Have X, will travel: typologizing Gap-Core people movement
Posted by Thomas P.M. Barnett
¦"How Africa Subsidizes U.S. Health Care: By poaching the poor world's medical workers, we're siphoning doctors from places where they are needed," op-ed by Sebastian Mallaby, Washington Post, 29 November 2005, p. A19.
¦"For Young Armenians, a Promised Land Without Promise," by Susan Sachs, New York Times, 9 December 2005, p. A4.
At the recent Highlands Forum we both attended, the Goldman Sachs heavyweight Robert Hormats offered to me the following typology for people moving from the Gap to the Core (which I repeat here with his okay): the worst route is "have gun, will travel," the next best is "need job, will travel," then even better is "have job, will travel," and the best is "have job, don't need to travel (cause you sent the job/investment here). I thought this a brilliant little typology, although I might quibble, on the basis of these two stories, regarding the relative value ranking he offered.
For example, is "have job, will travel" is the case, what the Core may really be stealing is a crucial skill set, like those possessed by medical workers, thus "brain draining" the Gap. I mean, it's one thing to take IT workers from a place that has little IT, but it's another when you take medical workers from a place that doesn't have nearly enough of them to deal with AIDS, for example.
The "need job, will travel" route certainly represents a release valve function on an individual basis for those who feel trapped in dead-end lives, but when enough of them go, like in the case of Armenia today, you get the Gap equivalent of a dying prairie town, with all the morose social sentiment that mass departure represents. As one young Armenia woman put it, "We can fit in anywhere. The only place we can't is Armenia."
That's good for the Core, which always needs people willing to work, but that's a killer statement for the very Gap-ish Armenia. I mean, how can Armenia join the Core if its young people mostly want to leave?
Posted by Thomas P.M. Barnett at 05:52 PM
Economics leads politics leads security on China
¦"EU Maintains China Arms Embargo: Pressure to Lift Ban Grows As States Risk Defying U.S. To Cultivate Economic Ties," by Marcus Walker, Marc Champion, and Scott Miller, Wall Street Journal, 9 December 2005, p. A14.
The EU decides to maintain its ban on selling arms to China—for now. But with trade burgeoning as fast as investment (west to east), it's clear that "Europe increasingly sees China more as an opportunity than as a threat."
So don't expect the arms embargo to last much longer. Already Germany and France want to relax the ban as early as next year. I mean, why let the Russians get all the big sales?
China's draw on resources and imports is already lifting all boats in an EU that doesn't take such long-term growth opportunities lightly. Yet another reason why the U.S. needs to establish a secure military alliance with China while the price is still right.
Posted by Thomas P.M. Barnett at 05:52 PM
South America copies Europe copies United States
¦"S. America launches trading bloc: Representatives from 12 South American countries have signed an agreement to create a political and economic bloc modeled on the European Union," by staff, BBC News, 9 December 2005, pulled from website newsvote.bbc.co.uk.
South America's new South American Community of Nations theoretically sports a population larger than the United States at 361 million. Theoretically, a new nation was born at this recent summit in Cuzco, Peru, one that one day will feature a common currency, legislature and passport.
If it did, it would mean the melding of New Core states in Chile, Brazil and Argentina with far-less stable Gap states in the Andean Community (known as Can), which, despite being founded 35 years ago, still hasn't even settled on common tariffs among the member states. Then there's the raging trade disputes of the two largest members (Brazil, Argentina) of the other great trade bloc on the continent—Mercosur.
Still, you have to admire the goal and the ambition—to follow in the footsteps of the Europeans, who only took a little over two centuries to follow in the footsteps of the United States.
So I guess patience is in order.
Posted by Thomas P.M. Barnett at 05:52 PM
Firewalling off the Core from Gap's worst export
¦"A New French Headache: When Is Hate on TV Illegal?," by Elaine Sciolino, New York Times, 9 December 2005, p. A3.
The French are being subjected to a "popular Arabic channel run by the Hezbollah militia out of Lebanon," which "beams its anti-American, anti-Israeli and anti-Semitic messages by satellite into thousands of homes, cafes, restaurants and shops throughout France every day."
Call it Islamotoxification.
The French okayed the broadcast so long as the channel abided by local laws regarding hate speech, but soon into its programming the usual stuff on Jews and Israel started spewing forth, and so the French government took action, eventually modifying a law to let it ban an unlicensed channel.
This is a key question for France and its democracy, where 5-6 million Muslims live alongside (okay, several neighborhoods over) from roughly one-tenth as many Jews.
America should be watching this. We don't have anything like this capacity in the U.S. in terms of legal rule sets. They are real questions whether any government can stop satellite broadcasts using the law (of course, authoritarian regimes do it all the time by fiat).
To me, it's essential to protect freedom of speech, until it starts inciting hatred and violence against others. There's a reason why Jews continue to leave France, and media like this are a prime reason. So France needs to ask itself what kind of secular republic it's going to be.
And America should too, since this Hezbollah channel, known as Al Manar, is available here as well, despite Hezbollah being on the State Department's list of known terrorist groups hostile to American interests. |
