan and Pakistan agree a revised bilateral trade and transit agreement by the end of 2009. Following trilateral summits with the Presidents of Afghanistan and Pakistan, Turkey has launched the Istanbul Forum as a catalyst for regional trade. To support improved cooperation at entry points along the Afghanistan-Pakistan border, Canada has supported the Dubai Process – an effort to bolster the capacity of border officials on both sides.

There is an entirely new vision for roads in the

heart of Asia in CAREC’s Connecting Central Asia: A Roadmap for Regional Cooperation (2008). In 2001, Afghanistan lacked paved roads outside major cities.

Today, the Central and South Asia Transport and Trade Forum, which groups Afghanistan, Iran and Pakistan alongside Tajikistan, Turkmenistan and Uzbekistan, is actively seeking to improve access to ports on the Arabian Gulf. Until now, Afghanistan has lacked substantial rail infrastructure. In March 2009, the ADB approved a Railway Development Study for Afghanistan: a first line from Islam Qala to Herat is virtually complete. Bereft of functioning civil aviation in 2001, Afghanistan now boasts one state-owned airline (Ariana) and three Afghan commercial carriers (Kam Air, Safi and Pamir) – two of which are operating near-new aircraft.

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Afghanistan has been a crossroads from time immemorial. For its region, for Asia and for the world, it exercises a powerful imaginative hold – an influence rooted in literature, dynastic history, and successive civilizations on the Iranian plateau, and in South and Central Asia.

Kabul), bringing US $3 billion in Chinese investment to one of the world’s 10 largest copper deposits, Afghanistan has gold. It also has iron and other base metals, coal and precious stones. In Jawzjan and Sar-i-Pul, it has proven oil and gas. Potential reserves, including in Helmand and Kandahar, are much larger. And exploration is accelerating.

Mineral projects bring multipliers: Ainak includes a commitment to build a railway along the TorkhamJalalabad-Hairatan route.

The second pillar is energy. As of January 2009, power imported from Uzbekistan is lighting homes in Kabul through new high voltage lines built from the North under the Northeast Power System – an initiative supported by the ADB, the World Bank, the US, Germany and India to bring imported power from Tajikistan, Turkmenistan and Uzbekistan to Kabul, adjacent provinces, and the Southeast. The current ANDS sector strategy calls for 1,840 megawatts of installed hydroelectric capacity in the Helmand, Hari-Rud, Kabul, Kokcha and Kunar riversheds. Rehabilitation of existing facilities at Salma (Hari-Rud),

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omplexity is a management challenge – especially for nation-states. At its best, Afghan foreign policy in the 20th century was neutral, drawing benefits from all, and preventing domination by any one power.

Post-Taliban Afghan strategic planning has sought to revive this tradition. According to the sector strategy for regional cooperation in the Afghanistan National Development Strategy (ANDS) – a five-year blueprint unveiled in Paris in 2008 – Afghanistan is a “central connecting hub” – a critical strut at Asia’s core linking the Far East (through China), Central Asia, South Asia and the Middle East. The diplomatic touchstone for reconnecting Afghanistan to Asia is the Kabul Declaration on Good Neighbourly Relations, adopted by Afghanistan, its six neighbours and G8 members on December 5, 2005 in the Afghan capital. The second Regional Economic Cooperation Conference for Afghanistan (RECCA) took place in Delhi on November 19, 2006. In 2007 and 2008, the RECCA process yielded to regional security imperatives.

But the Afghanistan-Pakistan Peace Jirga Declaration adopted in Kabul on August 12, 2007, followed by the October 28, 2008 Islamabad Declaration of the smaller jirgagai, addressed a key dimension of the regional cooperation challenge. The third RECCA finally took place on May 13 and 14 of this year in Pakistan, generating another Islamabad Declaration – driving home the emerging trade, border and energy agenda.

What is the upshot? The Islamabad conference focussed on rail projects – extending Pakistani lines from Quetta and Peshawar to Kandahar and Jalalabad inside Afghanistan, then linking them onwards via a railway shadowing the ring road highway to lines now approaching completion in Herat and contemplated for Hairatan-Mazari-Sharif. It also highlighted border management.

It identified potential in mining and agriculture.

It underlined the need for larger-scale capacity development. In marked contrast to 2006, there is now serious action on each of these fronts.

The Taliban have targeted trucks and traders – both to disrupt military resupply and undercut regional cooperation. In Afghanistan’s Southwest, issues of trade and transit take a back seat to the threat from narcotics traffickers. But the resilience of insurgency and cartel-driven drug trafficking has not prevented major improvements to road and border infrastructure: the Kandahar-Herat and Zaranj-Delaram highways were completed on time. Zaranj remains the fastest-growing city in Afghanistan – living testimony to trade’s vibrancy even in the teeth of conflict and an illegal economy.

An Afghan economy wired into Asian networks, further integrating economic giants with better overland connections, would embrace four pillars: Minerals and precious stones – the first pillar – have been pivotal from Sultan Mahmud’s time.

Beyond the Ainak copper mine in Wardak (south of

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Kajekai (Helmand) and Dahla (Arghandab-Helmand) is underway. Under the Central Asia-South Asia Regional Energy Market, promoted by the ADB since 2006, the CASA-1300 project would bring a generated surplus in Kyrgyzstan and Tajikistan to market in Pakistan. The Turkmenistan-Afghanistan Pipeline Initiative is advancing, with Turkmenistan recently confirming supply.

The third dimension is business infrastructure.

A Private Sector and Civil Society Enabling Council is active at presidential initiative, following a conference organized by the government and the Aga Khan Development Network in July 2006. Over 10 million Afghans now have access to mobile telecommunications. Access to finance has improved with 14 banks now licensed, including a network of entities offering microfinance. Under Afghanistan’s Border Management Initiative, customs procedures are improving, due to new equipment and better training. On September 27, 2008, Afghanistan inaugurated the Afghanistan Central Business Registry – a one-stop shop.

Tourism and culture – the fourth pillar – are equally critical. Badakhshan, Bamiyan, Herat and other provinces are already cultural magnets – as pilgrimage sites, as centres of civilization, and as stunning settings. With better security, tourism is set to become a major driver of Afghan growth. A new generation of mountain guides took several expeditions to Badakhshan’s highest peaks in 2005.

On April 22, 2009, Mostapha Zaher, Director-General of Afghanistan’s National Environmental Protection Agency (and grandson of King Zaher Shah), inaugurated Afghanistan’s first national park at Band-e Amir – a series of six terraced lakes in Bamiyan province. The Afghan story has a huge audience – from Khaled Hossaini’s best-selling Kite Runner, to Atiq Rahimi’s Prix Goncourt-winning Syngue sabour (Pierre de patience), to the blockbuster Afghan Star feature on Saad Mohseni’s Tolo television – itself the subject of a prize-winning documentary. Farhad Darya remains one of the Farsi-speaking world’s greatest singers. “East-West Divan,” an exhibition of contemporary Afghan, Iranian and Pakistani artists shown at the 2009 Venice Biennale, has put this vitality on display, as has urban regeneration and restoration of historic monuments by the Aga Khan Trust for Culture in both Kabul and Herat, and by Turquoise Mountain in the Murad Khane precinct of Kabul’s Old City. The “Bactrian Gold” exhibition, now shown in Europe and North America, has refreshed the world’s taste for the richness of Afghanistan’s archaeological legacy.

Afghanistan can be a lynchpin – for trade and transit, for the broader energy market, for nextgeneration tourism, and for an improving business environment. It is a potential hub for the next phases of Asian economic integration. After

only six years, Afghanistan has the region’s best mobile telecommunications network. Why should it not be possible for transit or tourism to follow suit? With a myriad of initiatives now underway to unlock these possibilities, three scenarios present themselves: which one will Afghanistan embrace over the next quarter century?

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he first is focussed on energy and infrastructure: Afghanistan as a web of new linkages speeding up land-based trade and transit – connecting the four corners of Asia, as well as more distant Europe and Africa. It would emphasize rail and road construction, as well as base metal and hydrocarbon development – to feed economic growth in China, India, Russia and a host of smaller Asian economies. It would also rely on new power lines and pipelines to bring Central Asia’s energy surplus to bear on South Asia’s deficit. This would be an export-led growth model, rooted in a trading, resource-driven economy. Let us term this scenario the Lapis Economy – in recognition of Badakhshan’s ancient gemstone export that was traded to Predynastic Egypt as early as 3300 BC. The second scenario would be for the Yaghestan Economy to predominate. Yaghestan is a Persian term – often applied to tumultuous periods of Afghan history – made famous recently by Michael Barry in Le royaume de l’insolence: L’Afghanistan 1504-2001: it literally means ‘land of the rebellious.’ Under this scenario, the drug lords protect – even enhance – their hold on power. The Taliban go untamed. A new generation of warlords is weaned. Impunity reigns. Recent gains in protection of human rights go by the boards. But Afghanistan continues to produce the world’s largest, high-quality, totally fungible, illegal commodities: opium and heroin.

Under this scenario, development, nation-building and ‘Afghanistan as entrepot’ are put on hold, or shelved altogether. International engagement is reduced to ‘terrorist hunting,’ as Rory Stewart, George Will, Jeffrey Simpson and other advocates of disengagement have urged.

The third scenario is the Deodar, or Chinar, Economy. The deodar (cedrus deodara) is a species of cedar native to mountainous areas of South Asia: it has highly aromatic bark and needles, which can turn an alpine landscape into a riot of perfume.

Chinar is the Persian name for the oriental plane tree (platanus orientalis), which has been a sacred tree in India, Afghanistan and Iran for millennia, and had already been imported to ancient Greece: Hippocrates is reported to have taught under a chinar. This is the future in which Afghanistan is given the opportunity to recover its history, to

rebuild and celebrate its monuments and institutions, and to participate fully in the new global economy – one based on innovation in both goods and services. This would be an Afghanistan with not only highways, but a stock exchange; with mobile communications and software start-ups; with eco-tourism in Bamiyan and ‘Silk Road’ tours of Helmand.

For the foreseeable future, Afghanistan will remain a hybrid of these scenarios. Each has had its champions in recent elections. Tilting the balance toward exports and nation-building will require a consolidation of forces – internal and external. At the time when President Karzai first referred to Afghanistan as “a crossroads of civilizations” and “a land bridge for Asia,” Dr. Abdullah was his foreign minister and Dr. Ashraf Ghani his minister of finance. As Afghan civil servants return from training in India, Pakistani merchant groups advocate more effective cross-border security arrangements, Iranian officials seize precursor chemicals needed for heroin production in Afghanistan, and Kazakh oil field engineers contemplate their next contract in Sar-i-Pul, there is no commodity so precious as Afghan leadership – the ability to drive forward a new era of reforms in all the relevant sectors of government, private sector and civil society.

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Afghanistan can be a lynchpin – for trade and transit, for the broader energy market, for next-generation tourism, and for an improving business environment. It is a potential hub for the next phases of Asian economic integration. of the future. An Afghanistan open to the world would reduce friction in Asia’s economic engine room. The gateway for South Asian goods to reach Europe by truck through Afghanistan, Uzbekistan, Kazakhstan and Russia is nearly open. South Asia’s appetite for energy has never been keener. China’s reach into the Gulf and beyond into Africa has never been stronger.

The wild card remains Pakistan – a Taliban sponsor, past and present, with the ability to veto key aspects of regional cooperation, whose army continues to see Afghanistan as an Indiandominated Yaghestan. Will Pakistan see advantage in allowing Afghanistan to embark on a future of regional reconnection? Will it be willing to replace a Taliban-led scorched earth policy with a tradedriven condominium? Time will tell. With breathing room for today, and internationally-backed stability tomorrow, Afghanistan has the potential to be the hinge for a new wave of Asian economic development. Whatever the ultimate scenario, we all have an interest in seeing that pivot turn. | GB

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n a Ten-Year Framework for Afghanistan – a report by the Atlantic Council – Dr. Ghani put it simply: “The Afghan people want institutions of good governance and to be part of the modern global system.” In short, Afghans want deodar, chinar and a whole forest of additional trees. Who knows? If international resolve holds, if counter-insurgency and institution-building can be delivered through an integrated approach, they may even see this goal start to be reached.

Afghanistan was already a centre of commerce and civilization in antiquity. Under its great Islamic dynasties, it became one of Asia’s key arteries of conquest, migration and trade. In the 19th and 20th centuries, it was written out of the global economic script. As a Great Game and Cold War buffer state, its borders were sealed, its railways unbuilt; investment denied. Undoing such a formidable legacy is hard.

But today, Afghanistan has a genuine opportunity to reoccupy higher ground in the new game of regional integration. Its economy is relatively open. Its currency is stable. Linkages with the outside world are strengthening. There is every reason to expect that 21st century traders and professionals will again make their homes in Khost, Jalalabad, Kabul, Mazar-i-Sharif, Herat, Kandahar and the thousands of other communities across Afghanistan that have deep roots in the soil of Asian trade. There is even

potential for NATO and Russia to make stability in Afghanistan and Central Asia a new fulcrum of cooperation – one that might underpin a broader Eurasian peace.

When he wrote of Zabolestan, Firdausi was flattering his patron, Sultan Mahmud – the progenitor of a Turkish dynasty who ruled from Herat to Delhi.

Today, Afghanistan again commands attention in Asia and beyond by those who seek advantage and profit – the equivalent of today’s ‘Bengali gentlemen’ in Singapore, Sydney and Siena. The global economy has new rules – as does the nascent Afghan nationbuilding process. The rules for regional economic cooperation and regional security for Afghanistan are also being written anew: when will they be accepted, and will they hold?

Students burning midnight oil at Kabul University, or in high-walled compounds in Daikundi, understand the opportunities. They are seeking the skills with which to embrace them. They are pleased to live on remittances or assistance-driven benefits for now, but will demand their place in the economy

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INNOVATION FOR TOMORROW York University celebrates 50 years of research excellence

York brings together researchers from across disciplines to tackle real-world issues. They’ve explored space and the solar system, helped Canada understand its unique history, and developed internationally-recognized excellence in business and law.

York continues to seek innovative solutions to scientific and societal challenges. Our researchers are finding water on Mars and creating programs to stop children’s bullying. They’re developing models to predict the spread of infectious diseases, decoding the brain’s mysteries, and discovering treatments to prevent strokes, heart disease, and autism.

They’re helping us to better understand citizenship and environmental sustainability in a global society.

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of knowledge that

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makes a difference.

To learn more about York’s innovative approach to research, visit www.research.yorku.ca

Russia’s New Ideocratic State Pure autocracy is passé, idée fixe is the present

IN SITU

Leonid Kosals reports from Moscow

Artem Loskutov, a young artist, was imprisoned university in question did not stop the corrupthis past May. He spent nearly a month in a pretion, but instead filed an action again Mr. Groshev. trial Russian prison. His criminal trial is now under Groshev was forced to put a disclaimer on the way. Mr. Loskutov is the leader of ‘Monstration,’ survey, pending a review of its ‘methodological a popular countercultural carnival procession, correctness’ by the Russian Academy of Sciences. known for its absurd, satirical slogans, that Despite their many distinctions, both cases marches annually on May 1 in Novosibirsk, Siberepresent a system of ‘ideocratic’ control that ria’s largest city, alongside traditional has emerged in Russia over the last demonstrations by Communists and decade. The first exercise of such the state authorities. Last May was control was in realm of the media: the sixth annual ‘Monstration.’

Russian TV and newspapers were Igor Groshev, a former professor captured by the state authorities in Tyumen (also in Sibera), was conjust as this new century began. This victed because he had allegedly damcapture provided the springboard for aged his university’s reputation. He mass state propaganda focussing on The arrest of Novosibirsk had conducted a sociological survey several easy doctrines: in particuartist Artem Loskutov, above, among students that revealed that lar, that Russia has many enemies in May 2009 triggered a 44 percent had often been forced to (the US above all others, and the series of pickets, protests, pay bribes to educators during their West in general); that to defend the and actions all over Russia. university career. The head of the country, it is necessary to restore

PhotographS: courtesy of chtodelat news

Leonid Kosals is a professor in Moscow’s Higher School of Economics, having also worked for many years in association with the Russian Academy of Sciences in Novosobirsk and Moscow.

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great power influence on some of the former Soviet republics, themselves generally seen as organically part of an historical ‘Extended Russia’; and that state leadership in the economy and in politics is an essential feature of Russia’s uniqueness, and indeed a key ingredient in the provision of national stability and prosperity. All this led to accelerated changes in public opinion: in 1994, 41 percent of Russians thought that Russia had external enemies, whereas 22 percent asserted that it did not. By 2008, the respective tallies were 68 and 14 percent.

The creation of Russia’s ideocratic state institutions has been gradual. A body of special laws has been accepted by a largely controlled Duma (the national parliament), including the 2006 Law on Counteraction of Extremist Activities. A broad spectrum of tools allows for relatively soft Russian (as compared with the harder Chinese) state ideological control over the Russian sector of the Internet. This spectrum of tools includes the opening of criminal cases against some bloggers on charges of extremism or abuse of the police, promotion of pro-government propaganda websites (such as www.russia.ru), as well as the planting

and so on. “Who will defend national Russian interests in the European history? And how?” the commission asks. It plans to fight against attempts to minimize Russia’s role in WW2, among other historical events. Indeed, a controversial recent article inspired by this commission charged Poland with responsibility for having started WW2, arguing that it had rejected ‘moderate’ German demands.

The article was only removed from the website of the Russian Ministry of Defence after significant protests by Russian academics.

Formal ideocratic control by the state is supplemented by informal dimensions, including unconventional violence – sometimes at the hands of pro-Kremlin youth movements – against people out-of-step with official lines. And domestic or internal ideological control is supplemented by foreign propaganda. The Commission on Forming Russia’s International Image is headed by S. Naryshkin, the author of the aforementioned notorious article.

This new ideocratic system has some similarities with, and distinctions from, the old Soviet ideological practices. The two systems have in common their significant control over,and manipulation of, the minds of the Russian citizenry. The emergence of autonomous powerful actors in every sector – the media, education, culture, science – is blocked. However, today’s ideocratic controls are influenced more by the economic interests of certain groups within the Russian state, rather than the Marxism of the Soviet state (see the Groshev case).

Still, the new ideocracy of Russia is compromised by the very vagueness of the system’s goals, and by the absence of attractive ends. And yet, the Kremlin has in its arsenal powerful arms for enforcing this ideocracy. These may at some point beget other kinds of weapons – ones that will not be allowed to rust for very long. | GB

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of anonymous people to push ‘state interests’ in Internet chat rooms.

Many public fears have resulted from state ideological activities in the realm of the teaching and interpretation of Russian history. A bill seeking to counter the rehabilitation of Nazism in the former Soviet republics was passed by the Duma. Then a decree by President Medvedev stood up a special commission to correct historical “falsifications damaging Russia’s interests.” The commission’s head is the head of the Presidential Administration, and the commission’s members include the Director of the Foreign Intelligence Services, the head of the Department of Federal Security Services,

This new ideocratic system has some similarities with, and distinctions from, the old Soviet ideological practices.

The two systems have in common their significant control over, and manipulation of, the minds of the Russian citizenry.

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A Strategic Meditation on the new century’s troubles and what’s to be done

BY James Orbinski

WHO’S TO LEAD? James Orbinski is a past international President of Médecins Sans Frontières, a professor at St. Michael’s Hospital, University of Toronto, and a founder of the Drugs for Neglected Diseases Initiative and of

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Dignitas International.

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ho is to lead world affairs in the 21st century? The question gets to the heart of politics, which was once famously defined as “the social processes that determine who gets what, when, and how.” But process is never without context, and this new century seems a world spiralling in crisis. Even before the international financial crisis (IFC) of 2008-2009, the real-time effects of climate change, the increasing price and decreasing availability of food, and roller-coaster but ultimately escalating energy costs meant that the bottom billion were already suffering more than their fair share. A few months into the IFC, World Bank President Robert Zoelick declared: “… a human crisis is rapidly unfolding in developing countries. It is pushing poor people to the brink of survival.” (See the Feature piece by John W. McArthur at page 46.)

Central to the question of who leads in the process of politics is the maxim that good leadership requires good citizenship. If crisis is to be opportunity, and not a portent to catastrophe, then an unwavering moral commitment to equity, an effective civil society and an aggressive and innovative approach to governance will be central to who leads, and to who gets what, when and how.

There is little doubt today that catastrophe looms large in the popular imagination, and not without reason. Millions suffer as they are denied humanitarian assistance, or are violated, forcibly starved or displaced in vast swaths of territory in Somalia, Congo, Sudan, Iraq, Palestine, Afghanistan-Pakistan, Sri Lanka or North Korea. These countries are inaccessible to sustained independent humanitarian assistance. Belligerents either refuse access, or it is too dangerous – as in Afghanistan and Iraq – for aid agencies to work in areas where political and military objectives have been perfidiously tied to humanitarian principles and practices. More broadly, a West pitted against Islam, a seriously damaged multilateralism, persistent war and political crisis in the Middle East, the proliferation of nuclear states and terrorist networks, a world population – currently at 6.8 billion, and nearing nine billion by 2050 – and new, old and new-again pandemics like H1N1 and tuberculosis (as well as its newly drug-resistant forms), together describe a world not simply in crisis, but seemingly on the verge of catastrophe.

illustration: brad yeo

ILLUSTRATION

Catastrophe denotes a reversal of what is expected, and marks the end of a story. It overturns the social frameworks on which humans depend for security, through which they make sense of the world, and through which they imagine possibility and a future with one another. If these crises escalate or are added to the triple crises of food, fuel and environment, the perfect storm may yet come to pass – a context wherein the wrong kind of leadership could well be catastrophic.

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oday’s crises are complex, interdependent, ramify in unexpected ways, and pose real threats – perhaps even to the viability of modern civilization or even the human species.

Risks and events seem to defy anyone’s control, old answers to new questions no longer suffice, and yesterday is no longer a baseline for tomorrow. If nothing else, they reveal the tenuousness of the myth-story that human beings have long used to explain themselves to themselves. It can seem, to quote Yeats – writing in the aftermath of WW1 – that, as “things fall apart, the Centre cannot hold.”

While America remains the world’s only military superpower, the IFC marked the end of American hegemony in the realm of economy, ideas and policy.

The ‘rise of the rest’ is real, both economically and politically, and even as it is now crystal-clear that markets need states – if only at a minimum, to set and enforce the rules of the game – it is not clear that the US and the West will be able to continue to set the rules of this game. Indeed, Brazil, Russia, China and India – the newly named BRIC nations, each of which owns vast sums of US treasury debt – potentially seek to rival the US and the West with their own supranational currency. Even with more than seven trillion public dollars for the collapsed international financial architecture – with the massive state-led bank bailouts and auto-industry buyouts – there are no quick or certain fixes for a broken system.

The year 2009 will see the first contraction in Global Domestic Product since 1945, and world trade flows will have fallen optimistically by 10 percent. Because it is more integrated with the global economy than ever before, the already vulnerable developing world – and especially Africa – is paying a deeper price than the industrial countries. Twenty-three of the 30 million newly unemployed are now added to the 1.3 billion under- or unemployed, the majority of whom are in the developing world. There, foreign direct investment – down from 1.2 trillion in 2007 to 363 billion in 2009 – trade, official development assistance and remittances are all desperately down, while inflation continues its staccato rise.

Globalization is in reverse, and while neoliberal-

ism, along with most of the utopian ‘isms’ of the 20th century, is dead, the nation-state system remains stuck in a Westphalian conceptual trap, groping for leadership. Since the end of WW2, the world’s 192 sovereign governments have, in the aggregate, lost considerable influence, while multinational corporations have become very powerful. Of the 100 largest economies in the world at the beginning of this millennium, 51 were businesses and only 49 nation-states. Today, competing and overlapping state alliances and blocks (Chimerica vs. G8/G5 + Egypt vs.

G20 vs. UN Fora vs. BRIC), multinational corporations, intergovernmental organizations like the WTO and the WHO, transnational public-private partnerships, foundations like Gates, one-man states like Bono, the UN, big and small NGOs, and transnational civil society networks are all powerful forces that shape and reshape contemporary international relations.

Uncertainty is the new condition, and if catastrophe is to be averted, leadership matters – perhaps as never before.

The world is not as it was, and if it is to be other than a lawless wilderness, it must first be seen ‘as it is.’ In early 2008, the WHO Commission on Social Determinants of Health argued that “social injustice is killing people on a grand scale.” It emphasized the need for changes in the operation of the global economy if the health gap between rich and poor is to be closed. At that time, the G8 had delivered only four billion of a promised 25 billion toward global health and development goals. Now, in the wake of the IFC, that gap is an open and growing abyss.

The G8 countries have not met their commitment to double aid to Africa by 2010, and are unlikely to do so. Only days after the 2009 London G20 Summit, official development assistance from Germany was categorized by the EU as ‘off track’ for 2009. Italy has actually cut aid, and France has reduced its aid targets and cut its aid budget. The Millennium Development Goals (MDGs) – agreed in 2000 – are the lowest common denominator of globally agreed goals rooted in, and driven by, social justice and equity. Six of the eight MDGs are on track to miss their 2015 target date and, at the pace of current funding, will not be achieved until 2050.

Even before the IFC, a 100 million people were pushed into poverty each year because of out-ofpocket health care payments. In 30 low- and middleincome countries, upwards of 80 percent of all people who die every year cannot afford existing medical treatments. Beyond HIV, tuberculosis and malaria, more than one billion people suffer from neglected tropical diseases, for which there is inaccessible, inadequate or outright non-existent treatment and – because of a lack of return on investment for the private sector – a paucity of research and development. Now, perhaps inevitably, that number will be higher.

In 2009, more than 100 million will be added to the already one billion people – one in six on the planet – who go to bed hungry every night. Last year, hungry people deposed the prime minister of Haiti (see the In Situ report from Port-au-Prince at page 45). They rioted in at least 30 countries.

Food prices were 24 percent higher in real terms at the end of 2008 as in 2006, and one-third of that increase was due to the emergence of biofuels as an alternative to oil-based fuels. On June 19, 2009, World Food Program representative Josette Sheeran said: “A hungry world is a dangerous world. Without food, people have only three options: they riot, they emigrate, or they die.”

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Today’s crises pose real threats to the viability of modern civilization and even the human species.

Risks and events seem to defy anyone’s control, old answers no longer suffice, and yesterday is no longer a baseline for tomorrow.

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eyond hunger and health, climate change is happening with greater speed and intensity than initially predicted.

Its consequences for political stability, the global economy and poverty reduction efforts could well be catastrophic.

(See the One-Pager by Gwynne Dyer at page 5.) It is climate change that drives competition for access to water and arable land in Darfur, and that leads today to war crimes, crimes against humanity and slow-motion genocide. The consequences of climate change will certainly worsen as the number of cars – for example – increases from today’s 700 million to an IMF-predicted three billion by 2050. A decade from now, crop yields in some parts of Africa are expected to drop by 50 percent, and water stress could affect as many as 250 million Africans. Globally, not only will the number and severity of droughts, floods and hurricanes increase but, as climate change worsens – humanitarian assistance notwithstanding – wars over water and arable land will also worsen. A June 2009 report by researchers at Columbia University warned that we could see the largest migration in human history, with up to 700 million climate migrants by 2050.

These are challenges on an epic scale. They require out-of-the-box leadership that brings a more orderly and reliable response to social and political issues that go beyond the individual response capacities of states.

The 21st century context demands a political process that offers not a reformed global system of government – for the world cannot wait, and will not wait, for that utopia – but a governance that offers ideas rooted in equity, as well as the vision, hope and optimism of principled pragmatism.

So who is to lead, how, and to what end? Ryan Balot, a classics scholar at the University of Toronto, has some old insights that matter to new problems.

Athenians, Balot argues, were resilient in the face of crisis – preventing these from developing into

catastrophes, because they had rich, open, democratic political deliberation that respected nature and acknowledged human limitations. And from this culture of open deliberation, the Athenians had the ability and will to hold political leaders to account for their choices and actions.

Hannah Arendt – a Jew who as a young woman escaped the Nazi Reich to France and then to New York – was one of the great political philosophers of the 20th century. Arendt spent her entire life as an academic trying to understand how it was possible that the 2,500-year history of Western political thought and experience could have given rise to the totalitarian regimes of Hitler’s Reich and Stalin’s Communist Russia. Some of what Arendt observed is crucially important to the questions of ‘leadership by whom, how, and to what end?’ She wrote that “we are not born equal: equality is the result of choice and of human organization.”

When Martin Luther King was assassinated in 1968, 125 cities across America erupted in a firestorm of rage and bloodshed. It was inconceivable back then that a mere 40 years later, a black man would be elected president by a majority of Americans. Obama does not represent African-Americans – rather, he represents the power of engaged citizenship in a contest of ideas and choice.

On July 4, 1994, the day that the genocide of Tutsis and moderate Hutus in Rwanda ended – the day the author left Rwanda – few on the planet could have imagined that, 15 years later, an International Criminal Court (ICC), however imperfect, would actually exist – let alone issue an arrest warrant for a sitting head of state, Mr. Omar Al Bashir of Sudan. Now, for the first time in human history, those who violate the laws of war can be held to account internationally if their own governments fail to so hold them.

The ICC came into being because citizens and civil society organizations like Amnesty International and thousands of others in churches, schools, community clubs and on university campuses around the world organized – bringing together academics, jurists and some of the best political and legal minds in the world. They engaged in rigorous public debate and policy analysis, and explored alternatives. All spoke, listened, demanded a better politics and sought out courageous politicians who came to the point where it was impossible to ignore the voice and choice of citizens.

Ten years ago, 400,000 of two million people with HIV/AIDS in the developed world had access to treatment. In the developing world, it was less than 40,000 of an estimated 28 million. Millions suffered and died needlessly. Today, because of an engaged, activist global civil society, nearly four million in the developing world are on treatment, there are new international health institutions, and the realities and possibilities of global health have

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changed forever.

Every major advance in scientific, social or political thinking came about because someone dared to believe the impossible. The most innovative and politically transformative ideas – ideas in the defence of greater equity and justice – of the last 200 years have not only emerged in, but have been driven by, civil society. The abolition of the slave trade, the emergence of organized labour, children’s and women’s rights, civil rights for African-Americans, reform of the post-WW2 and the post-Cold War rules of war, the environmental movement, the global health movement – all are examples of transformative political ideas rooted in notions of equity. Each began as a lost cause, and, however imperfectly, has achieved practical outcomes that surpass those of the prior world.

How does one see possibility? It does not lie in naive utopian dreams, but in what one does. Human beings are clearly capable of doing great and good things. But wanting or being good is not good enough.

Arendt’s central preoccupation – summarized brilliantly in the work of Margaret Canovan – was the re-evaluation of politics and political action. Arendt concluded that neither religion nor philosophy will save humankind from the possibility of political failures like totalitarianism. She concluded, though, that the right kind of politics can lessen the possibility. She was deeply concerned about humankind’s responsibility for politics and the duty of citizenship – looking after the world and taking responsibility.

“The first political act is to speak,” she once famously said. Indeed, if there is silence, there can be no justice. And revenge – the lowest form of justice, but a form of justice nonetheless – is the only certainty.

And to speak is to expect that someone will listen.

She saw as hubris the notion that everything is possible. She was concerned, too, with gratuitous activism, with limits. Politics is not a field for the action of deterministic forces, but political action is something that happens among plural actors.

Political action, then, is a practical activity – not a matter of executing theoretical blueprints, but something to be practiced with courage, skill and, sometimes, restraint. For Arendt, human beings have demonstrated their capacity to do the thoroughly unexpected, and if answers can be found at all, they will be found in human political capacity. In speaking and listening, therefore, human beings create the possibility of political process and institutions that can minimize the risk of disaster, political crime and catastrophe. For Arendt, it is politics that creates the possibility of humanizing the lawless wilderness.

Legitimate leaders emerge in an open process of deliberation and debate: they are chosen by their followers and arrive at the helm not by seizing it, but by convincing others that they should lead. Beyond the man himself, the Obama phenomenon occurred

precisely because American citizens spoke, listened and rejected a politics of fear; they instead embraced possibility in a world of uncertainty. This phenomenon has transformed a politics of cynicism into a politics of hope and optimism – even in the face of crisis and potential catastrophe. The same can be true internationally, where engaged citizenship is essential to effective leadership. Such a citizenship is one that will no longer be talked down to – one that is willing and able to understand complexity, as well as the necessity of hard choices as part of the public responsibility that good leadership and good citizenship demand. Young people the world over – the largest growing demographic globally – are inspired not just by the Obama phenomenon, but also by a politics of voice and choice.

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n a context of uncertainty, one should recognize the imperfection of humanity and of human beings’ limited ability to know and therefore to master fully the particular time and place in which they finds themselves.

Human beings can never fully grasp reality, but their understanding can more closely approximate it. This limitation is not a bad thing; it requires a certain humility about the complexity and unknown quality of the world.

Paradoxically, though, it also gives human beings a certain liberty to live in the world with their full capacities, passions, ability to use reason and to make choices. This means that a good leader in today’s world would, in the first instance, recognize the dangers of utopianism and, in turn, respect rhetoric and public debate – not in the sense of platitudes and slogans, but in the Socratic sense of using reason and evidence-based argument – so that a perspective emerges that reasonably reflects reality, and that also has a reasonable approach to altering reality.

Good leaders know how to alter the prevailing conditions of the reality in which they find themselves. They engage a public iterative process of first articulating a values-based vision that illuminates a particular question or problem; then defining the concrete elements of their vision for the future; then inviting debate; and, finally, firmly making a choice. This leadership process applies equally to the formally legitimate politics within and across states, and to the informally legitimate politics of civil society and the private sector. In short, leaders must also choose.

“Yes we can” meet the challenges of this early new century, but leaders have to move beyond slogans, and conciliators and centrists like Obama will have to be pushed hard by leadership and active citizenship from within civil society – so that what defines the centre shifts to a world of greater possibility and a place of greater equity.

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he world urgently needs reform to existing governance structures to establish an early reaction mechanism – similar to the ones used for natural disasters and conflicts – in order to preempt or respond to food crises.

There is no such mechanism now, and the creation of another layer to the array of organizations and institutions that are already in place should be avoided. It is more effective and cost-efficient to revitalize what already exists.

More broadly, effective leadership is able to identify the interdependence of ‘cause-and-effect’ factors across traditional policy silos – for example, the oppositional relationship between increased biofuels and decreased food security – in order to frame morally acceptable, integrating ideas that emerge from policy convergence.

The same kind of bold leadership that has been marshalled around the IFC is required for a sustainable human and humane future. Health and development should not be matters of charity, or subject to the variances and whims of market forces. Sustained efforts to address global health, climate change, food security and economic and financial stability are all mission-critical to a sustainable future. With crisis comes opportunity, and opportunity – if it is to be seized – requires political courage. In this vein, the single greatest crisis-opportunity is sustainable funding for the Millennium Development Goals. Sustainable development requires such sustainable funding, and this requires bold thinking and leadership around ideas such as a currency transaction tax (CTT) for development. A CTT would, in the words of former French President Jacques Chirac, be a “tax on the benefits of globalization.” A 2008 North-South Institute study found that, if properly implemented, the CTT could generate a minimum of US $33 billion per annum for the MDGs without affecting foreign exchange markets. In 2006, France and many other governments launched an airplane ticket tax, with proceeds now going toward an international drug purchase facility to assist the campaign against pandemics. In 2004, more than 100 countries endorsed a proposal urging action on a CTT-type financing regime. This small levy on foreign exchange transactions is an idea whose time has come.

Today, necessity must be the mother of invention.

The thoroughly unexpected must be done. Even in the face of spiralling crises, citizens and political leaders can embrace possibility and humanize a lawless wilderness. These are just simple ideas.

But ideas have always been more powerful than economies or armies, and are central now to how humanity invents its future. | GB

Every major advance in thinking came about because someone dared to believe the impossible.

The most innovative and transformative ideas of the last 200 years have emerged in, and been driven by, civil society.

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The global standing of those who claim to lead will depend not simply on what they can achieve for their own formal constituencies, but just as much on what they are willing to do and achieve for others. Globally, there is an absence of central authority – this against the manifest need for cooperation among governments and others to seek common practices and goals in addressing global issues. As the world gropes for leadership, effective governance is central. Governance means working with and through other nations, intergovernmental organizations, the private sector and civil society to understand issues, define their cross-cutting challenges, gather evidence and define policy choices.

Today, while American power is not hegemonic, it is still dominant, and a more humble America is best placed to take this on. Certainly, where at least some of the actors pursue a short-sighted, raw self-interest at least some of the time, global leadership will require an act of moral imagination that sees the pursuit of the common good as wiseself interest. ‘Coalitions of the willing’ should be built around this perspective. Such coalitions will need to be flexible, allowing for leavers and joiners as they move toward a vision of greater equity.

The G8, with its inside (G7) and outside (G20/G5 + Egypt) club membership, is fading in relevance as the world searches for an authentic form of governance that is both legitimate and effective – one that will not only rise to the challenge, but seize the opportunity for a more just, fair, equitable world.

Leadership, if it is to be more than custodial, must look for tractionable starting points that honour dignity as the basic relational commitment of one human being to another. This principle has pragmatic implications.

It means that, in the face of crisis, a principled, pragmatic leadership must deal with the consequences humanely – by first separating the humanitarian relief of suffering in situations of crisis and war from the necessary political responsibility of dealing with root causes. Humanitarianism is not a political solution to the causes of crisis, but rather, quite evidently, a humane response to its effects. Practically, this means that in – for example – war, humanitarian relief must not be conditional or tied to any political or military objectives. It means that belligerents and the wider global political community must recognize and fund an independent humanitarianism that is free and unfettered by the necessary political choices that war demands. This should apply to situations of war, as well as to crises like the global food security crisis. The director of the UN Food and Agriculture Organization, Jacques Diouf, said recently: “One thousand million empty bellies accuse and shame us… And are a threat to world peace and security.”

He is right on both counts.

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Are There Any Bismarcks in the House?

QUERY

The Iron Chancellor created the modern retirement regime. Who will reinvent it for the new century?

BY MOSHE A. MILEVSKY

Moshe A. Milevsky is an associate professor of finance at the Schulich School of Business at York University and executive director of the Individual Finance and Insurance Decisions (IFID)

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Centre.

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n 1881, the German Chancellor Bismarck, just prior to his 75th birthday, gave an historic speech in front of the German Reichstag in which he introduced what we now know as the old-age pension, to be paid by the State to all of its elderly citizens. Bismarck initially selected 70 as the qualifying age – back when life expectancy in Germany was in the late 40s. Bismarck’s cunning intention was to force children to collectively care for their parents during their golden years, in a dignified manner, akin to how families cared for their elderly prior to the industrial revolution.

Alas, his idea stuck and most countries’ social

security systems, including those in Canada and the US, can trace their origins to Bismarck.

Of course, in Bismarck’s day, very few workers survived to the advanced age of 70, so the qualifying age was eventually dialled back to the classical 65. Every worker under this age contributed money to a large bathtub, which in turn was used to fund payments to everyone over this age. This is the system that we have inherited today – give or take some equilibrium adjustments made by Sir Willam Beveridge in the 1940s. The financial bathtub was officially blessed by no greater an economic authority than Nobel Laureate Paul Samuelson in a very widely cited 1958 article with ILLUSTRATION: henrik drescher

an odd-sounding title about the social contrivance of money.

Fast-forward 130 years and Bismarck’s retirement plans have gone haywire. The slowest crisis in financial history is unfolding at a snail’s pace.

Consider this: In Paris, public transport workers threatened to shut down the entire country’s train system in 2007 because they were not allowed to retire on a full pension at the age of 50. In New York City, the subway system was paralyzed over the 2005 Christmas holiday by the workers’ union, for similar reasons. Civil servants in Turkey, longretired KGB agents in the former Soviet Union, and Argentinean farmers from the Pampas, have all taken to the streets to force governments to provide COLA (cost of living adjustments) to their cushy pensions.

Closer to home, General Motors has collapsed under a burden of over 500 retirees per 100 active workers. One of GM’s oldest pensionnaires was a sprightly 110 years old, having worked for GM for the requisite 30 years, and having been retired with pension for 40. In California, amid much public outcry, perfectly healthy 50 year-old firemen, police officers and public servants are retiring with lifetime pensions that pay hundreds of thousands of dollars in inflation-adjusted income – for life.

The bathtub has long gone dry, but everyone is still lining up to bathe.

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Bismarck’s cunning intention was to force children to collectively care for their parents during their golden years, in a dignified manner, akin to how families cared for their elderly prior to the industrial revolution. and investment products that have produced returns far below what would have been expected a quarter of a century ago. The equity premium, in short, has not quite panned out as anticipated.

Bold leaders have an opportunity to act now, before the battle and fault lines have crystallized and retirements have been ruined. Regulations must be mended, priorities have to be adjusted and, most importantly, the public must realize that today’s promises – if fully kept – will bankrupt tomorrow’s children.

In the inevitable public debate, it is important for leaders to stay focussed on three core principles: (1) Pensions are about providing a lifetime of income by pooling risk across heterogeneous groups using the principles of insurance. They are not about creating financial legacies and rainy-day funds for family and loved ones. (2) A true pension guarantees predictable income starting at some advanced age, with such income necessarily keeping up with the increasing cost of living for retirees. Hope, expectations and high odds are not enough. They – current and future pensioners – need guarantees. (3) Pensions must be paid for by someone. The key is to create a framework that allows them to be offered at the lowest possible cost in today’s dollars.

In sum, we cross our fingers for a younger Bismarck – one who can recognize that the answer to selfish offspring is not perpetual servitude. | GB

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ack in 1985, 90 of the 100 most prestigious employers in the US offered a Defined Benefit (DB) pension, which promised a lifetime of income to each retiree, when he or she stopped working, according to data from Watson Wyatt, the consultancy.

By 2008, the number had dropped to less than 20 employers. The remaining 80 or so companies now offer Defined Contribution (DC) plans, which are essentially tax-sheltered investment plans with zero guarantees and no promises. Most of the funds are invested in – you guessed it – the stock market.

The Roman Catholic Archdioceses of Chicago, the City of Fort Lauderdale and many teams in the American National Football League are just some of the entities that have now frozen their pension plans and replaced them with similar DC investment plans. Do you have a stock tip for your younger priest? How about a good fund for your new fireman? Of course,

the older ones will be just fine, thank you.

And so, in the year 2020, the working world will be split between two groups: not developed versus developing, or rich versus poor, but rather the pensioned and the pensionless. Leaders will have to contend with masses who have diligently saved and invested for retirement in mutual funds

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IRANIAN DIASPORA ON THE

Sam S. Shoamanesh, co-founder and associate editor of Global Brief, is a legal advisor with the International Criminal Court (ICC) in The Hague, Netherlands.

The views expressed in this article have been provided in the author’s personal capacity, and do not necessarily reflect

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the views of the ICC.

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Iran is a riddle, wrapped in a mystery, inside an enigma.

But what of the over three million Iranians outside Iran?

by Sam S. Shoamanesh

here has been heightened fascination with Iran since at least 1979. The recent contested presidential elections and the escalating bras de fer over the country’s nuclear programme have only fed this interest. Still, Iran and Iranians remain very much misunderstood outside of the territorial boundaries of Iran. And this, strangely, for a nation that has been in existence for over 2,500 years – home to one of the world’s earliest and continuous civilizations; one that has made countless contributions to the human condition.

For most foreign observers, the word ‘Iran’ triggers only the sad images of a tormented people under authoritarian rule, a recent history of war and conflict and a highly conservative, theocratic political system with a

Thousands of Iranian citizens came out to protest the result of the 2009 election at a mass rally in Tehran’s Azadi square.

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Behind the heavy formal ‘curtain’ of the Islamic Republic lies a highly sophisticated, cosmopolitan Iranian society with a profound awareness of its ancient culture and history, as well as a sincere yearning for political reform and respect for basic civil liberties.

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deep-seated animosity toward the West. Accurate though many of these impressions may be, thirty years against the backdrop of thousands of years of history and socio-cultural evolution can neither reasonably tell the full Iranian story nor provide a proper understanding of Iranian consciousness.

Further contributing to this ‘Persian enigma’ is the Iranian government’s isolationist posture since the 1979 Revolution – a posture that has circumscribed any meaningful cultural exchange or open contact with the outside world.

And yet, behind the heavy formal ‘curtain’ of the Islamic Republic that one typically observes in the popular media, lies a highly sophisticated, cosmopolitan Iranian society with a profound self-awareness – an awareness of its ancient culture and history, as well as a sincere yearning for political reform and respect for basic civil liberties.

Indeed, the recent upheaval in the country over the presidential elections is a clear example of the social dynamism that is alive and well in Iran. To be sure, the Iranian story has not yet been fully narrated.

Just as ‘veiled’ as the Iranian population inside Iran are the three million-plus Iranians – the Iranian diaspora – living outside of Iran proper. Scattered across the globe, the vibrant Iranian diaspora can doubtless help to demystify both Iran and Iranians. Quite evidently, this diaspora can also help to develop Iran itself economically, socially and, in time, politically. It can equally assist in developing options for intelligent and constructive strategic response to Tehran’s belligerence. Our task in this piece is to explore this exotic diaspora in its various dimensions and possible missions.

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ass Iranian migration is a relatively new social phenomenon. Indeed, with the exception of ancient sporadic migrations – say, after the invasions of Persia by Alexander of Macedon in 331 BC, the Arab conquest of 633 AD or the Mongol devastations that commenced in 1219 – Iranians have had, until recently, little cause for leaving their country en masse. Note: The Arab conquest of 633 resulted in the exodus of, among others, a large number of Iranian Zoroastrians – the ancestors of today’s Parsis – to India. And Zoroastrianism, of course, is Iran’s ancient religion, predating both Christianity

and Islam. It preaches, inter alia, gender equality.

Indeed, the teachings of Zarathustra, the faith’s prophet, influenced Judaism and, by extension, other Abrahamic religions, the Bahá’í faith, as well as Roman and Greek philosophical traditions.

The Iranian diaspora, as it is understood today, is therefore the by-product of different waves of immigration, precipitated mostly by the watershed events of the 1979 Revolution, the ensuing Iran-Iraq war and the resulting drastic transformations in Iranian society.

The first modern outpouring, from 1950 to 1979, pales by comparison with the mass population flows following the 1979 Revolution. After WW2, with a slowly recovering Iranian economy, Iran’s growing middle-class and elite increasingly engaged in the practice of sending their children abroad to pursue higher education at top schools – principally in Europe and the US. It is estimated that, by 1979, just prior to the Revolution, some 100,000 Iranians were living abroad and enrolled in the world’s top universities. Included in this first modern wave of Iranian émigrés were groups of wealthy sympathizers of the monarchy, as well as members of religious minorities who left the country out of a fear of persecution in the event of the collapse of the monarchy.

The establishment of the Islamic Republic and Iraq’s invasion of Iran less than a year later in 1980 combined to trigger the major modern exodus from the country. Among the émigrés of this period was an amalgam of all of the classes of pre-revolutionary Iranian society: secular Iranians and liberals, communists, opposition groups and ordinary Iranians who simply looked unfavourably upon the changing face of Iran – restrictions on civil rights; gender inequality; forced hijab laws; and so forth – and sought a more promising future for themselves and their children. These émigrés included Iran’s intellectual and economic elite. The exodus was abrupt, disorganized and uncertain. Thousands left, leaving their possessions and properties behind – fancying their leave to be temporary – only never to return. Many had their life-long savings and real estate confiscated by the Iranian authorities. Others fled out of fear of having to undergo military service, and of being sent to their deaths in the eight-year war with Iraq.

The most recent wave of Iranian emigration – lasting from the mid-1990s to the present – is a continuation of the brain drain of the immediate post-Revolution period, with one additional tra-

preceding page Photograph: The Canadian Press / Ben Curtis, AP PHOTO

universities, such as Berkeley, MIT, Harvard, Yale, Princeton, Stanford and Columbia, to name but a handful. This trend largely repeats itself in all countries inhabited by a critical mass of diasporic Iranians.

Both host states and diasporic Iranians stand to benefit from policies aimed at shattering glass ceilings that often prevent new immigrant groups from rapid integration into their new host societies. Such policies would include better foreign credentials recognition and zero-tolerance for workplace discrimination.

Not only has the post-Revolution Iranian exodus been a sizable brain drain for Iranian society, but it has also been an undeniable capital drain that has redounded squarely to the benefit of these Iranians’ new host countries. By 2006 estimates, Iranian expatriates are worth a net US $1.3 trillion. By the year 2000, diasporic Iranians had invested close to US $400 billion outside of their country, albeit with very little investment in Iran itself. These figures are much higher today. (It is estimated that the flight of human capital costs Iran a whopping US $38 billion annually.) The exodus of brainpower and capital continues at this time of writing, and will likely only increase in view of recent government purges and suppression of voices of dissent. The Iranian political landscape and the country’s failing economy – under perpetual sanctions, and beset by corruption and internal mismanagement – together offer no employment security and little opportunity for the influx of highly educated, skilled labour entering the job market each year from a population of 70 million.

All this translates into net emigration from Iran.

What is to be made of these dépaysés Iranians?

Once they have licked the wounds incurred by their immigration experience, diasporic Iranians should give back to their homeland, allowing it to develop economically and socially. Such ‘giving back’ can take myriad forms: creating joint ventures with clean Iranian companies; initiating development and construction projects in Iran; establishing and promoting non-governmental organizations, charities and other non-politically aligned entities charged with countering social ills in Iranian society (e.g., poverty, narcotic addiction, gender

Mass Iranian migration is a relatively new social phenomenon.

With the exception of ancient sporadic migrations, Iranians have had little cause for leaving their country en masse until recently.

Ayatolah Khomeini’s return from exile in 1979 precipitated the founding of the Islamic Republic of Iran.

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ditional group: working-class migrants in search of upward social mobility. Constant in these migration flows are asylum seekers, refugees and internally displaced persons – to date, over 100,000 in number – fleeing Iran on account of the government’s poor human rights record and crackdowns on political dissidents.

The largest concentrations of modern-day Iranians living abroad can be found in five countries spread between the Middle East, Europe and North America. The US hosts over a million Iranians – the largest Iranian émigré population in the world. The United Arab Emirates, due to its proximity to Iran – a convenient hub for Iranian business and tourism – hosts some 400,000 Iranians. Canada is third with some 120,000 Iranians (Toronto is affectionately called ‘Tehranto’ by some Iranian-Canadians), followed by Qatar and Germany, with numbers fast approaching 100,000 each. Other countries with large concentrations include Sweden, with approximately 54,000 Iranians; the UK, home to some 43,000 Iranian émigrés; and Israel, home to some 48,000 Persian Jews. (Interestingly, many Persian Jews, with roots in Iran dating back to its foundation, have refused to leave the country, thereby making Iran’s Jewish population – albeit small – the second largest in the Middle East, after that of Israel.)

Notwithstanding the hardships of immigration and thousands of harrowing accounts of struggle, the story of the Iranian diaspora is generally one of remarkable success built on resilience and courage.

Today, the Iranian diaspora is a robust and successful immigrant group. From accomplished engineers, healthcare practitioners, artists and entertainers, to journalists, scientists – Firouz Naderi, the former head of NASA’s Mars Exploitation Project, comes to mind – academics, business owners and entrepreneurs, Iranian émigrés have been quick to embrace the hospitality of their adopted nations and have, in a relatively short span of time, put themselves in a position to give back as productive citizens.

With a culture that puts immense emphasis on education and the nurturing of children’s talents – a parental obligation that is even legislated into the Iranian Civil Code – such collective success should not necessarily surprise. In the US, where the majority of the diaspora resides, Iranian-Americans have thrived with conspicuous distinction. According to a study published by the Iranian Studies Group at MIT, apart from occupying senior leadership positions at many of the Fortune 500 companies, Iranian-Americans are teaching in a wide array of disciplines as tenured professors in elite American

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Zoroastrianism, Iran’s ancient religion, predating both Christianity and Islam, is still

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practiced today.

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inequality, human rights abuses, discrimination); promoting civil society in Iran; encouraging the sharing of expertise between Iranian professional bodies and academic institutions and their analogues in other countries; supporting Iranian arts and artists; and assisting in the development of the potentially lucrative Iranian tourist industry.

From the capital of the ancient Achaemenian kings of Iran in Persepolis to Cyrus the Great’s tomb; from the prophet Daniel’s resting place in Susa or Esther and Modechai’s mausoleums in Hamadan to some of the world’s oldest churches and mosques; from the marvels of the Caspian Sea – where black caviar is harvested – to the deserts of central Iran; from skiing at Dizin resort in the Alborz Mountains to sea-dooing in the clear blue waters of Kish Island: Iran can offer something for everyone. These and countless other treasures remain relatively unknown to the ‘outside world.’

The Iranian story is tragic, and it has been so for some time. However, with every tragedy, there is opportunity. The opendoor policies of the diaspora’s new host states have, for the first time in the long history of the Iranian people, given them a platform to promote the richness of their history and culture. This platform is all the more important when juxtaposed with the peculiarly poor job done over the last 30 years by the government of the Islamic Republic of Iran in representing Iranians and Iranian values. Indeed, given that the current Iranian regime has been so openly hostile to the country’s history, it is the Iranian people – starting, arguably, with the diaspora – who must fill the void and create understanding.

In Egypt and India, let us recall, it was mostly the French and English who informed the Western world of the grandeur of Egyptian and Indian civilizations – albeit, granted, as an ancillary consequence of their imperial projects. In Iran, however, partly due to language barriers and the country’s relative immunity from foreign domination, the riches of Iranian civilization have been largely hidden from foreign audiences, and the Iranian story, as a result, less vividly ensconced in the imagination of the outside world.

But today’s world – powered as it is by massive flows of people, information, ideas and commerce – is an altogether different ‘chessboard,’ and the combinations of possible moves on it are quite different from those of times gone by. While the narrative of Iran and Iranians remains poorly understood, and has historically been poorly told, the

time is ripe for it to be recast. The Iranian diaspora should promote cross-cultural programmes to enhance and raise interest in the Iran that the mass media seldom cover. Every Iranian émigré is, on this account, now a ‘goodwill ambassador’ of the country’s long history and culture. Such ‘people’s diplomacy’ should in time eradicate stereotypes and prejudices, bridging gaps amongst civilizations. At this particularly volatile juncture in this early new century, diasporic Iranians are well placed to bridge artificial psychic fissures between the Western and Eastern worlds. Said Galileo, the celebrated 16th century Italian polymath: The world is round. His less well known counterpart from the ‘Orient,’ Ibn al-Haytham (Alhazen), said much the same in the ninth century – to wit, that in a spherical world with intermingled histories, notions of East and West belong only on a compass.

Iranians and Iranian academics in the diaspora, supported by Iranian business, can partner with leading world universities to establish programmes specializing in Iranian history, politics and languages (including Proto-, Old and Middle Iranian languages), following the examples of similar programmes at leading schools like Columbia and the Sorbonne. Sporting events with athletic clubs in Iran, university exchange programmes and similar initiatives are to be encouraged. Conferences and festivals exposing the world to Iranian art, literature and poetry can also encourage this intercourse of cultures. Iranians – it must be known – have intimate obsessions with poets and poetry: they revere their ancient poets – Hafez, Rumi, Omar Khayam, Saadi, to name but a handful – like deities. Iranian poetry, often punctuated by references to Iranians’ ancient love of wine and winemaking – a trade cultivated on the Iranian plateau since 6000 BC – nurtures the soul with sweet lullabies, permeating the senses, and carrying the reader deep into the meanings of life, love and mortality.

Diasporic Iranians now have an opportunity to educate the world about Iran and its lost history more effectively than any single Iranian sovereign could ever hope to do.

For reasons directly tied to Iran’s modern political history, the country’s legal and political institutions are underdeveloped. Under authoritarian rule, it is fair to say that Iranians have generally lacked a legal culture. For the most part, first-generation Iranian émigrés are themselves susceptible to such legal lethargy. Yet, for both groups, this is slowly changing. In the diaspora, lobbying firms and community interest groups have emerged in major urban centres with Iranian populations. Enrolment in legal and political studies is also becoming increasingly popular among Iranian émigrés. This trend will in time mean increased diasporic support for legal and political developments in Iran itself.

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Iran’s modern turbulence has, in addition, not about a native motherland long lost – are willing to allowed objective and complete historical accounts entertain the most destructive of forces – war and to be written about critical events and key Iranian collective sanctions – as a means to liberate their personalities. Precisely due to the country’s tortured country from the current ruling elite. Such hard-line political story, many Iranians (within Iran and in positions could well play directly into the hands of the diaspora) simply cannot engage in political those who may have vastly different motives than discussions without displaying emotional – often the establishment of a democratic Iran, and effecself-righteous – outbursts. Rigid ‘I am right and tively betray what may be called the ‘virtue of the you are wrong’ reflexes, as well as a tendency to lucky’ – a strategic naïveté born of the comfort and interpret things exclusively through a self-involved security of lands far removed from Iran and the very lens, make any sensible discussion of politics people who would have to bear the brunt of such challenging. The monarchist therefore has one policies. Instead, bona fide engagement – with a huversion of the world and understanding of Iranian man rights-centred diplomacy – and a healthy Iranian history, the socialist another, the secular another economy are what are needed to bring Iran out of still, the religious another, and so on. Blame lies, isolation and to nurture its socio-political growth historically, with the ‘other.’ As a result, there are toward democracy. History has demonstrated that many taboos that Iranians do not dare touch. For there is no ‘quick fix,’ and that real and sustainable instance, rarely can an Iranian write an objective democracy can seldom be achieved through foreign commentary about Mohammad Reza Shah, Iran’s last monarch, or the Pahlavi dyClearly, when the political situation in Iran finally nasty without being labelled a die-hard monarchist and, changes, there is much work to be done toward by extension, a puppet of Western dominion. Similarly, reconciliation, and to establish the full truth about any nuanced declaration (by an Iranian inside or outside pivotal events in Iran’s modern history. of Iran) supporting Western diplomatic engagement with Tehran can be discounted out of hand and molested by allegations of colluimposition or force. It is for Iranians – specifically sion and sympathy with the politics of the Islamic those living in Iran – to define their own political Republic: only, the claims goes, a ‘Hezbollahi’ would destiny, whatever form that struggle may take. In dare to encourage any form of détente or rapprochethis indigenous quest, the role of the diaspora should ment with Tehran. The natural consequence of these be no more than that of a constructive supporter of ‘tribal’ propensities and the patent absence of open such aspirations. Rash romanticism will only beget and accurate debate is the impoverishment of the detrimental results for Iran and Iranians.

Iranian people’s account of Iran’s modern history In sum, the Iranian diaspora is an ambitious and and the track records of, inter alia, the Pahlavi dyhighly dynamic émigré community. It is simmering nasty and the Islamic Republic. This is a net loss with potential and energy, and is already making for Iran, Iranians and those seeking to understand positive strides in the many nations that Iranithis complex nation. ans have called home since leaving their ancient Clearly, when the political situation in Iran finally homeland. But that is not the full story, nor should changes, there is much work to be done toward it be. The diaspora has much work to do in order reconciliation, and to establish the full truth about to correct the many misconceptions that pervade pivotal events in Iran’s modern history. For now, with about Iran, its multi-ethnic and multi-religious sorestrictions within Iran on academic and journalciety, as well as the country’s (lost) ancient history. istic freedoms, the role of filling this gap may very Equally importantly, the diasporic Iranian who has well fall to the Iranian diaspora. Yet taboos must the means also carries an obligation to give back be broken if this exercise is to have any meaning. and support Iran’s domestic efforts at developIranians (both in Iran and in the diaspora) must ment and progress. It is hoped that the diaspora’s abandon the aforementioned self-defeating attieffectiveness and contributions will only grow over tudes and work in unison to foster an intellectually time as diasporic Iranians form an ever closer-knit creative and dynamic political culture. community, abandoning their traditional amour de Marked divisions also exist within the Iranian soi and – to use an old Persian proverb – no longer diaspora regarding how best to help Iran move “shooting at each other’s shadows.” toward democracy, rule of law and respect for huOn all fronts, it is hoped that better – or, in Farsi, man rights. Many diasporic Iranians – nostalgic behtar – days lie ahead. | GB

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Elections and the Haitian Street Haiti’s capital teems, then stops (election oblige), then teems again

IN SITU

Caroline Kheboussarian reporting from Port-au-Prince

internally divided at the time, did not submit lists of their candidates with Aristide’s signature to the CEP (conseil électoral provisoire) before the official deadline. However, party proponents claim that they were excluded on purpose, and thus staged the nation-wide non-participation on election day.

That said, Haitians might be altogether fed up with politics, including Famni Lavalas. The nonvoting and the non-protesting could together be a silent retreat of the populace from their so-called representatives – a wholesale rejection of politics.

Many Haitians no longer believe that politicians act on their behalf to improve society, and thus do not wish to participate in the processes that bring them to office. Moreover, violent descent in Haiti can be staged by the cronies of powerful men to sway the political scene. It seems that there was no reason to agitate the population during this last senatorial election.

Wi t h o t h e r e l e c t i o n s right around the corner, one should not take the stated results as representative of the mood of the population.

Engaging the population is tricky in the current state of affairs. Another partial senatorial election is to take place in November of this year. It will directly follow the hurricane season, meaning that the level of popular interest could be even lower, as Haitians busy themselves with rebuilding their homes.

On the other hand, interest could well be extremely high, as they consider how international aid is put to use by their representatives.

These elections will pale in import with the 2010 presidential elections. That is when the real extent of this quiet protest will become clearer. En attendant, the vibrancy of the Haitian street endures. | GB

Caroline Kheboussarian has spent the last year in Haiti working for a humanitarian organization. She has worked in the humanitarian field for three years.

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Haiti brims with people. Its population (approximately nine million) dwells mostly on the coastline of this tiny piece of land, including in and around its crowded capital city, Port-au-Prince.

Astounding poverty and the insecurity of daily life notwithstanding, this is a place full of life. By day, the streets of Port-au-Prince and other urban areas are busy, bustling, dusty, noisy, garbage-filled, colourful and, yes, musical. Taptaps, the main form of public transportation – converted pick-up trucks and vans dressed up in a rainbow of designs, pumping Haitian music – abound. People hop on and off these packed vehicles to get to work, to school, to join friends. Every once in a while, a showy youth on rollerblades will hook onto the back for the tough, uphill ride from Centre-Ville to Pétionville. Market vendors are everywhere, on the roadside and among the slow-moving traffic of downtown. On sale are drinks, vegetables, fried banana chips. Clusters of people gather easily in the streets for a conversation or a quick hello.

Even the problematic shantytowns – Cité Soleil, Martissant – are filled with people going about their business as usual.

Protests are a common feature of the streets. In both the capital and the regions, Haitians will easily blockade or rally for various causes. The rising cost of living (la vie chère), lack of pay for schoolteachers, the dire need for road improvements, the non-inclusion of Famni Lavalas (a left-leaning key political party) and general misgivings about the UN MINUSTAH (peacekeeping) presence are all potential themes. Since mid-2008, these gatherings have been frequent, rarely violent, and even if so, only on a small scale. (The last truly violent protests were in April 2008).

Even with this constant action, all was silent on last April 19 and June 21 – the days of partial senatorial elections. Not a movement was noted, nor a sound heard throughout the capital. The streets were deserted. Reports indicate that between three and 11 percent of the entire population voted. And the following day, all was back to normal: the trafficjams, the colour, the music, people everywhere.

One interpretation for the quiet of the election period – popular with the Famni Lavalas (the party of former president Aristide, himself in exile in South Africa since 2004) – is that Haitians boycotted the election because their candidates were excluded from the ballot. The Famni Lavalas,

45

John W. McArthur is CEO of Millennium Promise and former Deputy Director of the UN Millennium Project. He recently co-chaired the International Commission on Education for

The 21st century

will see a most delicate dance between the new technical specialists and the non-technicians who must master them

Sustainable Development Practice.

by john W. McARTHUR

the Great

Generalists

G L O B AL B R IE F • FALL 2 0 0 9

T 46

he biggest headline to emerge from the recent G8 summit in Italy was a landmark commitment of US $20 billion over three years to support smallholder farmers in the world’s poorest countries. The announcement marked a breakthrough in rationality for the global system. It is analogous in historical terms to Kofi Annan’s 2001 launch of the Global Fund to Fight AIDS, TB, and Malaria, when approximately 1.3 million sub-Saharan Africans were dying of AIDS every year, and only 10,000 people in the region were receiving treatment.

Beneath the large font typically dedicated to dollar numbers starting with the letter b, a popular G8 sub-story recounted President Obama’s personalized intervention during the leaders’ meeting, where he cited the ongoing strains of poverty still felt by his own relatives in Kenya. The room was undoubtedly held captive by the legitimacy of a voice that speaks from personal knowledge, and one that blazed a unique path across so many barriers to reach a pinnacle of political power. On the heels of a global food crisis during which world leaders repeatedly bumbled and fumbled, Obama’s timely leadership helped a global initiative cross a major goal line. This followed a prolonged international campaign among experts and advocates who worked relentlessly to put the critical policy pieces in place over a number of years.

Impoverished farm families face no greater priority than access to food.

Fortunately, there is remarkable new momentum for treating problem ‘causes’ – especially Africa’s uniquely low food production – rather than symptoms, notably multibillion-dollar food aid budget shortfalls at the World Food Program.

However, such global breakthroughs remain the exception rather than the rule at high-level summits. Why? One reason is that leaders’ summits capture

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47

ILLUSTRATION: gary taxali

G L O B AL B R IE F • FALL 2 0 0 9

the outcomes of less visible movements with long gestation periods. As global problems emerge, professional networks toil across science, business, government and public advocacy to mobilize insights for diagnosis and garner support for scaled action. For urgencies affecting populations living far outside of the G8, full-blown coalitions typically take shape over a period of five years or more – in the best cases – and political attention only comes once problems are spinning out of control.

Another reason is that, even today, in 2009, G8 leaders lack the exposure and expertise needed to tackle core global tasks. Only President Obama was apparently in a position to describe his practical human connections with communities in the world’s poorest regions. There were no reports of other leaders recounting their own work in Africa, or of the impoverished farmers they know, or their own experiences of problem-solving for disease control, water management or building infrastructure in the poorest countries. Indeed, none of these leaders’ official résumés lists professional experience in the low-income parts of Africa, Asia or Latin America.

(Even Obama himself has spent very little time in Africa.) These leaders are only asked to tackle global issues because of influence rooted in their countries’ resources – not because of their particular expertise or representative legitimacy.

President Obama is himself an instructive case.

Even though his upbringing was certifiably intercontinental, his professional life has been spent entirely in the US, focussed almost exclusively on domestic issues. He cut his working teeth as a professor of the American constitution and a community-level activist. This is not a criticism – far from it, as the President has some of the most globally-minded instincts on the planet. But it is an example of the broader mismatch between political leaders’ professional backgrounds and emerging global responsibilities.

48

I

t has been a misnomer to call the G8 leaders ‘world leaders,’ with the current exception of Obama, who has a huge global following.

Most of his counterparts are straightforwardly leaders of countries that happen to be wealthy. These leaders represent less than one-sixth of the world’s population, and have little background or training to navigate the issues that affect the 2.6 billion people who live on less than US $2 per day – much less the 1.4 billion people who live below the US $1.25-a-day line of extreme poverty. In truth, most of what the G8 emphasizes as ‘global issues,’ like the international financial system, are those of self-interest, rather than the interests of the world’s majority.

To be sure, these leaders are capable of driving progress. UK Prime Minister Gordon Brown was

the most forceful and committed G8 leader on issues of African development and the Millennium Development Goals for several years before Obama took office. He has helped the UK provide much of the most robust global leadership in this area, bolstered by strong public interest in the issues and a relatively deep bench of civil service expertise. But even Brown is trained in UK-focussed economics, and his public arguments on Africa draw from logic and moral force, rather than practical experience or expertise in the region.

And while President George W. Bush was globally unpopular, his AIDS and malaria initiatives were pivotal in helping to turn the tide on key global challenges, even if these initiatives were modest in comparison with overall US capacity. They also helped turn the US policy supertanker in a positive direction after it hit its all-time low of international support in 1997 under President Bill Clinton.

For their part, Canadian leaders have been substantially absent on the global issues of poverty, environment and development that are so crucial to large swathes of humanity. Their neglect has been a bipartisan collaboration. The current Conservative government seems barely interested in Africa, for example. Liberal Prime Minister Jean Chrétien at least turned the trend line from pointing down to up. His Liberal successor Paul Martin disappointed globally when he failed to meet expectations and implicit promises.

Indeed, in early 2005, Prime Minister Martin allowed his Finance Minister Ralph Goodale to sign a globally prominent recommendation that all rich countries should fulfill their commitment to allocating 0.7 percent of national income to supporting practical investments in the poorest countries. At the same time, Goodale openly questioned European countries for following through on the commitment, and publicly ensured that Canada did not. Martin and Goodale were apparently happy to ride a wave that rallied public emotional support for Africa, but were essentially uninterested in the task of marshalling practical public effort for partnering with Africans on problem-solving.

Such shallowness of commitment should not be surprising when one considers how little most G8 leaders and their key advisors typically know about many core global briefs. Nor should it be surprising that relevant public debates in the same countries are often driven by tangents. Too often the critical arguments only bubble to the surface once a crisis has hit. Instead, issues of broad global interest merit public discussion that is both rigorous and vigorous well before crises erupt, with public leaders framing both underlying issues and potential solutions.

Fortunately, the era of maximum global power convened through minority representation is

already coming to a rapid close. Of necessity, the recent G20 Summit in Pittsburgh declared that the G8 will now be superseded by a more diverse group of 20 countries that better reflect today’s global economy. The G8 was already pushing the bounds of legitimacy well before this major shift.

In addition to concerns of representation, the group was in many ways putting itself out of business through an inability to follow through on its own commitments. Most prominently, the G8 has now essentially locked in a self-governance failure in the form of a US $20 billion-plus shortfall on its leaders’ personally signed 2005 pledges to Africa for 2010.

E

Our future political leaders

will have come of age in an era where global posts and pan-regional responsibilities are a standard part of business, science and government – and not just the preserve of the elite. are crucial for generating insights, well-trained generalists are needed to manage and implement insights across disciplines. This was the finding of a recent International Commission on Education for Sustainable Development Practice, supported by the MacArthur Foundation and the Earth Institute at Columbia University.

Consider, for example, the chronic catastrophe of low food production in sub-Saharan Africa.

An understanding of basic agronomy is central to tackling the region’s soil nutrient crisis. Basic climate science and hydrology are essential for understanding the water challenges of rain-fed agriculture – particularly those in the pastoralist drylands that also represent some of the world’s most significant security challenges. Basic engineering is fundamental to the successful introduction of irrigation. Economics is required to understand market limitations in solving problems among extremely poor people. Anthropology is required to understand community behaviours and choices.

Similar cross-disciplinary connections apply to problems of disease control, ecosystem management, basic education, and more. All such problems require the need to stay on top of evidence as it evolves, lest a 2020 or 2030 political leader be working from the health protocols taught in 2000 – for example, when official global policy said that AIDS

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ven as issues of representation are remedied in global fora, globally pertinent expertise will still be needed. Three major trends provide grounds for optimism that forthcoming leaders will have much more appropriate skills than their predecessors.

The first is inexorably generational. Leaders today were educated in the 1970s and 1980s – when vast portions of the Cold War world were blocked from mere travel; when most currencies were inconvertible; when there were no cell phones or emails, and certainly no Skype accounts for free phone calls to anywhere in the world.

Future political leaders will have come of age in an era where global posts and pan-regional responsibilities are a standard part of business, science and government – and not just the preserve of the elite. ‘Developing country’ posts typically still imply middle-income ‘BRIC’ environments – rather than low-income poverty zones – but the expanding professional interconnections of the world economy are nonetheless unquestionable.

(Among countless indicators of the trend, the eminent consulting firm McKinsey & Company recently named a Singapore-based Canadian as its global Managing Director.)

We can anticipate that many of the political leaders of 2030 and onward are studying in university today. The global spirit on campuses is palpably stronger than even a decade ago. In North America, it is now commonplace for undergraduates to take internships in developing countries and to launch their own internationally-focussed organizations, whether for profit or not. Many young people have gained tremendous global exposure well before they have even graduated from university.

The second trend is slightly more subtle. A growing number of university students realize that mere exposure is not sufficient preparation for global problem-solving. Advanced technical and scientific skills are needed. A generation ago, a large share of global policy-minded student activists studied

law or international relations. Today, they are more likely to pursue more technical subjects to match the nature of many of today’s problems. Similar to how Norman Borlaug’s green revolution heroics inspired legions of agronomists two generations ago, a huge number of ambitious idealists today study biosciences – not as a precursor to simply becoming a doctor, but as a stepping stone to a career in global health. Related movements are clearly discernible among engineers focused on energy, water and environmental management.

A third trend is related to, but more grounded in, strategic planning, and will be guided in the shortterm by current academic and policy leaders. It is the growing recognition that global problem-solving requires not only advanced expertise from within disciplines, but also management of expertise across disciplines. While PhDs and technical specialists

49

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was something to be prevented rather than treated, and that malaria bed nets were to be sold rather than distributed.

But our academic institutions overwhelmingly reward ever-narrower specialization, overlooking the public interest in rigorous, evidence-based generalism. This is why the Commission recommended that universities around the world introduce a new form of degree programme – a Master’s in Development Practice (MDP) – as a mechanism to teach core content across each of four basic pillars of sustainable development: health science, natural science, social science and management. The Commission further recommended that universities systematically deliver joint courses and internships across institutions and time zones, so that students practice cross-border study, analysis, and problem-solving on a routine basis. Students must also learn how to link efforts across the interwoven community-, country- and international-level dynamics.

The global interest in this initiative provides further grounds for optimism. In the three months after the Commission launched its recommendations, well over 100 universities around the world submitted formal letters of interest in MDP programmes. Less than a year later, the MacArthur Foundation has granted seed funding to help nine universities launch programmes across seven countries and five continents. A ‘global classroom’ is also entering its third iteration as a flagship that uses cheap webcam software for weekly seminars spanning across a dozen universities and time zones.

Global skills and representation are not a substitute for political acumen. Public leaders will forever require aptitude in distilling issues, communicating effectively and motivating their constituents. But it is an early 21st century anachronism that annual processes among a small minority of leaders still serve as a major force for brokering the major global problems of the day.

The skills are forthcoming. By 2030, today’s university graduates will be assuming positions of global influence.

In 20 years, they will be vastly more globally-minded and technically prepared than their predecessors. They will be much better prepared to shorten the gestation period between the emergence of a global challenge, its diagnosis and the implementation of appropriate solutions.

This does not suggest that the world should spend a generation in waiting. We must ensure that new cadres of public leaders receive rigorous cross-disciplinary education, and learn to follow evidence as it evolves.

They must be trained to listen and think across the diversity of constituencies needed to draw global insights and build global coalitions. We must ensure that they learn to connect global decision-making processes with expertise and communities on the ground. Above all, we must ensure that we do not let the problems they inherit run so far afield that they grow simply too big to be solved. | GB

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NEZ À NEZ Ottawa, le Québec et le monde: Qui mène?

Given the resurgence of the modern state (i.e. the state is back, so to speak), isn’t it time that Quebec conceded that Ottawa is the rightful senior player in Canadian foreign affairs?

Proposition:

bernard landry vs norman spector

Landry: « L’internationale sera le genre humain »,

Bernard Landry a éte ministre dans tous les gouvernements du Parti Québécois, puis premier ministre du Québec.

Norman Spector is a former chief of staff to Canadian Prime Minister Brian Mulroney, as well as a former academic, federal and provincial deputy minister, ambassador and newspaper G L O B AL B R IE F • FALL 2 0 0 9

publisher. He

52

writes for The Globe and Mail and Le Devoir.

chantaient les communistes bien avant la mondialisation. D’une certaine manière – pas celle qu’ils souhaitaient – ils ont eu raison. Mais cette mondialisation n’est pas acceptable sans être gérée par des organisations internationales fortes. Pour qu’il y ait « une table des nations », il faut des nations. Ainsi l’on pourrait dire également que « le national sera le genre humain ».

Le Québec est l’une des seules nations capables de siéger dans les instances mondiales à ne pas y être encore présent. Comme les autres nations, pour servir ses intérêts nationaux et ceux de la planète, il a le devoir d’y être.

La taille de la population n’est pas un facteur déterminant. Le Canada siège à l’ONU aux côtés de la Chine qui a une population 40 fois plus importante. Le Québec y siégerait avec une population égale à celle de l’Autriche, et deux fois plus importante que celle de l’Irlande. En quoi le Canada représenterait-il mieux le Québec que le Québec lui-même, en particulier en regard des importantes questions linguistiques et culturelles, ou nos positions très différentes en matières environnementales, pour n’en mentionner que deux parmi tant d’autres? Les 27 pays membres de l’Union européenne, qui n’est ni une fédération ni

une confédération, sont membres à part entière des organisations internationales. Suivant la logique de M. Spector (en appuyant la proposition), lequel d’entre eux serait prêt à s’en retirer et fermer ses ambassades à travers le monde? La nation québécoise a droit, pour les mêmes raisons qu’eux, de jouir d’un statut international complet et reconnu.

Spector: It is true, as Mr. Landry observes, that Canada sits with China in the UN General Assembly, as does Austria, and as would Quebec if it were an independent country. But it’s also true that Canada sits with China at G20 meetings, and that Austria does not. Nor would an independent Quebec have a seat at the G7 (and the G8), as does Canada.

In any case, for the foreseeable future, Quebec will continue to be part of Canada. As such, it benefits from Canada’s representation in the above fora. The province also benefits from Canada’s greater weight in international trade negotiations – be it in the case of the US FTA and NAFTA, or in the recently opened negotiations for a free trade agreement with the EU. In this case, the Government of Quebec understands that, unless Ottawa delivers provincial agreements to open up provincial procurement

to EU firms, there will be no agreement with the Europeans. As the negotiations unfold, and the difficulty of obtaining provincial consent becomes clearer, perhaps the Government of Quebec will explain these facts of life to the Québécois.

Landry: Les G20 et G8 sont des forums de discussions utiles et fécondes mais sans structures véritables ni pouvoirs décisionnels. Toutes proportions gardées, ils ressemblent au forum de Davos

your fellow Quebeckers that they’d be better off in an independent country; indeed, current polls suggest that support for your option has declined.

Moreover, you and your colleagues recently suffered an international setback when French President Nicolas Sarkozy observed that the last thing the world needs is greater division.

For the foreseeable future, therefore, Quebec will continue to be part of Canada – one of the most peaceful and prosperous countries in the world – as it has been for 142 years.

As such, Quebeckers will continue to have a voice at the G8 and G20, institutions that most countries in the UN would give their eyeteeth to be at. Quebeckers will have a chance of securing free trade with the EU, which wants access to the Alberta and Ontario markets as much, if not more, than it wants access to the Quebec market. As for the environment, the world has few lessons to take from Quebec, as Nobel Prize winner Jean-Marie Gustave Le Clézio recently observed in Le Monde in relation to the province’s hydroelectric projects.

Landry: De la marginalité en 1970, les indépendantistes sont passés à 40 pour cent en 1980 et à presque 50 pour cent en 1995, malgré les fautes

mieux représenté à Kyoto par le Canada, un des premiers pollueurs du monde, que par lui-même ?

Quand à l’accord avec l’Europe, si le Québec était indépendant il serait déjà signé depuis longtemps, comme l’a déjà fait le Mexique. Le Canada nous a retardés de ce point de vue comme dans beaucoup d’autres dossiers internationaux. Il sert d’abord, ce qui est normal, ses propres intérêts.

Spector: To date, you’ve been unable to persuade

d’éthique fédérales avouées par Chuck Guité et Jean Pelletier. Aujourd’hui les sondages leur donnent 47 pour cent (contre 40 pour cent en 1994) et la campagne n’est pas commencée. Cela s’appelle une progression démocratique.

Quant à Sarkozy, son premier ministre, son ministre de la Francophonie et l’ancien premier minisre Raffarin ont tous déclaré qu’il avait été mal interprété. Lui-même a rectifié le tir dans une lettre à Pauline Marois et Gilles Duceppe. Il a parlé

Photograph: The Canadian Press / Markus Schreiber

Quebec will continue to be part of Canada and Quebeckers will continue to have a voice at the G8 and G20, institutions that most countries in the UN would give their eyeteeth to be at.

Prime Minister Stephen Harper poses with other international leaders at the G8 summit in L’Aquila, Italy, July 2009.

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auquel j’ai participé souvent comme ministre du gouvernement québécois et où j’ai rencontré plus de décideurs politiques qu’ils s’en trouvent au G20 et au G8. Plusieurs pays très prospères sont d’ailleurs absents de ces dernières rencontres et n’en souffrent aucunement.

Le choix de la nation québécoise est simple : être membre à part entière de l’ONU, de l’OMC, du FMI, du BIT, de l’OMS, tout en renonçant à être représentée par le Canada aux rencontres annuelles du G6, 7 ou 20 ! Rien qu’être membre de l’OCDE comme la Suède, la Suisse ou l’Irlande, est déjà beaucoup plus séduisant que d’entendre le premier ministre du Canada parler en notre nom où que ce soit.

M. Spector, vous qui avez été diplomate. Demandez donc à vos contacts en Israël, en Irlande, en Suisse ou en Suède ce qu’ils feraient à la place du Québec devant une telle option.

En tout respect pour le Canada, il est clair que les intérêts de la nation québécoise seraient mieux défendus par ses propres élus que par ceux d’une autre nation qui, précisément parce que démocratique, défend d’abord les intérêts de la majorité. L’environnement en donne un exemple impressionnant. Comment un des premiers de la classe en ce domaine, le Québec, pourrait-il être

53

G L O B AL B R IE F • FALL 2 0 0 9

Il est clair que les intérêts de la nation québécoise seraient mieux défendus par ses propres élus que par ceux d’une autre nation qui, précisément parce que démocratique, défend d’abord les intérêts de la majorité.

54

des « amis canadiens » et des « frères québécois ».

Intéressant aussi de noter que l’immense majorité des Américains souhaite que leur gouvernement reste à l’écart de notre débat.

Pour le libre échange, je ne vois pas le rapport.

Le monde entier ou presque veut la fluidité. Le Canada la recherche même avec la Colombie. Ne pas oublier d’ailleurs que c’est le Québec, par son appui massif, qui a entraîné le Canada dans le premier traité avec les États-Unis.

Pourquoi défendre encore cette thèse indéfendable qu’une nation, pour être représentée par une autre au G20, renoncerait à être membre du G192, comme Ban Ki-moon appelle l’Assemblée générale des Nations Unies ?

Enfin, Jean-Marie Le Clézio dénonçant un projet hydraulique, approuvé par referendum par les Innus, a décrit Hydro-Québec comme une « mutinationale capitaliste »!!! Il est facile d’imaginer ce que ce grand littéraire pourrait écrire au sujet des sables bitumineux...

Spector: You and I may be right about the future of Quebec – and you and I may be wrong: after all, there are no facts in the future. Insofar as the negotiation of free trade with the EU and a successor treaty to Kyoto are concerned, Canada will be negotiating on behalf of all Canadians, including Quebeckers.

In the context of these two negotiations, Quebec will play the same role as Ontario and British Columbia, which means that it will have greater influence than American states. In both cases, however, it will be Canada and the US that sign any agreements that may be concluded.

Quebec has recognized this fact of life by repeatedly criticizing and seeking to influence Ottawa’s negotiating position on climate change – which is the only position that matters on the northern half of the continent – and by urging Ottawa to open free trade negotiations with the EU. One can expect this internal Canadian dynamic to continue, particularly since the EU has made it clear that provinces must open up their procurement in any free trade agreement. Quebec may wish that it were otherwise, but only Ottawa has the means to persuade reluctant provinces such as Alberta and British Columbia, if it comes to that.

Landry: En reconnaissant que ni l’un ni l’autre ne sommes des prophètes nous sommes enfin en parfaite harmonie ! Nous pourrions l’être sur beaucoup d’autres sujets si vous examiniez les avantages que le Canada pourrait tirer de l’indépendance du Québec. Mon ami et ancien collègue Reed Scowen a fait cette intéressante démarche dans un livre intitulé Time to Say Goodbye.

Beaucoup de politiques qui pourraient être

salutaires pour le Canada sont rendues impossibles par l’opposition constitutionnelle perpétuelle et justifiée du Québec gouverné par les libéraux comme par les péquistes : politiques nationales de l’éducation, de la santé, des jeunes délinquants, des valeurs mobilières et j’en passe. Si vous n’étiez pas entravé par cette constitution, dont Trudeau a dit « qu’elle durerait mille ans », la gestion de votre pays serait plus efficace et plus facile. Et avec des gouvernements majoritaires en plus…

Enfin, quand vous parlez de l’Ontario, de la Colombie-Britannique et des États américains, en référence au Québec, vous oubliez un facteur vital : aucune de ces entités n’est une nation.

J’ai apprécié notre discussion et j’aimerais la continuer « face à face » autour d’une bonne table, chez moi à Verchères, le long du Saint-Laurent, où j’aimerais beaucoup vous accueillir.

Spector: First of all, recalling our very enjoyable dinner in Montreal a few years ago, I will gladly accept your invitation to partake of another chez vous. As I hope you will accept mine, on the Pacific Coast, where we recently enjoyed one of the most beautiful summers in my lifetime. And lest I be accused of rubbing it in, let me add that this is the way it goes in Canada: some years we’re up – be it the weather or the economy – some years you are, but together we have one of the most peaceful and prosperous and beautiful countries on the face of the Earth.

In the meantime, Canada will be negotiating two important international agreements: the successor to Kyoto and free trade with the EU. These will be difficult negotiations with countries that will be seeking to maximize their national interests.

In these negotiations, Western provinces will have to sacrifice some of their interests to help realize Quebec’s objective of free trade, and Quebec will have to respect the interests of Western provinces in the climate change negotiations. No province will get everything it wants, which will make Ottawa’s job difficult, but not impossible, if we all get behind our national government – and if we all understand that solidarity among Canadians calls for no less. As to your claim that Quebec is a nation – that’s not quite right. The Parliament of Canada has recognized that the Québécois form a nation within a united Canada – just as we recognize that indigenous peoples in Canada form nations: First Nations, as it were. But we no more believe that First Nations – including those in Quebec – should become independent countries, than we do in the case of Quebec, one of Canada’s 10 provinces – distinct from the others in many respects, just as Newfoundland is distinct from British Columbia, but a province that is unique in our hearts because of its language and culture. | GB

If you had a friend going through some tough times, how would you help?

Last year, we gave our friend Chad

» We’ll call him

Chad

»

12 million dollars.

chad canada Would you just give your friend money or would you be

more creative?

The mainstream discussion about Canada’s relationship to Africa is how much money we should give. Is that creative?

Of course we also trade with Chad and other African nations, but: Canada imports goods worth just $3,000 from Chad each year.

How can we be more creative, realizing better trade relationships?

Canada’s top export to 12 African countries is used clothing.

How can we be more creative to not undermine the local textile industry?

Creativity requires connections. What if the people, universities, government, and businesses of Canada unleashed not just our money, but also our creativity, for a friend like Chad?

Ewb.ca/creativeconnections

adopt one village

When you give to Free The Children’s Adopt a Village program, you give children in developing communities what they really need to succeed. $50 can provide a family with a goat, a source of income to help lift them out of poverty $500 can provide children with a daily nutritious lunch program at school $8,500 can build a school for bright minds to learn and grow

Donate online, launch a personal fundraiser, or learn more. www.freethechildren.com

Photo Š V. Tony Hauser

CHANGE THE WHOLE WORLD

On Great Men and Women Assessing the world’s leaders – past, present and future – with the President & CEO of the International Crisis Group Conversation with Louise Arbour Q: So, Ms. Arbour, let us talk about your views on leadership in this new century…

A: Barack Obama impresses me. I hardly need to elaborate on the reasons. His intellectual strength, his moral grounding, the political acumen which allowed him to triumph after an 18-month internal political fight of quasi-epic proportions should be enough to impress even the most cynical observers. Other people impress me, but I am not sure that you would qualify them as ‘world leaders’ in the conventional sense. I think that they are important leaders who operate on the world scene. I am not sure that there are many people who lead the world. I am thinking here of Aung San Suu Kyi, for example, or of Ellen Johnson-Sirleaf. At a time of unprecedented global threats, there are very few people whose power, influence and interests transcend their national borders, their traditional zones of influence, or their narrowly defined interests abroad. Maybe we just do not currently have the kinds of institutions or mindsets that would allow for world leadership. Democracies – the preferred form of national governance – do not lend themselves to sustainable leadership that is prepared to advance the long-term global good at the expense of short-term national pains. Nondemocratic leaders do not produce exportable leadership, as they usually do not even need many leadership qualities to govern domestically. Finally, great leaders must invariably be the beneficiaries of a good historical fit: they will have been the right person for their time.

It would be interesting to speculate about the difference that it would have made had President Obama been seized with the 9/11 crisis, and President Bush with the global economic one.

Context, in other words, is a large component of successful leadership. Opportunity – or lack thereof – will often make or break a person with great leadership potential.

Q: Who are ones to watch?

A: I think that we need to watch leaders who have recently been handed opportunities, and whose

Louise Arbour has served as President & CEO of the International Crisis Group since July 2009. Previously, she was UN High Commissioner for Human Rights (2004-2008), as well as a judge on the Canadian Supreme Court (1999-2004).

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A: I should preface my answers with some general observations.

First, I have still not answered in my own mind whether I believe that people matter more than institutions or vice-versa. I understand that it is best to have great institutions led by great people.

But I am still not sure of who carries whom. Is it leaders who make institutions, or institutions that carry their leaders? I suppose it depends; and in an ideal scenario, there is a perfect symbiotic relationship between the leader and all of his or her constituencies.

In general terms, I have to say that I find the personalization of leadership a difficult subject. It may come from my professional commitment to equality and the long amount of time that I have spent working in the judiciary, where professional contribution is somewhat depersonalized. That is why judges wear uniforms and often refer to themselves in the third person – as “the court.”

Although this may sound bizarre at times, it is a reflection of a greater deference to the office than to the office-holder. And again, in the judiciary, the Chief Justice is officially no more than a primus inter pares, except for the occasional case where he or she also happens to be a genuine intellectual leader.

In my work within the UN, I also saw leadership as somewhat diffuse, although the organization is very hierarchical. There are several leaders – not just the ultimate leader – who constitute the leadership body of such a large organization. And I am not talking here about the distinction between leaders and managers. I believe that even in the lower echelons of an organization there are leaders – both formal and informal.

Finally, I believe that there is a difference between successful leaders and admirable ones. The appreciation of both will obviously vary with time and, as we all know, history may be kinder – or not – than contemporary appreciation as to whether a person has been successful or admirable, or both.

Q: Which world leaders impress you today?

TÊTE À TÊTE

57

outlook will be critical both nationally and regionally on the peace and security agenda, as well as on development issues. I can think here of Jacob Zuma, Benjamin Netanyahu and Morgan Tsvangirai.

There is no question that the leaders of China, in particular, and of India and Brazil, among others, will continue to have a growing influence on the global economy, as well as on global issues, such as climate change.

Q: Who is your favourite historical leader?

There is an insufficient critical mass of women in ‘high global positions’ to allow us to identify gender-based differences in style of leadership at that level between men and women.

A: Nelson Mandela.

Q: Which countries are producing disproportionate numbers of global leaders in different fields? Why? A: By disproportionate, you must mean per-capita, as opposed to ‘a lot more than anybody else.’ In any event, it must be the US – essentially because Americans believe that they are born to lead, both personally and as the ‘indispensable nation.’ The current dominance of American culture includes American political culture, which promotes the personalization of leadership and the disproportionate impact of mere celebrity. American wealth, and the entrepreneurial spirit that is also reflected in large American philanthropic endeavours, contribute to sustaining leadership in non-political fields such as the arts, health, science, etc.

Leadership is therefore generally understood under this US/Western model. This leaves little room for an appreciation of leadership that is less personalised and more conducive to collaborative, community-based initiatives where ideas take shape in a collective way, and credit is more diffused. As developing countries take a larger place among the international power plays, we may see cultural changes in the appreciation of leadership attributes.

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Q: How does Canada fare in this regard?

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A: You remember the story about the lobster tank in the restaurant? A client was worried because the tank had no cover, so he told the manager that it was dangerous, as a lobster might jump out (and what – run away? Or eat a client?). In any event, the manager told him that there was nothing to worry about because these were Canadian lobsters: “As soon as one gets close to the top, all the others quickly pull him down”.

But Canada fares well, I think, on the more ‘collaborative’ leadership model – leading international initiatives, whether on banning landmines or on developing the concept of Responsibility to Protect; that is, on the call for broad-based mobilization and the creation of consensus.

Q: Are there major problems or global issues for which you fear there is at present insufficient leadership? If so, which ones?

A: As I mentioned before, our current political structures are not conducive to effective leadership on issues that require long-term solutions – at least in democratic regimes. It leaves the longterm to those who can secure their power without having to worry about short-term popular support to ensure periodic re-elections, and to international organizations which are not supranational and therefore cater to a combination of short-term national interests – rather than to a longer-term common good. In other words, we have no guardians or promoters of a long-term international public interest – except in the non-governmental sector, where there are good ideas, but there is little power. This is not very encouraging. And this is why it is so difficult to get the right traction on climate change – for example – and on aid to development, fair trade, global health issues, and so forth.

We also have serious shortcomings of leadership on conflict prevention. The only political forum for robust action on the prevention, as well as the management and resolution of, conflict would currently be the Security Council, and its jurisdictional restriction to “threats to international peace and security” conveniently permits it to decline to play that role when coercive measures would be called for in the face of internal conflicts. In such cases, there are few leadership voices willing to advocate for measures that would override state sovereignty – particularly if there were even a remote possibility that these could one day apply to them.

Finally, I believe that there is currently a weak leadership – worldwide – on religion. While all religions purport to call for a virtuous pursuit of the common good, religious leadership has failed to prevent the divisive effect of religious affiliation – not to mention the rise of extremisms almost unparalleled in purely political movements.

Q: Is there any necessary difference in leadership style or impact by women at high global positions from that of men in high global positions?

A: There is an insufficient critical mass of women in ‘high global positions’ to allow us to identify gender-based differences in style of leadership at that level between men and women. In addition, the process of socialization that permits a few women to attain such positions is likely to blur characteristics that could otherwise be attributable to gender. Having said this, in most societies today, women are at the centre of positive

human and social interactions. Although they do not have a monopoly on virtue, they are universally less prone to violence than men, and often entrusted with cooperative activities – including their collective responsibility for bearing and rearing children. On that basis, one could assume that they would lead with more interest in others, empathy, caring and inclusiveness. But all this will remain a hypothesis until enough women are allowed to lead on their own terms.

Q: Turning to your erstwhile vocation as a top jurist, what role do you see for law or the rule of law – nationally and internationally – in the prevention of strategic conflict? Can it have a role in the creation of strategic conflict?

Q: As states become ever complex (and indeed, larger) in this new century, do you foresee capacity and legitimacy problems for judiciaries around the world in keeping political branches of government in check?

A: I think that the role of the judiciary in governance has yet to be properly understood and supported in the development agenda. In many developing countries, law enforcement and judicial systems are remnants of colonial models that are today barely sustainable in the context of rich, developed countries – and indeed not particularly suitable to the general culture of, and the modern problems facing, the developing world.

And as emerging democracies mature – particularly under constitutional models with entrenched Bill of Rights guarantees – we will likely see the socalled legalization of politics that we have witnessed in Canada; for instance, since the 1982 Canadian Charter of Rights and Freedoms. We have also seen this unfolding in South Africa, for example, as the Constitutional Court has occupied its proper place in constitutional adjudication.

So it is not really a question of courts ‘keeping governments in check.’ It is a question of courts being fully integrated as a branch of governance, as arbiters not only of private disputes in the application of the law, and in broader disputes about the interpretation of the law, but also as guardians of constitutional principles. In environments where grievances by minorities are not properly addressed by the political system, recourse to credible judicial redress can be a powerful force for social peace, and ultimately for progress on the political front. But I am not sure that we are currently investing enough in the development of competent, independent, credible national judicial systems.

I should add that this has been exacerbated, in a sense, by the growth of private international commercial arbitrations, which has permitted the bypassing of corrupt or otherwise inadequate national courts in favour of a parallel – but suitable – dispute resolution mechanism. This, of course, supports international trade, but it does little to encourage redress of the domestic shortcomings of a national system that remains the sole provider of justice in all other respects: criminal law, land and family disputes and, of course, human rights violations and other forms of abuse of power by the state. | GB

In addition, the process of socialization that permits a few women to attain such positions is likely to blur characteristics that could otherwise be attributable to gender.

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A: The Rule of Law is currently the ‘flavour of the day’ in the development agenda – repackaging concepts like good governance, transparency and accountability as desirable outcomes, if not conditionalities, in development assistance. I am concerned, however, that the prevalent understanding of the concept of the Rule of Law is an impoverished one, reduced to ‘rule by law.’ This is not unlike the exportation of an impoverished version of democracy that was often reduced to electoral mechanisms. There is, of course, a lot more to democracy than the holding of periodic free and fair elections: things like a credible law enforcement machinery; a free, independent, competent and properly resourced judicial system; a free press; and a participatory civil society infrastructure, even if only a modest one. When most of these are lacking, the rush to elections often does little more than legitimize the power of a strong executive, riding on the shoulders of a formal, but not significant, legislative branch – with little in the form of checks and balances to ensure proper governance.

In the same way, there is more to the Rule of Law than ‘rule by law’ to overcome human arbitrariness.

In its more sophisticated acceptance, the Rule of Law includes the requirements of equality before and under the law, equal protection and benefit of the law, and, of course, the guarantee that no one is above the law. In mature democracies, where the concept has really taken root, the Rule of Law, in my view, also incorporates all of the fundamental human rights guarantees that protect individual and minority rights so as to ensure that, even in a system of democratic majority rule, constraints are placed on the exercise of state power.

There is no doubt that the pursuit of political models of democratic governance under the Rule of Law, with both concepts understood as containing broad – rather than narrow and formal – requirements, would advance the peaceful resolution of conflicts, both domestically and internationally.

Conversely, the acceptance of formal, impoverished democratic models risks exacerbating grievances by legitimizing pure power plays. And the same is true for the promotion of a narrowly understood Rule of Law that would ‘legalize’ unconscionable practices, such as racial or gender discrimination or the availability of torture warrants.

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THE DEFINITION “The most strategic leader in the world today is... …neither any political leader of any particular nation-state, nor any presumed leader of any superpower, nor indeed any chief executive officer of any transnational corporation. The 21st century is the age of the revolt of civil society and community activism against the increasingly discredited state apparatus and ineffective global entities, ranging from the UN to the World Bank. The president of the most powerful country on Earth is a former community activist, who still looks and acts as a community activist!

Ours is the age of the creative fiction of the Internet exacerbating the critical condition of our globalized public spaces. In these circumstances, the accumulated synergy of cyberspace and the polyvocal views that it has enabled disallow any single leader the vacuous aura or the charismatic ambiguity that have historically conditioned great political and moral leaders. Neither a Gandhi will emerge in this world nor a Churchill, neither a Malcolm X nor a Martin Luther King – and the world is neither any richer nor any poorer for this fact. Rather, it is at the threshold of a whole new shade of moral imagination.”

...Muammar Gaddafi. For decades, he has mastered the politics of levering a tactical existence into the consummate strategic success story for maintenance of the ruler’s own power. If he had been around 500 years ago, he might have been Machiavelli’s Prince. None of this makes him less than mad as a hatter, but some of the oddest among us are also the most cunning.”

CRAIG SCOTT is Professor of Law, Osgoode Hall Law School, and Director of the Nathanson Centre on Transnational Human Rights, Crime and Security (York University, Toronto).

...Wen Jiabao.

This assessment follows a definition of strategy as the means or the tools by which objectives are consciously and systematically pursued and obtained over time. Since taking office in 2003, he has pursued the path of a (so far peaceful) rise of China in international relations – continously, persistently, skilfully and, to my mind, successfully. This impresses me, regardless of the domestic situation in China.”

HAMID DABASHI teaches social and intellectual his-

MARKUS KAIM is Head of the International

tory of Iran and the Muslim world, literary and cultural

Security Programme at the German Institute

theory, as well as world cinema at Columbia Univer-

for International and Security Affairs (Berlin).

sity (New York), where he holds the Hagop Kevorkian Chair in Iranian Studies and Comparative Literature.

of Tehran Bureau, a leading independent online news

still shaping Russia’s destiny from the White House rather than the Kremlin, provides a combination of stark strategic cunning in the international arena, with an overly tactical approach domestically that may over time undermine his strategic goals. Facing down international criticism of Russia’s actions against Georgia, domestic human rights abuses and his use of gas politics over pipeline routes through Ukraine, he has achieved divide-and-rule in European capitals, strengthened Russia’s position in its ‘near abroad,’ set back NATO expansion and consolidated power domestically.”

service in English covering politics, foreign affairs,

ADAM HUG is Policy Director at the Foreign Policy

culture and society in Iran and the Iranian diaspora.

Centre, a London-based think tank.

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... Ali Akbar Hashemi Rafsanjani. He start-

60

…Vladimir Putin,

ed out by Ayatollah Khomeini’s side, and so far even the powerful Iranian Revolutionary Guardian Corps has not been able to unseat him. By not officially aligning himself with anyone or anything, he plays centre, right and left at the same time. He is adept at mixing power and money like only he knows how. He, simply, has no parallel in the Islamic Republic of Iran.”

KELLY GOLNOUSH NIKNEJAD is the Editor-in-Chief

For more responses to The Definition, visit www.globalbrief.ca

its customers, partners and staff. She is comfortable in the crow’s nest – looking out beyond her mandate and positioning the organization and its people for that future. She is equally comfortable talking to staff on the front line: she knows her people; listens to them; hears their voices.

Photographs: the canadian press images

They, in turn, know her and what is expected of them. She is equal parts toughness and humility, and commands tremendous loyalty and respect.

She can have a laugh at her own expense: she is human.”

TONY DEAN teaches at the School of Public Policy and Governance at the University of Toronto, and advises governments on policy and delivery.

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...wondering what the hell is going on in the world, but is determined to make sense of what it means for her organization,

He is former Head of the Ontario Public Service.

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STRATEGIC FUTURES « Ma prochaine voiture sera produite... ...partout. » MEL CAPPE est président de l’Institut des recherches en politiques publiques à Montréal et ancien greffier du Conseil privé et Secrétaire du Cabinet à Ottawa.

... nulle

part. Ma voiture sera construite en pierre, comme celle de Fred Caillou (les Pierrafeu).

C’est un moyen de transport écologique et bon pour la santé! Quoi de plus post-moderne que le retour à l’âge de pierre! » IAN ROBERGE est professeur agrégé au

département de science politique du Collège Glendon, Université York, à Toronto.

...par le manufacturier

en mesure de me prouver qu’il utilisera un combustible renouvelable, mais non dégradant pour l’agriculture, et qui me fera la démonstration de sa fiabilité technique totale et de ses capacités à m’empêcher de la conduire si je ne suis pas en état, ou autorisé, à le faire. » GÉRARD HERVOUET est directeur du programme Paix et Sécurité Internationales à l’Institut québécois des hautes études internationales. Il est aussi professeur titulaire au département de science politique de l’Université Laval à Québec.

…en Europe, soit en Allemagne soit en Suède.

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Je cherche une marque renommée surtout pour sa qualité et sûreté, mais aussi une voiture belle et chic. C’est ma tête qui demande la sûreté, c’est mon cœur qui demande le style. »

62

SIMON ANDREWS est officier dans la Marine Royale australienne. Il a travaillé au Ministère du Première Ministre et du Cabinet à Canberra.

… dans un pays en développement, mais sa conception sera européenne. Les producteurs d’automobiles européens sont encore les meilleurs pour développer des voitures désirables et

intelligentes. De plus, la qualité et la durabilité de leur design fait en sorte que la durée de vie d’une voiture européenne est beaucoup plus longue que celle d’une voiture américaine ou même japonaise. Les voitures européennes offrent la meilleure économie d’essence, ce qui sera de plus en plus important dans un monde sensible à l’environnement et dans un contexte où le baril de pétrole se transigera à plus de 100 $ au cours des prochaines années. » FRANÇOIS BOUTIN-DUFRESNE est économiste spécialisé en finance et affaires internationales à Montréal.

… au Japon, de toute probabilité. Ou peut-être

Above: Volkswagen

en Chine. Paraît-il que tout se produit de nos jours en Chine… Pourquoi pas ma voiture ? »

production line

REBECCA STUDIN est avocate et boursière

plant, Lower Saxony,

Fox à Londres.

Germany.

in the Wolfsburg

of the Tata Nano

c’est-à-dire la société dont le nouveau propriétaire est le consortium canado-russe MagnaSberbank. »

in Mumbai, India,

ALEXANDER ROSIAK est ingénieur mécanique

within reach of

basé à Ashdod, en Israël.

millions of people.

PhotographS: The Canadian Press / AP PHOTOS

a vehicle designed to put car ownership

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Left: The launch

…sera produite à nouveau par Opel ;

63

EPIGRAM

Artists and Revolution Final reflections on leadership, truth and the subversive pen

By George Elliott Clarke

Propagandists argue that the true poet must be a revolutionary. Otherwise, he or she is just a bourgeois wannabe – or an opportunist. But isn’t the artist’s only responsibility to show ‘truth’ – as he or she sees it? If his or her art is ‘truthful,’ it will be ‘revolutionary.’ Besides, a real revolution is bloody and messy, and, sadly, instead of furthering peace and democracy, provokes civil war and terror.

George Elliott Clarke is a GovernorGeneral’s Awardwinning poet, novelist, essayist and librettist.

His newest book is I & I, a verse-novel.

He teaches English at the University

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of Toronto.

64

A revolution is optimistic nihilism versus realistic pessimism – or apocalyptic hope versus hellish desperation. Hence, revolutions frequently worsen already intolerable situations, exchanging disasters for catastrophes.

See the Russian Revolution of 1917 and the Chinese Revolution of 1949: their legacies included mass starvation and general repression. Yet revolutions can thrust history forward, allowing commendable social experiments. Indeed, one must defend both the Russian and the Chinese Revolutions as exemplifying the wish of the people to be freed from poverty, the selfish rule of the cold-hearted wealthy, and from foreign – or racist – domination.

Also, the Soviet and Chinese Revolutions provided inspiration to many developing nations that could only free themselves of Western economic, political, and military control by toppling the brutal puppets, ‘running dogs,’ and ‘paper tigers’ that exploited them at the behest of offshore powers.

The Cuban Revolution, of 1959, liberated that nation from impoverishing, Mafia overlords. However, one political party controls Cuba still.

The Velvet Revolution, in the then Czechoslovakia, led by playwright Vaclav Havel, exemplified the possibility for radical but non-lethal change.

The rebels won, yes, but the nation still split into two sovereign entities. The American Revolution terminated British mastery of the Yankee colonists, unleashing rich energies of invention – as well as a tendency to export a fierce republicanism.

The French Revolution of 1789 extended the American-born principles of liberty and equality to Europe, but not to French colonies, such as Haiti.

Indeed, Haiti had to have its own revolt, in the early 1800s, to rid itself of slavery and French imperialism (although it ended up with its own ferocious dictators). Likewise, the Iranian Revolution of 1979 properly nullified the fantastic horror of the Shah’s regime – only to propagate the fresh terror of the Ayatollah’s.

France, in May 1968, is the model of a pacific near-revolution – one that argued for unity between workers and students, inspired the feminist move-

ment in Europe, and tried to ‘liberate’ speech and imagination. It was a réveille for artists. Certainly, the problem with revolution waged at gunpoint is that one can never be sure at what end of the gun one will find oneself – or one’s family. Better is the revolution waged by ink, or by speech, or by paintbrush, or by music and song. Better to prompt thought than shed blood.

The philosopher Herbert Marcuse writes: “It seems that the poems and songs of protest and liberation are always too late or too early: memory or dream.” The artist is always either remembering political struggle or revealing, prophetically, its presence. Art always stages a revolutionary hallucination – or recollection.

If we view “society as a work of art” (Marcuse), then it is the task of artists to perfect it – but in art, not in legislatures or in armies. Political struggle is ephemeral, but art is its eternal witness.

Another philosopher, Adolfo Sanchez Vazquez, tells us that “beauty cannot exist outside of humanity.” Moreover, he says, “creation comes to mean rebellion.” As soon as the artist makes art, he or she challenges society. There can be no true art that is not also profoundly transformative of the artist and his or her audience.

Sanchez Vazquez affirms: “A victorious revolution, by unleashing the creative energies of the people, escapes the prison of tragedy.” Thus, triumphant art, by insistently provoking the intelligence of the beholder, escapes the prison of decay.

According to a third philosopher, Frantz Fanon, the artist is “an awakener of the people.” (The “awakening” is – one imagines – a revelation of social ‘truth.’) The conscious artist – the conscientious artist – is one who remembers roots, stares at stars, and humours humanity.

But that very process of reflection, observation and empathy renders every artist defiant to State dictates.

Governments succeed by ahistoricism, prejudice and cynicism. (I.F. Stone insists: “All governments lie.”) Their ‘truth’ can never be trusted. Yet, art displaces their lies.

In the end, the revolutionary task of the artist is not the fomenting of revolution. It is the making of renaissance after renaissance. If the art properly challenges his or her society, the artist has forged revolutionary change…

“Snow hammers earth with leaden softness….

Ah, this world’s mutable: mountains become coral reefs.” | GB

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Mugunga camp for internally displaced persons, North Kivu, Congo, September 2008. CRISIS GROUP/NEIL CAMPBELL

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