The elections in the Mideast
Barnett
¦"Anti-Syrian Bloc Claims A Victory In Lebanese Vote: Last Round of Elections; Alliance of Ex-Premier's Son Wins Majority of Parliament Seats," by John Kifner, New York Times, 20 June 2005, p. A1.
¦"Iran Moderate Says Hard-Liners Rigged Election: Investigation Demanded; Conservative Mayor and Former President Are Seen in Runoff," by Michael Slackman, New York Times, 19 June 2005, p. A1.
¦"Iranian Reform Party Hints That It Will Support Insider: A reluctant move to stave off a popular hard-liner," by Michael Slackman, New York Times, 20 June 2005, p. A8.
¦"Iran's Leaders Warn Candidate Who Charged Vote Fraud: But Rafsanjani Backs Inquiry, Too," by Michael Slackman, New York Times, 21 June 2005, p. A3.
Decent signs from the two recent elections in the Big Banged Middle East.
In Lebanon, the anti-Syrian forces seem to have captured the parliament, securing the recent apparent gains of the "cedar revolution" that had little to do with "democratizing" Lebanon (already a decent democracy) and more to do with simply throwing the Syrians out after their own SysAdmin role wore out its welcome (better than civil war and better than Israeli occupation, but no longer needed now that America is committed to fostering political change in the region).
In Iran, a fairly expected outcome: vote rigged just enough to make sure run-off election would be a call between the former president Rafsanjani and the hard-core conservative (but popular) mayor of Tehran. Good news is that the reformist blocs are coalescing around Rafsanjani as the lesser of two evils. To offer a comparison, it would be like a 1968 U.S. presidential election where vote-rigging had kept a Humphrey out of contention so that the choice would come down to a Nixon versus a George Wallace. At this point, the Nixon is the better choice.
The big question is whether this Nixon goes to "China" (here, the U.S.) and what deals are possible. Many doubt Rafsanjani will deal at all, but I'm far more optimistic. Anybody who can engineer such a Nixon-like resurrection is not to be underestimated.
The numbers game in Iraq
¦"Choose: More Troops In Iraq Will (Help) (Hurt): At home, calls for an exit strategy. In Iraq, calls for more combat power," by John F. Burns, New York Times, 19 June 2005, p. WK1.
¦"Marines See Signs Iraq Rebels Are Battling Foreign Fighters: Insurgenct may resent Jihadist violence against civilians," by Sabrina Tavernise, New York Times, 21 June 2005, p. A6.
We wanted Iraq bad and we got it bad. We opted for the fastest sort of Leviathan war (smart choice), but then turned cheapskates on the SysAdmin effort, and we continue to argue the wrong debate: it ain't about who "lost" the war (it was won, decisively), but about who bungled the peace and let the insurgency become so destructive. Back home plenty of politicians want an exit strategy (Powell Doctrine rearing its non-strategic head), so we can get out of Dodge as fast as possible, presumably to schedule our return date with greater accuracy. But the SysAdmin commanders in the field, who simultaneously battle a die-hard insurgency while trying to nation-build, clearly want more boots on the ground. Having alienated so much of the world in the run-up to the war, the Bush administration is reduced to "staying-the-course" pronouncements that spell q-u-a-g-m-i-r-e to many American parents of soldiers in southwest Asia right now.
Frankly, the best news coming out of Iraq right now is the rising frequency of red-on-red fire, meaning indigenous insurgents battling foreign fighters. If the two sides cannot stay together, then the legitimacy of the U.S.-led SysAdmin force presence is already gaining significant ground. Ideally, we become part of the country's natural immune system and it's the foreign jihadis that attract the most attention. When our security becomes their security, the SysAdmin effort begins to succeed for real.
Instead of trying to prove that we fought the war correctly, we should instead be focusing on demonstrating our awareness that the SysAdmin function is necessarily a multilateral affair that requires a region-heavy effort to reintegrate the country in question back into the international fold, otherwise we're just creating another Israel: a pilot program surrounded by a plethora of failed regimes (and yeah, I consider most Arab state-heavy regimes to be essentially "failed," as in, they "fail" to get their populations connected up to the global economy, much less prepare them for such a competitive environment.
Locating China in history: 4 new data points
¦"Rape in China: A Nightmare For 26 Pupils," by Jim Yardley, New York Times, 21 June 2005, p. A1.
¦"Chinese Furniture Is In Such Demand, No Widow Is Safe: Men Rudely Enter Homes And Induce Folks to Sell; 'More Wolves Than Meat,'" by Karen Mazurkewich, Wall Street Journal, 20 June 2005, p. A1.
¦"Chinese Bank Takes Lead In Privatizing: Stake by U.S. Bank Is Seen as First Step," by David Barboza, New York Times, 18 June 2005, p. B3.
¦"China's New Frontiers: Tests of Democracy and Dissent," by Howard D. French, New York Times, 19 June 2005, p. A6.
Yet another of my continuing efforts to locate China in past U.S. history.
The first story of the frighteningly arbitrary power of teachers in poor rural areas in China has an almost Dickensian quality to it. It's "Oliver" in the worst way, proving that China the coastal regions may be approaching a U.S.-like economic standard, but that there's still a vast sea of inland population that's stuck in Appalachia-like impoverishment, at best dating them in the range of 1920s America. China will go majority urban around 2020, roughly a century after the U.S. did. Expect a huge amount of political change to catch up with all that social change in that timeframe.
The whole mania for scrounging up antique Chinese furniture so it can be sold abroad speaks to an extreme compression of time in China: a super-connecting economy finds buyers for the household goods of the most disconnected (typically) rural poor. It's like these "raiders of the lost folk art" are pillaging the country's past in real time, able as they are to travel back in time simply by visiting the countryside and preying upon the elderly there.
But China is also moving smartly into the present, showing more and more signs that the government realizes that the best way to reform banking is to have foreign banks buy into the system, bringing their "new" rules (at least to the Chinese bankers) and their old money to help transition the industry from the bad practices (and bad loans) of the past. This simultaneously feels like the rise of better banking practices in the U.S. during the Great Depression and the raging bank mergers of more recent years.
And the final story has an almost 1970s California ring to it, as political decision making is increasingly devolving to local governments on economic development issues, and politicians there are likewise turning to almost "proposition"-like polling methods to sound out the public on how to move ahead. These politicians don't do it because they want to per se, but because they've seen too many provinces succumb to angry mob violence when the local population's desires are routinely ignored by secretive and elitist government-decides-all methods of economic planning. I mean, in one instance we're talking about a local Communist Party official bringing in a Stanford political scientist to oversee focus groups.
Who's really winning the ideological struggle
¦"Cheer Up Conservatives, You're Still Winning! The right has walloped the left in the war of ideas," op-ed by John Micklethwait and Adrian Wooldridge, , June 2005, p. A1.
¦"Rice Urges Egyptians and Saudis to Democratize]," by Steven R. Weisman, New York Times, 21 June 2005, p. A1.
¦"Uzbek Ministries in Crackdown Received U.S. Aid," by C.J. Chivers and Thom Shanker, New York Times, 18 June 2005, p. A1.
As always, an interesting and provocative op-ed from those Economist guys with the godawful British names. This one underscores how Bush's brand of core values conservatism continues to grow in strength across the country, especially among the people making a lot of babies, which tends to be the religious whites and the immigrant populations, both of whom prefer clear and less ambiguous rule sets within which to raise their families.
Yes, they say, Bush is spending a lot of money, but virtually none is designed to redistribute wealth in society through government programs. Plus, look at the last election, where seemingly the Dems had everything going for them and still lost an election far less close than the one that preceded it (Bush actually being the first president since Reagan elected with more than 50% of the vote).
Honestly, thinking about 2008 reminds me of when one of the two NFL conferences dominates the other for long stretches: the real contest for president is most likely in the Republican primaries, not the national election.
And you see this in foreign affairs: the Bushies are simultaneously the realpolitik types who are unafraid to rely on dictators and the Wilsonian types lecturing the Egyptian and Saudi leaderships on becoming more democratic.
The U.S. foreign policy that emerged in The New Map Game earlier this month was described by Alidade president Jeff Cares as a sort of "Republican Carter" administration, and I honestly think that description captures what most Americans will vote for in 2008: not too aggressive, not so ambitious as Bush, but focused on encouraging positive change that's defensible on moral grounds. I don't see the Democratic contender yet who can deliver that, but I suspect there are several on the Republican side who will.
It's so often a women's thing inside the Gap
¦"The 11-Year-Old Wife," op-ed by Nicholas D. Kristof, New York Times , 21 June 2005, p. A23.
Nick Kristof claims that two women die each day in Pakistan from honor killings (basically sex outside the marriage getting you killed in today's version of stonings, which, sometimes are still stonings). It's one of those factoids you want to resist embracing, because it's so hard to verify.
But there's no denying Pakistan's "hudood laws," which Kristof says have been used to imprison "thousands of women who report rapes." Here's the amazing standard: to verify a rape a women needs to have four male witnesses to the act. Sounds like a good-old-rapist-boys law that makes it impossible to ever catch one after the fact. The catch 22 is obvious: you can't get the four witnesses, so you, the woman, go to jail for admitting having "illicit sex." If there is a better way to scare females from ever reporting rapes, I haven't heard it. Such laws have the effect of making rape legal in the society. So if a woman gets too uppity in the business world or in family life or in stirring up trouble in general, you rape her and knock her off her stride. And if she complains she lands in jail.
Kristof tells the story of women in Pakistan who demonstrated for equal rights. They were clubbed by police and dragged to the station. The ringleader's fate was to be stripped naked in public.
Pakistanis are rightfully resentful that such headlines are the main depictions of their society in the West, but they should target their own political system for that anger. Bad people doing bad things will happen anywhere, but bad laws that let them get away with it tend to be defining features of the Gap, not the Core.
Millennium challenged
¦"Trade and Aid to Poorest Seen as Crucial on Agenda for Richest Nations," by Celia W. Dugger, New York Times, 19 June 2005, p. A8.
¦"A Timely Departure," editorial, New York Times, 19 June 2005, p. WK11.
¦"Bush Aid Initiative for Poor Nations Faces Sharp Budget Cuts and Criticism of Slow Pace," by Celia W. Dugger, New York Times, 17 June 2005, p. A8.
Tony Blair and Jeff Sachs and the ONE campaign want the U.S. to plus up their development aid to Africa, but just pouring more money on the problem is not the answer. The Old Core spends more than a quarter trillion on ag subsidies to its own farmers each year, more than three times the money it collectively provides the Gap in Official Developmental Aid (ODA). The World Bank estimates that if all such subsidies were removed and trade barriers eliminated, the in-kind transfer to the Gap would be in the range of $100 billion in income-just like that.
Who would you rather bet on? The corrupt governments of Africa or the farm households there? Which do you think will get you a middle class faster?
Meanwhile, Bush's Millennium Challenge Account remains challenged by its own bureaucracy and Congress's penchant for slicing and dicing foreign aid to death, earmarking as much as possible for pet projects that favor their own voting districts (the bane of the U.S. Agency for International Development these many decades now). The Account just lost its director after just over a year or so in the job, and it's only set up two accounts to date in Madagascar and Honduras. People (and African governments) complain about the Account's strict guidelines on corruption and the like, but its heart is in the right place. Still, the NYT editorial is right: the MCA could learn plenty from the World Bank's Fast Track program in speeding money to deserving states.
How the Leviathan's insider status is maintained
¦"An Office and a Gentleman: In Corporate Jobs, Old Generals Find a Hero's Welcome," by Leslie Wayne, New York Times, 19 June 2005, p. BU1.
The U.S. spends almost $80 billion a year on weapons, so guess how hard it is for retired four-stars to find seats on big corporate boards upon retirement. The "grey beards," as they are known inside the military, become a powerful voice for the past, as they tend to advocate for big, established programs that fit the wars they remember from their command youth. Their powerful connections tend to create a drag on change. Among this crowd, you find a lot of retired flags who still argue vehemently for China-as-the-next-threat. Why? It fits the model they grew up with. They spent most of their military careers making such arguments for the Leviathan force.
You want to find the voices for the SysAdmin force, then talk to the young officers just back from command in the Gulf. But they're about 20 years away from sitting on any corporate boards, so expect the acquisitions community to put up one helluva fight to retain their preferred Leviathan force structure for as long as possible.
I want my MTV Desi!
¦"I Want My Hyphenated-Identity MTV: Videos conquered America, and then the world. What's left? Something in between," by Deborah Sontag, New York Times, 19 June 2005, p. AR2.
MTV already has channels in India, South Korea and China. Now they'll have hybrid versions for second-generation Indians (MTV Desi), Koreans (MTV K) and Chinese (MTV Chi) here in the states. Hip hop and rap will figure prominently in all three channels. No surprise there, as it's become the current young generation's preferred cultural vehicle for expressing all the usual alienation and angst of growing up in the modern world. The big distinction here is the stylized content and the focus on the politics and sociology of identity. Make young people feel like they belong, no matter the niche, and they don't become angry, disassociated and desirous of change through violence. Instead, they find their own way and on that basis feel a lot of freedom, which-quite frankly-is far more about economics than it is politics.
Again, recalling my piece in the Baltimore Sun a while back regarding the ever-diversified face of globalization, this is yet another example of why no one will confuse globalization with Americanization in coming years.
To me this is also a clear indication of New Core status: when you're so inside the Core's main economy (the United States) that MTV gives your nationality its own hybrid channel.
What does "desi" stand for? One theory is "doctors earn significant incomes."
Move over Carson Daly, here comes Niharika Desai.
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